New clients are often surprised at my request to meet weekly for the first four or five coaching sessions. Some traditional coaches start this way but will more likely, see their clients once a month or even once a quarter. Somatic coaching is different, we are paying attention to very specific criteria. Let me explain.
Somatics pays attention to the body and what it is practicing. We are practicing something all of the time, whether we know it or not. This means we get really good at something we’re practicing, whether useful or not. The body learns through repetition and contrast, in other words we benefit from practicing, just like elite athletes or musicians. What we practice though, that’s important (for practice makes permanent).
Pause now. What are you doing, how are you being? How are you sitting or standing? How are you interacting with your environment? How is your body in space? What’s your mood? What do you want? In this pause, does anything intrigue you?
The big question is this: Do you know what you’re practicing? For example, one of my clients discovered they had a background mood of resentment; another realised they chewed their lips under pressure; someone else leaned away from interaction, withdrawing their chest in protective mode. Until we revealed these ways of being in a coaching session, they had no idea they were practicing these seemingly innocuous behaviours that nevertheless influenced the effectiveness in the world.
Uncovering these below-awareness-practices takes your openness and my trained eye. Once revealed, you proceed by simply (not necessarily easily) bringing awareness and attention to the practices in the moment. The next step is to pause mid-practice (oh, I’m doing that thing… again), take a breath, be gentle, and just do what you do. Then there is room for taking a different direction mid-stream, actually practicing something new that supports your ambitions.
At the outside of coaching therefore, we want to catch these practices and begin replacing them with something more useful; we want to start with those three hundred repetitions required to build new muscle memory. Just like having a personal trainer at the gym who keeps you on track in the early (gruelling) days of fitness training, having regular check-ins with me at the beginning help maintain commitment to the process of change. Change – a simple concept that’s not necessarily easy to carry out without support. That’s what we somatic coaches do, bring support to the process.
[My private practice has a waiting list at the moment, but you’re always welcome to reach out and enquire if anything has changed].