[Nadine]

SUMMARY POST
There is no right way nor there is a single way to experience grief. Each of us has our own needs in terms of our emotional and physical well-being, so activities and rituals to help will be different from one person to the other. We cannot escape grief, but we can learn how to incorporate into our life. How nature can help us to heal from grief, will be very individual as well, as there is no right way to use nature to deal with it. Each of us has our own view of nature, our own opportunities to connect with it. A closer connection to nature may help us better come to terms with death and the grieving process. Just as one season gives way to another, death is part of life. Nature provides an intellectual frame of reference for death and dying, reminding us that death is a natural phenomenon that we can neither escape nor ignore. Nature also provides undeniable physical evidence that life goes on. Being in nature one becomes aware of the infinite circle of life. There is evidence of decay, destruction and death; there are also examples of rejuvenation, restoration, and renewal.
This is my last post, and with it comes the closing of an amazing year. It feels bitter sweet. Thank you EBI, thank you Cohort 18, each of you had a tremendous impact on my journey this last year. THANK YOU. We will connect soon I trust.

[Nadine]

As you said so well Kimmee, “Grief comes in many forms and is so unique to each individual”. And to complete this thought for me, how individuals respond to loss depends on many factors, including their personal belief system, their social and cultural conditioning, personal coping skills and support systems they have in place at the time of the loss. What I am also learning first hand is that the client may not necessarily know that she is grieving, or what she is grieving. There is a sense that something is missing, lost, it is not the same. So it is important for us as coaches to recognize the signs so that we can handle the session appropriately. Allow the client to express her discomfort and not necessarily get anywhere specific.

[Nadine]

Thank you Sheri for sharing your session in such details. What struck me the most outside the grief topic at hand is following you in the progression of your session, and how pertinent your questions are and how it propelled your client toward the insights needed for herself. What I can see as well is that the tools learned throughout this year are becoming so readily available to you and you seem to be using them effortlessly. Good coaching my Friend, I am very proud of you.

[Nadine]

INITIAL POST
What I came to “really” realize in a recent session with a client, is that Grief, like trauma, can take different forms, display a variety of emotional, mental, behavioral, spiritual, physical reactions at various degrees of severity. But also that the client may feel grief but may not know exactly what she is grieving, and not relate to it as grief. Somehow, as with trauma, I had expected the client to show major signs, and for me to recognize Grief very easily, and for the client to name it. Instead, in a recent session with a client it is only after the fact that I realized I had gone through a grief session without being fully aware of it.

My client who is a very social person and thrives on interactions with others has lost her bearings recently because of the situation caused by the virus. Cooped up in her kitchen, attending mainly online meetings, she was lamenting about the pre-covid days when she used to hang at the Oregon State Bar with other professionals and lawyers. Not only she had lost the social interactions but also the direct recognition she was getting from interacting one on one with other humans. For an extroverted person, so much was lost. The way she was responded to this loss should have cued me in. Work became more difficult, she did not have the same relationship with people, her business world had lost its dimension, she was retreating, and could not see a great future.

In the course of the conversation we ended up better understanding the situation and the loss that had occurred, and we ended up naming it: The Great Flat. There was a feeling attached to it and my client reacted in a way that positively got her out of a daze. “That’s it,” she said, and repeated the words a couple of times. My client is an avid mounteenerer. Every other weekend she climbs a new mountain and goes as far as Nepal or Hawaii to find a challenging one. Naming it, the Great Flat, brought intensity and definition to her feelings. She now realized how the situation with covid had made her life flat, without the momentum and challenges she is accustomed to, and lacking the personal contact that she needed. Flat, boring, and idle. Not a good combo for a climber who likes heights, challenges, partnership, camaraderie, momentum, and newness.

At that point we were still sitting on the grass. I suggested walking to find out if and how Nature could contribute to our conversation. She was not sure what this could yield but went along. We were in a lovely Park where there were other people. As we approached the top of the hill, a puppy was running around and came to say hi to us. I greeted him and said a couple words to the owner to be polite and all the sudden my client, the dog owner and I were chit-chatting. As we walked away, my client acknowledged that this human interaction felt good and at least she could engage with people when she took her walks.

I realize that there is no place to go in a grief session, but at the time, as she was still feeling and under the grip of the Great Flat, I encouraged her to alter the shape of that feeling. My intention was to ask her to make a ball out of it, shrink it down, and let it drop down her leg into the ground and KICK IT!! Far! And Kick it until it was out of her sight. Something powerful happened for her. As she was shrinking it, all the sudden she exclaimed “It exploded!!” and she laughed. And a feeling of lightness seems to have overcome her.

