We were lucky to catch up with Katrina Dorow recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Katrina, thanks for joining us today. Do you have a hero? What have you learned from them?
We all have a Hero within that is brilliant, creative, and inspired by our passions. Throughout my life I have met phenomenal people who have ignited a spark in me to radiate or share that inner Hero. The mentors who have inspired me most have become my Heroes. My Heroes include my mother Carol Calkins, Rev. Vicky Jeter, Cathy Hawk from Clarity® International, and Melisa Pearce from Touched by a Horse®. What do Heroes have in common? They see the light, wholeness, and potential in another person. They are grounded in their truth, in alignment with loving wholeness, and they inspire others to expand into greatness.
My mother Carol Calkins inspired me to become a Spiritual Practitioner RScP by standing in her love, authenticity, and creating opportunities for me to learn meditation and prayer. Carol raised me in the Science of Mind teaching, encouraged me to learn visualization, guided imagery, meditation, spiritual mind treatment (a form of prayer), and in 2009, I licensed as a Spiritual Practitioner RScP. I have served as a Practitioner at Mile Hi in Lakewood, Colorado, Soul Home in South Africa, New Dawn in Aurora, Colorado, and now Louisville Center for Spiritual Living Teaching Chapter.
Throughout my career as a Spiritual Practitioner RScP, I have had Rev. Vicky Jeter as my mentor. Our mentorship started in 2010 with regular phone based Spiritual Practitioner sessions. Rev. Vicky Jeter has taught me how to deepen my spiritual practices, strengthen my spiritual leadership, challenge beliefs that are not serving me, and create an expansive consciousness.
My mother invited me to a women’s event where I met another mentor and Hero. Cathy Hawk is one of my Heroes and a model example of using our personal field to live “lights-on” with clarity and positive thinking. In 2007, I started my training and journey with Cathy Hawk from Clarity® International. I have become a certified Clarity® Faculty Member and am honored to share these gifts and tools with my clients. The Clarity® Tools designed by Cathy have changed my thoughts, choices, and created the foundation for good in my life.
Another incredible mentor and Hero is Melisa Pearce from Touched by a Horse®. Melisa provided me with one of the greatest gifts of my life, not including my husband or two children. It wasn’t until I started the two-year certification journey to become Equine Gestaltist® that I truly learned that imperfection is a pathway to self-discovery. Rather than striving for an unattainable ideal of perfection, I began to shift my focus to embracing my imperfections as opportunities for awareness, self-discovery, and personal growth. My imperfections started allowing me to flow into alignment, wholeness, and be who I truly am. By recognizing the inherent beauty and potential in my flaws, I opened myself up to a journey of self-exploration and transformation.
Gestalt taught me to accept my imperfections, celebrate baby steps of progress, and most of all learn deep self-compassion. With self-compassion and truly authentic self-acceptance, I cultivated a deep sense of wholeness and began embracing all aspects or parts of myself, including my perceived imperfections. Melisa Pearce from Touched by a Horse® defines wholeness as Gestalt.
Wholeness (noun) a state of forming a complete and harmonious whole; unity
When a person has personal awareness of all of their parts of self. They are responsive, not reactionary.
Gestalt is a German word loosely translated to mean “wholeness”. Fritz Perls, the psychoanalyst who coined the term Gestalt therapy, understood that we could not be truly whole if we did not know the different parts of self and their synergy in our personality. Wholeness of self in the present moment is the keystone of Gestalt. But Gestalt is more than a form of psychotherapy. Gestalt is a way of life in which we focus on the experience of “now,” referred to as the present moment.
Manely Divine celebrates the “Gift of the Present Moment.” Manely Divine focuses on trusting the process to create connection and wholeness of the gift of the present moment with gratitude, empathy, and awareness.
My mentors and Heroes created the foundation of my business Manely Divine and allowed me to become an incredible coach that is present, heart-felt, compassionate, and supports the journey of transformation utilizing the wisdom and hero within my clients.
As a Licensed Practitioner RScP, Clarity® Faculty Member, and Certified Equine Gestaltist®, I wish for you the awareness that you have a Hero within you that holds the answers to your potential and radiates “lights-on” fulfillment. I wish you the Gift of Gestalt or the Gift of the Present Moment, and I wish you the Gift of Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Authenticity that is in alignment with your Divine Oneness and Wholeness. Enjoy the Gift of the Present! Allow transformation to be an expansive and joyous experience.
Katrina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
As a Licensed Practitioner RScP, Clarity® Faculty Member, and Certified Equine Gestaltist®, I offer virtual Spiritual Practitioner sessions, one-on-one virtual Gestalt coaching, Clarity® groups, Get Clarity™ SHIFT workshops, virtual Gestalt Groups, and in-person Equine Gestalt® sessions.
The intention of Manely Divine is to empower individuals on their journey towards connection and wholeness. The mission is to guide clients in trusting the process of life and embracing the precious gift of the present moment. Together, we cultivate gratitude, empathy, and awareness as essential tools to foster personal growth, resilience, and meaningful connections, ensuring a path towards a more fulfilling and enriched life.
