In an online “Mindful Coaching” group, the group founder asked,
What is Mindful Coaching?
Isn’t all coaching supposed to be mindful? What’s unique about coaching via mindfulness-informed sensibilities? How does appreciating and having a personal relationship with mindfulness affect coaching work? What’s your experience with coaching, mindfulness, and mindful coaching?
I replied:
I think that the specificity of “mindfulness based” coaching is using the tool of spacious, high-resolution awareness, awareness to the point that the solidity of rigid self-structures eventually dissolve become translucent for a larger presence to shine through. Action taken by a client will be more effective and powerful, not to mention more elegant, kind, and satisfying, when established in that expanded presence.
Also, “coaching” in general of course is usually involved with action steps, setting and achieving goals, and general “doing”. I think that mindfulness-based coaching intends to bring a balance of being with the doing, yin and yang in balance, and of generating effective action coming from a place of peace and stillness, rather than from drivenness and other forms of subconscious agitation.
In terms of my own experience while coaching, I think that my meditation/mindfulness practice has helped me to put my full attention on clients as they speak, listening deeply with my attention steady and present in a way that allows self-release for clients. Practicing body sensation awareness while in a session has allowed me to use my body as an instrument of detection, noticing when I feel flow tense and when I feel flow, as a way of learning more about how my client’s energy moves or gets stuck.
My willingness to sit and stay open with difficult and unpleasant content when meditating helps me to be willing to sit with uncomfortable difficulties that may come up in client sessions, staying emotionally open and inflated when things get painful or dark. Finally, my meditation practice helps me to sit in silence with clients, holding space for any of my agitated desires to talk just to fill the space without acting on them. This often seems to create an untangling and unbinding in the person in front of me.
