Distance Coaching: why you should give it a try

Telecommuting. E-mail. Video chatting. Instant messaging. Blogging. Status updates. Tweeting. Pinning. Through the innovations of communications technology, these methods of connecting to others have become part of our mainstream culture.

But telecoaching--that's just weird, right? Even my spell check doesn't acknowledge it.

But distance coaching IS a viable option, particularly for anyone who doesn't have easy access to an in-person coach. Whether it is because you are unable to fit an office visit into your schedule, live somewhere where a coach or counselor is not within driving distance (or not one that speaks English), or simply prefer to work from the privacy and comfort of your home, e-coaching gives you the ability to take steps to improve your quality of life on your time.

Coaching by phone, email, or video chatting is effective, and has been proven to be so by the success of online coaching websites such as the Baby Sleep Site. There is also research that demonstrates that distance mentoring is comparable to in-person mentoring. In fact, it can be more effective, since it may be easier to access than an in-office visit.

Perhaps the biggest concern about e-coaching is that it might lack the personal touch of meeting with your coach in person. If in-person meetings are the only form of human contact you feel comfortable with, or if you are not comfortable with the technology, then yes, you may never be a good fit for online or telephone coaching or counseling. However, if you are able to connect with friends, family members, co-workers, and service providers using e-mail, the telephone, social media, and Skype, then you should give online coaching a chance.

Mind Body Global Wellness offers two types of distance stress-relief coaching to meet your needs:

1. 1:1 live sessions using the telephone or video chatting technology such as Skype
2. CALM Plans, which are comprehsive stress relief e-books customized to meet the needs of each individual client, and include follow up support via email. 

Corporations also benefit from hiring a distance coach, since consulting and presentations delivered electronically obviates the need to pay for the expert's travel expenses, and may be priced more affordably than on location services. 

Mind Body Global's mission is to give all people access to stress relief by pricing its distance coaching at affordable rates. If you know that you need help relieving your stress, but feel that a particular product or service is beyond your means, please contact me at www.mindbodyglobal.com. Sliding scale rates may be available, and may be subject to a means test. I look forward to talking with you!

Beyond the Butterflies: Relieving the Stress in Your Body

"What tools are available to me to relieve stress-induced tension and pain?"

Sometimes, simply developing a holistic understanding of your pain helps to relieve it. For example, once you are aware that the tightness in your chest is a symptom of stress, you can work on reducing your stress, or at the very least, release your fear that the pain is indicative of a larger health problem. You can also develop an awareness of your stress patterns. For example, if you only experience chest pain during exams, you can be reasonably sure that your pain is related to stress, and can choose to allow more time for stress-relief and self-care.* 

For chronic pain and stress, or if you need help creating a self-care routine, Mind Body Global Wellness offers a variety of tools to help you relieve your stress. Here are a few examples:

• Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
• An effective stress-relief technique that combines acupressure with cognitive restructuring. Visit www.mindbodyglobal.com to download your free instruction manual. 
• Guided Imagery
• A guided meditation practice that uses suggested visualizations to relieve stress and gain insight.
• Mindfulness Meditation
• A meditation technique that relieves stress by helping us learn to disengage from stressful thoughts and feelings. By returning our attention to a single focus, such as the sound of our breath, we train ourselves to let negative thoughts and feelings go. 
• Diaphragmatic Breathing
• Practicing slow, deep breathing of any kind will reduce your anxiety, increase your ability to focus, and promote overall physical and emotional health. Practicing diaphragmatic breathing is the most effective, and has the added benefit of being a gentle abdominal workout.
• Yoga
• Practicing either restorative or power yoga will help relieve your stress. Practice power yoga when you need to build heat and "work the stress out." Practice restorative yoga before bed to prevent insomnia, or whenever you need to relax and be gentle to yourself. 
• Lifestyle Coaching and Counseling
• Mind Body Global's 1:1 e-coaching sessions and CALM Plans will not only help you learn how to practice specific stress relief techniques, but will provide a comprehensive wellness assessment and recommendations for making changes to reduce future stress.

Questions? Ready to get started? Please visit www.mindbodyglobal.com to contact me, learn more about stress relief, or purchase an affordable stress relief coaching package. 

Just joining me? You may want to go back and read Parts 1 and 2 of the Beyond the Butterflies series.

*Remember, physical symptoms must always be checked out by your healthcare provider, and if you are experiencing chest pain or other symptoms of a heart attack, please go to the hospital or call your doctor immediately.

Beyond the Butterflies: Locating the Stress in Your Body

"So now that I've realized I may be holding stress in my body, how do I release it?"

First, you need to locate the stress in your body, and then, you need to understand why it's there.

Our minds can be poets, and they can also be smart-alecks. In order to understand why your stress-induced tension or pain has taken residence in a particular part of your body, you need to understand the metaphor or association that your mind may be employing in choosing that spot.

