Joy Nalywaiko
Forum Replies Created
-
Gestalt Intro Post
For this session with my client, I established the coaching relationship through stating my intention for the session as a coach, asking to be the coach and stating my confidentiality agreement. To start the session, I asked the client how she wanted to settle into our space together, and we ended up laughing together and doing some breath work to begin. I focused on watching her body language throughout the session as well as paying attention to mine. Was I mimicking her body language or holding my space open? It was interesting to reflect on both these things while also utilizing some of the work we did in the trauma intensive such as paying attention to my breathing and making sure that my breathing wasn’t intensifying when my client’s breathing was and so on.
This particular session ended up exploring different parts as well so that was also interesting to reflect on her actions, movements and breathing when each part was talking, especially when talking to one another and how different her body became when ‘soul’ came out. For this session, I checked in with her awareness and feelings throughout the session more than I have in other sessions. It was a good practice to continue to bring it back to the present moment and to check in with her body to see where or what she was feeling. I also focused more on the process (what was happening during the session) rather than the what was being discussed and fully focused more on what the client was saying rather than what question I wanted to ask next.
The practices of gestalt definitely fit into my nature-coaching practice as awareness, presence and paying attention to both their body language and mine is highly essential for all sessions. I feel, as stated in our gestalt reading, that “the emphasis is on what is being done, thought, and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be.” At first, the challenges I faced were feeling a little frenzied about the flow of the session and not knowing my next question as I was fully participating in active listening and not thinking at all what I would say next. But within about ten minutes, it seemed to flow just fine and I mentally calmed down. It flowed after that and moved right into parts work, which I love to incorporate into sessions.
My largest takeaway from the reading was the introduction of the concept of Gestalt phenomenological exploration, and that the goal of this is awareness and insight. It is important to take this concept into my coaching practice and into my personal life as it is important to see things different or to ‘stand aside from our usual way of thinking’ in order to assess what is actually being felt or perceived in the current situation vs. what is coming up from issues or things of the past.
-
Summary Post
Foundation Four brought many new aspects of the coaching process to the table for me, including an in depth look at integration and the time between the sessions. Figuring out how to set my clients up for success between sessions is a vital topic that I want to explore more. Within my practice sessions so far, I’ve concentrated on the stages of the ceremony as well as integration but am reminded to find the science of success for their time in between sessions.
During this foundation, including within the discussion, I’ve taken a hard look at my ideal client base. It started out as a client base dealing with trauma and involved a trifecta of healing but as I’ve gone through the modules and practice sessions, I’m finding myself leaning further and further away from a trauma-based focus. If and when trauma does integrate itself within my practice, with both hypnotherapy and with nature-coaching, I am ready to help my clients with it. But choosing to focus on a target market of trauma seems utterly overwhelming at this point in my studies.
That said, this module inspired me to do further research into nature-based travel coaching, which is something that I’m currently exploring with the intention of ‘helping clients find their personal freedoms through nature-based travel.’ I see this happening as a series of smaller ceremonies surrounding the larger ‘quest-like’ ceremony of the actual nature-based trip that they go on with a larger question or focused intention to seek out. As of the end of Foundation courses for me, this is much more appealing to my expertise and background then pure trauma.
The face-to-face intensive for Foundation Four focused on the layers of severance and moving through threshold while being aware of the guide’s role during this process and what the client wants/needs from the guide. This module also went through the various stages of incorporation and ‘SMART’ing them out, which has been a very helpful step for me while practicing integration with my practice clients.
Within the reading for Foundation Four, chapter three was especially insightful as a reminder of various aspects of the coaching/client relationship. This was useful for many reasons but especially with the sections pertaining to ‘being yourself and being real.’ It was also helpful to read through the unconscious processes, such as projection, transference and paralleling as my practice clients have also been my classmates/friends and this was a good section to remind myself of the coaching/client boundaries.
All in all, my greatest takeaway from this section was the online discussion question, which prompted me to think outside of my previous business plan for my current ideal clients and my focus.
