Meet your coach

Integral Coaching® is a powerful way of supporting whole-person development: head, heart, and body. 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. It’s an ongoing, evolving methodology designed to be a comprehensive response to human life. It meets a person exactly where they are, considering all domains of life: individual experience, body and behavior, culture and relationship, and environment. That’s how we reach solutions that address the root of the issue, not just the symptoms. It’s a way of coaching that feels doable and creates lasting, richer growth.

While our field is constantly integrating new ideas, a few key principles set Integral Coaching apart from other approaches.

Development over improvement. Integral coaches support the development of our clients, which is distinct from solving a problem or hitting a specific goal. When we coach the whole person, we invite a deeper way of being that’s authentic to who they are, and offer practices that shape how they show up in the world.

Expands beyond the mind. Integral Coaching doesn’t treat the mind as the only source of wisdom. We guide clients to sense into the intelligence of their heart and body, so over time they can embody their insights and create lasting change.

Adapts to your context. Integral programs are crafted to support clients through the complexities of life while deepening their connection to who they are at their core. The method has proven effective across many contexts, cultures, demographics, and life stages.

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.

I also pay close attention to my 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.

The Enneagram is a personality system of nine distinct types, used for personal and professional development. It doesn’t box people in. It offers insight into how you think, feel, and behave, and explores the core motivations beneath your personality. It’s an important tool for emotional and social intelligence, and can help us understand human nature, consciousness, and each other.

The World Health Organization defines burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

In the workplace, burnout is characterized by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job (or cynicism about it), and reduced professional efficacy.

Burnout doesn’t stop there. It can happen to anyone, including parents, caregivers, and people living with disabilities or chronic illness. The stress cycle of burnout affects us physically, emotionally, and cognitively.

Anyone can call themselves a coach. ICF-credentialed coaches have met rigorous education and experience requirements, demonstrated a thorough understanding of the coaching competencies that set the standard for the profession, and been coached by a mentor coach.

They also adhere to strict ethical guidelines that protect coaching clients. Certification from the ICF means the coach:

• Has received training designed to teach coaching skills in line with the ICF Competencies and Code of Ethics

• Has demonstrated a proficient use of those competencies

• Is accountable to the ICF’s ethics and standards

Therapy is about uncovering and recovering. It can focus on the past and on trauma. Coaching is about discovering. It asks questions and allows you to find your own answers, which are already inside you, so you can uncover your truth and take action. My approach treats the client as the expert in the partnership and as naturally resourceful. Coaching is for people who are ready to invest in themselves, look beneath the surface, and actively participate in their own growth. You need curiosity, openness, and a willingness to explore what might be possible.

Coaching is a developmental partnership, not a substitute for therapy or mental health treatment.

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.

Many clients notice shifts within the first month. How quickly you see change depends on how much work there is to do and how fully you engage with the personalized program we design together. Breakthroughs come from what you do when you feel uncertain, confused, afraid, or unsettled. Are you learning or judging? Taking responsibility or blaming? Ignoring or exaggerating?