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An ancient practice for modern relationships

Become more awake to who you are — and what it is like to be on the other side of you.

Most of us have spent years learning to explain ourselves. Far fewer have learned to recognize the experience we create for other people.

Nepsis combines timeless wisdom, modern psychology, and practical relational tools to help people become more aware, more present, and more trustworthy in the relationships that matter most.

Jason VanRuler writing at his desk Hover to turn
What you intend Steady. Present. In control.
What they experience Distant. Guarded. Hard to reach.

We have become experts in ourselves and beginners in one another.

We know our personality types. We know our attachment styles. We know our strengths, wounds, boundaries, triggers, and preferences.

Yet many of us still do not know what it feels like to be married to us, led by us, parented by us, corrected by us, or in conflict with us.

Self-awareness matters. But self-awareness is the beginning of maturity, not the destination. The deeper work is learning to see ourselves relationally.

Your greatest relational blind spot may not be something you cannot see within yourself. It may be the experience you unknowingly create around yourself.

Awareness shapes presence. Presence shapes relationships. Relationships shape everything.

When we become more aware of our inner lives, we become less controlled by them. We notice our stories before they become assumptions. We recognize our defenses before they become disconnection.

The meaning

Nepsis means to wake up.

An ancient Christian word for watchfulness and attentive awareness — the practice of observing what is moving within us before it unconsciously shapes what happens around us.

Awake Within

Recognize the emotions, stories, wounds, needs, and protective patterns shaping your responses.

Present With

Become more curious, grounded, honest, and emotionally available in your relationships.

Responsible For

Take ownership of the experience you create and learn how to repair what your patterns have damaged.

For people who want their inner growth to change their outer relationships.

Nepsis serves individuals, couples, leaders, teams, churches, and organizations ready to move beyond surface-level solutions.

01

Leaders

For founders, executives, pastors, and influential people who want to understand how their inner world shapes their leadership and culture.

02

Couples

For couples who want to identify the deeper patterns beneath conflict and become more emotionally present with one another.

03

Teams

For organizations that want healthier communication, more trustworthy leadership, and cultures where people can grow.

04

Men

For men who want to become more honest, integrated, emotionally mature, and trustworthy in every area of life.

The goal is not simply to know yourself better.

It is to become the kind of person who can:

  • · Remain present when conversations become uncomfortable.
  • · Tell the truth without abandoning kindness.
  • · Receive feedback without immediately becoming defensive.
  • · Recognize the story beneath a reaction.
  • · Repair rather than retreat, retaliate, or explain.
  • · Lead from integrity rather than anxiety, image, or control.

The evidence of personal growth is relational change.

A practical path toward relational awareness

Wake up. Look within. Turn toward. Live awake.

01

Wake Up

Interrupt autopilot. Become aware of what is happening in your mind, body, emotions, and relationships.

02

Look Within

Identify the stories, wounds, attachments, defenses, and desires shaping how you respond.

03

Turn Toward

Develop the presence and courage to remain connected when discomfort makes you want to protect or withdraw.

04

Live Awake

Practice honesty, curiosity, responsibility, repair, and love until awareness becomes a way of life.

One philosophy. Several ways to experience it.

Speaking

Transformative talks and experiences for companies, churches, conferences, and leadership gatherings.

Explore Speaking

Advisory & Intensives

Private, high-trust work for leaders, couples, and individuals navigating pressure, transition, or significant change.

Explore Private Work

Teams & Organizations

Customized workshops, retreats, leadership development, and cultural-health engagements.

Explore Organizational Work

Communities

Formation-based groups for people who want meaningful growth alongside others committed to honesty and action.

Explore Communities
Jason VanRuler, founder of NEPSIS
Founded by Jason VanRuler

A therapist's insight. A teacher's clarity. A guide's presence.

Jason VanRuler is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and advisor who has spent more than 15 years helping people understand the hidden patterns shaping their lives and relationships.

