Including Intuition in Coaching

What makes winning athletes and leaders outpace their competition? They utilize their brain more effectively than everyone else by tapping into and trusting their sixth sense. This incredible insight can be used in your coaching practice as well to effortlessly assist your clients in utilizing their brains more effectively too!  

Your sixth sense is sometimes known as intuition, but it is really so much more than that. For some, this sense is buried deep below rigid beliefs, false assumptions or a lack of knowledge about how to connect with themselves. Others do not have to look far to uncover their inner knowing and quickly begin dialoging with it. No matter where you fall on this spectrum, know that your sixth sense is not only your birth right, but it also comes standard in every human body! Learning how to communicate with your sixth sense will get it working for you and your clients right away. 

Have you ever felt someone watching you even though you were looking the opposite direction? Have you ever thought about someone only to have them call moments later? These are some examples of your sixth sense in action. Although your sixth sense is intuitive, it really speaks to your inner knowing, enabling you to say or do just the right thing in the moment. The most common way your sixth sense gets hijacked is through fear-based emotions like guilt, anxiety, anger or worry. Therefore, it is vital that you come from a calm, neutral place when communicating with your sixth sense to receive clear guidance. Luckily, doing so doesn’t require you to sit crossed legged in lotus pose – it only requires a calm mind. There are many ways to practice calming your mind on your own, but when you’re with a client the best way is to engage in conscious listening.  

Conscious listening is a technique that uses all six of your senses to focus on what your client is saying. In addition, empathy is a tool that assists your conscious listening while expanding your client’s ability to create a deeper relationship with their body and prime them for accessing their sixth sense. To begin, focus your full attention by engaging each of your five senses. Next, use empathy to provide feeling words which your client can either own or push back against. Using all six of your senses invites your clients to play in a neutral space, allowing them to experience innate knowing firsthand while helping them learn and trust what arises. The more time you are able to spend with clients in this incredible space, the more effective your coaching will be.  

If you are new to accessing your inner knowing, an easy game to play is “Yes or No.” Simply take several slow deep breaths in through your nose to the count of five, then slowly exhale to the count of seven. Once you feel calm and relaxed, close your eyes and picture a stop sign in your mind’s eye. Next clear the picture in your mind by blowing the image up or taking an eraser to it. Then picture a green light in your mind’s eye. Destroy or erase this image as well. Practice this several times until it becomes easy. After you feel comfortable imagining these images, you can begin to ask yourself yes and no questions and observe what image pops up in your mind (e.g., “Is my name Mickey Mouse?” will produce a stop sign image, whereas stating your true name will elicit a green light). Getting comfortable practicing this simple technique will prime you for trusting and accessing your inner knowing.  

Once you have practiced getting in touch with your sixth sense regularly, you can spend 5-10 minutes prior to each coaching session focusing on what your client needs to experience transformation during the session. If you do not have time before each session, consider doing a pre-workday meditation for all the clients you are planning to see while asking about each one individually. You will be surprised by some of the answers you get. a client might need you to simply listen in session, or perhaps where they really need to shift is by giving attention to their personal life rather than their professional life. Taking this time prior to your sessions will prepare you to consciously listen to your client more easily.  

Your sixth sense is a valuable tool no matter your preferred coaching style and creates lasting results when used with clients. In fact, using your sixth sense will not only improve the effectiveness of your coaching, but also create lasting results for your clients when you teach them how to do the same!  

© 2021 Teresa Lodato, CPCC