Broadly speaking, an Integrative Wellness and Life Coach helps you get from where you are in your life now, to where you want to go. In other words, my job is to help you with the tools you need to move from point A to point B in your life. 

According to the International Coaching federation:

• 80% of people who work with a coach experience Improved Self-Confidence and Life/Work Balance
• 86% of people who work with a coach make their investment back if not more
• 96% of people who work with a coach would do so again

This article lays out in more detail what an Integrative Wellness & Life Coach (or IW&LC) does, explains the benefits beyond solely life coaching, highlights the Integrative Wellness & Life Coach approach, and more. Let’s start from a familiar place and build from there…

What is a life coach?

A life coach is someone who typically helps their clients reach a goal or make a change in their life. An Integrative Wellness & Life Coach does all that PLUS helps their clients to heal core issues and negative patterns while empowering them to change their life with effective tools, techniques and specific action plans.

What is Integrative and Holistic Wellness?

The Merriam-Webster meaning of integrative is serving to integrate or favoring integration. In terms of wellness, integrative refers to a combination of modalities, fields, techniques or an inclusive approach.

Then we have holistic, which is characterized by comprehension of the parts as something as intimately connected and explicable only in reference to the whole. This includes mental and physical factors, not just symptoms of a disease or happening.
In putting these together, Integrative Holistic Wellness is a combination of modalities, fields, and techniques or inclusive approaches to empowering, giving someone the tools to self-heal, overcome and grow, towards wholeness, harmony, or balance, in the entire person.

In putting these together, Integrative Holistic Wellness is a combination of modalities, fields, and techniques or inclusive approaches to empowering, giving someone the tools to self-heal, overcome and grow, towards wholeness, harmony, or balance, in the entire person.

What is the Integrative Wellness & Life Coaching approach?

The IW&LC approach is derived from the following:

• The Inside-Out and Outside-In Coaching Model
• Balance in the 4 systems – Mental, Emotional, Physical, Spiritual

IW&LC utilizing both the Inside-Out and Outside-In Coaching models is deep! Teachers and therapists utilize the inside-out model where the client looks inside mentally and emotionally to see what is going on.  Then the outside-in model can be seen as Western doctors, dentist, etc., where the patient comes to them with a specific problem and they try to fix it from the outside to the inside. Both of these models in action looks like the following: A patient is a child who cut up their knee. A bandage is put on the outside (on their cut) while teaching the child how not to wreck their bike again and (internally) getting past their sadness and fear of bike riding and connecting with their full abilities.

Inside the inside-out and outside-in coaching model exists coaching towards balance in the 4 systems, which are mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual, or MEPS.

MEPS is 

• Mental – Harmony in our thought life and thought patterns
• Emotional – Freedom from negative emotions of the past.  Ability to receive love.  Ability to process emotions in a healthy way. Rapport or a good relationship with the unconscious mind.
• Physical – Physical health and having the things we want to have.
• Spiritual – Living congruently with our higher or true selves and in alignment with our purpose, self-development, practicing connecting to a higher conscious, or energy

Health in all 4 systems promotes wholeness inside as well as outside in what you create in your body and those around you. In Integrative Wellness & Life Coaching, we use tools and techniques that bring these 4 systems towards balance. As part of coaching towards balance, we coach our clients to apply the wellness, or wholeness, to all 4 areas of self to all areas of their life. The major areas of life are relationships, family, career, finances, health, self-development and spirituality. When the systems are in balance, effective goals are achieved and outcomes that lead to the outcomes for things you want to achieve in your life. This also looks like having peaceful thoughts for yourself and others, as well as making congruent choices or choices that feel true to yourself, and having clarity.

Life Coaching vs. Therapy

Life Coaching in general (and especially Integrative Wellness & Life Coaching) uses its own unique services designed to empower the client and help bring balance and fulfillment to their life. As mentioned above, therapists (healthcare professionals) use the inside-out coaching model where the patient needs to see inside to see what is going on through a long-term process that aims to resolve past issues in order to move forward. A life coach takes the client’s current starting point and works on an action plan in moving forward.

In reaching to our past, therapy aids in making sense of developed patterns and rewriting our stories, which is great for mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Life coaching uses goal-setting and other action-oriented tools. 

I personally believe in having a wellness “team” and if it is feasible to work with both a therapist and life coach – amazing! Different modalities will offer you different things and perspectives and you’ll find them more or less useful at various life stages. 

Who benefits from Integrative Wellness & Life Coaching?

Anyone who wants to overcome core issues and habits, change their patterns, and move towards empowerment can benefit from Integrative Wellness & Life Coaching. This can look like stress management & prevention, nutritional healing, releasing baggage & core issues via the Emotional Clearing Method or ECM, teaching healthy, balanced goal setting rooted in love, aligning your habits and patterns with your values, overcoming negative emotions and negative beliefs, and more.

See the Integrative Life Coaching Toolbox section of this article for what area may stand out that you would want to work on.

What is it like working with an Integrative Wellness & Life Coach?

You will be heard, seen, empowered, and not judged. Since we will be looking at where we can work towards balance in your 4 systems, working with me would look like the following:

• First, I’ll ask that you take about 40-60 minutes and fill out the client intake form. 
• During the interview process, an understanding will be gained of what is going on in your 4 systems and follow-up questions will be asked to ensure comprehension has been achieved and, of course, your goals will be placed at the forefront – as your coach I can also help you formulate your goals. The initial interview is 60-120 minutes so that I can understand yourself and your history in order to aid you in creating your desired future. 
• Then, during the 60-minute second meeting, action steps are created and documented together and then I will begin to guide you through some techniques or tools. 
• After that point, your action plan will be generated check-ins will be provided based on your plan, or schedule more follow-up sessions to be guided through more exercises or techniques on an ongoing basis. 
• Through my process, you will be equipped with the knowledge of where your baseline is, in addition to action-oriented steps to strive towards balance based on that.    

If you have questions or curiosities, I’d love to connect. <<Feel free to schedule a free 15-minute discovery call with me here – LINK FORTHCOMING>>. 

Are you feeling ready to take the next step towards empowerment right now? Also awesome. <<You can schedule with me here – LINK FORTHCOMING>>.

External Links:

• Integrative Life Coaching
• Life Coach vs. Therapist