Human expression is truly limitless, yet we often shorten our lives and crush our potential through our health choices.
When most people try to change their approach to health, they try to coach themselves, focusing on changing their nutrition and workout routine. But eating healthier and working out more regularly don’t tend to work long-term, even if they apply the most effective coaching techniques.
Why?
Ronan Diego, Mindvalley’s principal HoloBody coach, explains that to transform your body, you need to transform your connection with it.
In other words, you don’t want to master the body. You want to master your relationship with it.
What Is a Health Coach?
According to Ajit Nawalkha, co-founder of Evercoach by Mindvalley, there are two dimensions of coaching: coaching for challenges and coaching for growth.
When it comes to health coaches, their focus is to help their clients overcome health challenges such as smoking or achieve their positive health goals.
Your client may not be aware of what their challenge is or how they want to grow. So a coach will help them clarify what their needs or wants are.
We aren’t sure how to tell if someone’s healthy or not. But we know so much about diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and obesity. In other words, we live our lives in pursuit of managing our diseases rather than our health.
– Ronan Diego, Mindvalley’s principal HoloBody coach
Unlike mentorship or psychological therapy, a health coach acts as a guide who doesn’t impose their expertise and tell their client what to do, but rather provides clarity by explaining how things work and empowering them to figure out solutions on their own.
“You can take your client’s power away by giving them a piece of advice,” Ajit says.
When teaching, mentoring, and even willpower fail, coaching doesn’t because the request for a change is driven from within.
Ronan’s story of transformation
Ronan Oliveira is Mindvalley’s principal HoloBody coach and Mindvalley’s trainer of the 10X and Beyond Fasting Quests.
Although his transformation journey is unique (like yours), it’s premised on a typical story of an unhealthy relationship with his body.
He recalls that he was a healthy and active kid for the most part. But he was also weak, short, and skinny, and because of that, he was bullied by other children.
“Since my physical vessel was giving me bad experiences in my immature child’s mind, I was giving it bad experiences back by abusing alcohol, partying, and not giving it enough sleep. This is how disconnected I felt from my body,” adds Ronan.
At some point, he wanted to prove to everyone that he wasn’t weak, and the only way he knew he could do that was to grow his body physically.
But when he started his training, his body didn’t respond to it, so he concluded that he was living in a non-responder’s body.
He shares that when he found a training regimen that finally worked for his body to change, he immediately became obsessed. Getting stronger, healthier, and more energized was not good enough.
For years he trained his body past the point of exhaustion, had a super strict diet regimen, and cut back from social. It was an extreme measure to prove himself he was strong.
But the result was a weakened body and a burnout system.
“Although externally, I looked impressive, I felt miserable from the inside. I treated my body like a horse that was meant to serve my selfish goals,” confesses Ronan.
Eventually, he realized that he needed to build a healthy relationship with his body. It was not about forcing the body to become something it was not designed for but helping it fully express its unique strengths.
He changed his entire approach to health and fitness to learn how to listen to and honor his body and found that he had always been strong regardless of what his body looked like.
His story shows that only when you change how you relate to your body can you unlock its highest potential.
The Principles of Health Coaching
Successful health coaches follow these common principles:
- Help clients define a unique personal purpose and improve clients’ health and well-being
- See them as resourceful and self-managed individuals
- Form an active partnership with the client
- Focus on the benefit of the client by providing a personalized approach
- Help set goals for the client based on their preferences rather than those of professionals
- Help clients assess the point they are at and see how to move forward by taking action
- Help them improve insight through health education, reflection, identifying client barriers, and self-awareness strategies
- Allow them to feel empowered as a consequence of health coaching
- Help them build skills from lived experience and or skills learned from the coach
- Keep neutrality (non-judgemental approach) during their sessions
Holistic approaches to health coaching
What’s missing in the nutrition and exercise-focused approaches?
These two approaches are isolated from your body. Many more variables play a role in physical transformation than only exercise and nutrition. So when you don’t get results, you feel as if something’s wrong with you. When actually, it’s the approach you’re using that is ineffective.
Studies show there are seven elements that determine your health:
- Physical activity (exercise, standing, sitting, walking, etc.)
- Environment (physical environment, city, office, etc.)
- Physiology of the human body (gut microbiome, etc.)
- Food consumption (nutrition, etc.)
- Food production (what type of food do you have access to?)
- Social psychology (friends, family, etc.)
- Personal psychology (own beliefs, thoughts, etc.)
When you put all your efforts only into two factors, they cannot give you the results you expect. If you’ve ever taken a look at the Obesity System Map, you will see that your body is a complex system that requires a holistic approach.
So the most effective health coaching methodology integrates several elements at the same time.
The mind-body connection
On top of that, most health and fitness approaches focus solely on the body, missing the mind-body connection.
Your mind directly affects your body, so applying creative visualization and utilizing altered states of consciousness can accelerate your results.
According to Ronan, you can achieve a permanent transformation when you change your identity.
“When you rewire your old identity operating from a subconscious level, you can have different habits supporting your new identity,” adds Ronan.
What Does a Health Coach Do?
When coaching for a challenge, your primary task is to diagnose your client’s challenge regarding health.
You might start from a surface level and end with something completely different or unexpected from your client’s initial idea.
A successful health coach keeps digging deeper until they discover the real challenge. Once they diagnose it right, they help their client figure out the solution to overcoming it.
A health coach also helps their client:
- Shift focus from the challenge to the action steps
- Follow through with the action steps through the accountability and follow-up systems
When coaching for growth, your task is to help your clients identify their health goals, authentically meaningful to them, and then achieve them.
