About
Kat Allen
Kat Allen, founder of the Four Aims Center, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a Masters degrees in Applied Behavioral Science and Systems Counseling, a certified Sex Coach and a certified Yoga Therapist and yoga instructor. She has dedicated her adult life to helping others understand, heal and
transform themselves and their relationships through an integrated application
of coaching, counseling, movement and energy practices, yoga and mindfulness.
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Kat works with individuals, couples, families and groups in her counseling practice, and has
trained with teachers and therapists utilzing a wide range of methods. Strong aspects of her approach include Cognitive-Behavioral therapy, Family Systems, Mindfulness, Body Psychotherapy, Voice
Dialogue, Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples, Core Energetics and Gestalt therapy. She recognizes 25 years of yoga and meditation practice as greatly impacting her life and work. Inspired, perplexed and
activated by her own journey, dealing with her family history of mood disorders, alcoholism and mental illness, experiencing traumatic loss, and working through issues of perfectionism, she's discovered how working in an integrated way allows for the quickest and most lasting change to occur. With more connection to one's vital energy and core Self , and resting in a more expansive consciousness, one is able to experience a
life full of balance, joy and compassion.
Kat received her Master's Degree in Counseling from the
Leadership Institute of Seattle at Bastyr
University, and has been in private practice as a since 2005, and as a yoga therapist since 1994. Kat's first career began as a dancer at the age of 6, and she worked as a performer, choreographer and teacher throughout her twenties (B.A. in Dance, University of Washington, 1981). Discovering yoga at the age of nineteen, she began teaching in 1987 in the Iyengar tradition. In the 1990's she opened The Abode of Joy-A Yogashala in her home studio near Seward Park, was founding faculty at the Community Yoga Circle in Seattle, and in the 90's established herself in her vibrant
neighborhood yoga studio, Kaya Yoga (now
Lotus Yoga in Columbia
City). Her greatest sense of accomplishment was the south-end yoga community, which is still thriving, that she established as a result of Kaya Yoga. Kat sold the yoga studio in 1994 in order to achieve her goal of attending graduate school, in order to help others expand the gains they made on the mat in class and take those learnings into their private, everyday life and relationships.
Kat has practiced and
studied in the field of psycho-energetic healing with a variety of teachers, and her extensive training
in Focusing and the
Moseley Method, specializing in body-oriented therapy,
gives her practice a
unique edge in terms of utilizing the body as a primary source of
wisdom. She is a certified Sex Coach in the MEBES Method of Sex Therapy, and is currently working towards certification as a Sex Therapist by AASECT, the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. She also enjoys working with youths and their families, as she did for Renton Area
Youth
and Family Services, and is an associate member of the U.S. Association
of Body
Psychotherapists and the American
Associations of Marriage and Family
Therapists.
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| As a yoga teacher and Certified Yoga Therapist, Kat is recognized by her
peers as an inspiring source of practical knowledge in the lineage of T.
Krishnamacarya, one of the greatest yoga masters and healers of this century.
She's been fortunate to study personally in India, beginning in 1990, with his famous students BKS Iyengar, TVK
Desikachar, and Pattabhi Jois . Her credentials include the
American Viniyoga Institute's teachers's certification with Gary Kraftsow
(2000), and subsequent yoga therapy training with him, National Iyengar
Association teacher's certification (1992), and completion of the Sivananda
Yoga Vedanta Society (1989) and Integrative Yoga Therapy (1996) programs. As
well, she has taught numerous in-depth study and teacher training courses
herself, and has contributed as guest lecturer and teacher to the NW Yoga
Festival since its inception.
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Kat has been an adjunct professor at Bastyr
University, running the
yoga program 2005-7 as well as teaching in the Psychology
Department (Psychology of Nourishment). Kat continues
to explore and develop the interactive field between classical yoga and modern
therapeutic approaches to health and well-being, leading workshops,
intensives and retreats. (See Contact Us page)
She is inspired to help
others discover greater personal meaning in their lives, and to connect one's
innermost calling to community and global awareness. This is the
"new," "integral" yoga referred to by Sri Aurobindo, where
through our personal practice of self-discovery, we then reach out to help
others fully awaken and be free!
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