Meet the Founder
My name is Syd Siyadat.
1. My Journey and Background
I’ve been drawn to life’s deeper questions since my teenage years. For over 22 years, I’ve studied and practiced meditation, self-inquiry, and philosophy. This journey has taken me from formal academic study, including three postgraduate degrees (one in philosophy, where I studied both Western and Eastern traditions), to deep immersion in spiritual practice. I spent more than two years living and serving in an ashram, a yogic monastery.
One of my proudest achievements is that I’ve meditated every single day for the past 22 years. This sustained practice has certainly changed my perspective on who I am and what this world is about. But for me, transformation is not just about meditating with closed eyes or pondering in an armchair. It needs to show up naturally in how we see the world — in our actions, thoughts, emotions, and words as we engage with life.
I’ve had the opportunity to practice what I’ve learned on the path of transformation in my personal life and in a demanding and diverse 23-year career. My work spans multi-billion-pound business negotiations, corporate strategy, consulting, executive coaching, and leadership training. More recently, I’ve worked in policy leadership positions in the UK government, working on trade policy post-Brexit, strategising about the geopolitics of trade, and developing policy to enhance technology adoption. I’ve also studied and applied systems thinking extensively, which continues to influence how I understand change, interdependence, and complexity.
For me, my passion for philosophy and transformation has never been an abstract or lofty pursuit detached from the world. Quite the opposite. I’ve consistently tried to integrate my world of introspection, meditation, and intuition with pragmatism and rationality, within the realities of a changing world.
My philosophical and spiritual foundation has been most deeply shaped by yogic and adjacent traditions, such as Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita Vedanta. Alongside these, I’ve learned from a wide range of other traditions including Zen, Sufism, Buddhism, the Toltec and Yaqui teachings, as well as Western philosophy. As a trained systems engineer, I also love science, particularly physics and neuroscience. My interests in Western philosophy include philosophy of consciousness, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of physics.
In this school, what matters to me is not adhering to any one system of thought. What matters is helping us find answers to life’s big questions for ourselves and discovering ways to live with more clarity, freedom, and joy that work for us.
Along the way, I trained and practiced as a transformational coach and group facilitator, supporting others in navigating life and change from the inside out. I’ve taught systems thinking at university, led executive and transformational workshops, facilitated many mindfulness sessions, and studied how people learn and grow. Through that exploration, I’ve come to see that real transformation doesn’t come from information alone. It comes from a shift in perception and being. Transformation needs to be embodied and lived. Otherwise, we’ve just learned a bunch of words.
That’s why this school is grounded in transformational learning. It’s an approach that invites not just intellectual understanding, but integration at every level of our being.
As part of my work, I’m also currently writing a spiritual-philosophical novel — a work of fiction that weaves together many of the questions and experiences that have shaped my own journey.
Outside of this, I’m someone who loves music, dance, movies, books, spending time with loved ones and friends, and being in nature. I also enjoy games — from board games to poker. For me, joy, humour, and aliveness are essential to transformation, and I certainly try not to take myself too seriously.
2. Why I Established This School and Who Can Benefit
I’ve always valued rational thought. I’m a deeply analytical thinker by nature, someone who wants ideas to make sense, not just feel good. But through years of inner practice, I’ve also come to understand that there are other, powerful ways of understanding the world. These reveal themselves through direct experience, silence, and intuition. Ignoring them cuts us off from parts of ourselves.
I’ve seen how, on one hand, many spiritually minded people can benefit from grounding their experiences in clearer thinking. Making sense of what they’re going through creates a stronger foundation for their growth. On the other hand, many rational thinkers become trapped in their own concepts. They rarely experience what lies beyond arguments or turn their insights into lived experience. For many intelligent people, their mind — one of their greatest assets — becomes their biggest prison. I’ve also seen how people with religious beliefs can benefit from closely examining their assumptions, moving beyond intellectual belief and inherited notions of morality to directly experience the deeper truths that many religious traditions point toward. It is one thing to say we believe we should love everyone while harbouring anger or hatred in our hearts. It is quite another to genuinely feel love and compassion. The difference between intellectual belief and lived experience can be vast.
I believe the way we see ourselves and the world is at the core of how we experience life. In my experience as a coach, I’ve seen how sometimes deeply rooted challenges can dissolve simply by looking at things differently. When we see ourselves and the world from a deeper and more expansive perspective, something shifts. I call this “philosophy therapy.”
Unless we’ve engaged in honest self-inquiry and inner work, most of our deepest beliefs — including the image we have of ourselves — are not truly our own. We’ve inherited them unconsciously through conditioning. As the Toltec tradition puts it, we have been “domesticated.” Our belief systems are often messy collages made up of other people’s beliefs, especially those we absorbed from our families and culture when we were children.
But when you begin to properly test those inherited dogmas, assumptions, and stories, and choose for yourself how you want to see the world, it can be liberating. That shift changes your whole experience of life. Your behaviour and emotions are no longer compelled by old, unconscious scripts. You become lighter, more free, and more empowered.
This inner shift doesn’t just change our personal lives. It changes how we relate to the world around us. If we see the Earth as something separate from ourselves to be used or exploited, we will continue to destroy the very planet we live on. But when we feel ourselves in relationship with nature, we act differently. Living in harmony with the natural world begins with seeing it not as “other,” but as part of who we are.
In the same way, the lack of peace in the world reflects the lack of peace within individuals. Outer conflict mirrors inner conflict. The way we relate to others, the need to dominate or control, the inability to listen or empathise — all of these stem from how we see ourselves and the world. Transforming that vision is one of the most powerful ways to create change.
The work of this school is about integrating our full human potential. It brings together reason and intuition, concepts and experience. It’s about learning how to access all of our human faculties so we can think clearly, feel deeply, and live wisely and fully. This is how we develop the capacity to choose how we live, rather than being run by patterns we never consciously agreed to.
In the Western world, especially within analytic philosophy, philosophy has often become dry, abstract, and disconnected from the deeper questions of life. This school offers an alternative.
I created the School of Transformational Philosophy to bring together the richness of philosophy and the power of inner practice. These are not just ideas, but tools for living and expanding awareness. This is a space for deep inquiry, direct experience, and reconnecting with a more meaningful way of being in the world.
If you’ve ever felt that conventional answers don’t satisfy you, or sensed there’s a deeper way to live, or want to bring clarity, wisdom, and meaning into your everyday life, this work may speak to you. You can explore the online courses I offer, or get in touch if you want to try a one-to-one transformational coaching session.
3. My Commitment
I’ve tried — not always perfectly, but I hope sincerely — to live these teachings in daily life, including in high-pressure environments. That seeming contrast between the inner and outer has only deepened my conviction. It is possible to live with depth and strength in a fast-moving world.
I continue my journey every day and make no claims of mastery. But I’ve been on the path of transformation long enough to know it’s worth the effort. I believe I can help others find clarity and happiness in their lives, and support them in making sense of a world that can often feel fragmented and overwhelming.
If we work together, I won’t offer ready-made answers. But I can support you in discovering your own, and share perspectives drawn from both my personal journey and the threads of wisdom found across traditions and philosophy. Sometimes, a different way of seeing things is all it takes to open the door to real clarity and transformation.