Author: emilydownward

I’ve been quiet lately. Usually when I’m quiet – not posting frequently on the blog or on my Facebook page – it’s because I’m doing more internal work.

At the end of May, I got an insightful and helpful reading from a colleague of mine. She shared at the end of the reading that I was going into a period of intense spiritual growth for the next three months. As with any reading, I considered this information, weighing it inside to see if it resonated as truth with me. It did, as a reluctant truth, but truth nonetheless. I was reluctant because I knew that spiritual growth isn’t always easy, however, I know this is the path I’ve chosen as a healer, life coach and seeker. And I also know the rewards are great.

Part of my spiritual growth during this time has come from a training program I am taking. I am learning how to access additional information from my spirit guides. The information I’ve been given has helped me to identify limiting beliefs, or illusions that I have believed as fact, and the knowledge of the illusion is transformative, dissolving the old belief structures and opening me up to overcome what once seemed insurmountable. While much of the coaching training I’ve done has taught me many tools to identify limiting beliefs and begin creating new and more effective thought patterns for both myself and others, there’s something different about the approach I’m learning now. In my opinion, it seems to work more from the spiritual and energetic level, causing a beneficial ripple effect through the physical and emotional levels. The next two levels of this training, which I will complete this fall, will teach me how to use this process with others, and I look forward to sharing this level of healing with my clients.

Another part of my spiritual growth has come through the experience last week of sitting at my grandmother’s bedside. At 94, and after a full and active life, she suffered a major stroke. Several of us stayed with her for the last 6 days of her life, and as I sat with her, there was plenty of time to reflect on her influence on me and the large family she created. Her funeral service this week was a truly beautiful celebration of her life, and it inspired me to consider, what stories will be told in my eulogy? How will I be remembered? How do I WANT to be remembered? And how can I incorporate those values in my daily life?

So I pose to you the same questions for consideration: How do you want to be remembered? And how can you live those values today?

I took this picture at one of my niece’s science fairs. It made me chuckle at the time, both for the honesty and for the truth that resonated with me.

Sometimes, I have this feeling about life. Problems come up (or pile up) with no discernable solutions in sight. My first approach is generally try to figure out a solution – “I must figure this out!” – and after beating my head against that metaphorical wall, I remember how that doesn’t work so well (and hurts). So I try something new, like getting quiet, meditating, asking different questions, remembering that I can ask for help.

I try these new approaches hoping for an instantaneous solution and then get all doubtful and frustrated with the lack of evidence that the new approach works, while noticing how the problems continue to pile up. And that leaves me with the thought, “I would very much like to choose a different project. This one has turned out to be not so awesome.”

But we don’t always get to choose our projects, do we? Sometimes, our projects choose us.

We still have choices, though. Just as in this science fair project, where the student chose to neatly and colorfully display the results and commentary, we get to choose how we will deal with it. We may not like it; we may still have to go through the steps we’d rather not go through. But we can do each step to the best of our ability and be honest with ourselves about what we’re feeling and why. So often we don’t want to feel those painful emotions, like disappointment, sadness, loneliness, frustration or anger, but I have learned through experience that feeling them, letting them flow through you, is the only way to get past them. And, they each are trying to give you information, if you’re ready to listen.

And I’ve found most importantly is asking, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” Because unless and until I learn the lesson, the situation will recur.

I was recently interviewed by Jen Lewellen, a graduate student who had the assignment of interviewing a coach for her Executive Coaching class. The experience was delightful and enlightening for me. Having someone ask me questions and just answering spontaneously made me realize how pieces of my experience have shaped me and what I’m doing now, and it gave me additional clarity on what is important to me as a coach and intuitive. Here’s the transcript from some of our conversation:

Q: How did you choose the Martha Beck Life Coach training program?

I heard her (Martha) speak in 2008. At the beginning of coach training, Martha had us take the “Kolbe Test,” which tells you your cognitive type – how you do things in the world. I am considered a “quick-start”… it shows up in the way I handled this decision (and some other life choices!). I didn’t actually investigate other coaching options. That isn’t my process style; It’s  more of a gut thing. When I heard her speak, the things she said lit a spark in me. I started reading her book on flight back home and doing the exercises. Soon after, I signed up for her blog and saw she had this coach training. Some time passed… I knew I was in a job that I was good at but I didn’t enjoy, and I needed to make a change. It was a couple years later that I enrolled in the training..

Q: As a self-described “quick starter,” this actually seems like a long decision making time for you. What happened there?

