Holistic and Spiritual Business Coaching

Many business coaches today incorporate holistic and spiritual practices into their coaching.

Ann Thomas, Esq., CEO and Founder of Ann Thomas Coaching & Consulting, LLC, said most of her business clients tend to be cerebral – they typically rely on logic to resolve their problems. “There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but I firmly believe (and have seen) that the most powerful outcomes are derived when a person makes a decision based on their logic combined with their intuition,” she said.

Thomas offers her clients tools to help them better access their intuition, including body scanning (exploring the impact of a decision within the client’s body), guided visualizations, affirmations, meditation, and chimes. “Each of these tools are used to increase the client’s awareness of a deeper knowing – something greater than what the cognitive brain alone can grasp,” said Thomas.

Typically, when Thomas’ clients give in to these tools, they are able to take decisive action where they were once stuck, and let go of a deep-seated resistance that led to self-sabotage. Many of her clients feel these tools are corny at first, but once they are willing to play, find these tools are beneficial for helping them come to a more meaningful decision and for reducing stress.

Whenever Debbie Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress (Wiley and Sons), does a corporate workshop, she includes holistic and spiritual practices – often to the surprise of the participants. Her sessions include exercise, visualization and meditation, stress management principles and the science of food and mood.

Mandel concludes a session with how not to absorb a toxic mood from a colleague and teaches reframing techniques which create a compassionate spin on perceived transgressions. “To fortify stress management and physical/emotional well-being, participants practice a guided visualization which takes five minutes and can be performed throughout the work day to create a sense of peace and rest,” she said. “There is great productivity in rest – you come back better.” Aside from lowering blood pressure and improving focus, visualizations/meditations actually rewire the brain after a few weeks, helping people respond as opposed to react.

Learning how to reach equanimity for the purpose of equitable compromises and to promote team skills prove invaluable. Mandel said her participants learn to leave problems with family at home. They find relief just doing their work and not worrying about home issues  – less fatigue, a more creative output and increased productivity.

The point Mandel leaves business clients with: “You have 4 rooms in your house: the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. You have to walk into every room daily for balance and happiness.” 

A spiritual approach to organizational change enables every employee to overcome the #1 obstacle that everyone faces when overcoming an addiction: routine, said David Shaner, author of The Seven Arts Of Change: Leading Business Transformation that Lasts (Union Square Press, November 2010). “Every employee is held back by each person’s present memory related to ‘the way we have always done things’,” he said. “Unless the mind of everyone changes, the company cannot expect to execute in new ways and achieve new performance results.”

Shaner said that successful change requires that every employee anchor the need for change. To do this everyone needs an understanding of the business holistically, including the competitive landscape.

Holistic and spiritual practices like visualization, affirmations, meditation and stress management principles are being integrated into business coaching sessions–and clients are benefiting from these philosophies.