Supporting Our Clients at the Five Levels of the Human Experience

Are you supporting your clients to make deep transformational change? Do you want to be in a mindful place enabling you to support them to the best of your ability? Do you want to quickly build rapport and create partnerships with a deep level of trust and connection?

Coaches who support clients to create profound sustainable change will work with the ‘whole’ person, or as we say, at the five levels of human experience: the physical, mental, emotional, intuitive and spiritual. This is with the belief our mind, body, heart and soul are all connected. And also with the belief we all have different ways of experiencing and being in our world and will respond to different kinds of approaches to unblock certain and potentially deep patterns.

The physical level is looking at how we are experiencing our world in our bodies. Are we present in our body? Are we calm and relaxed or are we tight and tense? Are we aware of the sensations in our bodies? Are we tingling, are we in pain, or are we disconnected or even numb to the sensations of our body which carries us through the world? When we support our clients to become aware of their bodies, they can begin to listen to the clues and triggers that enable them to change their thoughts and emotions and move them into more powerful choices and actions.

The mental level is all about our mindset and how we view our world. Do we view it with optimism, with relish, with appreciation and joy? Or do we see it filled with stress and negativity? When clients recognise how they may be viewing their world and the meanings they are making up about it – which leads to their ultimate results and experiences – that’s when they can choose a different mindset. This is knowing we all have the power of choice in our mind.

The emotional level is truly important because as human beings, we are – as one of our mentor’s refers to human beings – ‘skin full bags of emotions.’ And as we say at Empower World: emotions are necessary to support us – to let us know if we are on track or off track in our lives. By supporting our clients to listen to their emotions and learn from what they are here to teach us, they can powerfully master and lead their lives.

The intuitive level is learning how to listen to our higher, wiser voice, which opens up our heart mind and supports us to live a more authentic and highly energised life. It’s listening to our ‘gut’ and our heart and using it in connection with our higher mind versus our fear based ‘monkey’ mind which is attempting to keep us ‘safe’ in sometimes – or perhaps often – our uncomfortable comfort zone of pain. As coaches, we support our clients to listen to their intuition as well as their wise self.

The spiritual level is often viewed as the relationship we have with God or source or the universe or with our highest self – whatever bests describes our version of spiritual. This can be deep work where we can support our clients to work and live in harmony with their purpose, legacy and higher beliefs.

May-Britt Searty, certified life coach, kinesealogist, naturopath and yoga teacher based in Dubai is a true believer in the mind-body connection and working at all five levels of the human experience. She says as a consequence of traveling around the world and experiencing living in a variety of different cultures, she has recognized the many various ways of connecting with people. As a consequence, May-Britt incorporates a holistic approach when working with her clients.

She explains, “For me coaching is really about connecting. The fact you are capable of connecting with other people and understanding who they are is the basis of creating great rapport.

“I also have a background in natural health and Gestalt therapy (exploring defining moments) and I’m accredited in Myers Briggs (personality profiling) which has allowed me to incorporate a lot of different tools and components into coaching in general.“

One of the success principles we teach during our coach training is our thoughts and emotions create our reality. The way we speak to ourselves impacts our inner strength and capacities, and as Henry Ford famously said, “whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.” So why not choose powerful beliefs and language to support our well-being?

So it’s important to feed our mind, body and soul with words and emotions that support us. May-Britt’s work in Kinesiology is a testimony to this belief. She explains, “Whatever we feel, take in, digest, and we are not only digesting the food that we are eating, we are also digesting energetically our mental thoughts and feelings. And all that is being digested in us is being stored in our cells and muscles. And through muscle testing (for example), we can really go in and get some amazing results in the sense that we can potentially really break free of all patterns.”

As coaches, some of the ways May-Britt says we can get into a great place and space to support our clients on these five levels of human experience – which we agree with whole-heartedly – is to consider some of the following ways:

• Meditating daily, becoming aware of emotions, physiology, patterns, what’s really important and letting go of what is not.
• Using our body to change our thoughts and emotions, because often it is through our body’s physiology we can change perspectives and therefore emotions. And through our body, we can tap into our emotions and potentially let go much easier.
• Keeping a gratitude journal everyday to stay present to what we are really grateful for today and then what we are grateful for in six months time that we visualize we want to achieve.
• Chanting to ground self: just a minute before a session.
• Staying present in self: noticing our breath, our body sensations.
• Taking care of ourself by honoring our body nutritionally, actively and mentally.
• Using positive language to program us for success.

We encourage you as coaches to fully tap into your personal five levels of human experience and by doing so you will be able to support your clients to do the same.

Be empowered.