The Self-Care Workshop is Back

Are you ready to stop running on empty and start living from a place of wholeness?

Join me, alongside Ally Fallon (best selling author + writing coach) and Koula Callahan (yoga teacher + speaker), for an unforgettable day of enneagram insight, intentional writing, and embodied movement — what I call the trifecta of true self-care.

This isn’t just another wellness event.
It’s a restorative experience designed to help you:

✨ Know yourself more deeply through the lens of the Enneagram
✨ Create a self-care plan that actually works for you
✨ Write your way toward clarity, alignment, and renewal
✨ Ground your body through yoga + sound bath therapy
✨ Nourish yourself with gourmet meals, spacious reflection, and soul-aligned community

We’ll also gather the evening before (Friday, Oct. 10) for an optional VIP dinner to connect in an intimate setting and set the tone for the magic to come.

Because here’s the truth:
We can’t keep giving from a place of depletion.
We need a plan. We need support. We need real self-compassion.

This workshop will show you how to build that foundation—not through quick fixes, but by returning to who you really are and giving her the care she’s been craving.

Spots are limited! Go ahead and mark it on your calendar.  Early bird pricing starts in two weeks!

Let this be the day you say yes to yourself…(and everyone else you love as a result!)

Love & Gratitude,
Katie

The Back to School Edit

Somewhere between the smell of freshly sharpened pencils and the first rustle of fall leaves, we’re invited into a familiar rhythm—one that feels both nostalgic and energizing. Whether or not you have a backpack in your life anymore, the back-to-school season has a way of nudging us to recalibrate, recommit, and reset. It’s not just for students. It’s for all of us seeking a deeper sense of alignment and intention.

So, in the spirit of fresh starts and nourishing structure, I’m sharing The Back-to-School Edit—a curated collection of the ways we can work together this fall to help you grow, heal, and reconnect with what matters most.

✨ The Enneagram Mastermind Series

Starts September | In-person in Nashville
This is for the women who want more—a deeper connection to their purpose, clarity in leadership, and the support of a soulful community. The Enneagram Mastermind is an eight-month in-person journey designed for creatives, professionals, and seekers ready to move from self-awareness to embodied impact. Each session blends powerful Enneagram insights with actionable tools, reflection, and conversation that’s as real as it is transformative.  And, the best part? You will meet some of the most incredible, like-minded friends…all over a delicious lunch.  

👉 More details and registration here

📚 The Experiential Book Club

Kicks off August | Virtual
We’re reading The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins this season, and as always, we’ll integrate the Enneagram, therapeutic practices, and group discussion that goes way beyond your average book club. These monthly 90-minute sessions are spacious, supportive, and just the right blend of introspection and inspiration.

👉 Join us — Register here!

🛁 Save the Date: Self-Care Workshop

October 11, 2025 | Nashville
This one’s for anyone feeling a little crispy around the edges. (Hi, yes—me too.) Our full-day in-person workshop will blend embodiment, self-reflection, and Enneagram insight to help you redefine self-care in a way that actually sustains you. More details to come, but consider this your official permission slip to put yourself on the calendar.

💛 Ways to Work Together One-on-One

• Therapy (TN residents): If you’re seeking  psychotherapy that weaves together narrative, somatic, IFS, and Enneagram-informed modalities, I’d love to connect.

• Couples Enneagram Intensives: A deeply supportive half or full-day deep dive to help you and your partner uncover patterns, rebuild communication, and reconnect through the lens of your Enneagram types.

• Team & Corporate Enneagram Workshops: From creative agencies to leadership teams, I offer half- and full-day immersive experiences to help groups work more consciously, compassionately, and effectively together. If you want to bring this work into your company or organization this fall, now’s the time to book.

Whether you’re craving a new rhythm, a safe place to land, or a powerful next step, I hope something in this Back-to-School Edit resonates. Fall has a way of bringing us back to ourselves—and I’d be honored to walk alongside you.

Love & Gratitude,
Katie

🖤 P.S. Want to stay in the loop about new offerings and events?
follow along on Instagram @katiegustafson.co for all the updates.

I Wish I Had Known This at 25

What piece of advice would you give your 25-year-old self? Sure, she may not have listened, but like any loving parent, you do what you can to steer your children in the right direction. That headstrong seeker was only doing her best. And yet today, you have matured into the expansive space of perspective and more balance. I know you have a lot to offer your younger, stubborn self.

Me? I would have a spirited come-to-Jesus about how to relax into the unknown, one brave and wobbly step at a time. I’d tell her that having all the answers isn’t half as important as asking honest questions.

Specifically, I’d love for her to understand what it means to have a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed one—less either-or and more both-and.

As a recovering perfectionist, I’ve been all too familiar with what it means to have a fixed mindset—you know, the way of thinking that is rigid and narrow. It’s all about pass or fail, win or lose, good or bad, black and white. It’s rooted in judgment rather than curiosity. It’s refusing to take myself on a brisk 20-minute walk because I didn’t have enough time to do my hour-long high-intensity workout.

Here’s another example. You have your six-month review at work. Your boss gives you high marks in several areas but points out one specific necessary improvement in your performance on a big project. A fixed mindset self-criticizes, labeling your performance as a failure. A fixed mindset disregards the praise and zeros in on the area of improvement. A growth mindset celebrates the positive feedback and understands the value of constructive criticism for future success. A growth mindset sees life as a slew of peaks and valleys all leading to necessary learning and expansion. It looks at life as an experiment, not a performance.

