As a spiritually-based coach, my aim is to help people connect with their higher Self and live a soul-infused life. Though I hold this ideal as a psychotherapist, I find it to be a more explicit focus in coaching. Since coaching clients tend to be more self-actualizing than the average psychotherapy client, they tend to focus on the life they want to create rather than on fixing what’s wrong. This naturally leads to an exploration of their higher purpose.

Establishing the Essence Connection
I deeply believe that the most important way I can support clients in building their spiritual connection is to connect with their essence myself. This bond is an energetic one. It is a silent appreciation and affirmation of who that person is as a being. It invites their essence to come forth and take its place in the world.

Most of us suffer from the primal childhood wound of not having been recognized as a sovereign and unique spiritual being. Instead, we have been manipulated by conditional love to fit in with someone else’s idea of who we should be. The coach’s unconditionality and honoring attitude helps to heal this wound. One of the best-known life coaches looks at a picture of each of his clients several times a day to help him maintain this kind of connection. When a person feels held in this way, they feel safe to come out of hiding and express the will of their true Self in the world.

Holding Sacred Space
The second most important thing we can do is to "hold sacred space" for the client. This too is something that happens at an energetic level. It is based on affirming and trusting the client’s process. It involves intentionality toward the ability of the client to connect with their wisdom nature and to find the answers they need from within. It involves deep and respectful listening to what is trying to happen in the client’s life. This attitude of invocation calls forth the client’s deepest truth and inner resources.

Enabling Processes to Clarify Vision, Core Values, and Life Purpose
Coaches often assign exercises to clients to help clarify their vision, core values, and life purpose. When people make choices based on their core values. their passion and genius are released. Typically, I use a values exercise in which the client lists peak experiences which have given them a sense of deep fulfillment. The person then explores the personal qualities, skills, and values operative in these experiences. Common threads are found and a list of five or six core values is made based on these common threads.

"The Future Self" guided imagery exercise is also widely used in coaching (Whitworth et al, 1998, p. 219). It takes the client on a journey into the future in which they meet a fully fulfilled version of themselves. The Future Self shares with the present-day self how he or she got from where the client is today to that future state. In a related exercise, the client imagines the Future Self on a stage in front of an audience. The Future Self speaks to the audience in a way that is profoundly moving and changes people’s lives. Exercises of this kind can provide useful clues to the client’s core values, essence qualities, and spiritual mission.

Coaches also use more conscious processes to explore their clients’ visions for their lives. This could include asking questions such as:
      * What do you want your life to look like five (10, 20) years from now?
      * What contribution do you want to make to the world?
      * What do you want your legacy to be?
      * How do you want to be remembered?

Providing Intuition and Spiritual Practice Training
Some coaches teach clients skills to develop their intuition and strengthen their spiritual connection. It is common to suggest a meditation practice. One spiritually-oriented coach has clients identify the "clair" skill that works best for them, be it clairaudience. clairvoyance, clairsentience, or claircognizing. The coach then trains the person to pay attention to this channel.

I may ask clients to get an image or a felt sense in their body when they focus on a particular issue. The classic psychosynthesis technique of having the client confer with a wisdom figure or inner advisor also lends itself well to coaching. Depth techniques of this kind bring fresh perspectives from beyond the surface mind. These depth approaches enable the client to access their internal guidance system and often inspire highly creative ideas. Dream work is also quite feasible in the coaching context.

At times I use my own intuitive skills to assess what is going on with a client. I have been trained in the Stillpoint Institute’s process of energy diagnosis which provides a useful "x-ray" of the psyche based on the chakra system. This helps me to understand where the will of the higher Self is being directed, as well as issues the person may be facing with their personal will.

I find that centering awareness in the heart is one of the most rapid and effective ways to access the wisdom nature. A simple technique that lends itself well to coaching invites the person to place a hand over their heart while focusing on an issue and sensing the heart’s message about this issue. This is easy to do this while talking on the telephone. In an instant this simple technique can shift a person from being identified with a negative mindset to an expanded state in which they experience clarity, compassion, and release of healthy will functions.

An example of the "hand on heart" technique in telephone coaching took place in a session I conducted this week. My client, who serves on the Board of a community theatre, was about to resign over a disagreement she had with the casting director. Though reluctant to give up her membership on the Board, which she valued, she felt unable to resolve the conflict. She feared losing control of her rage if she had to interact with this person. When she placed her hand on her heart, she experienced an immediate shift in perspective. This enabled her to see that she herself had a part in creating the conflict so she could choose to forgive the other person. She made a plan to work on this during the week and agreed to meet with this person as soon as she feels ready to approach the meeting in a healing spirit. Through connecting with the wisdom of her heart, she was able to step back from the victim stance and align her will with resolving the conflict.

Another effective method for focusing awareness in the heart is the "freeze-frame" technique (Childre and Martin, 1991), developed by the Heartmath Institute. In this approach the heart is activated by breathing into it (imaging sending your breath to your heart) and evoking memories of open-hearted experiences in the past.

Connecting with the Higher Will
There are many methods to help clients connect with their higher will. It seems important that the coach have a personal connection with the method being used so he or she can hold the thought-form with greater clarity of intention. It is also important, of course, that the method be suited to the client’s own temperament and preference.

One method I find particularly useful is providing feedback about the client’s energy when he or she is talking about a topic. When people are connected to their higher purpose, I experience a sense of excitement, a kind of electric charge. When they are doing something because they think they "should" do it, there is a heavy energy with no life. Reflecting this back to the person can increase their awareness of what they really want. In this way it supports the will of their true Self.

Related approaches that have become quite popular among life coaches are "attraction coaching" and "radical self-care". The aim of attraction coaching is to help people shift from struggling to get what they want to attracting these things effortlessly. There are two basic rules:
      * eliminate what drains your energy, and
      * add what gives you energy.

The premise is that by eliminating "energy-drainers" (e.g, clutter, unfinished business, a missing button on your coat, or neglected finances), you become more "attractive" and create space in your life for good things to come in.

Taane Miedaner (2000), an advocate of the attraction principle, says that when her life is uncluttered, she is able to simply think of something she wants and it shows up in her life almost instantly. She tells a story of deciding that she wanted more publicity and being invited to lunch the same day by a person who opened the door to a major publication. This sounds more like the New Age concept of "manifestation" than our traditional view of the stages of willing (Assagioli, 1973/1999).

The "radical self-care" idea is attributed to Shirley Anderson, former coach to Cheryl Richardson (1999). Cheryl describes this approach in her best-selling book, Take Time for Your Life. Coaches working in the self-care mode can be very helpful to people on the burnout track. They encourage clients to lead balanced lives, establish healthy boundaries, and do what nurtures them. The assumption is that overwork and stress diminish our creativity and effectiveness. Through radical self-care, well-being and health improvement, relationships flourish, and clients actually become more, not less, productive.

The self-care and attraction approaches are based on treating oneself as a person whose life has value for its own sake, rather than as an expendable machine. Perhaps these ideas are arising to counter the self-abuse so prevalent in our workaholic culture. In any case, they open up a fresh perspective on the will. They suggest that there may be a gentler and easier way to get things done than by laborious striving. Could it be that uncluttering our lives, eliminating self-sabotage, and honoring our true needs creates sacred space in which the will of the Self can more easily manifest? Can deeply valuing ourselves raise our vibration to a point where the power of our intention is vastly amplified? The coaching field may be fertile ground for researching the principles of "manifestation".

 

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