What the experts are saying

We can see from the previous blog that there can be a valid connection between coaching and therapy.  When someone has had some form of therapy that has proved to be effective for them, they often describe it as feeling that healing has occurred. And likewise clients often tell me that they feel that the coaching process has brought about a healing for them.  So let us look at how coaching connects to healing.

One of the central tenets of coaching is that the client may have one or more limiting beliefs preventing him or her from fully living the life they want to live and the coach, through the coaching process will firstly help the client to see that these beliefs are unhelpful and secondly will assist in changing them into beliefs that serve the client.

Much of today’s medical research and practice now embrace the premise that our body and mind are fully connected and that our beliefs and our thinking can and do affect us physically – sometimes quite dramatically.  So, in addition to bringing about emotional disorders, the way we think about ourselves and the world around us can also cause physical disorders – as is evidenced by the fascinating syndrome of hypochondria for instance where an individual can develop an actual illness stemming from their mental processes.  Other examples are the placebo and nocebo affect where patients can either recover from an illness because they (or their doctor) believe that they have been given effective medication or their condition can be aggravated if either they or their doctor believe that the treatment is ineffective.  (This intervention by the doctor caused by their own private beliefs is quite astounding and is perhaps the subject of a future blog.)

People suffering from all manner of disorders, emotional and physical, visit therapists for healing from their condition so that they can feel better.   ‘Feeling better’ can be experienced on a continuum from feeling a little bit better, to feeling a lot better to feeling completely better.

Coaching also makes people feel better.  Coaching helps to change limiting beliefs and these can sometimes bring about a reversal of the disorder that was caused by the limiting beliefs, so in this sense coaching strongly resembles healing.  An important concept to bear in mind in this discussion is that all healing is self-healing.  Good health and happiness are our default settings as living beings and our bodies and minds are constantly moving towards achieving this state.  Given the correct conditions we will automatically heal ourselves from whatever is disturbing the correct balance of our system and is causing our symptoms.  The most that any kind of therapeutic intervention (be it medical or complementary) can do is to provide the suitable conditions for the individual’s body or mind to do this amazing work.

Eckhart Tolle says in ‘A New Earth’, “When we come into the presence of someone who truly accepts us for who we are, the healing begins,” and I wholeheartedly agree with him.  So in some cases, simply accepting someone for who they really are with no judgement or agenda, can create the conditions for healing – and whether this person is your next-door neighbour, your parent, friend or your coach, they are helping to create the optimum conditions for healing – they are creating the space where healing can happen.  In fact, if a coach is not creating this space then I would suggest that they are not doing their job adequately.   From this point of view we can see that coaching is so strongly aligned to healing that, as coaches, we can embrace this without hesitation and celebrate the extraordinary process that we work with that can create the correct conditions for healing.    And since healing is an outcome of therapy then we can also say, without hesitation that coaching can be therapeutic.  So the question may not be ‘what is the difference between coaching and healing?’ but “is there a difference between coaching and healing?”

One of the knottiest issues that coaches face as they start to work in this rapidly developing field is that of the difference between coaching and therapy.    All coaches are taught in their training that ‘coaching is not therapy’ and we must be careful not to stray into this hazy territory. Because the quantum skills process can help clients resolve deeply embedded issues which have caused much emotional pain in their lives it is question that I have thought about extensively and examine in some detail in my book and DVD.  This blog is an excerpt from Quantum Skills for Coaches setting out the argument that I finally accepted with the help of several past clients when I shared my concerns with them.  In my next blog I offer a couple of additional thoughts on this tricky subject. 

In order to explore the implications of the connection between coaching and therapy let’s start with the two questions: ‘what is therapy?’ and ‘can something be therapeutic without being ‘therapy?’  First though we will clarify what we understand coaching to be and what it is not.

 Coaching, as we know, is about helping clients to find their own solutions.  This is done firstly through deep-veined listening where the coach is able to listen, not only to the words the client utters, but also to the way they are uttered.  This enables the coach to pick up on ‘the music behind the words’ and tune into realities that the client may be describing but is perhaps not consciously aware of and which may provide clues with which the coach can work.  The other key skill in coaching is the use of powerful and incisive questions, which help clients see their life situations in new ways and cut through their limiting assumptions about ‘the way things are.’

