Somatic Body-Oriented Coaching 

• Ever wonder what your body is trying to tell you?
• What if you could learn to listen your body and understand its messages?
• Explore Cooperative and collaborative techniques through Somatic Body-Oriented Coaching

Somatic Body-Oriented Coaching is strictly relational. The Coach begins by creating a safe container so participants involved Sense the quality of the relationship within the environment and themselves. When all sensors feel safe and established the Coach will ask the client to share their own present insight as to what feels alive in their mind, body and spirit today. Once shared, the coach will follow a sequence of questions related to what was shared. This is done in the most gentle reflective manner. For instance, the coach may ask if he/she can share what they are experiencing from the experience of the client. EXAMPLE: “For me it feels like... I am curious what are you experiencing...… for you?” This is known as cooperative & collaborative coaching without harm or leading too quickly because we want to take attentive time to explore what is it the body is trying to tell you. Through gentle cues of questions, the coach is always guiding toward an invitation for the client to focus on what their body is saying. Too often people keep busy, distracted, and avoid staying still enough attending to what messages the body is bringing. Normally the body is attended when it shouts loud enough in pain to finally listen to it. With Somatic coaching, we pay closer attention with the practice of curiosity, where we spend more time in this arena of exploration without agendas other than to listen to the body talk.

With Somatic Body Oriented coaching there’s no getting away from the fact that we have to do quite a lot of work on ourselves and not just from conceptual insightful perspectives alone. We have to, as well, open up to our own body awareness and truly listen and attend to its talk. If we are not working on ourselves to learn how to relax in our own body then striving to become ourselves is very hard because we leave no room to create the freedom and the space we need psychologically to unfold who we actually are; instead, we strive to be something we think we should be. There is a saying when we swap out fear with any emotion that is considered a negative emotion. And when these emotions are not fully expressed they end up compressed and depressed in the body.

Somatic Body Oriented coaching is about getting curious, explore the self through the body’s own innate wisdom. The coaching style is to allow the client the space to spend more time in the area of curiosity. To practice creating personal safe space to honor your own intuitive feelings, images, sounds, and sensations. The purpose of body oriented coaching is to help the client become more awaken to self without conceptualized reasonings. Ultimately the outcome is to bring a larger space and awareness of their own joy and freedom, self-empowerment and learn how to practice and master living authentically.

Working somatically is learning how to focus on the “WHAT” rather than on the “HOW”. In a coaching session, there is inevitably more silence because we spend more time working with our introspection (sensing within) creating non-conceptualized agenda space for the client to receive the body wisdom. We have more Afferent nerves going from our body up to our brain then we do Efferent nerves leaving the brain into the body. The nerves that travel from the body to the brain are unmyelinated and smaller, so the information travels slower. This is why spacious silence is helpful in receiving information from the body rather than always from the brain thoughts. Also, in humans, restoration of embodied self-awareness occurs in the context of interpersonal relationships. This is a big key to experiencing a cooperative and collaborative coaching. Both the coach and client are having a relational connection that helps the body feel more relaxed and free to share its wisdom. This is called relating through our innate proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensory designed to help a living being safely navigate in everyday living in congruence with the external world. In order to feel safe, we must first build trust and rapport. This allows the client to feel heard and respected.

Somatic awareness is guided by questions without challenge allowing the client space to listen and attend to what the body reveals. By doing this, the coach supports the client by gently guiding them to drop into a deeper state of embodied self-awareness priming for more body oriented work. The intention is for the client to have access to sense more awaken attention to what comes up for them. When we safely allow patterns of behavior, relationships, emotions and thinking to emerge then we begin to see key areas for challenge and change. Embodiment gives the client a bigger picture of how they are seeing and dealing with the world. It unpacks and brings forth congruency between what is being experienced at a gut level, what is presently aware and what is expressed to the client.

Reasons for having a body awareness somatic coach is to be able to navigate the experience with acceptance caring; unconditional positive regard of the process. A Somatic coach is trained and certified to hold safe space with empathic understanding and the ability to accurately sense the feelings and personal meanings the client is experiencing. This is accomplished by communicating that understanding to the client through sensitivity and deep listening. True authentic trust and rapport is naturally built with others when we allows a genuine space for realness to emerge. Here is where the client is being transparently heard, and seen as themselves without façade and/or judgment.

Quote:

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.’ I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

A way of Being
~ Carl Rogers