I was at a retreat and met a young woman who was in considerable pain and could not turn her head. She had to move her whole body in order to see something beside her. Being trained in acupressure techniques, I volunteered to do a “shoulder and neck release” as a way of soothing her neck.
As I was holding the acupressure points, I asked her what had happened. She told me about being out in the surf and being caught off guard by a powerful wave. Her head took the brunt of it, resulting in an extremely sore neck.
I commented to her, ‘Wow, you must really feel grateful for your neck.’ She wasn’t sure how to take that comment and asked me what I meant. I said, ‘Well, your neck did a really good job. Sounds like the wave could have broken it. You could have been much more seriously disabled. Instead your neck held strong for you and did what it needed to do.’
We continued to appreciate the strength of her neck and she sent ‘thank you’ energy to it. Ten minutes later she got up and noticed she could turn her head from side to side and the pain had dramatically diminished. She had chosen appreciation over criticism, with amazing results.
….another body-gratitude story
During cancer surgery, my husband Jim had six inches of his fibula bone removed from his leg so that it could be used to reconstruct his jaw. He woke up one night with excruciating pain in his leg. He was moaning and drenched in perspiration. He could not get comfortable, let alone get back to sleep.
After acknowledging his pain, I said, ‘Maybe you need to be really thankful to your fibula for the sacrifice it made so that you could have a new jaw. How would it be to breathe in some gratitude and send it to your leg?’ As he did that, his pain began to subside and disappeared within minutes. Tears of relief ran down each of our faces. It felt like a miracle. We were both able to go back to sleep.
Your body is full of wisdom and information when you take the time to slow down and purposely listen. Your body also needs to be acknowledged and appreciated for the signals it sends.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”.
Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Ask yourself, where in my life do I want more abundance? And if I had it, how would I feel differently? Would you feel more joy, happiness, contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction? Of course you would. In my view, abundance includes the broad categories of relationships, spirituality, finances, success, career, health and well-being.
Abundance is a feeling of overflowing fullness: a state of being. Abundance is an internal experience more than an external process. We are whole people - body, mind and spirit. How we think affects our internal body experience and our outer presentation - all of which affects our spirit. Our thoughts create our embodied behavior which then creates our results. Our body responds to everything we think and feel and has a direct effect on our embodied abundant mindset.
As you begin noticing your thoughts - your mindset - you will begin to recognize the thoughts that empower you and the thoughts that don’t. Your thoughts influence how you will behave; and your behavior will then dramatically influence your results. As you embody an abundant mindset, your feelings, emotions, body sensations and spirit are enhanced.
There is a difference between having a positive mindset and an embodied abundant mindset. It is vitally important to have congruence between your body, mind and spirit; to have them all supporting your mindset. Simply thinking thoughts is not enough. The body and spirit need to be involved.
Allow yourself to have an abundant type thought (and just stop here and notice - is this enough?) The thought is ______________________________________
Now have the exact thought again only this time:
- allow a smile to come to your face
- stand up: allow your shoulders to move and hold your head high
- feel your feet firmly planted on the ground
- breathe more fully into this abundant thought
- begin to walk around believing this thought - even “as if” you believe it
- what do you notice now that is different from stopping at the thought?
Creating an embodied abundant mindset will enhance your ability to honor your values, live your purpose in the world and increase your passion.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”.
Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Sometimes you may feel like you’re a human doing rather than a human being. It is so easy to get caught up in the “to do” list and the “should do” list. The endless list of tasks can leave us feeling depleted, unfulfilled and stuck; we go through our days distracted and dissatisfied.
By nature we are doers. We are designed to have goals, dreams and aspirations. And these require action - some doing. Doing is not the opposite of being; you are a human being who does things. An essential question is:
Who am I BEING while I am doing?
It speaks to who you are being on the journey of life. Are you being kind and considerate to others while you accomplish your tasks? Are you being mindful of the impact your behavior has on others? Do you take the time to feel the enjoyment and pleasure of what you are creating?
As a coach, you have the wonderful opportunity to share in another person’s life. Consider for a moment all of your coaching skills - the concepts, ideas and strategies that you have in your coaching toolkit. Who you are, however, is what brings your work alive and allows you to be yourself and be with your clients in a way that is fulfilling for both of you.