I think it was fear that kept me from making this decision. There was a voice in me that said “You can’t do that (be a coach); you are a digital marketer! Who is going to listen to you? How can you do that?” I think I just listened to that voice for too long. Her exercises helped me to break through some of that fear. I remember Martha talking about if you don’t know which way to go take one small step (she calls them turtle steps), or take steps towards what feels ‘warmer’ … so I was living in NYC and I knew it wasn’t right on so many levels… and my first warm step was to move to Austin (keep my job, but move closer to family). That was one of my first steps towards what felt ‘warmer’; I still had the job… but was moving away from it (NY was the center of the action; Austin just an office with 5 people). Six months later I started the coach training.

Q: What do you enjoy most about coaching?

There are two things – # 1 it has hugely impacted my life in a positive way – going through the training and the master coach program, you work on all your own stuff. It’s been transformative, giving me the freedom from my own thoughts. #2 getting to share that with other people … hearing the A-ha’s, the breakthrough moments. You can tell when people are breaking through the internal prisons they have kept themselves in for so long.

Q: What are your clients like?

My clients are people who are seeking more fulfillment in their life. They are yearning to lead a life with purpose and feel the pull of their heart and soul to do something meaningful. Some of my clients feel stuck in a life that no longer fits, and they feel called to do something more. I also help people who feel like their life has fallen apart (usually a combination of physical, financial and relational crises) to find their center again.

Q: Tell me more about the Intuition part of your practice. How did you figure out that you had this gift, this ability? How did you react to it?

It’s still kind of new to me [to be public about]… I didn’t know I had this for a long time. I have an intuition teacher who believes that we all have intuitive gifts, but that we are not taught in our culture to develop them. We are actually taught to squelch them, and she teaches people to unlock it. 

Before I began training with her, I did know that I was clairsentient; that I feel what other people feel. There are different types of intuition. There is clairvoyance, like seeing pictures in your mind, such as a metaphor or a vision. There is clairsentient, which I already mentioned. There is clairaudient, which is hearing things… like voices, but not in a crazy way! And then there is claircognizant, which is a knowing, and I have that too, and it has been the easiest for me to discount because I’ll have a knowing for something and I don’t know how I know it… the logical part of my brain challenges that ‘knowing’ – how can I know that? That is what I discounted, which I did for years, because I had no evidence, no proof or research. It’s been a process of learning to trust that.

When I started realizing I was clairsentient was during the coach training. My initial reaction was to shut it down – I didn’t want to feel other peoples’ stuff, I have enough of my own! It was like the Hero’s Journey (identified by Joseph Campbell) — I was denying the call… the first couple years was about learning to set energetic boundaries so I didn’t pick it all up, and then learning to release the “heaviness” of what I picked up. So the first part of that was learning energetic hygiene.

When I lost “everything,” (in 2013) when I felt like I had nothing, I still had my soul and I started connecting more to it. The question for me was, ‘What is my soul supposed to learn from this?’ And I started taking the intuitive classes and to tap in more regularly to that. It feels like play and fun to me. I can mostly choose now when I pick up stuff or not.

It helps with my coaching tremendously because I can pick up what is going on with my clients. Some of my sessions are combination sessions where I do an intuitive reading and translate for them what I am getting, and then we follow that with a coaching session. It helps my clients get more insight into a challenge they’re having. An intuitive reading is more of a picture that I can give them to work with. I don’t get all the answers; I will feel things and ask my higher self if these feelings are about me or them, and then I ask what does this feeling mean? Which leads me to a knowing or an image or a metaphor, and I write down everything I get. I look at the chakras  and tap into those and what is going on in each energy center. It’s not like I know what exactly is going on with them, but the sensations or visions I get prompt me to ask the questions that lead to things we can coach on. It is a deeper line into the coaching.

Q: What is your coaching philosophy and how have you seen your philosophy evolve / change with experience and time?

I really believe that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with people, I think we have the answers within us, and it’s not for me to tell someone else what job they should do or how they should live their life. I help them uncover the answers within themselves that they might not realize they have within them. The biggest change has been learning more about the intuition and incorporating that. I see people as whole, not broken, even if they see themselves that way. I can see them as whole and healed. And I can help them connect with that other reality.

Q: In class we are reading about…different empirical and theoretical coaching models. How would you describe your approach? What models do you use?

I have been influenced by the theories on health behavior change, particularly the health belief model and the realization that self-efficacy, the belief in yourself, is critical to making change. I also regularly use Martha Beck’s framework, which helps connect people to their own inner compass for guidance. And I use concepts from positive psychology. I love helping people increase their resiliency and improve well-being.

Q: What about continuing education?