I am dedicated to providing individuals with the chance to connect with their inner wholeness through alignment with their spiritual oneness. The process releases burdens and embraces a life in the present moment. Through our collaboration, clients undergo an embodied experience that fosters personal transformation and alignment, promoting congruence across spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being.
What to Expect
• Create a healthy, vibrant, and fulfilling life by acquiring essential life skills.
• Actively utilize affirmative prayer, meditation, visioning, and other spiritual tools to foster a more rewarding spiritual life, think positively, live abundantly, and love deeply.
• Actively experience and cultivate self-love and acceptance.
• Receive active trauma support for releasing burdens of the past or present.
• Fostering awareness, releasing unresolved emotions from past life experiences by embodying a deep sense of gentle compassion.
• Develop awareness and clarity through intentional practices.
• Learn and actively apply the art and science of spiritual mind treatment.
• Embrace and actively live in the gift of the present moment.
I am most proud of moving from doing exclusively phone/virtual coaching to the addition of in-person Equine Gestalt® sessions. Most of my clients continue to meet with me virtually on an ongoing basis with occasional Equine Gestalt® sessions to deepen their personal awareness and embody their wholeness.
Manely Divine comes from an acknowledgement that horses are sensitive, live in the present moment, and have natural healing abilities. In God’s infinite wholeness and perfection, horses have an intuitive bonding with humans that helps individuals heal their wounds of the past and live a more fulfilling life in the present.
From 8 years old to 17 years old, I had an amazing heart horse named Tiny that lived at the Flying X Ranch in Wyoming. As a child, I began to feel the healing power of horses by spending time with my beautiful, tall, and strong palomino horse Tiny. We would do everything together including going on trail rides, overnight rides, and play together in the pasture. Tiny was my best friend, and I would tell him everything.
Throughout the years I have had a few horse experiences with horseback riding; however, it wasn’t until 2016, at a women’s event where I met my first Equine Gestaltist®. Terri and her Equine partner ignited a dream in me to partner with horses to heal, learn, and align with personal wholeness. I placed the intention to become an Equine Gestaltist® in the pocket of my dream pillow.
With my deep love for horses, I chose to become an Equine Gestaltist® to complement my coaching and Spiritual Practitioner RScP practice. I have loved my Touched by a Horse® journey and am grateful to have graduated from the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method® course. Working with expert and teacher Melisa Pearce and being an Equine Gestaltist® is “a dream come true for me”.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
My coaching journey started in High School when I was selected to be on the peer counseling team. I practiced and applied these coaching skills in many ways until I started my first professional coaching job in 2004. As a coach, I added the specialty of being a Spiritual Practitioner RScP in 2009.
My natural tendency was to be a giver, nurturer, and caretaker. Although I have been receptive of mentoring, I often had flexible boundaries because I didn’t want to hurt others. When I began my Touched by a Horse® journey in the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method® course, the book Revolutionary Agreements by Marian Head was assigned. I read and re-read this book, bought the audio version and have continued to listen and re-listen to the content. I started gifting Revolutionary Agreements to family and friends. I found myself recommending this book and audio to anyone who would listen.
Throughout the 2 years as a student, I was delighted to experience healthy agreements being implemented in a community of over 300 people. I’m not saying that I became friends with every student and graduate, or that I like the behavior of every person in the program. What I am saying is that I loved seeing how agreements were honored and conflicts were resolved in a respectful way. The Touched by a Horse® Certification Program Agreements are highlighted on page 229 of Revolutionary Agreements. It was a phenomenal awareness that creating healthy agreements and boundaries in an organization creates a healthy and sustainable community.
While learning the Revolutionary Agreements, I had to unlearn beliefs around boundaries being unkind and re-establish a knowing that clear agreements create healthy ways to resolve conflict. Every client I have coached in this lifetime has had a variety of backgrounds, experiences, wounds, upbringing, beliefs, and ways of navigating life. Going into any relationship or partnership, assuming that my agreements are in alignment with their agreements without exploring and discussing our expectations is creating instability in future conflict. We all have wounds, triggers, and reactions. Some of us are more aware of those places in us that feel hurt, however; when anyone is exhausted, hungry, stressed, experiencing grief, experiencing emotional, mental, or spiritual challenges, our responses to situations might not come out ideal. We are all allowed to make mistakes. Mistakes help us learn and grow. Sometimes in the learning process, we inadvertently and unknowingly violate another person’s boundaries. In these situations, all the people involved have the potential of getting hurt especially without clear agreements.
Without clear agreements, we can be unaware that our words, actions, or intentions have hit up against someone else’s personal boundary. Without the tools to resolve conflict based on clear agreements, situations can get messy, relationships end, and more wounds are created.
What I learned by reading Revolutionary Agreements is that we can create conscious healthy agreements with our spouse, children, siblings, friends, teams, co-workers, clients, and community.
