To South Africa and Back… Twice!

Working with teacher trainees in Limpopo Province

A non-traditional first-person and personal way of telling you my story….

David Hesketh, MSc

Neuro-Medical Science & Education

Born to an Anglican priest and his wife on the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, I was a curious, gregarious, athletically-inclined lad and I loved singing. I describe my upbringing as ‘flexible religiosity’ but my life experience in my youth was spiritual, mostly in the outdoors: In a traditional, Canadian canoe.

It was the times like these that I spent alone are where I first became conscious of ‘something more’ than the ordinary.

Buckhorn Lake about 7 years old

John F Ross CVI Guelph, Ontario

I was a good student until High School which coincided with my experience of being bullied. My emphasis shifted to social acceptance from academic.

Post-high school, saw me working toward my goal of $1,000,000 and a Jaguar XJ-12 by the time I was 25 through such ‘careers’ as newspaper management, life insurance sales, gasoline jockeying and dispatching cement trucks.

Circulation Manager’s Prize Giving.

Guelph This Week.

With Elliott F Brady at Grad.

Thanks to some hard-hitting advice from mentors, I realized my goal was farther than I first imagined. So, I decided to enrol at Trent University (Peterborough, ON). I was introduced to the ‘Hippocampus’ (“What’s That!?!”) in a 1st yr Psych course. Upon discovering it as a primary brain area, I jumped headlong into a science degree (Honours BSc, Bio-Psychology), while being involved in university leadership roles.

My summers were spent working for Parks-Canada and Trent U (in sales). So, by age 25, not only did the $1 million exist soley in my imaginary bank account, but my Jag looked an awful lot like a Toyota!

Warming my paws as ‘Boomer The Beaver’ – Parks Canada mascot

During this time, it was a solitary moment where I felt I was bathed inside and out in a flood of intuition, like God speaking to me from the inside, that gave me the direction in medicine for my future. It was also then that I took a keen interest in Astronomy and The Cosmos.

McMaster University Medical Centre. Hamilton, Ontario.

In pursuit of a medical degree, I continued my studies in Neuro-medical science (and ice hockey!) at McMaster University (Hamilton, ON) serving in student leadership positions there, too. The feeling and sensations persisted that I was to make some kind of significant contribution to the world, although I did not know what that was to be.

The search for knowing took me on a 10-day solo journey into the Temagami Wilderness – Sacred Anishnabe land and old growth forest.

Powerful and Profound.

While applying to med school, I became a French substitute teacher. I was so turned on by teaching that I abandoned the idea of med school.

But I was turned off by the government education system. I felt that many of my fellow teachers were in if for the job and not for the love of the children, many of whom came from difficult backgrounds.

Quilted image of The Toronto Waldorf School by Mary Hesketh (Thanks, Mum!!!)

During this time I was introduced to the work of the Austrian spiritual scientist, Rudolf Steiner, and the method of schooling he started.

When I first visited the Waldorf School in Toronto, I had a deep experience of the love for children and a healthy way they were being schooled into the world.

I felt this was right for me and I pursued a year-long study (Toronto) in developmental methodologies used in Waldorf schools which closely coincided with awakening healthy brain development.

With fellow Teacher trainees. We had such a gas of a time learning. Special group!

Prepping for the next day’s lab lesson.

Before the program was completed, I landed a 1-year high school sciences contract in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the time when Nelson Mandela had just been released from his 27 years in prison. That 1 year became 5 heady years as the process of transition to a democracy bumped its way into being.

Toward end of this time my son arrived. Assisting the home birth in a candle-lit bedroom surrounded by friends and family was perhaps the most profound of spiritual experiences of my life.

Reading together was a daily Dad and Lad time.

With the dismantling of Apartheid in SA came criminal violence. I took the opportunity to move my family to the safety of Vancouver (BC). Teaching the sciences and undertaking many administrative and leadership roles, I finally quit smoking for good and took up triathlons to regain full health.

After 9 years, both my marriage and my life ‘went South’ and I returned to Johannesburg to co-parent my son.

After 2 more years, I called formal classroom teaching a day.

My Grade 11 Mob at Michael Mount. The last as a classroom teacher.

I then started my own health enterprise ‘dna Centre’ and promoted stem cell release products while lecturing for StemTech Africa throughout South Africa.

Stress, I learned, was a large reason why we get sick. I was motivated to develop a brain-based program, using Waldorf methods, to give people tools they experienced and could apply in their day-to-day lives to empower them to reduce stress and lead happier and more productive lives.

A happy group of graduate accountants!

This was the beginning of BrainFocus.

Focus is the antidote to Stress.

Corporations and schools became my target market. The uptake was tremendous and the results consistently good, which I was able to show statistically (See the Results page on this website).

A course at Sun International at Sun City

Some of the boys at St Stithians College and Gareth Murray

The privilege of teaching across the spectrum of cultures is a South African gift!

The experiential decommissioning of stress to awaken a person’s higher purpose, and experience of success in achieving that (called joy, happiness, inner peace, contentment, etc.) became my mission.

Through practical higher brain exercises that bring out the best in human potential, I have taught thousands of people how to lower the cost that the mindset of stress has on so many people’s lives.

Step 2 of 5 in defining an engaging and sustainable online program.

I have, since moving back to Toronto, added my curriculum development expertise to my mindset mentoring to assist professionals with their vision of developing businesses based on engaging programs that will have a transformative impact on their clients and themselves.

I am now using my scientific background to collaborate with professionals that want to positively impact the future of humanity and the planet through delivering programs that raise consiousness to a new level of awareness.

I host a Facebook Group called Global Consciousness Engineers, which is intended for like-minded people to find each other and collaborate to bring their own vision for awakened consciousness to the world.

My ultimate objective is to provide a global online curriculum that is based on the holistic development of the individual human being while being able to provide income to those who subscribe.

And, I have a viable plan to do it.

dh 2023