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Brain and Change 2 (Oct 2019)
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38 Replies
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Initial Post
I have a long-term client that I have met with about 15 times. She has a history of trauma in her life, so there was some hesitation that we would be able to implement any “brain change” without first addressing the trauma. Over the past couple of months, we have worked with some resourcing tools for in the moment trauma episodes, these definitely helped, but there was more work to do for sure!
The Brain 2 module helped tie this together for me into a working experience for the client. What she was missing or rather holding onto was the old self that was keeping her stuck. The session that I was able to put the concepts of the brain change to work was a hike that we decided to go on for our session. This was kind of a last-minute decision on my part to give the client the option to move the session to nature, and actually it was the first time I have had any of my sessions in nature. This has really opened my eyes to the power of nature and to allow the client the opportunity to do what they need for themselves and put my agenda or fears aside, but that is a story for another time.
The session began at the trail head on the bed of my truck where the coaching relation was established, and some intentions were set around a goal that the client had. This was a working goal that wasn’t really concrete at this moment in time and change as we processed more of the story and the feeling around the story. The goal started off with something like I don’t want to have the chest feeling associated with fear and I want to change how my past dictates my future. I should also emphasize at this point that prior to the session I offered one of Dr. Joe Dispenzas podcasts for the client to listed to. Because of the trauma I didn’t know how the podcast would be taken, however she was very receptive to it and there was an underlying intention of wanting to “do what the Dr. talked about.” As we set out on the hike it felt like a race to the top, this was the chest feeling hard at work and not even realizing it. As we made way to our stopping point the goal shifted to what do we want. The new goal was set to want to feel safe, like the feeling a hug gives you. She had been searching for this feeling from exterior sources, men and social groups primarily. I did not challenge this because I wanted to see if the connection could be made within her that it had to be a feeling that she embodied.
With the new gola of wanting to feel safe and knowing what that felt like with some undirected pendulation from the client, we brought her request to nature. I had her recite who she was (the feeling of fear and the chest feeling) sit in that for a moment, make the conscious decision to let nature have it and welcome in the feeling of who she wanted to be. I didn’t want to interrupt the clients process at this moment, but the second time she initiated the exercise I instructed he to use the words “I am” instead of “I want”. I asked her if she needed to go through it once more and she was relieved to say I don’t want to feel that anymore. There was some excitement when I heard this! At this point I asked the client how does the safe you carry themselves, talk to others, talk to self. What does she say or do as she passes other hikers on the trail.
From this moment on there was some real change that occurred. The pace to the bottom had slowed, head was raised to greet her surroundings. We used the rest of the hike to sink into this space and set up a plan to continue and bring into the days ahead. The planning and action steps were to invite a morning self-discussion of “who I am” and the spot check mantra was “I am safe”. She has checked in with me to let me know that she is carrying out her new rituals. I can hear the change in her voice, and I am excited to meet with her next to really see how things are going. Brain changes at work!
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Ben,
This is such a cool experience since it was your first NCC session in nature…AND it started on the bed of the truck. Ha awesome!
And those mantras seemed to be really helpful for her. I’m excited to see what she experiences with you next time.
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Ben, your first NCC session sounded very powerful. You mentioned having some fear around this but it seems like you stayed with your client quite beautifully. I wonder if when you were witnessing her find who she is, you were too. I’ll be interesting to hear how this client progresses. Good job!
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Wow Ben! There was so much going on in your session! That is awesome how different aspects of partswork, pendulation, and others tools were used. It sounds like she got to that space she wanted, and you helped her develop a good piece of incorporation of a daily ritual around that morning discussion. It felt like you were right there with her, true coaching, as well as showing up with the established intentions. Thanks for sharing that experience!
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Hi Ben,
Thanks for sharing your experience, which sounded so important both for you and the client! It sounds like you did exactly what needed to happen and trusted your gut on the experiment and it worked! thanks for sharing.
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Initial Post
• What steps did you take to establish the Coaching Relationship and focus the session?My client is a very talkative and self-motivated late 40s mother of two who owns 2 very successful restaurants in Crested Butte. She came to me wanting to cultivate and grow a greater sense of work/life balance, and inner calm. From the beginning, we’ve been working on lots of ways to meditate, remain mindful, in the body, in the moment, etc. Two days ago was our fifth session.
