[Josh]

Summary Post

Reflecting and re-reviewing everyone’s posts in the Foundation Four module is so energizing and reinvigorating. The passion, energy, and creativity from everyone is truly inspiring. It truly points to the virtually infinite possibilities for what we as nature connected coaches can create with the knowledge and experience this program provided.

During the foundation’s webinars, Daniel discussed the importance and value of finding a specific, focused niche. Among other things, it allows us to be more differentiated, better target our outreach and marketing efforts. The uniqueness of NCC can help provide some focus and specificity and that is magnified more through a focused target audience.

Over the past several months, I am increasingly interested in centering some work around outdoor and wilderness experiences. Being based outside of Park City, UT, between the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains provides a rich tapestry of wilderness experiences combined with an accessible destination for so many.

I’ve been exploring tailoring nature and wilderness experiences based on duration or time in wilderness (and, relatedly, investment on the part of the clients). For example: offering day trips or experiences to (re)connect with nature, weekend or 2 day experiences for deeper connection and exploration, and longer multi-day experiences and excursions geared toward facilitating lasting change or transformation. These experiences would all be supported with coaching both before and after the experiences, with the goal of creating long term coaching engagements and sequencing combinations of experiences to support the clients goals.

As I plan ahead for an ultimate transition into coaching full-time, I am excited to continue to refine my target audience and value proposition over time.

[Josh]

Summary Post

Ah, the beauty and power of Threshold. As Sara calls out in her summary post, Threshold is THE thing that makes nature connected coaching unique and differentiated in a sea of (somewhat) sameness in coaching modalities. This is not something that I appreciated when I was consciously evaluating the NCC program which, as Sara also highlights, points to the opportunity we as nature connected coaches have to creatively articulate during discovery sessions (or, earlier in our broader marketing efforts) the unique approach and value of the NCC approach.

As NCC we are not just going to talk about things our clients could do to facilitate change or transformation, we are actually going to do it. We are going to feel it. We are going to experience a new way of being. And, we are going to experiment and learn from this new way of being. AND, AND, we are going to collaborate with nature to support threshold’s conscious experimentation. When those two concepts collide, true awareness and change can occur in profound ways for our clients.

As I reflect on threshold experiences and our time on the land during Foundations, I am struck by the importance of non-judgmental creativity and playfulness. As coaches, it is critical that we create the container and conditions for our clients to trust us and the space we co-create. This will allow our clients to create threshold experiences that allow them to more deeply surrender into their new way of being.

[Josh]

Summary Post

The exploration of ecotherapy, ecopsychology, and nature connected demonstrate the importance and need for nature’s collective healing, that is the healing of us as individuals, as nature, and the interconnected system from which we all spring and thrive. We suffer when nature suffers, nature suffers when we suffer because we are one in the same, a collective body and consciousness.

As nature connected coaches we are tapping into this collective body and consciousness to support our clients on their journeys. We are also supporting them, through our unique coaching methodology, to tap more directly into this shared nature.

This Foundation also helped clarify the importance and meaning of nature as a co-guide in the coaching ceremony. Much of our readings and these discussion posts highlight how nature is not just something to be used or exploited in service of our client’s own goals — it is, in many ways, an equal partner in the coaching ceremony with its own wisdom and needs that can support our collective growth.

[Josh]

Summary Post

Reflecting on what it means to be connected to nature and the role that plays in supporting our coaching practice brings back a wave of energy and emotion from our time together with nature on the land in Gunnison. For me during the start of our time, that was so much unknown. What truly is this nature connected coaching program? Why am I here? So much anticipation. How will this experience and this program and the people within it impact my life and how I move through the world? Within a matter of days, many of those questions were answered. Many, though, were still unanswered, and ever expanding waiting for the months (and years) ahead to unfold the answers through our collective and individual experiences.

