Yoga Health Coaching |

Trauma, Turmoil and Evolving Through Transitions

Cate Stillman — Wed, 16 May 2018 12:23:03 +0000

In this Changemaker Challenge conversation, Cate and Grace discuss trauma, turmoil, and evolving through transitions as a wellness pro. One week post-op major abdominal surgery, Grace Edison is glowing! Prior to her surgery, Grace made sure that her Body Thrive habits were solid, especially the ones she would be able to do post-op. Professionally, there wasn’t much to be done. Her annual planning was complete, and the structure and support for her courses was already in place. The YHC business model allowed Grace to relax and focus on what was most important – healing. When we put the “pro” in wellness pro, as we do in Yoga Health Coaching, it’s important for us to model ease and flow no matter what life throws at us. Trauma, turmoil, and transition open the liminal space, a space beyond the threshold of our own patterns and programming, that allows opportunity for new insights and growth. The habits of Body Thrive provide us with a groundness that leaves us much more available to our experience. Yoga Health Coaching creates a lifestyle and structure that allows us to turn trauma, turmoil, and transitions into opportunities for insight, growth, integration, and evolution!

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

How to turn trauma, turmoil, and transitions into opportunities for insight, growth, integration, and evolution.
How the habits of Body Thrive help us thrive through trauma.
How Yoga Health Coaching is more than just a business model.

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Show Highlights:

0:30 – One week post-op major abdominal surgery, Grace Edison is glowing! Prior to her surgery, Grace made sure that her Body Thrive habits were solid, especially the ones she would be able to do post-op. Professionally, there wasn’t much to be done. Her annual planning was complete, and the structure and support for her courses was already in place. The YHC business model allowed Grace to relax and focus on what was most important – healing.
4:30 – When we put the “pro” in wellness pro, as we do in Yoga Health Coaching, it’s important for us to model ease and flow no matter what life throws at us. For Grace, that was simply a matter of getting really clear on what needed to be done while she convalesced. Because the structure and support that provides her ease and flow was already there, she was able to relax and enjoy a sense of relief while she recovered.
7:54 – Grace’s keystone habit through her convalescence has been Earlier, Lighter Dinner. Start the Day Right is a close second, particularly with regard to drinking water and pooping, which is a common problem after surgery. She’s also practicing self massage. She’s enjoyed time for reflection and deeper integration.
10:35 – Trauma, turmoil, and transition open the liminal space, a space beyond the threshold of your own patterns and programming, that allows opportunity for new insights and growth. Case in point, Grace is already thinking about how she can help other people prepare for and recover from trauma.
15:55 – As we engage in a growth journey and step deeper into dharma, we require a stronger energetic container. The habits of Body Thrive help us ground and build that stronger container that can withstand higher and weightier vibration. On a growth path, we’re in transition a lot more, yet with that stronger container, that groundedness, we’re much more available to our experience.
19:55 – Yoga Health Coaching is more than just a business model. It creates a lifestyle and structure that allows us to turn trauma, turmoil, and transitions into opportunities for insight, growth, integration, and evolution.

Favorite Quotes:

“I’m seeing a whole other level of how Body Thrive and how Yoga Health Coaching allowed me to move through a situation or experience that could have been a break down and could have been very traumatic, and it really was the complete opposite.” — Grace Edison
“It’s so funny to think about how . . . really learning a proper business model was going to help me go through major surgery. . . . But it isn’t just a business model, Cate. . . . It’s the lifestyle and the structure and the conversations I was able to have with my family and how present I’ve been able to be through all of this.” — Grace Edison
“Get awesome at transitions by getting super grounded, and expect miracles with trauma.” — Cate Stillman

Guest BIO:

Grace Edison lives in British Columbia, Canada. She’s a mom of twin 8 year olds, a Yoga teacher, studio owner, and Yoga Health Coach — and she also works for Cate Stillman in Admissions at Yogahealer! More than anything, she loves to make people laugh and has a not-so-secret dream of doing stand-up comedy. Grace has a strong passion for empowering others to take their health and wellness into their own hands. She loves building authentic relationships, making people laugh, and creating supportive communities. After a long-standing relationship with severe depression, Grace has found deep relief through the habits of Ayurveda — and much credit is due to Cate and her Body Thrive program. After taking Body Thrive several times and jumping into Yoga Health Coaching, Grace came aboard the Yogahealer team.

