20+
Years of Experience
AN AUTHOR AND A GUIDE
The Seven Levels Framework did not begin in a seminar room.
It began with a contradiction.
For years, we helped others work through conflict — professionally, skilfully, with genuine results. And for years, we quietly avoided looking at our own.
That contradiction, when it finally could not be ignored, became the turning point that made this work real. What you’ll find in the Seven Levels Framework is not theory. It is a path that has been walked.
20+
Years of Experience
When approached with consciousness and courage, conflict becomes not an obstacle to peace — but a catalyst for more profound peace.
WHERE IT BEGAN
I enrolled in police training at seventeen with a genuine desire to help people. I believed in it. But I quickly came to see that reactive, control-based approaches to conflict — however well-intentioned — rarely reached the level where conflict actually lives. Something deeper was being missed. That early discomfort with the status quo set me on a different path, though I didn’t know where it was leading yet.
THE DECADE I DO NOT SKIP OVER
My twenties were a decade of struggle — with alcohol, with the chaos of nightlife, with the kind of drift that happens when the ground shifts beneath you. My parents’ divorce had taken something foundational with it, and I hadn’t found a way to replace it yet.
At twenty-nine, something shifted. I looked at the path I was on and understood, clearly, where it was heading. I made a decision to turn around. With a Tony Robbins course as my only resource and no real map, I turned my attention inward — and that decision changed everything.
THE WORK THAT FOLLOWED
The two decades that followed were a sustained exploration of what it means to be human — through professional coaching, conflict resolution practice, and a deep study of the inner dimensions of experience. I launched my coaching business and discovered something that would become central to everything: a holistic approach produced results that single-dimensional methods simply couldn’t reach.
The SADHANA Approach took shape in 2006. The Seven Levels Framework followed: a map of the same terrain, through the lens of conflict. What level is this dispute actually living at? What is it asking us to understand? Those questions changed the nature of the work entirely.
WHERE WE ARE NOW
Three books, hundreds of coaching engagements, and a successful training pilot later — this work is still unfolding. We are not at the end of this path. We walk it every day, with more clarity than we had at twenty-nine and more questions than we had at seventeen. That is what keeps it honest.
The Inner Resolution Philosophy exists because of the conviction that peace does not come from perfect circumstances. It comes from within. This site, and everything on it, is an expression of that belief.
WHY THIS FRAMEWORK
What makes the Seven Levels different
Traditional conflict resolution tends to ask: what happened, who is right, and how do we settle this? Those are useful questions. But they rarely touch the level where conflict actually originates — in the stories we tell about ourselves, the emotions we haven’t yet understood, the identity threats we haven’t named.
The Seven Levels Framework is built on a different premise: that every conflict carries information, and that information lives at multiple depths simultaneously. To resolve conflict at the surface while ignoring what is happening at the level of identity or relationship is to manage a symptom. The framework invites something deeper than management. It invites intelligence.
Professional Background
Author of Resolving From Within: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Seven Levels Framework (2025)
Explores the full Inner Resolution Philosophy at ianrenaud.com
Trained and piloted the Conflict Intelligence Practitioner program (September 2025)
Founder of NAMASTE International Inc., Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Professional coach and conflict resolution specialist — over two decades of practice
Creator of the Seven Levels Framework and the SADHANA Approach
Author of Living The Chit Life and Know Thyself and Move Forward
READY TO BEGIN?
There is a place to start, wherever you are.
Explore the work through a free 7-day practice, or take the assessment to discover where your Conflict Intelligence is calling for attention.
Peace Comes From Within.
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