Mick Collins

Mick Collins PhD has had a diverse career since leaving school at the age of 15, including working as a builder’s labourer, infantryman and heavy goods truck driver. Between 1977-1983 Mick travelled around the world visiting diverse countries and learning about different cultures, which also brought him into contact with Buddhism. In the mid 1980s Mick lived in a Buddhist Monastery in the North of England between 1983-6. Eventually he decided to train as an Occupational Therapist and worked in acute mental health settings as well as a specialist psychological therapies team. Mick also spent 9 years training in transpersonal psychotherapy, integrating spirituality and dream work into his therapeutic practice. After many years working in the NHS, Mick took an academic role as a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy and Director of Admissions within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He retired from academia in 2015 and now works in the field of eco-transpersonal development, using methods such as dream work and imaginative action to facilitate growth and transformation in individuals, groups and organisations.

Mick’s personal transformative journey also includes working through an experience known as spiritual emergency, which happened in 1986 after he had been living in a Buddhist Monastery. This encounter catalysed a deep sense of vocation and a decision to become a therapist, as well as inspiring his career as a writer. He has written academic publications on the subject of spirituality, including his doctoral thesis. His PhD explored the relationship between individual recoveries from spiritual crisis, through new ways of doing, knowing, being and belonging, and how these may inform collective transformation. Mick is using his knowledge and experience to explore how humanity can face up to the impact of a burgeoning global crisis, which is also a spiritual crisis. He is interested in exploring new vistas of awareness and action to support the co-creation of an improved and sustainable future.

His first book, The Unselfish Spirit: Human Evolution in a Time of Global Crisis, won the 2014 Scientific and Medical Network book prize. He was ‘author in profile’ at the 2014 Hostry Festival, and was interviewed about his book at the 2015 International Hay Festival for Literature. His second book, The Visionary Spirit: Awakening to the Imaginal Realm in the Transformocene Age is described by David Lorimer as a “transformational tour de force”. Mick continues to speak at conferences and was interviewed about his work on Conscious TV in 2016. He lives in Norwich, Norfolk, UK with his wife Hannah and is a father and grandfather.