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So What is Coaching Anyway? A Rough Guide Through Some Key Impacts.   Part 1: Awareness Evoked.

Writer's picture: Joanna ShipleyJoanna Shipley

Updated: Nov 23, 2024



One of the questions I’m often asked is “What is coaching? What is a life coach exactly”. 


This is great!  I LOVE a good question.  Questions show curiosity, invite exploration, show a desire for growth. 


(It’s much worse if people think they know, but actually don’t.  They instantly think of sports or fitness coaching, goal setting or something more akin to therapy or mentorship.  And then they move on, unaware.) 


Good coaching is magical, life enhancing and joy infusing.  It creates peace where there was internal or external battling, it brings direction where there was only listlessness, it fosters courage where there was fear, peace where there was pain, joy where there was only ‘meh’. We get to understand our feelings, responses and to figure things out in a way life rarely allows us.


I want to show you some of the key concepts that underpin great coaching so you

1)        Know what great coaching is.

2)       And, know what you’re looking for if you’re seeking a coach.


Even if you’ve already experienced coaching and it didn’t work for you back then, I’d love you to reopen your mind.  When coaching follows certain principles, life becomes more peaceful, more purposeful and more profound. 


Every time.


One of my favourite principles of excellent coaching is that it creates new awarenesses for the client.  It “Evokes Awareness”.  There are others that are on a par in importance, and presence is one of these for another blog.  But Evoking Awareness is one that the client most often becomes aware of as their ‘takeaway’ from a session. It's one of the International Coaching Federations's Core Competencies for good reason.


Now, not all coaching is about ‘aha!’ moments.  Those “Oh-my-gosh-suddenly-I-have-a-whole-new-perspective-on-EVERYTHING!” flashes of inspiration.  But when they do happen.  They’re LIFE-CHANGING.


These do happen. But not always.


But what great coaching does is it gets under the usual, customary thinking. It enables us to look again with fresh eyes.  To change our perspective.  To ask ourselves new questions.   And I find it can be done in a number of ways.


And for life coaching there are no bounds. We could focus on work, promotion and leadership. We could explore your relationships, marriage, parenting, sexuality. Or creating your own business, writing that novel, moving house, decision making, undoing 'stuckness', your relationship with money.


A life coach's remit has no bounds because a great coach does not have to be a mentor. They are not an expert on an area of life other than coaching. They have the tools, the presence, the honed practice that seems like intuition and the mastery of their craft to enable them to help you to find your own answers. Even when it doesn't feel like you have any yourself, or don't even know what the question is that you should be asking. In fact, especially when you don't know anything other than some aspect of your life (or all) is unsatisfying in some way.


As a coach, I help you do this in many different ways. Here are just a few to get started.


 #1 Questions



I can ask what in the coaching profession are known as ‘powerful questions’.  (Although I can’t help thinking of my childhood TV ‘Allo ‘Allo and Herr Flick talking about his ‘powerful binoculars’ every time I hear this phrase. Silly, I know! The hazards of 'far transfer'!) 


These are questions that get you to think about things in different way.  Of course, these can be the why’s, the what’s, the when’s, how’s, where’s and who’s.   But there is NO formula.  No secret list.  They’re powerful because they’re intuitively on the mark. 


These questions come from deep listening to your words and to what’s going on between the words and under the words.  They come from being fully present with you through the time we work together.  They can be questions and they can be hunches, framed in a way that you can dispute and push back on – never to force my opinions on to you.  A good coach is ‘the window, not the light’, to quote Martha Beck and her coaching guidelines.  We help you to see the way for yourself, not to be the way.  A good coach is not attached to any of their observations or reflections (and only offers them as a last resort, always asking permission to share them).


The magic comes from the coach being able to discern where something more is going on that you are currently not conscious of.  From 20 years of listening to homeopathy patients, I witness the underlying patterns, the things you’re not saying out loud (but your body is screaming, your voice tone is whispering, your emotions are painting).   From tracking all you’ve said within the session, and across the arc of several sessions, I gently reflect back to you what I observe. 

When else in your life has someone listened to you that well, without an agenda or desire to impart advice, consistently, every time, without needing to be listened to in return? 


And when this is done well, it is done with empathy for your background, respect for your life experience and values, inclusively.  You shift from your current, overlapping, overwrought thinking to clarity.  You find answers that meet your needs, wants and beliefs.  It may be a ‘next step’, or noticing a need that’s been unmet for a while.  It may be just becoming aware of your body and the emotions you’re feeling (and then moving on to decide what to notice or do with this going forward).  It may be to come up with new ideas, acknowledge what is working, or let go of thoughts and beliefs that are keeping you stuck.


Sometimes they're questions that get you past your blocks. Here are some I've used recently - they're not from a set list, they just emerge in our reflective process:

  • if you knew your project couldn't fail, what would be your next step?

  • If you did know the answer, what would it be.

  • Do you know anyone who has successfully negotiated a shorter working week?

  • Whose voice is that in your head?

  • How do you feel as you say that?

  • What do you really feel?


