Practical Mindfulness in the Real World

Brad Cooper

welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and wellness coaching podcast. My name is Brad Cooper. I’ll be your host in. Today’s interview is with Laura Henlen, a nationally board certified health and wellness coach and a specialist in our topic today, which is mindfulness. Now if you’re like me and you hear that and you say, Oh yeah, mindfulness, I know all about that. I’ve read about it and you are in for a big and very pleasant surprise. As long it takes us much deeper into the concept and more importantly the application both in our coaching practices but also personally. I loved this interview. A little background on Laura because I mentioned she’s a nationally board certified health and wellness coach. She’s been coaching since 2009, but, and she jokes about this a little bit in the interview. She’ll tell you, she hasn’t worked a day in her life because she’s so passionate about wellness and the empowering process of coaching.

Brad Cooper

She’s also a certified smoking cessation trainer and is honored to be not only an instructor, but a mentor coach for the Catalyst Coaching Institute, and she’ll mention a couple of times this webinar she’s put together on mindfulness, so those of you who were in the program, that might be one you want to check out. Laura holds a master’s degree in health psychology, were fun. Fact, she actually crafted her own year long multidimensional wellness plan as her master’s thesis. I like that. In addition to coaching, her most notable experience comes from work as a clinical biofeedback therapist. Biofeedback is all about training people to relax and learn how to self regulate their autonomic nervous system, instructing her biofeedback patients in mindfulness techniques was a foundational aspect of this powerful mind body training. Laura got turned onto the impressive health benefits of meditation when she was a senior in high school and it’s been hooked ever since. She’s a firm believer in taking some time everyday to turn inward, nourishing the connection with your mind, body, and present moment experience. So with that, let’s get started. On this latest episode of the Catalyst Health and wellness coaching podcast. All right, well Laura, thanks for joining us today. Before we take a deeper dive into this intriguing area of mindfulness, if we’re going to talk about today, can you tell us a little bit about your kind of broader career as a health and wellness coach? We’ve provided the introduction a leading into this, but just a couple of tidbits that might be of interest to the current and future wellness coaches that are listening to this.

Laura Henelund

Sure. And I appreciate you having me on today. Well, I have been working my dream job as a wellness coach for nine years and it is definitely my true calling and passion. Um, don’t laugh when I say it’s my job, but I do truly feel that. Um, and you know, I’ve done a lot of coaching calls, probably upwards of, I don’t know, nine or 10,000 at this point, but I still feel it’s really a huge honor and a privilege to be invited in to someone, you know, very personal wellness journey. And I try not to pick that light. So I think it’s a pretty, pretty amazing field, so happy to be doing it.

Brad Cooper

Everyone listening to you, not everyone, but 99 percent of the people listen to you go, wow. 9,000 coaching. I think you have their attention already in terms of mindfulness itself, how did, how’d that get on your radar screen initially and then walk us through the role it’s played for you in your health and wellness coaching because that’s not necessarily something that everyone brings to their, to their career as a health and wellness coach.

Laura Henelund

Sure. Yeah. Well, as you mentioned in my introduction, I was a clinical biofeedback therapist, um, for a number of years which no one has ever heard of, but it’s extremely cool work and biofeedback is all about training people to cultivate a healthy collaboration, if you will, between their mind and their body. And believe it or not, mindfulness training, Brad is the foundation for all biofeedback and self regulation training. And so when I was doing that work, you know, working with patients day in and day out, they learned really quickly that they had to be in the present moment in order to create any positive shifts in their physiology, um, and to relax at the nervous system level, but kind of witness the power of, of the present moment in that work as a biofeedback therapist. And now as a coach, I love sharing the physical and mental health benefits of relaxation and mindfulness with my coaching clients.

