WTF...
...is Coaching?
It’s kind a strange word for what seems to actually go down in the work that I do. I've either heard or shared so many sports metaphors in my life that the first images that would come to my mind for “coach” tended to involve some person (usually a dude) serving up inspiration or threats to help people realize their “full potential” in order to “win the game.” To be honest, that idea kept me well clear of the field for some time.
I don’t believe in “winning.” And I don’t think I’ve personally got anything to say so inspirational that it will change your life forever. I don't believe that "full potential" is a place the universes promises and rewards. And no threats, obviously.
So what do I believe in? I believe that life is “living” us via these bodies, that it has a flow, and a direction, and its natural cycles. I believe that when we can tune into the energy of life itself, we can find our way into closer alignment with what is and what wants to be.
For me that’s what coaching is: going into the heart of the matter, asking what is wanted, asking what matters, and beginning to orient towards that with the attention and care of another.
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What this feels like in the body may vary, but its safe to say it includes states such as peace, flow, settledness, liveliness, heartfulness, and ease. Life will lead you there if you listen, and I can help you listen.
... is Somatic Coaching?
There’s nothing about us, no sensation, no idea, no breath, no emotion, no story, no sense of anything that doesn’t take place within our bodies. Our whole bodies. Numbing out happens there. Sexuality happens there. Drive happens there. Wonder happens there. Self happens there. Lostness happens there. Race and gender happen there. And, meaningfully, inquiry can happen there too.
We are a creation with a specific shape and history. We are a creation with the wisdom of evolution. We are a creation that absorbs and emits so much in our relationships with other people, with the physical world, and with the unknown.
So this is where we begin: with the whole body. The “soma”. We bring attention, we listen, we ask. We move, we practice, we feel. And what emerges is some form of life itself, leading us. And we follow.
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Somatic coaching is an approach to tuning into and moving towards what you really care about, using the body and all that it holds as a source of wisdom, a place of awareness, and vessel for practice. Over a determined number of sessions, we'll look, listen, and learn from your own 'soma' what new shape wants to emerge. and we'll explore body practices that support your own work to transform. This work is a great complement to other modalities that focus mainly on seeing what we're made of; it encourages us to also orient and move towards concrete meaningful change.