His work brings together clinical experience, spiritual wisdom, attachment theory, communication research, and practical relational tools — and is the foundation for the PATHS communication framework.

Book One Get Past Your Past
Book Two Discovering Your Communication Type

"What is it like to be on the other side of you?"

Praise for Get Past Your Past

Bob Goff says the book guides readers toward "a path that ends in connection."

Bob Goff · New York Times bestselling author

Jon Acuff calls it a companion for moving past pain toward a braver, more connected future.

Jon Acuff · New York Times bestselling author

Ideas for living more awake.

The Podcast

Conversations about relationships, leadership, faith, pressure, and what comes next.

The Books

Practical frameworks for understanding your past, recognizing your patterns, and building healthier relationships — including Get Past Your Past and Discovering Your Communication Type.

The Newsletter

A brief weekly reflection and one practical tool for becoming more aware and relationally present.

The Assessment

Discover your communication path and how other people may experience it under connection and stress.

Recent conversations
The Candace Cameron Bure PodcastSix-part series on the PATHS framework
All It Takes Is a Goal — Jon AcuffThe five communication types
That Sounds Fun — Annie F. DownsAttachment theory & dating
Dream Big — Bob Goff and FriendsTurning ideas into frameworks
Typology PodcastPATHS and the Enneagram
H3 Leadership — Brad LomenickCommunication and leadership blind spots
Win Today: Your Roadmap to WholenessWhere your communication style came from
Shifting CultureWhy we keep missing each other
The Crystal Paine ShowDiscovering Your Communication Type
Late Learner — Allison HareWhy high performers struggle with relationships
Best Audacious LifeHealing trauma & rewriting your story
Sex, Love, and AddictionWhy going to therapy is so hard
Onsite WorkshopsCreating connection with the people around you
The One Day At A Time Recovery PodcastGetting past your past in recovery
RAPT InterviewsStrengths, struggles, and coaching well
The books
Get Past Your Past book cover

Get Past Your Past

A guide to facing your broken places so you can stop running from your past and build the kind of connection that lasts — with an introduction from Bob Goff.

View on Amazon
Discovering Your Communication Type book cover

Discovering Your Communication Type

The five PATHS types — Peacemaker, Advocate, Thinker, Harbor, and Spark — and how to recognize your pattern before it costs you a relationship.

View on Amazon

The life you build is inseparable from the experience you create.

Become more aware of what is happening within you so you can become more intentional about what happens around you.

The Nepsis Way

Personal growth is incomplete until it changes the way people experience us.

The Nepsis Way is a framework for becoming awake to your inner world, aware of your relational impact, and intentional about the person you are becoming. It moves people from unconscious reaction to thoughtful response.

An ancient word for an urgent modern need.

Nepsis is traditionally translated as watchfulness, wakefulness, or sobriety of the soul. It invites us to become curious about our thoughts, emotions, bodily reactions, desires, wounds, fears, and defenses before they quietly direct our lives.

Modern life encourages speed, reaction, distraction, performance, and certainty. Nepsis invites us to slow down long enough to see clearly — so we can become more available to God, to reality, and to the people around us.

We cannot take responsibility for what we refuse to notice.

You can understand yourself and still be difficult to experience.

A person can know why they become defensive and continue hurting people with their defensiveness. They can identify their trauma and continue using it to excuse their impact.

Insight is important. But insight that never becomes relational responsibility can become another form of self-protection.

Self-awareness asks: "What is happening in me?"

Relational awareness asks: "What happens to others when this happens in me?"

Nepsis teaches us to ask both.

Four movements of becoming awake
01

Wake Up

Interrupt automatic behavior long enough to recognize what is actually happening.

  • What am I feeling?
  • What am I reacting to?
  • What am I trying to protect?
Awareness
02

Look Within

Become curious about the stories, attachments, and wounds underneath your behavior.

