The Certified Holistic Life Coach (CHLC) and even, Certified Holistic Nutrition Coach, will want to recognize how different and diverse holistic coaching strategies need to be. Your role becomes more than just helping clients to understand aspects of holism but you might also be tasked with helping your client to adopt holistic changes as part of a healthier lifestyle – meaning that most of your clients will look to you for advice on how to manage some aspect of their self-care or human maintenance needs. Maybe in part because they do not know how to live holistically, they may want to make a change or – for some – a health crisis drives a client to seek our help. Others might be confused about where to start.
A note before you read on…. Although this article is in-depth, it still does not cover many modalities, techniques, skill sets and knowledge that is taught and needed to become a highly proficient holistic coach. In some cases, people combine these skills with fitness and focus on holistic personal training.
We approach the coaching training lessons in the holistic life coaching course from a perspective of how Holistic Life Coaches work, emphasizing some of the skills required to be successful as a coach. But ultimately, the coach actions become more intense when holistic health requires change from our client. Managing stress, improving posture or mobility – these are just two very realistic coaching needs in the field of holistic coaching.
From a moral standpoint, whereby someone wants to be more harmonious and whole in all parts of their life. Others are coming to the coach because they need help; this client needs support and often, direction. This puts the CHLC in a leadership role and the goal is typically going to involve a fair amount of skill to help our client make changes.
This lesson explores the therapeutic interventions coaches commonly use to address changes toward a holistic lifestyle. These changes are mutually agreed upon and the key – the ideas for change MUST come from the client. The coach does not tell a client what they should change. This is prescriptive and it’s also risky. A coach caught in this mistake may end up feeling responsible for the client’s success when that is not at all the case. We don’t carry the burden of our client’s problems in our own world. An objective coaching model allows us to help and yet to do it at an appropriate level of professionalism. This is really similar to Wellness Coaching in this way but with the CHLC would also provide recommendations for a specific course of action. They would be holistic in nature.
There are so many options available for clients who are looking to encourage their own body’s natural healing properties. This is not elaborate or intricate medical science. These are simple, easy and effective measures that require very little equipment or training. As with all modes of coaching delivery, it is implied that you have tried any methods you recommend to client for yourself, first.
Rest, Recovery and Sleep
This is the most forgettable and underestimated of all the measures available for a client who seeks natural healing. It doesn’t get much more simple to say “get more rest and sleep”, but your client will most likely fall shy of what they need for optimal health. You will see that sleep or rest are both difficult elements in the busy lifestyle of most of your clients. Even clients who have the luxury of time still overlook the value of sleep. In all cases, some education for the client is in order. Begin by assessing the client’s current sleep or rest patterns.
We know that we need to keep things simple when we consider how we coach a client – but this is a goal for you to develop within the client’s perspective, delivery or methods of strategizing. In this section, we will describe some of the ways that a CHLC would approach understanding clients better. By learning how clients view their physicality, you can improve their holistic health and how the parts all come together to make a client more whole.
The Science of Personal Fulfillment and Enhanced Achievement
Clients achieve greater fulfillment, joy and success through applying an array of tools and techniques that tap into the magic of the nervous system, the mind, physiological and emotional states, energy medicine and their own inherent wisdom of their own spirit. These tools and techniques leverage the law of holism and integration.
Therefore, we will need to dive into a little bit of science to understand how to assess needs in clients who face changes in their physical dimensions. Keep in mind that many of the physical dimensions of holism also require that other (mental, emotion and spiritual) be considered as part of any holistic coaching strategies that you use.
The central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) is the controller of every single biochemical activity in your body, and is the physical (anatomical) link to our thinking minds and our spirits. It is no accident that the energy vortices called Chakras, run along our spine.
The Conscious and Subconscious Mind
Habits of thought and spoken word have tremendous power to shape our outcomes. Those who learn to harness these powers and control their thoughts can propel themselves much swifter towards their goals.
Determine what aspects of yourself (your own obstacles) that may block your client’s coaching experience toward achieving their goals.