Laura Henelund

Um, I have to say, it does kind of strike me as a little bit unfortunate that as a society we’re not exposed to this type of training elsewhere. Um, oftentimes I guess the conversation I have with my clients about cultivating a mind body connection is the first they’ve had with anyone. It sure sound, like I know kind of crazy. And then when I actually guide them in a mindfulness breathing exercise or kind of a mini body scan, which by the way, I always try and do some type of experiential thing with them because feeling is definitely believing. Um, but it’s after another first experience with some type of, you know, mindfulness or relaxation. Um, and then I also hear from many clients and actually a lady yesterday that I was working with in fact that they’ve tried meditating before, but they were terrible at it.

Laura Henelund

Um, and so they gave up. I, if I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard that I wouldn’t have a ton of money, but I would definitely be a small, small pile. So, so that whole notion just really motivate me even more to share different options with them to really find a way to help them kind of move through the struggles of getting some kind of mindfulness or meditation program going. I mean, if you think about it, slowing down, letting go and hanging out in the moment is not, is not easy in this crazy busy, you know, sort of overstimulating environment. We live in a. When my clients kind of get the hang of it, it’s so gratifying when they start experiencing some positive results. I had a client that I’ve only got, I only got to work with for four sessions and I think it was session one that I taught, taught her that kind of that brief relaxation exercise that I’ve been teaching for.

Laura Henelund

Oh my gosh, probably two and a half decades now where they’re just kinda noticing themselves taking a slow, relaxed breath and letting go of tension. Anyhow, she came back and said that she’d been practicing it and her neck pain was gone. Her kind of, you know, pence, cranky, aching, neck was gone and every time you know, we had a conversation, I kept checking back in. She said, yeah, the neck pain’s gone and hasn’t come back because she’s been continuing to practice this. So that. That’s really why I do continue or get excited about sharing it with my coaching clients.

Brad Cooper

It’s so interesting and I think you’re. You said it’s unfortunate people aren’t getting this. I think it’s coming. I think it’s out there. The power of it is really coming to the forefront, so people like you sharing this information, bringing it to the attention of, of the folks that are listening here, hugely valuable, but you mentioned when we were talking offline, it was just on the cover of a magazine recently to publicity and I think there’s a. there’s a good reason for that. Can you? Can you take us into. So if someone’s listening to this who says, Oh yeah, I’ve kind of heard of that, but I don’t know much about it. Can you describe just more of the basics of mindfulness and its benefits to somebody who maybe is just vaguely familiar with the concept?

Laura Henelund

Sure. Yeah. So said that if you’re practicing mindfulness are following three simple but definitely not easy parameter. So that first parameter, Brad, is that you are observing your thoughts, your feelings, and your body sensation in the moment without judgment or expectation. Second parameter is that you are making no attempt to try and quiet or empty your mind and the third parameter is that you’re letting go of any effort to change, push away or distract from your present moment experience. Those are kind of the, I guess the sort of the guidelines. And then I think really, yeah, really important to recognize that mindfulness is a lifetime engagement and practice. We don’t ever arrive. Um, I know I’ve been practicing meditation for about 32 years since I was about 18 and you’re in high school and, and you know, you call it a meditation or relaxation practice for just that reason.

Brad Cooper

That’s excellent. That is excellent.

Laura Henelund

So in terms of the benefit of adopting a regular mindfulness practice, I mean we could probably spend an entire, you know, second podcast on that, but there’s literally brad been thousands of studies done on the benefits of mindfulness, many which have been using functional Mri, which is, you know, pretty cool stuff, pretty high tech stuff and the evidence is so clear that it can support our physical, mental, and emotional health and just a multitude of ways. So some of the biggies are decreasing anxiety, stress and depression. I’m less suffering, improved immunity, self esteem and empathy as well as increased optimism and life satisfaction.

