Women’s Freedom Coach
Move from crisis into new freedom, self-love, trust and worth in 8 sessions
Especially dear to my heart is my coaching work with women. In learning about domestic violence through my personal journey with my daughter and in my training as a DV counselor, I realize the mirror these brave women have been holding for the rest of us. The truth is the feminine aspect in all of us, including men, including the natural world and the earth itself, is in crisis.
My personal experience is that most crises don’t just happen. They’ve usually been building inside of us for a long time before they become externalized. I also believe that when we tend to our inner crises and the emotions that come with them, we can prevent them from becoming the bigger, externalized versions of themselves
In this world where crisis seems to be happening everywhere, all the time, learning how to tend to our own inner state has become as essential. Countless studies have shown how our mental and emotional state affects our physical wellbeing, how childhood trauma affects the development of our brains way into adulthood and how positive thinking and feeling can create health or vice or versa, can cause dis-ease.
I like the Chinese word for crisis, “kanji,” which is translated into two characters – one meaning “danger,” the other meaning “opportunity.” These two characters reveal the split in our humanity between our spirit or greater Self and our ego or smaller self. In crisis, the ego senses danger and feels afraid, whereas our spirit feels the excitement of new possibilities. This is because when we’re in crisis, we feel the imminence of change. And to the ego, change means loss and disintegration, whereas to the spirit, it means transformation and creation.
Whenever we are at a change point in our lives, we must pass through three doors:
Our willingness to change
Our ableness and
Our readiness.
I support women in walking through these three doors.
Email Lisa to schedule your free 15 minute Freedom Call
In 8 sessions, I help clients to reconnect with their Self with a capital S and get to know their inner parts that may be in conflict with change.
According to IFS (internal family systems) therapy, the ego is really a conglomeration of fragmented parts, most of which are formed in childhood and many of which want different things. The reconciliation of our inner parts with one another and with our whole Self (which is both the sum of our parts and something that exists beyond them) is the process of integration and coming into our integrity.
IFS therapy points to certain qualities that make up this whole Self. They are referred to as the 8 Cs. Calm, Curiosity, Connectedness, Clarity, Courage, Compassion, Confidence and Creativity.
I see these 8 Cs as stepping-stones into Selfhood or specifically for women, our divine feminine embodiment. I often use them as focal points in my work with clients, offering supportive meditations and exercises to help women bring these qualities more into the forefront of their awareness.
Email Lisa to schedule your free 15 minute Freedom Call
I believe each woman is the expert of her own life. Our sessions together are a co-creative process. I don’t have the answers for you. You do. I simply help you find them. Through reflective listening, I help each woman to build on her strengths, explore her options, work through the tough life choices and take her next steps forward. Using the Hakomi principles (the therapeutic modality in which I was trained) of organicity, mindfulness, non-violence, holism and unity, my approach is non-directive and client-led. I trust each woman to set her own pace.
I like to begin our work together with cultivating the first C – calm. I resource women with a toolbox of somatic practices that helps them to care for their nervous systems and balance their energy in and out flow so they don’t deplete themselves in their work life and relationships. From a foundation of calm, we can make good choices.
Lastly, I help women to be accountable to themselves. When we show up for ourselves, we become trustworthy to our Self. We expand both our self-trust and worth. We also become trustworthy to the universe, and in turn, the universe trusts us with more. More opportunities, more love, more abundance, more joy!
Private coaching sessions: In-person or online: $150
Or book 8 sessions upfront for $1000 ($125 per session).
Email Lisa to schedule your free 15 minute Freedom Call
How I Work
1
I begin by creating a safe space for each woman to tell her story.
“What everyone needs is a good listening to.”
Every woman deserves to be deeply seen, felt, heard and honored for all she has been through (because women are holding a lot right now for our partners, our family, our collective humanity and for the earth). Almost every woman I know has suffered some kind of trauma. What makes trauma so devastating is not just what has happened to us, but that no one was there for us during or after. This lack of attunement is like a hole inside a woman, that leaves her feeling alone in the world. In partnerships, she can’t quite trust. When having to make decisions, she doubts herself. Rather than enjoying her life, she often feels like life is a battle. Women who’ve survived emotional, physical or sexual trauma often alternate between states of hypervigilance, anxiety and depression. Even when life is good, a woman can feel like the rug might be pulled out from under her at any moment. I know. I’ve been her. And I have so much compassion for her.
When a woman gets to tell her story, it’s the beginning of her healing. And when the listener is attentive, she not only feels that someone is there for her in the present moment, the missing experience of attunement happens backwards and forwards in time
2
I help my clients reset and rewire themselves for pleasure.
“The habit of pleasing others is broken when a woman chooses to please herself and go after her own pleasure.”
Along with talk therapy, I offer women somatic meditations and practices that help them reconnect with their bodies and relax their nervous systems. Changing neural pathways requires repetition of new behaviors. Most women come to me with various levels of anxiety. They usually suffer from hypervigilance and body tension. Some have lived this way for so long, they don’t even know how constricted they are.
When I say to women, “It’s safe for you to relax here,” many of them get tears in their eyes. It’s funny to think that we have to learn how to relax and that relaxation requires practice. It seems like it would be something that just comes naturally. Unfortunately, most of the modern world has become disconnected from our naturalness.