-
This is a really tough question for me to answer, and I want to stop avoiding it simply because I don’t know my ideal target client at the moment. I would love to coach those that want to make big life changes but are scared – life changes that lead more to their own personal freedom and inner growth and awareness. I’ve had a lot of people come into my life since I started traveling and surrendering to the flow that’ve said, “Oh I wish I could do that.” Or “if only I could do what you are doing.” I would love to help empower them to do what they really want/need to do.
That said, as a hypnotherapist, I also imagine my ideal coaching clients to come from my hypno sessions. When starting with EBI, I had a vision of a ‘trifecta’ of therapy with those that have unresolved childhood traumas. With that unresolved trauma, I would help them heal at a subconscious level, moving to energy sessions (a lighter subconscious level) and then to coaching to move forward with their goals. That whole client base feels a little heavy in my mind right now (at this point in the program) but am still open to that idea.
So for the purpose of these questions, I will explore the first ideal client base that I mentioned because that currently feels lighter for me. My ideal client in this instance is the client that wants more freedom in their lives…perhaps someone that has lived more in a ‘I should do’ type of life rather than ‘this is in my highest and best interest’ kind of life. A client who wants to surrender to the flow of life, in whatever capacity they need/want. I really enjoy using the ceremonial process of severance, threshold and incorporation as well as the nature-based thresholds that we used in school such as finding sit spots, asking the sacred questions, utilizing the seven breaths of awareness, and wandering. Being an online coach, I want to incorporate these threshold experiences into my sessions and also incorporate nature-based exercises as homework. I also would like to continue utilizing guided imagery and mini-hypno sessions into the sessions as an offering.
I foresee them working through some common categories such as “I want to make these changes but I don’t know how,” “I want to quit my job or find a position that gives me more freedom”, “I want to travel the world but have these life responsibilities.” I would love to use both aimless wandering and wandering with a purpose to achieve these goals by giving them a different perspective in nature – whether in their local park, forest or backyard and seeing what arrives for them.
Upon researching this topic, I’ve discovered a realm of coaching that relates to traveling that contains some of the aspects I’m looking for in my own personal nature-based travel coaching practice. My focus is more on finding life freedom in order to travel but also would want to incorporate the traveling aspect into their goals – to become a larger picture threshold experience. But doing it through nature-based trips such as backpacking in the Alps or Himalayas. More on the aspect of a travel coach can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/02/04/personal-travel-coach-hot-trend-2020/?sh=2ca83769665f
-
Summary Post
This module represented not only the impact of actually being in nature during threshold but also how that incorporates nature into the constant threshold of the mind. While being in my sit spot on the ridge and rolling around in the dirt giggling with glee was a spectacular moment that I’ll never forget, it isn’t just a distant memory to me. That experience was a threshold for me back then but also remains a threshold in my mind. Finding that spot whenever I close my eyes and need that inner sanctuary back brings me right back to that feeling of ‘pure joy’ that I felt in that same spot on the ridge. Understanding how to bring nature into the mind no matter where I am at is of utter importance to me and seeing how that meshes together with my understanding and takeaways with this module was the most important for me as a client, coach and hypnotherapist.
It also reminded me of how I can, as a coach and hypnotherapist, take my clients on a journey through nature over Zoom. Of course, being in nature itself is the best form of therapy as it provides comfort on so many levels but finding that nature in the mind is just as important. I’ve been practicing this with my online sessions and with integrating nature imagery into guided meditations or threshold sessions that cannot take place outdoors.
But also, this module reflected the importance of the threshold experience, not only through our experiences of it as a client and those takeaways to use as a coach but also in how to guide through the threshold. The importance of things such as safety, asking the sacred questions and really tuning into the client’s needs during the threshold stays with me in each session since Foundations. Also, leaning into the connection of threshold from a coaching perspective and tuning into the client’s baseline and how everything shifts or is shifting through their threshold experience is important. I have been able to experience this through feeling the energetic baseline and changes fluctuating throughout my online sessions with clients.
During this module, in the Foundations Intensive (or Nature Camp as I like to call it), we also tuned into the deeper levels of listening and discussed full surrender. Tuning into the energy around us in nature and the energy of our clients, both in person and over Zoom is so important. I had forgotten how strong it is in person until the next Intensive when I realized that I accidentally stepped into someone’s outer edge during a threshold experience. Other takeaways include utilizing our vision council to guide and support us and walking in with a ‘posse’ as well as the missionless surrender.
