Tag: Presence
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Making Room for Integration
This article first appeared on the Mindful Leader blog in September 2021. “Along with all the growth and healing, remember to give yourself time for integration, which is a fancy word for ‘allowing sh*t to settle.’ It looks like doing nothing. This nothing is necessary.” – Emily McDowell Has it ever happened to you? You’ve been…
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Self-unification in a divided world
“In order to truly change, we have to let go of who we think we are. Early in life we had to form the ego, or the ‘little self,’ in order to protect our true self. Later in life, the way we originally protected ourselves begins to endanger the presence of our Self. What protected…
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Changing and Staying the Same are the Exact Same Process
Cyd is the person in the office who is always fixing everything: the broken printer, the scheduling snafu, the delivery gone awry. They see things that are invisible to most: the bump in the ceiling that could become a leak; the fact that you’re halfway through the second-to-last jug of water and haven’t placed the…
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The space we need to grow
This article was originally published on the Mindful Leader blog in July 2020. When folks are considering Integral Coach training, they often bring very reasonable questions like: These are all perfectly understandable scenarios, which is why it can be surprising to learn that our answer to each of these questions is “no.” We require students…
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Coregulation: the Heart of Skillful Response
This article first appeared in the Mindful Leader blog in December 2020. “If you want to improve the world, start by helping people feel safer.” —Stephen Porges Can you recall a moment in your life when you felt truly supported? Perhaps it was a session with a therapist, bodyworker, coach, or teacher. Maybe it was…
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Coyote Trickster: Embracing the Unexpected
While catching up recently with two of my wonderful colleagues, one of them asked the other what kinds of new connections she was making since having chosen her fetish. Wow, I thought, what a juicy conversation this was going to be! Yet quickly I was told that this wasn’t about the kind of fetish I was…
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Body-Centered Speaking and Listening
This article was original published on the Mindful Leader Blog in June 2021. In Integral Coaching we often talk about the three centers of intelligence: head, heart, and body. Useful across all areas of coaching, they are particularly interesting to explore in the realm of speaking and listening. Recently, I had the opportunity to spend…
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Innocence that Heals
What’s possible as we re-emerge, and my experience in a laudromat A day after a spiritual healing retreat I attended in Feb, 2020, I was at the laundromat. As the Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, says in his book, “After the Ecstasy, The Laundry”. This was about three weeks before COVID, so a pretty appropriate title.…
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Shaping Our Presence to Be More Supportive
This article was originally published on the Mindful Leader Blog in June of 2020. In these days of heightened anxiety and insecurity, many of us are drawn to be a safe and reassuring space for those who are in crisis and afraid. And, when we’re in that often unavoidable place ourselves, we’re grateful to the…
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Life as a mirror
A few weeks ago, chaos had been tracking me through my days. I felt it chugging through my veins alongside my blood cells: Urgency. Insanity. Nonsense. Annoyance. Rushing. When I get this way a particular part of me takes over: a manic, starving, prowling hyena. I am at her mercy, bending to her frightened, angry,…
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Inspiration
It is a wonderful experience when, as a coach, I can inspire a client or a student with an idea, a reframing of thought, or a practice that has them engage in the world more freely. This inspiration happens by way of some alchemy arising from the special relationship that exists between coach and client,…
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We can’t live like this anymore
During the 10-minute drive to work this week, I listened to a local NPR station’s daily call-in show. The topic was child abuse, and the story was based upon a recent BBC documentary and an article in The Guardian newspaper written by an American physician who works at a hospital in Houston. She has studied and thought…