Approach

Approach

 

Integral Coaching®, Carl Jung’s Depth Psychology, the Tavistock Process Approach, Mindfulness, and Yoga underlie my work as a Leadership and Personal Development Coach, which I combine with my qualifications and experience in business, psychology and mental health.

My coaching services are an integration of my knowledge, experiences and personal and professional development up to this point in my life. A consistent thread weaved throughout is my dedication to deep work, practice, intentionality, professionalism and integrity. I care deeply about partnering with my clients to make progress on what matters to them.

Integral Coaching®


“Integral Coaching®is a discipline that enables clients to become more aware of their current approach to situations, to see new possibilities and then build sustainable new competencies to achieve outcomes that deeply matter to them.” - Integral Coaching Canada

Integral Coaching Canada is a sort of martial arts training for the mind, heart, and spirit. It is a coaching school unlike any other and its founders, Laura Divine and Joanne Hunt, are true masters in the field of coaching and human development. What started out as a small boutique coaching school in Ottawa, Canada has now become a thriving global coaching school with training programs offered in Canada, USA, Europe, South America and South Africa. I first discovered the school by chance, having found some of Joanne Hunt's writings online and felt an immediate resonance. What a gift it was to discover a school in Canada as my journey towards becoming an Integral Master Coach™ brought me home, to my country of birth, but also to the roots of myself.

We each have a unique way of perceiving ourselves, others and the world. It’s like a pair of glasses that we put on each day as we wake up and don’t even know that we are wearing. The lenses of these glasses are usually unseen by us because they are the worldview through which we make meaning of ‘who I am’, ‘who you are’, what ‘things are’, when all is ‘ok’, and when all is ‘not ok’ etc.. Our lenses have a particular structure that defines what we uniquely can see (and not see), actions that we think are available to us (and those that are not) and ways we check for how things are going (am I ok? are we ok?) – all of this forms our way of being in the world. 

Rather than ‘out with the old and in with the new’ the Integral Coaching® method recognises that a client’s current way of being never entirely goes away but rather that aspects of it live on inside the clients next level of development. As such, Integral Coaching® is a ‘transcend and include’ method.

So what does this mean in real terms if you are a client? As an Integral Master Coach™ I aim to understand how you have been approaching your coaching ‘topic’ - the thing that you are having a hard time achieving or reaching or that you feel stuck with - up until the time we first meet and continually thereafter in all its iterations. Together we identify and work with long-standing patterns while building your ability to move in different directions – since both occur at the same time. Through this approach we develop greater conscious recognition of a past way of being and in doing so we are loosening it’s grip. Simultaneously we are creating new ways of moving forward. These new ways call for development, letting go, progression and breaking new ground. And so some ‘sweat’ is involved. As you come to see yourself more objectively you become increasingly able to shift into healthier, more productive, and more expanded ways of being in your life. In essence, your development during your coaching program will include integrating the healthy aspects of how you have been approaching your topic until now as you develop new competencies to support an expanded new way of being in that topic. And in the middle of all of this sits some natural developmental creative tension (the sweat, tears and joy), a very necessary part of the work we do together.

Integral Coaching® Outcomes include:

Awareness: Newly gained and deepened self-awareness and the ability to self-assess and self-adjust.

Embodiment: New competencies are sustained over time.

Generativity: When new areas of development are identified, learning and new competencies gained through a coaching program are called upon.

Carl Jung’s Depth Psychology 

“At the heart of Jungian analysis is a realignment of conscious and unconscious aspects of the personality with an ensuing creation of new values and purpose.”(New York Association for Analytic Psychology). Carl Jung viewed the unconscious as a place of great creative potential and energy. He believed that our ‘stuckness’ in old patterns hinders our ability to integrate our creative potentiality. His process of Individuation explained our human drive to live out and express our full unique potentiality.

Jungian Psychology in Organisational and Leadership Development, also referred to as Depth Psychology, is about working below the surface of behaviour to better understand why people behave in certain ways. The role and purpose of Depth Psychology in leadership is to understand the possibilities hidden in people; to determine or discover the processes by which they unfold; and to develop practical pathways with which to broaden people’s growth.

While I am not formally trained in Jungian Psychology, this school of psychology greatly informs my coaching approach as well as my general way of being in the world. From 2003 to 2015 I was in weekly Jungian analysis sessions, a deep and transformational psychological journey into getting to know my unconscious. My work in analysis is what has enabled me to be able to notice and to be conscious of the places in which I get stuck, where I feel blocked, when my energy gets drained, when my Ego is at odds with my Self, and where I know that I am out of alignment with my authentic self. This has deeply aided me in attuning to clients, in listening more attentively, in asking more powerful questions, and  

Often this shows up in various forms of anxiety which in the past I would have felt confused or overwhelmed by. These days I feel I’ve learnt to befriend my anxiety as it’s often got a lot to tell me about where I might step next in a way that is healthier and truer to me.

Tavistock Process Approach

The Tavistock approach involves working with the hidden dimensions of organisational life and assisting people to see the links between the different layers of the system. In this approach my work with the individual is embedded in our awareness that they are a part of a larger system- their organisation, community, and society. Our work together is an exploration of the interface between these multiple and dynamic systems in their life.

Yoga and Mindfulness

As a yoga practitioner, as a coach, as a mother, and as a human being I sense the subtle energy of myself and others by observing how we flow or don’t flow and by listening for what is said and what is not said. In yoga our patterns are constantly triggered and through practice we have the opportunity to observe ourselves. We can become less identified with ways of being if we can observe ourselves. If we can observe something in ourselves we can then create space to get distance from that which we observe. If we can observe ourselves then we are no longer whatwe observe. If we can observe our thoughts then we are no longer thosethoughts. Yoga offers us the opportunity to observe ourselves while on the mat and to stay present to what we observe through our practice. And through yoga we can learn how to meet that which comes our way with more conscious awareness and mindfulness, presence, grace and acceptance.

All of us have very busy minds. Yoga teaches us to reign in our busy minds through diligence. It helps us to access and connect with our intuition, the beautiful stillness of our knowing….that which is always there if we stay still long enough to notice it. In yoga we have the opportunity to surrender our body and flow; to feel the subtlest vibrations in ourselves. And even this is a covering of the absolute stillness of the centre of our being, of our essence.

Mindfulness is the art of being in the present moment. It is not necessarily hours of meditation or weeks of silent retreats. It is about being present to the moment when you wash dishes, feed your children, greet a friend, share a meal, or listen to nature. Mindfulness can be practised in a zen garden or in your bathroom. It is bringing as much conscious awareness to as many moments of your day as you can. And it isn’t possible every moment of every day. Our minds wander, to the past and to the future…it’s what our minds do. Mindfulness is bringing our minds back, when possible and with consciousness, to the moment that we are in. As many times as it takes. This is the practice of mindfulness. I try to practice it regularly when I sit to do homework with my children, when my husband shares about his day, when I am doing one of many household chores, when I walk or run in nature, when I swim or when I eat. Yoga, meditation, martial arts…these are all incredible practices for deepening our experiences and availability of mindful living.

If you are interested then please do contact me