Welcome to Our Website

Thanks for taking a look at our website, and a hearty W-E-L-C-O-M-E to you. We hope you find things interesting, informative, thought-provoking, and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Our website provides us the opportunity to present to you what the American Sports Institute is about. This is informed by both our mission, that includes returning sport to its rightful place of honor in the arts, humanities, and sciences, and, in a larger context, our vision and perspective related to witnessing the reunification of the body with the mind in individuals and institutions in America and nations around the world.

We’re endeavoring to realize our mission and vision through five major themes that also offer the possibility of realizing our full human potential through:

1. The Body-Brain Connection that focuses on how the human body and brain are inextricably linked, interacting with one another in ways that are genetically programmed and integral to our evolutionary journey;

2. Living Well, Living Wise that looks at how to live in ways that maximize wellness, providing us with purpose and meaning in our everyday experience;

3. Forces for Social Transformation that offers ways in which the principles and practices that work in sport, physical education, and wellness can serve as means for transforming the lives of individuals, social institutions, and nations;

4. Sport International that explores sport as a global enterprise that can transcend differences between people and nations, providing ways to expand awareness of the diverse ways in which the world works and create bonds that unite rather than divide; and

5. The Arete School of Sport Culture and Wellness that demonstrates in a real-life, practical school that in order for there to be a true transformation of America’s public-school system where every child has a real opportunity to realize his or her full potential, the physical domain must be a major focus and be fully integrated into the learning experience.

These major-theme pages include material in the form of text, links, videos, pdf’s, graphics, and other media. As you’ll see, we link to a number of other websites because they provide really good related material. However, sometimes these other sites unexpectedly deactivate these links. We try to stay on top of this as best we can, and apologize if you encounter any links that are no longer active.

We also offer special Features on our home page that change on a more regular basis. We have the Main Feature on the right side of the page, just below the rotating major themes. And below this are our nine other Features, including this one.

In the banner section at the top of every website page, you’ll find our name and logo, a search bar, a great many languages to select from that allows just about anyone in the world to view our site (we love this), and a subscription link that enables you to be included in our email database and receive updates from us. Go ahead, sign up.

In addition, directly under the banner are our main navigation items that let you know what we’re about and who we are, what our programs and services currently include (there’s a major emphasis on education here), news and events about what’s going on, how to contact and connect with us, and a way to donate to the American Sports Institute and play a role in helping to further our efforts. By the way, all donations are tax-deductible to the extend provided by law.

In the footer at the bottom of every page, you have easy access to many of the items above so you don’t always have to scroll up to connect with these items.

All of this gives you an overview of how to navigate our new site and what to look for. For now, here’s an insight that gives you a representative idea about our perspective toward sport and the physical domain: The American Sports Institute is not about holding winning and who makes the most amount of money as the ultimate goals of sport, as sport’s bottom line. In fact, at the American Sports Institute, we believe that the ongoing overemphasis on winning and money trivializes sport and emanates from a limited and limiting perspective that exploits humanity’s lower common denominators.

For us, sport is a cultural manifestation of the body and our human potential from an evolutionary perspective. As such, we believe that sport plays a vital role in the evolutionary development of humankind toward a higher state of consciousness. In this higher-calling context, we believe that everyone’s absolute best effort is inspiring, that when you give your best you always win, and that a sole focus on winning at any cost is just plain wrong. For us, winning is important in an appropriate context. It’s not if you win, but how you win.

So there you have it; an overview of how to navigate and what to look for on our new website, and an insight into our perspective, our paradigm.

All of this is exciting and rewarding because the American Sports Institute’s vision, mission, and major themes present practical ways to make a true difference in the lives of people everywhere, and a fun way to go about making this difference. As Albert Einstein once said, “He who doesn’t live a life for others, doesn’t have a life worth living.” In the same context, Jackie Robinson put it this way: “A life is only significant as it impacts others.” And it was Eleanor Roosevelt who proclaimed, “Our own success, to be real, must contribute to the successes of others.” Our vision, mission, and major themes and how they are carried out offer you and us the opportunity of a life worth living, a significant life, and real success.

This is what the American Sports Institute is about. Once again, a hearty W-E-L-C-O-M-E to you. We hope you enjoy our website.