Continuing education is important to me, and I do that through taking courses through other coaches and leaders (like Byron Katie, Deepak Chopra, and others) and through self-study. I’m currently reading and learning more about the framework of emotional intelligence. And one of the things that really interests me is continuing to develop my spiritual and intuitive gifts.

Q: What haven’t I asked you about that I should have?

There is always more than I can possibly say that influences me now, and different things I am trying to weave in. I sing in a women’s group called the Threshold Singers, and we sing in harmony to people who are on the threshold, who are sick or dying. Not sure yet how or where this fits in… One of the songs is called “Holy Angels”… I recorded this for my own practice and to share with my Mom, who has since been sending it to people she knows in pain… and they have sent me responses back telling me how it has helped them. I am not sure if that is coaching or service, or how it fits in but I feel that this is also a part of what I am being called to do.

Q: If you could do one thing differently on the path that got you where you are today – what would it be?

Go through coach training earlier! I wish I hadn’t listened to that “who are you?” voice. But, everything happens in its time; you meet people for reasons that you can’t really know, even while you might be on the “wrong” path. Part of me has regrets, but I really value more what I got out of it – this better connection with myself, my spirit, and who I am. I don’t know if I could have found that without going through what I did, so I am grateful for it.

Have you ever made a really big mistake? The kind that makes you sick to your stomach…you are totally responsible for it, and although you can see how it happened, it’s going to take a LOT to fix it.

Yeah, me, too. I recently realized I made a doozy of a mistake, and while I would love to be able to share that I remained very calm and detached and handled it beautifully, that’s not really how it happened.

First, it was shock and denial: “Oh, no…please don’t let this be true.”

That moved quickly into anger, directed at myself: “Oh sh*t! How stupid! I can’t BELIEVE I did this.”

And that started a barrage of horrible thoughts and feelings of panic, despair and grief.

Fortunately, I know enough to know there’s no use in fighting this kind of emotional turbulence. So I stepped away from the situation and headed out to one of my favorite parks here in Seattle, Lincoln Park.

The tears began to spill a bit on the way there, and the downpour started in earnest when I got to the park. I walked among the gorgeous, huge trees and felt comforted by their strength. I made my way through the woods to the beach and found an empty bench facing the waves, where I sat and really let it all flow out of me: all the shame, the disappointment, the embarrassment, the stress. I’m not sure how long I sat there quietly crying.

At some point, my tears and the whirlwind of negative thoughts subsided, and I began to focus on my breathing and the steady rhythm of the waves. I got up and walked to the water’s edge, and looking down, I noticed a small, yellow, spiral shell. The spiral shells are my favorite. I love their beautiful perfection, and they remind me of the sacred geometry that is present throughout nature. As a child, I used to only collect unbroken shells, searching for perfection. At some point, I realized the beauty that was evident even in the broken pieces, and I’ve been collecting beautiful shells – broken and unbroken – ever since. They serve as such a good reminder to me that even when I am broken, even when I disappoint myself, there is still beauty, there is still something worthy, within me.

I walked along the shoreline picking up spiral shells of various sizes until I had a handful. Then I looked up and saw two large birds soaring in arcs together just above the tree line. It was breathtaking. I noticed a couple other people were also watching them, and I saw one of the birds – a bald eagle – perch at the top of a tree. I thought the other bird might be a hawk, as it didn’t have the white telltale head and tail feathers of the bald eagle, but I learned from another observer that it was a juvenile eagle. The adult eagle began to cry out, and the juvenile then came and perched next to it. I stood there for several minutes, enjoying their majesty and beauty.

I walked on, and at one point looked out across the water once more. Just then, a seal popped his head up! I laughed with delight, and said quietly “hello there.” He came up out of the water even more, allowing me the chance to take a quick snapshot, as if to say hello back. It felt magical.

Interestingly, on this trip to the park, I found two things which allowed me to be of service and possibly correct what others might consider a “mistake” on their part. First, I found a woman’s drivers license along the path. Knowing how annoyed I’ve been in the past when I’ve misplaced mine, I picked it up and put it in the mail back to her. Second, on my way back to the parking lot, I found someone’s keys in the grass along the path. It was nearly sunset, and I considered how distraught and frustrating it would be to realize you’ve lost your keys and don’t know where on the path that might be. The keys included a car lock/unlock thing, so I located the car and placed the keys in an envelope I had and put them on the driver’s windshield.

Although I visit Lincoln Park often, this particular visit was unique in so many ways. To me, it served as a reminder that even though I make mistakes, even though at times I feel broken, I’m not alone. I’m connected to the beauty and nature all around me, and I’m connected to others, even those I may not know intimately. And there is magic all around – if only I can get out of my own head and open my eyes to see it.