Beyond excitement about the possibilities to come for the program and coaching, what was so transformative about the experience with nature on the land in Colorado was the rather immediate deepening of my connection with nature, both the real and tangible and the mystical and spiritual, all providing a deep source of wisdom, guidance, comfort, discomfort, challenge, friendship. As I spoke to in my initial post, in many ways, the experience connecting with nature during Foundations was a reconnection. A reminder of the role that nature played throughout my life, especially in those moments when there was no one else to turn to; nature, the land, the wilderness was there to act as my guide.

Lindsay’s reference to the Watt’s quote, “You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here” speaks so clearly to this relationship to nature.

I also resonated so strongly with Tony’s notion of “A connection to nature is a connection to Being, rather than Doing. We are nature. Even a moment of true connection to the natural world puts us in touch with a true part of ourselves.”

As coaches and guides, we have the opportunity to collaborate with our clients to tap into the existing relationship we all share with nature to support the change and transformation our clients may seek. As coaches, we are focused on helping to bring our presents into the present moment, connecting with their current experience and “being.” As Tony mentions, connecting with nature is connecting with ourselves, our current being in the present moment to support and guide us towards the future we seek to create. As (nature connected) coaches and guides, we are in a unique position to leverage and apply this insight to support our clients.

[Josh]

Gestalt is admittedly one of the more challenging concepts we’ve encountered for me to fully wrap my head around. For me, it seems most useful as a set of concepts and principles that can be applied primarily in part throughout a coaching or guiding session. Even more specifically, it has been a set of things to ‘listen’ for in a session versus any larger concept to orient a session around.

A few key principles that standout:

1. The present, here and now nature of Gestalt: with coaching rooted more in the present and future vs traditional therapy, these concepts have helped firmly root the coaching model. Practice clients (and, even myself as a practice client) naturally spend more time on the backstory, the history that led to this particular moment, and today’s deeper need. Gestalt helps to reorient less on the backstory and more on how that history is being experienced today in the moment of the session. This also applies to future ruminations and considerations (there / then in the here / now). Simple questions that help pull the client out of the backstory and into the present (how are you experiencing that right now, where in your body are you experiencing that or holding that now) all help the client confront the present, felt experience of their own history.

2. The centrality for experimentation and direct experience: mirrors much of the nature connected coaching model, moving through severance and threshold with conscious experimentation. In the context of Gestalt, this seems to help shake clients from talking about and thinking about experiences that are not directly felt and experienced in the here and now; leaving the session with a new awareness and understanding of how to be in the world.

3. Contact Boundary Disturbances: these are the primary items (introjection, projection, deflection, retrospection, confluence) I have carried forward from the Gestalt toolbox; listening for when and how these disturbances are shared or revealed during discussion with clients, especially around the deeper need. Often these appear as barriers or hindrances that need to be overcome in order to move towards accomplishing or fulfilling the deeper need. Simply acknowledging and bringing awareness to these disturbances in a session can help move the sessions towards the client’s goal. This is not something I have explored, but interested in seeing how and when it might be worthwhile to explore addressing and overcoming the disturbance itself as the goal of a session such as addressing the disturbance in real time.

4. Moving towards health: this concept stuck with me from our toolbox — the idea that we are all moving towards health, trying to be okay — it may not be the healthiest choice or functional, rather an adaptation. But, it is important we all have the recognition that at any point in time we are moving towards health with the resources we have.

5. Group and workshop style models (from the reading): this came up primarily in the introductory text, but something I am interested in exploring with practice clients or later down the road is how to integrate workshop style coaching into my portfolio of offerings. In the context of Gestalt, observing others moving through coaching, can help ground people in the here and now (how does observing and participating in that session impact you in this present moment).

When it comes to work with practice clients thus far, my application of Gestalt has been primarily rooted in a greater personal awareness and attunement with my client rather than introducing any of the concepts directly. The closest I have come to pulling in the concepts directly is by questions that lead the client to experience the ‘here and now’ nature of their experience (i.e. how are you experiencing that today, in this moment?).

