Kathy is a certified trainer of Life Centered Therapy. She has taught this modality to psychologists, therapists, doctors, and coaches in the U.S., UK, Ireland and Sweden.
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Life Centered Therapy(formerly Developed by clinical psychologist, Dr. Andrew Hahn, Life Centered Therapy is an efficient mind/body, psychospiritual, energy and consciousness-based framework for healing and transformation. It integrates concepts and contributions from multiple psychological and energetic frameworks into an inclusive holistic framework where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (Psychodynamic Therapy, Eastern Medicine, Archetypal/Depth Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, Narrative and Post-Modern Systems Theory, Energy Psychology and alternative therapies.)
Life Centered Therapy is fundamentally based on a simple premise – that our difficulties are the reenactments / manifestations of stories, and when we discover these stories and move to a more aware, compassionate relationship to them, our symptoms resolve themselves or our attitude about the difficulty transforms. Life Centered Therapy has five well-defined steps. Focusing in the body we resolve energetic resistance through awareness or finding the causal story and often doing an energetic practice. There is no presumption of where or what the cause is, or how it is to be resolved. This openness makes space for real healing to occur. |
“The genius of Life Centered Therapy (LCT) is its ability to open pathways to the soul’s deep wisdom and to use this knowing for self-realization and personal growth. Infused by the facilitator’s compassion and love, each session has the quality of a sacred healing.
With Life Centered Therapy , individuals and groups experience a depth of awakening, self-realization and personal growth unparalleled by other methods. Andrew Hahn, founder of LCT, is among the foremost psychologists of our times”.
– Phyliss Mabbett, RN, Ph.D. – San Diego, USA
With Life Centered Therapy , individuals and groups experience a depth of awakening, self-realization and personal growth unparalleled by other methods. Andrew Hahn, founder of LCT, is among the foremost psychologists of our times”.
– Phyliss Mabbett, RN, Ph.D. – San Diego, USA
What is a Life Centered Therapy session like? What are the 5 steps?
After a brief centering practice and check-in conversation you will be supported to:
1) Identify your heart's intention - what you would most like from our time together - and clarify the outcome, how you will know healing has occurred.
2) Resolve any fundamental blocks that keep you from healing. We call these 'sabotage patterns'. These can include limiting beliefs, blocked access to your emotions, or boundary issues; patterns that involve interlocking dynamics of beliefs/emotions/boundary issues; or patterns that obscure your true identity. Once resolved we work directly on your intention. Sometimes sabotage patterns and whatever is blocking you from manifesting your intention can be resolved simultaneously.
3) Determine how to resolve whatever is keeping you from your intention.
These first 3 steps are like creating a roadmap for healing: We'll know where we're going (your intention). We'll be ready (fundamental blocks resolved). We'll know how to get there (generally through body sensations), and what to do once we are at the cause of your difficulty (often times you'll access the causal story and we'll do an energetic practice before, during or after accessing the story.)
4) Take the journey. Following our 'roadmap', you will be guided to focus in your body, find the sensation related to your difficulty, and to access the appropriate story or experience where healing is needed. We may or may not need to do an energetic practice. We'll do what's called for. You will feel a shift in your body sensations and will know when healing has occurred.
5) Access new insights and behaviors that will deepen and maintain your healing work and help you in your daily life.
Kinesiology: We often teach our clients kinesiology (muscle testing) at the start of our working together. It's a way for you to witness the wisdom of you body (your intuition) in an external way to help guide us to 1) do the most fundamental work first, and to 2) determine how best to do that for you in each particular session.
1) Identify your heart's intention - what you would most like from our time together - and clarify the outcome, how you will know healing has occurred.
2) Resolve any fundamental blocks that keep you from healing. We call these 'sabotage patterns'. These can include limiting beliefs, blocked access to your emotions, or boundary issues; patterns that involve interlocking dynamics of beliefs/emotions/boundary issues; or patterns that obscure your true identity. Once resolved we work directly on your intention. Sometimes sabotage patterns and whatever is blocking you from manifesting your intention can be resolved simultaneously.
3) Determine how to resolve whatever is keeping you from your intention.
These first 3 steps are like creating a roadmap for healing: We'll know where we're going (your intention). We'll be ready (fundamental blocks resolved). We'll know how to get there (generally through body sensations), and what to do once we are at the cause of your difficulty (often times you'll access the causal story and we'll do an energetic practice before, during or after accessing the story.)
4) Take the journey. Following our 'roadmap', you will be guided to focus in your body, find the sensation related to your difficulty, and to access the appropriate story or experience where healing is needed. We may or may not need to do an energetic practice. We'll do what's called for. You will feel a shift in your body sensations and will know when healing has occurred.
5) Access new insights and behaviors that will deepen and maintain your healing work and help you in your daily life.
Kinesiology: We often teach our clients kinesiology (muscle testing) at the start of our working together. It's a way for you to witness the wisdom of you body (your intuition) in an external way to help guide us to 1) do the most fundamental work first, and to 2) determine how best to do that for you in each particular session.
What are the presuppositions of Life Centered Therapy?
