Coaching led me to meditation. I was looking for something to increase my connection with myself, something to open me up to my intuition, my own inner guide and just felt that meditation was it. I wanted something which would not only help me to sense what was going on for a coaching client, but also to have the courage to put that back into the conversation with them.
I think coaching also put me on a spiritual path… many of the principles of coaching are what I see as spiritual ways of being… open mindedness, non judgemental, leaving out our opinions and our ego, being in service to the client, being absolutely present and in the moment, believing that people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole.
Before I learnt the practice of Effortless Meditation I thought coaching was ‘the answer’. My field is business coaching, executive coaching, leadership coaching but inevitably we get into whole life stuff because the person you are at work is the person you are in the rest of your life, so whatever behaviours are showing up at work, so they are showing up out of work too. Anyway, I wasn’t really up for believing that coaching could only take a person so far before it came up against blockages which it couldn’t deal with… how could I believe someone was creative, resourceful and whole and also believe they had blockages? To me blockages meant ‘broken’.
Now, from learning to meditate, I know we all have blockages which stop us from living our lives from our authentic selves. That doesn’t mean we’re ‘broken’, just that there’s stuff in the way, the creative, resourceful and whole being we are is still there, so meditation clears the stuff and our creative, resourceful and whole being, our authentic self in all its brilliance can shine .
So, now I see that coaching can take people so far – it can help in raising awareness of behaviours, in bringing some of the unconscious stuff into the conscious mind so it can be seen by the coaching client for them to then choose to change behaviours where they are no longer serving.
Meditation then, works on the subconscious or the unconscious mind, clearing those blockages, releasing those patterns of tension that we’re holding spontaneously without having to bring them into the conscious mind.
It’s making me think that types of therapy and analysis are about analysing, digging into the why, understanding – very much at the mind level; that coaching moves a little way from that in that there is an acceptance of where you are now and then it’s about moving forwards from there towards goals; and that meditation is not about the mind at all, it is not only accepting where you are now, but it’s not about setting goals and trying to move towards them, it’s about not trying, not striving, not having goals, it’s about trusting the process, about listening to your heart and about living from your true, authentic self.
I’d like to bring my coaching and meditation together much more and I think one way I can do that is to allow even more stillness and spaciousness during coaching sessions. I also think if my coaching clients learn to meditate we’ll see a faster movement towards where they want to go…
- What led you …to coaching? …to meditation?
- What’s your experience of the overlap between coaching and meditation?
- Which do you think creates most progress?
I’d love to hear your thoughts… either by leaving a comment here or on twitter @ThePensiveCoach
@thepensivecoach 