Contemplative coaching
Listening is the loudest form of love
Behavior moves attitude much more than attitude moves behavior—so how do we create the conditions for new actions?
My life’s work and my passion involves bringing psychological integration and contemplative awareness together to facilitate greater agency, empowerment, and awakening for my clients. My approach is collaborative rather than directive; needs-oriented in place of goal-focused; and empowering and non-pathologizing. I do this work because I see that mindful or contemplative practices that ignore or leave out psychological integration run the risk of becoming escapist, leading to spiritual bypassing or stagnation, while psychological integration approaches that ignore or leave out the contemplative or spiritual dimension will be limited in the depth of integration or healing they can facilitate.
I’m passionate about this work because I’ve seen its catalyzing power in my own life and practice, and in the lives of those I work with. I believe it’s important to know that sometimes we need to be willing and able to engage fully with life, and not disappear into meditation or spiritual practice, bypassing the challenges of our life. And, sometimes we need to allow things to just be as they are and release (the illusion of) control, so as to not reinforce our conditioning and our habitual tendencies to avoid pain, presence, and the fullness of life. We can learn to spot when we’re leaning one way or the other and course-correct, avoiding spiritual or psychological pitfalls and gaining clarity, agency, and freedom.
I’ve tried in the past to deal with overwhelm and stress by leaning too far first in one direction, then the other. Of course, I didn’t realize this was what I was doing! Maybe you’ll recognize a similar pattern in your own life. For a while, I overanalyzed and psychologized everything, looking for reasons, rationality, and justifications for my pain and difficulties. Seek and you shall find! When I looked for these kinds of justifications, my mind was capable of concocting all kinds of seemingly-true stories that fueled the fire and kept my wheels spinning in a victim narrative, an I’m-just-not-enough narrative, and other stories that seemed highly convincing to me at the time.
When that strategy of psychologization failed to yield the results I wanted—like an easy, pain-free, perfectly satisfying life—I eventually switched to the other extreme of meditating a lot –a lot– and imagining that somehow everything would sort itself out without me having to even show up fully for my own life. I figured things would work out for themselves; after all, I was tuning in to the frequencies of the universe, right? Obviously, that strategy, too, yielded predictable results: the universe failed to comply with my personal wishes; who could have imagined such a thing?
It’s easy to see how one extreme leads to the other. Sometimes we have to learn the hard way! I spent many years sort of switching back and forth, seeking a balance without being able to slow down enough in the middle of the pendulum swing to really find the balance I needed. I learned so, so much from that journey, for which I am humbly grateful.
Through balanced psychological work, we develop in true maturity and become more integrated, which means we are less driven by our social programming or unconscious conditioning, and better able to make space for all the parts of ourselves, in coherence.
It is one thing to focus on managing psychological symptoms or discomfort; it is very different to focus on their integration within our whole being. It can be important to work psychologically on our “stuff” if it’s in the way of our full development as persons and spiritual beings. At the same time, we by no means need to “heal” everything! We can get caught in the loop of always finding something else that needs healing before we can be “complete” or “enough” or whatever it is. Let’s not hold ourselves needlessly back!
I can help you notice your patterns, learn to cultivate compassion for how you’ve learned to move through life so far, and orient to what you really need. Much of what we’ve lived through may not require “healing” as such, but recognition, care, and attention. Making space for each thing just as it is paradoxically shifts things and makes the whole balance more easeful.
We do need clarity on what we want and what might be hindering us, and this includes addressing what’s in the way, whether through the natural shifts that come with true presence, or through more targeted psychological healing work. When we’ve attended to what needs our attention, we can more deeply, clearly, cleanly flow with the fundamental truth of who we are, behind and beneath the personality and constructed self. We are able to hold our parts in integrity and compassion. We have more access to the ground of our being.
True transformational power lies in direct experience, rather than abstractions or concepts. I will help you access and attune to your direct experience as a key part of our work together. As embodied beings, the body is the instrument of our experience. This means we will tune into the inner world of the body, with care and compassion, through different types and levels of practice, guidance, and engagement. We will always move at the pace that works for you. You can expect from me an open, welcoming attitude of truly unconditional positive regard; a respectful, attuned presence; skilled listening; and openness to what you need and what is in service of you and your process.
Part of my work is a radical invitation to shift, at least for a moment, from top-down, managerial control of your experience to a bottom-up, open-to-it-all experiencing; to let yourself be without having to be something or someone in particular; to let the sense of self shift from a self-image to a felt sense of being. This process is an unfolding rather than a “doing” because we invite transformation: we participate in it, and help create the conditions for it, yet we don’t “make it happen.”
Transformation requires integration; this calls for time and space, for gentleness, for openness. As some of our learned patterns and behaviors begin to unwind, we gain more access to our full being, and this can leave us feeling a little vulnerable. This may show up emotionally, somatically, or relationally. As we engage this process, we are asked to be gentle and compassionate with the tender parts of ourselves as we learn to be in our feelings, in our body, and in our relationships in this new, less armored way. This is beautiful, liberating, sometimes difficult work; I am honored to accompany you in the exploration.
How does this work? First, we’ll have a brief introductory chat, to see if there is a good fit between us. If we decide to work together, we’ll usually meet once a week, for an hour. I’ll ask that you commit to creating the space in your life for our conversation, and that you dedicate your full, open, quiet, and honest attention to it.
If you feel moved or curious, please get in touch or book a session here.