Wellness is the complete integration of body, mind, and spirit -- the realization that everything we do, think, feel, and believe has an effect on our state of well-being. ~Greg Anderson To answer the question, "What is a holistic life coach?", one must first start with the question, “What is a life coach?” A life coach is someone who helps individuals, couples or groups with their problems. The goal is to assist people in finding solutions to make their lives better. Life coaches usually have specialized niches. Some focus on business; some focus on nutrition; others focus on love and romance. My focus as a life coach is on healing: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Rather than using the generic term of life coach, many life coaches create a unique name for themselves such as a Financial Prosperity Coach or an Academic Success Coach or Integrative Health Coach. It helps clients better understand the focus of that coach’s specialization. On the practical side, specific titles also help with search engine optimization and promoting one’s business. There is no official certification or licensing for life coaches. When I decided to become a life coach, I investigated getting certified because that certification designation on a website adds credibility in many people’s minds. However, if you see a life coach who says they are certified, that often just means they paid money to an independent organization. I could start a life coaching certification program today and start certifying life coaches myself: There’s no oversight. Many life coaching certification programs require no more than a financial donation (usually $75+), and then they provide you with a certificate saying you’re certified. A few do require some kind of training before the certify you. Overall, though, life coaching certification means absolutely nothing. What matters more with life coaches than certification is their life experiences, their training, their personality, and their natural abilities. So what makes a holistic life coach different than a life coach? A holistic life coach focuses on the mind-body-spirit connection that exists in each of us. We are not just logical beings who live in our brains. We’re emotional and spiritual beings as well. Stress affects our body which affects our mind which affects our emotions. While many of us would like to just take a painkiller and make that pain in our knees go away, but often such attempts fail because they don’t also work at eliminating emotional trauma or issues behind the pain. In trying to treat a human as a fully compartmentalized being as our society does, one fails to see the interconnection within us. Many of us would like to believe that our brain is in our head and is generally separate from our heart which is in our chest. We’d like to believe that our heart is an organ that pumps blood. However, science is slowly coming to realize that organs do far more than just a physical job, and the brain is not the only source of emotion and thought in our body. One of the ways this is coming to be understood is through organ transplants. It’s not uncommon for individual recipients to take on qualities from their donors without realizing that those traits belonged to the donors. Clearly demonstrated in those cases, more happens with organs than just physical function. A holistic life coach, then, works to integrate all parts of a human together in order to achieve healing and success. Holistic life coaching recognizes that we are souls with bodies, not bodies with souls. This approach to healing can succeed when other ways fail because it looks for a variety of root causes, not just what is obviously on the surface. I feel very blessed to be able to help others heal on so many levels. It’s always amazing to work with people who are willing to take the leap of faith and try something new and different. Watching the amazing results they are able to achieve when they explore new perspectives in healing is truly a sacred gift. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance There’s a saying about how all people put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. It’s a reminder that those in positions of power or fame aren’t really superbeings. They are human, too. One of my pet peeves is when people put priests, nuns, religious brothers, ministers, gurus and other church officials onto pedestals. Based on my previous experiences in life, I believe that is a mistake. Many of the shepherds are no more holy than the rest of us sheep. They just happen to be our religious leaders. During graduate school, I lived with nuns and brothers and other lay people in a large Victorian house. There also were other priests and nuns who resided in the neighboring houses which were also owned by the department. As most of us know from roommate and partner experiences, living with someone is the quickest way to learn about their faults and flaws. After living with members of religious communities who were on sabbatical and working on advanced degrees, I was 100% certain they were human. Many of them were wonderful people, but they were far from perfect and certainly did not deserve to be viewed as “better” than average person. The shared bathroom issues with one of my housemate nuns were enough to clarify that point rather quickly! Later in my life, I worked as the office person for a liberal church. The senior minister was definitely a flawed human being and a rather unpleasant colleague. I suspect he was having an extramarital affair without his wife’s knowledge or consent. He was also accused by some of the members of the board of allegedly committing acts that if they’d pursued would have been felonies. The assistant minister also was a challenging co-worker. She seemed to believe that laws and rules were things that were only meant to be followed when they were convenient for her. Her narcissism was difficult to work with, especially since she was in a role which was based on helping others. Needless to say, I found that environment hard to work in. In the same way, non-denominational spiritual leaders and gurus are very much human. I've seen many spiritual leaders who lead highly toxic lives, some allegedly even committing crimes, yet they feel free to dispense advice to others on how to live. They are not perfect, and just like the rest of us, they are struggling to learn sometimes difficult lessons in their lives. Assuming that they are holy and trustworthy simply because of their job or vocation can be a major mistake. Before you put anyone on a pedestal, nonetheless a religious or spiritual leader, remember that they are human, too. They are just as likely to err as the rest of us. Recognizing that religious leaders are no different than any other humans will help correct some of the imbalanced social privileges afforded to these religious leaders. It can also help individuals to think on their own rather than blindly following religious and spiritual leaders who may not always be speaking from a place of divine truth. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance The unofficial slogan of Missouri, a state where I lived for quite a while when I was growing up, is “The Show Me State.” I definitely absorbed that idea in my upbringing. I tend to be a skeptic about things I haven’t experienced. That doesn’t mean that I don’t deny that those things might exist. It just means that until I have experienced some things, I’m not willing to take it on the word of others that they do exist. Up until I experienced one, I was on the fence about angels. However, all it took was one experience of an angel in my life for me to cement my view of their reality. Angels might seem like ghosts or spirits in that they’re not visible to the human eye most of the time. However, their energy is very different than any spirit that has ever been incarnate. It’s much more pure. There’s nothing but goodness to it. The first time I experienced an angel, I was in one of my healers’ offices, and he was talking to me about something we had been working on. As he was talking, I became very aware of an angel standing next to his desk. She was drawing energy off of a huge chunk of rose quartz that he has in his office, and she was using the energy to heal my heart chakra. It was a powerful experience that lasted for several minutes and that rocked my world. As he finished talking, my healer looked at me and said, “Does that make sense?” I replied, “Yes, but there’s someone standing over at the end of your desk.” He turned, and as he looked at the exact spot where the angel was standing, he visibly shivered from head to toe. He looked back at me and said, “There’s someone standing over there.” It was nice to have the confirmation from someone else of what I was experiencing. The second time I felt an angel was while my massage therapist was working on me. She was working on a leg, but an angel was working on my head. I could feel its hands on me, doing what felt a lot like craniosacral work. This experience wasn’t quite as powerful as my first, but it was still amazing to feel that higher power’s energy working with mine to promote my healing. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance If you haven’t figured it out already from reading previous posts of mine on this blog, I’m about to make it explicit: There are no sacred cows here. Except actual sacred cows. Those I don’t have much to say about, though, so I won’t be discussing them. But as far as anything else goes, I’m willing to talk about it. One of the problems I see in our society as a whole is a lack of willingness to discuss serious physical, emotional and spiritual issues. As a whole, we prefer to ignore major difficulties and issues. We clamp down and shut out pain and difficulties both in ourselves and others. That doesn’t mean we’re an uncaring group of people. People care. They just don’t know what to say or what to do most of the time, and so rather than face their fears, they just hide from them. Through this blog, I hope to put a bunch of ideas out into the mainstream so that others who are seeking information and help can find it. If you have questions you'd like me to address through this blog, please ask. I want to promote discussions. I want to encourage communication. And most of all, I want to facilitate healing. Without talking about the difficult issues, I don’t feel healing can happen at deep levels. Our world needs more people who are brave enough to take on the difficulties in their lives and in the world around them. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance |
Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
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