Laura Henelund

Been an immense benefit to the people that are doing research on mindfulness and any of the folks that are listening out there. If you’re not familiar with some of the research on mindfulness and the use of functional Mri to show what portions of the brain are doing, what when people are practicing that, definitely look into that and that may be something we’ll cover in a future evidenced based practice episode, but thanks for mentioning that because that is such a key area and maybe the reason we’re seeing much more about mindfulness now because the researchers are getting their arms around it and saying, look, we can show it. It’s not just subjective anymore. It’s. It’s an objective measurement that we can identify. So great stuff. Great stuff. Okay, so stress. Our coaches that are listening to this, that’s probably one of the primary areas they’re helping their clients work through is is reducing or helping manage stress obviously is not a bad thing. It’s how we deal with it is how we absorb it as our bodies prepared for it in our mind, et Cetera, et cetera. So how have you seen benefits from mindfulness in addressing stress management or stress tolerance or whatever you want to call it, a in that area?

Laura Henelund

Yeah, and this kind of does go back to my background as a biofeedback therapist and I mean there’s no doubt that regular, a regular practice of mindfulness is a, an extremely powerful tool for managing stress and fighting ourselves, brad at that nervous system level, which is so important. Again, I’m such a big advocate on, you know, really self care of our, of our autonomic nervous system. So kind of by way of explanation, let me start with the idea that, you know, let’s, let’s assume that 99 point nine percent of the time in the present moment, we are indeed safe. We’re, we’re not in any physical danger, right? There’s not that saber tooth tiger or that, you know, bear knocking down our door, right? Any of those things would warrant a fight or flight stress response, but none of those things. 90 nine point nine percent of the time are happening, so when our attention is in the present moment with our body, which by the way is the only place the body can be the Amygdala, which is that primitive part of the brain scan for danger and threat. It’s when we’re in the moment, it’s receiving real time information that all is well, that we are safe and it’s this precise message of safety and that we’re okay, um, that it’s receiving that allows us to feel calm and relaxed and most importantly prevent turning on that fight or flight stress response unnecessarily. So that’s kind of the sort of physiology behind it, but unfortunately, um, much of the time, our attention and therefore thoughts are not in the present moment, right?

Brad Cooper

Yeah.

Laura Henelund

Yeah. So they’ve gone back to the regretful passed, right? Coulda, Shoulda, woulda dwelling. I’m kind of, Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. You know, worrying about past mistakes or we spend an exorbitant amount of time in the unknown, scary and worrisome future, what I call the world of what is right. And in both those cases, broad, the Amygdala, which unfortunately has the mentality of about a three year old, cannot discriminate between real and imagined danger. It’s getting the message that things could have or have already gone wrong and when, when, when it’s getting that message again, even if it’s just imagine it’s because its only job is to protect us if it senses danger again, even if it’s only imagine it’s going to start the fight or flight stress response. And so circling this all the way back around to the original question being in the moment, it was that real time live streaming message of safety which allows us to not have to be in the fight or flight stress.

Brad Cooper

Laura, this is fascinating. I mean I’m just sitting here going, man, I love this stuff. Okay. So do you see ways in which mindfulness, aside aside from what coaches can, how coaches can utilize it with their clients, but what are ways that coaches can use it to be better coaches?

Laura Henelund

Yeah. Yeah. And I talked about that in my no catalyst coaching institute mindfulness, a Webinar that I just put together. So definitely on on the top of my mind and I think practicing mindfulness on a regular basis has helped us as coaches to slow down our minds so that we are better able to put our full attention on our client and what they’re saying. And of course when we’re listening more deeply, we’re better at sensing those subtle shifts in the tone of their voice. The verbiage, which is gonna make it easier to pick up change, talk. Right? And I also think broad and you’ll probably agree with is our clients can probably sense even over the phone when we’re distracted.

Brad Cooper

Huge.

Laura Henelund

I know I can tell right away when my client is not present in the conversation, I can almost hear them typing, but I can just tell some kind of background, you know, typing or something. I just thought yeah, they’re not really, they’re not really with me. So a regular practice of mindfulness could also help us, you know, really learn to be better at responding what our clients are saying and that kind of thoughtful and meaningful way rather than just reacting, which is happening more in that from that unconscious or habituated place, right? Maybe from triggers or cues, they might say something and we just to have that immediate reaction. So we definitely want to, I’m in more of that responsive mode that’s definitely going to make our sessions more personalized and more individualized to the client themselves.