Or they can evoke some dreaming and scheming

  • what does your ideal life look like? (and many related questions as I guide you through a typical day in your ideal life)

  • imagine it's the future and you've had the most incredible year ever, as you look back what are the highlights you've most loved? What qualities and characteristics stand out to you?

  • What would you like to be known for by the end of your days?


Anything goes - but the well aimed question at just the right moment, in the area where you feel most stuck?


Priceless.


#2 Silence




As a homeopath I found silence to be one of my key tools.  I learned not to jump in with a new question, but to give the patient time to reflect.


As a coach, this still stands.


Giving someone what I call ‘active silence’ is a gift. 


It’s not just saying nothing, it’s feeling into what wants to be born in that moment.  Sensing the energy in the client, sensing that something is unsaid and is coming to the surface to be revealed – maybe for the first time – by the client.  They hear themselves saying something new.  They hear a truth and their body relaxes.  There is a feeling of a ‘click’ as their mind, heart, body and soul aligns. 

Silence is where we dig deep.  Where I live, silence is olden.  That’s not a typo.  In our newest variants of life silence is no more.  It is… old.  Noise proliferates – TV, podcasts, news, phone games, video games, Social Media, a thousand things to google and to do.  Silence is rare.


Active silence is where that silence is proactively held, with the intention to be purely present while you listen to yourself.  You find your truth.  Your genuine feelings.  Rage. Disappointment.  Grief.  Frustration.  Exhaustion.  Even naming these allows them to start to shift.  But when we’re busy, busy being busy or just not listened to, this wisdom doesn’t get to surface.  It stays deep in the ocean of experience, still, always there, and the choppy waves of confused thought bash noisily in our awareness distorting the truth that really matters. 


Active silence.  Focused silence. Silence supported by powerful questions. 


THAT is golden.


I often find clients are working out what to say. Whether we're on zoom, in an field with a horse, or over the phone (it's surprising just how well the last one works, especially in our zoomed-out, teamed-out culture), as they search for their own answers, or hit on what it is they really feel, this is the time to allow SPACE. To rush in here with a question would destroy their process, would interrupt the trust and safety they feel, as a realisation or recognition is on the tip of their tongue.


"And then I noticed...a sort of... well, I was annoyed!"

"Annoyed?" I ask.

I pause, I hear a shift in their breathing, the air feels sort of pregnant.

I let the silence run

"Actually, I wasn't annoyed. I was deeply hurt. And sad that I've let myself stay in this situation for so long".


I hold the space for you. Because when we are on our own our automatic, quick-to-respond thinking will fill the gaps. Processing all of the options, the feelings, the who-did-what-when-and-to-whoms, the busy left hemisphere of the brain, gets in the way.


But if silence, at just the right time, is facilitated for you, honoured in this moment so your truth can arise, you will start to find your own new ways forward.


#3 Metaphor



 

There are many times when we just can’t access our truth directly.  Hidden like gems in ore, we cannot see the answers to our own problems.  This, my friends, is where metaphor plays a blinder!


I use metaphor in a number of ways.  Sometimes it comes up spontaneously in your speech.  You say things like ‘I’ve hit a brick wall’ or ‘it’s like walking on quicksand’.  We can follow this up by staying and playing in this realm. The powerful questions and silence being used with the imagination.  Incredibly, by describing the brickwall, the quicksand, and finding creative solutions to climb, scale, avoid, circumvent, cross, fly over, we find right brain solutions to the ‘cartoon’ version of the issue.  We stay in this realm for a while – not allowing our critical left brain back in until we have the solution that feels the most fun, the most easy, the most joyful. 


As a coach I hold you here as you play and explore.  People’s imaginations grow, the metaphors come to life in the mind’s eye and unfold in surprising, sometimes even hilarious, ways!  And then, my friends, only then, do we start to see what parallels our magical imaginal answers infer for real life.


Or we can create a metaphor from scratch.  We can find out what thing, what creature, what landscape, what object this ‘thing’ we’re concerned about is like.  What does your relationship with money look like?  If money were a place, creature or thing what would it look like?  How does it behave? How do you behave?  Even if we don’t consider ourselves a ‘visual’ person, we find we instinctively, intuitively ‘know’ what it is. 


Sometimes it starts in the body.  An emotion, or sensation, takes on a shape or colour and -boom!  We’re off into playing with it in an entirely whole brained way. Resting our (usually) exhausted and perseverating left brain, pausing our anxiety (because creativity and anxiety cannot coexist), and allowing us the freedom to find a fresh approach.


Metaphors can be a single image, or they can appear like a whole chapter of a computer game as scenery, events and even conversations happen in this reality-suspending, guided experience. Sometimes they're spontaneous.


A client recently said 'it was like I'd fallen down a hole'. As we explored it more we discovered this hole was 'dark, miserable, damp, small, confined and smelly.' She went into it with her mind's eye and noticed particular things within the hole. By the end of the sessions she'd found a ladder out of it, and brought some jewels out with her. These all made complete sense to her (as they were, after all, created by her subconscious), and the ladder became the metaphor for the people she could ask to pull her out of this hole.


