Karen Hawkes

Karen Hawkes is a certified Enneagram teacher and typing professional whose work integrates psychological, spiritual, and somatic approaches to self-understanding and personal growth. She is particularly interested in the Enneagram as a tool for recognizing the automatic patterns that shape how we think, feel, relate, and respond—and in the greater freedom that becomes possible when we learn to observe those patterns with conscious and compassionate curiosity.

Karen's path to the Enneagram grew from a lifelong curiosity about human behavior and the question of why people respond so differently to themselves, one another, and the circumstances of their lives. Her professional background includes a career in law enforcement as well as work in security systems design, where she navigated complex systems requiring precision, critical thinking, and rigorous regulatory compliance. These experiences gave her opportunities to observe human behavior and decision-making across an unusually broad range of settings and circumstances and contributed to her enduring interest in what shapes our perceptions, motivations, and responses.

Her continuing search for a deeper understanding of human development led Karen to study mind-body approaches, trauma and emotional response, spirituality, and contemplative practices. She has trained in Conscious and Compassionate Counseling and Transcendental Meditation. She discovered the Enneagram through the teachings of Richard Rohr and was drawn to a framework that offered something she had not found in other approaches: a way of understanding human experience that honors its psychological, spiritual, and somatic dimensions while providing a practical path for growth.

As a neurodivergent woman, Karen has a particular interest in the intersection of neurodivergence and the Enneagram, including how neurodivergent traits, adaptation, and masking can influence how personality is expressed and understood. She is interested in helping create space for neurodivergent people—particularly women—to explore the Enneagram without confusing neurological differences or learned adaptations with Enneagram type.

Rather than using the Enneagram simply to describe or categorize personality, Karen approaches it as an invitation to self-observation: to recognize the habitual strategies with which we have come to identify and to discover who we are beyond them. Her teaching emphasizes curiosity rather than judgment, motivation rather than behavior, and growth rather than labels.

Karen is especially interested in the passions and virtues, the three centers of intelligence, the spiritual dimensions of the Enneagram, and the ways greater self-awareness can foster more authentic and compassionate relationships with ourselves and others. She also brings a systems-oriented perspective to the Enneagram, exploring how individual patterns operate within relationships, organizations, and larger human systems.

Karen offers introductory Enneagram programs, workshops, typing sessions, and facilitated discussion groups designed to create a thoughtful, respectful, and supportive space for exploration, self-discovery, and growth.