Form 07 · About Alex
I’m Dr. Alex Lovell, a political psychologist, kundalini yoga therapist, and founder of the Department of Aliveness. I study what makes people feel alive, and I’ve had plenty of reasons to ask that question in my own life. Here’s the work I do, and the life it came from.
Form 08 · The work
What I actually do.
I lead research, write, and work with people one to one and in groups. Across all of it, I’m interested in what makes a person feel alive, and what helps them live that way.
By day · the research
Political psychologist.
By day, I’m a VP leading global research on what makes people come alive at work. I study how organizations shape people’s experience of belonging, recognition, and the opportunity to do something that matters. I love finding the question that helps you see your life differently, the words for something you’ve felt but couldn’t explain, and possibilities you hadn’t realized were yours.
By practice · the body
Kundalini yoga therapist.
As a kundalini yoga therapist, I work with breath, movement, sound, and attention to what’s happening in the body. We can begin with a feeling, a question, or something you’re finding difficult to put into words. Together, we explore what helps you feel, respond, and participate more fully in your own life.
The one question
What makes a person feel alive?
What shapes your experience
The expectations you live with, the people around you, and the places you spend your days all influence what feels possible. We can look at those conditions together, including the rules you’ve inherited about who you should be and what makes your life count.
What you notice in yourself
There’s also what happens as you live: the conversation you leave feeling more like yourself, the wanting you keep talking yourself out of, the moment you realize you’ve been enjoying yourself. Those experiences give us somewhere to begin.
I bring both kinds of attention to our work, so we can understand more of what’s shaping your life and explore what you want to do with it.
1,000s
interviews conducted
100,000s
people reached
Top 3%
recognized pro
Weekly
writing by email
Recognized ·
Thumbtack Top Pro
Bark Elite Pro
Published & featured
Speaking & workshops
Form 09 · The long way here
Some I walked toward. Most I got shoved through. This is the material — not a résumé, just what made the Department necessary.
I was homeless at seventeen.
I didn’t choose it. I worked my way out, learning resilience, what insecurity feels like, and how to build support for myself. I learned the difference between surviving and performing survival from the inside, a distinction the whole Department is still built on. Having somewhere to live didn’t end what I carried from that time. There was still the work of learning to trust and feel safe with myself again.
At seventeen
The study
Two languages for the same thing.
Became a political psychologist and a kundalini yoga therapist. Started quoting research and my own nervous system in the same breath. Both gave me ways to understand what shapes a life, and what it feels like to be the person living it.
Field note · off the clock
A marriage ended. A life kept going.
I’ve been divorced. Found out that something can end and the afternoon continues anyway, dishes and all.
Field note · Wasatch
The turns
The threshold
A seven-car pileup, a semi, and a brain injury.
I survived the crash. What came after was the longer part: a traumatic brain injury, and the slow, unglamorous work of relearning my own mind. Attention, language, memory, patience. I had to learn how to live with what had changed, while I was still discovering what those changes meant. There was aliveness here, too. Not because suffering was a gift, but because I stopped waiting to be healed before I started paying attention. It’s why I refuse to save aliveness for later.
A department that doesn’t exist, for people who are real.
These days I lead research, write, create experiences, and work with people who are figuring out what living looks like after everything shifted, including while plenty is still shifting. The Department gives us somewhere to do that together: to be known, try things, and make room for a life we want to be in. You don’t have to finish healing to begin.
Now
Still here. Still glad to be.
Form 10 · Off the record
And when I’m off the clock.
A few things about the person behind the Department, and the two colleagues with very little respect for office hours.
A few true things
01
I can happily lose hours in the mountains. Trails, lakes, finding out what’s around the next bend.
02
I love pizza, and food generally. There’s a lot to be interested in.
03
I love new experiences. When something lights up my heart and mind, you can see it all over my face.
04
Anything that makes me forget my overevolved sense of responsibility, even for a minute, is welcome.
05
I love a good pickle.
A bench in Ogden · off duty
DOA
Somewhere warmer · making friends
DOA
Off-duty staff · on the payroll
H
Helix
Weimaraner. Reports to no one. Sets the pace of every afternoon.
P
Poppy
Border jack. Highly effective in her role. Believes no meeting is truly urgent.
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