Summary

“Partswork invites such a rich array of points of entry into the work, and I imagine there will be as many unique mandalas as there are people creating them.” I wrote that in my journal back when we started Partswork together. As I reflect back on my time with my Cohort throughout this course, I am also reflecting back on all of our int…

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I remember the first time I imagined my Mandala. It was hard for me to compose it in a 2-D jamboard on my computer. I think even sticky notes on a big piece of paper would have been difficult for me to work with at first. Instead, when I closed my eyes, I saw it so clearly, slowly spinning above my head, gently contracting and expanding. It…

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Summary

In his essay, “Eye and Mind”, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty discusses how we cannot see everything at once, that our positions in the world at certain times limit our perceptions; there is always more to see. While some may see this as a limitation of our being human, I see it as liberating. It allows for the digestion of…

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I have been reflecting on the long-term coaching and the work I do as a Career Coach at my company. There are tasks that we need to accomplish together as part of the company’s criteria and constructs, and there is also space for me to create the container of the time we have together. There is a framework we are given for the first year of e…

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Summary

When we do the seven breaths, we consider one of two questions, “How do I heal this?” or “How do I create more of this in my life?” Those questions are focused on growth and positivity. The answers to both questions and the subsequent actions are going to present varying degrees of challenges and difficulties, but the questions themsel…

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Summary

I have spent a great deal of time in this module reflecting on my experiences throughout my life of visiting the homes of those in mourning, and in the last 20 years, as a member of my synagogue’s Chevra Kadisha, a group that supports the preparation of a body for burial, the staying with the body until the time of burial, and also the m…

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In all of our intensives, the connections betwixt and between continue to be made for me. In this intensive one of the connections that landed very solidly for me was between the ways in which we can correlate guiding through grief and the stages of change. Because grief can be so uncertain (e.g., when will it hit us?, in what ways will it…

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I love all the required readings that have been assigned and the recommended readings that have been shared, both by our instructors and our cohortmates. For example, I have found the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, by Joe Dispenza, to be enlightening, interesting, applicable, and at times, mind-blowing.

I have to say, however, that I…

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Recently, in trying to put words to my work as an NCC for some of my more skeptical listeners, and in recognizing the roles of the brain and Nature, I landed on an equation that may help introduce Nature-Connected Coaching to some of my clients who are otherwise wary of the “squishy” parts of it. I introduce to you the Law of Non-Squishy Coa…

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I have not yet had any sessions with a client that have touched on trauma. When I was trying to decide what I wanted to write about for this submission, however, I was overwhelmed by how many examples I had of working through trauma on my own and/or with others that I could share. From my personal life at home, to my experiences as a volunteer…

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One of the common threads that has followed us throughout the course is that “one size does not fit all.” This is something I have intuited since I can remember, and it is one of my favorite aspects of coaching and guiding… and of teaching and facilitating, for that matter! In stepping us through the Stages of Change in Changing for Good, Prosc…

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I have been in the role of a Career Coach at my company for over a year now, and I have been working with K recently on the issue she brought to our 1:1 of feeling stuck. We had only had one session prior to our Brain and Change module, and while it was a good session, I was excited to meet with her again after learning about the Stages of…

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When thinking about radical acceptance, I also think about the ways in which I strive to extend grace and kindness outward and to be compassionate with others. Going back to Dr. Taylor, something that stood out for me was when she said, “For me, it’s really easy to be kind to others when I remember that none of us came into this world with a man…

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As distant as I felt from Gestalt, is how hard in love I fell with Partswork. I know Gestalt and Partswork are connected, but I am not able to fully see how or why just yet. Gestalt baffled me, and Partswork empowered me. It instantaneously gave me a lens through which I could consider my feelings, my actions, and the world around me. Who, for…

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I described my feelings about Gestalt at one point as being the same as the frustrations I felt with those hidden 3D stereogram posters. When they were popular about 20ish years ago, I would stare at them, gaze at them, and look at them. And then I would throw a crazy combination gazelookstare at them some more. I would let my focus go soft and…

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Caving was my favorite trip to go on with campers and staff members because it was such a unique experience for them. For many of those first-time spelunkers, there was excitement and anticipation, and they had no preconceived notions or previous experience with which to compare it. For some, however, the unknown begat fear and apprehension.…

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When talking about the phases of ceremony and closing with incorporation, I found myself dwelling on the contrasts and similarities between coaching and guiding. I look forward to exploring this as we continue through the rest of the course, and at the moment, I find myself gravitating more towards Guide than Coach. When we work with a client as…

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The population that most excites me is the summer camp community, and my mind does not slow down or take a break when I think about working in that space. Some of my most powerful experiences as a camper and as a camp staff member were directly related to what I now think could have been threshold experiences. How much more powerful would they…

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I feel like I am starting to grasp the more specific aspects of ceremony that loomed large at first. Going back and forth between the big picture of ceremony, to its individual parts, to the big picture again, and back down to an even more granular level of the individual parts has been challenging, but it is starting to come together. I also…

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Entering each day with a growth mindset and curiosity is a starting point for which I am grateful. Sustaining both throughout each day is another story. It is challenging, for sure, and I am now additionally grateful for the threshold experience.

I told my students in the first few minutes of the first day of each new school year that I hoped…

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Michael talked about how 80-90% of our energy is spent on the preparation and building of a fire, and only 10% is spent on lighting the fire. He used that as a metaphor for the time spent in severance and threshold. I love campfires, I love using them as metaphors, and this brought to mind my favorite fire to ponder and play with, the top-down…

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Reflecting back upon the questions from Foundations 1, my curiosity around the reciprocal relationship in our connection with nature remains. Almost dizzy from wrestling with this curiosity, I wrote “What are we giving back?” in the middle of a page in my journal, and I now think that I have been asking the wrong question. That wording imp…

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Summary: In <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Wilderness As A Healing Place, John Miles refers to wilderness walking and mindful walking in ways that resonated with me after this module. Running has been what I always referred to as my moving meditation, and I don’t hold any land speed records, but I have noted that I more e…

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When Coyote’s Guide arrived in the mail, I hugged the book and said, “No way!” I then immediately ran upstairs to my office and pulled an old friend out from one of my bookshelves.

I think it was in 2007 when I sat sponge-like, taking in every word of Richard Louv’s talk at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Last Child in the Woods:…

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