Jason “ECHO” Echols

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I didn’t find my way into Life Coaching because I had my own life figured out.  In a lot of ways, Life and Wellness coaching found me as I was fighting to put my own life back together.

My personal journey has included marriage & divorce, co-parenting, addiction & recovery, uncertainty, illness, loneliness & isolation, seeking & overcoming as well as the challenging process of learning who Jason really was without my destructive coping mechanisms at play.  Now, with nearly five years sober from drugs and alcohol, I don’t look at those years simply as something I survived.  I see those years as a great teacher because they helped shape the way I understand people.

I know exactly how it feels to desire something different and also feel bound to what is familiar and comfortable.  I know exactly what it is like to question life direction, to feel that internal conflict between the You, you want to be, and the You, you are!  I know the realization that changing your life involves much more than simply "deciding" to change and hoping for the best.  Real change requires honest work.

Along my journey I found that meditation, mindfulness, nutrition, time in nature, and learning to become present became vital aspects of my own life.  They taught me something surprisingly simple:

I was spending so much time “doing” to become someone that they thought I should be, that I never slowed down enough to understand the "being" underneath.

That realization has shaped the way I coach.

Maharishi International University is where I received my formal training in Life and Wellness Coaching.  With nearly five years of experience in coaching, nutrition counseling, and mentoring people through life transitions, I’ve learned that credentials are only a small part of what I bring to the conversation.

I bring lived experience.  I bring authenticity.  I bring curiosity.  I bring compassion—without pretending that compassion means avoiding difficult conversations.

Most importantly, I bring a grounded respect for something I believe deeply: your life belongs to you.  My role isn’t to tell you how to live it.  It’s to meet you where you are, ask meaningful questions, and help you find greater clarity in where you choose to go from here.

I am not your therapist.  Or your counselor.  I am the one genuinely interested in you living your most authentic life.  Talking about our goals only gets us so far.  I am not interested in standing on the other side of the table telling someone how they should live, or who they should be. That is NOT my place, and I have experienced enough to know better.

I will sit beside you.  I will hold space.

Space to listen.  To ask better questions.  To challenge perspectives.  To quiet things down when life has become too loud.  To recognize patterns without reducing a person to those patterns.  Creating enough space for someone to hear their own voice again—and begin deciding what comes next with mindful intention.

That philosophy eventually became GroundState.

At its heart, GroundState is about returning to something we often lose beneath responsibility, expectations, comfort, technology, old habits, fear, and the sheer noise of everyday life:

returning to ourselves.

I don’t believe people need another person telling them who to become.  I believe they just need somewhere they can finally stop performing, take off the mask, put down the noise, and be honest with who they are and where they are right Now.

That is the space I create.

Welcome to GroundState