There are some important reflections from the readings as well and utilizing the indicators of awareness and how I integrated them into my personal reflections from Foundations and nature camp. Reading afterwards gave a new perspective to some of the things that I was experiencing out in nature camp. For example, when on an aimless wander, I found myself on the ridge, which then became my new sit spot. I was instructed by nature to spin around and to stop with my eyes closed and that was the direction to where I was going to live next. Of course, I was facing the town that my dreams had been guiding me to go to as well. But after reading Coyote’s Guide and the chapters on the natural cycle and the indicators of awareness, I looked at this directional wander from nature in a new light. Maybe, I don’t have to take all of my signs so literally. Or, maybe it is my next home. Only time will tell. Much thanks to this module! Also, I hope this is where I’m supposed to be posting this summary :).
-
Reflect on your experience as a client in the “threshold”. How does that experience inform your coaching and why? How did Nature participate in your process and what does that tell you about coaching others?
As a client going into the experience of threshold multiple times during our Foundations Intensive, I received the awareness of how each different modality of a threshold experience can offer what is needed, through the client’s choice and perspective. Having the power as a client to ‘guide’ the session and to choose the threshold allows the empowering aspect of coaching to really take hold of the session. By recognizing what I needed as the client in that given moment of that issue allowed me to choose where and what I needed to do for myself, with the support of the coach.
As a coach, this gives me the insight of the importance of empowering the client to know and figure out what they need to do for themselves, while offering suggestions or guidance of nature-based options along the way. Choosing to go on an aimless wander during one session in threshold was quite a bit different than choosing to let others support me and to hug them as another threshold experience in a different session. But each was what I needed at the time to help me achieve the results and understanding of that particular issue that I came in with.
This helps to give me clarity as a coach to remember that I don’t know my client’s answers (thank god ;)) and that my role is to simply support them and ask them questions that help them to figure out their next steps through empowerment and guiding them through a collaborative and experimental experience. It enhanced my understanding of coaching a client through the threshold while also ensuring their safety but to offer a complete understanding of their needs and achieving their intention.
Nature was a key factor in the process as it is what the threshold is all about in my eyes. It connects the client with finding their intention and answering their questions or clarifying their deeper need. For me, the wander during a threshold experience in Foundations allowed the stillness and clarity that I needed to resolve a question from that session. Taking that into coaching helps remind me all of the different ways that a client can work together with nature to figure out the ideal outcome or to answer a question – holding hands with nature is the inner peace.
What ICF core competencies are essential for you to practice and build on to feel confident in that “place” as a coach?
Um, all of them. But really, they are all important. One of the reasons that I am finding that I signed up for this program was to hone in on my listening skills, especially as I am going into more work with hypnotherapy and possibly coaching. So for me, which I noticed heavily in Foundations, the section of communicating effectively and ‘listens actively’ is what I am practicing on the most. In my practice sessions since Foundations, I have been working on writing down exact wording of the client to repeat it back in their words, for both their needs and to ensure that I am not summarizing my own thoughts of their issues in my reflections. It is also very important for me to ‘notice, acknowledge and explore the client’s emotions, energy shifts, non-verbal cues and other behaviors’ as a coach, such as we went further into in our Gestalt intensive. I am also practicing and building on ‘recognizes and inquires when there is more to what the client is communicating’.
-
Summary Post
Foundation 2 had many lessons hidden away that were uncovered through layers over the months following the intensive at nature camp. During this module, we learned the phases of ceremony – severance phase, threshold phase, and incorporation phase. I learned the various components within the severance phase as well as how to get to the threshold. This was the most important aspect of our learning within the shaping of a coaching session within the nature realm. Finding the issue, want, deeper need and outcome here were vital components for the intensive of foundation two.
This entire module was of utter importance for laying the foundation for coaching and for the ceremony. Practicing these phases over and over in person and then over the course of the past few months was helpful in honing in on my listening skills and practicing the steps of the ceremony with my classmates. Also, diving deeper into active listening and really asking ‘what are we listening for’ helped me when tracking the internal world of my clients during my practice sessions while also becoming more self-aware of my own body language and questions.
