Health & Wellness

Coaching

What Is Health & Well-being Coaching?

The best way to describe coaching is to think of it like habit mastering and goal-guidance. Working with a coach means working with a guide to help you navigate behavior change.

Example: You're tired all the time and want to have more energy. Habits that might be influencing how you feel include your sleep hygiene, movements during the day, posture, nutrition, communication styles, work-life balance, environmental components, screen-time usage, how and when you eat, self-talk, and so forth. A coach helps you navigate any habit that can help or hinder your progress.

Coaches guide you to create sustainable habits that help you move toward a goal that you want. They also guide you towards a goal that your physician/provider would like to see for you; often in effort to prevent a condition that you might be on the verge of being diagnosed with, or to get the best possible long-term health outcome with a medical condition. Coaches also help you step away from habits that no longer serve a purpose in your life as well as habits that might be hindering progress toward your goals like smoking, excess screen time, sedentary lifestyle, reactive communication, and many more.

What are the main tenets of Coaching?

Collaborative partnership between coach and client
Each person naturally comes to coaching whole, wise, and capable (you, the client, are the best expert on you!)
Providing a safe place for exploration and processing
Both parties to be present, mindful, authentic, and honest

How does it work?

Come to sessions with a focus
Identify goals
Assess health and well-being in multitude of categories using various assessments
Identify and cultivate your strengths
Identify and challenge barriers and limiting belief structures that hold you back
Work with motivations, values, and perspectives
Use researched interactive methods to explore and process strategies and emotions around change
Generate achievable and realistic steps to help you get to your goals
Accountability, support, and resources with a coach

What are the (common) results?

Improved sleep and mood
Grow stress management skills and decreased stress
Enhanced communication at home and work
Incorporating healthy movement
Decreased pain and enhance pain-management skills
Chronic condition support and condition-management skills
ADHD daily living skills
Improved self-image, grow confidence and self-esteem
Improved relationships and relationship skills
Increased nourishment from both food and experiences
Improved home and work performance
Personalized work-life balance (and healthy alternatives to that model)
Feel safer and more confident in the body
Identify and understand emotions and learn to navigate them safely and effectively
Desired weight adjustments -- loss or gain -- with lifestyle modifications
Increased energy and decreased fatigue
Identify needs and get them met
Cultivate a care team for condition support
Let go or replace habits that fill a void like watching tv for hours, doom scrolling, smoking, etc

What else do you get out of coaching?

Enhanced self-awareness and -knowledge so you can make informed decisions
Improved quality of life
Learn how to effectively alter and adjust habits intentionally throughout your life
Use values to help direct motivation
Perspective shifting is easier, therefore helping you to get out of struggle easier
Learn how to navigate disappointment without it taking you down the rabbit hole
Becoming intentionally responsive, less reactive in non-life-threatening situations
Learn how to use setbacks as stepping stones
Learn how to express yourself and your needs safely and effectively

As a coach, I am not here to tell or direct you on what to do, how to be, or where to put your energy. You make the decisions for your life. By implementing evidence-backed strategies and methods, I act as a flashlight to help you see opportunities that may otherwise have been hidden or blocked from sight. Should you request health information or education that is within my wheelhouse of knowledge, I am happy to provide insight on those matters, but only with your permission or by request.

By using interactive modalities that engage your exploration, expression, and communication, you gain insight and clarity on your whole-system health and wellness. Coaching promotes self-awareness and attention to mind, body, emotions, and environment, allowing you to remember that each part of you is valid and worthy of attention.

What Makes Braided Earth Coaching "Integrative"?

Integrative Health and Wellness Coaching is a holistic, mind-body-spirit service that provides supportive navigation in health and wellbeing areas which you, the client, wish to explore. Your coaching sessions are unique to you – your needs, desires, and circumstances – as you design the focus of each session.

My studies have equipped me to have a firm understanding in both conventional, western medical approaches as well as practices that are used in complementary and integrative medicine and health. Other than in Massage and Bodywork, I am not an expert on these practices, nor am I a physician, so I cannot diagnose, prescribe, treat, or cure. I can, however, offer insight in these fields where applicable and when desired.

What is the difference between Coaching and Therapy?

Although therapists and educated coaches share a lot of similar background in understanding behavior, there are major differences that are important to clarify.

First, and perhaps most important, coaches do not have the authority or expertise to diagnose or treat mental health abnormalities or illness. We are, however, trained to see signs of mental health conditions and are required to recommend respective resources for clients.

Coaching focuses on the "here and now" and helping individuals get to where they want to be in the future, while therapy may focus on dissecting the fears, traumas, and pain of the past that affect people's behavior in the "here and now". It is not uncommon for therapists and coaches to use similar strategies when helping clients/patients gain clarity on their situation, but the unpacking of the situation and emotions differ.

With both professions, clients are offered a safe space to address their emotions and perspectives. They might even get insight into how past situations have affected a client's current behavior, but coaches will not dig deep into the past or try to treat trauma. Instead, coaches will help guide a client's perspective to see how the past might be influencing their current situation, and help clients use this information to support desired habit changes.

As a coach who is strengthening her skillset in trauma, diversity, transitional well-being, and complex health conditions, it is of utmost importance to me that I stay within my scope of practice to ensure safe care for all clients. If you live with the effects of trauma or deeply struggle with anxiety and/or depression, I highly recommend working with a therapist first (or conjunctively with coaching) before teaming up with a coach.

Let’s Work Together

Message here for any questions or click to schedule a free 30-minute Curiosity Consultation with a Mini Session