We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alistair Hawkes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alistair, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back at internships and apprenticeships can be interesting, because there is so much variety in people’s experiences – and often those experiences inform our own leadership style. Do you have an interesting story from that stage of your career that you can share with us?
When I was in graduate school I did my internship at a horse rescue ranch called Medicine Horse in Boulder, Colorado doing Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy. The lessons I learned during that 800 hours of training stick with me today.
One of the groups of horses at the ranch was a group of Premarin Foals. Premarin is a synthetic drug made from female horse urine (gross) collected during the natural gestation of a baby horse. Once the baby horse is born it is considered a “byproduct” and the baby is then separated from its mother and either destroyed or orphaned out. Sad. Medicine Horse rescues some of those foals and organizes groups of orphaned children to work with the orphaned foals and voilá, therapeutic magic is a result.
The ranch also organizes groups of veterans to work with horses in different ways. I witnessed an exercise where the group facilitator threw a flake of hay into a pen with five horses. Immediately the group of horses dispersed and the passive alpha leader presented itself by guarding the flake of hay. This was made relatable to the veterans by talking about leadership in the herd, and making parallels to leadership in people. Very profound learning happened in myself as an intern, and I observed the veterans making connections and reporting personal insights.
These, and many other experiences on the ranch, taking care of horses, learning how to help others through the non-verbal communication of our animal helpers were invaluable and deepened my relationship with animals and nature and helped me be a great therapist, too!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am mostly from Colorado, and I was educated at alternative universities and institutes with educational focus in mindfulness and meditation. I came to the psychotherapy and mental health education industries by having been mentored by two of the wisest women: my mom – in non-profit development where I learned massive amounts of energy medicine principles at the nonprofit I helped her develop called the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM), and by a woman doctor from Argentina I met at the 1992 annual conference ISSSEEM hosted.
I’ve been a licensed psychotherapist since 2011 and have worked in many community settings providing mental health support to clients and their families. I have taught mental health and wellness extensively, and for the past several years have been focussed on supporting therapists and other service professionals in overcoming burnout by applying ancient wisdom practices such as breathwork and mindfulness in their day-to-day wellness activities. Helping clients and students resolve anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout is a passion of mine, and I enjoy helping people in this way. What makes the work I do unique is the self-development and self-transformation system called HIKE4evolution that I use to help others.
I’ve lived long enough to be proud of many of my accomplishments, being the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college and go on to graduate school is among them, but developing a daily practice is also a proud accomplishment, and helping others by teaching them important wellness skills, then watching them grow and thrive is very rewarding and personally satisfying as well. It’s interesting how age puts things in perspective.
My intention is to teach as many people how to actualize their potential and become all they can be by learning to learn self-regulation and how to harness their inner power via the HIKE4evolution system. By doing this I hope to support other world teachers to create a critical mass of aware humans that can turn the tide of consciousness toward a bright future full of harmony, possibility and community.
Have you ever had to pivot?
During COVID my private practice grew exponentially in a few months, meaning many many more people in the world were seeking therapeutic support. I noticed a trend in the types of clients that were seeking services from me, more therapists, nurses, social workers and teachers began to reach out for support in managing their stress and overwhelm, oftentimes triggered by caring for and providing services to others within systems that require a high level of time commitment – such as a 40 or more hour work week, with high patient/client/student quotas that most felt they could just not say “no” to. I remember working in community mental health and education settings – where the hours are long and the caseload is overfull. I remember the crisis calls, and paperwork, and documentation requirements. That kind of work pace is difficult for most, particularly when, after work, people go home to take care of families.
It became clear during an online Clarity Breathwork certification training I was attending in 2020 that every single person, not just clients and students in my practice, but every person can benefit from breathwork. Taking our first breath is how we arrive in this lifetime, and having our last breath is how we leave. Breathing in between is a mostly subconscious/autonomic nervous system function, but during times of high stress and/or trauma our breathing often gets interrupted and we develop stress patterns around this interruption, either rapidly breathing or holding our breath or some variation of the two. To grab control of breathing through awareness, mindfulness, and attention helps us regulate stress and promotes optimal function, allowing us to develop healthier habits in our minds and bodies. I pivoted at that time from doing solely individual work in my office to teaching groups of people about the benefits of practicing conscious breathing, self-regulation, and stress management. It’s easy to attend one of my free weekly stress management classes by clicking this link: https://www.alistairmhawkes.com/masterclass2/
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
There are so many stories I could share that illustrate my resilience, overcoming childhood trauma and neglect, coming of age in the 80s (eek!), raising a daughter as a single parent but having lots of support doing it. But the story I’ll tell is silly and significant, even today.
In 2015 I attended a retreat where I was taught the practices that have become my daily practice (and which are the practices that I teach to others to help them develop a daily practice). I have learned that real change – self-discipline – comes from this daily practice. During this particular retreat we learned somatic practices, ancient energy concepts (Chi, Qi, Ki, Prana), and considered evolutionary ways to optimally reprogram the nervous system, overcome stress habits and create new pathways for healthy functioning. In addition to the practices, the intellectual information shared during this retreat was high level science regarding self-regulation using principles from biofeedback and neurofeedback, as well as concepts from astronomy and physics such as the Higg Field and the Higg Boson particle. As the retreat progressed I was feeling increasingly mentally and emotionally drained due to the high level of input and I was ready to be done and go home. The very last experience, a Vivenciá, was to take place at dawn on the last day. Me and other attendees went to the designated spot in nature at sunrise and did the practices and exercises we were instructed to do. I was frustrated because I wasn’t sure I really understood what needed to happen and I felt grumpy because I like to “do things right” and I wasn’t sure what “right” and “correct” were in this circumstance. I went ahead and did what I was told by my teacher, grumbling to myself under my breath complaining about my lack of knowledge and understanding.
Following my practice, feeling grouchy and out of sorts as I walked alone back to the car, I happened to look down on the dirt road and saw a first place blue ribbon just laying there. This made me laugh out loud (I got first place in the Vivenciá!) breaking the spell of my frustrated mood and helping me realize that even though my intellectual mind wants things to be a certain way, there are other levels of mind that are in play, too. There’s automatic thinking, habits and patterns from lived experience, reflexive and instinctive thinking, etc. and trying to see learning in only one way is incorrect. What a great lesson! I appreciate the resilience of my mood and my emotional flexibility. And the humor. Yay. Then I went home to integrate all the things I’d learned during that retreat weekend.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.alistairmhawkes.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alistair.m.hawkes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/192055533924459 https://www.facebook.com/alistair.m.hawkes/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alistair-m-h-83b37820/
- Twitter: https://x.com/A_M_HawkesLPC
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB6TeuJE_ICyxGPhYjS6HDQ
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@evolution_therapist?lang=en
Image Credits
Magdalena Images for Headshot
Tracy Raftl and Chris James for Graphic Illustrations – Balance, Communication, Evolution, Community, Family, Passion