My sessions with her have been marked by a lot of nonstop ‘shop talk”, and although she was changing her routine, she was regularly meditating, and she was being less triggered in stressful situations, by now I was becoming dissatisfied with my approach, that my client appeared not to be often in touch with her feelings, or in the moment, because our sessions were all about her past. I became concerned I might not be intervening enough, that we weren’t circling back to the goal often enough, or serving the client’s overall needs. I wanted to direct the session more, especially at the beginning.
Because this client loves to talk, and because there’s a 7-10 minute walk from the car to my home, we usually engage in chatter all the way up. Often in the past I have not been mindful enough and have let this chatter continue to follow us right into my coaching space, and trample over the first minutes of the session. But on this day as we crossed the threshold into the mudroom, I modeled a very slow, silent demeanor in removing my boots, and I encouraged her with a hand gesture and a big smile to please take a seat inside. Soft Kirtan music and the faint aroma of incense helped set the tone for our nervous systems to calm, and become more inward focused over time. In this case, we sat in silence for 4-5 mins.listening to the music until it was over. After another 30 seconds of silence and not moving, I handed her a sheet of paper with the questions;
“What would you like to be the outcome for this session today? How does that relate to your goal? (Please write me back (☺). No hurry.”
Because we had already talked about her verbal proclivities, I felt comfortable enough with this client to try this experiment which asked her pfc to engage non-verbally in the Now and override her tendency to let her verbalizations (memories) about the past get the best of her. Plus, I needed a way to just slow her down and find out what we wanted to focus on! As it turns out, the approach worked really well and helped the client focus on their immediate true feelings about what they wanted that day. The session focused on her sharing her accomplishments since we began together, and us celebrating how far she had come from her old reactive self. We used this to check back in with, and tweak, the goal, and to begin working on an intention for her New Self moving forward.
It also cool that this very ‘type A’ client credited her meditation/breath awareness practice, with her ability to feel more connected in nature and to see mirrors/metaphors of her own life experience on our wander out on the land. This is a very motivated individual who has adhered to a repeitive new behavior for long enough that she is experiencing her own brain changes. Those neurons are starting to fire together in new ways. Inspiring.-
Sandy, This is an awesome accomplishment for the client. I have toyed with a few similar ideas and it has been a little stressful, but when I put my agenda aside and do what would be in the best interest of the client it has proven to work out. I like the way in which you used the questions as a way t slow the client rather than jumping into old habit, very powerful tool. Watching the new circuitry start to form is truly and amazing thing to watch. Thank you again for sharing!
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Sandy,
What a graceful way to direct a chatty client, I have never thought of that! Very intuitive way into feeling. What inspired this action? Great job by the way! -
Sandy, it sounds like you really created a powerful intention around the coaching presence. Allowing yourself, as well as her, to sit into a calm place after talking about some other things. I loved how you incorporated calm music and smells to add to your calm presence to allow both nervous systems to settle in to the session. The questionnaire you handed out was a really nice gesture as well. It sounds like you two have been making great progress together.
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Hey Sandy, what a great post! How great to change up what you were used to doing with her and let her experience herself in a different way. I had to grin when I read about handing her a note. How cool. And what a friendly note it was, no aspect of shaming or blaming or any of the things that could have happened inadvertently if you had directly said, ‘you know, you might find different things for yourself if you are silent’. What a neat technique.
