Previously, I had mentioned taking a Somatic Coaching course from my long time mentor coach, Tijen Genco. It just ended and I thought I’d post a review of it, as it was excellent and exposed me to a ton of modalities and possibilities.
Somatic coaching moves the center of learning from the head into the body, giving you and your clients access to all aspects of your intelligence—intellectual, emotional, and physical.
Strozzi Institute, https://strozziinstitute.com/somatic-coaching-certification/
I like the definition that the Strozzi Institute uses. In my recent coach training, we focused on the intellectual and emotional aspects. What was missing was the use of physical aspects to enhance the coaching experience with our clients. While some of us touched on this in our interactions with the mentor coaches, we never dived fully into this type of coaching.
I resonated strongly with this concept from my previous work as a personal trainer and diving into many rehab and prehab disciplines. Thus I jumped at the opportunity to see how I could meld the physical with the traditional coaching techniques I had just learned.
There was both breadth and depth in topics. The breadth involved an introduction into a wide variety of disciplines and techniques. These included:
- Sound healing, music, chanting, singing bowls, chimes
- Reiki healing
- Yoga for ailments
- Chakras
- The Meridians and Traditional Chinese Medicine
- Meditation
- Visualization
- Emotional relationships to physical conditions
- Coaching inquiry with a physical component
The depth involved mostly using yoga poses for ailments, aligning with Iyengar Yoga for ailments in the book, B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health, and Yin Yoga techniques from Sarah Powers’s book Insight Yoga. We studied the 12 main meridians, emotions and conditions associated with them, and then yoga poses to help stimulate and improve energy flow in them. We enhanced the practice with the addition of sound, meditations, and visualizations. We also built upon our traditional coaching techniques by using those techniques alongside the discoveries from the yoga and meridian work.
I thoroughly enjoyed the learning! Due to my previous personal training work, I found it straightforward to apply these techniques. Having recently finished my coaching course, it was also straightforward to add in traditional coaching inquiry to this method.
We all needed at least one practice client. With mine, I chose someone who had more overt physical conditions and a sensitivity to them. I also thought it would be easier to work on someone who already has a body awareness rather than someone who needs to be made more aware, during this learning process.
I chose to apply the techniques gradually. In earlier sessions, I only deployed one yoga pose and used it as a way of inquiring. I then added sound, in the form of a singing bowl and appropriate music. From here, I moved to different meditations and visualizations, along with adding more than one yoga pose. Towards the end of our many sessions, my practice client noted a unique result, that she felt completely pain-free for the first time in any recent memory!
It was clear to me that this was a powerful modality! I don’t think I’ve ever gotten someone to completely pain free with any other method I’ve learned. And that was applying only part of what we went over.
I am now in the integration phase, going back over the many concepts we went over. Pandora’s box is also open now, and I’m looking into pendulums, more singing bowls, different meditation styles, energy medicine techniques, and a yoga teacher certification. To some, this may seem that I’m diving into the occult. That may be true to some viewpoints, but I also want to acknowledge that I’ve had first hand experience of the effects of some of these modalities, which is why I want to learn further about them. I do acknowledge that there are some techniques where I have not had first hand experience of effects. I call that a lack of resonance which is totally OK. Not everything needs to be resonant with everyone, nor be effective. And the world is very large so there is room for different methods and philosophies.
I do also want to say that in my work with clients, I have often hit plateaus in their progress. I’ve taken a wide variety of techniques to find solutions for them. However, they still hit plateaus. Now I am looking into other ways of proceeding with them. I moved from purely physical disciplines in rehab and movement, to nutrition coaching. Then I discovered health coaching, which led me to the broader discipline of life coaching. And now I am delving into energy related disciplines, and the relationship between emotions and physical ailments. These modalities are allowing me a fuller set of solutions that I can bring to bear on a client.
I would highly recommend this course. It helps if you have previous knowledge of traditional life/health coaching techniques, have a familiarity with yoga (or better yet, if you are already a yoga instructor), and have familiarity and openness to energy techniques like Traditional Chinese Medicine, the chakras, Reiki healing, and sound healing. I personally benefited from having worked in personal training for so long and was comfortable with cueing and checking a client’s body position or technique.
I am not sure when it will be offered again, but check Genco Coaching for updates, and you can always contact Tijen to see if she would be willing to offer the course again soon. It helps if you can help gather together a group to form the class.
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