[Josh]

I have long struggled with the question of which population most excites me for guiding and coaching. Feeling the call to guide, but feeling not oriented towards a clear sense of direction.

Throughout the Foundations Modules and beyond, I have struggled with the tension of wanting to guide people find purpose through coaching work versus helping companies influence and find profit and power. When I first started this program, I was seeking to run away from my past and professional experience and move towards a more nature connected way of living and guiding.

In my professional work today, I lead a mid-sized communications and brand strategy agency that helps some of the largest, most powerful companies, brands, and organizations tell a more effective and compelling story to influence their respective audiences.

In the weeks and months since, it has become clear that these are not opposing paths, but instead, point towards a shared path and purpose ahead. I now get excited about the possibility of helping organizations find and achieve purpose through the application of nature connection and coaching principles and practices.

Helping leaders, both established and new, lead and execute their organizations in a way that leads to a more positive impact on the world and the people they lead and manage. And, then I also get excited about working with individuals across these organizations and others. How can people better find their purpose and lead a life full of vision aligned work (or, a vision aligned life distinct and separate from work)?

Too often, it feels our relationship to work drives a growing wedge between our innate desire and needs to cultivate connection with nature. As work for many shifts even more online, this wedge puts more pressure on our relationship with and connection to nature.

It is clear we have an opportunity to reorient organizations, those who lead them, and those who comprise them, and the cultures that unite them towards a new form of growth and culture. A growth that is oriented towards the people organizations and companies serve and the lives they lead beyond their work. Not a culture of profit-seeking productivity but a nature connected organizational culture that recognizes and acknowledges our shared heritage and belonging with nature. As we reorient, we have an opportunity to reclaim purpose and vision as our own — not one defined by society or its existing structures.

Now, this feels like an increasingly crowded and undifferentiated space.

There is a glut of individuals and organizations that work with organizations to help them find purpose, vision, and mission (heck, I lead one of those already). But, all too often these are focused on brand marketing to influence and shift perceptions.

There is also a glut of work focused on team building, collaboration, and culture through outdoor and wilderness education and experiences. But, all too often these themselves are devoid of their own purpose and vision. Too short term focused on short term gains rather than true change and transformation over time.

And, there is a glut of executive and leadership coaching focused on working with individuals and organizations to cultivate and retain leadership talent. There is a small and growing number of coaches and guides that recognize the value in highlighting “nature” or “outdoor” or “wilderness” in their pitch. But, for most this amounts to coaching or guiding in nature, rather than with nature. A backdrop for a retreat or a walk rather than a true collaborator or catalyst for change.

At the end of the day, I am interested and most excited in guiding the broad swath of individuals and organizations seeking change and transformation, those who recognize the need to reorient towards a nature connected culture, community, and life; those who seek to live lives of meaning and purpose through a deeper collaboration with nature through all elements of life and work.

[Josh]

As a client, my personal “threshold” experiences have been among the most profound and transformative of the NCC program. As we were first learning about the phases of the Nature Connected Coaching process and ceremony, the threshold hold framing as “conscious experimentation with the deeper need” helped unlock greater understanding about what is truly unique about this approach to coaching.

A few things from the “threshold” definition stand out.

First, the deeper need. In order to have a threshold experience that can inform effective incorporation, a true connection and clarity with the deeper need is essential.

While there are certainly benefits to experimenting in a less directed way in nature, to have a threshold that can lead to change and transformation outside of the coaching container requires the clarity and confidence that you have arrived at the deeper need: a clear understanding of how you need to be in order to achieve your goals and wants. This clarity then ensures the threshold experiences that are created and crafted by the client are aligned with how the client needs to in the days and weeks ahead as they move through incorporation (and, hopefully, future coaching sessions).