Disconnection and constriction go hand in hand. When there is constriction in the body, it is almost always a sign that a woman is disconnected in some way – disconnected from her natural self, disconnected from others and the natural world and disconnected from her present moment experience. Yes, life is hard, but life is also magical. When a woman is disconnected, she misses out on the simple joy of being alive.
Relaxation is the foundation for all other higher states of being. When we relax, we create more space in our bodies. When there’s more space, our sensory awareness can stretch out. We become more sensitive and receptive. With more receptivity comes more inner and outer connectedness and resource. With access to all of our resources, we feel our abundance. We feel our infinite potential. And all of this creates a sense of wellbeing that can be summed up as a deep feeling of pleasure, that is unconditional.
Email Lisa to schedule your free 15 minute Freedom Call
3
I support my clients in moving through their resistance into their power.
“When a woman befriends her enemy, when she sees her enemy as an ally to her growth and to getting what she wants, there’s nothing more to be afraid of.”
In the process of priming themselves for relaxation, ease, flow, abundance and pleasure, resistance is inevitable and normal. Resistance is simply a psychological reaction to change. It’s a kind of self-protection mechanism that helps us human beings to check our willingness, ableness and readiness to change. Despite our best intentions, resistance almost always shows up in behaviors such as wasting time, making excuses, avoidance, distraction, blaming others, perfectionism, self-sabotage, losing motivation, depression, postponement or giving up all together. When we expect resistance as par for the course, we can let go of our self-judgment and use our resistance to strengthen our resolve and increase our capacity for success.
Some reasons for resistance are:
- Introducing change too quickly without preparing and self-resourcing beforehand
- Not fully committing to the change or doing it for others and not for ourselves
- Underestimating the time, effort it takes to change and overestimating our current capacity
- Not realizing the stickiness of old beliefs, feelings or behaviors
- Unexpected external factors, like the reaction of other people or the onset of other life events
- Lack of support systems in place or a belief that we should be able to change on our own
- Lack of new vision or fear of the unknown
- Fear of “going back to how we were” and having to feel our helplessness to change
I support my clients in overcoming their fear of change by helping them to:
- Expect resistance and identify their most common ways of resisting and reasons why
- Prepare for and have strategies in place to deal with their resistance
- Remember why they’re making the change and how it will benefit them
- Set up self-care routines and other systems of support
- Relax, take time to reflect and continue to refine their approach
Life is not about doing it “right.” Life is creative. It’s about making mistakes, learning from them and growing into our full potential. The more mistakes we make, the less we take our mistakes seriously, the less we judge ourselves, the less afraid we are and the more compassionate we become. In stepping up to challenges, we discover that our resistance is not the end all. It’s part of the process and a valuable learning experience that we can use to our advantage.
Email Lisa to schedule your free 15 minute Freedom Call
Whenever a woman comes up against her resistance, I first remind her that it’s not all of her. It’s just a part of her – a shadow part that’s likely been in place for a long time and for a good reason. Yes, it may have kept her from moving forward, but it’s also what has helped her to cope and function in life. Almost always, her resistance is protecting more vulnerable parts of her. When resistance raises its stubborn head, I encourage my clients not to judge it or push it away. Rather, I help them to meet it and get to know it. I help them to explore the emotions, beliefs and memories that are connected to it. In this spacious self-exploration, a woman discovers what the resisting part has been protecting in her and in turn, she has more compassion and patience with herself.
Qualities such as compassion and patience are higher expressions of our humanity that emanate from what some call our divine Self. It’s through the process of getting to know our protective, resistant parts that we begin to feel our wholeness or our original Self behind them. Gradually, our identity shifts to this Self that holds all of our parts, like a mother. And we have more capacity to mother ourselves.
This inner mother, otherwise known as our divine feminine being, is what many women come to me seeking. They come wanting to claim their divine feminine wisdom and power. Ironically, the way we come to know our wholeness is through our parts. Not just our light parts, but our dark and ugly parts. The truth is every part of us holds both shadow and light, both a burden and a gift. When our original Self comes online, all of our parts feel it. They finally feel safe to let go of their control and hypervigilance because someone they know and trust is there to take over. As resistant parts of us let go, they also release their burdens. Released, they are free to be repurposed. It’s truly an alchemical process! The same parts of us that once sabotaged our growth begin to serve us in new ways for our highest good.
Accompanying our sessions, I sometimes offer women shadow work practices to “play” with their resistance. A recent study documented how play could change old behaviors and patterns faster than without it. Normally, changing a behavior, and the neural pathways connected to it, requires 500 repetitions of a new behavior. Play reduces this process down to 15 or 20 repetitions. When we include the body in play, through things like movement, we can change at a deeper, more quantum level. This is because the body is the storehouse for the subconscious and when we change our minds in the body and in the nervous system, change lasts.
4
Finally, I support my clients to get grounded, organized and practical.
“Confidence is made step by step.”
I help women to set weekly and monthly intentions that move them towards the changes they want to make in their life. I help them to keep making decisions and taking action steps. Studies show that when we have at least one person who we can be honest with, who is holding us accountable, we increase our chances of success and acheive our goals faster. In my experience as a coach and medicine guide, the two most common phrases I hear from women are, “I want to trust myself” and “I want to know my worth.” Through nonjudgmental holding, I help my clients show up for themselves. In this way, they become trustworthy to themselves and in turn, they feel a deeper sense of self love, trust and worth. They also become trustworthy to the universe, and in turn, the universe trusts them with more. More opportunities, more love, more joy, more abundance!
