Coaching before being fully certified is one of the most valuable aspects of the Yoga Health Coaching course. With the support and guidance of Cate, our mentors, and other course members, we practice our skills and gain proficiency while we train. We emerge ready to coach and support our own course members.

Alison Miller went through Yoga Health Coaching while working a demanding full time job with Special Olympics Michigan. Alison is enjoying her work as a yoga health coach so much that she has set a retirement date for her job with Special Olympics Michigan, a job she truly loves. In the meantime, she’s able to do both by staying focused and organized.

Alison is now in Q4 of YHC and has finished coaching her pilot program. She’s getting ready for her certification exam, and her advice to new YHC members is don’t procrastinate! Keep up with your assignments and keep your certification record up to date.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How Yoga Health Coaching prepares you for the meaningful, valuable, impactful work of health coaching
• Why coaching is the only way to prepare for coaching
• The best advice for new YHC members

Links Mentioned in Episode:

• Alison’s website
• YHC Have a conversation
• Watch the Masterclass NOW

Show Highlights:

1:12 – Alison went through Yoga Health Coaching while working a demanding full time job with Special Olympics Michigan. She’s now in Q4 of YHC and has finished coaching her pilot program. She’s getting ready for her certification exam, and her advice to new YHC members is don’t procrastinate! Keep up with your assignments and keep your certification record up to date.

4:30 – Coaching before being fully certified is one of the most valuable aspects to YHC. With the support and guidance of Cate, our mentors, and other course members, we practice our skills and gain proficiency while we train. We emerge ready to coach and support our own course members.

10:00 – Alison is enjoying her work as a yoga health coach so much that she has set a retirement date for her job with Special Olympics Michigan, a job she truly loves. In the meantime, she’s able to do both by staying focused and organized.

Favorite Quotes:

• “If you waited until you were ready to coach, you would never be ready to coach. The only way to be ready to coach is to coach.” — Alison Miller
• “It [the habits program] facilitates all kinds of internal work. This isn’t a diet program. This isn’t an exercise program. It’s everything. It’s an entire life program. And it shifts your whole mindset.” — Carly Banks

Guest BIO

I’m Alison and I am a seeker of all-things health and wellness. I believe that my dharma, my purpose in life, is to help others be the best they can be through lifestyle (re)design that includes learning, practicing, and implementing healthy self-care practices.  The formula and principles are simple; the practice takes discipline; and the implementation and experience of a healthier life is just ahead. I’m not going to lie ~ I want to change the world by reaching as many people as I can and lead them into health by (re)aligning their lifestyle choices. Life can be SO much better when you make small adjustments to your daily habits including what you eat, how and when you move your body, and reducing your stress level. Connect with Alison on her website and FB page.

This beautiful soul has got it figured out!! Are you ready to have FUN in your BUSINESS?

Are you ready to create programs and workshops WITH JOY?

Are you ready to feel like THIS IS SOOOOO EASY?!!!

Today I chatted with Suzanne Lynch of saratogaspringsyoga.com and Suzanne Lynch Wellness.

After three years as a Yoga Health Coach, she’s developed a custom program that suits her dream lifestyle while attracting her dream clients. She’s changing people’s lives, by just doing what comes naturally to her! How lovely is that?
This show is a MUST LISTEN. I’m super inspired.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How to develop a community mindset toward your potential clients.
• Why you want to leverage your YHC resources.
• What you gain when you approach your business model with a sense of ease and abundance.

Links Mentioned in Episode:

• Suzanne’s FB
• Suzanne’s website
• Sign-up for the FREE live Living Ayurveda Masterclass series now!

Show Highlights:

• 2:11  – Suzanne discusses what motivated her about her career challenges to take Cate’s business program and her initial successes.
• 6:30  – Part of successful coaching is patience, support, and understanding the wisdom in our resistances.
• 8:09  – After we master the techniques of a new program, the rules, we can improvise, play, and make it unique to ourselves and our clients.

Favorite Quotes:

• “How easy can this be? How much fun can we make this?” – Carly Banks
• “I am really really big on a lot of support and small steps. Because I want sustainable change.”  – Suzanne Lynch
• “They’re driving the content, and I’m really serving their needs.”  – Suzanne Lynch

Guest BIO:

Suzanne has been helping people get out of pain, and live happier, healthier lives for over 25 years. She has a special talent and affinity for habit evolution and deep listening. Suzanne loves helping clients feel better than they have in years.

Suzanne has been a meditator for 30 years and was certified by the NACC as a Catholic Chaplain in 2001. She worked for the Red Cross after The Trade Center bombings, as well as in hospitals, and in Hospice. She’s a long time student of yoga and started back in 1989. Suzanne lives in Saratoga with her husband, Bruce and her dog Argos. She is a mother of two grown children. Connect with Suzanne on her FB page and get more info on Suzanne’s website.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How do the Body Thrive habits help us to thrive?
• How to find more time in your day.
• How working in a group helps growth.

