Our coaching for resilience approach involves working holistically – involving mind, spirit, and physiology within a positive reinforcement framework (as opposed to diving into the story or trauma, or meeting the issue ‘head on’) to enable your whole system to stabilise and increase its capacity for resilience.

Resilience is the ability to healthfully deal with life’s challenges – from small disappointments, setbacks, and stress to major change, trauma, and disaster, and maintain or quickly return to balance.

Resilience leads to greater happiness, more peace, and increase resourcefulness and creativity.

When dealing with challenges – of any kind, our bodies respond in various ways – such as preparing for fighting, running, or shutting down, to name the most common.  These responses are useful when there is an imminent threat to our well-being, but if they stay activated for more than a few minutes, they can become disruptive and even harmful and unhealthy.

Before any coaching intervention can be effective, your whole system needs to stabilise and return to autonomic balance.  From a balanced stabilised state, a new perspective and changes are not only possible, but arise naturally, and often without further intervention.

Why conventional approaches are often ineffective

The conventional coaching, counseling, or therapy approach is to deal with the issue head on – using cognitive and analytical processes to seek solutions and desired change.  Often this doesn’t yield deep insights, or extraordinary outcomes, and one makes slow, incremental changes.  Importantly, this type of approach starts from an unstable, unresourced state, so an extraordinary, beneficial outcome is even more difficult to achieve.

There are at least 4 reasons why the conventional coaching, counseling, or therapy approach based on dialog (e.g. discussing the challenge, related impacts, potential solutions, etc.) is not very effective.

1.  You are in a ‘reactive’ state

You are trying to address the issue from a ‘reactive’ emotional state, mental perspective, and biological state.  A  shift of your mental and emotional state is needed, and your nervous system may need to be stabilised in order to see the issue from a more resourceful, creative perspective.

2.  Possibilities are limited

The field of quantum mechanics explains that when we focus on something – such seeing a problem from a certain (maybe habitual) perspective, we literally eliminate all other possibilities.

3.  Neurons that fire together wire together (neuroplasticity)

If we see our challenges as problems, risks, or anything uncomfortable or threatening, we reinforce certain ‘negative’ neuropathways and thinking that may have contributed to the challenges in the first place. Unchecked, these neuropathways get stronger (harder to change) and are likely to be outdated, unproductive, and limiting.

4.  Communication between the brain and body is afferent

Neuroscience research now explains that the communication between the brain and the body is 90% bottom-up (afferent).  This means that the body is doing most of the ‘talking.’  The quickest, most impactful, and sustainable way to change the brain (such as creating new perspectives, solving problems, releasing old habits, updating beliefs, releasing fears and other difficult emotions) is via the body.

What is the body saying?

The body responds to our every thought, and communicates via sensations and emotions.  We are always seeking safety and comfort (including pleasure), so our behaviours can be seen as strategies for seeking safety and comfort.  Without conscious sensitivity to our bodies’ responses, we can become reactive, and develop stories and beliefs around our discomfort.

The body holds unresolved emotions, traumas and stories, and is a learning organism.  If it learns that shutting down or ‘being small and invisible’ is safe and effective, it will continue to ‘run that program’ long after it has been useful.  Certain situations that may be similar can automatically activate the program.

The body’s threat response network – also called the autonomic nervous system, is always scanning the environment (both internal and external) for potential threats).  It is a primitive system, and does not know the difference between excessive worrying about an unpaid bill, and a dark shadowy figure following you down a deserted street.  In both cases it releases chemicals into your brain and body to prepare you to fight or run.  It can hijack your higher thinking processes (which can be experienced as brain fog), and your lower primitive brain takes over.

In coaching for resilience, you will:

• Experience a greater sense of well-being and balance
• Resolve issues and challenges with less effort from a more balanced state
• Learn how to support your body to return and remain in greater autonomic balance
• Learn how to quickly reduce intense feelings of stress, anxiety, and emotions
• Experience being able to influence and change your external environment
• Improve your performance at work
• Improve the quality of your relationships
• Improve your health and sense of well-being

Coaching structure

To get the most benefit from Coaching for Resilience, it’s important ‘maintain momentum.’  We are actually ‘re-training’ your nervous system to become more balanced and resilient, and developing new neuropathways that need to be re-inforced to become established.

We recommend a minimum of 3 – 5 sessions, with a 7-10 day interval.  the sessions are approximately 1 hour in duration.

Cost

The first session is $140, and subsequent sessions are $125 per session.

• No horseback riding
• No horse experience required
• Horsemanship techniques are not taught

Anyone can participate irrespective of physical or fitness limitations, including those who are fearful of horses.

Contact us for an obligation-free discussion to determine if this coaching is for you