Women’s leadership mentor and Ban Draoi (Irish wise woman) Cathy Coyle swaps pills and productivity hacks for plants and breathwork. And she ushers in a new era that combats chronic burnout and reclaims what it means to be a woman in leadership.
If you feel like things are very loosely connected right now and are quickly unraveling, you are not alone. In 2026, WH has seen a steady increase in press releases about the silent rise of mental health crises. The South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) reports that more than half of South Africa’s workforce struggles with mental illness. According to SADAG, “The most common diagnoses include burnout, clinical depression and anxiety.” Driven by ongoing global crises, economic volatility and hyper-connectivity, the world is experiencing a pervasive sense of uncertainty. This is associated with profound deteriorations in psychological well-being – most acutely in younger generations.
With this in mind, Cathy Coyle, a leadership consultant with a master’s degree in coaching psychology and an ongoing doctorate in transpersonal psychology from the California Integral Institute, shares her wisdom with women around the world. In her work, Cathy supports women who recognize their potential and want to bring about change in their lives and work. Her work lies at the intersection of psychology, spirituality, body and nature. She also provides unique health insights and guidance for women on their own transformation journey.
The big unplugging
While studying to become a clinical psychologist, Cathy fundamentally disagreed with the clinical healthcare approach. Through her experiences with nature – discovering medicinal plants and studying mysticism – she discovered that nature plays a greater role in healthcare than a hospital setting could provide. “As I moved through these experiences with nature,” Cathy explains, “I began to say, ‘There is another way we can heal ourselves; that we can approach consciousness, that we can approach the body.'”
Through her explorations, she discovered that clinical psychology was not the only way to work with the mind. She also noted the state of the world: how dependent we are on machines and how much of ourselves is valued by what we produce. “We are in a time where we can see that this way of life has really made us sick,” says Cathy. “People are overworked, people are stressed. People are struggling with many different types of physical illnesses as well as mental illnesses.”
Only 1.4% of the healthcare budget of a typical low- and middle-income country (LMIC) is spent on mental health.
WHO Report 2025, World Mental Health Today: Latest data
Cathy’s journey into folk wisdom
Ultimately, Cathy received the call to work as a “medicine woman,” as Native Americans call it. “It depicts a woman working with the community, but also with psychic abilities, intuitive abilities, various healing methods, healing with plants and working with ancestral spirits,” explains Cathy. “I have had these experiences myself.” But Cathy, an Irish woman who values decolonial perspectives and intersectionality, knew she had to draw on her Indigenous heritage. “What came to mind was this word Ban Draoi [pronounced bahn-dree]”Describes Cathy. “This is what we call ‘Medicine Woman’ in Ireland. These women exist in every single society. Every single country has its own stories and versions of these women who were healers, bone setters, midwives, herbalists, lore keepers, storytellers, psychologists – for lack of a better word.”
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Science & Nature
Her professional career – the combination of science and ancient knowledge – is unconventional and incredibly lonely at the time. Mysticism is now popular on social media – but for Cathy, discovering her calling was a lonely task. “There were no other people talking about it. None of my friends or colleagues knew this kind of work or this kind of world, and there wasn’t this kind of community on social media, where it’s much more public,” she remembers.
Her work was also triggered by a health crisis in which she suffered from chronic spinal pain. She was told she would have surgery; that it would take six months to recover and even move her head. She refused and decided to look for alternatives. “It made me realize that there had to be other ways to heal. And I healed myself. I’m pain-free. I’ve been pain-free since 2016.”
“I really work with women who understand, ‘Okay, I have a role to play on some level, whether it’s in my small community, in my home, or in a boardroom.’
Cathy points to the ancient wisdom of ancestors that humans always cooperated with the natural environment. Now, in the midst of the mental health crisis, Cathy is witnessing – and part of – a revival of nature-led wisdom. “We’re at this moment where we realize that we’ve lost the way. And we’ve strayed too far from nature,” she says. The separation of what work is and what many women feel within themselves. And part of Cathy’s work is helping other people realize this – and discover a way of life that resonates with them.
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The rise of nature-led healing
Returning to ancient wisdom and harnessing the transpersonal is increasing among burned-out, overstimulated workers around the world. This is evidenced by the rise of mystical social media accounts and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Science confirms that Cathy’s work is necessary. The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic Research has shown that “mystical” experiences (through therapeutic psychedelics) can produce long-lasting positive changes in mental health. Singing bowl therapy has been shown to lower blood pressure and relieve anxiety. And if TikTok is anything to go by, traditional Chinese methods like Qigong, Tai Chi and traditional Chinese medicine are becoming increasingly popular.
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The work goes beyond drinking warm water, microdosing, and standing in line at Headspace at lunchtime. Cathy focuses on personal transformation; Women work through deep inner conflicts to recognize their strengths. “I work a lot with women to really help them find their identity and also to train them in certain areas of leadership,” she says. “I help them become more stable within themselves and move in the world. And sometimes people experience dark nights of the soul. Other times they’re building their business. They’re building spiritually sound entrepreneurial practices. And I’m there to mentor them, just to walk alongside them when they need it.”
Working with nature
Nature is at the center of Cathy’s work. “If we can go back to nature, we can heal with nature. Nature can heal with us, and we can heal with it. And that’s been a big part of my journey,” she says.
Using breath is a powerful method Cathy uses to connect nature with the body. “If we assume that all people have the potential for mystical experiences and that there are plants on the planet that can even ignite them, we can also see that people can have mystical experiences through things like breathwork,” she says. “If you just work with your breath, you can also have these visionary experiences and that’s where healing can occur.”
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Healing through transformation
And it’s not just psychedelic trips: just like breathing exercises, simple plants like roses – or the many native plants in South Africa – also have healing properties. Cathy describes impressive experiences like watching the sunset as healing, transcendent experiences. Being alone is another powerful experience that Cathy points out. Sitting in isolation for a few days is a transformative practice that has been revered in many cultures for millennia. “It’s just you and the wind and the trees or the mountain,” she explains. “But something happens in this process: When the person comes out on the third or fourth day, they have reached a new level of individuation.”
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Using plants, breathwork and mentoring, she helps women develop their leadership skills. “‘Leadership’ is a pretty big word and also a pretty simple word because ‘leadership’ could mean leading within your family dynamic. It could mean leading your children, leading your husband. It could mean feeling anchored in your truth and centered enough to support movements in your community. Or, if we have women involved in very large projects, leading various organizations.”
Ultimately, the work is about an inner transformation and the awareness that women are the ones who “support this change in consciousness, because the way things are currently happening in the world cannot continue.”
Meet the expert: Cathy Coyle is Ban Braoi, a respiratory therapist and coaching psychologist. She is a candidate in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Integral Institute, which was founded on the basis of integrating yoga psychology, somatic psychology and transpersonal psychology into mainstream psychology.