An Experiential Learning Journey Designed for Coaches

Whether you have received formal training and identify professionally as a coach or not, this module lays the Foundations upon which we will build your competency as a Body-oriented Coach. Modern psychology has focused primarily on verbal communication and the cognitive, reflective mind. Conventional helping conversations often follow suit and much of the work revolves around mental meaning making and reframing. This is important work as we are as much our thinking as we are our sensations and feeling states. As such we need a model for working at all levels if we are to transition into more embodied spaces with skill.

We live in a culture that is largely disembodied, so this module can be experienced as awakening the senses or coming home to the body. We’ll dip into biology, anatomy and interpersonal neurobiology to develop a foundational understanding of the bodymind. For many of us, actually being fully present to ourselves can feel like travelling into outer-space, or the great unknown. Like “somanauts” you will explore the worlds that exist inside of your body and expand your conscious awareness. Through the use of subtle and non-intrusive methods you will learn how to help your clients come into contact with the body as sensed in the present moment. In this way you will enable clients to step back and thoughtfully attend to their internal experience and thus explore the ways in which they have been influenced and shaped by their unconscious.

Safety is a prerequisite for all helping conversations, especially when doing the sensitive work of somatic coaching. How do we ensure that both coach and client are able to work at Somatic depth, without feeling out of their depth? This Module provides answers to that question. From initial conditions, to the resourcing potential of intentional play we will be equipping ourselves with the tools to be both responsive and responsible. If a coach is dysregulated we could be doing our clients more harm than good. With a well regulated nervous system, you could very well sit with a client for an hour in silence and do them a world of good. If our autonomic state shapes experience, then our ability to navigate the nervous system is essential.

This module explores how to use your whole self as a tool to adjust to your client and come into resonance with them. Helping the client tune into their own somatic experience and exploring your capacity to tune into what they are feeling too. This is about your relationship with your clients, their relationship with their bodymind experience, your relationship with your own, and how these all inter-relate. The Attune & Resonate module will help you develop skills to notice even seemingly unimportant details that may in fact be outward expressions of adaptations or implicit beliefs, bringing habitual behaviours to the client’s consciousness and exploring the meaning and impact of their experience.

Our communities are touch deprived, so much so that receiving touch can be profound and transformative. Physical contact in the coaching space is a grey area for most. This module equips coaches with the awareness and skillset needed to work with intentional contact in a way that is safe, supportive and in service of their clients. As clients take what they are learning and discovering within the session into the wider ecology of their lives, a natural shift occurs in the session. What if we could explore options, make plans, and form strategise from a more embodied place? In this Module we’ll utilise our clients capacity for accessing embodied ways of knowing to identify an inspired course of action or resolve complex issues that call for innovative solutions.

Everything we’ve experienced over the years, physical and emotional pain, happy memories as well as sad, have been stored in the cells of our bodies. Embody & Integrate helps clients engage with their active imagination, allowing unconscious material to flow outward. In this module you will explore movement, posture, shape and form to expand the embodying dimensions of the work you and your client have done together. This is especially beneficial for those who have difficulty processing their issues verbally through traditional forms of coaching. Here, we tap into the aliveness of the body and learn how to help clients take conscious action. The coach helps clients practice, adopt, and integrate positive new experiences, beliefs, and choices into their current everyday lives and embody these changes. What’s more, you will support your clients to install positive states as enduring traits through the deliberate internalisation of positive experiences in implicit memory.