“I am large, I contain multitudes.” - Walt Whitman

Our inner world is vast—containing our hopes, dreams, fears; our past, present and aspirations for the future; our full range of emotions; a cast, crew, and scenes from many plays. This complex inner world is always sending signals—telling us what feels right or wrong; showing us if we’re stuck; pointing us towards a yearning. Sometimes there’s an inner voice that whispers, other times a picture emerges of a different possibility, and sometimes the body screams in pain, or crashes in burnout.

We contain multitudes and are built to be soothed and stretched from the inside out. But many people are scared by this nature of ours, unsure how to be with the many parts of ourselves, preferring to close themselves off to their inner wilderness. 

My job as a coach is to be hugely curious about your inner landscapes and walk alongside you as you discover and embrace the more of you.

A compassionate and connected relationship with yourself emerges in our work together as you build skills of internal navigation. What follows is greater clarity, confidence, and congruence in what you want to do and how you want to be—ready to be translated from the inside, out.

Coaching work is not just a navel-gazing experience inwards. People want coaching to help them step up and step forward, into the world they want to create. They want to test and grow themselves in relationships, in leadership roles, in realising their visions, and steadily moving towards their goals. They want to challenge themselves and feel a sense of achievement, celebrating milestones while enjoying the ride.

Coaching that supports this journey into the outer wilderness may include developing leadership skills (e.g. communication, decision-making, adaptability, relationship building and difficult conversations), working on embodied confidence, retooling for greater focus and time-management, holding healthy boundaries between work and personal life, and more. In exercising these skills, your inner life feels its translation into the outside world to be increasingly authentic and robust. You become less concerned with fitting into the expectations of others and more capable at carving your own path into what’s calling you forward.

Being in nature is the oldest and most soothing balm to the troubles of being human. We have an inbuilt biophilia - a love for and yearning to connect to nature - and when we open to that, wonderful things happen. 

Perhaps the first thing people notice is how reducing daily distractions unfurls our bodies, clears the mind, and allows what’s most important to come to the fore. When my clients are pulled in a million directions and don’t know which way is up, a facilitated walk in nature invariably delivers the ‘ah ha!’ focus for the next right step.

Nature also holds itself to us as a non-judgemental mirror, inviting us to deepen feeling, sensing, intuition, insight, and creativity. When I ask people to let their gaze be caught by something in particular in a natural landscape, their subconscious makes sense of why that thing is relevant at that particular time. Clouds roll in and my client reflects on how sometimes, it’s OK to see only the next step in front of you; a fallen tree creates a whole new ecosystem for more biodiversity to flourish and all of a sudden an ending is reframed as a beginning; a different mountain is calling and the realisation dawns that they’ve lost the passion for their current work; and when my client’s body and soul feels weary, they see an inviting, cosy place to rest.

Finally, connecting to nature brings us into our own natures, capacities, and knowings. We can witness the full spectrum from elegant beauty to utter chaos in nature, and remember that everything has its place; nothing is static; the cycles of life and seasonality always persist; and we can always move towards harmony, without ever reaching or maintaining some impossible idea of there being a perfect state.