- Emotional The emotional side of our being is directly connected with our physiology, our both our conscious and subconscious thoughts. Control of emotions can be learned. What we feel is greatly influenced by the choices and interpretations we make about our experiences. Emotions harness powerful energy to facilitate change and drive us to accomplish our goals. Learning how to choose our emotions carefully is vital to enhanced achievement.
- You will want to understand, and help your clients understand, the difference between the brain and the mind.
Spirit, Energy and Aura
Again, this is not related to a religion our client may observe. The spirit, and our energetic field (the aura of energy around your body), reflect the thoughts we think and how we live your life. Our energetic or auric field acts like a beacon of attraction to or repulsion of the things we want to experience and have. Healing, integration, and alignment of the spirit and energy self are vital to permanent change and to enhanced achievement.
Ultimately clients begin to feel measurably better, live dramatically better, and achieve a lot more than they thought was possible!
Preventing Cardiovascular Disease
Balance and harmony are the key to successful holistic approaches to preventive medicine. Consider cardiovascular (CV) health. With holism as a main goal, there must be clear and free flow of energy through the various aspects of the client‟s life. Keep this simple, fundamental dimension in mind as you strategize how to coach your client toward greater holistic health.
Herbs
The herbs used commonly by Holistic coaches are detailed in the appendix materials provided. Overall, it is common for a CHLC or health/wellness practitioner to make suggestions or recommendations that bring the importance of using herbal remedies to the forefront of any interventions or strategies that a coach might use with a client. However, we also need to highlight a range of issues that must be understood and addressed because they may go beyond the way herbal medicine can transform metabolic and physiological processes.
Nutrition must be of a quality that enables the body to create itself in a way that ensures health and wholeness.
Structural factors must be addressed, by skilled practitioners if this is indicated but also through appropriate exercise, dance or any enjoyable expression of the physical vehicle. A Bodyways practitioner (Mind Body Fitness Coach) is an excellent example of someone who would coach clients with regard to structural factors. This does not mean that all patients must get involved in deep psychology, but that attention be given in the appropriate form to that individuals’ emotional needs. But there is more.
Mental factors are crucial as we are what we think. Without a personal vision, life can become a slow process of degeneration and decay. We must make progress or fall behind our own potential and life opportunities. We know that some openness to spirituality in its various forms is vital. This may take the form of the stages of a sunset, being touched by poetry or art, belief in a religion or a dogma free joy in being alive.
The plant kingdom offers much for the CHLC who is interested in prevention. The key is not so much in specific remedies but in an understanding of the role of herbal actions in maintaining health and correct physiological activity. With the insights that the bio-medical model provides about bodily homeostasis, it should be clear that herbs used the right way will support the bodies own process of maintaining a stable internal environment. A number of actions and herbal processes should be considered when formulating a program of preventative medicine.
All of this is an important aspect of our Integrative Health Coaching course.
The concept of system affinity highlights the possibility of nourishing and toning the whole of a systems form and functioning without eliciting a specific physiological or biochemical.
The primary system tonics are listed below.
- Bitter tonics, as a group, will have a generalized toning effect as described.
- Immune support may be important.
- Cleansing and detoxification can be gently facilitated through herbal support of the eliminatory systems of the body as described.
- Don’t be concerned that all of this might seem like adding extra steps or procedures in your coaching delivery. A review of the each procedure will show how much they are mutually supportive. Similarly, with the application of secondary action and system affinity concepts, it is apparent that there is much overlap with the use of herbs to these various procedures.
To summarize the commonly used system tonics in European and North American phytotherapy:
Herbs still maintain a central position in orthodox medicines treatment of various heart problems. Plants that contain cardiac glycosides are used throughout the world for the treatment of heart failure and some arrhythmia’s. In such conditions these herbs increase the strength of heart beat, and normalize the rate of beat. Their real value lies in the increased efficiency not necessitating an increase of oxygen supply to the heart muscle. In heart problems there is often a deficiency in blood supply because of blockage in the coronary arteries. Lily of the Valley shares its therapeutic value but has fewer side effects and lower toxicity. However, herbal remedies nurture the heart in deeper ways as well. Consider the cordial (liquor), a warming drink and a word for heart-felt friendliness. The original cordial was a medieval drink based on Borage that warmed the heart and gave the person HEART.
