A practice for attending to this connection In the Integral Coaching community-in our purpose of easing the world’s suffering and providing opportunities for everyone to find meaning, belonging, and contribution-we are ever cognizant of that new coach’s wise words: I am not me without you. In doing so we are attending to this precious, central, and sometimes overwhelming truth: that there is nothing any of us does that doesn’t affect everyone. What is our client in the middle of, in ways they may or may not know? How can we attend to what is coming up for them? What is the feeling of this room full of students what is present in the collective field that needs attending? What is the longing of this greater community, both of people who have made their way here and those who are still looking? What is the call of the world? What is life asking of me?Įvery day, in every moment, we are doing our best to answer these questions through how we live. Integral Coaching is so much about attunement. But rather than an insistence, an injection of this intelligence into the world, it is all a response. Of course our programs are meticulously designed our faculty members are profoundly experienced, educated, and developed and there is a definite, intentional arc of what happens for students in our courses. The truth is, as we’ve been reflecting, neither do we. I can’t imagine or explain what actually happened,” or “I had no idea what I was actually stepping into.” In that certification session checkout, many students expressed some version of “I thought I was coming here for X. I am bringing it up because, in this last week of 2021 as I write this, our staff, faculty body, and wider community are reflecting on another year of challenge, dynamism, change, connection, and… mystery. Naturally, as I try to articulate this now, words are falling short. That there is not one movement, word, or breath that doesn’t somehow affect every other being we know and don’t know. What it appeared they were discovering – and hence helping us all discover in a new way – is the fact of the literal connection between all beings. It is also true that by the end of the journey, when they undergo the ritual of certification and join the international community of Integral Coaches, they feel themselves suddenly and unmistakably part of a wider web of folks who are serving the world in a particular, often mysterious way.īut this graduate’s message went beyond even those truths. It is true that students in New Ventures West Professional Coaching Course cohorts form lifelong ties early on in their year by the nature of the work and exploration they are doing. Their words were a transmission, it seemed, from somewhere far bigger than our love-filled Zoom gathering.īecause of all this, without this person needing to say anything more, we all felt what he meant in our own bodies and hearts. All thoughts seem to have emptied out of them save this one. Deeply rooted and vastly expanded all at once. They were profoundly still, a little solemn, full of wonder. Though I know this person to be profoundly wise, spiritually connected, and relationally skillful, it nevertheless seemed to be a new realization for them-evident not so much in their words but in their way of being. At the close of the session, one new graduate checked out with these words: By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West, guest contributorĪ few weeks ago I had the privilege of witnessing the certification of a new group of Integral Coaches: a powerful rite of passage that is the culmination of a year of hard work, dedicated practice, and profound growth.
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