[Nadine]

It has taken weeks to get my motorcycle and myself ready for the trip. It felt like I was almost there, and this weekend I inadvertently backed my car into my motorcycle and it crashed on the ground. I broke a few things and she needs to go back to the shop. 🙁 It is the first time she went down, and now has a few scars to prove it. But I guess the timing was perfect as I had to practice lifting it off the ground. Well, it is very very heavy and for a moment I thought I could not do it. But I did. Lesson learned: Do not drop the thing again, especially when I am alone!

I have also decided to tackle a few more days to my trip so that if the new seat is still unbearable, or if I get caught in thunderstorm or other unforeseen event, I have the time to recover so that I can be there in Gunnison at 12:30 on Saturday 8.

So far, no fear really, but I realize how good I am to ignore the things that scare me. lol!!

[Nadine]

SUMMARY POST
Brain 2 was a powerful module for me as it incorporated a lot of the information received throughout our NCC training and integrated it in a much deeper way into my brain. At this point, it feels like this knowledge is part of a database I could easily access and introduce organically during my coaching sessions and that feels encouraging.

Coaching is about changing the brain. This process is not easy, it does not happen overnight and it can bring a great deal of discomfort. It takes repetitions, commitment, and compassion. I believe I can help the client understand this upfront by sharing some of the science behind neuroplasticity. And maybe part of an initial when I interview the client. This would quickly get us to grasp the power of the intention and that it is the anchor of the coaching. Thinking through this a bit more, it might be helpful for me to have a list of facts to share. Though initially received as fun facts about the brain, a few powerful stats that are easily digestible, eventually the client might draw the full meaning of it by tying to their behavior, as I did. In some respect, all the information Michael shared was interesting and informative until I could relate it to my behaviors, the ones I keep repeating that are no longer serving me.

And I realize that having this information will not be enough to trigger a change. But it brings awareness, and allows me/the client to make informed decisions, and increased awareness. Even though all this information is available to me, I continue making decisions that do not support my new way of being. This is interesting and powerful to watch. So what is missing?

Maybe the lack of a well defined intention, or an intention that is not juicy enough to get me to stop sabotaging myself. What is my deeper need? And how can we help the client define it in a way that goes beyond a thing to get to?

[Nadine]

Thank you for sharing your experience Sheri. You made several points in your post that greatly caught my attention.
First, how the nature connection piece is what distinguishes us from the mainstream coaches, and curiously enough, I realize I have not intentionally practiced that part as much as the others teachings, e.g brain, Partworks, trauma… yet this is where the power resides, there is where our power as coaches is.
I also recognized myself as I too have a tendency to ask my client if she has a need to ground at the start of a session. Not only do I give my client an easy out, but I honestly feel relieved when they reply they don’t need to. That is because I don’t feel comfortable leading these exercises yet. Mm!
Another good reminder for me is to ask the client to define the term they used. That prevents us from having a disconnected conversation.
And I totally related when you said the understanding of change theory and awareness is helping us better guide our clients through a scientific understanding that makes sense to them.
The last part, maybe the most important for me, is to practice the pause, and not rush into the next question or the next comment. So easy yet so hard to do.
Thank you for all of that Sheri.

[Nadine]

What a powerful session Kimmie!! WoW!! In reading your post I can’t help but draw some parallel between how your session evolved with the breaks in between flatter parts and the way Michael took us in the last intensive with breaks between identifying the issue, the want, the bigger need, etc. It was very powerful for me then and it seems like it was for your session as well. You write this client likes to think/rethink concepts and come back to them, and I think based on our teachings, the magic happens really beyond the conscious brain, so having time to let it seep in might be useful for the brain to not try to figure it out consciously. So thank you for sharing your story. I was able to relive how powerful it was for me and reinforces my curiosity around how to implement pauses in a coaching session. What comes to mind and if I were to have a small group coaching session, let’s say with 3 people, after an initial kickoff of the session, I could send people on a wander walks. I will hold mini one-on-one sessions for 15 m with each and wander walks would happen between the individual sessions in order to let the 3 brains process and get clarity before the next part of the session. I would definitely have to try it to see if that would be an option. All I can say is there is an active curiosity for me and a belief of The Power of the Pause!!