Life Centered Therapy (LCT) is based on several core ideas:
- Any repeating obstacles/symptoms we have in taking the 'next steps' in our life are a signal to resolve or "re-member" an experience we perceived as "too hard to handle" at the moment of its first occurring. Our way of handling the situation initially was to "put it out of our awareness." Now, often years or even lifetimes later, Life is still inviting us to learn the lesson we felt was too much to handle initially. With more life experience now it's often easier than it initially was to integrate the learning and 'let go of the story'. The stories now and those in the past are often reflections of one another. When we bring our awareness to them, Life helps resolves them, helps us learn the lesson, release the resistance, and become our whole selves again, all parts joined as one.
- The simplest way to remember is through the body. Every traumatic block (our resistance to opening to and integrating Life lessons) has its equivalent body sensation/s. Even though we may not consciously remember the story it is nonetheless stored in our body as an associated uncomfortable sensation(s). This leads to the perhaps radical notion that every sensation we have in our body is a story we couldn’t integrate and every story we can’t integrate from the smallest to the largest, from the past, present and future, is a sensation that is held in our body. The body thus becomes a library of all experience.
- Often what we think of as difficulties are really symptoms of some deeper unresolved theme. Examples of these themes are neglect, longing, betrayal, violence, inability to let go, ongoing need for protection, covering over who we truly are. . . By identifying and working with these themes as a foundational component to your healing, we are able to do the preliminary work required for resolving your difficulties. Sometimes, this is all that is needed to fully resolve your presenting problem. In our experience, it is often the case, when this happens, that seemingly unrelated difficulties also resolve. (There are many case studies in our Articles.) When we are remembering who we are and are in authentic relationship with ourselves, we feel whole, clear and in the flow.
- Healing occurs through connection, focus and an open heart and mind. Either the symptom will change or our relationship to the symptom will change. Either way, you will notice the difference.
How will we find the story that can lead us to healing?
We invite our clients to bring all of their awareness to the typically uncomfortable sensation(s) that arise in the body when focusing on the difficulty. We then invite the client to re-member (all perceptual modes) by reporting whatever they are experiencing which may include re-living (kinesthetic), re-viewing (visual) or re-calling (auditory), whichever way is most natural for them. By focusing all of their consciousness on the sensation(s), the client is able to report whatever the sensation(s) have come to share.
EXAMPLE:
Some people ask our help to relieve their anxiety. In LCT, we ask, “When you fully allow the part of you that is anxious, what are you feeling in the body?” As you scan your body, whatever sensation(s) (typically uncomfortable) you are experiencing is the part that is feeling anxious. The sensation has an identity of its own; it knows the story of the anxiety and what the anxiety needs. It has its own consciousness whose name is the sensation (queasy stomach, pain in the side, or racing heart, for example). Your job as the client is simply to report the sensation and the story that arises through it.
Other people come because they wish to heal some kind of physical symptom, things like chronic pain, headaches, discomfort associated with allergies/asthma. In such cases, we start with the presenting sensations and from them finding the unresolved issues. So, on some level, every discomfort we experience is associated with unresolved issues. Sometimes the unresolved issue is a physical trauma itself. This is what it means when Carolyn Myss and others have said our "biology is our biography and our biography is our biology".
Every time we have a discomfort, before taking a pill to make it go away, we may want to ask it what it has come to share, to help us learn.
EXAMPLE:
Some people ask our help to relieve their anxiety. In LCT, we ask, “When you fully allow the part of you that is anxious, what are you feeling in the body?” As you scan your body, whatever sensation(s) (typically uncomfortable) you are experiencing is the part that is feeling anxious. The sensation has an identity of its own; it knows the story of the anxiety and what the anxiety needs. It has its own consciousness whose name is the sensation (queasy stomach, pain in the side, or racing heart, for example). Your job as the client is simply to report the sensation and the story that arises through it.
Other people come because they wish to heal some kind of physical symptom, things like chronic pain, headaches, discomfort associated with allergies/asthma. In such cases, we start with the presenting sensations and from them finding the unresolved issues. So, on some level, every discomfort we experience is associated with unresolved issues. Sometimes the unresolved issue is a physical trauma itself. This is what it means when Carolyn Myss and others have said our "biology is our biography and our biography is our biology".
Every time we have a discomfort, before taking a pill to make it go away, we may want to ask it what it has come to share, to help us learn.
Is Life Centered Therapy a spiritual practice?
It is a practice that engages Life's creative energy, whatever that is for you - Nature, God, Source, Love . . . whatever you experience as an infinite loving life force that is part of you and greater than yourself. We often call it 'Source' as an inclusive term. However you make sense of this is fine. This is not a religious practice in any way.
“When I started on this journey with LCT I had no idea of the profound personal learning it would lead to. I have deepened into my true self by removing old patterns and stubborn blocks, gained enlightenment and a deep inner knowledge from age-old wisdom. It has allowed me to work with my clients on a much deeper level and the results have been truly remarkable. Andy Hahn and Kathy Eckles are visionary leaders in the growing field of Energy Work. Their compassion and knowledge establish a very safe base which allows change and growth for the individual."
Sarah Bird - Energy Therapist, Business Mentor Sarah Bird Foundation - Dublin, Ireland
Sarah Bird - Energy Therapist, Business Mentor Sarah Bird Foundation - Dublin, Ireland