Do you ever feel “stuck” in some part of your life? Like you’re on some existential hamster wheel, unable to actually make progress no matter how hard you try? Don’t beat yourself up about it – it happens to all of us at some point. If you feel like you can’t get ahead, you should think about enlisting the help of an integrative health coach.
Although integrative health is still a fairly young field, many clients have already found ways to improve their lives with the help of a coach. Let’s look at what integrative coaching is, what coaches do, and how to choose a coach to help you move forward and achieve your goals.
What is Integrative Coaching?
In simplest terms, an integrative coach helps an individual or group achieve their life goals. This often pertains to their overall health and wellness but can also focus on other parts of their life, like their careers. Coaches develop creative, individualized approaches to help each client in all kinds of unique scenarios.
A coach needs to form a partnership with their clients to achieve these goals. This relationship shouldn’t have any weird power dynamics that put the coach in charge of their clients. Instead, the power lies in their clients. Coaches help clients unlock their own innate healing abilities through self-care.
Integrative coaches focus on four interlocking practice areas: mind, body, spirit, and emotions. Here’s how they all break down.
- Physical: Physical health can cover a pretty broad area. Obviously, it covers concrete aspects of health like strength or endurance training. But it also incorporates other parts of real-world wellness, like career trajectory.
- Emotional: How feelings affect overall wellness. Also includes your relationships, not only with other people but also yourself.
- Mental: A person’s thought processes, their mental patterns, and how they perceive themselves.
- Spiritual: Connection with the natural world, awareness of existence and how a person fits into it.
What Do Integrative Coaches Do?
That’s all good, but what do coaches do for their clients? I’m glad you asked!
Many life coaches simply have conversations with their clients to help them process what’s going on in their heads. That’s not the case with integrative coaches. Instead, these types of mentors take a hands-on approach to helping their clients change their lives.
This includes helping clients make plans for overcoming their hang-ups and moving forward in their lives. Suppose you’ve previously worked with a traditional counselor and found that their approach leaves something to be desired. In that case, an integrative coach might be just what you’re looking for.
Breaking Free and Overcoming the Past
One of an integrative coach’s primary jobs is helping clients reprogram themselves. This may include processing some event (or multiple events) a client has experienced to help them overcome their past traumas. Finding a positive way to work through these traumas and release them can greatly impact a client’s overall wellness.
In addition, coaches can help their clients overcome their destructive habits. Often, these habits stem from one of the traumas a client has experienced. But this isn’t always the case. Regardless, a coach helps clients escape these self-destructive cycles and focus their energy on positive habits. This is one of the biggest ways a coach can help their clients work towards the life they want.
How to Choose an Integrative Health Coach
If you’re searching for an integrative coach to help you move your life forward, you’ll want to look out for five main traits. While none of these are necessarily dealbreakers, they’re definitely factors you should consider when looking for a qualified coach.
Are They Trained?
While there can be plenty of wise, effective coaches without formal training, this is more of an exception than a rule. If a coach has received some training, it shows that they’re serious about their craft and they’ve learned about certain health and wellness paradigms.
Do They Have Previous Experience?
Along similar lines as our previous point, you’re going to want to find a coach with some real-world experience. Integrative coaches can only learn so much from their training programs. A coach with extensive training and zero real-world experience may not have the perspective you need to develop an action plan and improve your life.
Do You Connect With Them?
This is one of the most difficult factors to appraise before you start working with a coach. It’s also one of the reasons that free consultations are so important (more on that in a minute). If you don’t connect with a coach, opening up to them and being honest about your needs isn’t easy. And if you can’t do that, you’ll have a difficult time developing an action plan.
Does Their Process Work for You?
This is probably a no-brainer, but if you aren’t in tune with an integrative coach’s counseling process, you’re not going to get much out of it. Instead, you need to buy into your coach’s process and believe it can lead you to a better life. This is probably one of the most difficult factors to consider before spending time with a coach. Still, there are absolutely some parts of a coach’s process you can look at before you hire them. For example, some coaches only offer in-person sessions, while others only offer online classes. Make sure you’re choosing a process you can commit to!
Do They Offer a Free Consultation?
You can only learn so much about a coach by browsing their online listing or website. To get a feel for them, you will need to have a conversation. You’ll be able to tell fairly quickly if you and your potential coach connect with one another. If a coach doesn’t offer a free consultation, it’s definitely a red flag.
Finding the Right Integrative Coach
If you’re searching for an integrative health coach, your search is over! As a trained Somatic Release practitioner and a Psychedelic Informed Coach with real-world experience, I’m ready to help you begin living your best life. Want to learn more? Let’s connect! Reach out to me to schedule a consultation – it’s entirely free.
I look forward to hearing from you!