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Foundation Four Discussion (June 2018 Intensive)
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12 Replies
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Foundation 4 Kick off Question:
When I think about coaching/guiding others, I think about working with women. Specifically executive women and mothers, struggling with self-identity, sense of self, and who want to overcome adversity, assumptions and expectations of women in the workplace and at home. At my current place of work, I am surrounded by executive women that are killing it at work, but really struggle in their personal lives. Through conversations that I have had with several women there, they express how proud they are of themselves in where they are in their careers, but have given up a lot to get there. Many of these women are still single because they donāt have time to date, canāt meet men that live up to their expectations, or constantly meet men that are intimidated by them. In my personal life, I have a lot of friends that are mothers. Many of them have left their careers or changed careers to accommodate their life as a parent. Itās not they are unhappy being a mother, but I hear so many stories like, āif I hadnāt had my baby, I would be doing this or that with my career.ā Itās really interesting to have such vast differences with women in my life, but it has also peaked my interest in working with them as a coach.
Common categories of goals of my ideal clients would be: Embrace their strengths, purpose and value. Love what they are doing in their life. Increase self-expression and self-worth. Use grounding and breathing techniques. Improving communication.
Ideally, when I think about working with these women, I think about taking a broad holistic approach. My main goal is to empower these women to love the life they are living, whether that is continuing on their career path and/or having another child, as long as they feel confident and content in their decisions. I want to coach, guide, inspire and empower women to embrace their strengths, purpose and value, to live passionate lives doing what they love, while standing strong with a better sense of self and confidence.
In the big picture, I want to start a company that is all about women empowering women. (I already bought the domain: Women Empowering Women Alliance). My idea is to gather other women that I know are excellent in their field and have the same ideas and goals as I do. I mentioned a broad, holistic approach in my last paragraph, because women (and all people), have a wealth of things that they struggle with and want to work on. I also know that I do not have all the answers, knowledge and training to work with every client. When I reflect back to one of the webinars and through reading the Coaching Skills book, I am reminded of ethical boundaries and when it may be necessary to refer clients out. For example, I may have a client that recently had a baby and is struggling with feeling comfortable and confident in their body. Iām not a health or wellness coach, but I know an excellent one. So, as I continue my coaching, I refer my client out to the wellness coach to perhaps create a new meal plan/exercise routine that works for her body and new time constraints. In this moment, I am EMPOWERING my female client and also EMPOWERING my wellness coach friend, also a woman, by referring her a new client to continue to grow her business. Or for example, I have an executive client that is struggling with stress at work, and this is starting to manifest health issues. She may not be an advocate of pharmaceuticals and wants a more holistic approach. I know an amazing Herbalist that can work with my client to create herbal teas and tinctures that will help with her stress and related health issues. Working with an Herbalist as part of the coaching process is a great way to connect with Nature as well. I have a bunch of examples similar to this, but for this exercise, I will keep it brief.
Things that I would like to do with my clients, and also with professional women working under the umbrella of WOMEN EMPOWERING WOMEN ALLIANCE is: Nature connected coaching, client-specific programs, and retreats.
ā¢ 1-1 coaching
ā¢ Small group outings in nature with a specific theme, i.e.:
What kind of leader are you?
What is your communication style and how is that an advantage/disadvantage?
Finding your strengths.
Facing your fears.
ā¢ Holistic all-women retreats (Quarterly)
Healthy Eating and Body Image
Yoga, Meditation, Grounding/Breathing Techniques
Outdoor Challenges/Team Building/Leadership
Communication/Self-Expression/Self-Worth
Herbal Alchemy, Education and Energy HealingTraditional therapy doesnāt work for many people. Itās too sterile. People often want a quick fix to their problems or limitations without taking ownership for their actions, behaviors and decisions. The real work starts with you. Immersion in nature connects you to something bigger than yourself. You are able to develop a deeper understanding of how you relate to others, yourself and your life, by reflecting on symbols and metaphors through nature connection. You challenge perceived notions of self and others, to develop awareness of your own strengths by using the environment. You are given the ability to process your new understanding through sharing thoughts and experiences in a relaxed, safe, supportive, constructive and respectful environment.