[Nadine]

INITIAL POST
I met with my client on July 8, a week after our last powerful Partswork session. My client was excited to recount how her life has been flourishing. She gave me several concrete examples of events that have happened in the last week, and wanted to explain each in detail with background info and all. It was amazing for me to watch, there was not much for me to add, and though I personally did not have to hear all the examples to understand that something positive was happening, I could not interrupt her, there was so much excitement and pride to be able to “show me” it was happening. This part of the session lasted a long time, and there was no coaching, and my mind was starting to get busy to find a way to get out of the conversation mode. I introduced the concept of the RAS and read her a couple slides from the book. Her intention has been so laser focused lately and her RAS has been highly programmed and the work is happening. When she mentioned that she was not consciously making this happen I shared a few stats about how much the subconscious and unconscious actually ran the show. she appreciated the information and it made even more sense to her, and she appreciated the power of intention.

Though she had not done her mandala snapshot daily as she had intended, she mentioned that it had stayed with her the whole week and recalled how the three parts that had been positioned on the mandala as a wall between the Soul and the Introject “I am not good enough”. She said it gave her a new way of being and the introject (which we renamed the hooligan because she does not seem to remember introject) did not have the same power, because she had a place to put it, to the side and as far as she could on the mandala.

My client has been offered several opportunities lately, and typically she would say that she was interested, but would never really follow up because “she is not worth it”. This week, she said she felt ready and that voice was not there. She said our last session gave her laser focus and removed what was in the way.

My client could not find the link for the jamboard I had created for her last week in advance of our session, thus could not readily refer to the changes she had made. She asked me what parts she had added. I reminded her it was the Healer. Healer was a part I suggested last week, and from my vantage point it was obvious that part was missing. She wholeheartedly agreed to add to Healer to her mandala saying that others had mentioned it and laughed it away. She agreed though it was such an important part. If it was so important how did she forget it again I thought?? I decided to probe into it, and she said there was a story behind it that she would tell me later, but in her mind to be a healer you needed to have studied academically and have a diploma to prove it. I asked her if the Healer wanted to talk to the Soul and she agreed. I had noticed this beautiful artsy pillow behind her, with a gorgeous drawing of a deer, and a design I could tell was very special. Before asking my client to select a couple of objects to represent the Soul and the Healer, I asked her to show me the pillow. She told me its story and showed the sacred designs within the drawing. It was just gorgeous. Then I asked her to select 2 items, and she picked that cushion for the Healer and a gorgeous big and plump mug for the Soul. She knows the drill now, but I did remind her about the qualities of the Soul and to talk using the 1st person. The Soul was addressing the Healer in a way that was not resonating with me, and yet I could not put my finger on it so I did not intervene. When it was the Healer’s turn, I could tell my client was reaching really deep within herself to find a voice for the Healer, some words came out but fewer than usual, there was a different feel to it. And I thought, the Healer has not expressed herself for a long time, she has even been repressed and has lost it voice, or does not have a voice yet. So I told my client that I wanted to try something different to bring the Healer out and she agreed. Instead of conversing with the Soul, I used the 10 or so questions to interview the Part. And it was amazing for the client, so much that we wished we had recorded the session. It was totally unexpected. When asking the Healer where she existed in the body, she located the spine, and she added she embodied the backbone in a very determined and confident way.
Then my client shared with me what had happened. She moved to the NW 20 years ago to go to medical school. 911 happened during her first year and with all that came with it, she did some soul searching and decided that being a doctor was not what she ultimately wanted to do, and that day she had decided that she could not be a healer because she could not have a diploma. She said the Interviewing of the Parts has already allowed her to reclaim the Healer.

At the end of the meeting I asked her what was the most helpful and without any hesitation Partsworks and the interviewing of the Part. She added “it gives me an authentic power and self care so that I can give, serve and care for others”.

We decided not to do any planning for the next session nor have any action items. She is about the go on a 8-day quest including 4 days solo and fasting so this is the upcoming work. We decided to resume our sessions mid-August upon my return from my quest.

Before we closed the session, I asked her what part of her body was the cushion touching (she had placed her cushion/Healer back behind her). For a second she did not get my question, but then she screamed “my spine, my backbone!!!!” and that was such an amazing threshold experience. I asked the permission to make one more request of hers, and she agreed. I asked her to give the Healer a big hug and she took her pillow in between her arms and squeezed it for a long time with her eyes closed. I invited her to take Healer out sometimes and walked her maze together. She thought it was a great idea and we parted.

This client is incredible. What I get to practice with her is being creative and being ok not knowing where we are going, and feel totally comfortable looking at my books for help. It often feels very much like a conversation and I feel like I should do a better job reeling myself out of the stories. But then something amazing happens for her.

