Matt Segall, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Cosmology & Consciousness
What Is Integral Education?
A different kind of learning: one that honors the whole person, bridges wisdom traditions, and transforms how you understand yourself and the world.
Integral means whole. At CIIS, this word shapes everything.
Integral education doesn't just develop the intellect — it engages the whole person: cognitive, emotional, physical, cultural, communal, and spiritual. It draws from Eastern, Western, and Indigenous traditions as important sources of knowledge, honoring multiple ways of teaching, knowing, and learning. At its foundation is a simple recognition: no single framework is sufficient for the breadth of human experience, or the depth of what we're each navigating.
CIIS was founded on this idea in 1968 and it has never felt more relevant.
"We step into that process of education with a sense of purpose and a risk — because you will be transformed, and it won't always be easy. But all of that is in service to opening our hearts and feeling more deeply, so that we can then imagine the future that we all know is possible."
On the Meanings of Integral
CIIS community reflects on the integral approach that shapes how we teach, learn, and engage.
Integral in Practice
Integral education at CIIS means:
- Coursework that connects scholarship to lived experience.
- Faculty who bring active clinical, creative, and scholarly practices into the classroom.
- Research that takes consciousness, spirituality, and embodied knowing as primary sources of knowledge.
- A community where different ways of knowing shape how we teach and learn together.
- Programs that transcend the boundary between who you're becoming and what you're studying.
The Difference Between Traditional and Integral Education
| Traditional Education | Integral Education |
|---|---|
| Siloed disciplines | Transdisciplinary synthesis |
| Mind learning | Embodied, whole-person |
| Credential focused outcome | Transformation as practice |
| Self and studies keep separate | Self and studies integrated |
| Subject-based | Experience-centered |
| Linear timelines | Multiple knowledge systems and timelines |
"When people get here, they start to create some language around what they have felt before but haven't been able to name. And I think that's what 'integral' is."
Sonya Shah, Professor, School of Undergraduate Studies
A Transformational Education
See integral education through the voices and questions that define life at CIIS.
In these short videos, you'll hear what draws people to a place where your biggest questions aren't obstacles to overcome, but doorways to walk through.
In their own words, faculty and students reflect on what makes learning at CIIS unlike anywhere else.
How CIIS honors the Earth through curriculum, retreats, events, and practices that root learning in the living world.
Three Schools.
One Integrating Vision.
All 30+ programs at CIIS are built on integral principles — curricula that cross traditional academic boundaries and embed embodied, reflective ways of knowing alongside rigorous scholarship.
School of Undergraduate Studies
Bachelor's completion programs in Interdisciplinary Studies, Psychedelic Studies, and Psychology — designed for students ready to connect what they study to the work they want to do.
School of Professional Psychology and Health
Psychology practiced in its fullest dimensions, from clinical work to drama therapy, somatic approaches to community mental health. Five counseling specializations and a doctoral program in clinical psychology.
School of Consciousness and Transformation
For those drawn to the deepest questions about mind, meaning, spirit, and existence. Programs in philosophy, consciousness studies, spirituality, activism, art, and leadership.
