Of course, you are wondering: so what is Soul-based Coaching? Let me share some client experiences to help your understand what Soul-based Coaching is, and how it works.

For one client:

It’s wanting to start a business, and finding herself holding tight to a rescue buoy, with an island in the distance, but she isn’t sure she can swim that far. Step by step letting go of the rescue buoy, finding out she can swim to the nearby rocks, even if that’s not her destination of choice. Climbing up the rock that seemed lifeless, to discover it’s teaming with small life. To find a secluded plateau where the sun warms her and she can rest for a while. Discovering a pathway that makes her onward journey easy, and supported with food, water and shelter. Realising that it will bring her to the island in an uncomplicated, and safe way. And she realises she already started the journey!

These are the journeys that we take people on. Every journey is unique, as it is coming 100% out of the client’s mind/body/soul system.

They travel in metaphor, as metaphor is our primary ‘operating system’. It is where our soul and our physical everyday experience meet and find they speak the same language.

It is where we invite our client’s to go, to be surprised by the way they navigate their experience. 

For a coach in training:

It’s noticing how scared she is because of the abyss in front of her, with it’s no-good rope bridge, while her garden, the one that she want to grow to share its fruits with the world, is at the other side. It’s where she tries the bridge, absolutely petrified, to only find herself back on the solid ground again. It’s when she suddenly finds herself a female Indiana Jones, with a monkey on her back, and a long whip. And while she is trying the rope bridge again, a lantern appears, with a light that is her soul light. And she finds out that that light can come inside of her. And somewhere on this journey, the walls of the abyss are suddenly starting to move closer together, and that continues until she can easily walk across it to head to her garden and start the work that people are waiting for..

And even though it will not make sense to you, it makes complete sense to them. It is expressing exactly what they are experiencing, and it incorporates all the parts of them that are not aligned yet with what they would like to have happen in their lives. 

As a Soul-based Coach, we know how to Hold Space, and direct our client’s attention so that this journey starts to unfold.

And when it unfolds, and the landscape starts changing, so does that operating system. 

For another coach in training:

It’s a rose that starts to blossom in a secret walled garden, and the bees want to visit it, and there is no door yet in the wall. And there is purpose in the rose, and it is soft and opening a little further all the time. And the door has been made, and there is a space being made in the wall for the door, so people can visit and bring money. And then, something shifts and the rose is inside her body, surrounded by a shell. And she knows: when the grows grows and the shell melts into the rose, she will be able to do exactly what she is here for. Every time a little bit more melting is happening and she is noticing how she is showing up differently in the world. How she sees things she never saw before, how she says and does things she never held possible before. Until the day comes that she knows: this is it. I am doing what I am here for.

We can never predict what will happen, or how our client’s system will make the changes happen. We only know that when we do our job well, the changes will happen ~ in line with what they want. They happen in their metaphor landscape and at the same time, in their actual day-to-day experience. And even though a journey could take us anywhere, the change can be swift.

It’s up to us as Soul-based Coaches to stay fully present with our clients AND not be in the way.

To embrace all that is coming up in our clients and invite it to become part of their future.

To embrace all that is coming up in ourselves and invite it to become part of our future in a helpful way.

We see time and again that our clients are powerful beyond measure. 

And so are yours.

So why not give them them the opportunity to experience and live that. 

And there are some added benefits for you as the coach too:

• What about spending much less energy on coaching? 
• Or knowing that you don’t need to know the way to solve their problems.
• And feeling very confident that you can hold just about any change process in this way. 

The tools and skills are very effective and universally applicable, meaning you don’t need to change the way you work with a client, depending on their situation/question/frame of mind/character. Our toolbox is like that of a carpenter: it has a hammer, nails, a screwdriver ~ all the basic tools. And with it, you can make magic happen, whether the client wants a table, a house or a boat.  

Intrigued yet? To find out more about this powerful and somewhat magical way of supporting others: download the short overview What is Soul-based Coaching?