COACHING
I offer a series of six, one-hour coaching sessions to individuals and couples, in-person and virtually. Sessions are tailored to address the unhelpful thinking and feeling patterns that dominate daily life and cause emotional distress - often affecting how we treat ourselves and loved ones. They include instruction in mindfulness meditations and practices, and talks on topics directly related to how we cause ourselves unnecessary suffering. Distress is not to be eliminated but, rather, it calls for attention. Mindfulness practice is an attention practice.
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While the mindfulness and meditation practices derive from the Buddhist tradition, they are universal in orientation and address spiritual themes of concern to all contemplative traditions.
Sessions are individually tailored. Each session begins with a check-in. How are things going? Mindfulness breathing and body awareness practices are included in each session and are recommended for home practice. Journaling after a session is recommended to record insights and seeds of transformation.​
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Example of a six-session coaching series
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1) Topic: Physiology of self-compassion & self-criticism. How we cause ourselves unnecessary suffering. Learn to pause and anchor mindfully when feeling distress.
Meditations and Exercises: Mindful presence in the body. Listening & breathing affectionately - assists in deep relaxation and letting go.
2) Topic: Anger and unmet needs. Anger and blame are often expressions of unmet needs.
Meditations and Exercises: Identifying unmet needs, body and breathing meditation, Soften, Sooth, Allow.
3) Topic: Anxiety & worry. When we have a situation that triggers anxiety, worrying about it can feel necessary: it can provide an illusion of control. Meditation and mindfulness exercises can help interrupt the cycle by training our mind to refocus.
Meditations and Exercises: Affectionate breathing, Compassionate touch.
4) Topic: Discovering core values. We suffer when not living in alignment with our core values. Identifying them helps us give ourselves what we need (another way to live with integrity and interrupt patterns of blame).
Meditations and Exercises: Identifying what matters.
5) Topic: Useful thinking and conscious awareness. We are often entangled in negative or ruminating thoughts -
Meditations and Exercises: Are these thoughts useful and how do they behave? - Sense and savor walking meditation
6) Topic: Living with a vow or intention. A vow anchors our life to what matters most to us and offers a practice to reorient when we have gone astray.
Meditations and Exercises: Finding loving kindness phrases, gratitude for small thin