Links Mentioned in Episode:

• Body Thrive Book
• YHC Have a conversation
• Davina Clauer’s website
• Davina’s Facebook
• Watch the Masterclass NOW

Show Highlights:

• 1:20 – Davina talks to us a bit about her Yoga Health coaching background, how she found Cate and Yogahealer, and where it has led her.
• 6:00 – The addiction to saying ‘I don’t have enough time.’ In reality, with the BT habits we are opening up so much time and space for ourselves and we have the capacity to handle more.
• 12:00- The importance of group dynamics and how accountability helps our exponential growth in life. We don’t have to do it alone!

Favorite Quotes:

• “Your day now flows around the habits instead of being another thing that you have to find time for.” -Davina Clauer
• “The most successful people start before they’re ready.” – Davina Clauer
• “Sometimes we compare ourselves to people who are in chapter 20, or they are in a different book, and we forget that they were on chapter 1 at one point.” -Davina Clauer

Guest Bio:

Davina Clauer is the proud mother of two amazing girls and is really into practicing & teaching Vinyasa Yoga. Her specialized practices are focused on supporting mothers, babies and children through significant moments of life. The techniques used in prenatal and children’s yoga can provide countless benefits for the overall well-being for the entire family. Davina took her first yoga class with her then 6-month-old in 2013 and her life changed forever. This led her to start teaching yoga in 2015 after completing my RYT-200 certification. Towards the end of 2015 Davina’s life was shattered when she suffered a devastating loss of a pregnancy at 11 weeks. She was searching for anything to feel better and decided to turn back to her yoga practice. She was pulled toward the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda to heal herself emotionally and address the physiological cause of her miscarriage. She found Yogahealer and entered into her first Body Thrive during this time, which then lead her on to Yogahealers’ Yoga Health Coaching Course, that she is currently enrolled in.

Davina is now happy to report that after some major changes in lifestyle, she conceived and carried a healthy baby girl who graced us with her presence in Feb. 2017. Since giving birth Davina has been bound and determined to continue down her wellness path and decided that she wants to help others on theirs; she hopes to help people design the healthy life that they deserve to live! Conect with Clauer on her Website and Facebook.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How Yogahealer retreats facilitate rapid connection, insight, growth, and breakthroughs.
• Why connection and communication happens quickly and deeply at Yogahealer retreats.
• Why you should attend a Yogahealer retreat!

Links Mentioned Episode:

• Body Thrive Course
• Body Thrive Book
• YHC Have a conversation
• Retreat

Show Highlights:

• 0:30 – Carly and Angela met at the Yogahealer retreat in Mexico in March 2018. So many of the practices done at the retreat facilitated rapid processing and lead to big shifts in the course members who were there.
• 2:27 – Connection and communication happens quickly and deeply when you’re in person with people on the same path as you, who “speak your language.” It’s an invaluable experience to wellness practitioners who often work alone. In the “pressure cooker” of the retreat experience, we help each other evolve as individuals and as wellness pros.
• 4:55 – The ability to stand in a room with your peers and see yourself as someone like them, someone who is making big shifts, someone who is being a catalyst for change, results in powerful identity evolution.
• 6:25 – The theme for the Mexico retreat was leadership, and by the end of the training, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that each of us was indeed a leader. We left with clarity about how to move forward with our businesses. For some, like Carly, that meant scrapping the business plan that they had formulated prior to the retreat, but rather than being tedious and tiresome, the process felt easeful and fun. For others, like Angela, it meant leaning into shifts from a head-forward business to a heart-forward business.
• 8:38 – Cate has an uncanny ability to relay information that, in the hand of another, could come off as heady and esoteric in a way that is relatable, digestible and manageable. Because of that, course members easily “speak the same language” and are able to get further faster in the retreat environment.
• 10:30 – The retreat experience also offers an opportunity to powerfully connect with other amazing course members who we might not have discovered or connected within the online community.
• 11:00 – There are now 1,700 members in the Changemaker Challenge forum. If you are one of those, and you haven’t talked to Grace about Yoga Health Coaching, do it now so that you can get in on the next retreat in Salt Lake City!

Favorite Quotes:

• “There’s something about being in person. There’s an immediacy. There’s that energy exchange. And there’s that . . . recognition of yourself in others and vice versa that doesn’t always happen online. It’s hard to duplicate online.” — Angela Hammond
• “We need to stop making ourselves feel small and look small.” — Carly Banks
• “It the retreat really solidified my ideals of having a business that is also fun.” — Carly Banks

Guest BIO:

Angela Hammond is the owner of Main Street Yoga, the first yoga studio in Fairmont, West Virginia. Yoga found Angela about 20 years ago. She started practicing yoga in her living room with her three young sons running circles around her. After practicing on her own for years with books, VHS tapes, and DVDs, Angela completed her 200 hour yoga teacher training in February of 2016 and she is currently working towards her 500 hour certification at Asheville Yoga Center. After a short flirtation with Ayurveda years ago, Angela has found her way back to it through Yoga Health Coaching and is enjoying empowering other women to take charge of their health with the habits of Body Thrive. Contact her on website and her facebook page.

