The 5 main principles of Zen Coaching
Zen Coaching is a powerful approach to living that is supported by the following understanding and main principles. When integrated in our lives, they have a profound effect on how we relate to ourselves and others.
Zen Coaching is listening in the form of an open, spacious, accepting and allowing presence, based mainly on silence, open questions and verbal reflections. In this way the life process of the client has space to unfold according to its own movement and wisdom.
As coaches we do not primarily seek to fix, guide or even to help the other, but rather to provide support through simple presence, Being-Here, resting as awareness, and simple and innocent curiosity.
The main focus of the coach is to offer empathic listening: to stay present to what is alive right now in the client (and also in the coach herself or himself).
It is a premise of Zen Coaching that THE basic need or longing of all human beings is to be connected with ourselves, and to rest as the awareness that we are – to be our true nature as Peace, Freedom, Love, Strength, Value and so on. All perceived problems manifest out of a disconnection with who we truly are. Problems dissolve as we connect deeply with ourselves.
When the coach is grounded in the above principles, he or she can use many different techniques that are helpful to find our inner resources and see our possibilities.
