ABOUT

In 1981 Michael embarked on The Betrayal of Intimacy, an independent research and public awareness project to help prevent sexual violence. Michael observed that the abusive person is most often themselves a victim of early childhood abuse, humiliation, and neglect and that this betrayal of intimacy creates a foundation for violence. If the absence of nurturing is a major contributor to patterns of violence, then feeling safe, physical affection and play in early childhood will help prevent violence. It was upon these simple observations that Michael founded Touch the Future in 1987, a nonprofit learning design center.

As a documentary filmmaker Michael has traveled extensively researching sensitive issues: domestic violence and rape, the impact of media on learning, cultural and human development, the nature of intelligence, holistic learning models, the changing family, prenatal learning, creativity and peak performance. For decades Michael has gathered and published interviews with more than fifty researchers, scientists, authors and performance specialists, including extensive works with renowned physicist David Bohm, J. Krishnamurti, Ashley Montagu and Joseph Chilton Pearce. Working closely with Pearce and performance specialists, Michael developed a revolutionary parenting and coaching model that applies the psychology of optimum experience, what athletes call The Zone, to parenting and to education.

Magical Parent – Magical Child, the Optimum Learning Relationship, a book written in collaboration with Pearce, offers this model of peak performance and optimum learning to parents, preschool, Head Start, and child care providers, public educators and amateur athletic coaches. Michael has presented these and related works at national and international conferences in the United States, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, in India and the United Kingdom.

The mission of Touch The Future is to promote Optimum Learning Relationships between adults and children. A five-year exploration of optimum states of learning, wellness, and peak performance led to a revolutionary parenting and coaching model the authors call The Intelligence of Play. Touch the Future’s top agenda is to provide a lasting foundation for Pearce’s legacy and to extend this model for Optimum Learning Relationships to specific populations: preschool, Head Start, and child care providers, public education, and amateur athletics.

“It is possible to create a new world by transforming ourselves and modeling that for our children. The intellect can’t save us. Something else is needed. What athletes call the zone, researchers call flow and children call play, transforms the present by breaking patterns that have enslaved humanity for millennia. Authentic play, with its empathy, care, sensitivity, wonder and affection is the only force strong enough to bring about the change we know is needed, now. To understand this force we need to rediscover what authentic play feels like, in the mind and the body.”