Distinctions

Her breathing will slow and deepen or become more shallow and rapid. Her throat will relax, preparing her voice to be in its normal range or tighten, pitching her voice higher than normal. Her pupils will widen to take in the whole situation or narrow to look for and focus on potential threat. Her eardrums will remain in a neutral state or flex to hear more acutely in the range where danger may appear.

And of course the analog of these events is happening in the coach as well.

Almost always these body events happen outside of awareness, yet they determine the depth of contact between coach and client, shape the possibilities for trust, and establish the limits and types of mutual influence.

In other words, the client senses our attunement or not. She can tell if our heart is open or not. She will detect our caring or its lack. Her body, her nervous system will relax, feel safety or anxiety.

It’s on this foundation that we understand our client or come away with a very partial, distorted view of her. Here are some predictable consequences when we don’t turn toward our client with presence and love:

• We detect the client’s subtle or obvious anxiety and become anxious ourselves, which triggers more anxiety in the client and so on.
• The client stays guarded and never gets to what is really most central for her. Consequently, the client never fully commits because the coaching engagement never seems that important or engaging or meaningful. Besides, most of us never jump into the unknown unless we’re accompanied by someone we trust.
• We decide that the client is difficult, closed, not self-aware, or maybe even “uncoachable.” What happens when our client detects all this in her own body?

So maybe you can see from this view how many of us misdiagnose what’s really going on when our coaching programs become difficult, stuck or murky.

Does this shed any light on current or recent coaching engagements for you?

To be someone who can turn toward our clients in the way described, we must ourselves be held in the mind and heart of someone who is loving, attuned and self-possessed, which I take to mean someone who is present and in contact with his own experience moment by moment. Otherwise we are either retreating, contracting, collapsing from life or charging through it fully armored, defended and ruthlessly ambitious. That’s what happens when we don’t have resilience.

How then do we live in the mind and heart of such person? I suggest an answer that is both simple and eternally challenging. Live with an open heart: open to everyone, open to all experience. Trying to open our hearts at just the right moment—when we encounter a potential partner/lover—and otherwise staying protected likely will never work. We will be too late, and besides, how can we sense the relational possibility with a closed heart?

Living with an open heart also discloses a world of wonder, richness and clarity that brings tremendous power to our coaching. Nothing can replace it: no amount of razor-sharp brilliance or charisma or persuasive/manipulative force.

To understand our client, then, we must turn to her with genuine caring so that she will respond with authentic openness, candor and courage. Genuine caring is an expression of an open heart, which we cultivate every day in every encounter with others and with experience.

Living in such a way takes a lifelong commitment, really a vow. Vows call on us to build the body, by daily practice, which can live up to the commitments we’ve made.

If you are ready to begin this cultivation, you can start with the Practice of the Quarter and also by reading the extraordinary book reviewed here.

Take care of yourself.

Love,

p.s. Here’s Part 1 of this article

• Did I keep my heart open? To everyone? To everything that I was experiencing? What was my life like from this place?
• If I closed my heart, what were the surrounding inner and outer events?
• If I closed my heart, what did that reveal to me about my current narrative, healing that’s necessary, or the present state of my self-care?
• What will I do to keep my heart open?

When I Heard at the Close of Day

Walt Whitman

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.

A Wish

Robert Creeley

So much rain
to make the mud again,
trees green
and flowers also.

The water which
ran up the sun
and down again,
it is the same.

A man of supple
yielding manner
might, too, discover
ways of water.

Mind’s Heart

Robert Creeley

Mind’s heart, it must
be that some
truth lies locked
in you.

Or else, lies, all
lies, and no man
true enough to know
the difference.

Letter from the Graduate Director

Dear Friends,

As I sit here thinking about each of you, our community and the fleeting nature of earthly life, a poem and story arose to share with you.

First:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, I 59 (emphasis mine)

And:

Abbot Lot went to see Abbot Joseph and said, ‘Father, according as I am able, I keep my rule (of life), and my fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of bad thoughts: now what more should I do?’ The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like lamps of fire. He said, ‘Why not become all flame?’

—The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Love to you all,

Adam Klein, Graduate Director

Integral Coaches in Georgia

A group of NVW alumni in Atlanta had their first meeting this spring.

Front row from L to R: Afsaneh Abrishamchi, Debra Hiers, Nancy Scheel
Back row from L to R: Rita Wuebbeler, Plamen Russev, Rubina Malik
Missing: Jim Colwick, Meredith Walters, and Linda Hipsman

The alumni Facebook group is a great way to connect with your local cohort. Email me for an invitation to join.

ICF Updates

ICF has made some important changes to their credentialing requirements, taking effect this fall. Scroll to the bottom of this page to read about what’s new.