Community Leadership: The Next Evolution on the Yoga Health Coaching Path

Alex Biondo — Thu, 03 May 2018 05:00:54 +0000

In this episode, Alex Biondo and Rachel Peters talk about the ways in which Yoga Health Coaches are becoming community leaders. Alex and Rachel rap about how leadership is a natural evolution of a Yoga Health Coach’s journey. Rachel shares how she became comfortable with stepping into the role of leader by recognizing and aligning with her natural strengths. As someone who’s been known for years as a successful yoga teacher, her identity is evolving into someone who supports others on their wellness journeys and as a coach and collaborator.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

How Yoga Health Coaches become wellness leaders in their communities
How recognizing and utilizing our natural talents makes us better leaders
How mesh networking and collaborating are the new leadership models

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Show Highlights:

2:30 – What is the difference between community building and community leading? Rachel has been building a yoga community for years, and she talks about how she made a mindset shift and got comfortable stepping into the role of leader.
5:00 – Rachel recently felt sparked to step into leadership and is now making an impact both locally and with her online national (soon to be global!) community.
8:00 – When we recognize our natural strengths, we lead others with more ease. Rachel talks about showing up as her authentic self and focusing on her strengths and desires, which, in turn, leads the right people to find her.
11:00 – For many of us, leadership starts at home. When we live in integrity, the first to notice are those closest to us. They often pick up the reins and take the lead, as Rachel’s husband Dan likes to do. He’s now an avid forager!
16:00 – What Yoga Health Coaches do has a ripple effect. We touch others in many ways. As people learn what we do, we become a face of holistic wellness in our communities and often end up helping people who aren’t even our clients.
19:30 – What does the next step of leadership look like? Collaboration and mesh networking. Rachel talks about how she works with other wellness leaders in her community.

Favorite Quotes:

“I lead from my strengths, rather than having to cultivate new ones” ~Rachel Peters
“A sometimes unintended consequence of becoming a Yoga Health Coach is that we are becoming community leaders.” ~Alex Biondo

Guest BIO:

Rachel’s – As a Certified Yoga Health Coach and the Founder of Embody Ease and the Easeful Living Community, Rachel leads women on a yearlong journey to dissolve perfectionism and embody daily habits that promote clarity, ease, and inner connection. She is a wife, mom, and lover of wild places and contributes to her local community as a yoga teacher and teacher trainer in Prescott, AZ she also serves as the leader of the Coaching Team at Yogahealer. Check her website and facebook page.

Finding the Lost Daily Rhythm

Carly Banks — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 14:37:07 +0000

From an unhappy marriage, addiction, and a cancer diagnosis, to health, happiness and a growing business, Lael shares her breakthrough moments, and the habits she’s harnessed to thrive in her life and business.

Eighteen months after the birth of her twins, Lael was close to burnout and harboring resentment in her marriage. She and her husband started couples therapy where Lael was forced to confront her own addictions. A couple of years after saving her marriage and overcoming her addictions, and at a time when life seemed good, she received a cancer diagnosis. During treatment, Lael was forced to slow down, and her time spent in contemplation became the turning point in her life.

Lael was introduced to yoga in college but it wasn’t until her cancer diagnosis that she recognized the spiritual benefits of the practice and started waking up to her own life. She started yoga teacher training. During teacher training, Lael found Yogidetox and Yoga Health Coaching, and she now feels like she is following her dharma. With each round of Body Thrive, Lael feels like she’s peeling back more and more layers, and now, as a coach, she gets to see it all from another perspective. Connection with her higher power keeps her effective, efficient, and inspired.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

How the habits of Body Thrive lay the groundwork for deep transformation.
How burnout, addiction, and resentment can masquerade as highly functional.
Why you don’t need to be (and probably shouldn’t be) perfect to be a good coach.

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Show Highlights:

1:00 – Yoga health coaches are able to show up in a really honest way and share their struggles with each other and with the people they coach.
2:00 – Lael has been a therapist in private practice for 11 years. She has faced burnout, addiction and disease, and has overcome them all.
9:00 – Despite appearing as though she was doing all the “right things” and functioning at a very high level, Lael was missing the deep self care she needed. She deepened her yoga practice, started yoga teacher training, and found yoga health coaching.
14:15 – Lael is now running her first yoga health coaching group. She feels as though she has awakened to her own life. Through health coaching, she is able to share and to be real with her clients in a way that she couldn’t in a clinical setting. She feels she can now help people in a practical way.
19:45 – For lasting habit change, kaizen (small, incremental steps toward great change) is Lael’s top tip.
24:00 – Scheduling in down time, time to connect with her higher power, keeps Lael effective, efficient, and inspired.

