Health Coaching

Tolstoy and IFS

By |2023-07-18T19:02:59-04:00July 18th, 2023|Health Coaching, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Uncategorized|

 

Leo Tolstoy opened his blockbuster novel Anna Karenina with this famous statement: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And went from there to show — in gloriously artful detail — how one family’s story could exemplify that observation.  Seems to me there’s resonance there with the Internal Family Systems model for understanding how any life can unfold into its own story.

~How so?

The internal family of Parts of us…when we are in harmony with each other…and there are no dragons to slay in the immediate or imagined vicinity…well we occupy a human nervous […]

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The Tyranny of GO and Slowing the Flywheel

By |2022-04-20T14:01:56-04:00January 15th, 2020|Dr. Sharp's PlumLine Articles, Health Coaching, Integrative Health Coaching|

We hope the holiday season provided you downtime to experience some disengagement from the press and drive of life’s demands. We call this slowing the flywheel — that instrument within that spins and keeps the engine roaring and the wheels turning fast.

This is actually our autonomic nervous system at work, reacting to the pressures it perceives as danger by sending the signal to the body to release more stress hormones. This is to activate our defense system, get our dukes up, be ready to slay the dragon in its many forms. Day after day, year after year of […]

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A note from your inner Customer Service Department

By |2021-04-07T09:32:57-04:00February 20th, 2018|Health Coaching, Integrative Health Coaching, Mindfulness|

inner customer serviceThat notorious Inner Critic — in health coaching partnerships with people carving a path to their healing, I observe this voice to be a shared entity. Like a weird uncle, we all seem to have one and it is important to be self-aware of such.

This ‘internal cattle prod’ has gotten plenty of attention. By now, no one is terribly embarrassed to confess to theirs, because we can be reasonably sure of a sympathetic audience. We know the feeling of squirming under its scrutinizing gaze and recognize its sharp disdaining tone as […]

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Intention

By |2021-04-07T09:30:46-04:00January 15th, 2018|Health Coaching, Integrative Health Coaching, Mindfulness|

Albert Einstein, that master of the underpinnings of physical life, observed that the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

Along that line, all of us who have been through the School of Sesame Street can see that there’s something wrong with this to-do list:

  1. Renew car registration
  2. Take the dog to the vet
  3. Get teeth cleaned
  4. Pay the bills
  5. Lose 15 pounds

An intention—to lose 15 pounds, to be less driven, to be more patient with our children—cannot be enacted from the usual way of thinking about our […]

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Taking Aim

By |2021-04-07T09:28:57-04:00December 15th, 2017|Health Coaching, Integrative Health Coaching, Mindfulness|

I have two dogs who insist on daily workouts of ball fetching. My childhood athletic reach never included ball games, and as a result, I never developed much of a throwing arm. We live in a wooded place, and our ball workouts have often felt more like a game of tree-billiards, with my workout involving chasing crazily bounced balls. Recently, out of self-preservation, I’ve started taking a moment before the throw to focus very clearly and specifically on where I want the ball to go.  Sometimes I even call it out loud […]

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