Introduction: Whole Person Running Coaching and Life Coaching
I believe whole person running is the best approach- combining mind, body and spirit. The fully integrated runner, both in terms of body and mind, making it a practice for personal and athletic growth. I use psychology and peak performance for the mind and advanced breathing and body alignment techniques. I am a USATF Certified Coach and tai chi/chi gong teacher with a Masters in Counseling Psychology. I offer coaching for individuals and groups of all ages.
I also offer life coaching for those who wish, drawing upon my therapy experience, Masters in Counseling Psychology, and previous life coaching experience. Check out my coaching philosophy below to get a better sense of how I work.
My coaching philosophy
My coaching philosophy (inspired in part by CoActive Coaching) is not only an important part of how I work but the means by which any goals are implemented. Fulfillment and balance can become as simple as specific running goals, but often these are part of larger goals and values that must be taken into consideration. Within the framework of my coaching philosophy, I bring in the appropriate skills, knowledge, and techniques needed to help realize change for a whole person runner.
Fulfillment: As coach, I consider it important to discover together and hold the client's highest values. In doing so, I can help the client move in the direction they wish to move.
Balance: We work together to choose a life in action, aligned with a compelling vision. Opening up possibilities and alternative courses of action can move a client out of unchangeable circumstances ultimately into powerful action.
Process: The internal experience, or what is happening in the moment, is something I work with when needed if given permission to do so. Naming what happens in the moment and exploring it can allow the client to understand and then shift internal blocks, giving access to new resources.
The Designed Alliance: I believe the power must be given to the relationship between the coach and client. As coach, I give power to the relationship. As client, the relationship gives and receives power and support. To do this effectively, we consciously design our working relationship. When we both know what the expectations and assumptions are as coach, client, and for the nature of the relationship, we can work together far more powerfully.
My primary responsibility as a coach: I look to help clients determine their best course of action and support them in staying on track. I believe this is an empowering process for the client as they uncover the learning for themselves and become more resourceful as a result. I look at the issues brought into coaching within a larger context. I emphasize open listening, mutual respect, clarity, and a willingness to engage with even difficult and emotional conversations.
My Story:
If you're on this page, I suppose you'd like to know more about me. I could just give you a list of qualifications, but perhaps my story is more interesting.
I love running. I always have. And yet I discovered distance running almost by accident. After a season with the track and field team my freshman year in high school, friends starting telling me about something called cross country. And then they started telling me I had to join.
A friend came by where I had lunch every week, asking me to join the cross country team. And so I did, promising I'd be there for tryouts at the end of that summer.
Little did I know, that summer changed my life.
While on a week long boat trip in Turkey with my family and friends, I got to play fight with one of the stranger, more magical people I have ever met. Laughing, we would balance on different parts of the rocking boat, and whack each other with foam tubes. I thought this was all just good fun.
But then I came back to the US and I was fast. Fastest kid in the school fast, when before I had been even with the other freshman runners.
As it turned out, I had unknowingly been trained in principles of body connection by one of the top Chinese internal martial artist masters in the world. He had shifted my body's functioning such that muscles throughout the body were taught to work as a coordinated whole.
Not to mention the laughter and play, which was and continues to be an important lesson. Play and lightness lead to better performance.
I then continued on to UC San Diego, running for the Cross Country and Track and Field Teams there. Here the beginning of my next lessons began.
I knew I had bad form, but no coach was willing to show me what to do about it. "Oh, its working for you, let's not mess with it." And then there was the psychological side of performance, which without any wisdom to guide me on was becoming a greater and greater drag on both my performance and enjoyment in the sport.
I graduated from UCSD in 2009, and the Chinese martial arts master returned. I became sponsored by Topspeed Running, training intensively for marathons and half marathons for two years. I was trained deeply in the arts of Chi Gong and the principles of Tai Chi.
I learned on a far deeper level how to train the body's muscle and fascia connection and how to get into "the Zone" on purpose through different types of meditations. I became certified as a Chi Arts Association Taoist Mind-Body Mastery Teacher in this process.
But my performances were still not quite what I wanted. My head wasn't truly on right. Granted, I still did quite well- notching first places at the 2011 US Half Marathon and in the 2012 LA Marathon Open Division. But I knew I could do better.
So I went back to school, and worked to receive a Masters in Counseling Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (recently renamed Sofia University). I became a USATF Certified Coach.
An idea of what I wished to do with my life was forming in my mind. I could be a Whole Person Running Coach. I could combine the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual. I could bring in advanced martial arts principles, my growing therapy and psychology skills, and my passion for involving meditation and the art of letting go.
I've been coaching for the last three years. During that time, I also worked as a registered Marriage and Family Therapist intern working with kids ages 3-18 at Head Start and CHAC. I worked as an Inventor Mentor and later as the Program Director for Wizbots, teaching kids how to make lego robotics in a brilliant model combining teamwork, engineering, imagination, and project oriented learning.
In the past year, I started receiving requests to provide life coaching to previous whole person running coaching clients. And so, my practice has expanded to include working as a life coach. I also have several adult running groups. And inspired by my experience with running and designing after school and summer camp programs, I now offer my own Youth Programs.
I believe in life coaching and whole person running coaching as a path for personal growth.
I value grace, play, and community. Grace in humility, grace in competition, and the grace of trusting one's own training and capacities. Without play there is no enjoyable running or living. And without community, we isolate ourselves and lose sight of what truly matters.
And if you've made it this far, don't hesitate to contact me. Perhaps its time to get started on your next path together.
I love helping runners and people become not only better at their craft but better at life. I guide runners to an injury free, pleasurable, and relaxed place. I shift my clients into a paradigm of faster, effortless, and joyous running. Runners and people in general learn about themselves in a way that directly improves performance as well as self awareness.
I help life coaching clients become clear about who they are and what they want. As we uncover their highest values and goals, we work together to create a life in alignment with that. I work to help keep clients accountable to those values and goals and support them in making the changes they want to make.