Second, the concept of “conscious experimentation.” For me as a practice client, experimentation was a useful framing. I did not need to create or identify the perfect nature based experience on the spot that could lead to change or transformation; rather, I had permission to experiment with and around my deeper need. Experimentation helped introduce a curiosity and playfulness to the threshold experiences for me.

In my professional research work with clients, we often talk about moving through an iterative cycle of “testing and learning.” You do not need to have all the answers after the first experiment, but you should learn something that you can apply to the next round of work. In the case of our coaching work, the next round can be the incorporation phase, it can be the next session. But, through awareness and alignment with the deeper need, we ensure threshold provides direct, tangible, and often, tactile, experience with the need through nature.

Reflecting back on earliest experiences in Gunnison reveal that often the most simple exploration and experimentation with nature was the most profound for me. Nature as metaphor is a constant for me.

Even through the severance process of a coaching session, I would often (and, continue to) connect with nature’s metaphors in ways that helped bring the words to the fore as I explored my deeper need. I found this would then carry through to the threshold experiences, making them more illuminating and boosting the potential for meaningful change.

While my coaching sessions as a practice client were more structured with a clear demarcation between severance and threshold, the connection and collaboration with nature from the start of the session through to the close was constant. Nature wasn’t simply a device to be used to give me the experience of how I needed to be to achieve my goals and wants, but a partner that helped me understand myself more deeply while providing the space for learning and exploration in threshold.

My experiences in threshold reveal the importance of having a clear understanding of the deeper need. If understanding or articulation of the deeper need remains too surface level, the client risks a less rewarding threshold experience (which can lead to less effective incorporation practices). Before moving to threshold, it is important the client feels they have identified the deeper need. And, as a coach, it is key to have the client articulate that need so I can be best positioned to support the client through their threshold experiences and incorporation efforts.

Beyond the deeper need, my experience approaching threshold with curiosity and exploration is something I want to continue to bring to my sessions with clients. While our clients will more often than not have the answers within them, they might not be immediately evident or revealed. Coaching is a process of curiosity and questioning to gain clarity. As a coach, I want to cultivate a nature connected space that allows clients to feel comfort and ease to experiment with themselves, their needs, beliefs, attitudes, and more.

Much of this feels aligned with several key ICF competencies. At a foundational level, co-creating the relationship is core to creating an environment between a coach and client that allows for the conscious experimentation in threshold. It is important that my clients have a clear understanding of the NCC approach that involves more active experimentation with these needs.

More broadly, the competencies within “cultivating trust and safety” are important for me to continue to develop. It is that feeling of trust and safety that allows a client to identify and explore the deeper need and feel safe experimenting and collaborating with the need in nature.

And, lastly, threshold experiences are all about “facilitating client growth” through direct experience. As I progress towards being an NCC coach, it will be important for me to keep the threshold experiences as client-led (especially with respect to competency “acknowledges and supports client autonomy in the design of goals, actions and methods of accountability”). I have often felt a desire to present clients with a “menu” of potential threshold experiences rather than truly allowing the client to design the experiences for themselves. Moving forward, I plan to explore how, when, and where to bring awareness to the “toolkit” of an NCC coach in a way that allows the sessions (and, threshold experiences in particular) to feel client-led (even, while being NCC inspired).

[Josh]

Ecopsychology provides the foundational principles that undergird our work as nature connected coaches and guides. Ecopsychology roots the coaching experiences we offer in a rigorous and deeper exploration of the benefits of nature connection in a psychological and applied therapeutic sense.

In “Psyche and Nature In a Circle of Healing,” Buzzell and Chalquist lay out the cornerstone concept that unites ecopsychology, ecotherapy, and nature connected coaching: “people are intimately connected with, embedded in, and inseparable from the rest of nature. More simply, they define ecopsychology as “the study of the psychological processes that tie us to the world or separate us from it.”

Roszak, in “Where Psyche Meets Gaia,” shares that ecopsychology “proceeds from the assumption that, at its deepest level, the psyche remains sympathetically bonded to the Earth that mothered us into existence.”

