Depending on the areas of specific health focus and concerns, you sessions will be personalized, with a focus on “Mindful Presence.” Mindful Presence is the process of bringing intentional focused, nonjudgmental awareness into the present moment across multiple levels. As described by Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, mindfulness (the core of mindful presence) is paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment with curiosity and non-judgment. Mindful presence incorporates essential “being skills” such as:
Together we will create and develop a time line protocol with goals and objectives, progress and accountability, and victories and accomplishments. Remember that you are one who takes personal responsibility for achieving your optimum wellness lifestyle. Know that my support is consistent, dependable, and focused on your victorious results.
- Empathy
- Compassion
- Creativity
- Warmth
- Acceptance
- Courage
- Energy and Grit
- Partnership
- Fun
You will be EDUCATED about aspects and pillars of robust HEALTH
Understanding and comprehending the complexity of the holistic approach to health becomes easy and manageable once you have access to clarifying information and resources. I maintain a large cutting edge archive of both. I will be sharing the most relevant and applicable techniques, articles, theories, philosophy, and fundamental knowledge that directly applies to your personalized Health Coaching plan. We will explore how the 5 Elements from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) relate and are relevant to wellbeing.
Knowledge is power...and knowing the details of your health priorities create decisions which shape your habits and routines. This important knowing will re-power you to take control of your health and self-healing.
You will experience MINDFULL LISTENING and AUTHENTIC COMMUNICATION
Mindful presence embodies the skills of mindful listening, which is the skill most recognized for enhancing the quality of the coaching relationship and perhaps the most important. Integrated into a coherent whole, authentic communication pulls together notable communication approaches and strategies such as “motivational interviewing, appreciative inquiry, and non-violent communication.
You will be LISTENED TO DEEPLY
inspired by the motto “Listen until I don’t exist,” deep listening is hearing below the surface of what you are communicating beneath and between your words, body language, nonverbal behaviors, and emotions. Nourished by kindness, compassion, and curiosity, deep listening cultivates stronger, closer successful relationships with ourselves and others. It’s our path across the divide, or as developmental theorist Ruthellen Josselson describes, our only means of bridging the separateness that exists within the “space between us.”
Deep listening invites you to explore yourself deeper, ask deeper questions about your life and future, and the beliefs, choices, and habits that have brought you to where you are today, and could potentially move you forward.
There will be CURIOUS INQUIRY
Likened to the feeling of fascination, curious inquiry invites child-like wonder into the health coaching relationship as a means of investigating and exploring deeper. Curious inquiry invites open-hearted, fresh, limitless, unbounded, and unknowing exploration, without goals, expectations, or judgment; however, the process is not always comfortable or easy. As well-known theorist of group process, organizational culture, and leadership. Curious inquiry can provoke uncomfortable emotions such as “dependency and vulnerability,” and even fear as you explore those deeper, hidden places within yourself. However, as uncomfortable, even painful as connecting with our deeper emotions can feel, through the curious exploration of what lies beneath the surface of ourselves, we gain priceless insight that can empower us to take action and transform our lives.
In short, it’s normal and okay to experience uncomfortable, difficult emotions in our process of learning, growth, and change.
You will have the opportunity to see and hear yourself, perhaps for the first time. Given full autonomy, you have an ongoing invitation to confirm, clarify, and expand upon that which the coach perceives and reflects. Perceptive reflections symbolize deep listening, and aim at intentionally moving you from the comfort of your “cerebral thinking mind” into the often ignored or avoided emotional center of your brain. Key for your self-awareness and successful behavior change, perceptive reflections facilitate dramatic relief or emotional responses (e.g., fear, inspiration, guilt, and hope) that often accompany the early stages of change.
There will also be moments of SILENCE
An essential and often forgotten ingredient in authentic human communication is the mindful practice of silence, In a similar light, the more that you experience the stillness of silence, hear yourself through perceptive reflections, listen deeply to your inner voice, and connect with your emotions, possibilities for change emerge and grow. What once seemed impossible suddenly seems within reach.
You will increase and enhance SELF AWARENESS
Simply stated, self-awareness is being consciously tuned into our physical, mental, and emotional self in the present moment, “the ability to monitor our inner world.” Within the context of coaching, self-awareness is an inner knowing of where we are in the coaching relationship and how to return to the present moment in those rare, yet human, moments when we drift.
The practice of self-awareness is a lifelong commitment to expanding consciousness, “strengthening the experience of knowing and our capacity to be aware.”
You will feel SAFE and experience a SACRED SPACE
Essential for change is a safe and sacred space, the open, trusting, connected, respectful, safe, non-judgmental holding environment where you can explore and discover possibilities freely, openly, and honestly. Co-created collaboratively, the safe and sacred space is where you can learn to trust yourself is the “ultimate goal of coaching.” The trust cultivated within the coaching relationship translates into deeper trust in yourself and what you are capable of achieving. Within the safety of the coaching relationship and environment, you feel supported to venture into experimenting or “trying out” possibilities, perhaps for the very first time. The whisper of, “I’d really love to complete a 5K, even if I walk it,” suddenly feels possible.