Also, chapter five in Coaching Skills was very helpful for distinguishing what the client is saying and working with effective questioning at the same time. The awareness that this reading brought me in a practice session helped me to know my limits and when/how to redirect the client to refocus on the issues pertaining to them. Webinar two also discussed asking open-ended questions and really dived into the types of questions to be asking, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions, and using ‘why’ carefully. It also reminded me to PAUSE and let the questions sink in.
During the career development section of foundation two, we really honed in our business plans. This helped me to regain focus on the business plan that I developed months ago that has fallen wayside during all of my courses while feeling overwhelmed. I really appreciated the question ‘what do you need to start believing about yourself now?’
With the readings assigned for this module, I appreciated the three levels of questioning brought up in Coyote’s Guide and pondered how I can use these in my coaching sessions. I enjoyed chapter five and learning more about the art of questioning, creating curiosity and letting the client figure out the solutions and answers. This chapter definitely presented it in a more playful and less serious manner, allowing the client to have the freedom to find the answers within themselves and their memory (and storytelling from the Mind’s Eye from chapter three).
And of course, as explained in my first discussion post, the articles about ecopsychology were enlightening for me in many different ways –perhaps highlighting ideas and concepts that I already knew but also bringing awareness to new aspects of my own time in nature and all of the various ways it has healed me.
-
Where does Ecopsychology and Coaching come together? How does this blend add foundation to your interests as a Nature-Connected Coach. How might it fall short? What skills are needed?
When reading the articles surrounding the concepts of Ecopsychology or ecotherapy, simply defining it as ‘healing and growth nurtured by healthy interaction with the earth’, I immediately felt the link between being a nature-based coach and this new-ish ‘form’ of psychology. By simply acknowledging, as one of the articles states, that we are ‘intimately connected with, embedded in and inseparable from the rest of nature’, shows just how important nature is to our overall wellbeing as well as how far away we have strayed from this sense of wellbeing in our modern world of working too much, social media, iphones, texting, screens, digital everything, etc.
Actually, upon reading these articles (months after our actual Foundations Intensive), I can’t see how ecopsychology and coaching come apart. They are (or need to be) (or I have a longing for them to be) so integrated together that the possibilities of separating them seems impossible. This section really showed me just how important nature is to my coaching, to my wellbeing and to my soul. For some reason, these articles on ecopsych finally reached the inner-psyche of my own resistance to this entire program. I’ve known in my heart that I need to be here and have felt it in both my resistance and in my impatience/rush throughout the first few intensives. Yet, the link between our own internal structure and makeup to all of nature, not just all of mankind, was finally revealed to me through these readings, just like the mycorrhizal links and networks connecting all plant life in the forests.
It seems quite natural that coaching and nature go hand in hand while trying to ‘reconnect the psyche and the body with the terrestrial sources of all healing.’ Bringing all healing back to nature brings on a different meaning when I finally am connecting the togetherness that we find ourselves in with all living beings. Rolling in the dirt (I will continuously revert back to that glorious moment on the ridge in all of my reflections from here on out) means far more than a simple joy that I felt. Rather the connecting with the earth, the connecting with the plants, insects, fungi, strange chicken bird that was watching me, were all included in the connectedness that I suddenly felt in that moment. I wasn’t just reconnecting with myself. Rather, I was reconnecting with my tribe…all of my tribe. Down to every little bit of grass or the tiniest of little red bugs crawling on my blanket.
That all said, this concept didn’t just blend to my concept of being a nature-based coach. It redefined it.
-
Summary Reflection
Wow, as I sit months later, trying to summarize what Foundations One meant for me, I just imagine rolling around in the dirt on the ridgeline at my sit spot all blissed out on nature. It was like a drug. The pure ecstatic bliss of feeling the air on my skin while rolling in dirt and sagebrush, giggling with no one watching but a weird chicken-like bird that was bobbing around in the distance.