Simply BEING who you are is one of the greatest assets that you bring to your relationship with clients. As you embody your authentic human ‘beingness’ through self discovery and your acceptance of self, you can fully be of service. As you connect with your inner resources, strengths, values and wholeness, you become more congruent, supportive and powerfully creative.
There is a difference between doing coaching and being a coach. Ask yourself, “Who am I BEING while I am doing coaching?” Let’s use listening as an example.
One way is the doing of listening. In this example, you are merely going through the action of listening without much consciousness. You may be hearing the words, but the client is not ‘being heard’. You may be caught up in your own thinking about the client’s situation in relation to your own personal experiences. You may be thinking about what powerful question you can ask when they finish speaking. You are focused more on yourself than you are on them.
The other way is being an empowering listener. In this example, you are being fully present to your client; aware of their internal experience as well as what is being expressed verbally. You have an understanding and a connectedness with the other person. The client feels heard on a deep level. Your powerful questions come from a place of curiosity and inner guidance.
Here is the good news. The moment you become aware of being distracted and not truly listening, you can choose to be more present and a more engaged listener. It is simply making the choice to bring yourself back to the client, to what is. When you are being in the present moment, your compassion, intuition, curiosity and imagination are more accessible to you.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”.
Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Generally, there are many influences during the decision-making process:
- The intellect is often dominant; we make ‘pro’ and ‘con’ lists, make rationalizations, and label things good or bad, right or wrong.
- There is often the added pressure to make decisions based on what we think we should do, rather than on what we want to do.
- We may be operating from what used to be true for us but is no longer the case.
- We may be making decisions based solely on what we think and discount or ignoring our intuition.
The practice of body-centered coaching recognizes that body, mind and spirit are different aspects of your whole being, like different doorways into the same house. We are whole people.
When making a decision, sometimes your heart wants to go in one direction and your mind in another. When there is a discrepancy - incongruence - the decision making is not only difficult; it often ends up being out of alignment.
When you pay attention to body, mind and spirit equally, you listen with all parts of your being - eyes, ears, heart, soul, body, mind - you allow for all parts to be heard and respected. That is when congruence is possible.
The individual parts need to partner with each other for the greatest good - for yourself, those around you and for the environment. For a decision to be congruent - body, mind and spirit - you need to listen to:
- your body’s wisdom - What sensations do you notice? Is there tension or is there relaxation? What does your gut say?
- your mind’s ideas - What are the positive and life-giving thoughts that support this decision? What thoughts come from an abundant mindset vs. fear?
- your spirit’s guidance - Are you connected to your higher power? What feelings do you experience? Is there joy and excitement or resignation and dread? Do you feel alive and inspirited by this decision?
As coaches, when you work with clients in their decision making process, the more you assist them to access and name all of the parts, the more congruent will be the decision that they make. When congruent decisions are made, the results lead to success and fulfillment.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”.
Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
If you are anything like me, you encourage your clients to take care of themselves, be self-nurturing, strive for balance, celebrate their wins, put themselves first, have a fulfilling life…and the list goes on.
And, if you are also like me, you may not be listening to your own wisdom. I have definitely had that experience lately. For the past month I have had a bad cold - it would get better for a couple of days and whammo! I would be into relapse again.
My body was trying to tell me something and I wanted to step over the message. Why? Because I was busy, didn’t have time, people were depending on me, had deadlines to meet, clients to coach, classes to teach…you get the picture. Does that sound familiar for you too?
In my book I have a chapter called Embracing the Signal. It is about having an attitude of gratitude that our body is in fact communicating something important to us. Rather than wish our pain or discomfort would stop, it involves being curious and mindful about the message. It’s an attitude that says to our body, “I am listening. Thanks for signaling me to pay attention: to be mindful.”
As an example, when you are really stressed and out of control, your shoulders may typically become very stiff and sore. Rather than being angry with your shoulders, another perspective could be to be thankful that they are giving you a warning signal to calm down and find a way to relax for a while. By pausing long enough to roll your shoulders, give them a rub, or simply stand up and look out the window, you would be looking after your physical and your emotional well-being.
Now, let’s use my personal example of a cold. Rather than being annoyed that I have one, I finally stopped to listen and become curious. I took time to become mindful, to honor and respond to my body’s wisdom; to be grateful for the warning signal to slow down and practice some self-care; to look after my physical and emotional well-being. Failure to do so, for any of us, can create a negative impact on a much larger scale.