When herbs are combined and used by medical professionals or health practitioners, we refer to them as cardiac remedies. This is a general term for herbs that have an action on the heart. Some of the remedies in this group are powerful cardio-active agents such as Foxglove, while others are gentler and safer cardiac tonics such as Hawthorn and Linden Flowers, however, it is not just Foxglove that has such valuable actions. Cardio-actives owe their effects on the heart to active substances such as cardiac glycosides, thus having the both the strengths and drawbacks of these constituents. Cardiotonics have a beneficial action on the heart and blood vessels but do not contain cardiac glycosides.
Boosting Immune Response
Our immune system is complex. So much so, that they require an intense, multilevel treatment approach. Clinical molecular medicine is a new field of medicine, which integrates environmental medicine (the study of the effects of the environment on human illness), applied immunology (the study of immune system functioning), toxicology (the study of free-radical biology and the toxins that cause illness), and clinical nutritional biochemistry (the analysis of the chemical processes that may be inefficient in cell functioning) Autoimmune disease is a problem for many people in the general population, including your clients. Some of the most common auto-immune diseases are believed to be autism, Lupus, Autoimmune thyroid disorders, Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn‟s disease/ ulcerative colitisii, Multiple Sclerosis and some of the more broad syndromes (CFS, Fibromyalgia, etc.).
The number of clients you have with one of these conditions is probably going to surprise some coaches. If you are a trainer or coach currently, you are aware of how true this can be. To be effective as a CHLC, the coach has to have the basic knowledge of the immune system.
Structures of the Immune Response System:
- Thymus gland-specialized organ of the immune system. The only known function of the thymus is the production and “education” of T- lymphocytes (T cells)
- Skin and mucous membranes Bone marrow
- Spleen Lymph nodes
- Lymphatic system Lymphocytes
- Immunoglobulins
- Interferon
One of the best ways the CHLC can strategize with a client in this group is by antioxidant therapy, which is the use of over-the-counter substances such as vitamins C and E, glutathione, beta-carotene, lipoic acid -and many others– to help prevent cell damage in people who suffer with autoimmune disorders.We can not take every dimension of holism and explore it in this format. It would involve more knowledge on nutrition, bodyways, emotional and mental health as well as physical activity and spirituality.
Many of the physical dimensions of holism presented in this course may require multiple objectives; the CHLC is thus tasked to learn how bringing a few different holistic coaching strategies together can be most effective for some common concerns seen in clients (CV disease, sleep problems, or other holistic-related dimensions). Emotional and spiritual holism is also approached by assessing what blocks the client from living a holistic lifestyle and strategizing with the client for change. The items mentioned in this chapter are drawn from the multitude of options you will face – or what you will coach through.
Again, it is normal to not be an expert in all fields, but it is good to have some fundamental knowledge, as to help coaches to feel comfortable in their strategies and approaches with their client.not your own. For you, it is clear that the awareness and education for what you are planning is vital. In this case, the CHLC would need to have intelligent discourse with the client about sleep – and would also need to know how to coach the client through changes that impact sleep. So it becomes a lot at times, and this can leave the coach feeling overwhelmed. It is best to break dimensions down into one or two manageable changes at a time There is a lot of of the most common auto-immune diseases are believed to be autism, Lupus, Autoimmune thyroid disorders, Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn‟s disease/ ulcerative colitisii, Multiple Sclerosis and some of the more broad syndromes (CFS, Fibromyalgia, etc.).
The number of clients you have with one of these conditions is probably going to surprise some coaches. If you are a trainer or coach currently, you are aware of how true this can be. To be effective as a CHLC, the coach has to have the basic knowledge of the immune system.
Structures of the Immune Response System:
• Thymus gland-specialized organ of the immune system. The only known function of the thymus is the production and “education” of T- lymphocytes (T cells)
• Skin and mucous membranes Bone marrow
• Spleen Lymph nodes
• Lymphatic system Lymphocytes
• Immunoglobulins
• Interferon
Again, everything you just read above is a fraction of what is involved in becoming a world-class Certified Holistic Life Coach or Certified Holistic Nutrition Coach. If you aren’t yet sure where to start, click this link to begin your journey.
