More than Talking
As I moved through my 200h yoga training, during the hard times of the pandemic, I was also working on getting my integrative life and wellness coaching certificate. Very early in this process, it became obvious to me that coaching and yoga had much to talk to each other., and much to learn from each other. That is how I started imagining my BodyMove coaching practice. A practice that could start from the coaching dimension and incorporate yoga and body movements or the other way around.
It is very Western of us to sit in front of a computer or in an office room and talk to someone about our challenges while our body is just made to be almost immobile. We sit and talk without paying attention to the body’s needs to express sensations, feelings and thoughts. Well, isn’t the mouth doing its job while expressing these same thoughts, sensations, and feelings?
Actually, even as sophisticated as our 21st century language has become, our ability to verbally communicate what goes inside our body has limitations. The need to stretch, to yawn, to flex our spine or any other almost irresistible desire to move our body after certain day events are examples of how the muted body tries to communicate its needs for expression.
As you start to work through a specific life challenge or project with a coach, therapist, or a friend, your body is “listening” and actively participating in this conversation. As we ignore the body’s dialogue with the mind, it will continue to manifest itself by other means, such as discomfort, aches or pains, a need to lie down, or a crying need for a walk or a run.
Movement is an integral language of being human we have almost forgotten how to use. This coaching practice propose to rescue this powerful tool so that while the words express the mind and body through verbal vocabulary, the body is also invited to participate in this dialogue, adding richness and complexity to ways of knowing what we know and what we find out.
Movement is organic, beautiful, necessary, and part of what defines our humanity. Growing in life is more than talking.