I have listened to and embraced my body’s wisdom. And, as soon as I did so, I began to feel better and less-stressed. At the end of next week, I am taking myself on a solo-retreat to a resort a few hours from home. And guess what? From a rejuvenated perspective, life will look, feel and be different - thanks to me taking care of my body, mind and spirit.
What signals have you been stepping over? How is your body asking you to pay attention? Become still and listen to your inner guidance. What are you being called to notice and experience?
Self-care is self-love.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”.
Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Establishing and maintaining connection with your client throughout the session is paramount. Keeping in contact helps you to build relationship and establishes the opportunity for your client to open up more easily and expansively. We do this by being a mindful listener; tuning into the present moment, being spacious and allowing connection to come from that place.
As you listen to your clients, there are two potential levels for focus. You can focus on the story or you can focus on the storyteller.
The story consists of the details about various aspects of your client’s life - the who, the where and the what. The story can often be intriguing and interesting and it is very easy to get mesmerized by the details. If you stay focused on the details, and ask questions relating to the details, you encourage your client to stay in ‘reporting’ mode.
You miss the opportunity to connect with your client’s inner experience.
When you become curious about the storyteller and begin to get a sense of the essence of their internal experience you connect on a much deeper level. You get a sense of what the experience felt like to them and the impact it had. When you ask powerful questions from this mindful place, you give your client permission to examine their deeper feelings for insight and meaning.
By acknowledging the essence, rather than the details, you provide the opportunity for the client to feel heard and understood in powerful ways. You allow yourself to connect human to human.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”.
Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Intentionally putting yourself on ‘pause’ is an invaluable life skill. It allows you to slow down any automatic reaction that is threatening to happen and, with reflection, puts you in a position of choice. It gives you the ability to respond - to be response-able.
For the purpose of today’s article, I will specifically focus on the power of ‘pause’ as it relates to being a coach or other serving professional.
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
Often coaches I train comment on how spacious I am when working with a client; how I allow lots of time for the client to go inward without interruption. This is a particularly important body-centered coaching skill as the body needs time to communicate with us. The client needs time to notice body sensation, thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Being spacious requires that we pause. It is often tempting to fill in the empty space with language; this does the client a disservice. Our role is not to fill space but to create space for insight and learning.
As coaches, we ask powerful questions - and powerful questions require that we allow the client time for mindful self-awareness and reflection. They need time to quiet their mind, turn their attention to their own internal present moment experience and to simply notice whatever is occurring, without trying to change anything.
I remember when I was first learning to be an effective “pauser“. I would remind myself that “There is nothing to do yet; I first need to be.”
As we encourage our clients to become more self-aware and self-reflective in their sessions, we assist them to create the experience which they can they use elsewhere in their lives. It will benefit their emotional health, relationships, personal effectiveness, and even their immune system.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”. Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Few people have the experience of truly being heard. Fully listening to your clients is a wonderful gift that you can offer them. As listening is a complex activity which involves paying attention at many levels at the same time, skillful listening takes practice. Being self-aware is the foundation for fully listening to another person.
And, as you are being a skillful listener, there is the additional skill of “listening for ….”
As we listen to what our clients are saying, it is important to be conscious of limiting thoughts and “stories” that they have made up…limiting thoughts and beliefs that are disempowering and do not serve them in any useful way.
Here is a partial list to watch out for:
-
Language clients use - “I have no choice.” “I could never ….”
-
Lack of energy when they are speaking…sounding ho-hum
-
Stuck-ness - “I feel stuck here…I have no idea how to change….”
-
Expressions of fear - “What if … happens?”
-
Repetitive behavior and / or telling the same story over and over - and nothing changes
-
Confrontational or defensive (justify / defend) - “Wouldn’t you feel the same way if that happened to you?”
-
Poor me - victim “This always happens to me.”
-
Yes, but…. (excuses) “Yah but, I tried that and it didn’t work.”
-
Trying too hard - “I try and I try and…..look what happens.”
-
Speaking in absolutes… all or nothing…catastrophic - “There’s never enough.”
-
Inflexibility, unwillingness to look at other perspectives
-
Globalizing - “That’s just the way it is.”