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I want to discuss a new client. At our first session she presented with a very passionate desire to overcome her phobia regarding commitments, especially those to other people-as in intimate relationships. We spent the majority of our first session with me trying to really understand her and articulate the deeper need, screen for safety, etc. As I was preparing to close the session she said she wanted to mention something-and that was, that she is a clinical psychologist. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but psychologists scare the bee-geezes out of me. So right away I knew I needed to pay attention to my level of affective arousal as she said that. I realized then she had really dodged around my typical questions in which what a person does for their living usually gets answered, and so I was also surprised at myself for having “missed” something. And then she said she needed to tell me one more thing. And I am looking at the clock, because I had heard the little jingle of our doorbell telling me someone else was waiting to see me, and I know how it is when people tell you 5 minutes before saying goodbye they want to tell you something. That given human nature, those 5 minutes are going to be filled with the real reason they wanted to come to see you. So she let me know that her home had burned down a few months ago. Everyone was safe, but everything was gone. And she quickly let me know that everyone she had turned to to help her process the loss had disappointed her (my words, not her). O.K. 2 minutes to my need to walk out my office door and greet someone else. Thank goodness for EBI. I put aside my fear of psychologists, modulated my breathing to be slower than hers (hers was quite fast at that time), silently called to my vision council and imagined her vision council sitting with her (and in my imagination they were all sobbing and grieving), and I let myself sink into what experience I may be having if I had just lost everything I was used to and many of the things I loved and then felt betrayed by my family and friends, and said, “It sounds to me that you haven’t really had permission to fully grieve.” Who knows if that was helpful but I know it came from a place of just being human. She began to sob and we sat there for a full five minutes before she started to calm. I let her know I needed a minute to let my other client know I knew they were there. And when I returned she was ready to say goodbye, and let me know she appreciated our session.
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opps. That was supposed to go in the grief module discussion post.
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For the brain change module, I want to talk about a client that I have actually seen for years. Until about 12 months ago, she and I were working steadily on her emotional regulation and ability to have typical relationships-where she was able to engage in a relatively steady guarded openness with a few individuals, and have fewer and fewer episodes of deep and difficult depression. We worked a lot on just communication between the two of us to establish a working level of trust. Then at about that time she began to take leaps in her emotional capacities. It actually seemed to me that during that time she was changing from a “therapy” client, to a “coaching” client in that she could start to look at a broader view of goals and states of her being, as she had mastered a level of emotional regulation. Anyway, after the first brain change module she and I began to really concentrate on brain states, and for the first time she came on board with daily meditation, and the idea that her body informed her mental state. Then she broke up with her boyfriend and had a lot of feeling states telling her she needed to be back with him. We talked about how her body was “detoxing” from the relationship and as it did that it was similar to a diet detox in which we can have unreasonable cravings. She appreciated having a different viewpoint than just, “I must really want to be with him because I am crazy” viewpoint, and that helped her withstand the desire to contact him and start the cycle of difficulties in their relationship again. When I was at this past toolbox I had an urgent call from her as she had snapped back, contacted him and then deeply regretted their interchange, and felt hopeless and out of control. Through phone contact I led her back into a meditative state in which she again connected to the self she had been associating into through her daily meditations. At the end of the call she stated she felt fragile and vulnerable, but better connected to the self she was moving toward. At our meeting this week she reflected that she had quickly moved away from the intense feelings of snapping back, and had the sensations that her cravings had “dissolved” and were such that she did not even think about them since our phone call. I am aware that some aspects of therapeutic theory (not all) would suggest that she decided to contact him while I was gone due to the fact that there was greater physical distance between she and I and that I had left during a time she ordinarily would have scheduled an appointment with me. And that therefore, part of the work of therapy would entail psychological interpretations regarding that issue, then “worked through”. The use of brain change theory, and coaching principles however, appeared to have a more client-based approach, concentrating on her ability to move to her desired state of being and making progress that she both utilized immediately and was proud of, strengthening the relationship she has with her self and providing for more opportunities for her to make independent decisions.
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Lisa,
I liked your inner conscious approach to bringing back to self and in the moment. You seem to have a special gift with this. This is not an easy task but working with you in the past I experienced this as well. You have an amazing presence and soothing understanding voice that I’m sure this same client experienced.
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Lisa, how you guided your client to better understanding of what “detoxing” a relationship is like was a very empathetic and relatable response. I get this image that you really are at her level and not looking down on her. What great support through a difficult situation.
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Lisa, you have such a great awareness of both yourself and the client. Really being able to meet her where she was at, and to notice in yourself the other role there, but not necessarily act on them. I could tell in your writing that you were there with her as she needed you to be, and not as you wanted it to be perhaps with your own agenda.
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Initial Post:
Lately I have been focusing more on long term clients and not really one-off type clients. This of course has slowed business down but the clients that I do have are greatly helping me improve my practice.