Brad Cooper

So as you’re talking about that, I’m thinking there are so many technology firms trying to create coaching from, uh, an ai side of things in. One of the things you were pointing out is yeah, you can wrote the answer. A computer can, can memorize or respond the way the coach is technical answers should be. But the mindfulness on the part of the coach allows you to go another level deeper that the computer never would be able to.

Laura Henelund

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean because you can hear no hesitation in their voice. You know, I’m like, I work a lot with smokers and now you can definitely hear it when they’re like, yeah, you know, I’m going to quit and then you kind of just hear a shift and like you kind of can pick up that hesitation or that year. Um, and then that helps you kind of be able to pose that question like, well, you know, I hear you saying you’re ready to quit, but I’m also picking up a little, a little sense of hesitation or something going on and you’re right, the computer would never be able to do that.

Brad Cooper

So good. So good. Okay. So let’s dive into the practical and again, just high level stuff for the coaches. Some of them have listened to your webinar on mindfulness that goes really deep. Some of them will in the future, but just for the group that’s listening to this now and may never get a chance to hear that. What are some specific ways coaches can use mindfulness either personally or with their clients on kind of a practical, you know, three tips kind of thing.

Laura Henelund

Okay. So obviously mindfulness is all about managing and directing our attention. I think that’s just a really good foundational way to think about it. So a good place to start for coach or client is to spend some time every day purposefully putting your attention on the present moment. And Oh my gosh, there’s just a huge variety of ways in which you can go about this. Spend is paying attention to your breath. You could take a short mindfulness a where you’re purposely purposefully noticing details of your environment, flowers, leaves, are out. You could also tap into sound like closing your eyes for a few minutes and just listening to the sounds around you, you know, like on a lunch break or coffee break going out in the sunshine with, oh my goodness, it’s so healing. Um, I’m a big promoter of that. And just closing your eyes and just listening to the sounds around you, Brad are occurring in the present moment when you’re tuning into them, right?

Laura Henelund

Even if it’s our horns or birds chirping. And then it’s kind of cool because if you heard both of those, you could actually play around with directing your attention to the most pleasant one and that would be kind of higher level stuff so you could, um, you know, immerse yourself in paying attention to the minute by minute sensory experience during a mundane daily tasks such as showering, doing the dishes or wiping down the counters. And there is literally, I mean, when I was putting together the Webinar, I mean I was almost overwhelmed or thousands of resources for incorporating mindfulness. So I really encourage coaches to just, you know, kind of play around, pick a couple to start and then just start, um, we can pretty much use any sense. So, you know, visual, auditory, smelling. When I take my mindfulness walks now with my dog, not only do I try and really look at the beauty of the flowers that I would stop and smell them in the springtime, just get right up my nose right up in there. And, and you know, just really against stop and smell the flowers. Kind of a cliche. But that’s mindfulness. Pretty basic stuff.

Brad Cooper

I love it. You’re doing such a good job. This is just so fascinating and I think I came into this thinking, oh yeah, I know mindfulness in your. You’re appealing stuff back here. So great job. Let’s, let’s talk about a anonymous obviously, but keeping it anonymous, can you share a, an encouraging story, an interesting story, something about a client again in the context of being anonymous, where mindfulness really played a pretty big role in how they progressed or how have you developed? You mentioned one example earlier, but is there another one that comes to mind just off the top of head?