This expanded understanding of agreements allowed me to better manage my personal field. As Cathy Hawk from Clarity® International defines personal field as our energy, thoughts, feelings, emotions, choices, behaviors, and actions. In our personal field, we are always at choice. We can choose our thoughts, have an awareness of our emotions, and choose our actions. We have full control over our personal field and can choose to be fully present, appreciate the good, and take responsibility for our personal thoughts, feelings and actions. We can enhance our personal field experience by applying positive thinking, practicing spiritual tools like deep breathing, meditation, prayer, doing things we love, being in nature, and expressing our authentic self through creativity.
Our near field is where we create relationships and agreements. Our spouse, children, siblings, friends, teams, co-workers, clients, and community all come in and out of our near field throughout the day. We can influence those in our near field by having clear agreements, communicating with integrity, honoring one another, respecting our differences, and resolving conflicts constructively. By agreeing to take problems or complaints to the person directly, rather than complaining, commiserating, or gossiping, we can resolve conflicts more smoothly. Seeing others with positive intent and lovingly reminding others of our boundaries and agreements creates a healthier and happier relationship.
I am grateful to have unlearned and learned the importance of clear communication, clear agreements, and creating healthy boundaries in all areas of my life.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Many of the clients I have seen over the years start our session in a disempowered place due to exhaustion, a tragic life circumstance, or a pattern of behavior that is sabotaging their good. These same clients transition into empowerment and leave feeling energized with new insights. As a coach, Licensed Practitioner RScP, Clarity® Faculty Member, and Certified Equine Gestaltist®, I strive to create a safe environment for self-discovery and self-compassion. I am not in the business of giving advice or telling my clients what to do, rather I am present with my clients and observe, ask questions, and allow the client to explore what is going on within themselves in a safe environment.
A pivotal point for me as a coach and in my life occurred in 2016, when I was introduced to my first Equine Gestaltist®, who ignited a dream in me to partner with horses to heal, learn, and align with my personal wholeness. This created a desire in me that came to fruition in 2022 when I began my journey to become an Equine Gestaltist® and culminated in receiving my certification and graduating in September 2024. Through this 2-year program, we learned so much about partnering with horses to gain insights and create awareness that heals ourselves and others. When an Equine Gestaltist® partners with a horse, they do an experiential “in the moment” process to support greater awareness of “Wholeness”, with the belief that we are born with natural resources within. This deep connection with horses started transforming my beliefs, teaching me to express my personal boundaries, and allowing me to be seen and heard.
I see my clients as whole, resourceful, and capable. I see the magnificent potential in my clients and know that clients come to me to discover self-compassion, express emotions that have been trapped in their body, or to change habits or behaviors that developed as a strategy to keep the client safe. My clients are often in a state of confusion, emotionally struggling, have disempowering thoughts or actions, and are ready to leave that baggage behind in order to step into a more blissful state.
We all have disempowered parts of ourselves. Some of these disempowered parts are outside of our awareness and we are unconscious of how these disempowered parts operate or impact our lives. In some cases, we don’t know why we repeat the same mistakes over and over or attract the same type of people repeatedly in relationships. Coaching can shift us to a place of being empowered with insightful awareness. These moments of awareness or ah ha moments create personal transformation.
By having an awareness of our thoughts, feelings, words, actions, emotions, choices and the various parts of self, life experiences can either be an area where we discover greater self-compassion or become a wound in us.
As a coach and Gestaltist®, I have had many opportunities to be coached and explore those aspects of myself that were out of my awareness. I have had the opportunity to do my personal work and heal those deep childhood wounds in me, so that I can hold sacred space for those going through emotional pain or grief.
During the experiential process, I was asked to be open and vulnerable enough to challenge old beliefs, I could see how a new empowering affirmation would be more effective in my life. What happened next is almost indescribable, the words of the new affirmation were stuck in my throat. I physically wasn’t able to claim the truth without an emotional release. Tears fell down my cheeks as I noticed the horse was completely present with me in the depth of my pain. What felt like a lifetime of hurt was expressed in a couple moments. Eventually, my body, mind, emotions, and heart came into alignment and my new empowering affirmation integrated in my life with confidence. This process allowed me the opportunity to embody alignment and wholeness.
Gaining insights and awareness during this extraordinary 2-year training program and ultimately becoming a Certified Equine Gestaltist®, has been pivotal in my business as a coach and in all aspects of my life. The reason this was so pivotal in my life and business is that I already had a fabulous life that I loved, however, enhancing the magnificence of good in my life into GREATNESS in my life occurred in a moment. The GREATNESS occurred in the Present Moment. Partnering with a Gestalt coach that sees you as whole, creates a safe environment to express, and asks great questions of self-discovery is transformational. The greatest gift I can give another person is to truly see them, hear them, and be with them in the Present Moment. I offer you the gift of the Present Moment and the Gift of Gestalt.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://KatrinaDorow.com
Image Credits
Katrina Dorow Main, 1 and 2 Photo Credit Jennifer Lord Photo
Katrina Dorow 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Photo Credit Kim Beer Photography