About Somatic Coaching
Coaching in a nutshell
Coaching is a partnership, co-created by the coach (me) and the client (you). It's rooted in the belief that each of us is already resourceful, creative and whole. It's a process of bringing loving presence by listening, sensing and feeling without judgement (within and between each other and ourselves). Reflecting, asking curious questions, and holding space to unearth and connect to the possibilities that already lie within you, so that you can notice insight and embody transformation.
Coaching is not advice-giving or therapy. Though it can support individual and collective healing, coaching is not the same as therapy, and would not be suitable for you if you're looking to access therapeutic services or counselling.
It's rooted in what is present and emerging in the moment, with a forward focus towards integrating these new learnings for your future.
What's different about somatic coaching?
Somatic / embodiment coaching focuses on being with our whole bodymind's noticings, rather than just our mind's. Being with what is here now, allowing ourselves to feel it, and acting from there. Our bodies have so much to tell us, through physical sensations, images, sensory experiences, thoughts, emotions...
With courage and practice, we can learn to notice all that is here.
The coaching I offer is focused on taking what we practice in session out into your relationships... so that we can embody care, feel in integrity, and co-create positive collective change.
I am trained as a somatic (body-oriented) coach, having initially trained as a transformational life coach. I bring skills in both conceptual self-awareness (processing logically through our thoughts, and making meaning with words) and embodied self-awareness (using our senses to feel from within our bodies and connect to felt sense signals, and allow insight and shifts to emerge) to my practice.
The kind of healing I’m interested in takes it beyond the edges of our own bodies, into our relationships with beings, land, systems, ancestors, descendants, time, cosmos and and and.
Lineage
I'm committed to exploring my relationship to lineage as a somatics practitioner. You can learn more about the lineages of my work on the About page.
My coaching philosophy
- Each of us is/has a bodymind, a whole self that weaves together different sources of knowing. Our bodymind includes our sensations, thinking, emotions, felt sense, intuition, ancestral wisdom, and more that we do not have language for. By bringing our curiosity to our holistic bodymind, we can connect to more signals and insight than if we were just focused on our mind alone.
- We are energetically connected as a collective body in ways I do not pretend to understand.
- You are the expert in yourself. I bring my skills as a coach to be alongside you as you are with what is present in the moment. Together, we move at the pace of your sense-making.
- Everything offered is an invitation, not an expectation.
- There are different ways to process and different ways of knowing. We each have different capacities and life experiences. All are equally valuable and precious.
- Healing is not a linear process. We can trust that everything is unfolding at the right time, and does not need to be judged, pushed or strived for.
- Under the right conditions, we can bring loving attention and compassion to the ways that our bodyminds have adapted for our survival.
- Through practice in safe-enough environments, we can explore new or forgotten ways of relating to ourselves, our environment & to others.
- Embodiment practice, while seemingly individual, has a powerful ripple effect when we practice it in the world, and I consider it vital to the work of positive collective transformation.
Who my work centers
I specialise in coaching individuals whose experiences sit outside of the mainstream, holding space for the unique ways we each move in the world, whether in your neurodivergence, your queerness, your ethnicity, your disability, your gender expansiveness, your trauma history, your marginalised experiences... because that's my life experience, too.
As someone who lives with a dynamic physical disability, I seek to offer invitations that feel accessible to all bodyminds.
I don't make assumptions and will always seek to validate and celebrate your lived experience, and to be a lifelong learner.
What to expect during a session
Sessions are all about presence, experimentation, play & invitation.
Each session will be unique, arising from whatever is alive for you within our space during that time. Together, we trust that, when we seek to stay in partnership and presence in the moment, what wants to emerge will emerge.
My approach is non-directive. We will always move at the pace of your embodied yes or no or maybe, with spaciousness to sense into that. There's no expectation that just because we tried a certain somatic practice in a previous session, it would also be welcome in this session.
Sessions follow a general structure:
Opening
- You may arrive with an issue that you want to explore. Or, you may have nothing specific and just want to feel into what's calling your attention
Flow
- In somatic coaching, we "dance" between conceptual self awareness (processing logically through our thoughts, and making meaning with words) and embodied self awareness (using our senses to feel from within our bodies, connect to felt sense signals, and allow insight and shifts to emerge).
- Much of the time, we will talk or be in silence, as in any conversation. Throughout a session, I will reflect your words back to you, pull out certain phrases, and ask curious questions. Some sessions may be spent completely in this way, and may stay within conceptual self awareness.
- When it is welcome, you may want to explore sensations within your body. Any invitations from me for you to explore through embodied self awareness will be exactly that: invitations or offerings of practice or processes that you can choose to say yes or no to within each session.
- Examples of somatic processes that I may offer to guide you through include: Resourcing, orienting, felt sensing, Focusing, PIE sensory awareness (Proprioception, Interoception, Exteroception), Constellations, somatic boundary explorations, verbal experiments, dance, visualisation, Centering.
Integration & Close
- We spend time at the end of each session integrating and making sense of what has emerged, and partner together to ensure that you leave feeling resourced.
Each session is unique.
Everything is always an invitation.
Coaching, Therapy and other Complementary Approaches
Coaching and therapy offer something different for your life. Many of my clients coach with me and also work with a psychotherapist or with bodyworkers and therapists from different modalities.
In my own life, I find that therapy supports me to dive deep into the past to understand how experience and trauma affect my present behaviours. I also receive regular coaching with a generative somatics practitioner, which supports me to attune to what is here now, and what is wanting to emerge. I also spend time with other somatic approaches that are complementary to coaching, such as dance, grief rituals, acupuncture, energy work, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Clinical Somatics.
If you are working with a therapist or have somatic, spiritual or therapeutic practices that are part of your life, we can explore these in our Connection Call. I will partner with you to seek that our coaching sessions are complementary to those approaches and that the different practices are mutually enhancing.
Co-creating a space of trust
Transparency and openness is really important to me - I want your experience of working with me to be really positive and based on trust and clarity. I follow the International Coaching Federation's (ICF) ethical and professional guidelines for coaching. Before our first session, you'll receive a coaching agreement which explains what you can expect from our time together.
At the start of our first session together, we'll spend a few minutes creating our "Alliance", which will be an agreement between us for our first session together about how you want to be, how you want me to be, and how we want us to be as a partnership. If it feels supportive, we may create an Alliance at the start of each session, to check in with your needs that day.
Confidentiality and ethics are an important part of my role as a coach. You can read more about this here:
https://everydaywrites.com/pages/confidentiality-ethics