Body-oriented Coaching

How does your body respond
when you say, think or feel something?

Is it hard to know what you want?
Or to set healthy boundaries?
Do you want to open up to intimacy or touch, but don’t know where to start?
Do you want to connect more with your body, and with yourself?
Do you want to connect with others, without losing yourself?

What is Body-oriented coaching?

Body-oriented coaching uses gentle and mindful methods to become aware of what happens in your body when you say, think, feel or do something. This gives you information about your experience, and which choices you want to make.

What happens in your body, when a friend asks you to do something you don’t feel like doing?
What happens in your body, when a colleague gets that project you wanted so badly?
What happens in your body, when your partner tries to please you, but it’s not quite what you had in mind for yourself?

What thoughts pop up?
How does it feel in your belly?
What is your breath doing, and your heartbeat?

“Body-oriented coaching offers mindful practices in attention, touch and communication, to discover what your body is trying to tell you”

Becoming aware of body signals
I call the way our body responds to events, body signals. When you feel excited you might want to scream and jump in the air. When you feel afraid you might want to crawl up under a blanket and hold your breath. These would be very clear and visible responses from your ‘system’, your body. Many body signals are not always immediate accurate

When you stop yourself from saying something, you may press your lips together, or tighten your jaw. When someone suddenly raises their voice, your upper body may move slightly backwards. These subtler body signals are easily left unnoticed, because for various reasons, we have been conditioned to suppress our bodily experience.

Your body wisdom
Your body signals together form your body wisdom: it gives you information about yourself. More awareness and understanding of your body signals helps you to tap in to what you want and what you don’t want. It becomes easier to make choices that suit you, in relationships, friendships, intimacy, sex, and in many other aspects of your daily life.

What does it help you with?

Body-oriented coaching helps you to recognise, value and trust your body signals. It becomes easier to feel and communicate your wishes and boundaries in the moment. Your Yes’s and No’s become clearer and it becomes easier to say them out loud.

Connecting with your feelings
Your body is not only a handy tool to feel in to what you want, it’s also a big part of who you are. Being more connected with your body, therefore brings you in a deeper connection with yourself and your feelings. It helps you stay true to the things that matter most to you.

Feeling and setting boundaries
Imagine a friend asks you to do something and you say "Yes". Yet you feel resistance while doing it. Then you may not have noticed your limit at the time of the request. The coaching helps you to notice in the moment how your body reacts to an event (eg thoughts that arise, tension, relaxation, movement), and to discover what you need to indicate this in time.

Discovering desires
Imagine your partner asks you how you’d like to be touched. If you have no idea, you might tend to ask him to do the same thing as last time. There's nothing wrong with that, but it might be interesting to discover other ways to feel what you want in the moment. You can learn and practice this in the coaching.

“When you connect more with your body, it becomes easier to feel what you want in the moment.”

Express yourself
Asking for what you want can feel very vulnerable. When you practice this in small baby steps in a safe environment, your system learns a new pattern. You create a new belief that it’s safe to be who you are and to express what you need or what you don’t want, without necessarily losing the connection with the other person.

Quieting the mind
Thoughts are body signals too. Our beautiful mind brings us lots of wisdom. However, sometimes this wisdom has a second agenda: to protect ourselves. The thought “what will people think of me” can protect you from being criticized. But it also holds you back from trying new things.

Stressful thoughts cause tension in your body. Will I make the deadline? Does my partner still find me attractive? The coaching helps to recognize these thoughts and to acknowledge them, so you can do something about it. It gives you choice: what you want to focus your attention on? On the unhelpful thoughts, or on what actually is, here and now?

"How we think about things, has an effect on our body."

With exercises in attention, touch and expression we help our body and system to relax and experience that it is safe to feel and indicate our needs, desires and healthy boundaries.

What I liked about the sessions was that it made me experience something new that I really liked. I didn't know I could open that way. And what helped is that it felt very safe. Irene inspires confidence and a sense of security, and she invites you to take steps forward.

Eva

34 years old

What does a session look like?

In an (online) body-oriented coaching session we start with a few minutes ‘to land’ together: we give some time to become more present in the moment, and to explore what feels most present to work on.

Talk and Touch
Sometimes there is more talking and feeling into your body, how she responds to what we are talking about. Other times I invite you to connect more with your body and yourself through some exercises, with or without touch. All clothes can stay on during the session. In between sessions, I give you exercises that you can do at home.

From old to new patterns
During the sessions, we may encounter the patterns and blockages that, for whatever reasons, your body has created to protect you. Apparently at some point it was safer for your system not to experience or feel something than it was to do so. With exercises in attention, touch and expressing, we can slowly get your body and system used to the fact that it is safe to express yourself, and to experience pleasurable sensations fully again.

Emotions
It is normal for emotions to arise when you get more in touch with your body, and with what’s holding you back in enjoying connection or pleasant sensations. I offer a safe place where you can be with what is. If at any point, it feels like "too much", I offer gentle ways to bring your system back to safety again.

This is for you if:

It’s hard to feel what you want
Or to set healthy boundaries
You want to connect with others, without losing yourself
You want to connect more with your body, and with yourself
You want to open up intimacy or touch but don’t know where to start

If you resonate with the above or you feel triggered by it, it can be interesting for you to explore that in body-oriented coaching.

Do you also struggle with themes like sex and intimacy? Then I suggest to read further here: Intimacy Coaching.

The logistics

To open up to more awareness of your bodily experience, takes time, attention and practice. Your system needs time and space to ease its way into new patterns. When your system feels pushed, it will take longer to relax and open up to change. It’s for this reason I have arranged my offering in the following way:

Two 60 minute sessions per month
Guidance in self-reflection and email support in between sessions
Minimum commitment of 3 months (6 sessions)

The investment:

€ 200 per month

I give my sessions online via Zoom. There is a limited number of spots available for live sessions.

Apply for body-oriented coaching

If you want to experience what it’s like to have me as your coach, schedule a complimentary coaching session with me by clicking the button below. This is a full 1 hour online coaching session, not a getting-to-know-each-other call. It’s a no strings attached gift from me to you.

If we both happen to feel a clear Yes by the idea of moving forward together, then we’ll schedule a separate call to discuss working together. If that sounds like a good plan to you, then go ahead and click the button below to book your gift session today.