What is a body-based approach?
Coaching in this way aims to allow the conscious mind to take a step back so that we can connect with the body.
This isn’t to say we ignore the mind, but rather treat the body and mind as an integrated whole and create space for the body to speak its wisdom.
Instead of asking ‘why’ something is the way it is, we are open to exploring our sensory perceptions and emotional responses and how they have contributed to patterns of behaviour.
Traditional coaching works with the content of the story: what you say and the meaning of it.
Somatic coaching focuses on how the storyteller experiences the story and is process-oriented (journey and not goal driven)
Somatic coaching aims to wake up our body’s untapped resources for living more joyful, resourced and authentic lives.
What do we do in a session?
Honour the authority of the body - we follow what the body is doing and what it wants to do (for example, how it wants to move or express.)
Trust and listen to the body’s impulses by engaging with them and bring them to the forefront.
Consider how you say things and your nonverbal communication (this is the material we use during a session)
Work with the ‘felt sense’, a body-based understanding or clue to describe what/how you feel.
As the coach, I’ll guide you to deepen your experience of what is present and track what’s going on in your body.
Give you space and time to arrive at your own awareness and insights and move towards new possibilities, outcomes, and change.
Encourage the cycles and thresholds of your nervous system, helping you notice the subtle signs of activations and work with your body in each and every phase.
How a session will & won’t look:
Somatic, body-based coaching isn't about picking through past traumas and historical issues and is not psychotherapeutic in nature (psychotherapy looks at the present moment and into the past). Our session will be based on the present moment and future.
This is not to say that past experiences will not crop up in sessions or feel present for you within our time together, but my role isn't to actively seek them out. I trust that what is drawing your attention in the emergent present is exactly where you need to be, and we work from there.
Coaching in this way is designed to assist you in studying the processes that automatically create and maintain the person you’ve become. You might like to think of it as a method of assisted self-study. Within a session, you’ll be invited to observe your own reactions, almost as if you were observing the behaviour of another.
I assist your self-study by creating "experiments" (practices and invitations to go a little deeper) while you are in the state of observing yourself. These experiments can help you to unravel the habits and beliefs that make you who you are and the implicit beliefs with which you meet the world.