An essential component of successful coaching is that coaches adopts a ‘coaching mind-set’ which means firstly that they have no attachment to their own agenda and secondly that they see everything the clients says merely as information to work with, with no judgment as to whether it is good or bad, desirable or not. 

This, I think you will agree is a fairly simple overview of the essence of coaching.  As coaches we have also been well-drilled in an understanding of what coaching is not through our training programmes and the books we have studied – it is not advising, counselling or therapy.  All the input comes from the client and not from us.  We might offer feedback as to what we observe in the client’s behaviour, body language or responses but this really is the limit of our input.

I believe that most coaches, at some time or another disregard this when we feel it to be appropriate.  For instance, if the client is totally disorganised it would be a bit of a struggle to coach them into designing an effective time management tool from scratch.  We clearly want to hear their thoughts about the way they manage their time and what being organised might look like to them, but with scores of books on time management to draw from it generally feels acceptable to give them a heads-up on one of the many effective and proven techniques available, or at least some ‘hot hints and tips’ on being more organised.  Similarly when coaching a client through managing stress  – how many coaches would think twice about teaching a deep breathing exercise? 

And then as we explore the issues that are causing the stress, what happens if we discover that the client is experiencing some deep emotional pain?  Do we back off at that point and refer the client to a therapist or do we explore further with the client?  What if our further explorations reveal that the client is terrified of creating authentic relationships with others?  Do we then cease the coaching programme?  If we continue and find that this fear is rooted in a dysfunctional childhood does that ring the warning bells for us?

You may have found yourself trying to answer any of these questions at some point in your coaching experiences and come up with different answers at differing times depending on the client and your feeling of confidence at that moment.  The truth is that we’re making judgements about these things all the time and using our intuition to decide what to do.  People are holistic beings and every part of their life is connected to every other part. 

 You may be coaching a senior executive to develop leadership skills to improve team’s performance and in the process uncover feeling of inferiority around others caused by a dominant father.  The executive’s workplace issues are securely linked to this and to try to deal with their leadership skills without addressing the impact of the parent’s behaviour is to apply a sticking plaster to an infected wound without first cleansing it.  “What if I open a Pandora’s Box?” you may ask yourself.  What if you don’t?  The client will always be at risk from the lid popping open at some other time and releasing the emotions that have been suppressed for so long.  An advertisement on a passing bus, a film or television programme or a throwaway comment overheard in the company cafeteria can release the fragile catch on the box.  The question is how to do it in a way that is safe and leads to permanent change?

 Therapy or not?

The key word is ‘therapy’ – we know that we are not supposed to cross the line between coaching and therapy.  What is therapy then?   So let’s look at the dictionary definition.

1.      a treatment of physical, mental, or behavioural problems that is meant to cure or rehabilitate somebody                            

2.      psychoanalysis or techniques from another school of psychotherapy, intended to treat mental and emotional problems with psychological methods                    

The second definition points towards the work of a professionally qualified psychotherapist.  In the first definition the words  ‘treatment’ and ‘cure’ might be significant here so let’s look those up too.

 treatment

1.     the application of medical care to cure disease, heal injuries, or ease symptoms

2.      a particular remedy, procedure, or technique for curing or alleviating a disease, injury, or condition

 cure

1.            to restore a sick person or animal to health

2.            to bring about recovery from an illness, disorder, or injury

and while we’ve got the dictionary out -  ‘to recover’ is:

1.      to return to a previous state of health, prosperity, or equanimity

2.      to bring the self  back to a normal condition

Whilst all of these definitions refer primarily to professional medical intervention they all also point to a more general restoration of normal functioning.  Therapy could be described as ‘applying a technique or set of tools’.  Earlier in this blog I proffered the question “can something be therapeutic without being ‘therapy’?”  An overview of the above definitions shows that therapy can be seen as applying a technique to alleviate a condition and bring the self back to a normal condition or to return someone to a previous state of health or equanimity.  Therefore, an activity that achieves this outcome could be seen to be therapeutic.  We all know that when we’re feeling negative, stressed or even depressed a walk in the woods, a swim in the ocean, cleaning the house, baking a loaf of bread or planning a new project such as moving house all help to move us to a more positive place of equanimity and can be described as therapeutic.  And of course we all know that retail therapy is aptly named!  When we are troubled just talking to someone about the problem can feel like therapy.  If I ask a room of coaches “do your clients ever give you the feedback that they have found a coaching session to be therapeutic?”  almost all raise their hands.

