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275 - Joel Monk: Essential Tools for Coaches in These Times · Coaches Rising

• 0:00
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to share some thoughts about somatic coaching, the body and coaching, the soul mate and coaching, and why I think it's so important in our times.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I used to say that for me, somatic coaching was so relevant for our times, but now I don't say that anymore.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I say it's essential for our times.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think,
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the moves we're being invited into is to reclaim the intelligence that is our embodiment.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And actually, I think that's a nice way to say it because so often we talk about my body as if we were somehow separate from our body.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, we are our embodiment, which is deeply intimate with our experience.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this intelligence, this wisdom that lives in our body, is actually, for me, the transformational arena that we can enter into as a coach, actually, if we have big insights and great ideas in our coaching, it's actually not enough if we want to support our clients to create lasting change.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: actually lives in our bodies and the tissues and the muscles, and actually there's an intelligence to that shaping.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a way that we are biologically wired to learn and to grow and to respond to our environment and that shapes who we are, and actually a lot of that shaping then drops out of our conscious awareness.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know that way we respond when
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We answer a room full of people, or when something challenging happens, it's habitual and it drops out of our awareness.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that frees us up to be able to learn new things.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, we can begin to tap into that same process in ourselves and with our clients.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: By expanding our awareness, our attention into our embodied life, our embodied experience.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a great wisdom that we have access to.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in our times, I think it's even more important
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It goes without saying these times are there a lot and if we are only living inside of our analytical minds, our rational minds and I don't want to denigrate those but if that's the only place we are with its tendency to reify experience to fixate on things to abstract or experience out of the livingness of life.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: What happens when we do that is actually we again we disconnect from this web of intelligence and this flow of life and we tend to take land even more in a sense of orienting to control and safety and analyzing our experience so our bodies are vessel.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: within which we can navigate the uncertainty of our experience.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is an intuition as a knowing in our bodies that allows us to navigate life.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually where our deepest cares and sense of purpose and I would say in Solomon begins to take root as we do our deeper work.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a place where we can listen and attune to life.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: To what comes next, to where we might want to go to a decision we want to make.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And not only that we can actually metabolize the intensity of our experience, the harmonizing force of presence, which comes online as we deepen in our embodiment, is such an essential gift for us.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our presence itself is deeply intimately connected to our sense of embodiment.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So not only in the moment is our embodiment, a intelligence within which we navigate life, and that we can attune to more and more, but it's also over time the place
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: where as we do our deeper integrative work, our sense of embodied contribution and purpose begins to live.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think in our times, we've been called into that deeply in response to the world.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: AI is another factor why I think embodied coaching is so important.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I was reading one of the, I think it was the Chinese thought leaders in AI,
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: who was challenging whether large language models would reach human intelligence.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not an expert in that, whether it will, it won't, but one of the arguments was that our embodied experience is something that actually guides and informs and is part of our intelligence.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So any kind of coaching which
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: stays at the level of ideas and knowledge which AI can do far better than us, it's going to become redundant.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now what's left over, well it turns out actually a vast territory which is exciting and thrilling are embodied human experience, what makes us truly human.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it turns out that I think there's a way in which our unfolding, our growth, it activates human to human when two embodiments come together.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: and we can refine that capacity to hold that kind of space and to help our clients journey deeper into their embodiment where so many of our gifts come online.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to offer you one journey, one frame here,
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: that is interesting when looking at embodied transformation.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the somatic arc of transformation that distrusts the institute.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Offer.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wherein, we might say, those are current way we are shaped by our experience.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that shape affords particular outcomes.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It allows us to take action, certain actions and it closes down other actions.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: it closes down our perception and it's attuned to certain kinds of perception.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's all fine but it where that becomes topic is when our clients or ourselves when we have a deep care or a deep longing maybe we change work into a new position and suddenly that shape no longer is enough
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: for thriving in our new environment or with helping us to create what's most meaningful to us.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this invites us on a journey.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in this arc, one of the first places we go to is clarifying a commitment and embodied sense of commitment.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: What am I committed to?
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: What am I a commitment to?
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: even in clarifying that commitment and stating it, it will reveal where we don't feel aligned with it.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It will reveal parts of us that don't feel aligned with it.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a gift because
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: then we can include those and meet them.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in this arc, we move on from commitment to condition tendencies.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stacy Hayne spoke about these in a recent master class we did.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are the ways that I habituated that are soaked inside of my muscles and tissues that habituate ways I respond to life that actually have that intelligence inside them
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: so we can begin to surface those, and then it's not that they're wrong but actually to meet them, to hold them with care and presence and love.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: and this can lead us into what they call somatic opening, where we enter into an unbounded space, a space between shores, between our old shape and our new shape, and we don't want to rush through this place.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: In some ways we might say collectively we're in a
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: an unbounded somatic opening right now where we're questioning so much about the ways we've created life and the ways we collaborate and the institutions that we have and it can be an uncertain place, it can be a scary place sometimes and it's a place of potential.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a place of emergence.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Moving further, we can start to articulate some practices that are embodied.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And these practices help us to embody a new shape.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's important here is we don't start out with embodied practices to cultivate a new shape from the mind of what we think, but we move through this process of opening.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then from their new embodied practices, crystallize.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'd like to share two practices that you can do with your clients.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is very foundational when you're with a client and they're talking about their topic.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: you can begin to invite them to experience how it lands in their bodies, particularly as they talk about the central, challenging part of the topic.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's showing up in their bodies as they talk about it?
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: How does that body shape in reaction?
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do they collapse?
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do they lean forward?
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do they move away?
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you can begin to help your clients.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: increase their awareness, their embodied awareness around their reaction to these experiences that often are challenging around the coaching topic.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as you do, the key, you're bringing the coaching topic into the present moment.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where we enter really into that transformational arena, into the present moment, experiencing with curiosity and care, with no demands that anything change, what's here.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the key here is we want to allow very gently our clients' experience to reveal itself as we contact it.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then new insights, new senses and body senses will arise that can become part of the coaching conversation.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Practice number two, invite your client to think of a moment when they felt deeply joyful, deeply alive, touched.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: go to a memory and be in that memory, experience yourself inside of it.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stay in the memory and experience your embodiment, your attention, can rest in your feet, in your calves, and your pelvis, and your belly, and your chest, and your back, and your arms, and your head.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Notice the sensations.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: pay attention to how your body talks to you in this moment, and let your client soak in it and purify it, and give it an unusual name.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: One person, I remember, recalled the birth of their child, and the words love bomb came up.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you can use this feeling, this quality, when you want to make a decision.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does it give you more of this feeling?
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over time,
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your client will, or you will develop capacity to follow this sense of what brings you joy, what brings you meaning, what amplifies this feeling.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening and I will be back to you again at some point.