Fifteen years ago, I had to make a decision about the naming of my practice.
It was between Graphic Coach and SHIFT-IT Coach.
I chose the latter.
At the time, I wasn’t sure if I had made the right decision. Now I know I did.
I chose SHIFT-IT Coach as I felt it had greater reach and would have legs over time. That it left me lots of room to stretch and roam. And ultimately it defined the spiritual essence of what my work and I are about.
While ‘graphic’ is a tool that I am known for, it’s ultimately ‘shift’ that the graphics are in service of.
Even though my 2020 curriculum was creamed by the pandemic, I’m busy. I’ve trained my whole career for this intense time. While the present is difficult and the future remains uncertain, I am being well used right now.
At My Digital Station
Each morning I wake, take a walk in the woods, and head over to my studio … my beloved cave at the Arts and Cultural Centre.
Tackling whatever that day has in store for me.
As I look back over the last while I’m so appreciative of the people who grace my calendar and the work that we do together – usually with my good ol’ Cintiq drawing tablet over Zoom.
You are all over the globe and the Process Work we do varies across the Left and Right Brain spectrum. From the very logical (organizing, planning, and doing) to the very intuitive (emoting, expressing, and being).
I occasionally need to write posts like this to literally see what I am doing. It helps me process, dissipate, and make room for what’s next.
Forgive the indulgence … but here’s what I’ve been up to behind door 1034.
- Grieving the loss of a brave and eloquent client who wrote extensively about her journey with cancer in the current medical model. Thank you T for the amazing education and blessing of knowing you.
- Helping one of my Visual-Coaches-in-Training recognize the Left-Brain centric world she currently resides in and how her heart yearns for more freedom, space, and expression.
- Helping another one of my Visual-Coaches-in-Training identify and rescue one of her Inner Children. The one whose siblings brutally destroyed her award-winning artwork at the tender age of 8 … which has interfered with her visible creative expression ever since. No more!
- Showing a nurse how to be emotionally supportive to one of her own Inner Orphans. Interesting how she was taught to be unconditionally loving to others but struggles to do the same for herself. It’s tender territory however she’s doing it.
- Holding space for a delicious 20-something to meet many layers of emotions as her developmental launch into life and career has been thwarted. Anger, shame, grief, hopelessness, despair … you are welcome here. By authentically meeting all emotions a space is opened for new ideas and hope.
- Facilitating a Polarity Square on Fight and Peace in the days following the contentious U.S. election. It’s easy to be judgmental and self-righteous – many are automatically doing that. What’s harder is doing the Inner Work to own all four sides of the quadrant within ourselves. Owning projections and making the unconscious conscious.
- Helping a visual student who’s had much success open up and allow more as a book deal comes her way.
- During a break in the Covid restrictions, welcoming a Visual Skills student into my cave for mark-making at the wall. Plus, deep inner work on her Vision and white settler/colonial guilt given the northern land she lives and works on is indigenous.
- In my Visual Satsangs (Tuesdays and Saturdays) demoing the AlphaMind technique as a helpful launchpad for Future Self visits and Orphan Rescues. An incredible resource for productive time travel and integration of fragmented parts.
- Design meetings with the Principal, Vice Principal, and Pro D committee of a middle school. Prepping for an online Strategic Planning Retreat to assist with school culture and Covid pressures.
- Hours and hours spent in the NING Forum for my Visual Coach Certification. Reading their posts. Seeing their maps. Offering suggestions, feedback, and hopefully sage advice. Feeling extremely proud of them and the progress they are making … two months in and most of the cohort is over the hump and working away with their own clients. Yay!
- Despite guidance to not work with people you know well, especially family members or close friends – holding space for one of my Visual Coaches as she belatedly realizes why. Navigation of tricky trauma and substance abuse issues. Really, really important lessons being learned.
- A whole flurry of Conscious Inquiries in the Visual Satsangs. From guilt to gratitude. Honoring fury. Cultivating collaboration. Balancing engineering with psychology. Rooting anxiety with gravity. Giving care to the caregiver. Plus the how-to of converting a hands-on culinary course into virtual world.
- Intake discussion for private visual skills training. Covid restrictions interfere with our in-person dates. So he’ll work through my online visual skills kit first. Eventually using the skills with indigenous governance and curriculum development – yes!
- Online facilitation of Strategic Planning Retreat. 45 People. Part 1 of a 3 part engagement. Thanks, Grove Consultants for the excellent Virtual Graphic Guides. Wishing you my very best as your analog tools wait it out. Grateful for my years in San Francisco way back when.
- Attending a training on Illness and/or Death as an Initiation process. Yes, it is. Such an important topic that the western world tends to ignore until it’s too late.
- Intake discussion with an elementary school principal for a Strategic Planning Retreat. Wait for in-person or do online? The ins and outs of both. Price tag. Timing.
- Session with one of my Visual-Coaches-in-Training. Client seems to be performing for her rather than being authentically honest. Turns out she was an employee. Yup, that’ll do it. Guidance on power dynamics and safety.
- Systemic Constellation. Recently retired social worker wants clarity on Business Offer to same social service system. Boy did the floor show it — “this is spookily accurate” he chuckles.
- Another Systemic Constellation on client’s relationship with protection and self sabotage. Amazingly tender, powerful and educational constellation for all involved. Got an email afterwards, the kind that makes me cry, and makes all the very hard work of decades of self employment so worth it.
- More Self Inquiry during Process PopUps. For client nervously awaiting the results of her Covid-19 test due to possible exposure from a relative. And a Mom who’s been through the wringer with her adult child who battles substance abuse. Standing in her own life rather than the old call to co-dependence. Its time.
- Grandmother ran into issues with grandchild on zoom. Inquiry for her betrayed heart. Turns out there is soul connection behind the ancient anxiety. With a little BodyTalk through in for extra measure.
Whew. It’s good for me to stand back and take in what’s been happening. So much at many different levels.
As we swing into December, I need to figure out what to offer next season for courses.
Usually I have this figured out back in the summer. But things have been so up in the air in the world and I’ve been busy with so much of such an intense nature, that I haven’t been able to plan like usual. Join the club – who has?!
I know I’ll offer the 2021 cohort of Visual Coach Certification in April. Likely an online SHIFT-IT Retreat sometime before that. Likely another Visual Satsang or two given they are going well and are so needed right now. Pondering a new Sketch Club with Rhoda Draws, as I want the fun and discipline of regular sketching and I’m guessing others will enjoy that too.
We’ll see.
Wonder what the heck the world has in store for us next.
New World Order? Paradigm breakthrough in a good way? Somewhere in between.
We do not live in boring times …
Thanks for reading. Hang in there! xo
For more info, see Public Courses and Private Services.
P.S. A big thanks to my assistant Pat for helping at every turn even though its been a heck of a year for you. You are a consistently amazing person! Couldn’t and wouldn’t want to do this without you. xo
