Get to the Root of Your Clients' Challenges to Create Lasting Change
If you're intuitively wanting to take your clients deeper through their challenges to get to the root of the issues, but feel like you don't have a structure for how to do that...
...read on! I'm going to share mine with you. 😊
Using the mind-body connection to get to the root of issues is the secret sauce in my coaching method.
It may seem like the mind is where its at when it comes to coaching, because when we shift mindset issues, we shift everything. And, to some extent, that’s true.
Except, working with the mind and not including coaching tools that work with the nervous system, the brain (as in, the way it’s functioning physiologically), the unconscious mind, and awareness of the sensory experience of the body prevents you from being able to get to the root of most issues.
Why?
Let’s say you’re working with a client who is trying to stop binge eating. She’s conscious during the entire day of her desire to shift this issue, and she’s even aware of some of her limiting beliefs around food. Then in the evenings, she eats more than she wants to and feels upset.
You work with her using tools that address what is in her conscious mind; shifting limiting beliefs, creating a new mindset, and discovering what she really wants for her health. It seems like this is going to make a positive change happen for her, and it does.
At first.
Then, she finds herself falling back into the pattern again, and she’s now frustrated with herself. She thinks she's not doing the tools right, or she’s not able to master this.
Can you continue to make progress using these same tools?
Yes, but it can feel slow and arduous.
This is because all the secrets to unlocking this pattern lie in her unconscious mind, not her conscious mind.
If you help your client to tune into her nervous system, she’ll be able to notice that it’s activating into a fight/flight response regularly throughout the day, and she’s unconsciously trying to regulate it into a relaxed feeling through eating.
And, guess what, it’s working! Chewing activates the vagus nerve in a way that tells the nervous system everything is safe and she can let down her guard. The fight/flight response eases off and she feels better and even able to sleep. That’s why she’s not shifting the pattern; it’s actually a positive self-care pattern for her. (It just has side effects she doesn’t love.)
So, here we have two layers:
- The nervous system is activated throughout the day, which means it’s alerting your client to something in her unconscious mind that’s a regular trigger for her. Only the unconscious mind knows what’s going on here, so working with the nervous system will help uncover the root issue.
- Finding other ways to soothe the nervous system will help your client feel less inclined to eat food while she’s working with the other tools to get to the root of what’s causing the fight/flight response in general.
Because we’re truly unable to separate the mind and body, and often it’s actually hard to create a mindset shift when our nervous system is activated or we’re not conscious of what is at the root of the issue we’re facing.
Cognitive coaching tools are working with the conscious mind. The only problem with that is that our unconscious mind is in charge of processing most of what we learn throughout our lives and it knows why we’re struggling with whatever issue is at hand.
The conscious mind doesn’t have awareness of the unconscious mind, which is why we feel like we get “aha” moments when information pops into our conscious mind from our unconscious mind.
If we’re connecting with the conscious mind when we’re coaching a client and we’re not accessing the nervous system, the body, the brain, and the emotions, we don’t have access to the unconscious mind. (I’ll delve further into these two minds in another post as this is a big topic!)
The nervous system doesn’t speak to us in words, and we can’t speak to it in words. It needs us to talk to it in a sensory way so that it can understand whether or not it’s safe to let go of that fight/flight response.
This is why chewing works; we wouldn’t be eating a snack if we’re being attacked by a bear, so the nervous system knows that this is a safe moment.
When my daughter gets activated, I often offer her a piece of gum for this very reason. It can help her regulate her nervous system and relax out of the fight/flight response.
In my mind-body based coaching system, I’ve created tools that address this problem of not having access to most of what we need as a coach because its stored in the client’s unconscious mind.
When we say “mind-body connection,” what we mean is we’re creating a bridge of awareness from the conscious mind to the sensory experience in our bodies, the nervous system’s messages, the unconscious mind, and the guidance from our inner wisdom.
In my coaching system, I use a systematic approach to create this bridge of awareness.
We work with the body to notice its sensations, discover when the nervous system is activated, and find ways to let the nervous system know when we’re truly safe.
We work with the emotions that arise to discover what our unconscious mind is letting us know; old stories it’s holding onto from early lessons in childhood, perceptions of ourselves our unconscious mind is working from, and more.
We work with the conscious mind to help it stop looping in self-critical patterns and then connect those patterns into unconscious learned behaviors and thoughts so that the client doesn’t have to keep believing their own mind-stories.
They become aware of what’s running the show and why it’s not reality. (This requires actively changing the electrical brain activity the client is experiencing through sound, breath, and other techniques so that they can make permanent shifts, not just temporary ones, in their thinking.)
We work with inner wisdom to help the client feel like they can easily access it, trust it, and follow it so that they’re no longer making decisions from unconscious patterns and reactions, but full awareness of their needs and inner truth instead.
Because there are tools in all four of these areas; body, emotions, mind, and inner wisdom, my coaching system helps clients create lasting shifts around issues that come from working with those deeper roots in the unconscious mind.
Learning my entire mind-body based coaching method is the core of my group proam. The method, called the Mind-Body Magic Method, seamlessly integrates the client’s mind-body system in a way that their conscious mind can understand.
You’ll be able to help your clients go deep into whatever struggle they’re facing and finally feel empowered to create lasting shifts, and they’ll also know exactly what to do if the issue resurfaces for deeper healing. You’ll be coaching them and teaching them how to use the tools on their own so that they finally have a manual for their mind-body system.
You can learn more about this program and others here.