How Coaching Unlocked My Strength

As I started my daily activity, I required support on my healing journey to become pain free. I had the awareness and education, the belief, and my mind had accepted the concept of being able to recover by myself. Now I had to put all of that theory, and what I had learnt into practice.

Coaching, what is it? It is a positive forward thinking session, allowing the client to always make the decisions, and really come into their own, by allowing reflection, and creating ideas and solutions, feeling empowered, self motivated, and taking ownership. Partnering with a client by asking open questions and allowing them a safe space to mentally grow is a huge transformational impact. It is important to coach the whole person, mind and body.

Jeannie Kulwin, a coach from LA, in America who also specialises in breathwork, empowered me to strengthen my belief that I could indeed recover and become pain free. I was already tracking my progress daily a month prior to reaching out to her, by applying methods of writing out my goal, and writing down how I felt, and what reward I would give myself.

Being a coach myself I knew I needed to take action to make progress. Jeannie had been through her own health challenges such as chronic fatigue, where she fully recovered, and now focussed her energy on helping others through coaching, along with her breathwork classes. I needed a coach to champion me through this difficult period, where self doubt kept creeping back into my thoughts, and creating beliefs that were potentially going to stop me from recovering. I needed one to one support, and further motivation, which is why I wanted a coach to partner with me. I had 12 sessions where I would be supported fully to start small goal setting to focus my mind into action, and progress.

Any small win or breakthrough I had I would message Jeannie on Voxer to tell her. I knew there would be no judgement, just pure support and encouragement. It was important that I was made aware that I had lacked my own self care for years through raising a young family, and I needed to give myself time and relaxation. ?Time for me. The tools provided such as certain meditations before going to bed was like a drug in itself as I would get a better sleep, which in effect would help my recovery. The goddess hour, which was an hour to myself, which I rarely had, gave me time for reflection, relaxation, and think about my needs. I used to do gratitude daily, which helped with my emotions, in that they were positive, and made me feel happy again.

I listened to motivational talks that Jeannie had sent, and I would listen to them whilst walking every day, through the pain, and focus on my goal to recovery. Every day I would get stronger and stronger, and quicker in my pace. This was the fuel in my belly to keep pushing me on, even with the tears streaming down my face listening to such powerful stories, reminiscing about my grief, and the mental anguish that wanted to make me stop. I kept going, I kept thinking of others in much more dire circumstances, and I had to be thankful that I was alive, and that I was going to do this, no matter how long it took, and no matter how much pain I was in. I was not broken. I could not hurt myself I told myself, as I had not done anything to have caused my disc prolapse in the first place.

I knew that if the pain began to move around my body then I was winning the battle, because the body needs to be pushed, and the mind agrees. I would focus on other body areas that were pain free. I would consciously breathe, and visualise through using some NLP techniques of images, internal and external, auditory internal and external sounds, and kinaesthetic, dealing with feelings and physical connections.

I wrote down in a book proof that I was healing such as sitting on a hard chair, which was no longer a problem, or that I could walk for 40 minutes, whereas before I could only walk for 2 minutes. I could even stand to have a shower, which was such a relief. This was where I could relax, daydream, think of other things. ?Cooking in one go standing up without having to sit down, felt amazing. I knew I was healing and it felt like an addiction every day, a really motivating factor to know how far I was coming.

I knew breathing was such an important step to relaxing the tension in my body, and doing breathwork with music lying on the floor with Jeannie helped ease the sensations in my body, and allowed me to stay in a calm state. This made me feel happy, and a sense of achievement.

The funny thing was that I didn’t go to a coach from the initial outset. I sought a conventional route, as I was not aware. The medical professional whose help I sought through a doctor, physiotherapy, conventional chiropractors, and neurosurgeon created fear for me, and the pain persisted. I took the time to study the mind/body connection upon the initial reading of Dr Sarno, and I spoke to experts in this field such as Georgie Oldfield, SIRPA, Dr Howard Schubiner, and Steven Ozanich, author of The Great Pain Deception, who all concluded the same thing. That it was a stress induced symptom that can resolve without medical intervention. If thousands of others recovered from chronic pain, why couldn’t I? What made me any different? The excuses in my head held me back, and that’s what I had to let go of to fully embrace the healing journey.

3 takeaways:

1. Think back to a time when you felt pain free, and visualise that as often as you can, or as a minimum before going to bed, and first thing in the morning. See what you see, hear what you hear, and feel what you feel to really get into that positive state. You could also add it into your daily habit, before you have breakfast, or a hot drink.
2. Keep going. Tell your brain that the pain will not worsen. If you feel a huge amount of pain, because you have not exercised for even years, this is because the muscles, ligaments, tendons in the body have not been used for a long time. Remember each day incremental steps towards your biggest goal will help, and consider what works for you and how you feel. Write it down daily if it helps you, or what you want to accomplish in the next 6 months to a year.
3. Focus on other areas of your body that are pain free. For example I would concentrate on my left side, especially the calf area of the leg, which did not have any pain and kept on imagining that my right side calf would also become pain free every time I was walking.

If you need further help or tips DM me, or got to my website mapcoach.co.uk to book a free 30 minute discovery call.