And sometimes they're more deliberate: "So if your relationship with money was like a relationship with a friend, how would you describe it". Or, on closing their eyes and settling into a deeply relaxed state, asking "if money were an animal, object, landscape or thing, what would it look like". You'd be amazed at what people come up with in a situation where they're relaxed, not having to 'hold their own space' as we do in journalling or self coaching, but held with the session in a deep and trusting relationship and 'boom'! The solution or answers or ideas are suddenly present and obvious.


By handing the solution finding to our creative right brain, leaving our amygdala and fight, flight, fright, freeze, fawn, flop response out of it, we find the perfect solution. Moreover, we're usually completely surprised at how it plays out and the unusual ideas we have - and these metaphors are often vivid experiences which help us almost viscerally remember our next steps far beyond the session.


Sometimes they’re visualisations that I choreograph for you. Guiding you through 'My Best Holiday Ever’.  You freewheel through the inner lanes of your heart and mind to find what it is you are secretly yearning for.  And only when it’s fully expressed to we turn to the more practical, grounded part of exploring how to bring it about, and how to remove an obstacles to so doing.

It’s fun to play with.  AND it gets results far quicker, far more effectively, far more truthfully, than hard work ever did.


#4 The Body



One area we’re often divorced from in our lives is our bodies.  Brought up to be rational, and told to ‘stop fidgeting’ or to push down emotions that are unseemly or unacceptable in our current circumstances we learn to let the mind be king or queen.


This comes at a cost.


When we shut down our bodies to uncomfortable feelings we also shut down the chance to experience joy.  We don’t get to choose.  It takes energy to hold a feeling down.  Yet we cleverly adapt to do this as second nature.


I help my clients to reconnect with their bodies.  Sometimes the first step is just to notice what is going on – that we have a body that responds with different physical sensations to different thoughts and images.  Some clients find this extremely difficult.  If there has been significant ‘big T’ trauma then shutting this down can be a survival strategy (there are ways to work with this, sometimes referring someone to therapy is the best choice, or homeopathy.  Sometimes there are other tools I have in my toolbox).  But often we just get cut off from this vast and valid resource that is our nervous system.


Suppressing thoughts and feelings for years takes its toll.  On our joy, on our ability to detect and sense what we want from life, on our physical and mental health. 


In coaching, as I connect my client to their body they notice what they feel with more acuity.  This may release some of the pressure of holding things back (and emotions only last 90 seconds when there is not ‘story’ to prolong them, as neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte-Taylor tells us).  It can unleash powerful wisdom as we can ‘listen to the body’ as it often carries powerful, personal messages, intuition and insight.  And, as creatures with a huge and complex nervous system, which is far better at processing information than our overworked and often overwhelmed brains, we can start to use it to guide us.  To become a compass.


It has a near magical effect – if we can get out of our heads and into our hearts our new awareness feels so on track with what we yearn for.  It is so aligned with our sense of purpose and joy that it can only ever feel liberating.


This is what I want for you.  And for every single client I work with. 


Liberation.  Peace.  Joy. 


And it starts with finding a new awareness of our situation through body, mind and soul united.


We may find that a sensation in our body feels a particular way as we think of the problem we're seeking help with in our lives. Warm and fuzzy. Tingly. Crunched up. We may discover it has a colour or a shape. With gentle explanations and questions, my clients discover that it can somehow answer their questions, get specific about why it's here, or that they can become it's spokesperson while I interview it. As this inner wisdom is gently mined, the sensation often disappears. Clients are usually surprised, even astonished, at the wisdom it provides when a coach is with them as a witness.


And when I coach with horses an equine guided session, the horse is responding to the client's deepest bodily responses. We get the feedback from the horse based on the subconscious response of our nervous system. This helps us to notice what is really going on . The powerful questions, silence, metaphors, questioning tools are still a part. But the horse is our secret weapon.


The horse can spot our dissonance, prevarication, the stories we tell ourselves to keep things from changing which may seem true on the surface but really aren't. It can even have in impact on the way the client uses their body, or responds to the space around them.


I'll leave you with this little story from a client last month, where working with the horses, and the sensations in her body had this impact in her work.


"At work I was feeling unseen, unheard. I felt disconnected, and not wanting to engage with a difficult boss because they made me angry and anxious. I was pushed out and felt undervalued. This consumed me.


"But in the sessions with the horse, where we talked about my childhood, and the horse responded by coming over, and then the second session with an entirely different horse - with lots of energy - something shifted. Two examples spring to mind. One is with my boss being drunk and angry - before I'd have felt overwhelmed and unable to consciously respond. But I just felt very present, and told him he was over-reacting and I didn't agree! A senior colleague afterwards told me he was really impressed with how I held myself. Previously I would have played this over and over, upset and anxious. But I didn't. I just dealt with it and moved on!


"Another colleague is always in my face - with no awareness of my physical being and space. It's intrusive and uncomfortable. After the first session with the horse on this, somehow I just decided to turn my head away when this colleague invaded my space. Not angry. Just physically changing my space in relationship to her rather than 'just putting up with it'.

 

"I feel that I can see these situations as something separate to me - that I can manage to not be swallowed up in the emotion of it all."


 


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