Personal Life Media

For over twenty years, Dr. Shaner was the Principal of Shaner & Associates: Performance Development Consultants. Shaner & Associates facilitated their corporate clients’ ability to “lead change” and execute their business strategies and operations plan. Clients included Umbro, Frito-Lay, Duracell, BIC, Ryobi, Gillette, Owens Corning Composites, and many others (videos).

Today Dr. Shaner is the Principal of CONNECT Consulting, LLC which not only helps to create measurable and sustainable performance improvement for corporations, but also his consulting services are expanding to include non-profits, peak performance training for experienced athletes and musicians (videos), as well as individual counseling for executives and leaders of all kinds who seek a committed Seven Arts approach to continuous performance improvement.

David Shaner is also a former collegiate and Olympic Valley USA ski racer, former Deputy Sheriff law enforcement officer in Aspen (video), Colorado, and occasional trainer of world champion (pic) and national champion athletes and musicians for the past twenty- five years.

For forty years, Dr. Shaner has been a student of Master Koichi Tohei, founder of Shinshin Toitsu Aikido and the International Ki Society (pic). Today Shaner Sensei holds the Ki-Aikido rank of Nanadan (Seventh Degree Black Belt), holds the rank of Okuden in Ki Development, and he is an Authorized Special Examiner and Chief Instructor of the Eastern (United States) Ki Federation, a branch of Ki no Kenkyukai, International. Shaner sensei is also Japan Headquarter’s Advisor to the Eastern Europe/Russia Ki-Aikido Federation.

Dr. Shaner has been a Fulbright Scholar in India (video) and has received numerous grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. He is a Crown Prince Akihito Scholar and was granted a personal audience with His Majesty, Emperor Akihito (Japan) (pic).

David Shaner holds an Endowed Chair serving as Herring Professor of Asian Studies and Philosophy at Furman University, where he has taught for the last twenty-nine years (video). Dr. Shaner has also taught at Harvard University when he was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He is the author of The Bodymind Experience in Japanese Buddhism (video) and a co-author of Science and Comparative Philosophy (E. J. Brill) with Shigenori Nagatomo and YUASA Yasuo. Dr. Shaner is also the founding editor of the “Philosophy and Biology” Book Series of (37 volumes, video) with the State University of New York Press.