Yes, but it is safe?

So, it is not totally outrageous to consider that coaching can be a therapeutic experience for our client.  The question then is how appropriate and safe is it to venture into areas that we have been taught are off-limits for the coach – mood swings, depression, shyness, social anxiety, feeling “stressed out,” panic attacks,phobias, obsessions and compulsions, chronic anxiety, eating disorders, difficulty in maintaining relationships, inadequate coping skills, over-inhibition of feelings or expression.  This list is very similar to a typical list of conditions that many forms of therapy might aim to treat.

 My experience and that of colleagues who work with the quantum skills for coaches is that, while we would not advertise ourselves as coaches who work with clients in these areas, if such issues do emerge during a coaching programme, then the coach will carefully consider whether to continue.  I tend to tell the client that “coaching doesnot usually cover this subject, but that having said that, I work with a process that uses the wisdom of the body to surface the ‘inner knowing’ housed in the body.”  I share with the client further details about the quantum skills and the body-mind and a little about the specific techniques for focusing on our personal issues within our body. 

 I believe that when we deal with such problems in this way, we are far safer than if we attempt to work them out using our brain with its reasoning and logic. 

 Once I have had this conversation I leave it to the client to decide whether to consult a therapist specialising in the issue or continue to work with the quantum skills process.  Because, by this time the client and I have a solid coaching relationship and the client trusts the way I work, all such clients have so far, chosen to explore their issue in our sessions.  However I would be genuinely happy if they opted to talk to a therapist instead.

Many clients have also told me that the reason they feel so comfortable to examine their ‘hot buttons’ with me is that my utter confidence and conviction in the safety and naturalness of the process makes them feel safe with it  – and if I were less certain then this would affect their decision to do so.  I never guarantee results of course, but I do firmly believe that whatever comes out of the exploration will be helpful.

These are the thoughts about this topic that I express in my book which do not touch upon the next layer of this subject which is the connection between coaching and healing. So in the next blog I would like to offer a couple of thoughts on this.

I was talking recently to a woman who, unhappy with the abusive behaviour of the man she was in a relationship with, was unsure as to whether to walk away from it.  She was confused about the notion she had heard so often of ‘not resisting what is’ and was anxious that in wanting to end this relationship, this might be what she was doing.  So, the question is, does ‘not resisting what is’ mean that we have to accept everything that happens and not seek to improve the quality of our lives?

This is a concern which can be a real stumbling block to people who have read this in spiritual works such as those by Eckhart Tolle and think it means that we should not create change for ourselves but stay forever in our miserable rut.

No.  (There, see, I said that word.  No!)

Saying no is not the same thing as ‘resisting what is’.  And here’s the difference.

When we resist what is, we are, in effect, saying one of the following: “No.  I don’t want this.  Something has gone wrong here.  This is not how it should be.  I’m not going to accept this.  Nooooooooo!”   It’s what psychologists call ‘being in denial’.

And the real clue that these expressions of resistance mean that we are refusing to accept what is, is that we can feel the effect of the words in our body.  If you’re on your own, just try it now and see what I mean.  Think of something you’re not terribly happy about and as you do so, say any of the expressions of resistance above (either out loud or silently depending on whether you’re alone or not).  Notice whereabouts in your body you feel a physical sensation. 

                                                                  * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I imagine that you may have felt any or all of the following sensations in your body.

• Your face scrunching up, particularly your forehead, cheeks, eyes, nose.
• Your teeth clenching
•  A wave-like feeling moving through your head.
• Your shoulders hunched
• Your arms tightening and fists clenching
• Your chest contracting
• Your stomach and solar plexus tightening
• The muscles in your legs tightening.

It is all this physical tightening, clenching and scrunching that is the indicator that these statements are expressing deep resistance to the situation you’re facing.  They are the physical manifestation of your emotional response to it.

And the good news is that you can say no to a situation without having all of these symptoms of resistance – these emotions swirling around inside you.  Here’s how. 

1.  What to do.  Consider that what you have here is a situation or a problem/situation.  If you label it simply as a problem this can cause the symptoms above to flare up.  Say to yourself something along the lines of:  “Ok.  So this is how it is.  Let’s look at it properly”.

Why this is effective.  These words express acceptance of what is happening and create a state of equanimity in your mind.  They are allowing you to start to move towards the problem-situation without fearing it.