A growth mindset is the petri dish that breeds resilience. A fixed approach creates inflexibility, closing us off from abundance and opportunity.

This isn’t about glossing over reality. It’s about softening your approach to the inevitable ebbs and flows of life and enjoying yourself a bit more along the way.

Spend some time this week pondering this:

What area of your life could you stand to soften into? Is it your relationship with food, your body, parenting, or work? Is it your self-care? Whatever it may be, I believe a great way to find out is to pay attention to our self-talk, that often nagging inner critic that rages on involuntarily.

Write it all down.

I love what Tara Mohr says: “Where we think we need more self-discipline, we usually need more self-love.”

The Somatic Enneagram

One of my favorite things about the Enneagram is its holistic capacity to bring balance  and integration to our overall experience.  I’ve heard it described as a psycho-spiritual tool, one that provides benefits on a psychological and spiritual plane.  It definitely does this.  However if we dismiss the rich insight the enneagram provides to us on a somatic (body) level, we are missing out on the gifts it can bring to our total embodiment day after day.  

You may have heard about the concept of three intelligence centers: body, heart, and mind, frequently taught in enneagram circles.  Basically, this proves that we are actually three-brained beings (heart, body, mind) instead of one-brained beings (mind), as has  been elevated in our modern western world.  Emotional intelligence has made a big splash in the last 50 years or so, yet somatic intelligence has not been as accepted until now.  Thankfully, recent scientific studies are finally catching up to this wisdom of the enneagram by proving we have neural cells not just in our brains, but in the lining of our stomachs and hearts.  Crazy, right?

I interviewed Terry Saracino, core faculty member of the Narrative Enneagram (and my teacher…pinch me!) for the Practice, my enneagram-based self-care membership program.  Specifically, we talked about the somatic approach unique to the Narrative Tradition.  If you are interested in taking your enneagram understanding and overall well-being to the next level, I hope you will join the Practice and check out that conversation.  Terry is lovely, brilliant, and as passionate today about this system as when she first learned about it in 1989.  

She describes this dynamic approach to understanding ourselves through the lens of the enneagram, and really unpacking this often forgotten intelligence center of the body.  Interestingly, our bodies are always in the present moment.  Our hearts and minds can be all over the map, future-tripping and stuck in the past, but our bodies ground us in the present moment if we are willing to bring greater awareness to them.  Our bodies are the experiencers of our enneagram type patterns of thought and emotion, so we must lean on them for greater insight and support in our day to day experience.  

Many of us are wildly disconnected from this somatic, or kinesthetic wisdom.  And one of the trillion things I love about the enneagram is it’s all about bringing balance and openness where there is imbalance and contraction.   

When we do the work of the enneagram, we discover our personality type and deeper character structure are held into place by our types emotional patterns, thought patterns, and somatic profile.  I love getting to work with clients to bring awareness to this unique type-specific picture and begin to relax these often limiting patterns.  As we relax those conditioned patterns, we are able to open up to the true, or unconditioned self that has been buried under years of habit and automatic behaviors.  

Do you long to experience a more embodied, balanced, and fulfilling life?  If so, you’ve come to the right place.  I’d love to guide you and your team deeper into the enneagram.  

5 Things to Avoid when Using the Enneagram

Do you have a funny taste left in your mouth with regards to the Enneagram?  I’m not going to lie, with its rise in popularity and the obsession with it in Instagram culture, I fear it’s become something of a caricature of itself.  If I see one more meme about type, I may just boycott it altogether.

Ah, but that’s not the response of a self-aware, evolved, and gracious person living in wholeness is it? No, it’s not…

The Enneagram teaches us to grow beyond reaction and choose from a place of responsiveness—and power.  

I do, however, want to point out 5 mistakes to avoid when using this tool for life and relationships.  So here goes:

1. Don’t type other people.  This is a biggie.  The Enneagram isn’t just about the optics of our personality.  It’s about the story, or motivations and beliefs that fuel our patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.  So unless you are familiar with the deeper aspects of  someone’s core belief system and narrative, avoid typing them.

2. Don’t indulge your type.  In other words, don’t use your type as an excuse for bad behavior (i.e. “I’m going to let her have it when I see her.  She’ll never want to cross me again.  I’m an 8 after all!”)  We identify our type in order to better understand ourselves and grow beyond our personality tactics.   

3. Don’t stereotype others based on type.  Again, this is such a rookie move.  To judge someone and make assumptions based on their type is a big no-no.  Just as there are about 100 unique shades of white, not all persons in a type show up the same.  Especially when you factor in subtypes, you can actually have two people who are the same type look nothing alike.  

4. Don’t force it on others.  Even though the Enneagram is a powerful, transformational tool, not everyone is willing to or interested in subscribing to it.  The worst thing we can do as Enneagram advocates is to force it on others, no matter how much it has helped us.  We must learn to trust others’ process. 

5. Don’t stay on the surface.  Even though it’s incredible fodder for coffee shop or cocktail party conversation, the Enneagram is meant to be applied to our daily lives, not just talked about.  Knowledge without application is, well, just knowledge.  

P.S. If you’re in the market for a way to learn about and apply the Enneagram, you’re in the right place.  Check out my Enneagram-based Self-Care membership program called the Practice!