[Michael Jospe]

Welcome! We have a wonderful mix of students from different cohorts coming together for this intensive. This will be our first hybrid intensive where we will have both in-person and online students attending. Use this space to connect with each other. Since not everyone will be at both the Gestalt and the Partswork sections, you’ll be able to connect with the whole group here.

Make sure you subscribe!

[Michael Jospe]

Hi All! Don’t forget to click the “subscribe” button above so you are notified when one of you cohort members posts.

[Michael Jospe]

Hi Everyone! Please use this forum as a place to connect and share ideas! Go ahead and introduce yourself.

In addition to this forum space we also have a Facebook Group for you to use. Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ebincl

See you soon!

[Michael Jospe]

“Such a walk is totally different from random drifting. Leaving your eyes and ears wide open, you allow your likes and dislikes, your conscious and unconscious desires and irritations, your irrational hunches to guide you wherever there is a choice of turning right or left. You cut a path that is yours alone, which brings you face to face with surprises destined for you alone. When you travel in this way the trip, like an improvised piece of music, reveals its own inner structures and rhythm. Thus you set the stage for fateful encounters.” – Steven Nachmanovich

[Michael Jospe]

James,

“One thing I hear consistently is that my clients would like to receive more “of me”…As I balance how much agenda to hold for format and experience, I am also finding it necessary to learn to balance my personal input and to have practices that help me to distill that which is true wisdom and helpful to share with that which isn’t.”

Yes, this is so well said and a deep learning edge for all coaches and guides. We are there to hold space for the client and learn that this is the client’s time and about the client’s process. And also, we are humans sitting across from each other sharing a human experience. And as much of our wounding and challenge arises out of relationship, the potential for healing and growth exists within relationship as well. We as coaches and guides are an essential ingredient to the recipe for our client’s growth. And it is a personal journey of self discovery to explore where the appropriate line is for when and how much of ourselves we share while at the same time keeping the focus and intention on the client’s highest good.

[Michael Jospe]

Maria,

“As Nature Connected Coaches, we are participating in the healing of the whole. We are participating in something ancient, known to all indigenous peoples who came before us. We are participating in the reconnection to the “respectful give-and-take with the flora and the fauna, the rivers and the hills, the sky and the soil on which we depend for physical sustenance and practical instruction” (Roszak, 1995, pg 6). We are shattering our limiting belief that we are somehow separate from Creation and inviting us back into our identity as part of the expanded I AM, the Self that includes all the natural world. Not only are we guiding clients into greater clarity and self-compassion, we are also inviting us all into greater compassion for all Beings, human and non-human. Ecopsychology roots Nature Connected Coaching into the greater vision of the wellbeing of Gaia.”

Yes! I’m appreciating your awareness and reflection of how ecopsychology brings in a greater awareness and a slight shift in our place as coaches–that we are not only holding space for the client to find their own truths and potential, but we are holding space to allow for the healing and wellbeing for all of nature, ourselves and Gaia included. All one, interconnected.

[Michael Jospe]

Teddy,

“Although ecopsychology is a powerful field of study for a coach to honor, she need not ‘throw it in a client’s face;’ rather, it can be a quiet philosophy that inspires a style of guiding which connects clients to themselves and to the natural world slowly but surely – even unwittingly. So long as a coach embraces an understanding that the mind/psyche/soul and the other life forms that inhabit this planet are one, that is enough to get going in the right direction.” …..

Yes!! Beautifully stated. Not necessarily a heady philosophy to dispense, but a way of holding relationship, a way of seeing and a way of being that infuses the space which you hold.

[Michael Jospe]

Nadine,

Again, I’m appreciating your thorough and sincere look at your own triggers as you grow from this experience. It is so natural for us to internalize the client’s experience as a reflection of our effectiveness as a coach. However, it is so critical that we learn what our triggers are and learn to watch for them and work with them so that we can stay present and detached from outcomes.

I find it especially helpful when working with a client who is experiencing a trigger to remember that I am working with a nervous system. I actually imagine their nervous system or their amygdala rapid firing because their system perceives a threat or danger, and that whatever the perceived threat is is waaaaaay bigger and older than me. This is about them. And as I recognize that I’m working with a nervous system, it’s easier for me then to see that a triggered nervous system is like a rubber band – either totally wound up tight and ready to pop, or limp and checked out. My focus then becomes about what we might be able to do to help that rubber band get back into a neutral state.

[Michael Jospe]

Nadine,

Such a powerful reflection of your experience, and sounds like this experience allowed you a ton of insight into your own process.

As you said here: “The client became activated outside the window of tolerance and got caught in her limbic loop. But I did not recognized it as such though the change was very obvious as she became suddenly very defensive, retreated into her convoluted stories and was no longer present. I honestly got thrown off and worse, likely experienced my own limbic loop, went down my low road, thus experienced my own trauma. Instead of creating safety for the client, I may have doubled down on the coaching, I became more rigid. I got lost, and that is likely what triggered my own trauma.”

I think one of the beautiful things about the trauma module and learning to be able to see a trauma response or a triggered nervous system in others, is that it can help us to objectify; to take ourselves out of the mix and recognize a heightened nervous system and to help to resource without going down the low road ourselves. Of course, this is an ongoing learning process for us all. And when we help our clients resource, we are helping ourselves resource as well.

Great reflections!

[Michael Jospe]

Sheri,

“This time for dropping into connection is helpful not only to bring the client to the state of mind for clarity but brings me there too.”

Yesss! This is so important and powerful for everyone involved 🙂

[Michael Jospe]

Hi all,

Such juicy and rich experiences you are all posting about so far! What is coming to mind as I read through these posts is the idea that one way to deepen our listening and understand what is happening for our clients is to consider that we area always working with a whole being–brain, nervous system, body and one that will naturally always orient itself towards healing and health.

If the word “trauma” gets you caught up a bit, it can be helpful to remember that we are working with a nervous system that is sitting across from us or walking with us. We all have “trauma” in our bodies and nervous systems somewhere. One thing we are looking for and listening for is where our client’s nervous system is in that moment–are they within a window of tolerance/in a coachable space? Or is there opportunity to invite grounding and resourcing to help bring their nervous system back into that learning, creative, curious window of tolerance.

[Michael Jospe]

Great to be reconnected, Sam! Welcome back!

[Michael Jospe]

Thank you Wayne!! Glad you enjoyed it. The recordings are now up! Keep me posted.

[Michael Jospe]

“Becoming a genuine individual requires learning the oppositions within oneself. Those who fail or refuse to face the oppositions within have no choice but to find enemies to project upon. Enemy simply means a “not-friend;” unless a person deals with the not-friend within they require enemies around them.”
― Michael Meade

[Michael Jospe]

Hi all, I just posted an updated version of the recorded session (found in step one). I realized that I forgot to turn on my screen share again after the 7-stairs mediation, so I included the slides I was referring to. I also added an additional slide about Partswork, and uploaded an audio-only version of the 7-Stairs mediation.

Good luck with the Programming work!