For example, take the case of the client with the persistent, oddly located headache. The spot on our foreheads between our eyebrows is the location of one of Eastern medicine's energy centers, or chakras. This particular chakra is commonly associated with intuition, and by understanding the potential connection between this place in her body, her pain, and what was happening in her life, my client was able to relieve her headache.

To experience the connection between your mind, your stress, and your body, I invite you to join me in a short guided imagery:

Take a few long, deep breaths, and when you're ready, close your eyes.
Locate a place of tension, tightness, or pain in your body. Focus all your attention on that place. Notice what you see.
What does this spot look like? How deep is it? How wide is it? Does it have a color? Does it have a texture? If you were to touch it, what would it feel like? Notice everything about this spot--all the details.
Now, I invite you allow an image to form in this spot in your body.
What is appearing? It could be a person, someone you know or a stranger. It could be an object. It could be a place. It can be anything at all. What is it?
Why is it there? If it could speak, what would it say?
Now I invite you to return all your attention to your breath, taking a few long, deep, cleansing breaths. When you're ready, open your eyes.

Now write down everything you saw. This step is very important, as we develop our understanding through the process of writing it out. For more information, you may want to Google "(whatever you saw) + universal symbol."

Guided imagery and other mind-body stress-relief and healing tools work quickly because they take an expressway straight to the core of your distress, which allows you to understand what you're feeling and why you're feeling it much, much faster than hours and hours of analysis.

When practicing stress-relief, I encourage you to try new things, even if they seem odd or unfamiliar. If something works, great! And if it doesn't, try something else! *

Continue to Part III of Beyond the Butterflies: Relieving the Stress in Your Body.

*Mind Body Global Wellness respects the beliefs of people of all faiths, and works to ensure that any stress-relief coaching it provides fits with each individual's or organization's values. 

Beyond the Butterflies: Recognizing Stress in Your Body

"I have butterflies in my stomach." 

"My stomach is tied in knots."  

"I have a sinking feeling ..."

Most people know that the above statements indicate anxiety. Gastrointestinal distress, being obvious and demanding, gets the most attention, but did you know that your hips can be affected by stress?

Stress can affect every part of our body, and sometimes the tightness, tension, or pain will dissipate once the source of the stress has been removed. If you've ever suffered through shoulder pain at work, planned to get a massage but didn't have time, and then forgot to do so because the pain just disappeared, that's what happened. However, in the case of chronic stress, physical expressions of stress may feel like a permanent fixture in your body.

It is common for symptoms of stress to show up in the stomach, neck, shoulder, back, and pelvis, but we can store stress anywhere in our bodies. When people experience severe stress they sometimes feel odd or painful physical sensations long after the event has ended and/or physical healing is complete. This type of stress can be particularly sneaky, as there may not be a clear connection between our stress and that area of our body.

For example, I once worked with a client who consistently complained of a headache in the center of her forehead, but had ruled out all medical causes of this pain. Through EFT and guided imagery, my client realized that this pain increased when she did something despite her instincts telling her not to. In other words, when she ignored her gut feeling, her intuition screamed at her, and over the course of several months her intuition had been doing a lot of screaming. However, by recognizing what was causing her physical pain she was able to change her behavior, and her persistent headache eventually went away.

Any experienced massage therapist, mental health professional, or yoga instructor could cite dozens of examples where a client's emotional or psychological distress manifested as an unpleasant physical sensation. Although it is imperative that we get these symptoms checked out by a healthcare professional and not assume that they are psychosomatic, once we have established our physical health, it is equally important to listen to what your body might be trying to tell you.

Continue to Part II of Beyond the Butterflies: Locating the Stress in Your Body.

Relieving Stress with Emotional Freedom Technique

Emotional Freedom Technique [EFT] is a powerful mind-body self-care tool that helps bypass the barriers keeping you from achieving emotional balance, physical health, and self-awareness. EFT can help you identify the source of your stress, relieve the symptoms of stress, reveal healthy, positive choices that will help you move forward, and remove any mental or emotional blocks that keep you from acting on these choices. The best part is that EFT is a tool that is--quite literally--at your fingertips, and once learned, can be practiced on your own.

EFT works by combining gentle acupressure point stimulation--“tapping”--with cognitive restructuring and mindfulness. It is a fast, effective approach that blends the fundamentals of acupuncture theory and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) (without needles, of course!). As you tap on particular acupressure points on your body, you say statements that help you zero in on what is really causing your distress. By bypassing the "noise" in your mind--noise such as negative judgements, self-doubt, and blame--you get straight to core of your problem, and heal from stress faster.

EFT is, at its core, a mindfulness practice that helps open our hearts and minds to self-awareness and the possibility of change. The gentle tapping keeps our energy moving and our minds focused, and the statements allow us to determine exactly what we need to do to feel better. When we are stuck, EFT is the catalyst that helps us move forward. 

If you'd like to learn more about how EFT can relieve your stress, please visit my Website at www.mindbodyglobal.com and download my free e-book, "EFT for Self-Care: A Step by Step Guide for Beginners." 

EFT Tapping Points