Kristine Axelson

Episode Description

This is a clip from one of our weekly live coaching calls from inside The Secret Garden. Inspired by questions + themes from inside our community, these rooms are designed to guide your exploration of new ways of being, thinking & leading.

This week, we jam on our experiences + learned techniques for supporting clients who put up a stone wall anytime you try to go deep with them.

There are plenty of clients who are going to struggle opening up because their default is to protect themselves from the perceived threat of vulnerability. Even if they’ve expressed a desire to explore their mindset and emotions more deeply with you, that conscious desire is often overrun by their unconscious desire to feel safe.

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼Join our next live weekly coaching call and experience The Secret Garden for yourself for 14 days free.

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Episode Description

Today on EXPAND, we’re joined by a special guest, Jonah Richman, who is best known for his expertise in compassionate marketing for coaches & wellness practitioners.

Laura & Jonah discuss the ins-and-outs of business trauma and what trends they’re seeing in the coaching space when it comes to marketing our services. Jonah shares his insights and how he found his way back to his purpose after feeling jaded by deceptive practices.

You will also learn how to transition from a program or strategy that doesn’t feel quite right to something that feels more aligned with your heart.

This conversation not only highlights the intricacies of business-trauma, but also, the uplifting truth that once we notice what doesn’t feel good for us, we can create meaningful shifts that change the way we move in our businesses.

To connect with Jonah on Instagram: @jonah.richman 

www.jonahrichman.com

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Episode Description

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

In this episode, we take a deeper dive into our bodies ability to constantly take in information from our environment through our senses and how it naturally orients us based on what it perceives to be safe or unsafe.

When we are in session with clients, it is normal for our stress response to be activated. This activation can sometimes signal to our body that we are under attack, and that we are being threatened. When we can better understand this process within ourselves, we can better notice how the same thing may be happening within our clients and create safety within our coaching structure.

Laura leads us through concepts such as resourcing, the ‘window of tolerance’ and how meeting our threshold can cause us to react in ways that we normally wouldn’t. When we can practice and build the skill of staying present with the experience, we can help our people to learn to do the same.

This episode is an insightful reminder to stay present and mindful of our stress responses and to be kind and empathetic towards ourselves and our clients.

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Episode Description

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

The ‘patterns’ that our clients come to us with and are wanting us to help them change are often the same coping patterns that they’re using in their day-to-day life to help them manage their feelings.

In this episode, Laura leads us through a beautiful lesson that even though there might be an expectation that we want to create change rapidly & efficiently, we actually don’t want to try to remove their coping patterns immediately.

She teaches us that these mechanisms are a really wise adaptation of their body to get their needs met…it’s the way that their system has learned to orient to the world in order to keep them feeling safe, taken care of, and to access love or belonging.

Oftentimes, by demonizing those patterns and trying to shift them away from those patterns too soon, without having resources in place to offer them the same conditions that their coping mechanism was creating for them, we can actually cause more dysregulation and reinforce the pattern that we were trying to shift them away from in the first place.

(You might want to save this one for the future 💫)

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Episode Description

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

As we begin to deepen our coaching practice and invite our clients into conversations that involve emotional awareness or exploration of their thought patterns, it’s really important that we also invite in the conversation with ourselves around the line between our scope of practice as a coach and what would be better served in a therapeutic environment.

This line is going to be different for all of us depending on our formal training and the knowledge/experience that we’re coming into the coaching space with.

In this episode, Laura guides us through a few tangible, real-life examples to help us better understand where our limit is and how to create peace of mind within ourselves and our clients.

Episode Description

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

Today, we chat through the importance of obtaining consent from clients before delving into deep, unconscious work. As coaches, we cannot assume that just because we desire our clients to move through deeper work, that they are ready and willing to engage in that kind of work.

This episode teaches us how to pre-frame the journey and offers us ways to confirm whether our client feels safe to be engaged in that type of relationship with us, and whether they are ready for it.

One of the most important things we can look out for as coaches is noticing when a client verbally consents to the work, but their body language may indicate that they are not ready or are uncomfortable with it. Learning to read the subtleties of our clients is one of the greatest tools along our journey.

Episode Description

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

Have you ever experienced a moment with a client where you offered a solution, idea, or action item…& they agree to give it a try, but somehow you sense that they aren’t fully onboard with what you’re offering? Perhaps it’s something in the tone of their voice, or their facial expression changes suddenly…you might even sense a shift in their body language.

Chances are, if what you offered was pre-planned, you may have been blocked from witnessing the subtleties of your clients’ current experience. One of the most difficult shifts we can make as coaches is moving away from pre-planning our coaching sessions and instead, learning to be whole-heartedly present with our clients experiences as they’re reflecting them back to us.

In this episode, Laura offers us the idea that becoming aware ourselves and our clients in these moments and pulling them to the surface is the key to catching patterns that are playing out in many areas of their lives. When we can become present enough and hold them in that experience, we can disarm the power that unconscious pattern has over them.

With time, we begin to create new patterns, where they can feel safe to look at the discomfort that’s coming up, or why they didn’t feel comfortable doing the action step that you ask them to do.

Episode Description

In this episode, we explore the concept of spiritual bypassing, a phenomenon that was first introduced in the 1980s by Buddhist teacher John Welwood.

Throughout this discussion, Laura helps us to better understand the ways in which we might use spiritual practices to avoid facing the emotional undercurrents that are taking place within us.

& while it’s meaningful to embrace spiritual practices in the coaching space, Laura shines a light on how we might be using this to avoid or remove ourselves from our own experiences.

In the exploration of this within ourselves, Laura also speaks into the importance of being emotionally present and holding space for clients in order to build trust and safety, first. She encourages us as coaches and leaders to explore our own emotions so that we can provide safe spaces for our clients and meet them where they are.

Through opening our awareness to this, we get to ask ourselves: “How can I become the space holder, the guide, and the leader that I dream of being by being that for myself first?”

Episode Description

In this episode, Laura coaches listeners of the show through questions that they’ve been coming up against over the last month.

You can join us for our next Live Q&A on Wednesday, March 15th by clicking here.

Today, we cover topics from listeners about their morning routines and how to create an adaptable practice so that they can meet themselves with the demands of their day, regardless of how much time they have.

We also talked about what it’s like to begin a coaching journey when you feel like you’re different or you don’t fit in with what you see other coaches doing.

Lastly, we chat about regulating our nervous systems in a moment that a client is getting activated in session and the invisible value that our presence has in moments like this.

This is a really beautiful room that Laura holds once per month for listeners just like you to join us in a live setting and receive direct support on exactly what you need.

Episode Description

This month, Laura guides us through a practice of presence.

Simple in theory, presence is one of the most challenging states to consistently live inside of. It asks us learn how to stay WITH the full experience of a moment that would previously cause us to unconsciously react or mentally spiral.

The techniques Laura teaches us in this ritual are ones we can use inconspicuously right in a client session or on a sales call to stay grounded and open…or can be layered together to create a more nourishing ritual that will set us up for inspired creative blocks or longer coaching days.

Find a quiet, gentle space to land as you immerse yourself in this ritual. We hope you enjoy and come back to this anytime you need a breath.