All of us have important parts of us that we’ve needed to edit, cut off from, or push into conformity, like the proverbial square pegs in a round hole, to get by in an unbalanced world full of trauma and disconnection. Letting those parts come back into their full expression takes time, but it’s that very process that allows us to feel fulfilled in our endeavors, as we make choices that are much more aligned with all of who we are. Although not everyone can commit to a very long term coaching trajectory — which might luxuriously allow the fullness of your complex, individual process to come to fruition inside the shared space of our sessions — the principle of giving your unique inner constellation space to reveal itself, and allowing its organic timing, guides my work even with short-term clients.

Practically speaking, in coaching together we can focus on a specific issue or project and just work together for a set number of sessions, work in an ongoing rhythm, or meet on an as-needed basis. We’ll take into account your budget and life situation to choose the time commitment that works best in your case. 

Our sessions together will consist of free-flow discussion, as well as body-based, intuitive, creative and energetic practices to help support your direction of change and integration.

In all cases, a core tool for our coaching work will involve using your astrological birth chart as a map to guide your next steps. Our focus is to use this insight such that your choices bring you ever deeper into alignment with the core themes your soul desires to explore and master.

Why Astrology? 

I didn’t always use astrology in coaching. But as I saw how incredibly helpful and effective it was in my own life, I began to incorporate it with clients. Personally, it allowed me to see certain serious blind spots that led me to making the same mistakes over and over again. Learning the symbol-based language of astrology gave me the literacy and the orientation I needed to move in the direction of my own evolution — and away from those repetitive, draining, soul-sucking wrong turns.

Since I began to use astrology with my clients, a few years ago now, it has proven to be an invaluable language to articulate the seasons of their lives, as well as the essential needs and purpose of each part of their inner universe — especially clarifying those of the parts we touched on above, which have needed to edit themselves to survive.

There are many schools and approaches to Astrology, which is an ancient discipline aimed at deeply understanding the correspondences between the big cosmos “out there” and its twin mirror within our inner world; as well as the world of our earthly experiences. In this way, astrology affirms a worldview of complete interconnectedness. 

I practice a kind of astrology known as Evolutionary Astrology, which holds that we, as souls having an embodied experience on planet Earth, are looking to grow, develop and evolve through specific existential questions which are reflected in the positions of the planets at the time of our birth. It also outlines some of the gifts and “raw material” that we came into the world with, to develop through experience.

Note that here I’m not saying our life experiences are pre-determined by those planets. Neither is our identity or behavior! This is a kind of astrology that focuses on the questions or archetypal themes we must face with full awareness and creative agency, for our souls to feel nourished and satisfied by the life experiences we’re having. In this way, it’s very much like a roadmap: a tool to help us navigate to where we’re wanting to go, but which can’t ever dictate either how we experience the journey or what we do when we get there! That is all up to us. And yet, the important caveat is that, rather than following received wisdom (even if it’s truly valid in principle) to guide our growth, we each have specific instructions for life that are only for us.

As you learn to get a feel for how to use your astrological chart to navigate turning points and decisions, you’ll be able to rely on it for the rest of your life.

Personal and Professional

You may be getting a sense already that, with all the above, coaching with me can mean many things depending on your individual situation. Some clients would prefer to mainly focus on their personal or relational growth, deepening their awareness, self-understanding, general joy and ease in life, and becoming more vibrant moment to moment. Other clients really want to “put something out there”: build a soul-based business, begin their work as teachers, healers or intuitives in their own right, create a body of work as writers or artists, or give form to a socially transformative mission— or take their current project or work to a new level. Let’s call this latter aim (loosely), professional goals. 

Both these tracks, personal and professional, are absolutely welcome! If you’re considering working with me in either direction, or both, we can definitely explore them. The process of building something from our hearts to share with our community is one of those powerful soul-crucibles in life that transforms us with every step. Because of that, if you’re considering coaching with me to support your professional or vocational mission, we’ll still root our work in the wholeness of your inner world, by including your personal development at every step of the way. 

My Coaching Philosophy: Holistic Development

Holistic refers to a container that’s inclusive of the heart, mind, body and spirit, as well as the web of relationships and the specific life, social and ecological context we’re nestled in. 

While you, as a client, will bring specific goals and areas of focus to the table, my approach is to see those goals in context of all parts of your experience, inspire you to understand yourself in that same way, and in our work we’ll resolve obstacles and chart next steps only in this inclusive way.

In this approach, progress takes more of a spiral path, as opposed to a linear “problem (or goal) — action—solution” model. I’m not a fan of some models of traditional personal development that portray change as a matter of top-down discipline and willpower, which ends up applying (undue) levels of force and control. On the contrary, I hold that true, soul-level development happens from building a caring relationship with all parts of ourselves, with life, and with others. All of this adds up to sustainable change.

I feel there’s already more than enough control in our world, and better yet, I feel like our western culture’s drive for excessive control is damaging for each of us individually and for the well being of humanity and our planet. These top-down approaches can work great for some situations and contexts, but for long-lasting development,  I believe in supporting your inner self-organizing, self-sensing systems to come forth!

 In fact, much of my work with clients in coaching takes inspiration from the tenet that “the problem is the solution”.

In other words, “problems” and “limitations”, when we engage with them with curiosity, an open heart and mind, and a philosophy of play, creativity and compassion, can prove to be the very doorway to our soul’s path. First and foremost, that means that within the very thing we’ve defined as a problem, we might find the creative raw material to a better place in life. We lean into the very things that we’ve first spotlighted as the issue, but from a more integrated perspective. Other times, we don’t solve the problem, but engaging with it, dialoguing, exploring what it brings to our attention, we grow in wisdom to the point we experience the original stuck point as a non-issue. Or we grow our outer life, prompted by the emotions and needs the problem signifies, in broader, more expansive directions, such that the original problem has now been counter-balanced to the point that it no longer causes pain.