[Nadine]

SUMMARY POST

For now, and until I am able to find a simple and elegant way to introduce Partswork, my approach is to let Partworks flow into the session, naturally and effortlessly, at best a tiny bit of help from me, and if it does not happen, I will not use this modality. As good as my last Partswork session was, I am also fully aware that Partworks does not work and will not work with everyone. That client has already a connection to Soul so I did not have to fumble with explaining that concept.

Because I find Partswork so powerful, and in light of the fact that I want it to flow naturally into the session, I am also pondering how I can influence the process and help kick start the discussion. Mel has shared her mandala with one of her clients and that might help some client who are afraid to not get it right or who are more visual.

At the same time, I am not against eventually offering Partswork as a more specialized service, but now is not the time. What stops me today is that I do not feel ready to launch into an intelligent explanation, and I also don’t want the session to turn into an intellectual conversation. I can already tell that my style will be much more experimental. But if the client needs more information, I would be willing to share Roger T. Strachan’s article.

The way I have introduced parts in the past is by calling out when the discussion started going in that direction. I am always attentively listening to the “part of me wants this…” and when I hear it, I may be asking what part of you is saying that. If it lands, I might throw a follow up question, or just a jot down and highlight a word in my session notes, knowing I would bring this back when the right time comes around.

In my online perusing, I came across the concept Archetypes in psychology as well as the Internal Family System and I started to wonder what the differences were as I saw overlap. I have little to no understanding of archetypes and internal family system (IFS), but now that I understand Partswork better, I can tell that Parworks is a model that does not fit the client into existing, universal boxes, but rather is individualized, and that the client herself gets to decide what that is. This is a very powerful difference, and that might be the only thing I need to know in case someone is asking me to explain the differences.

As I have a better sense of how to use Partswork in an online session using jamboard, my real work now is to apply it in Nature, and to create a more nature connected practice. Maybe in the forms of gathering elements of nature that represent the parts, but mostly to get connected to something much grander than the Parts… the Soul?

[Nadine]

Because I find Partswork so powerful, and in light of the fact that I want it to flow naturally into my sessions, I am also pondering how I can influence the process and help kick start the discussion. I see how sharing our mandala as an example with some clients who are more visual or kinesthetic, or afraid to not get it right, could help them get over the initial hurdle of not understanding. This would also greatly help me explain in fewer words. And when I think about the potential drawback which would be for the clients to be influenced, I truly believe that overtime as the Parts get refined, the true parts would replace the ones that have been initially hastily borrowed.

[Nadine]

Hello Kim, your question about how does Partswork fit into nature connected-coaching triggered an image for me. Though I initially thought jamboard was going to improve my ability to make Partswork available to my clients, and it might sometimes, I am starting to sense some of its innate limitations. It is on the computer! And it might not be the best medium for some clients. And there is likely a better way to do it in Nature. If I were to do a Partswork session with a client in Nature, I will likely invite the client to look around and pick a few things that would represent their individual parts. A rock, piece of wood, pinecone, a tree, a boulder, anything that has some association, real or implied, with the parts. These artifacts could be then brought home and used to do a snapshot within the confine of their home.
My last Partswork session was online and my client was inside her home. When we were about to do Parts interviewing, I asked her to pick an object to represent the part and another the Soul. The Soul became this beautiful mug full of color, and looked like a ball of fire, and the part was a semi-precious stone my client has on her desk. So it was good for me to remember that we can bring nature into a session even on an online session.
The other thing that comes up for me, and when the parts are identified, we could always suggest that the client go outside and pick a few items. Or this can be done in between sessions. And it is exciting to realize the possibilities are endless. 🙂

[Nadine]

INITIAL POST

I met with my client on June 29. To give you a little bit of context, I began coaching this client back in October, and when we first started we met weekly when our schedules allowed. We quickly got into doing for Partswork as I needed to practice after the September intensive training. From the get go this tool was very powerful for my client. At the time we had identified a few parts. Every time we met it seemed, there were some parts refinement and new parts were added. At that time I introduced Parts interviewing as well as Soul to Parts interviewing. The client always left the sessions with powerful insights.

When the client entered into Action at full speed, we started to not meet as often, once a month was becoming our new cadence. Then Covid hit. Following by the BLM movement. During this time my client’s priorities had shifted. I stayed in touch and shared with her that I was in a bit of an idling phase but continuing my EBI training. She always responded that she wanted to get back into coaching with me when things had settled on her side. On June 1 she was allowed to start her business again and her life regained a sense of normalcy. It took her about a month to catch up with her work backlog and now she is just now ready to resume where we left off in March.

