What Is Spiritually Intelligent Coaching?

How Coaching is Practised?

 Coaching is about helping the client to create their solutions through a process of evoking their awareness of limiting factors such as beliefs and values through a process of active listening and curious and humble inquiry. Such a process can be learnt by anyone. One doesn't have to go to university or a training institution to be trained in coaching competencies. There is a natural skill all of us possess.

 While generalisation can mislead, I have observed that 70% of the trained coaches I come across listen and enquire cognitively and transactionally, even in their mastery level submissions. A few who have been trained to explore emotions pose questions such as, 'what are you feeling', 'what are you experiencing' and or canned 'powerful questions' which are rarely customised to context. However, any superficial cognitive response from the client arising from their thought process is accepted as a sufficient response. Such inquiry is often misleading and almost always useless.

 Practitioners who are trained in interventions of Gestalt, Neuro linguistic programming, positive psychology and such other techniques may try reframing client perceptions. This can be very powerful if they go deep enough and do not stop at the cognitive level. Not many use the holistic sensory and ontological techniques, which are part of these interventions.

 Neuroscience of Coaching

 At the simplest level, two of the more powerful inquiry frameworks that lead to a deeper than superficial cognitive awareness, based on how skill of the coaches, are the Non-Violent Communication model of Marshall Rosenberg and the Clean Language model of David Grove. NVC framework of Observations, Feelings, Need and Requests, used with the metaphoric and somatic enquiry process of the Clean Language model, is quite effective in exploring the emotional layer of cognition and then into the sensory somatic layer to create a true awareness of the individual's experience. These approaches are in alignment with neuroscience.

 Cognitive responses are perceptions which are twice corrupted in our brains. The metadata that we experience is sensorily received not only in the brain area, but also in every cell of our body. in one form or another. This sensory metadata is morphed, interpreted, and corrupted in the limbic brain based on the conditioned memories stored in the hippocampus and labelled as emotions in the hypothalamus and amygdala. This emotionally labelled data is then forwarded to the prefrontal cortex for a tertiary level of corruption and interpretation cognitively. Any response based on thinking is not about the data as received, but as twice interpreted and corrupted data in the brain system. This is a simple neuroscience 101 truth.

  Ancient Wisdom on Spiritual Energy Intelligence

 The observer effect, which is now a Quantum Science truth, was mentioned 5000 years ago in the Vedic scriptures of the Upanishad. The Isa Vasya Upanishad stated that all matter is energy, and as energy beings encased in matter, we mirror the creative energy of the universe within each of us, and that our infinite potentiality can manifest desires as reality.

 The Mandukya Upanishad describes awareness and consciousness of the mind as the 4 States of Mindful state, Dream, or subconscious state, Sleep, or unconscious state, and the ultimate Fourth state of being mindfree. This was articulated by Freud, Jung and others about a hundred years ago, and this was restricted to the first three states. This Upanishad also describes the four parts of the mind as: manas, sensory organs; Chiti, memory; Ahankara, ego; and Buddhi, intelligence. Such detailed division as functions of the mind has only been talked about in neuroscience very recently.

 Taittiriya Upanishad describes the energy states within the mindbody system as five sheaths of energy: Annamaya Kosha, physical sheath; Pranamaya Kosha, breath sheath; Manonmaya Kosha, emotional sheath; Vignyanamaya Kosha, wisdom sheath; and Anandamaya Kosha, bliss sheath. Another minor Upanishad called the Yoga Kundalini Upanishad and several Tantra scriptures describe the energy system of the mind, body in terms of seven major energy centres, Chakra, and 108 pathways called Nadi.

 Sensory Energy Awareness Coaching

At Coacharya, using our LASIE-SET framework of inquiry in alignment with neuroscience and the ancient wisdom of spiritual energy intelligence, we created the Sensory Energy Awareness coaching technique.

 This is a spiritually intelligent process, which can be used to inquire, explore and create deep awareness at the somatic level, resulting in awareness of emotions and cognition without a need to know anything about the context and the content of the client's situation. This guarantees total privacy and confidentiality, resulting in a far safer psychological space of trust for the client. All that the client is requested, with permission, is to observe what's happening in their body, especially in the trunk area, and express what they observe. This helps the client to release their sensory trauma, and as a consequence, the emotional and cognitive trauma in line with the 'Observer' effect postulated in Quantum Physics.

 For a practising coach, it may not be necessary to understand the deeper energy centre-based emotional connections that relate to the Chakra principles. Each other energy centre Chakra, is related to an emotion. Any trauma that we experience, depending on the nature of the emotion, is related to one of the Chakra. A negative energy causes the Chakra to shrink, resulting in physical, cognitive, and emotional suffering. We use breathing exercises and a simple energy meditation process to help energise and enlarge the chakras to heal and restore an individual's mindbody system to holistic wellness.

 The sensory energy awareness coaching process has been evidenced to work with over a thousand individuals and refined over the years. This process has also been publicly demonstrated in coaching conferences and webinars, including many sponsored by ICF chapters. As a spiritual systemic process, this is the future of coaching. You're welcome to reach out to Coacharya to learn more about this process.