In keeping with all this, the way I hold the container of our coaching sessions is by both welcoming whatever is here-and-now with you, and holding the thread of our existing trajectory as the context against which we place every new “puzzle piece” of development into its emerging spot. Our discussions can range extremely far and wide, and be super animated and joyful, or deep and profound. As we do so, I‘m always tracking “where you’re at” in your bigger arc of development — even if we don’t directly discuss that arc in a particular session. As I notice meta-level themes that arise for you, both in relation to your astrology and your goals and process, I’ll gently keep directing our shared attention to us tackling your next step, whatever that may look like. 

Coaching vs. Therapy, and Addressing Trauma

While coaching can have deeply healing side-effects, it’s not intended as a healing modality for trauma or mental health issues, unlike therapy.

Where therapy and coaching overlap is that in both modalities the client connects with their inner world to gain insights felt “in the bones” , so as to move forward in a way that truly reflects what’s within them, making aligned choices and changes.

Coaching, however, focuses on present- and future-tense building and creating, where therapy often takes us into the past and to understanding the roots of our hurt so as to transform and grow beyond it. In coaching, client and coach are undertaking a shared “creative project”; in therapy, the therapist and client are forming a kind, compassionate relationship to help the client heal and “level up” how they relate to themselves and others.

It may be that what we’re building inside coaching are healthy habits, or small daily steps to form a holistic, expanded perspective, or a greater understanding of our inner worlds; just as it can be about creating outer-world projects and goals. It’s about putting our soul’s desires into tangible reality as mature, evolving people — oftentimes, that means accepting the places where we’re wounded and gently de-centering the healing focus as we create a more positive, meaning-filled life with the parts of us that are feeling stronger, more capable and empowered. In this way, coaching and therapy can be great allies, as seasons of building and creating can alternate with seasons of healing, or work side-by-side. 

That all being said, sometimes it’s healing that must take center stage, and without it, we truly can’t move forward. Here are some rule-of-thumb ways to evaluate if you’re at a place where coaching can help:

• You can “afford” to feel challenged:
  When we’re in a place where our wounds are crying out for healing, what we need first and foremost is validation and affirmation. We may have no inner resources to be challenged to try hard things (beyond perhaps the “hard” of daily living), or to be challenged in our thinking models, just like a very physically ill person doesn’t have the bodily resources to run a long-distance race. In coaching I aim always to hold a validating, affirming space, but I do challenge my clients to try out perspectives and experiences that take them into uncertainty and which call for courage and grit as well! Consider if you’d welcome being challenged in this way, as much as you’d welcome validation. If so, then coaching might work for you!

• You know at a sufficient level that you’re OK:
  You don’t need to be ultra-secure to jump into coaching, but it helps immensely to have a basic feeling of OK-ness with yourself which you’re not looking for the coach to prove or disprove. As a coach, my first assumption is the basic goodness and dignity of my clients. I have known some clients who, because of the hardship and pain in their past, had felt as though that very basic goodness was always in question, and who were looking for signals of me thinking they’d “failed me” or that they should be ashamed of themselves in the coaching process. In tandem with the question of validation vs. challenge, they felt as though unless I was only validating, there must be something they’d done wrong, or as though they couldn’t “show their full selves” in our space. This is a very normal way to feel when we’ve been seriously humiliated and hurt, especially by authority figures. Unfortunately, it defeated the purpose of our coaching work, as we couldn’t make headway into their desires and goals because of a shaky foundation in which their basic goodness couldn’t be established as a “solid ground” to build upon. This is a great example of where therapy can be the perfect space to (re)learn that basic goodness of self before jumping into the challenges of coaching.
  
  
• You have some time and energy to dedicate to implementing changes. As I mention above, our trajectory can certainly be slow and spiraling, however, if your daily life is taking up all of your energy and then some, it might be hard to make any headway toward your goals in coaching (and yes, “slowing down” could be a coaching goal! 🙂 ).
  
  
• You’re here for the process first, rather than in a state of urgent “need” for solutions/outcomes/results or looking for a quick fix.
  
  
• You’re driven by an inner sense of inspiration, meaningfulness, joy, hope, optimism, even in the face of personal or global darkness.
  
  

My background as a coach is both trauma- and neurodivergence-informed. That means both these aspects of a client’s life, when applicable, are welcome to show up in sessions and for us to explore them as they connect to all of the rest of their life-ecosystems.

The way we can do this safely despite our space not being a therapeutic one, is by taking a bit of philosophical distance, where we focus on understanding themes and dynamics, rather than digging deep into the emotions and relationship narratives of specific traumatic experiences. We also tap into the client’s body-wisdom to guide our navigation.

Especially when it comes to trauma, the above-listed factors (especially a basic foundation where you feel OK-enough rather than in an ongoing state of fear, shame or overwhelm during our sessions) need to be in place so that if we explore trauma-related themes, we can do so safely within your emotional and nervous-system resources. If you’re not there, that’s totally OK! I may be able to make suggestions for therapeutic modalities to explore with other practitioners, or perhaps we can still work together in other ways. One way I’ve worked successfully with clients in their healing is that in coaching we take the big-picture, bird’s eye view that allows them to reflect on the ongoing process, helping them to direct it intentionally— almost like becoming one’s own “project manager” in healing.  If you’re not sure if coaching would be right for you, feel free to reach out.