Bio

Kathy Eckles, M.A.

Kathy brings a deep background in leadership, energy, psychology, and group facilitation to her work with private individuals and organizational leaders. Formally trained as a healer, psychotherapist, executive coach, and mediator she helps people resolve challenges at their cause and then apply their inherent wisdom to create satsifying, generative lives. She listens for people’s deepest needs and intentions, their existing gifts and what’s needed to help them move forward.

Her work is informed by a Masters in Counseling Psychology and decades of study in wisdom traditions, mystery trainings, hands-on healing, archetypal and spiritual psychology, past life therapy, the Enneagram and more. The wisdom of these are integrated into the profoundly efficient, psycho-spiritual framework which she often utilizes for healing and transformation, called Life Centered Therapy (LCT), developed by clinical psychologist, Andrew Hahn.

Kathy has extensive experience in design and facilitation of private and board retreats, workshops, and delivery of yearlong training programs where she taught trauma resolution skills and the Enneagram to psychologists, doctors, coaches and therapists in the U.S., UK, Ireland and Sweden. She provides dialogue facilitation, training and consulting for Essential Partners, Inc., managing multi-stakeholder initiatives across non-profit, civic, educational, and religious sectors to increase a community's ability to address challenges, ultimately helping them live and work better together. She also facilitates half year mindfulness-based leadership programs for the Asian Leadership Institute-Consultancy.

Kathy was formerly a top-quartile performing Div. Vice President in the retail industry ($120M budget in 43 stores in New England) and adjunct professor at Lasell College where she taught Organizational Behavior and Ethics in Business. Her work is informed by these values.

Education

Masters in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Depth Psychology, magna cum laude, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA
Bachelor of Arts, Clothing and Textiles, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Trained mediator through Mediation Works, Inc.
Executive coaching internship with Masterful Coaching
Dialogue and facilitation trainings with the Essential Partners
Essential Facilitation and Facilitative Leadership for Social Change training with Interaction Institute for Social Change
Energy healing: 15 years training with Rev. Rosalyn Bruyere
Hands-on healing, chelation, sacred mysteries, channeling, Bon-Po and Hopi traditions
Energy psychology, psychotherapy and group facilitation internship: 5 years internship plus training program development with clinical psychologist, Dr. Andrew Hahn. Dr. Hahn continues to provide ongoing supervision for work with individual clients.
Certified trainer of Life Centered Therapy (formerly Guided Self Healing).
Taught this mind/body, psycho-spiritual framework for healing to psychologist, therapists, doctors and coaches in the U.S., UK, Ireland and Sweden
Enneagram study: Private study plus 15 years with Dr. Andrew Hahn utilizing the wisdom of the Enneagram to help clients improve relationships and resolve personal blocks
Reiki Master and teacher in the Usui tradition. Trained by Julia Carroll
Heart-centered transformation and dream tending: Multiple programs with Brugh Joy, M.D.
Healing through body-based awareness: 15+ years with Dan Emmons

My Personal Story

Since childhood I've had a keen awareness of the unseen world that was always coupled with an appreciation for well-developed, diversified life skills. As a kid I watched people in my rural neighborhood west of Cleveland go to and from work in what seemed rote behavior with minimal joy. It was merely my perception, not necessarily an accurate one, but it didn't look like an appealing way to live so I pondered what would make my life worth living. My answer was to discover how the seen and unseen interact in Life's creative process. Big words for a little girl. I had no idea how this would happen. I simply paid attention to learning practical skills, to the impact of my thoughts, feelings and actions, to my intuition, and to developing a healthy relationship with myself and something part of and bigger than me that I call Life/Love itself. I cared more about the quality of my inner and outer life than about being a particular 'something'. I asked Life to help me learn professions that would help facilitate a good life in every place and context.

Fresh from college I started in a retail executive training program, remaining in retail for 24 years, most recently as a top-quartile Div. Vice President in merchandising responsible for the end-to-end operations of multiple women's sportswear divisions. I led a professional buying staff merchandising 43 stores in New England with a budget of $120 million. It's here in operating a top-performing retail business that I became most interested in what helps people excel and learn from one another. Intuition and curiosity prompted me back to graduate school in psychology, to internships in pastoral counseling, executive coaching, and group facilitation, and ultimately to trade my lucrative six figure job for the chance to learn something that even then seemed essential.

Having studied energy healing since my late twenties and psychology since my forties, I now bring a lifetime of business, psychology and energy to my work with individuals and organizations. I learn something more every day. I now live in Gloucester, MA, the oldest seaport in America. It's a rugged, grace-filled place that's definitely home. And the journey continues . . .

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation . . .
So we must not forget, when we love, that we are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love and must learn love; and like all learning, this needs peace, patience and composure.”
Ranier Maria Rilke - Author of Letters to a Young Poet

Kathy brings a deep background in leadership, energy, psychology and group facilitation to her work with private individuals and organizational leaders.