I have one client who is currently seeing a therapist for grief and trauma. So this collaboration with a therapist and taking them after they are out of therapy has been very helpful. At first I had a hard time making sure I wasn’t overstepping any boundaries. I still feel hesitant that it isn’t my profession and title to handle these type of clients since we aren’t licensed and ethically trained.
Yet…this client (She) was actually perfect and we are now 3 weeks in with a 4th session next week. What helped this time was slowly building the trust of meeting inside in an office space and then bringing them outdoors! One thing I am excited about with this clients is that the nature collaboration piece has been extremely beneficial. I have been taking some EcoTherapy Certification courses for my Level 2 Certification and am sort of becoming more aware of deeper consciousness practices to use with them.
Last session we did a two hour session on my farm. This was a special session because it sort of extended from the last one so we were in threshold the entire time using Gestalt. What was profound about it is that a ritual idea formulated out of the sessions and she thought of her own ritual to do out onto the land and to embody it. It was very moving for the both of us and I can’t wait for the next session because she wants to have a session a day before a NatureLink Vision Quest that she signed up for!
These long term clients are slowly starting to become more aware of our other programs and it so humbling to see them come back to Vision Quest and other community programs I am offering. 🙂
What steps did you take to establish the Coaching Relationship and focus the session?
How did or could the concepts learned this last weekend fit into your nature-connected coaching session?
How did or could you collaborate with Nature and combine the concepts learned this last weekend with Coaching principles?
What challenges did you face? How did you adapt?
What flowed and how did you build off it?
What did you learn about yourself and nature-connected coaching?
How do the readings relate and interact with the face to face material and your work with your practice clients?
What ideas do you have for how you might use the concepts learned this last weekend and nature-connected coaching in the future with your client?
How do change theory and neuroscience principals effect or enhance your Coaching Presence and approach?
How does Nature-Connected Practices, change theory, and neuroscience principals interface?-
I think that it is great that you have clients that are seeing specific specialists for their needs and that you are able to collaborate with the other professionals in the field. I am trying to build my referral group so that I can do the same. I also can really relate to what you and your client found through taking the session into nature and find a ritual that the client can use to facilitate her change!
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Ben, I think your specialty is developing right in front of you from the sound of it and the attention you are drawing to your other programs. I was wondering if you encountered any challenge as you were working with your client on change? From the sound of it you were in the flow with her. Great!
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Having that awareness to notice that you feel unqualified in some aspect, yet listen to your intuition I think is very powerful. You have such a gift to share with people, and it sounds like through some collaboration you were able to continue to work with this client and work to be in a place that provided growth and change to continue to happen.
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Hi Ben, as usual, I can hardly keep up with all that you are doing and creating. I am glad to hear about how others are slowly and gently taking their clients outside. I feel particularly challenged in that department because only two clients of mine during this entire year have actually approached me to do the nature-connected coaching, and the other clients in which I use coaching practices are either clients that want coaching to stay inside or therapy clients with whom coaching principles seem to be helpful. So I am always looking for ways to get that nature connection and, hopefully, help that grow.
I am glad, too, to hear our success in meeting your clients as a coach and how helpful it is to have that role when there are multiple people involved with the same client. You seem to convey such a deep sense of knowing the boundaries and how you keep yourself in the boundaries in a way that is helpful for your client.
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Initial post:
I have met with practice clients before but for this brain and change module, I am starting with a new one. We haven’t met yet for coaching yet but I plan on taking her out into Joshua Tree National Park and having some coaching sessions on the trail!It was kind of a funny story how I got my coaching client actually. She was an old colleague of mine from years ago and she just happened to move into my neighborhood. We ran into each other at my local pet shop and she was reminiscing about backpacking and wanted to do another trip. I just happened to have a trip planned and I asked her to come.
This was the perfect setup for her. We met up for coffee later and she shared with me that she had been working for a company for in home health care and really desired to start her own company. She had also been reading a few books on mindfulness books including The Surrender Experiment. I asked her of I could coach her while we are out in the desert and she happily excepted.
What serendipity indeed.
My client is has already primed her pump for mindfulness and change
, but I could see the look in her face say “how do I get there?” My plan is to see what nature has to offer my client and create that experience of who she wants to be. We will be out on the middle of the desert for four days backpacking. If it feels appropriate, we could create a ritual at the end of the trip to mark a new beginning. The whole trip could be a continuous threshold experience.As far as challenges goes, I don’t know what to expect and I think that in itself is a challenge. I might find it challenging to keep in contact with the clients process well when we are walking. I also need to organize the session so it has a clear intent to it.
