What is Somatic Coaching?
I'm glad you asked. Before we can get into the somatics, let's start with coaching.
What is a coach?
In essence, a coach is someone who helps you get better at something. There are coaches for pretty much anything. Sports coaches, career coaches, health coaches, financial coaches, you name it - there's probably someone who offers coaching for it.
The coaching I offer can be seen as life coaching or personal coaching. I coach people who want to get better at living, better at being a whole person. Living more in line with your own design and purpose, living with less anxiety and stress, living with ease.
Not all coaches are the same
Some coaches will tell you exactly what to do. That can be super helpful if you're learning a new skill or trying to improve your performance. Say your goal is to do a muscle up in CrossFit or learn how to trade stocks. In this case, you really want your coach to tell you what to do, so you get to the goal faster without injury or losing a lot of money along the way.
Personal coaching, the way I practice coaching, doesn't give advice. I believe that you already are the expert at being you. And so does the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the professional body to whose standard I have been trained. As personal coaches, we're there to ask you the right questions and keep you company, so you can cut through the noise and remember the things that have always been there, but maybe got lost along the way.
As your coach, I'm your partner on your journey of self-discovery. I'll create a safe space for you to explore big and small questions you might not have asked yourself in a long time. I'm here to support you, I can help you read the map, but you are always in control of where you're going.
Now, what is Somatic?
Somatic is a fancy word that means body-oriented, coming from the greek word Soma for body.
In today's world we're very focused on the mind. Our culture and technology have made us very good at thinking, and they also got really good at controlling our thinking. Everything is explained, proven, analyzed, optimized and documented. Our job roles are getting more and more specialized and automated, which it's great for control and oversight, but not always great for creativity and humanity. Our feeds are curated by algorithms to create optimal engagement, which is great for advertisers, but can overwhelm our minds and create anxiety and stress,... Our thinking mind works by telling stories. Many of them aren't our own stories, but the ones we hear at work, in the media and from our peers. And the most dominant stories we tell ourselves over and over again, even when we're lying in bed trying to sleep.
Somatic practices simply mean getting out of the mind and into the body. By moving, feeling, and sensing our bodies. If you go to the gym, enjoy running, yoga, breathwork, or meditation, you already have some sort of somatic practice.
Somatic coaching with Jonas
In somatic coaching, we come back to the body. The bodymind goes directly to the feelings and sensations, it makes sense in our present experience. That allows us to momentarily turn down the volume on those endless replays in our mind and feel into the change we desire. Often simply being with those emotions and sensations can start to shift things. Rather than numbing ourselves with our glowing rectangles, or substances that take off the edge (food is a substance, too), we choose to keep our feelings and sensations company.
A somatic coaching session with me is a bit like a curious conversation. A conversation you're having with me, and also a conversation you're having with your body. At times I might invite you to get to up and move, or maybe to see how it feels to close your eyes for a moment and notice how something feels in your body. Sometimes we might simply take a nice breath together, and sometimes we might laugh or shed a tear. You're always in control of where you're going and what you want to explore, I'm just there to keep you company, ask a question or two and suggest things we might do to connect with the wisdom you already hold in your bodymind.
Often you can start to feel the shift during the coaching session, sometimes things snap into place a few days after, and sometimes it might take a few sessions to really get to the root of things.
Radical change - change that starts at the root of things, your stories, beliefs, feelings and sensations - is change that lasts.
Slow down with me, feel into the shift you desire. What are you looking to change in your life? And how are you feeling? Let me know.