2.  What to do.  Ask yourself:  “So, what’s good about it?  What can I learn from it?  What is it showing me that I need to pay attention to?”  Think about these questions carefully and jot down as many answers to them as you can.

Why this is effective.  These words are creating a sense of curiosity within you, which continue the journey inwards towards the problem-situation and  start the process of exploring what the situation has to offer you – things that perhaps you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

3.  What to do.   Spend some time looking at the answers you’ve jotted down and use these observations as the basis for your strategy as to how to handle the situation.

Why this is effective  It is keeping you firmly in the place of acceptance of the situation and is creating    a great platform for you to work with it and make whatever changes to it that you feel would serve you better.

Why is this is three-step process so effective?   It demonstrates quite powerfully that an emotion is the body’s response to a thought and shows how you can choose your emotions by choosing your thoughts.  It also keeps you rooted in the present moment of experiencing just how it is.  The present moment is where love lives and where there is love there can be no fear.

If during stage three you decide that the most effective path is for you to make some changes to the situation, walk away from a relationship, look for another job, move to another area then this is probably the right decision for you.  In contemplating any of these actions you are saying no to the situation as it is, but you are saying this from a place of acceptance and not resistance.  You are accepting that it is in your life and, after considering all the implications, choosing not to allow it to remain there.  The effect on your body is entirely different from that which you experienced in the exercise a few moments ago – and it is this difference that is so crucial to your wellbeing and to the effectiveness of your strategy.  It is also crucial to the wellbeing of the planet – but this is the subject of another article.

And one last thought about saying no.  When you say no to something you are saying yes to something else.  When you say yes to something you’re saying no to something else.   So, in saying either yes or no, consider what these contrasting statements are.

In finally deciding to walk away from the relationship with the man whose behaviour she did not want to be around, the woman I was talking to, was therefore saying yes to herself and to her life.

Have you ever noticed what you do when you feel bad; fearful, angry, resentful, worried – anything that you might describe as ‘emotional pain’.  Do you groan, wince, sigh?  Perhaps all of the above, or variations thereof?  And, then what do you do? 

Perhaps you try to get out of that uncomfortable space as quickly as you can by diverting your attention and thinking either about what has caused this feeling or about something else entirely.  Do you ever think to yourself; “Hmmm this is interesting!  I’ll think I’ll stay in this place and continue to feel this feeling for a bit longer.”  Probably not.

Perhaps you do though.  If so you will doubtless have experienced the great Healer that abides that space and the gentle, powerful transformations that can occur there.  Amazing and unlikely as it sounds, healing happens right in the centre of pain.  Remember the yin yang symbol which means that everything contains the seed of its opposite.

As human beings our innate conditioning is always to move away from pain and towards pleasure and we do this instinctively in all painful situations just as we would instantly withdraw our hands from the burning stove.  It’s an instinct that works well for physical danger but does not serve us well either for the physical pain that results or for emotional pain.

Let’s look at the physical pain first.  When we’re in the grip of any kind of physical pain our natural tendency is to resist it in a variety of physical and mental ways such as writhing, tensing our muscles, clenching our teeth, grimacing, screwing up our eyes, holding our breathe, asking ‘why me?” or wishing it would go away.   But can you remember an occasion when you momentarily ceased this resistance and just ‘went into the pain’ and felt the sensation of it, almost as if you were observing it rather than being the victim of it?  If you can remember a time like this then you will probably remember that the pain seemed to lessen during those moments when your attention was focused on the experience of the pain rather than reacting to it.  The nerve cells were almost certainly functioning as before, but instead of resisting, your attention was fixed on the physical sensation; following the rhythm of the throbbing feeling or watching to see how far the shooting pain travelled up your limb and this was kind of interesting to observe. 

You might think that it helped because you had taken your mind off the pain but actually it was the opposite – you had consciously put your mind onto it.  And from a physiological point of view this act of directing your attention towards the pain like an interested observer of it, automatically relaxed the muscles of your body and slowed your breathing which aided in the pain relief. 

