The mind can be anywhere.
It can be five years ago, reliving a beautiful memory. Or next week, anticipating a difficult conversation.
It can be in the next room, hoping a friend’s interview goes well. Or across town, at a child’s baseball game you wish you didn’t have to miss.
This capacity the mind has to move through time and space is extraordinary. And it can be incredibly useful.
But transformation doesn’t happen in another time or another place.
It happens here. Now.
When we’re deeply connected to our direct experience.
And one of the best ways to help our clients find their way back to the here and now is through the body.
The body may be responding to something from the past, or reacting to what the mind imagines about the future. But the response itself is happening now.
The tightening in the chest.
The impulse to pull away.
The warmth, numbness, fear, anger, or aliveness.
When we invite a client to notice what is happening in their embodied experience, we make an important shift:
We move from describing the pattern to making contact with the pattern as it is happening now.
Instead of only talking about the experience, the experience itself becomes part of the coaching.
And this opens up a much richer field of information — one that goes beyond the thinking mind, to include sensation, emotion, impulse, and the wisdom of the body.
This is the first principle I explore in a new 5-part video series on transformational coaching:
Bring the coaching into the present moment.
In this short video, I explore why the present moment is such an important doorway into transformational work — and offer some simple ways to help your clients move from narrative into direct experience.
I’d love to know what resonates — and what questions it opens up for you. You can share your reflections in the comments below.
With care,
Joel
Thank you for this video; it confirms something I have always done intuitively in my coaching because I am a somatic learner, and it comes easily to me. I like how you speak about holding someone newer in their journey, because it reminds me that not everyone defaults to, or will automatically understand, this being present in your embodied experience. I look forward to the next video.
Dear Zola, thank you for sharing that. It makes sense this landed so naturally for you as a somatic learner! And you’re right: not everyone arrives at embodied presence the same way, and part of our job as coaches is holding that gently for the ones still finding their way in. Looking forward to sharing the next video with you!
This is an incredibly helpful reminder, Joel. And so beautifully and clearly expressed. Thank you very much. It is generous of you to offer your insights for free and I appreciate you for doing so. Interestingly, this generosity makes me more, rather than less, inclined to return to Coaches Rising to take another paid course in the future. I am looking forward to the next video! I hope you have a wonderful day.
Dear Josef, thank you so much for these kind words! We’re glad you liked the video, and it’s wonderful to hear you’re looking forward to the next one. We’d love to have you join one of our courses again down the line. Wishing you a great day!
So true.. I can relate this
Dear Henk, thank you for sharing. Wonderful that it resonated with you!
Appreciate the distinction between self-improvement and unfolding/transformation, and between fighting oneself or one’s experience and allowing and including it. Also how these tensions are related to sickness and transformation. Look forward the the next video!
Dear Tina, Self-improvement versus unfolding, fighting versus allowing — these really are two different orientations, and it changes everything when we notice which one we’re in. We’re glad that landed, and we’re looking forward to sharing the next video with you soon!
I like what you’ve articulated here. That sense of deficiency in the present moment may even block access to the present moment, where one actually needs to be for things to unfold. I feel that many coaches don’t do a great job of explaining what this whole matter of engaging with the body’s experience has to do with their coaching problem. We could do a better job of saying that insights and forward progress will occur not by figuring it out with our minds but by letting insight arise. Thanks for your good work.
Dear Michael, That distinction you’re naming is such an important one. A sense of deficiency really can pull us right out of the present moment, even as we’re trying to access it. And you’re right that the “why” often gets lost: engaging the body isn’t a side exercise, it’s how insight actually becomes available, rather than something we think our way into. Thanks for your thoughtful reflection.
I love the idea of inviting our clients to taste being in the moment.
What happens when, even for a few seconds, the mind stops wandering and we simply inhabit what is here?
Dear Mon,
Exactly this moment of stillness can bring so much transformation. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Dear Joel, dear Coaches Rising Team, dear Inspiration-Mycelium which nourishes CR and the whole community,
What a great idea to start this series of coaching principles and to share it as a gift. THANK YOU!
Referring to Principle 1:
Oh yes, being in the present moment makes a great difference for coachee as well as coach. I love to call it the “humus of being”. Sometimes I sense it like a relief — similar to the rain which started an hour ago (here in Bavaria, Germany) after many weeks of sunshine and very hot temperatures, which now lets the grass and many other beings “unfold” again. And yet this moment also contains the desire for change, for wanting sun and warmth, which likewise contains a relief that nourishes. So maybe we need both: being present, as well as sensing what is on the “other side of presence,” be it future or past — both of which contain the seed to evolve. In quantum physics, it is the continuum of changing from particle to wave.
Much looking forward to principle 2 – 5
Dear Andrea,
Thank you for such a beautiful reflection! We’re so glad you’re finding this series nourishing and look forward to sharing the next principles with you 🙂
Thank you, Joel, for this video. I am looking forward to seeing the next one. My key questions are: 1) how to keep someone in the present moment as it is not always comfortable and it is easy to switch to storytelling and 2) how to leverage sensations and emotions for transformational purposes. Thank you .
Dear Natasha, thank you for these great questions! You’re right that presence isn’t always comfortable, and the pull back into storytelling is real. Those are exactly the kinds of questions we hope this series will help coaches sit with and explore — for now, we’d just say: notice what pulls you (or your client) away from sensation, and get curious about it rather than rushing past it. Thank you for watching so closely, and we are sure you’ll find more answers as the series continues!
I fully subscribe to this notion of being in touch with the body as an entry point to expanding consciousness. As someone with an astrological chart almost entirely in air signs, I have found it difficult to sense my embodiment prior to starting yoga and hiking. These disciplines have helped me to stay in my body, despite the desire to flee into other realms.
I wonder what you will focus on in the next clips. Articulating so clearly the difference between “allowing change to unfold” versus “taking deficiency as the base line” is an essential realization. Thank you for offering us this clarity.
Hi Ann! Indeed, the wisdom of the body and the experience of being embodied seem to be essential aspects of our conscious growth. : )
Thank you for your words, we’re also looking forward to what will continue to unfold here!
Hi Joel, I just watched the above video. Its great!….Infact I watched the second one first and then went looking for this first one in my emails. I love this series, what a fabulous idea. Thank you!
I am a Somatic coach and can relate to the importance of bringing coaching in the present moment. Great reminders.
Hi Kamila, thank you for such a warm comment! We love hearing that the series is resonating. As a somatic coach, you already live what Principle 1 points to — the body speaking, not just the story about it. More principles are on their way:)
THIS.
Becoming aware of and welcoming what’s unfolding creates a rich opportunity for both the client and the coach. A lot of what happens in a coaching session can easily devolve into the client and coach lobbing blocks of thought back and forth at each other: familiar assessments, habitual scripts, conditioned responses.
Becoming attuned to the present and treating it as meaningful is like stepping into a landscape (in this case, a heart/mind/bodyscape) without a map. You take off the narrative blinders that have focused your attention in practiced ways and pay attention to each step, with curiosity and wonder. Things that you never thought to question reveal answers that you never realized were there all along.
I’m leaning forward for the rest of this series. Thank you!
Hi Chris!
Indeed, it is such a potent, alive and fruitful place that we get to step into together when we drop our agendas and practice being present together. Thank you for your fantastic comment, we love having you on this journey with us!