  • What story am I believing?
  • Where did I learn this response?
  • Is this about the present or an older wound?
Understanding
03

Turn Toward

Choose curiosity over certainty, connection over protection, responsibility over explanation.

  • What might this person be experiencing?
  • What truth needs to be spoken?
  • What would love and courage require here?
Presence
04

Live Awake

Practice honesty, courage, curiosity, humility, repair, and love until they become available under pressure.

  • What experience am I repeatedly creating?
  • What conversation have I been avoiding?
  • Who am I becoming through the way I respond?
Transformation

Awareness becomes visible through practice.

Notice

What is happening within and around you.

Name

Honest language for the emotion or pattern.

Own

Responsibility for your behavior and its impact.

Turn

Toward truth, discomfort, and relationship.

Repair

Acknowledge harm and practice a different response.

Notice what is happening. Name what is true. Own what is yours.
Turn toward the person. Repair what has been broken.

Your communication path

Awareness becomes practical when you understand your patterns.

PATHS helps people identify their primary communication tendencies and understand how those tendencies are experienced under both connection and stress — the foundation of Jason's second book, Discovering Your Communication Type.

Discover Your Communication Path
P Peacemaker
A Advocate
T Thinker
H Harbor
S Spark

The same inner work changes every relationship.

Leadership

Lead with steadiness, self-awareness, clarity, courage, and responsibility.

Marriage

Recognize the cycle beneath recurring conflict and create greater safety and connection.

Teams

Replace avoidance and defensiveness with candid communication and relational trust.

Parenting

Respond to children from grounded presence rather than anxiety or control.

Faith

Move from spiritual performance toward attentiveness, surrender, and genuine transformation.

Personal Growth

Become someone whose intention increasingly matches the experience others actually have.

Wake up to what is happening within you.
Become responsible for what happens around you.

Work with Nepsis

Deep work for people and organizations ready for meaningful change.

Nepsis engagements help people identify the patterns beneath their problems, become more aware of their impact, and practice new ways of relating — combining psychological insight, practical tools, and a deeply relational approach.

Private Advisory

High-trust guidance for leaders navigating pressure, complexity, transition, and the relational weight of influence.

FoundersExecutivesPastorsPublic Figures
  • Leadership presence
  • Relational blind spots
  • Navigating pressure and transition

Executive & Couples Intensives

Concentrated, private engagements for leaders and couples ready to do focused, in-depth work in a short window of time.

1:1 IntensiveCouples Intensive
  • Recurring conflict cycles
  • Rebuilding trust and safety
  • Clarity before a major decision

Keynote Speaking

Talks and experiences for conferences, companies, churches, and leadership gatherings built around the Nepsis philosophy.

CorporateFaith-BasedExecutive Groups
  • What the Hardest Marriages Taught Me About Leadership
  • Every Leader Is a Thermostat or a Thermometer
  • Custom talks by audience and theme

Leadership Workshops & Team Retreats

Immersive experiences that build emotional intelligence, communication, and trust across a leadership team.

Half-DayMulti-Day Retreat
  • Executive men's groups
  • Team culture and communication
  • PATHS for Teams

Organizational Culture Advisory & Men of Integrity

Ongoing partnership for organizations building healthier culture, and formation-based community for men pursuing integrity together.

Ongoing AdvisoryMen's Community
  • Cultural-health engagements
  • Leadership development pathways
  • Brotherhood and accountability

A simple way to begin.

01

Start a Conversation

Share a bit about your situation through a short, segmented inquiry form.

02

A Personal Reply

Jason or his team responds with the right next step for your specific need.

03

A Discovery Conversation

A candid conversation to understand the work, the fit, and the path forward.

04

Begin the Work

Engagements are scoped around depth, audience, and the change you're after.

Start a conversation

Tell us a little about what brought you here.

Nepsis does not publish pricing for premium engagements. Every conversation begins with understanding your situation, not a rate sheet.

I'm a leader
I'm part of a couple
I lead a team or org
Speaking inquiry