Spirituality is a topic that I'd like to see approached in trainer training. Here are some recommendations that I made in my Masters thesis (http://calsca.com/thesis/cover.htm) about integrating spirituality into NewStart Life Skills, and I offer them as a beginning to the larger discussion of trainer training criteria.
1. that coaches / coach trainers use a process of discussion and consultation within the group to find either a consensual definition of spirituality, or points on which to agree to disagree;
2. that coaches / coach trainers accept self-evaluation as sufficient for assessing competency with inner skills like mindfulness and meditation;
3. that criteria for inclusion of lesson material and resources rest with applicability in the context of Life Skills groups, group members, group situations, and coach / coach trainer competence;
4. that coaches / coach trainers who wish to (or are willing to) address spirituality with their group members take steps to explore their own spirituality, and, that at a minimum, the skill of mindfulness, which is basic to many other practices, be explored;
5. that coaches willing to approach spirituality in their groups use the emergent approach;
6. that coach trainers who wish their graduates to be ready for at least a discussion of spirituality be direct in their approach to spirituality with their training groups; and
7. that coach trainers who are direct in their approach to spirituality with their training groups have some understanding of the theoretical constructs that underlie spirituality and NewStart Life Skills, and be able to demonstrate, and/or refer their training groups to, appropriate spiritual awareness and growth techniques and resources.
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I took Life Skills Coaching into private practice in a religious/spiritual community, having connected the skills/lessons to Scripture to integrate them for both myself and my clients.
ReplyDeleteI have started reading your thesis, and I note the following comment:
"The NewStart Life Skills lesson plan addresses the cognitive, affective and psychomotor (behavioural) learning domains (Curtiss and Warren, 1973; Himsl, 1973b). "Knowing, acting and feeling are interacting functions of each individual's world-view"
Scripture , both the Old and the new Testaments, speak of '...loving God with one's whole heart, and whole mind and whole soul (body) and your whole strength." The way I have applied this is when we fully use our hearts (feelings/affective) cognitive (mind, intellectual capacity) and the psychomotor (behaviourial, body/physical), we can't but have spirit, which is the whole strength referred to by the Bible.
"The spirit [mental inclination, inner feelings and thoughts] of a man can put up with his malady; but as for a stricken [wounded, afflicted] spirit, who can bear it?"
From all the work I have done with clients, I have found that healing whatever has wounded them just naturally brings them back to spirit or spirituality.
I believe that spirituality is one of those aspects of our being-ness that can not be taught through any amount of discussion or exercise. I have found that such discussions only encounter locked and barred mental doors, no matter whether talking to Christian or atheist, or a fence-sitter.
So I've found, it's all about healing the woundedness and the stricken spirit heals right along with it and spirituality (or strength) follows naturally. It can't be otherwise.
So, we may be coming at the same issue from two different angles. The part I have saw the NewStart Life Skills as lacking was a piece to create this healing. I created that piece for myself in my own training and honed it in my work with clients.
Now I am challenging myself to see if I can facilitate this healing, create this healing atmosphere using only the NewStart lessons, with what I know to guide me.
If I am off track with my comments, I apologize. I will read more of your thesis another evening.
Thanks for your insight Gini. I think that psychological growth and spiritual growth amount to the same thing, and I use mindfulness as the key tool in supporting that growth.
ReplyDeleteHi Rod, and all
ReplyDeleteThe references to spirituality (note small "s") would imply many things, not the least of which is respect for the participant and for the principle of non violence, which Donna Martin, M.A. addresses in her article in Writings in the Calsca online mag.
The following brief excerpt sums up what good coaching is, though it was not written about Life Skills specifically.
"Violence, or abuse, in therapy may be quite subtle, as Ron Kurtz points out in his Hakomi Method of Body-centered Psychotherapy. My training in both Hakomi and yoga has given me an appreciation of the need for non-violent therapy to break the cycle of abuse for many clients and re-establish the healthy boundaries that go along with healthy self-esteem. (The yoga principle of non-violence is called "ahimsa" in Sanskrit.)
Let's agree that the obvious forms of abuse in therapy (including verbal and sexual abuse) are totally unacceptable. Now we can address the less obvious ways that therapy can be abusive, including when:
· the therapist tells the client how he/she feels;
· the therapist continually contradicts or interrupts the client;
· the therapist presumes to know what's best for the client;
· the therapist tells the client what probably happened to him/her as a child;
· the therapist ignores what the client says;
· the therapist puts words in the client's mouth;
· the therapist touches the client in any way without permission;
· the therapist claims that his/her words, impressions etc."come from God"
· the therapist presumes to be more ... than the client ... more powerful, wise, spiritual, capable ... anything.
It is only when teachers, parents, therapists, and other helpers and healers really accept that all healing comes from within, and that the most we can really do is be present for others, as for ourselves, with a quality of non-judgmental awareness, only then will boundary violations, abuse, and even neglect and abandonment shift to let something else (loving presence... compassion) enter into the relationship.
Sustaining Energy in a Helping Profession
...requires that the therapist:
- is balanced and relaxed (relaxation)
- is receiving as much as giving (nourishment)
- has good boundaries (codependency)
- stays in touch with self (mindfulness)
- stays present and in the present
- appreciates whatever happens
- trusts the client's "core self"
- has faith in a Higher Power
... is difficult if the therapist:
- works hard to make something happen
- feels responsible for the client
- questions, advises, explains, worries excessively
- ignores own body, feelings, needs
- avoids certain issues, feelings
- has a need to do it "right", understand, fix, know
- has a need to be liked, accepted, believed
- feels unsupported, hopeless, helpless
- is operating with one or more of the four universal addictions:
intensity - low tolerance for boredom;
perfection - low tolerance for mistakes or vulnerability;
the need to know - low tolerance for the unexpected;
focus on what's not working - negativity
I think those concepts are very well put and certainly apply to Life Skills Coaches.
Penn