Robert A. Threlfall is a graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute's two year Ayurvedic medicine program and the International Institute of Chinese Medicine's two year acupuncture and herbal program. He has been a Reiki teacher from time to time for the past thirteen years and an advanced Kofutu spiritual healer for sixteen years.
He received his undergraduate degree in theoretical mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently doing graduate level research in complexity theory and algorithmic number theory in conjuction with the computer science department at UW-Madison.
At age four his mother (one of Wisconsin's most experienced botanists) started his botany education – he was not always a willing student.