Laura Henelund

Yeah. So this particular client, I’m really described herself as an unhealthy. She kept telling me she just always felt rush and frazzled and distracted. Um, her verbiage was actually that she felt like she had gotten on a treadmill, you know, five years ago and she couldn’t get off of it or slow it down. I thought, wow, I really sort of felt for her and I heard this real sense of helplessness and so I thought mindfulness might help. Um, I explained what it was and what a simple practice might look like and because feeling is believing and I’m sort of really big on that spiritual thing, I led her through a brief guided exercise where I just had her pay attention to our breath for a few minutes and I can remember her saying, I’ve never paid attention to my breath, Laura. I’m so. I knew right then.

Laura Henelund

I mean this was going to be pretty eye opening stuff for her. So ultimately this client chose to start engaging a few simple mindfulness practices and just kind of recommended the, you know, the coaches might do and one of those was to spend 10 minutes a day simply paying attention to her breath. Which by the way is a fundamental mindfulness practice that many people start and stay with that you don’t have to venture much further from that. That’s, that’s sort of a foundational practice. And the other one, and I think it was because I was sharing with her that I was taking these mindfulness walks with my dog. Other one was this gal wanted to start turning her dreaded daily dog walks into joyful mindfulness walk and so I was Kinda asking her a little bit more and she was telling me that her dog walks were miserable because she spent the entire time up in her head worrying about things, you know, sort of wishing the walk over so she could get back to the business of her busy day.

Laura Henelund

Um, so anyhow, those were the two things she decided to work on. And I am not kidding you. She came back to our next next session saying she had been diligent about practicing and researching and she was just literally gushing about my, um, some of the things she shared. It’s still kind of, I just kind of get a tingle when I think about it because it, I mean almost get teary eyed because, I mean she was talking about, I mean some of the things she’d be. She’d lived in her neighborhood, I don’t know, 15 years. And for the first time she wasn’t noticing the beauty of her neighborhood because she was slowing down to notice the homes and the colors. And the flowers now yard, the core, just kind of simple, silly stuff like that. Um, and her walk with her dad became enjoyable, peaceful break from her busy day.

Laura Henelund

And she also mentioned just some of the things she’d kind of been noticing because she was spending more time in the present moment was how darn cute her dog’s nose and mustache were. I don’t know. I’m a dog lover. So that stuck out and that her 14 year old daughter had natural red highlights in. It just gives you the tills and another sort of thing she noticed was the dust on her dashboard of her car. I don’t know why I remember that one, but again, she just was slowing down and it was still cool because she was so amazed that when she began consciously spending some time everyday in the present moment, it was getting easier to slow down, to be more present during the rest of her day. Right. The practice. The two little things that she was, Brad, we’re starting to inform the rest of her day. She was just so tickled that something as simple, not always easy as hanging out in the present moment had had allowed her to cultivate this peace and this calmness had just really been alluding her. So it was, it was kind of a welder. So I like. I do like sharing that one

Brad Cooper

tremendous. I almost feel like we need to pause and ponder that one for a little bit. I think think of the impact and impact for the next day, the next week only. This is, like you said, it’s kind of lifelong stuff. Once you establish that habit. Wow. Okay. So first step for a coach who, who’s listening to this and saying, you know, I’m coaching currently. I haven’t really integrated much with the mindfulness stuff up to this point, but I think I’d like to, or someone who’s thinking about being a coach and they want to make a mental note of when I started coaching, I want to be sure x, Y, Z, what will be a good first step or two for a coach that hasn’t been, but would like to integrate more mindfulness elements into their coaching practice.

