Peter Matthies spent years in Silicon Valley venture capital, burning out, feeling like an alien in a world that everyone else seemed to navigate with ease. Then a book about an Apache elder, a psychic mentor in Carmel, and a flash of insight on a plane from New York led him to found the Conscious Business Institute in 2005. Since then, more than 80,000 professionals from Starbucks, BMW, Siemens, and Intel have gone through its programs.

Nathalie Claude knew at five years old that she wanted to sing jazz. She fought for it, moved to San Francisco to study it, and spent 30 years on stage living it. Then she went to Egypt, saw a vision of gemstone-infused crystal singing bowls, could not find them anywhere, and built them herself.

Stacie Marie Sholer had spent 20 years building a national business from zero to three million dollars a year, raised her children as a single mom, and given 90 percent of her soul to something that was no longer hers. When she finally walked away, she found what had been waiting all along: art, healing, and the work of bringing people home to themselves.