The most important aspects of Foundations One had everything to do with our time at Nature Camp in June and learning how to be more attuned to what was going on around us rather than carelessly stomping through the forests on trails as I usually do. Everything from finding a sit spot to wide angle vision has changed how I view my time in nature as well as how I view my time back in ‘real life’, whatever that means. Feeling the energy of the trees, plants and ground while viewing everything as an integral part of the system has a very calming effect on my overall view of how we all live in society and have an integral energetic/connected part with everyone around us.
The trust built within nature that arises within myself throughout this foundation one module is unshakable as is the deep listening from the soul that comes along with it. Being connected to nature is being connected to myself, which in turns connects me with others. I find myself asking the sacred questions all of the time, to myself and to others, through coaching, friendships and hypno sessions. It has become integrated into my being each time I teach someone else about finding a sit spot, wide angle vision and feeling the energy and details of every single minute being in the outdoors.
Also, of course, the setting the foundation for a coaching session section was very important in this module too. It opened up the door for understanding what a nature coaching session looks like and feels like. It helped me to differentiate between coaching and therapy while also understanding how the two could go together with modalities such as hypnotherapy. We also learned the different types of threshold experiences through experiential learning during this module, such as wandering – both aimless wandering and wandering with intent.
-
Also, upon reading the organizations that you found while researching your ‘dreamy’ ideas, I can feel your passions coming through in a more concise, yet awestruck kind of way. I can’t wait to see the route you wind up taking 🙂
-
Hi Sara – I can relate to your struggle of finding the ideal client. I found myself struggling between what I ‘should’ do as part of my original business model and what sounds light and fun for me in the moment.
Upon reading your various options that you presented for yourself, I wonder if being a coach to parents is similar to being a teacher to children. As a teacher, you don’t feel the need to be a parent in order to teach children; perhaps this is similar to coaching parents – and teaching modeling directly helps both the parents trying to go outside the box as well as the children.
-
Hi Sara! I love your expansive approach to this question and exploring the layers of threshold in everyday life and how the nature-based experiences ripple out into the city of your mind. Thank you for sharing your experience with bringing the pinecone into your home and always holding it in your mind, thus bringing you back to that beautiful feeling that you felt at one point in nature. Bringing nature into the mind resonates with me in the same way as building an inner sanctuary in the mind.
-
Hi Hannah! I loved how you described the threshold experience as a vortex or amplified space for opportunity to re-create yourself. That was a beautiful way to describe the experiences within threshold. I also appreciate when you said ‘a sense of unlimited support.’ Thinking of nature as a spotlight and giving you that sense of time-altering exploration and importance of finding the solution or inquiry into your question was also a beautiful response.
-
Hi Lindsay and Sara,
Yes, yes, yes! I have also been pondering this as it has taken me up to now to even see just how the connection to nature has really benefitted even myself (through all of the modalities of healing and connecting every bit of the earth and living creature to aid in that healing, rather than looking at it from simply a ‘me’ standpoint). If that makes sense… But also, I’ve discovered in the past few weeks of meeting many new people on a daily basis (out in nature) but as they are driving by on a beautiful pass ‘leafing’ (looking at the aspens) that there are many who are awakened by this concept of nature coaching that might not have sought us out beforehand. Just by simply mentioning it to a few of them during their brief stops in my tiny mountain ‘village’, they’ve seemed perplexed and then enlightened by the possibilities of connecting with nature in order to gain clarity on life decisions. So, I guess what I’m saying here is that these types of clients that we wish to reach that wouldn’t be our typical ‘roll in the dirt’ nature-coaching clients may still end up finding us.
-
Wow. John, you really captured the essence of every part of this kickoff question. You wrote with such eloquence. I appreciate how you have tied in every part of our reading and linked together the readings – with your quote from the coaching skills to Coyote in bringing them all together. I felt such a connection with the readings but failed to spend the time pondering how to write out my thoughts. You have done a fantastic job with conveying your understanding the connections and writing with such grace. Thank you!
-
Hi Ceci! I love what you wrote about the trees and how you mentioned their imperfections (just like humans) but also how those don’t remove their charm (and adding more instead). What a beautiful insight. I also appreciate how you mentioned that they all have their own unique offering and they need each other for survival (just like humans).