In a communication prior to our last session she mentioned she wanted to do some Partswork. For the sake of time, I had created a mandala in jamboard for her, with all her parts identified so far, assigned her edit mode and shared it with her. In my communication, I suggested that we start by taking a look at the mandala, review the parts, refine if necessary, and I introduced the concept of parts re-purposing, parts healing and introject.

During the meeting my intention was for her to drive the creation of the snapshot, but she said she had an old computer and she could not bring it up. She was also prepared on her side and had written her parts on pieces of paper. For the purpose of that exercise I moved the parts around the jamboard based on the instructions she provided. This was done very playfully. In the process there was a “part” that was creating havoc, and I loosely mentioned the word introject. We played with that for a while, and my client ended up saying that it would be best if “I don’t deserve it” was left to the side. I added a bit of drama by pushing the part as far as I could off the page and even turning it upside down and she thought it was so appropriate. We also explored what parts would come to the rescue if “I don’t deserve it” were to come up again. She named the three parts which I tightly placed together between the introject and the Soul for added protect. That made her laugh and was cheering the supportive parts.

Then I asked her if one of the parts needed to speak up. And she picked one that was not even positioned close to the Soul, “the Nature Lover”. We set up a conversation with the Soul and when the Nature Lover was expressing herself to the Soul, something powerful happened. My client stopped and started to laugh, but it was an uncomfortable laugh, and she said she was feeling sick, but not in a bad way. She realized how under-expressed that core part had been, and she became very sad about not having noticed it. She was referring to herself as the Original Nature Girl. I made a note of this term which I found powerful, and brought it up in the conversation later. She then decided to rename the Nature Lover the Original Natural Girl which she related to so much more.

When this was completed I asked for permission to bring up another part that my client had not identified. She accepted and was curious. When I said Healer, she again burnt out laughing and said that others had mentioned that to her. Among other healing work, my client does land blessings for land that have experienced a lot of trauma or disturbance, ceremonies that connect with the Spirit of the Land, clears away any remaining energies that no longer serve the higher good and deepen the bond between land owner & land. So now there is a new part to her Mandala. We capitalize the name on the sticky, HEALER, and it is positioned very closely to the Soul.

We are meeting again in a few days, and I suspect Partswork will be the main tool for me to work with this client.

[Nadine]

SUMMARY POST
I am glad that the concept of long term planning was presented to us so that I am in a position to elaborate the shell of a long term program that could be used as a base to tailor for each client. In all honesty though, I feel pretty anxious presenting a long term plan to any new clients at this point, and my current position is to wait until I am more established in terms of number of clients coached and my ability to consistently show I can deliver results for my clients. Being able to create a plan that looks and smells like delivering results will, I suspect, be the key to enrolling my clients effortlessly.

Prochaska’s five stages of change model is a great tool for coaches creating a long term program with their clients. Not only it provides coaches with an understanding of how and when behaviors can be altered and why clients may struggle, fail, or quit. It also helps facilitate the discussion with the client when it comes to creating a long term coaching plan. It is important to identify the stage of change that clients may be in when they first come to coaching. From there, the model can greatly help in explaining the process of change, and the fact that the client can be in different stages of change for different areas or behaviors in their life or even explain that it could take iterating through the five different phases several times for the client to reach her goals. This can lead to discussing some of the techniques that are appropriate and when to use them, and also addressing the frequency of the coaching sessions, etc. This would invite the coach and the client to have a conversation and create a plan that is accepted by both.

I also feel like the 8-Shield model is a great way to weave in nature in a long term plan discussion, as it is based on the patterns that can be observed in nature, allowing to categorize these patterns and apply them in a variety of settings. Not only Nature is a powerful teacher, but most clients will be able to relate to the basic cycles including the phases of the day and the seasons that are easy to observe. With this model it becomes possible to effectively map many of the phases and relationships occurring in nature to the journey of the client to reach her goal.

[Nadine]

That simple phase Mel “they are both in cyclical ceremonies and ongoing” was the missing piece of the puzzle for me to fully understand how Long term coaching and Nature connected coaching totally fit. Thank you.

What I am understanding more and more from reading everyone’s posts is that it is OK to present a shell of a program to a client even if this is not what the client is willing or able to do. At least it gives a place to start a conversation that both the client and the coach can pursue to design a program that works for both.

As always, I appreciate your courage and your vulnerability to move forward in the face of discomfort and going into the unknown. You Rock Mel!!