Coaching Methods: For a Holistic Approaching to Expansion
Ontological, Ecological & Mindfulness Coaching
Coaching begins and ends with “who are you?” One’s identity. Through questions, reflection and exploration, the coach helps you delve deeply into what matters most to you; what’s important, what you truly want, and what you value. Through that, you can discover ways of being that support aligning yourself with those values.
But who we are and who we want to become doesn’t happen in a vacuum, we are embedded into our environment: the familial and societal structures that help shape us. This includes our family near and far, our religious community, our work, recreation, hobbies, interests, our neighbors, our schoolmates or children’s schoolmates, etc.
Finally, Coaching demands we become mindful and present to our thoughts, feelings and experiences. That we aren’t just passive riders of the storm, but captains of the ship, noting the compass, winds, our trajectory and our intended destination. Simply put, mindfulness is about presence and witnessing our internal experience instead of being blindly controlled by them.
Somatic Work
Somatic experiencing is a technique to help anchor you into your present moment experience within the body (Soma). Through a simple set of questions about current sensations, you can tune into your feelings, intuition and (unmet) needs or desires. By examining our physical experience in the present moment, we can more deeply feel what lies below the surface of discursive thought and receive clear information about ourselves and our inner world.
Internal Family Systems or “Parts” Work
Each of us are made up of a multiplicity of thoughts, feelings, desires and needs. Sometimes these different needs or desires are in direct conflict with each other. While ultimately we are whole, one individual, it can be helpful to approach our inner conflicts or complex feelings through the lens of different Parts. Some Parts may not want what the adult, present part wants. Some Parts can be very young and have different needs that we think we have. By connecting with these exile or firefighter parts, you can create intimacy with yourselves and find inner coherence and harmony. In doing so, this also makes you more in tune with your complete self and more effective in executing action towards your needs and goals
Inner-Child Work
Inner-child work involves creating relationships with your younger Parts (see above for ISF or Parts work) and healing past traumas, meeting unmet needs of childhood and creating peace with the inner aspects of yourself that you may have hidden away. Sometimes the inner child can be loud and noisy and get in the way of your adult self’s desires, and sometimes they can be exiled, ignored and then pop up at unexpected (and inconvenient) times. Inner-child work often includes Shadow Work, a term coined by the brilliant and ground-breaking psychoanalyst Carl Jung, where the aspects of yourself that you don’t like or that you suppress needs to be addressed and worked with in order to create greater freedom and authenticity.
Quantum Coding
This new coaching technique was created by the brilliant Dr. Sam Radar. It involves looking at a person’s challenges through the lens of copy mechanisms, or styles and how each person is recreating their current situation and circumstances through their coping styles. By looking at the language you use and then decoding that language by mapping it to the different coping styles, you can create breakthroughs emotionally and bring forth clarity. The theory rests on the idea that we are living in a “Quantum hologram” where the outside is a reflection of inside. This is also called the law of correspondence, and is a non-dualistic way of taking responsibility for our life situation and events.
Self-Actualization
A term popularized by the great Psychotherapist and theorist, Abraham Maslow, it refers to moving from “getting by” or surviving to becoming a fully self-aware and thriving individual. By meeting our “lower” or more basic needs, (what Maslow coined as our “Hierarchy of Needs”) we can strive and reach our full potential as individuals. Maslow believed that Self-Actualization was a need in and of itself. That all organisms have a need to fully become what they are capable of becoming. Maslow defined self-actualization to be "self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”
Transformational Coaching
Transformational coaching is about becoming who you truly want to be. One could say it is about self-actualization, but the approach is very different from talk therapy. Central to this approach is radical responsibility (if it’s to be, it’s up to me) and possibility (100% is possible 100% of the time). Language becomes integral to the process as we create our reality and perspective through our language, so the client must learn to speak from an empowered place versus speaking from victimhood. Like with Ontological coaching, it’s about becoming and ways of being. At the heart is the concept of Be-Do-Have. Beingness comes first, then action and then our results (what we have). The order is critical, as it sets you up to experience your end state now, in the present moment, and not have you wait for some far off circumstance for fulfillment. The order also sets you up in an empowerment context, one where you are captain of your ship instead of being the victim of circumstances.
Spirituality
Transformational coaching is about becoming who you truly want to be. One could say it is about self-actualization, but the approach is very different from talk therapy. Central to this approach is radical responsibility (if it’s to be, it’s up to me) and possibility (100% is possible 100% of the time). Language becomes integral to the process as we create our reality and perspective through our language, so the client must learn to speak from an empowered place versus speaking from victimhood. Like with Ontological coaching, it’s about becoming and ways of being. At the heart is the concept of Be-Do-Have. Beingness comes first, then action and then our results (what we have). The order is critical, as it sets you up to experience your end state now, in the present moment, and not have you wait for some far off circumstance for fulfillment. The order also sets you up in an empowerment context, one where you are captain of your ship instead of being the victim of circumstances.