I researched some companies online that were working with women specifically. As far as with working with executive women specifically, I didnāt find much that wasnāt directly related to getting ahead professionally, and that is not the population Iām trying to work with. I did find a company, http://www.namasteworksyoga.com, that talked a lot about how nature plays a huge role in our life and how connecting with the natural rhythms of nature can calm us all down and ground us, finding solace in our crazy lives. This company specifically uses Yoga as their tool for coaching, and I believe yoga is an excellent practice for calming the mind and many other things, which is why I would want that to be a retreat focus in my business. I also found another company called Womenās Empowerment Workshop. They work exclusively with women and girls, and their mission statement is as follows: ā¦programs empower women and girls to nourish mind, body and spirit by connecting to the natural world in a profoundly enriching, compelling, and transformational way. By reconnecting in a receptive way to the gifts of nature, women and girls discover and build their feminine power, confidence and purpose. They also run 3-6 day camps with girls where they can be immersed in nature, discover, connect, build confidence and find their authentic voice. I think that is so cool! I struggled for a bit deciding what population I wanted to work with because so much of my past experience has been with youth, but for financial reasons and what we do as coaches, I picked adults. However, I really love what this company is doing for young girls and feel that those kinds of experiences are very important in creating and supporting strong young women. Finally, I found a business that worked with mothers called Flourishingmothers.com/au . These coaches seem to be doing a great job working with women that are struggling at the crossroads of becoming a parent and working and/or leaving their job, and loving their life without compromising everything. This company does not do nature-connected coaching. So, all in all, there are some good programs out there, but I feel like I have found a special little niche in my approach and specific client needs. Iām excited!-
Hi Lauren!
Kapow! What an awesome vision you have and I can really feel all the energy around it. I hear how there are multiple threads running through on how to empower women clients and women professionals that you will partner with. The holistic vision with multiple levels of intertwined offerings sounds fantastic and I can see how you are in the center of this hub creating space for your coaching, your clients’ process while weaving of all the offerings and connections to come forward. Very dynamic!It seems like you are ready to move deeper into your creative, empowering and dynamic vision by further defining the specific offerings you’ve already identified; carving out that niche that you found and are excited about. It feels like a lot of vision has poured forward and you have a lot to work with and produce. I look forward to hearing more about these powerful offerings to meet your goals as you named them: “Embrace their strengths, purpose and value. Love what they are doing in their life. Increase self-expression and self-worth. Use grounding and breathing techniques. Improving communication”. What do you feel are the next steps? Any obstacles? How might you partner with these women already in your life to inform your visioning?
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oh wow “(I already bought the domain: Women Empowering Women Alliance).” That is amazing – you’re already starting to live your vision – I’m so excited for you that you have been able to put a name to it.
Reading your post, I’m blown away by how clear you seem to be around the population, structure and even your offerings. It’s so interesting to see the commonalities in the population we want to serve yet the differences in how we plan to approach it. It just illustrates to me that there is room for both of us (and more) in this unique space!
You really gave me food for thought about my own vision and how I can go deeper – I loved how clearly you had laid it out, particularly your partnership with others to present a holistic offering. I also have that vision but am further behind you in terms of manifesting it.
Your passion for this population comes through so strongly in your words and I can clearly feel the personal experiences which have influenced your soul-direction.
Another thing which resonated really strongly with me was “Many of these women are still single because they donāt have time to date, canāt meet men that live up to their expectations, or constantly meet men that are intimidated by them.”; this is so true for me that I’ve given up. I would love your guidance on how to create the time and space for the possibility of a relationship while never dimming my light or feeling the need to apologize for who I am.
This was such a great post – thank you for sharing it!! -
Lauren, this demographic of people is right up your ally! I know how inspired you feel about guiding women who are doing well in their professional lives but lacking in their personal life. Or women who are moms that are seeking for something more. It’s wonderful that you’re looking to take a holistic approach on helping these people.
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* Kick-off Question: When you think about coaching and/or guiding others, who comes to mind? What is the population that most excites you, and why? How do you imagine working with them? Take time to consider all that youāve learned during these Foundation Modules and express how you might work with your ideal client. What would be the common categories of goals that you foresee them working towards? How would you like to collaborate with nature to support their awareness and success? Also, search the web and share with us a few examples of individuals or organizations who work with similar populations. Add to your post, a comparative critique of these organizations based on what you know about Nature-Connected Coaching.
* Use citations from assigned readings (or other resources), your experience over the weekend, and your past experience to discuss your perspective.I am writing this paper having done 2 days of Gestalt work and 1 day of Parts work so I am aware that I am using language in advance of what I knew when I completed Foundations Four. However, as this is all driving towards an end state, I donāt feel it serves me to exclude this information and language and write from an incomplete place.
