Health and Wellness Coaching as Part of a Healing Journey

WIMHS is partnering with Sylvia Schneider, a certified health and wellness coach. I asked her to write about her work for our blog to better understand how coaching can be an essential tool on your healing journey.

How can you benefit from working with a health and wellness coach?

If you’ve ever tried to change a behavior and maintain that change over the long haul, you know how hard that can be. No matter how much you feel you want to let go of that habit that’s no longer serving you or start a new habit that you know would contribute to your health and happiness, it just doesn’t come easily. And when you have been successful at making a change, you likely also know how empowering and confidence-inspiring that can be. If you can do that, what else can you do?

As a certified integrative health and wellness coach, my passion is walking with others on their journeys towards greater alignment with their dreams for themselves. I became a coach after going through an especially difficult season in my life that included experiencing losses and being diagnosed with an autoimmune illness, all while parenting a young child. What I learned through that time was that healing my body and spirit required becoming more aware of what I most deeply needed and wanted. That included doing less of some things that exhausted me and made me feel unwell and doing more of things that made me feel well - that is excited, energized, and confident. This led me to become a coach, where I find deep joy in supporting others seeking their own joy, meaning and purpose within (and learning from!) the constraints in their life, such as chronic illness or the demands of parenting.

Here are 5 ways I’ve seen coaching benefit clients::

1.      Get greater clarity on what you actually want and why you want it

Sometimes, we may not have the clearest sense for what we actually want, or we think we want something, and when we dig deeper, it turns out our heart is longing for something else. If you don’t do the work of clarifying where you want to go and acknowledging and addressing any ambivalence, your inner saboteur is likely to win out. When you try to make lasting change in your life, it’s also important to have an understanding of what is motivating you. When you articulate and can hold onto your “why,” you have a powerful engine to keep you moving forward. One of my favorite things about being a coach is holding the space for someone to do the powerful work of self-discovery.

2. Own your role as expert in your own life

 As your coach, I will never tell you what to do or claim to know what is best for you. I recognize that you (and all of us) are whole and resilient and have so many inner resources at your disposal. We may not always be aware of our inner wholeness and the resources we have, and that’s where it can be helpful to have someone else walking beside us who truly believes in us. 

3. Tell a new story

What holds you back from doing that thing you’ve always wanted to do? Often, it is something we believe about ourselves, the stories that we tell ourselves, that hold us back. Let’s say you have a chronic illness, and your story is filled with stories about what your body will not let you do. On the one hand, we do want to honor our bodies and the limits they set for us. As someone with chronic illness and fluctuating energy levels, I am always learning how to live in harmony with my body and to honor my body’s needs. I also know how easy it can be to believe that I am defined by an illness and how consciously re-writing this narrative (sometimes over and over!) opens the door for new possibilities. Our stories can be incredibly powerful and have the potential to harm as well as heal. Let’s write a new healing story about your relationship with your body (or whatever else is holding you back). 

4.  Make a plan for what you will do

You are much more likely to do what you want to do when you have a concrete plan. You’ve likely made a SMART goal before, one that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. We will walk through all of this ahead of time so you know exactly what you will do, when, where, and how you will do it. We will also talk about what barriers you anticipate facing. If you’ve already thought this part through, you’re much less likely to be derailed in the moment.

5. Tweak and maintain your plan for long-term growth

One of the most important roles of the coach is accountability and learning partner. Let’s say you did your plan exactly as laid out. Amazing- let’s celebrate you. What else is possible? How does it feel to do what you set out to do (and maybe didn’t think you could do)? 

Let’s say your initial plan didn’t quite go as expected. Let’s talk it through and see what we can learn from your experience. Not out of judgment or a sense of failure but with curiosity and the belief that this presents an opportunity for learning and growth. How might we tweak your goal for next time? 

One of the hardest things about changing is maintaining it over time after the initial burst of motivation fades. It can be helpful to think of change and growth as not linear in nature; sometimes we might feel as if we have taken one step forward and two steps back. In these times, a coach can provide nonjudgmental accountability, helping you see how far you truly have come and remain in tune with what is calling you forward.

Get in touch

If you’re interested in learning more, you can contact me through my website  https://www.sylviaschneidercoaching.com/