The Fire Within: An Interview with Chris Kisling on Finding the Path Back to Yourself
- Racheal Hebert
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 15 hours ago
There are moments in life when we recognize that the path we have been following no longer feels entirely our own. Sometimes that realization arrives quietly. Sometimes it comes through loss, transition, longing, or the persistent sense that there is something within us asking to be heard.
For Chris Kisling, that longing began early. As a younger person, Chris describes himself as shy, sensitive, introverted, deeply religious, a self-described “geek and band dork,” and someone who often felt uncomfortable in his own skin. And yet, alongside that uncertainty was something else: a deep desire to connect with people.
A Winding Path Toward Purpose
Like so many of us, Chris did not arrive at his calling in a straight line. He began his professional life in education, working with students from kindergarten through college and beyond. Later, he entered the corporate world, eventually becoming a business development director for a national consulting firm and leading a team across several states.
There was meaningful work and connection along the way, but the question that had followed him since adolescence remained: What would it mean to do the deeper work?
Chris began dedicating himself to intensive personal growth and professional training, including mentor certification through the Option Institute International Learning and Training Center in New England and an immersive coaching and counselor training program in the San Francisco Bay Area. He eventually returned to that program as a faculty member.
But his education was not simply about acquiring techniques or credentials. It required him to turn inward, examining his own beliefs, wounds, fears, aspirations, and patterns. Through that process, Chris began developing the qualities that now sit at the heart of his work: deep listening, empathy, thoughtful inquiry, and the ability to create a nonjudgmental space where people can become curious about themselves. Eventually, he found the courage to leave the security of his corporate career and step fully into the work he had imagined all those years before.
Today, Chris works as a coach, facilitator, and mentor, accompanying people as they explore the barriers between where they are and the lives they want to inhabit more fully. And this September, he brings that work to The Red Shoes.
The Quest for Fire
On September 26–27, Chris will facilitate The Quest for Fire: A Weekend Retreat at The Red Shoes, an immersive experience designed around a powerful question:
What if the way forward begins by remembering when you have felt most alive?
Rather than approaching personal growth as another opportunity to fix ourselves, improve ourselves, or become someone different, The Quest for Fire begins from a different premise: there is already something valuable, vital, and deeply alive within us. The task is to remember it.
Throughout the weekend, participants will revisit what Chris calls their “timeless moments”: experiences from their lives when they felt especially alive, connected, courageous, creative, peaceful, purposeful, or authentically themselves.
These moments become the embers.
Through reflection, writing, meditation, music, movement, creativity, conversation, and interactive exercises, participants will explore what those memories reveal about the values and qualities that matter most to them.
Along the way, the group will also consider the inner critics and gatekeepers that sometimes keep us from moving toward what we want, while making space to release what no longer serves and listen for what may be ready to emerge.
The goal is not to leave the weekend with a new and improved version of yourself.
It is to become more deeply acquainted with the person who is already there.
We Look Back in Order to Look Forward
Fire is never static. It flickers, changes, consumes, illuminates, and transforms.
Our lives do the same. The Quest for Fire invites us to gather the glowing embers of our own histories and ask what they might illuminate about the path ahead. What has made you feel most alive? What qualities were present in those moments? What parts of yourself have been waiting for more room? What might you be ready to carry forward, and what might you finally be willing to set down?
At the end of the retreat, participants will create a personal touchstone using words, images, objects, intentions, or actions: something tangible to help them remember the direction they want to travel when life inevitably becomes noisy again.
Watch our conversation with Chris Kisling to hear more about his personal journey, the experiences that shaped his work, and his invitation to join us for The Quest for Fire.
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