Magazine: Quick Tips To Look After Yourself As A Coach

As coaches, we are great at holding the space for our clients. Coaching them through gaining better balance, self care, working out their priorities and creating the life they envision. Are we always great at doing the same for ourselves? Taking our space. Taking time to explore our balance, self care and priorities to keep creating the life we envision. It’s time to put ourselves in the other chair to check in, delve deeper and take our moment of reflection.

Maybe this is something you’re already well versed in doing. But when the day gets busy or a client brings a topic that knocks you a little off balance or you’re just not feeling it today, hopefully these tips can help you get back to yourself and give you a little boost, a spring in your step, to take forward into the day. Afterall, we are coaches, but we’re also human and need little moments of space for ourselves.

As you’re reading this now, take a second to just settle into where you are at this moment. How is your body feeling? Have your shoulders crept up? Is your neck feeling tense? Roll your shoulders up, around, down and back three times now, easing out that tension. Stretch out your neck from side to side, working out any little niggles. How do you feel now?

If you have the space and freedom, stretch your arms above your head, reaching as tall as you can, inhaling deeply, then bring them slowly out to the side as you exhale, stretching out your hands and taking up as much space as you can. Repeat this three to ten times, growing taller and taking up more space each time. Play around with your inhales and exhales, challenging yourself to make them longer each time. Try to get to a four second inhale and an eight second exhale. By making our exhale twice as long as our inhale, we can activate our parasympathetic nervous system which acts like the brake pedal to our sympathetic nervous system (the one in charge of our flight, fight, freeze response) and calm everything down: reducing our blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels1,2.

Research has shown that changing our posture can help change our mood and cognition3,4,5. It can be really easy, especially during a day on zoom or at your desk, for you to start to become hunched over your laptop, bringing tension into your shoulders and neck. This can actually start to affect your mindset meaning you may feel more stressed or negative. By simply giving ourselves thirty seconds to roll out that tension, sit back up straight and tall, we can help give ourselves the mind space we may need to jump back into our day more energised.

Finally, now we’ve taken some time to release our upper body tension, correct our posture and calm our mind through deep breathing, there’s one final tip that can make a huge difference to your day: nature. Some studies6,7 have shown that getting out in nature can increase your happiness, wellbeing, concentration and problem solving ability. If you can now, take a little walk outside. Sometimes all it takes to make a difference to your day is fifteen minutes of fresh air.

Beth Hope

Associate Board Member for Credentialing & Ethics

LinkedIn

References:

1. Noble, D. J., & Hochman, S. (2019). Hypothesis: pulmonary afferent activity patterns during slow, deep breathing contribute to the neural induction of physiological relaxation. Frontiers in physiology, 10, 1176.
2. Jha, R. K., Acharya, A., & Nepal, O. (2018). Autonomic influence on heart rate for deep breathing and Valsalva maneuver in healthy subjects. J. Nepal. Med. Assoc, 56, 670-673.
3. Peper, E., Lin, I. M., Harvey, R., & Perez, J. (2017). How posture affects memory recall and mood. Biofeedback, 45(2), 36-41.
4. Awad, S., Debatin, T., & Ziegler, A. (2021). Embodiment: I sat, I felt, I performed–Posture effects on mood and cognitive performance. Acta Psychologica, 218, 103353.
5. Shahidi, B., Haight, A., & Maluf, K. (2013). Differential effects of mental concentration and acute psychosocial stress on cervical muscle activity and posture. Journal of electromyography and kinesiology, 23(5), 1082-1089.
6. Mayer, F. S., Frantz, C. M., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., & Dolliver, K. (2009). Why is nature beneficial? The role of connectedness to nature. Environment and behavior, 41(5), 607-643.
7. Russell, R., Guerry, A. D., Balvanera, P., Gould, R. K., Basurto, X., Chan, K. M., ... & Tam, J. (2013). Humans and nature: How knowing and experiencing nature affect well-being. Annual review of environment and resources, 38, 473-502.