Laura Henelund

I think the first thing I might suggest would be for the coach to you personally cultivate some type of daily mindfulness meditation habit, even if it’s just, I’ve had a minute and that’s kind of the cool thing with mindfulness practice, Brad is really, um, you know, most folks out there are just, you know, saying, Hey, just 10 minutes and have these huge, huge impact. So don’t underestimate the power of a small commitment of time. But I think that practice would allow, you know, the person who experienced the benefits, but also the challenges of practicing mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness is super humbling for like, yeah, I was in the present moment for about half a second

Laura Henelund

and true. I mean, it’s really, I mean, especially when we’re just, you know, our minds are just so good at being distracted. Um, so again, I think practicing it, um, gives him that percent experience and then they could move on. You know, once they kind of practice it in their own personal life, I think it’s easier to begin practicing being more mindful during a coaching conversation. And initially, you know, this could be, oh, practicing simple ways as a coach to maybe bring themselves back to the present moment. Um, I think it happens to all of us, you know, we maybe noticed our mind as galloped into the future, right when we’re starting to formulate that next brilliant question we want to ask and all of a sudden we’re not really paying attention very well. So having a way to kind of, you know, obviously noticed that and then just kind of maybe pull your attention back to your center of your solar plexus or some way that’s very unique and personal to you to kind of bring yourself back. So that would definitely be a way to kind of integrated into your coaching practice by first integrating it into your own life.

Brad Cooper

Amazing advice. I mean, it’s consistent with what you’re saying is instead of get ahead of yourself and do these five things, it’s woo wade, let’s take a step back and let’s integrate it personally.

Laura Henelund

And then from that personal integration will spur these other things. So outstanding. Alright, so we’re gonna take mindfulness. We’re going to put it over to the side here for a second and we’ll be talking about Laura, if you’re okay with this, we would like to ask our guests. We’ve got all these coaches listening. How are you in your health and wellness? Is there some area that has been a struggle for you? It’s, it’s an area that you’d like to share that you’ve been kind of focusing on. Can you, can you walk us through kind of your recent journey in one area? Maybe it’s exercise or stress or life balance or any of the dimensions that’s been your focus in kind of what you’ve been doing and how it’s going and just walk us down that path with you a little bit.

Laura Henelund

Yeah. Well, you know, as I mentioned, I’ve been sort of doing a deep relaxation meditation for about 32 years, so that’s really well cultivated an established in my life. But I tell you when I Yeah, when I did put together that mindfulness Webinar for CCI, it, it just, I mean, I don’t know, it was fun. It was a lot of work. Um, but I learned so much and I really caught the mind, the mindfulness bug, you know, really I think just studying and reading that, all the fabulous benefits that I was like, no, I really want this to be a bigger part of my life. And I came across an incredibly cool quote when I was working on the presentation and it is, life is what you pay attention to, life is what you pay attention to and for some reason it’s just kind of stopped me in my tracks and stuck with me. I don’t know, maybe the sheer simplicity of it, um, but it really spurred me to, um, work on being a better steward of my thoughts and my attention.

Laura Henelund

I mean, I think I do pretty good job and maybe that’s my, that’s my, you know, long time meditation practice. But I knew I could do a lot better. Um, and it’s been sort of strangely fun and empowering to practice with this. And I get excited because I know each time I purposefully redirect my attention, it’s kind of fun to see how my thought follow. Um, so if I’m out walking and become aware or mindful that I’ve started thinking about a problem and I’m up in my head, right, just, you don’t even notice it until you start noticing it, you’re just kind of, they’re like, oh, I’m not, you know, thinking about this thing that I think about everyday and all of a sudden I’ll put my attention on something around me like a beautiful flower or a tree. And now as I’m paying attention to the flower, kind of trying to use as many senses as I can.

Laura Henelund

Right? I talked about like actually going over, walking over to the flower, looking at the, the, you know, three different shape paint and smelling the flower. I find myself starting to think about the flower, right? So now my attention has been redirected by me and now my thoughts are following. And I’m actually thinking about this flower. Like, wow, how can nature make this amazing scribe colored flower? And then I actually start to feel, you know, when I’ve been noticing the positive shift in my body as well, I kind of stand up taller. I feel more confident. I feel more peaceful and in charge of my mind and I don’t know, I guess in reality, um, I don’t know. Each time I redirect my attention, I’m becoming more in charge of my mind. I’m, I’m, I’d love neuroplasticity. I read a lot on that, so I kind of get excited that I’m actually brad sprouting new neural circuits when I’m redirecting my attention, I’m kind pruning away the old undesirable ones for those, those, those repetitive thought, right? They say that all of us have, oh, I don’t know, 12 to 90,000 thoughts per day, but 95 percent of them are the same ones we had yesterday and the day before. So if I can kind of work on pruning away those sort of old messages and old bat, that’s cool. Yay. Neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity at work, right?