You might start by defining what health means to them and what experiences they want to have if they were healthy.
Ajit explains that most of us live our lives as a reaction to what’s happening to us. It’s hard for us to attain success or ultimate health because the definition of it isn’t truly ours.
A successful coach will expand your way of living by suggesting the idea that life is happening through you, and you can create your own life based on your unique values and aspirations.
Once you help define your client’s health definition and health goals, you coach them to create an action plan made of small incremental steps.
A health coach also helps their client:
- Create progress over time
- Prepare the client to move towards their goals without being overwhelmed
- Decide on the best directions
- Overcome challenges
7 Steps to Succeeding as a Health Coach
1. Define your why and your niche
According to marketing guru Tad Hargrave, “You discover your niche; you don’t choose it.” And this discovery takes time.
Ask yourself:
- What am I passionate about?
- What am I specifically drawn towards?
- What feels natural?
- What category of people (gender, age, profession) am I most attracted to?
- What specific health challenges do I want to help people with?
- What’s my health challenge or health goal?
Your personal story can help you define your big why. It will bring you the most fulfillment when you aspire to help people rather than monetize your skills, whatever niche you define for yourself.
2. Get clear on the benefits and your added value
Depending on your niche, you want to get clear on the benefits of health coaching. It can be supporting in:
- Decision-making and implementing changes to improve their health
- Stress management
- Controlling hypertension
- Weight loss
- Women in their menopause
- Overcoming their health challenges or achieving their health goals
3. Get a certification
Getting a certification itself shouldn’t be your goal. Your goal is to get holistic training that can equip you with a time-proven health coaching methodology, master your coaching skills, grow your coaching business, and most importantly, help you transform your health.
With so many options available on the market, you want to find a training program that has a holistic approach to health, such as Mindvalley’s Holobody Coaching Certification.
It encompasses all seven crucial elements of health and is based on the mind-body-soul approach to creating permanent transformation for you and your clients.
4. Develop a coaching business plan (and know what to offer)
You have to know what type of packages you will be offering when the time for enrollment comes.
A few questions you can ask yourself as a starting point are these:
- Do you want to work with clients individually or in groups? Face-to-face or online?
- Do you want to have a structured program for your clients or completely customize your approach?
- How long are your sessions going to be? Less than an hour or 90 minutes?
- How many clients do you want to work with each month?
Unlike some other coaching niches, it’s almost impossible to create lasting transformation in health coaching with only one session. So make sure you offer long-term coaching packages to ensure enough time to coach your clients through their journey and create results.
And then there’s pricing — there’s no ‘right’ way of pricing your coaching packages. Prices will constantly change according to your expertise, authority, and offer. So don’t stress over having the perfect or most attractive price from the get-go.
You can start by benchmarking your competitors or defining your hourly rate and then move from there.
5. Establish a personal brand
A ‘personal brand’ translates as the feeling people have when they think of you. It’s a modern term for positioning yourself before seeing your potential client.
You need to define your personal brand as it focuses your clients on what they can expect when they work with you.
Three steps to establishing your personal brand:
- Define who you are by getting clear on what you are truly passionate about. Don’t overlook it because it seems obvious.
- Get clear on what you can do for your clients. What’s your superpower?
- Define how you engage with your tribe. What will you do to attract, engage and convert your audience into raving fans?
6. Build relationships and support groups
Your personal brand is built on relationships with your audience. As much as you care about the message, you want to make an effort to deliver it in a way they care. Remember that they don’t care about your personal brand. They care about things that relate to them, so make them care.
Find platforms you are most comfortable with and where you can find your ideal audience, and start building relationships with your audience.
7. Keep investing in personal growth
Your transformation doesn’t stop after you get your health coach certification, nor is it limited to your discovered coaching niche.
On top of that, your goals and values may change over time, and your growth must be in alignment with them.
According to Mindvalley’s founder, Vishen, “one of the greatest qualities you can have as a human being is the growth mindset that ensures that you constantly take care of your rate of self-evolution.”
When your growth becomes your #1 priority in life, everything in life will grow with you.
Stories From Mindvalley-Certified Health Coaches
By joining Mindvalley-Certified Health Coaches, you will get educated on the holistic health coaching business model and start your own Hero’s Journey on transforming your health.
This Holobody Certification Course has been the culmination of my own Hero’s Journey!
– Lynda Hamilton, strategic communications consultant, New York, United States
I am fully transformed: healthier & more fit than I have been for the last 2 decades; younger and more attractive than I was when this all began; and lighter in spirit/more filled with bliss and adventure than I have literally ever known.
Now I am equipped and educated about the approach, care, and business model of mental wellness.
– Rodley Woolfolk, firefighter, Little Rock, United States
Holobody Coaching certification has taken me from an idea to complete an executable business. I understand certain business principles that go directly with this mental wellness service.
This has been an incredible journey and so worth it!
– Ashley Potts, researcher at U.S. Bank, Maple Grove, United States
I started this journey 4 months ago because I was tired of waiting for life to happen to me and knew I needed more. As to what I would say to myself 4 months ago….you did it! You have sold your house, opened an LLC, got back up on your pointe shoes (after 20 years), and had a positive impact on those around you.
Start Your Coaching Journey
Most people don’t know how far they could go, but they know they could do better. You have infinite potential, so you can potentially do better in health and life. And you can achieve more than you’ve achieved so far.
If you aspire to change your career and become a successful health coach, you are one step away from transforming your professional path.
Most importantly, you are one step away from transforming your own health by starting to build a healthy relationship with your body.
And this is what Mindvalley’s Holobody Coaching certification can do for you, your family, and the community you choose to serve.