I have always been drawn to the idea of supporting the female population, more specifically, women in their late teenage years and beyond, who have experienced a life-course altering event such as the death of a family member or friend, a divorce, bullying, abuseā¦
I have already met some of these women in my life and can recall the conversations Iāve had with them as it relates to how these events have temporarily defined them or, in fact, redirected the course of their lives for the good, empowered them. Iām excited by the privilege and opportunity to guide them and partner with them into a place of knowing that they donāt have to be defined by their experience but can, in fact, use it to empower them to go on to do extraordinary things and live extraordinary lives.
I also want to remain open to the possibility of guiding men who may seek out my guidance but I have not had the powerful vision of this being the population most in need of my service.Reflecting on the 4 modules, I would start by taking time to hear how my client’s experience has impacted her by listening to the words she speaks (are they emotionally charged, clinical, neutral), by observing her sentence construction (is it grammatically correct or is it all over the place), by observing her body language (is it congruent or incongruent with her language) and perhaps invite her to explore how her body language reflects her feelings, perhaps even more truly than her words. This will help guide me to know how to meet her where she is at. My ability to move into severance, threshold and integration work will depend on where she is at with these emotions, her process and her healing and her willingness and readiness to explore it all. I believe that it will be different for each client based on her level of emotional distress and even distance from the impacting event.
Common categories of goals:
1. how to feel and become more empowered
2. how to speak her truth / find her voice
3. identify and verbalize her self worth through learning, understanding and articulating her strengths
4. how to build and maintain her self confidence
5. how to say no or yes; both are important
6. how to be optimistic / positive in the face of seeming hopelessness
1. how to find that tiny glimmer of light in the darkness, that ember that can fuel and light the fire
7. how to believe in herself again (if she has lost it)
8. how to reclaim her self respect
9. how to create an alternative / believing in the power of possibility
10. how to develop a ‘yes AND’ mindset
11. for me, as the guide, to create a safe space for her to explore and work outside her comfort zone and face her fear without judgment
12. to experiment with failure
1. how does that impact her self worth
2. what did the failure teach you
3. how did it feel to fail
4. how can you use it for good to empower yourselfHow I would like to collaborate with nature:
* get her out of enclosed spaces to free her mind
* take her to places to show her, thruā living examples, how hard some plants/trees have to work to survive, but still do, against what seems like all the odds!
* Create the opportunity for her to question how this could be analogous to her own life
* take her to an area previously damaged by fire and witness the resilience of nature as it is reborn in this seemingly hostile/destroyed/nutrient-deprived environment (this is sort of the same as the above, but more specific)
* build a fire (safely!) – demonstrate how a huge fire can grow from a single ember
* again, this could be analogous to her own life – if she can find that single, tiny hope, how does she think she can build her future from it (this would be baby steps work!)
* have her pick something up off the ground which looks dead or is dying to see if and how she can find beauty in it
* leaves in the Fall, a fallen pinecone
* take her on a walk without purpose or a map
* has her trust been broken thruā her experience and can she trust you
* can she lead and trust herself
* can she surrender to not knowing where sheās going or why (this could be analogous to her life)
* if itās all too much/too soon, just take her to simply be outside
* what does she smell, hear, see, sense, taste – bring her back to self and ground her in the present, not the past, not the future, the nowOther organizations:
* Divorced Moms on a Mission: divorcedmoms.com (this is an online forum of many resources, from legal to emotional, but has no nature connection)
* Meetup groups (Local. Can also include men. Are not necessarily professionally run and may create a social support structure without the therapeutic support. Meetups can entail going for a hike but it isnāt necessarily the main focus of the event and is not communicating as such either)
* Womansdivorce.com: (another website which offers support solely from a procedural and resource perspective: lacks the nature connection)
* Psychologytoday.com offers many resources and ways to connect with groups or individual therapists for abuse, divorce and behavioral issues. There are hundreds of therapists listed, just in the Boulder zip code, who offer professional services in these areas, however, in their intro bios, I did not see any (in the few I spot-checked, who offered nature connection as the foundation to their practice)
* In searching yoga therapy for divorce, no sole practitioners surfaced but law offices and the Huffington post had articles about the therapeutic benefits of some yoga postures but did not offer yoga as the basis for healing and recoveringWhile my vision is still nascent, I know that my offering is unique and also something that will likely appeal to a specific demographic, even within my chosen client population. I have used nature for my own healing and believe that by sharing this with others, even if itās not verbalized, my soul-directed coaching will communicate for me.