Brad Cooper

If you’re not familiar with this concept of neuroplasticity is not a new concept, but it is getting a lot of recent attention. So again, I’m glad you just throw that phrase out because that’s a good little homework assignment for listeners to say, wait, I think I’ve heard of that. Let me go check that out. Fascinating, fascinating research on the topic.

Laura Henelund

Yeah, and I can just say neuroplasticity is, you know, again, you know, things that wire take or things that fire together, wire together, things that fire apart, wire apart. So basically what you continue to attend to and put your attention on get stronger and stronger. And um, yeah, that’s how we can, I mean it’s fast. It is I think important and fascinating work for coaches because it really gets the, the sort of neuro psychology route of habit formation and habit breaking habits that are no longer serving as well. So, um, yeah, it’s really one of my favorite favorite topics. There’s a really couple of great books I’ve read on neuroplasticity, a coaches or I’m interested, they’re both by Norman doidge a first day norman, lesson d o I d, g e, he’s the Canadian physician. Physician just has a fascination with neuroplasticity and all its different applications which are immense and he’s got two books out of that just blew me away.

Laura Henelund

So. And then this morning when I was just kinda thinking about this podcast, I was actually thinking that this process of, of practicing redirecting one’s attention, right to more positive things. Um, it’s, it’s a little bit like curating, right? And that’s a word we’re also hearing a lot about mindfulness, neuroplasticity curating at least I’ve been hearing that word a lot and it’s kind of like curating your own life experience, but from the inside out. And then I’m also listening to a really good book right now I’m kind of an audible sound and, and it’s called the untethered soul by Michael, a singer. And it’s been really helpful to just another way of looking at letting go and spending more time in the here and now.

Brad Cooper

I think the only thing people are going to walk away from this bummed about it. Second of all this homework because they got these research studies, they need to get these books. They’ve got to read, they’ve got to get on up. So. No, that’s awesome. Thank you. So I’ll kind of wrap up question, any suggestions, comments for, and maybe break this into two pieces. We have with two groups of listeners, basically we have the folks that are currently coaching the. It’s not quite at the level they want to be. They want to become better coaches, they want to have more energy, they want to get their passion back, whatever it might be, and then we have the folks that are on the fence. They’re thinking, yeah, I think I’d. I think I might like to go into coaching, but I’m not sure if it’s right for me, that kind of thing. So any maybe a tip or two for each one of those groups. So a, the folks that are currently coaching, maybe they’re not quite as experienced as you. Maybe they’re the same as you, but now they’ve kind of hit a barrier of they’re getting tired or they want something fresh or whatever. So any tips for the experienced coach and then any tips for the considering coach will call them today?

Laura Henelund

Well, for us coaches in the trenches, you know, I really liked the idea of us all working together to bring respect, invalidity and attention to this amazing field. I think in time we are going to be an integral part of healthcare in our society and they’ll wonder how they ever lived without us, but we also, um, you’re spot on. We have to keep it fresh for ourselves. We have to make sure we don’t get burnt out and I think a lot of that comes back to again, cultivating some type of nervous system or mental strategy for ourselves, some way to really take care of our ourselves, you know, with um, um, formal maybe routine where you’re meditating every day or you’re practicing mindfulness for 20 minutes a day or you’re doing kind of a western base, no relaxation exercise. This strategy for self care, um, and know, just keep finessing your coaching skills too because I think that, I know, you know what I mean, like anybody go in dips and valleys and peaks and valleys I guess is a better way of saying it.

