Editor’s note: Wellness Word is an informational column which is not meant to replace a healthcare professional’s diagnosis, treatment or medication.
What is Mind Body Coaching and how can it change the world?Â
Coaching is an evolutionary approach to managing and taking responsibility for your life. It’s looking at all of life’s ups and downs as rituals that are sacred and meaningful to you and celebrating the living part of life.
Therapy can help you process the past and what has happened, coaching allows you to celebrate the present, what is truly available to you now, and consider what is possible for the future.
Traditional methods of therapy and counseling can work hand in hand with coaching, giving individuals, especially those who have experienced trauma, a wrap around system of support for recovery and resilience.
Coaching is also about mindset. When I say it’s evolutionary, I mean it’s using the mind as your number one tool for creating growth and change, beyond our habitual ways of thinking.
There are circumstances in life that we do not have control over, but the one thing we can always control is how we think about what is happening. This process of thinking on purpose or mindful thinking, takes work, practice and awareness, and will change your life in amazing ways.
When we begin to think in alignment with results we want in our lives, emotions and actions fall into place helping us creating those results.
The trick is, you have to be aware that thinking is a choice. So much of what we do is on auto pilot because of repetition, it seems as though we don’t have a choice of how to respond because we have conditioned our own beliefs.
Since beliefs are just thoughts you think again and again, then we have the capacity to believe anything we want if we change our thoughts accordingly.
For example, you may think “My boss never gives me positive feedback. He doesn’t care.” It can makes you feel unimportant. You work at a slower pace and as a result, your work quality suffers.
If you change just the thought to, “My boss has such a hard time giving compliments, I wonder why?” Or, “I love the work I do so much, I don’t need external praise to know it’s amazing”, then you can see how emotions, actions and results will be different in the later scenario.
There are countless thoughts available to us. Why we default to pick the worst-case scenario much of the time, is based on what our brains were used for when our survival was constantly threatened. However, we no longer need to live in fight or flight mode. Practicing thinking on purpose with believable thoughts is an exercise in free will.
Mind Body Coaching offers tools to make the process of thinking on purpose easier, enjoyable and creating an overall more satisfying life. This isn’t a practice to white knuckle through, it’s a process of softening our rigidity to change, and embracing the fact that we too are of the Earth and require attention to the changing rhythms of our life and cycles of our journey.
One powerful tool for mindful thinking is active listening. This changes how we interact with others from how we support our most intimate relationships, to how strangers respond to us.
So much of the time in conversation, we are either just waiting for our turn to talk, not paying attention or already moving on to the next task in our minds. Active listening is just that, doing nothing but listening to the other person, fully engaged with all of your senses, it means you care. It is an opportunity to experience empathy, a truly adult emotion that will make a difference.
As humans in a western culture, we are in GO mode, rarely powering down when our batteries run low. Slowing down to look at the inner workings, the uniqueness of our truest essence takes a practice. Having a consistent practice is one thing that will help create a calmer life, a more abundant future and ultimately more world peace. This is becoming more of a priority in our culture and is important for the welfare of our societies, children and the world at large.
Taking responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings and actions and empowering future generations to do the same is the way to change.
Mind Body Coaching creates a sacred space where you can begin to know your mind and body and experience your divine sense of self.
Mary Wagstaff, can bee contacted at yogafiedsoul.com
