Have you ever felt your coaching sessions lacked something… deeper? Like you’re skimming the surface instead of diving into the wellspring of human potential?
This is where holistic coaching can make a difference.
Whether you’re a seasoned coach seeking new heights or just curious about this powerful framework, implementing it as part of your practice can create a powerful journey of growth and empowerment. Not just for your clients but for yourself, too.
What is Holistic Coaching?
Holistic coaching is an approach that considers the whole person—mind, body, emotions, and spirit—within the context of their life.
The core idea is that these facets are interconnected and influence each other. By addressing all of them, you help foster deeper self-understanding, lasting growth, and a more fulfilling life for your clients.
This approach doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be a life coach and work on all areas of your client’s life. For instance, you can practice holistic wellness coaching by considering how the client’s career affects their well-being. Or you can practice holistic business coaching by helping your client find a sense of meaning and purpose in their business.
The bottom line is, you equip your client with the tools and knowledge they need to become their own best advocate and make informed choices about their lives.
What are some of the different techniques used in holistic coaching?
Some techniques and tools that help shape your holistic coaching style are:
- Mindfulness and meditation
- The Wheel of Life assessment
- Energy balancing techniques like reiki
- Creative visualization
- Yoga and movement therapy
- Journaling prompts
- Breathwork
You don’t have to necessarily practice any particular personal growth tools or healing modalities to coach holistically, but combining a few can benefit your clients in many ways.
3 Approaches to Holistic Coaching You Can Use in Your Practice
It’s no secret that coaching clients always seek profound transformations that touch every aspect of their lives. Here are three ways you can address their multifaceted needs and facilitate lasting change.
1. Holistic coaching for focus
We are constantly distracted by something—our smartphones, the internet, emails, or even our own thoughts. As a coach, helping clients navigate and minimize these distractions can significantly enhance their ability to concentrate and achieve their goals.
That’s why coaching for focus is one of the most important skills you can have in your practice. But the thing is, if you want to help your clients develop greater focus, you first need to do it yourself. Cultivating a calm and organized mind will communicate safety and trust to your clients.
There are two basic ways to achieve this:
- Through mindfulness and
- A healthy environment.
Living in the present helps you reduce your distractions and pay attention to what’s important right now. A healthy environment is necessary for you to get there.
2. Holistic coaching for growth
The most powerful coaches arrive at every session with a single purpose: to encourage growth in their clients. They aim to tackle the root of the problem and help the client see themselves in a new light.
If you want to excel at coaching for personal growth, you need to put the same effort into your own personal and professional development.
You can start with a self-coaching exercise to identify situations that cause you discomfort or difficult emotions. Ask yourself: Why am I feeling this way? Getting to the root of your emotional state will open the door to new opportunities for growth.
Once you test this exercise on yourself, you can bring it to your sessions to help your clients reach their next breakthrough.
- Holistic coaching for change
Using coaching for life transition is based on the Transtheoretical Model, which aims to answer the question: “Is your client ready to change?”
Identify which of these five stages is your client currently in.
- Pre-contemplation: You can find your clients at this stage when they haven’t acknowledged that there’s a problem and that they need to make a change. In this case, they are not ready to listen to you as a coach.
- Contemplation: Once they accept there’s a need for change, they have reached the contemplation stage. Although they acknowledge that they want to improve their lives, they still lack the determination to act. This is where you, as a coach, come in to help them navigate this uncertainty.
- Preparation: After overcoming their doubts, your client is determined to change things. They have done their homework, and they might even know how to move on, but they need that extra push of motivation toward implementation.
- Action: When your clients start taking action, they are making changes in their lives. As a coach, you’re there for support, so they don’t go back to square one.
- Maintenance: You need to make sure that your client continues the work in the long run and helps them overcome any roadblocks along the way.
Understanding which stage your client is at will let you improve their performance towards transformational results.
Unleash Your Power Within
These are just the first tools in your holistic coaching toolbox.
But why stop there? Join the free Become a Mindvalley Certified Life Coach masterclass and learn how to design bespoke paths to well-being for each individual.
Whether you’re working as a life coach or a professional in a more niche industry, you can gain insights and wisdom from the Mindvalley experts so you can be the coach clients rave about—the one who helps unleash their power within and ignite true transformations.
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Images generated on Midjourney.