Laura Henelund

And sometimes when you learn something new, right? Like when we have our coach huddle, which is where we, we learn something new that I always feel fired up for the next couple of weeks. Right? Because you’re, you’ve taken in new materials, so I think that would be kind of for the, the current coaches and then for people on the fence, I’m going to come back to mindfulness and just observing if you will, all your passing thoughts about coaching. Should I go for it? Should I not now at least you’re not trying to change this, that and not just, you know, observing them. Right. Without judgment or expectation, expectation and you’re, you’re listening, right brad for what’s coming up or that wisdom so that you can make a good decision. So using as a tool to decide if you want to be a coach or not  I guess.

Brad Cooper

Laura this was outstanding. Your awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. I think. I think a lot of people are gonna want to listen to this one a few times through because it’s almost relaxing to hear you forget the information. You’re sharing this great information. It just, it, it’s calming just to listen to response and I think that’s probably a reflection of the life that you live and the way that you have implemented this into your daily practice. So thank you so much and uh, folks, I will be right back.

Brad Cooper

Pretty good stuff, Huh? It’s just so interesting and it just goes so far beyond the headlines that you hear about mindfulness. Uh, I loved how she talked about. It’s a practice. It’s a lifetime thing. It’s not something you do, you master, you move on. But like so many other aspects of wellness, it’s an ongoing practice she talked about. It allows us as coaches to be better with our responses. It keeps you from falling into that rote response with your clients. You heard her say she had been involved with 9,000 coaching sessions as a wellness coach. You think she hasn’t heard it all before? Well, as long as she’s mindful, the response is still unique versus being habitual. So I thought that was powerful. And then one that really resonated personally because we’ve been talking about this as a family lately, is she tech, that, that quote she loved of life is what you pay attention to.

Brad Cooper

So similar. Suzanna had brought up basically a little phrase that we’ve been talking about in our family of life is now life is now, so obviously very close to what she was talking about. I mentioned in last at the end of the last podcast and exciting announcement coming up. We do not have all the details up on the website depending on when you’re listening to this, but I want to mention I want you to be one of the first to hear about this because we are so excited about this. You’ve been to a number of conferences, maybe even some coaching competencies and they’re always very good. You know, the educational opportunities and what you learn in some of the networking is really valuable. We thought as a wellness coach, he needs something a little bit different. You need the education, you need the ceos, you need that chance to grow yourself as a coach, but you need a chance to just relax and let up and just kind of refresh and recover and rejuvenate and refocus and all those kinds of things.

Brad Cooper

And so on. September seventh and eighth, 2019. That’s the weekend after Labor Day, we’re going to be hosting the very first health and wellness coaching retreat and symposium in Estes Park, Colorado. If you’ve not been ss park, it is so beautiful and September there’s not a better month. Like literally there is no better month. You don’t have to worry about the snow. You get the sunshine still the nice cool evenings, just beautiful. So mark your calendars. We don’t have you for listening to this immediately after the recording when we don’t have the details up on the website, but they’re coming very soon, so keep an eye out. You can go to catalyst coaching institute dot Com and just look for the details on the retreat. They’re just a neat, neat opportunity and we’re super excited about it. We do a retreat as a company on a regular basis and there’s no more powerful weekend and we thought, how can we spread that out?

Brad Cooper

It helped coach us through the same, so it will involve ceos. You will have some great coursework, some great networking opportunities. We’re going to take that retreat piece very seriously, and so you’re going to get a chance just to breathe and just get your feet back under you. So anyway, lots of resources at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. In addition to details on the retreat that will be coming up and feel free. We love getting emails from you. Questions, ideas for future podcasts, anything that’s on your mind in terms of the wellness coaching side, feel free it’s results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Thanks again for joining us and for spreading the word about this podcast. Keep working towards better than yesterday and I’ll chat with you soon. On the next episode of the Catalyst Health and wellness coaching podcast.