Michael Greenwald has been involved in menswork for more than three decades. He is one of the founders of the New Warrior Network, now known as the ManKind Project. He has led hundreds of trainings and worked with thousands of men, facilitating their explorations of their own Masculinity and bringing them to their own initiations.  

This is Michael's story of the inspiration behind behind Menswork Institute:

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In April 1987, a man asked me,” Wanna go to a men’s weekend?” 

I asked, “What’s a men’s weekend?”

I was 38 years old. The law firm at which I was a partner had closed its doors and I was recently divorced. “What the hell?” I said to myself. I signed up.

The “men’s weekend” was the New Warrior Adventure Training (NWTA), channeled, envisioned and organized by Bill Kauth, M.A., a psychologist; Rich Tosi, an engineer with General Motors; and Ron Hering, Ed.D., a professor at the University of Wisconsin. That April 1987 NWTA sounded a call that I didn’t fully hear for many years. But that experience bent the arc of my life toward what is now the Menswork Institute.

In 1989, “New Warrior Brothers” David Lindgren, John Perrin, David Kaar, and I created what came to be known as the New Warrior Network. (It is now known as The ManKind Project, www.mkp.org.) From 1988 to about 2003 or so, Bill, Rich, Ron, Kaar, Lindgren and I and many others built a network of men and a network of centers across the country. With our leadership and the leadership and initiative of dozens of other men, the Network delivered the NWTA and ran follow-up groups for men, integrating the training into their lives. 

Early on in that period, I discovered that I had the aptitude both to facilitate men’s exploration of their lives as men and to lead NWTAs and men’s groups. I also trained men to lead NWTAs and other trainings and mentored those cohorts. I led over 100 NWTAs as well as leader trainings and integration groups. This worked touched thousands of men, their families and communities. 

The NWTA was an organic, challenging and deeply spiritual training. Leading and delivering it took far more artistry and intuition and far less protocol and technique. My training in theater became far more useful to me than my experience as a lawyer. 

From 2000 to 2020, I lived on the shore at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. For many of those years I was the cantorial soloist at Temple Israel, Miller Beach, IN. I also worked with Musicians Without Borders (www.mwb.org), a Dutch NGO that uses the power of music to heal the wounds inflicted by war and civil strife. I came to understand that music is the sound of the energy, the vibrations, of what I called the Divinity. Intrigued by that notion, it wasn’t long before I became interested in quantum science, the study of the energy that is the ground of all being and the secrets it might hold for menswork.

Starting in about 2005 or so, I began thinking about what it might take to offer men a path to productivity, empowerment and joy. My exploration led me to several discoveries.

First, I saw that the threats to humanity arise because mature masculinity seems largely to have disappeared in contemporary worldwide culture.

Second, I envisioned an Arc of Masculinity. As explained in other pages of this site, the Arc of Masculinity encompasses initiation (separation from the Archetypal Feminine and connection to the Archetypal Masculine); Embodiment (feelings, intuition, integration with the environment and reintegration with the feminine); and Quantum Connection.

About Quantum Connection: In the mid-1980s Bill Kauth wrote, “Everything is made of the same stuff: energy vibrating at different frequencies.” As I learned from Ron Hering’s NWTA process “Wildman-Gift,” sensing and surrendering to identity in, of and with the flow of quantum energy both bestows upon a man the potential of the quantum field to bring to bear on his existence; and calls him to recognize and do what he is to do in this time and in this place.

In March 2022, I got this fortune at my favorite Asian restaurant.

Blessed is the man who

has found his work. 

Shortly after that, I went to a workshop called Path to Spirit Warrior, created and offered by David Lindgren. I also attended Desert Wisdom III, created and offered by Dene Maria Sebastiana, George Daranyi, Dee Spitler and Evan Daily.

These intense and transformative experiences helped confirm that I have found work I am meant to do. I readily acknowledge that I am an infinitely tiny collection of tinier subatomic wave/particles humbly dancing in the music of the cosmos.

With deep gratitude for your attention and blessings for health, compassion and peace, I am,

Your brother,

Michael