Kali Hewitt-Blackie

Kali is a Registered Psychotherapist with 34 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist, initially specializing in sexual abuse, women's issues and eating disorders, and working from somatic and feminist perspectives. Kali works with individuals, couples, and families, focusing on relational issues to help her clients discover balance-in-relationship. Her methods are at once challenging, direct, and supportive.

In the early 1990s in Toronto, collective awareness was just beginning to connect the political and personal for women struggling with issues around food and body image. Kali had the good fortune to be at the forefront of depathologizing eating disorders through education and media. She participated in radio and television broadcasts and sat on the Steering Committees for NEDIC (National Eating Disorders Information Centre) and EDAW. At that time, Kali completed doctoral course work in feminist psychology and community organizing at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto, a Masters degree in Somatic Psychology and Education at Antioch University, San Francisco, and a clinical internship at the Centre for Attitudinal Healing in Sausalito. Leading groups for members living with chronic and terminal illness demonstrated the impact of personal narrative in either feeding one's development or starving it, and gave Kali the life-affirming opportunity to witness the power of cherishing life when one surrenders and faces one's fears.

More recently, five years of Gestalt training has fed Kali's creativity as a therapist and affirmed her strong belief in one's ability to self-empower in the face of obstacles and manifest richness in one''s life. She is a founding member of the Gestalt Institute of Toronto Alumni Association. Since 2015, Kali has been a member of the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO), and was elected to CRPO Council in 2020 as a professional member, and in June 2022 was honoured to be selected to serve on the CRPO Executive Committee.

Kali has practised aikido, an integrated Japanese martial art, since 1990, and at 5th Dan is one of the highest ranked females in Canada. She also teaches at her own dojo, Regent Park Community Aikido and has taught at Aikido at Tendokai and Naka Ima. The essence of Aikido is presence and connection which Kali aspires to in everything she does. For Kali, being present for others flows from her commitment to ongoing learning and development, both professionally and personally.