Much as ecotherapy is defined and viewed as applied ecopsychology, nature connected coaching is the application of these same principles but in the coaching modality.

Beyond the terminology and definitions, the principles of ecopsychology present a broader cultural, and even planetary level diagnosis for the challenges we face today as individuals (and, ultimately, the challenges we’ll help our clients confront and overcome as coaches and guides).

Buzzell and Chalquist articulate this diagnosis as the core “problem of our day” describing it as “an inner deadening, an increasingly deployed defense against the stresses of living in an overbuilt industrialized society saturated by intrusive advertising and media, unregulated toxic chemicals, unhealthy food, parasitic business practices, time stressed living, a heart-warping culture of perpetual war and relentlessly mindless political propaganda.” Roszak outlines a similar phenomenon: our collective and individual repression of the “ecological unconscious.”

As coaches and guides, we are ultimately client led. While clients may not come to us for explicit help addressing or overcoming the specific challenges Buzzell, Chalquist, and Roszak identify, it is critical we have the skills and awareness to recognize this as the broader backdrop for our planet overall, society at large, for ourselves, and for our clients. We need not offer an ecopsychology-based diagnosis (or, any diagnosis). Rather, we can tap the tenets of ecopsychology in guiding our clients forward. And, we can tap these same tenets for direction on what to avoid.

As we’ve discussed in many of our NCC program sessions, nature connected coaching is not merely facilitating coaching sessions in nature. Buzzell and Chalquist address this powerfully and directly:

“Animals are not mere tools, nor is Earth a gigantic breast to be heedlessly sucked to exhaustion. Using nature as a mere tool for human healing perpetuates the very-self world split responsible… for our maladies and deteriorating biosphere.”

As we seek to guide our clients through challenges and lasting transformations, we must keep nature as a co-participant, recognizing as Buzzell and Chalquist do, that our co-participants in nature are “subjects in their own right with their own precious needs and freedoms to preserve.”

Seeing nature as a co-participant reveals a broader concept that points to the transformative power of authentic nature connection: nature is a co-participant because of the interconnectedness present across the entire natural world.

At a macro level, ecology itself is the study of these connections. At a planetary level, Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis points to the potential for global self regulation through interdependence and interconnection. On a person to person level (or, a coach to client level), improving one’s own connection to nature can lead to change and benefits across any number of dimensions in one’s life and the world at large.

As Buzzell and Chalquist note, “our mind-body-world web contains its own freely available healing potentials.” It is this web and this interconnectedness found at the core of ecopsychology that provides a pathway to progress we can reveal and share with our clients as coaches and guides.

[Josh]

What does it mean to be connected to Nature, and how can that relationship support your coaching?

Leading up this program, I reflected on the role of nature in my own life and the meaning of nature connection. I often found myself coming back to language related to safety, support, and connection. Safety from the tumultuous challenges I faced within the four walls of my childhood home. Support to sustain and persevere in this life. And, connection to something larger and more meaningful.

I know those experiences and the connection I have with nature are both why I am here today — in both a very real, physical sense — but also here in this NCC program. Our time in Gunnison and the time since have helped me start to clarify my “why” through a deeper understanding of my connection to nature and how I can use that connection to support my coaching.

To me, nature connection is innate to our being and who we are. Yet, our day to day experience often feels in conflict with that very being, creating distance and distraction from nature. We do not exist separate from nature, but rather a part of it. While these ideas seem obvious to me now, experiencing them firsthand in Gunnison unlocked the potential for both mental and spiritual exploration and transformation.

I was, admittedly, somewhat surprised at how prominent the spiritual connection was over the course of my time in Gunnison. Spirituality is not something I have explored in the years since growing up deeply embedded within the Catholic Church. As I went off to college, I turned away from the church and what it represented, declaring it personally unwanted and unnecessary. But, in that process, I turned away from a spiritual connection and a set of beliefs that were a grounding force in my life.