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Wendy I appreciate your willingness to support and guide young women but also be open to men wanting to do self work. You’re incredible thorough in your post and I like how you listed all of the categories of goals as well as the collaboration with nature. By listing the categories of goals, it’s a great visualization for us as the reader to understand your steps and processes of moving forward with your ideal client.
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Wendy,
I love your ideas of the population you want to work with, and way to challenge yourself with focusing on picking clients that you know have experienced a ‘life altering event’ from the start! I think the work we did at the intensive in December around Brain and Trauma will serve you and really help you work with your specific client population. When you say ‘life altering event’, I immediately think of some time of trauma (or traumatic), some perhaps on a larger scale than others. We learned some excellent grounding techniques to work with your clients, and the reading and what I learned at the intensive around how the Brain functions. In order for change to occur in someones life, their brain must change. When you become aware of what is going on in your brain, you begin to control how it processes. I find this to be important to understand, and for your client as well.
I thought your ‘ways to collaborate with nature’ were awesome! I may ‘borrow’ some of these š
Keep up the good work! -
Summary:
The Foundations Module set the tone for understanding what our connections to Nature look like, what our ideas are for the population of clients we want to work with, and to begin brainstorming about our potential businesses. There was a lot of reading and information to process, but I believe that the readings will be great resources in the future.
I’m excited to continue my work as a coach and add new awareness, exercises and understanding as i attend future intensives. -
Summary:
Before this module, I had never really considered the type of client I would want to work with, nor had I considered that I could choose not to work with someone. Saying ‘no’ is very hard for me so this was a powerful realization. Since this realization, I’m very clear about who I want to partner with and think that it will likely make me a more effective Coach.
The other aspect of this module is the concept of being made up of different parts. I’ve always known that there are aspects of my personality which, literally, drive me to behave a certain way and to take risks but, before this module, I never understood why. Having a deeper understanding of what makes Wendy Wendy is incredibly empowering.
Of everything I’ve learned, I feel that Partswork is something I’d like to bring to my clients because the language and the concept seems to be easily relatable to anyone seeking to develop a deeper connection to themselves. -
Initial Post
When I think about guiding others, I think about multiple kinds of people. First off, I think of people who love the Earth. The have a distinct love for the planet we live on and the detrimental effects humans are having on the planet. These people institutionally have a love for nature, find beauty in it and are conscious about their role on this planet.
Another kind of person who I can see myself guiding are people who struggle in their lives to find purpose other than just surviving. These people deal with the brunt of environmental devastation and have their voices ignored because of the background, economic status or geographical location. I believe I’m able to help people step into their power, help guide them into tapping into their emotional, physical, mental struggles.
These two demographics excite me because I feel a strong connection to helping those in need, from all walks of life. It’s important for me to help guide people who want to be guided and who may not know that coaching is available. I don’t expect this to be easy but I do wish to work to reach these people.
For both demographics, I would want to take them out into nature and work to understand their wants and deeper needs. What is stopping them for working to better themselves? Is it internal? Is it external? If it’s external, I’d invite experiments into play and invite them to work inwardly to retrieve fulfillment on the external. -
Summary
I’ve had some time to reflect on the people I would like to serve. I suppose that I am working to reach a demographic that either aligns with my nature connection or who may not be exposed to that sort of connection; people who don’t reject the idea but who simply may not be exposed to the awareness of nature connection. Their are those who may not be aware or exposed to nature connection, so I would like to work with people, either in educational groups or speaking opportunities, to give a larger number of people the education on why this is important and why it benefits them. -
Response to Amanda:
Obviously, we’re writing these long after the module and with the benefit of getting to know each other on a really personal level, however, when I read your post, it resonates deeply with what I know about you. Your deep care of the planet coupled with your own struggles with finding meaning in your life. As a generalization, I think that the most effective and impactful coaches come from a place of understanding what their client is experiencing and in you selecting these 2 populations, I have no doubt that you will not only resonate with their challenges but be able to guide them to achieve fulfillment (while at the same time learning things about yourself, which all the best guides do!)
I’m excited for you to watch you serve these people.
As you say, I’m curious to see how you will identify them and reach out to make those connections.