So we can see that going into the pain can help to ease physical discomfort.   How about emotional pain?  Well it works in very much the same way.  When you are fully and mindfully experiencing the sensation of pain you are in the present.  Not in some unhappy past memory when you experienced a similar pain or in a wishful, future pain-free place but sitting peacefully in the present moment.  And this is where the healing and relief is to be found.  Emotional pain is exactly the same.  When we resist it by remembering a past time that we felt something similar or projecting forward into the future when we anxiously wonder if it will persist or hope that it will have disappeared, we are ensuring that it will persist.  When we move towards the pain and choose to sit with it, in the transforming, restorative present moment we are imbuing it with the power to dissolve it. 

What I have just described is a process that can work as a stand-alone method for dealing with physical or emotional pain.  But in the coaching process I use which I draw from some of the findings emerging from quantum physics we can apply this idea a little differently.  When we direct the mind-that-is-in-the-brain into the body in this way we are connecting with the mind present in the whole of the body, which operates very differently from the mind-in-the-brain. The body-mind doesn’t try to label, interpret or attribute meaning to its experiences – it just experiences them, fully in the present moment as we have just seen.  It is the mind-in-the-brain which with its habitual drive to describe, summarise and tell a story about what is happening to it, is responsible for most of our human suffering.  The body-mind has a different kind of story to tell, one that doesn’t refer back to the past but just tells it how it is.  And if we let our body ‘speak its mind’ we can hear the story, usually expressed in metaphor but very direct and simple.  And when we witness this unfolding of the story, somehow the magic happens and the body just ‘gets it’.   It just understands the source of the pain and in doing so, the pain dissolves. 

We are mysteriously and wonderfully made and it is when we connect with our innate, inner abilty to heal our emotional wounds that we are free indeed!

It was nearly twenty years ago that I was first introduced to this branch of science called quantum physics alongside something else called ‘systems thinking.’ Having failed pretty dismally in chemistry and physics at school I was not exactly a natural aficionado for any kind of physics, let alone quantum physics – or quantum mechanics if you want to sound even more obscure, (though, I must say I did love biology).

But strangely enough quantum physics really grabbed my attention and I could straightaway see that it was a model for the interconnected way the world works and the interconnected way that, we as humans, fit into it and function biologically and emotionally. And it changed the way I saw the world and began to affect the way I lived and responded to the things that happened in my life. At around the same time I also began practising Reiki healing, flirted a bit with reflexology, discovered the joys of meditation and was developing an increasing interest in all things spiritual – all of which brought some pretty amazing people into my life. And the further I walked along this spiritual path the more and more magical my life was getting, which was the best bit.

So, when, as a management consultant, I found myself running workshops in areas such as personal development, stress management and assertiveness I began shimmying some of these quantum-based ideas into my training material. The workshop participants seemed to ‘get it’ quite intuitively probably because it was rooted in modern science and they were more prepared to listen to it than if I was spouting some flaky new-age mumbo-jumbo. I would frequently receive letters and cards from clients, often months after a workshop, saying that the tools that I’d introduced them to were really working for them. And, as well as becoming a workshop junkie myself (taking all sorts of weird and wonderful courses) I was constantly discovering new and exciting books in a whole host of related disciplines – all of which seemed to be saying the same thing as each other, but in different ways: almost as if they were different facets of the same diamond of truth.

Sometime later I moved into the field of leadership coaching and was totally bowled over by how powerful this process was in enabling people to change their thinking and behaviour patterns and start to live the life they wanted. Because the quantum concepts had become such an integral part of the way I saw the world and dealt with my own issues, I found myself, quite naturally, blending ‘quantum thinking’ into my practice, alongside the standard coaching methodology. And I was gobsmacked by the results.

This is how Quantum Skills for Coaches started life!

The book and DVD are available at bookshops and online at Amazon.co.uk and www.bookdispensary.com (click on link to open)

Looks like a binary number. So does today’s date. And October 1st and 10th will too. Here we are in this new decade where the energy is shifting quite dramatically and the planet is stepping into a new version of itself. And, as above so below – the same is true of its people. So many folk seem to be stepping into a new version of themselves; into a new adventure. Though for some, if the new chapter is not welcome it may feel as if they are stepping out into the void.

My husband and I stepped into our new adventure last summer when we moved to the astoundingly beautiful, astoundingly rocky and astoundingly blue south west of France. And it did feel for a while as if we’d stepped into the void as we dealt with the myriad of practical hurdles that obligingly presented themselves for our growth. It’s feeling a lot more like home here now and the warm welcome we have received from our delightful neighbours has captured our hearts. So the adventure is is full swing – tally ho!

“And He pushed them, and they flew.”