I’ve run the experiment.

The results: Trying to launch my wellness career alone sucks! In business, going at it solo is a dead-end path.You’re a wellness leader. You care about helping others. Are you having the impact you desire? If so, great, forge ahead. If you want to enjoy exponential growth, read on. You’ll see why going at it alone is a fixed, dead-end approach and be inspired to transform your mindset and nurture your potential in a dynamic group of growth-minded wellness leaders. 

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.

– Lau Tzu.

While growth is one of my highest values, I have a tremendous fear of failure. I don’t want to expose myself in the early stages of development. I don’t have enough information yet. I can’t possibly have an impact if I’m not an expert. People will see me as a fraud. Instead of asking others to support my growth, I contract, isolate, and drown my desires in fear. I shut down the growth path from the get go. Sound familiar? What I realize now is that although I value growth, my mindset around growth has been fixed. There was only one way to grow and it was on my own. After all isn’t that what solopreneur means?

Which Mindset are you operating from?

“Your mindset is the view you adopt about yourself.” Psychologist Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success cracked open my mind about how I had been viewing myself as I contemplated my dreams. 

Your mindset profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.

– Carol Dweck.

Dweck describes 2 mindsets fixed and growth: “The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.” I was approaching my business dreams armored with fear of judgement and failure.

According to Dweck, we can have different mindsets about different parts of ourselves. You may have a growth mindset when it comes to your intelligence, believing that your intelligence is malleable, while you may believe your personality traits are fixed. My stubborn, “I’ll do it alone” approach is a fixed mindset that I’ve clung to for too long.

Isolation is a self-sabotaging behavior that feels like a contraction around the heart. Growth is not possible in a contracted, isolated state. Not only was my fixed mindset closing off my heart, my head hurt. Trying to build a website, blog, learn about marketing, do my own accounting, were all foreign to me. I may have looked at a few websites trying to figure out how to assemble these pieces on my own. But did I ask for help? Heck no!

Is fear of failure holding you back?

I didn’t want to risk being judged. I would see feedback as criticism rather than support. Intolerance to criticism, mistakes and setbacks is classic fixed mindset according to Dweck. In my contracted state, I couldn’t see that the work I desired to do, pursuing my passion, required a group. Late in 2016, my mind cracked open. I couldn’t take the mind-numbing pain any longer. One day after many years of following Cate Stillman on Yoga Healer podcasts and blogs, I decided….ENOUGH! I reached out. I was ready to admit I needed help. I became a member of the Yoga Health Coaching community. Joining the YHC community has been the smartest decision I’ve ever made. Why did I wait so long? Before joining the Yoga Health Coaching community, I had a fixed mindset about growth. I was going to grow my business on my own. I was going to do it my way. I didn’t want to seek out help for fear of failure and judgement. I needed to shift my mindset. If I wanted to inspire others to grow, I needed to adopt a growth mindset. And I needed a community to shift my mindset from my isolated fixed way of doing things to a dynamic, growth-oriented approach. 

This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.

– Carol Dweck.

The last part of that quote is life enhancing…help from others.

Our community has a growth mindset.

How do we support a growth mindset? We have rules. No, these rules aren’t about right and wrong. The Ground Rules for Dynamic Groups of Yoga Health Coaching are about cultivating our unique abilities to inspire growth through dynamic group engagement. The intro to our “rules” reads: All members of your dynamic group are on a growth path and their pace on this path accelerates in an engaging and supportive environment. As each member “pays forward” their attention and commitment to the group, the group gives back exponential value to each member. Higher levels of growth and development only happen when we surrender to and commit within a dynamic group and stop trying to evolve alone. BAM! That’s a growth mindset! Together we Engage our Edges and Nurture Identity Evolution and we Reach Out When We Tweak Out (3 of my favorite rules). We connect through private Facebook forums, weekly coaching calls, mentorship, bi-annual retreats, mastermind groups and more. “Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? People in a growth mindset don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. The bigger the challenge, the more they stretch.”, Carol Dweck. So again, I ask you: Are you having the impact you desire? If not you may want to check your fixed mindset at the door and try on something new…a growth mindset. Stop wandering aimlessly. You can change your mindset and it’s much more adaptable in community. Nurture your passion in community. You need a community to thrive. Welcome to our Tribe! Open arms, hearts and minds await you. Check out Yoga Health Coaching and accelerate your growth. “

We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.

– Dorothy Day