From a body perspective, the limiting thoughts and beliefs are registered in the body…sometimes in a subtle kind of way and often in a blatant way.
I often say to my clients, “As you are thinking this thought / telling this story, what do you notice about your posture?” Often clients will report a slumping of the shoulders, a collapsed sensation somewhere in their body, a tightening or tenseness somewhere. As attention is brought to that impact, clients become more aware of how their thoughts influence their internal experience and how they get exhibited in an external way.
As we listen for…and hear our clients, we are in a position to name what we are hearing and to assist them to move beyond what is keeping them stuck.
And as coaches, it’s a good idea to be aware of our own self talk, our own limiting mindset. I know that as I read this list, I can hear shades of my own voice in some of them, and I notice how easy it is to get stuck in “the story”. The more we deal with our own mindset, the better we will be at modeling and being with our clients.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”. Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
In by book, Body-Centered Coaching, I include a poem called “Fixer” which is a wonderful inspiration, and reminder, for those of us who are coaches.
As coaches, the moment we decide that our client is in need of our help, we are disempowering them. The playing field is no longer equal. We perceive our client as a person who needs fixing or needs our guidance and advice. We are no longer focusing on them but on ourselves; this is ego-driven behavior. All of these thoughts limit our ability to listen and restrict our creativity with that person.
Fixer
A fixer has the illusion of being causal.
A server knows he/she is being used in the service
of something greater, essentially unknown.
We fix something specific.
We serve always the something:
wholeness and the mystery of life.
Fixing and helping are the work of the ego.
Serving is the work of the soul.
When you help, you see life as weak.
When you fix you see life as broken.
When you serve you see life as whole.
Fixing and helping may cure.
Service heals.
When I help, I feel satisfaction.
When I serve, I feel gratitude.
Fixing is a form of judgment.
Serving is a form of connection.
- Author Unknown
As we connect with, and accept, the whole person - body, mind and spirit - we stay in the curiosity and the mystery; we acknowledge and respect our clients as being creative, resourceful and whole. As we remain present to them, the connection is deepened and insights are more meaningful and available. From a place of acceptance, and an attitude of being of service, who we are being with our clients is the most valuable gift we can offer them.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”. Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com
Feeling vs. Sensing
Often as coaches and other helping professionals begin to work with assisting clients to connect with their body’s wisdom, confusion can occur simply by using ineffectual language and questions. This confusion generally comes from the use of the word ‘feeling’ - which must be used very selectively when working somatically.
The word ‘feeling’ is used in a number of different ways in our language. It can be used to describe various ways of experiencing. Therefore, the word ‘feeling’ in relation to the body can become misleading when asking questions.
- “I feel tired” or “I feel nauseous” describes a body experience.
- “I feel like going to a movie” describes a desire or a want.
- “I feel like screaming” describes an impulse.
- “I feel sad” describes an emotion, often accompanied by a story.
- “I feel lonely” implies a whole story about what or who is missing.
If you were to ask “What are you feeling in your body?” a client may interpret that to mean what emotion is there. Emotions have different qualities to them so we distinguish them by naming them or by using a metaphor for them. Sensations are the body speaking.
When feeling is experienced with the body alone, it could more accurately be called a sensation or ‘sensing‘. This is an important distinction for coaches who are accessing the body. Ask a question like the following and it will eliminate confusion for the client as to what you are asking about:
- “What are you sensing in your body?”
- “What is the energy you notice in your body?”
- “What are you noticing in your body?”
Sometimes I help a client out by saying something like: “You may be noticing some tension or some tightness somewhere in your body.” This allows them to focus on something specific. Or I may ask a client to tell me about the position that their body is in; body language can represent what is going on within the client. This assists the client to more fully experience what is going on.
The body is a wonderful resource to move clients through meaningful and sustainable change and to provide much needed insights.
© 2009 Body Mind Spirit Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article, written by Marlena Field , on your website or in your own e-newsletter, you MUST include the following:
Marlena Field, PCC, CPCC, founder and author of Body-Centered Coaching, offers a free e-newsletter titled BodyMind Wisdom: listen to your body, connect with your spirit. When you subscribe, you will receive her free audio titled “Conscious Choices for Change”. Visit www.BodyMindSpiritCoaching.com