Over the course of our time with Gunnison, I felt both a reconnection with nature and a clarified connection with its spiritual energy. In the “Way of the Wilderness,” Steven Harper quotes Alan Watts who says “You did not come out of this world. You came into this world, like a wave from an ocean. You are not a stranger here.” While this quote closely represents my feelings and experiences, I have struggled with how to think about this spiritual connection and experience in a nature connected coaching context.

In reading Miles’ “Wilderness as a Healing Place,” I began to recognize how and why this spiritual experience could support my work with clients. Miles discusses the Jung archetype of the Sacred Space and applies it to nature and wilderness experiences. He describes the Sacred Space as a “place pervaded by a sense of power, mystery, and awesomeness” which undoubtedly matches my own experience in life (and, in the mountains outside Gunnison). He goes on to describe how “implicit in the archetype is the concept of transformation and change.” Even if the spiritual dimensions of nature connection are unspoken with coaching clients, I believe there is power in finding ways to mutually recognize and experience nature and our connection with it as a Sacred Space that can help prepare our clients for meaningful change and transformation.

While I believe nature connection is innate to our very being in a deeply spiritual sense, it requires an active effort to reconnect. Nature connection implies action. For me, it is not a passive act. It requires clear and deeply rooted intentions. It requires a deep attunement and broader awareness than we typically bring to our everyday experiences. The active orientation of connecting and reconnecting with nature is core to what I seek to apply with coaching clients. Change and transformation does not emerge simply because you recognize a need. Setting intentions. Following through on those intentions are all lessons from nature connection that I can apply to coaching.

Separate from what I view nature connection to be and separate from what I believe nature connection requires, I believe nature connection reveals an infinite number of lessons and metaphors that can be used to push myself and my coaching clients forward.

For me, one of the clearest revelations from a deeper connection with nature are the benefits of slowing down our senses to the pace and speed of the natural world around us. I am often — and I know this is not unique to me — moving at a speed that does not allow me even the slightest opportunity to experience my emotions, feelings, and thoughts in any meaningful way. Reconnecting with nature means reconnecting with a pace that has been lost amid the flurry of our endless, day to day stimuli. It is through this more natural pace, this more natural attunement and awareness, where we can truly hear what is important to us, to truly listen to and connect with our why.

In summary: I believe nature connection is core to who I am and who my clients are and will become. It is not some separate connection that needs to be developed but rather an existing connection that needs to be strengthened. But, strengthening that connection requires effort and action. And, through that action and effort, our reconnection with nature reveals an endless array of lessons. Most notably for me over the past few weeks: the benefits of moving at nature’s pace rather than some artificial pace imposed by the pressure’s of the world around us to continue to hear and listen to our why.

[Josh]

Hello everyone! My name is Josh. And, I am thrilled to begin this journey with you all in just a few days. I recently moved to Salt Lake City from San Francisco where I had been living for the past five years. Nearly two years ago, I founded a strategic communications and research agency with a few former colleagues. The process of founding and growing the business and our team has challenged me to explore what I truly value and what I can offer to the world.

I’ll be driving from SLC — spending Friday night (25 June) in Montrose, CO and continuing on to Gunnison early Saturday AM.

Can’t wait to meet you all soon!

[Josh]

Joy + Hannah: love this Gestalt lesson that Derik discussed with us around being a part of the client experience in the here and now. This allows us to maintain our client-led approach but recognize and leverage our own presence and awareness to serve our clients needs. As John called out below in his post, it takes ‘two to tango’ in Gestalt so we need to be an active and aware (but, still non-judgemental) dance partner.

[Josh]

Lindsay — love how you connect with the experimental aspects, matches and mirrors your thoughtful + creative approach to coaching and guiding. This experimental aspect matches so well to the NCC coaching model and the conscious experimentation we bring to our clients via the coaching ceremony.