My idea is actually to start a ceremony before we start trekking to get clear intent then have some hiking in silence. When we break for camp, we could get further into threshold through experimentation with nature. On the last day we could create an ending ceremony and action for the future. I have read all the material and am ready to help this nervous system out!
I am new to outdoor guiding experiences such as these so I am excited, nervous and anxious for any feedback that you have.
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Hi Adrianna, I am so glad for you that you are going backpacking soon. I looooooved all of your ideas of ritual and ceremony being woven into your trip. And how open you are with your friend and with the experience, and all of the learning that is/will be happening. I hope you have a really good time. I am eager to hear how it all works and what you end up doing and how that is for you.
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Hi Adriana,
Cool that you’ll be going out with your friend! Love J-Tree. I wonder if you know the book the Roaring of the Sacred River, by Foster & Little? I great resource about guiding/experiencing Rites of Passage. It’s exciting to hear you’ll be doing that and I hope you will let us know how it went. I’m looking to do similar work and also thinking about how I would structure it, what elements and kinds of interaction and ceremony to have when, etc. It sounds like your client is already well-primed so maybe just holding space and doing the 50-50 plan will be all you need for them to get what they need. Exciting! -
Adriana,
I think this will be an amazing experience for both you and your client. I cannot wait to hear more about how this trip goes, for both you as a coach and the client. I think organizing the session and having clear intent and some planning will go along way for this trip. Very curious to hear if the intent stays the course or how it varies.
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My client has been working on change around being more kind and loving to everybody. He said, and I have seen that this has been true. He has gone from a nihilistic approach on life and people to one that is more open to experience. There was still a problem with his sister-in-law though. No matter what he was trying he could not change the way he was viewed her. I recommended some videos on Joe Dispenza, as well as talking about and finding an understanding around what thoughts he had about her. By talking about all of this we were able to map out some things for greater clarity.
We found that his thoughts about her were shaped on past experience of things that she would do that irritated him. I had him incorporate how he was feeling about her while he thought about what she did in the past. I told him that this was a memory, an attitude. That these attitudes compounded over time and formed perceptions around the way he views her. After some dialogue back and forth he shared more of his experience, but I had him try and be with his feelings in this moment, and not about something that happened in the past.
He was able to work out a greater awareness for himself. Stating that he was caught up thinking about how he used to feel about her. Now he is going to try to “go with no past” as Michael says into his next encounter to try and be aware of what he is thinking and feeling about her in the present moment. Instead of believing a past memory that was based on certain moods and attitudes he acquired.-
Hi Cory, I am in agreement with you about how change can feel like magic. I have a quote I wrote in my daily planner that I am not sure about. It says, “Transformation is not something you do but something that happens when the conditions are right”. I am conflicted by the quote because transformation is certainly something that you do but maybe the things we do is to created the right conditions. So when you are talking with your client about his conflicts and past hurts regarding the person he wants to see with “no past”, and he is watching and reading about brain change, and seeing and hearing about your own transformation, it is all toward creating the right conditions so transformation will occur. And then when it does it is magic.
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hi Cory,
It sounds like almost a kind of pendulation you did with your client, having them ‘re-live’some of their past feelings, but keeping them in the present moment. They could then presumably get some distance from the habitual feelings and see them as ‘memory.’ Then we can view each situation with new eyes. (Even though the rope still strongly reminds me of a snake, now that I have inspected it (pendulation) I know it cannot be a snake, and so actively look for ways it resembles a rope, to help confirm my new view.)
This reminds me of the meditation concept of “Fresh Start” (similar to ‘no past’), where we begin from where we are (no past influencing or dragging at us) and not merely accept but embrace the fact that we’ll stray from our intended path (be it meditation or a friendly encounter with a past foe, or a rope). One could say the practice is the process of repeatedly returning to the practice. Thus we develop compassion for ourselves–and offer ourselves the option of Fresh Start at every moment, so as not to be discouraged. I’ll be curious to hear if the client was successful in their next encounter with the sister-in-law, and what tools prove useful in sustaining a new view. 🙂
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Cory,
I have been referring people to the Dispenza podcasts as well. I have found that follow up in our next session around what he is talking about has been very beneficial on how to incorporate what he is talking about into ones life. Thank you for sharing!
