The above is the common thing between yoga and coaching.
What differs between the two is the “How” to do it, the way to reach self- awareness and transformation.
As illustrated in the above diagram, coaching lead and support the client to reach self awareness through dialogue, challenging questions, where the client start to explore more and more about himself, talks, visualize, think, imagine & feel until he/she reach the level of self awareness, and realize their goals and objectives.
As for yoga, reaching self awareness comes through mastering your mind and body, it reach level of self awareness when a person is in full control over his thoughts, body & spirit.
Below is the 2 phases where a person go through when he practice yoga:
iv. So how would Yoga help the coach and the coaching journey?
From a coach perspective:
Yoga could help the coach to maintain focus and balancing his thoughts and feelings.
When a coach is able to balance his thoughts and feelings, the judgmental factor that sometimes considered to ba challenge for some of the coaches will be better controlled, also, when a coach practice yoga, he will have more capacity to absorb all the topics and issues (and sometimes negative vibes) that comes out of clients and turns it into positive approach to help the client staying on track.
Yoga For client:
If yoga and coaching share same objective “TRANSFORMATIO” then having the two support of yoga and coaching might be able to speed up the process, or would definitely give support to each other.
Yoga & coaching are 2 interrelated supporting functions that in the end help the client and the coach to reach their goals.
v. Case Study
While reading through to prepare for this paper, I found 2 case studies that attracted my attention that presented how yoga could have great influence in changing a person and build self confident through realizing capabilities and building on self awareness, which is very common with coaching purpose. And I believe integrating yoga practice with coaching journey in cases like the below, it would speed up and support the client’s progress.
Case Study 1:
Improving Child Behavior
In the following case study you can read how Sinclair’s behavior improved because of his success in the yoga lessons over two terms.
The plan to teach challenging postures, supportive group work, heaps of positive praise, certificates and masses of encouragement-helped change Sinclair’s attitude and behavior.
Background
Sinclair is a Year 4 pupil child in a primary school in Redbridge.
His class teacher described him as having a low self image, often moody, having a short attention span; often disrupting the class with silly noises or swearing.
Sinclair was aggressive to other children and found group work difficult.
Sinclair enjoyed PE and loved football, was sharp and incredibly flexible.
Individual Aims for Sinclair
The main focus of our work with children centers on the social and emotional aspects of learning.
Our main aim in every lesson is to enhance children’s self esteem.
Other benefits like improved flexibility, fitness, better concentration and calmness, for example, are natural when you practice yoga, yet contribute to the overall sense of a child’s self worth.
We designed specific aims that included:
Our Approach
Our approach was to build on Sinclair’s strengths:
Sinclair the demonstrator
Sinclair was a natural yogi and we quickly realized that he was excelling at the posture work.
We decided to use Sinclair as much as fairly possible to demonstrate new postures and reinforce old ones to the whole class.
Before the lesson class teacher would remind Sinclair that he was being given responsibility of showing the other children postures and it meant that he had to show responsible behavior too.
Sinclair the ‘helpful teacher’
Group work proved successful in achieving our aims.
The children worked in groups of six. Each group was to work as a team to find a way to perform a specific posture in an interesting way that also supported and connected with each other.
We said we were looking to reward group skills which included listening and making decisions.
Above all there was an emphasis on group members helping each other in a kind and encouraging way. In other words children were given the responsibility of looking out for each other.
Sinclair’s expertise at the postures set him up as a natural leader and his attention to detail meant that he could spot ways to help children in his group.