Spending time in nature has been an integral part of my life – nature grounds me, it helps me to reconnect with myself when I feel out of sorts, upset, anxious or unsure about something. It has always helped me to find a way back to what matters most. It made sense, therefore, to make nature part of my coaching practice so that my clients could benefit from it.
When I enter nature with clients, it creates a coaching space that invites experiences that go beyond the immediate, past the ordinary and mundane. When we start paying close attention to the natural world around us, we start to sense we are not separate but connected to all life. The outer space then creates more inner space. As we walk we come back to our senses, we connect with the earth beneath, the sky above, we connect to all life around us. We naturally slow down, drop out of the head – out of conceptualising, analysing, overthinking, of needing to find the answer to problems – and into the body, into our direct experience: body-mind-heart-spirit get ignited and we have access to deeper layers of information and knowing.
In this process we come into closer connection with nature – from which we have become alienated in our modern, fast-paced life. Intuitively we know there is something bigger than ourselves, that transcends the personal, that connects us to more than human life, to that which can’t be fathomed with reason and logic.
Dr Iain McGilchrist’s (psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher and writer) extensive research into the divided brain is worth mentioning here. He has shown that the left and right brain hemisphere pay attention in fundamentally different ways. The left brain hemisphere pays attention to logic, detail, parts. The right brain hemisphere pays attention to the whole. The left brain hemisphere is interested in controlling, linear thinking and in executing things quickly. It doesn’t understand relationships and the larger context. The right brain hemisphere is interested in intuition, emotion and purpose. It understands how we relate to self and others and is able to perceive and experience an interconnected world. (The Matter with Things, 2021)
Nature beckons us to pay attention, to wake up, to listen carefully. Nature encourages us to look at the world from the right brain hemisphere. When we do, it’s almost impossible to feed the old story of I, me, mine and never enough: what’s wrong with me, I’m not good enough, what will other people think of me, how can I do better, more and faster?
In nature, deeper and better questions find their way into the coaching space that take the client beyond the personal, the day-to-day self (with a small ‘s’) and into the transpersonal realm of Self (with a capital ‘S’). In nature, questions can be held in a larger space and we can more easily let go of needing to find the answer, but live the questions. We can’t force knowing, we can’t force answers.
I’ve been coaching leaders since 2010 and in my experience, few leaders have the courage and wisdom (because they don’t get brownie points for it but should) to say: I don’t know the answer. I need to take time to reflect, to sit with it. But those who have the courage and insight, make the best decisions and have the clearest vision.
Answers emerge naturally by being present, by slowing down, by noticing, by being curious, by walking with the questions. Questions such as:
What is nature’s message?
What does this landscape tell me?
What’s needed now?
Who and what do I serve?
What does my work need me to grow and develop?
What have I avoided and can no longer ignore?
What do I need to let go of?
What is the most important question right now?
And as we become more aware, awake and more deeply connected to self, others and world, we begin to grow our understanding that rationality and thinking are not separate from our feelings and emotions, that body-mind-heart-spirit is an integrated whole and that we are interconnected with our respective contexts, our organisation (our people and culture), our community and with the wider eco-system.
From this transpersonal perspective and experience, clients, leaders, begin to move from being an agent to being a conductor. They begin to feel more able to collaborate, to let go of outcomes, control and instead are able to be more open-hearted, curious, trusting that answers to their deeper questions, challenges and demands will emerge because they sense that they are not alone but held by and connected to something that is much larger than themselves.
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