Favorite Quotes:

“Sometimes our desire to be with other people is a distraction from our own stuff.” — Lael Peterson
“I was doing all the right things, . . . but it wasn’t that deep self care. It wasn’t about slowing down at all. It was very busy. It wasn’t about really listening to my true desire. . . . It was doing what was in front of me and what I was good at. . . . And I wasn’t unhappy, but it wasn’t sustainable.” — Lael Peterson
“I didn’t want to be one way in my personal life and one way with my clients. I wanted to take everything that I was learning in my personal life and bring it to people.” — Lael Peterson
“I want to be real with people. . . I want to help people in a real, practical way. And I feel like health coaching and what I learned in Body Thrive is perfect for people. It’s exactly what they need to know.” — Lael Peterson
“It’s incredible to hear that coming from a therapist’s perspective, because I very much felt the same way: No matter what the issue is, start with the habits of Body Thrive, and then see what flushes out.” — Carly Banks
“How could you have any clarity about what’s actually driving you crazy, when you’re so out of rhythm; you’re so out of sync?” — Lael Peterson
“I am only as effective or as efficient or inspired as I am connected. . . . It’s really, really important for me to be connected to my higher power, and the way I do that is by getting away from my regular life.” — Lael Peterson

Guest BIO:

Lael is a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, yogi and yoga teacher. She’s a recovering addict, cancer survivor, spiritual seeker, and nature lover. She’s also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has been providing support, education and therapy for the past 15 years. Lael offers individual therapy as well as yoga health coaching. Her personal life experience combined with her professional expertise and her innate passion to help people live better lives forms the basis of her practice. Her approach is create an atmosphere of safety and acceptance where her clients can dig deep and get real. Connect with lael on her FB page Lael Petersen and her website .

Competition, Collaboration, Innovation + You!

Cate Stillman — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 11:53:11 +0000

As wellness pros, we sometimes find ourselves thinking we are in a limited market, that there are only a certain number of people looking for the services we’re offering, and if someone else is offering the “same” services, our market is even more limited. In this Changemaker Challenge conversation, Cate and Grace discuss how competition can be a asset to our careers.

Knowing there are others in our market doing a little (or a lot) better than we are lets us know what is possible. It also forces us recognize what sets us apart so that we can capitalize on our unique strengths. Collaborating with competitors allows us to create something that didn’t exist before, something that benefits everyone involved, including our clients and/or students.

We all have the capacity to create. When we recognize and optimize our unique strengths, competition becomes a means to our success. When you merge competition, creativity, and innovation, the possibilities are limitless. When you orient from that place, you start to understand your own value, and you’ll find there’s more than enough work for you to do.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

How you can generate your own market by combining your creativity with the issues you truly care about.
How authentic connection and collaboration with competitors benefits everyone.
How to figure out what unique value you offer.

Links Mentioned in Episode:

Show Highlights:

1:00 – Some of us love competition. It gives us a way of “keeping score” and helping us to perform better. Knowing there is someone out there doing a little bit better (or a lot better) than we are lets us know what is possible. It forces us to see where our unique strengths are and what sets us apart, and we can use that to grow our business.
8:00 – Collaboration with our competitors makes it possible to create something within the pro healer market that didn’t exist before.
12:00 – When you combine your creativity with issues you genuinely care about, you’re generating a niche; you’re generating your own market.
17:00 – Even in small communities, what might seem like competition can actually be transformed into mesh relationships that benefit everyone: business owners, clients, and the community as whole.
21:00 – Collaboration must include authentic connection in order to be a successful two-way street.
23:00 – Your ability to connect and collaborate with other pro healers who offer things you don’t offer adds value and depth to your services.
25:00 – We all have the capacity to create. When we recognize and optimize our unique strengths, competition becomes a means to our success. When you merge competition, creativity, and innovation, the possibilities are limitless. When you orient from that place, you start to understand your own value, and you’ll find there’s more than enough work for you to do.
32:00 – If we continually show up and provide value, it allows people to mature in their own way, sometimes elsewhere, and then come back to you.
34:00 – In order to figure out what value you offer, combine your expertise with your personality strengths, and track your interests.

Favorite Quotes:

“If anyone follows any kind of competitive sports, you’ll hear sportscasters talk about the assets and the weaknesses on each team. And it’s not that the team’s not aware of their own assets and weaknesses; it’s everybody’s really aware of who’s going to leverage what. And if we bring that into our careers as wellness pros, we can also see that.” — Cate Stillman
“Human beings are inherently creative. We can’t not create.” — Cate Stillman
“Those of us who have been damaged in our labeling, and we label ourselves as an uncreative person, you’re just out of touch with your own humanity.” — Cate Stillman
“We are creative. We are designed to thrive. We are designed to connect. And that’s always going to be emergent.” — Cate Stillman
“More than anything, for me, collaborating is fun!” – Grace Edison
“One of the things you’ll start to realize, if you haven’t already, in pro healers, is that everyone’s making it up. If someone has a platform, they built that. If someone has a unique offering, they created that. We all have this creative capacity.” — Cate Stillman
“Who you are is your advantage.” — Cate Stillman