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Summary Post
I always enjoy reading everyone’s experience. The brain and change modules have been my favorite, and I am reminded on a professional and personal level how unique the change looks. It can be as something as dramatic as the manifestation of change on the personal level, or something as small as deep introspection taking place. I say it is small, but it really follows the as above so below mantra. I notice certain believes and perceptions being challenged in myself that sets the stage for change to take place. Having this experience happen within myself grants me that much more gratitude when I see the change that is happening in other people. We see the actual manifestation take place, but under the surface there is so much going on that really appears to work like magic. -
Summary post. It has been great to read about so many different kinds of transformations. I am heartened to feel that I have such a wonderful variety of techniques and ways of being with/working with people that are shown to be effective. I remain very interested in understanding more about how we can directly access the RAS. Sometimes I wish I had been able to do more research with topics such as these. I think my 600 questions would come in handy in a research setting! But, since I work directly with people now, it is just great to feel validated in utilizing skills and techniques that have research backing.
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Summary Post
The brain 2 intensive has been very powerful in tying most of what we have learned so far together. I feel as though it was almost a missing piece and has brought new light to who I am as a coach and my individual style. Watching a client intentionally make changes to the brain through experiences and ritual has been an amazing piece to be apart of. It has changed a lot of my initial fears of how to incorporate nature and how power of a tool nature can be for the client.
It has been awesome to read about how it has helped and been incorporated with others in the cohort. It has also been very beneficial on my own personal growth.
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Summary Post
The Brain Intensives continue to reverberate in my life and with my growing work with clients. I’m reading several books at once and starting to make some more connections between mindfulness, intention setting, ritual, power of story and the ability of the brain to help us to imagine and deeply feel our way into our new vision in powerful ways. I also have enjoyed reading others’ experiences in these areas and look forward to the next two webinars where we can share more!
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Wow @ Strong Ben! This sounds like a great experience, not only for your client, but for you as well. To be able to see how nature can show up for client in your first NCC session sounds incredible. We have talked before about wanting to have sessions jump out of the gym and into nature and this session really knocked it out of the park for you.
Sounds like you gave the client just the right amount of space and instruction that was needed in the session for such a positive outcome. Great job!
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*Initial Post*
I always like to start off a session with establishing some kind of grounding first. I feel that helps the client to take a minute to themselves and focus on what they want to achieve during the session. It can be silent, breathwork focused, quick guided meditation or a moment of gratitude. Usually after that brief moment I will simply just ask what’s going on for them today and what does the client want to walk away with from the session.
One client I work with gets VERY stuck in her headspace and it’s been difficult for her to get to her heartspace. She is a co-worker and we do hour sessions during lunch breaks occasionally. Our environment outside of work is very busy, being in a city, and I think that could be playing a huge part in not being able to have that silence and nature around us. We have had a few sessions and usually all she wants to do is vent about work issues and one topic brought up trying to be perfect because her father has a very successful career. I think that’s a road we can dig deeper on, however, she’s quick to change the subject.
We spoke yesterday and we will be having sessions AFTER work from now on so we can really find the right environment for us. A more private space with less distraction and I am hoping that helps her to focus more deeper and what’s going on in the heartspace. While the convenience of the lunch breaks was great, it just doesn’t work right now, especially during winter, it’s frigid out there. Environment of where you have a session, whether indoor or outdoor, really can make a big difference in letting your client express themselves.
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*Summary Post*
It’s really awesome to see how far everyone has come since their first posts. We were just barely comfortable with exposing ourselves with client work and now I see how far we are all digging into clients. Everyone seems to have their own approach, and it all works out the way it’s supposed to. There is no “by the book” method for any of us, we work with what we are comfortable with and what we know. Whether it be in the gym, on a farm, or on a journey, we all have started our own ways to use the skills we have obtained. The brain change courses have just gave us so much knowledge. It’s helpful to listen to clients talk about how they feel, or what they do, but it’s so powerful when you can tell them the science behind it.
