The word “integral” speaks to many aspects of our work.

• The methodology integrates teachings of many movements, traditions, fields of study, and people. These include somatics and embodiment, adult development theory, neuroscience, ontology, integral theory, numerous spiritual traditions, and many other influences.
• Integral Coaches view each client as an integrated whole: someone who is shaped by their history, circumstances, relationships, and environment.
• We support our students and clients in living in a more integrated way: bringing our full selves to every part of life and experience more fulfillment as a result.
• We believe development happens not only through insight but through integrating those insights into our bodies through practice.

The International Coach Federation is a membership organization for trained professional coaches worldwide. They award accreditation to both coaching schools and individuals who meet the standards they have set.

An ICF credential is not a requirement for calling yourself a coach or offering coach training. Some organizations require this for internal coaches; other coaches feel that it adds prestige and credibility for them to carry the accreditation.

ICF credentialing is distinct from being certified as an Integral Coach through New Ventures West. There is an extra step required to obtain your ICF credential. The good news is that New Ventures West is an Accredited Coach Training Program (ACTP) with ICF. This means that if you train with us you may go on to get your ICF credential via the ACTP path—all of the requirements for your credential are met by our program.

Narratives are an important aspect of an Integral Coaching program. They are usually in the form of metaphors intended to help the client feel into their current experience of the world (current narrative) and what is possible for them through their development (deeper narrative).

A very simple example of a current narrative might be a firefighter: the person os constantly tending to others’ emergencies at the expense of their own wellbeing. It can feel like the world is on fire. A deeper narrative in this case could be a ballroom dancer: moving with the rhythm of life and in harmony with others, joyful and secure in their own experience. The deeper narrative reflects the client’s authenticity, or essence.

Part of the purpose of the coaching program that follows is to help the client move from a felt experience of the current narrative to the deeper narrative.

Clients and students of Integral Coaching are invited into various forms of self-observation: a precise study of our habitual behaviors and responses that up that point have been running unconsciously in the background. It is only through noticing these patterns that we can begin to change them. As the client engages the practices that are part of their coaching program, they notice how these tendencies begin to shift.

Over time, the client embodies this skill of noticing their way of being, consciously making shifts to get them back on course. This is self-correction. In most cases, this continues to be the case long after the coaching program ends. This is self-generation: the client no longer depends on the coach—or even on a formal coaching program—to continually grow and deepen.

The dictionary definition of somatic is “relating to the body as distinct from the mind.” We have long believed—and science has long proven—that our experience as human beings is largely body-based. Wisdom originates in the body, trauma is stored there, and our experience of life reflects and is reflected by how we move through the world.

Though all this is true, much of our world still operates in a head-first manner, stemming from the Cartesian credo “I think, therefore I am.” Integral Coaching challenges this primacy of the mind and cognition above all other sources of wisdom by emphasizing embodiment: being aware and operating from our experience living in a human body.

We also pay close attention to our clients’ somatic experience through observing body language, behavior and habits, and inviting them into physical practices that promote their growth and development in an embodied way.

Development is distinct from improvement. In Integral Coaching, we are committed to our clients’ development—deepening their capacity not to do more, but to be with life as it unfolds. We develop characteristics of compassion, spaciousness, self-love, awareness, discernment. Development is about aligning with the natural process of being alive, and with the longing to express what is coming forward in us.

Development isn’t a linear, driven process. It’s not about identifying a goal and heading unstoppably in that direction, which tends to be the spirit of self-improvement. Instead, it is growing in the direction of our fullest expression.

In this sense, Integral Coaches are like gardeners tending to this growth in clients in that we are not forcing or strategizing about their development; rather, we are coming alongside the client’s natural process of unfoldment.