Before I started my coaching session I was in the beginning of my journey to learn about thoughts and beliefs creating my reality. I have a need to attempt to control my environment in order to feel empowered, but it is having the opposite effect as I have found myself in high states of anxiety in trying to do it all.
I didn’t know what to expect really when the journey began, all I knew was that it was something about being in my body and that sounded like heaven to me, as all of the anxiety I know comes from worrying about the past and the future and I have been reading so much about how all of the power lies within me and being present to it and that all of the answers are in there, but there has been so much noise and busy-ness and thus the quest to find the woman within has somewhat eluded me.
During the first session, as I was without expectations, I didn’t really know what was happening. After a meditation and coming into the space, I was taken on a journey of my inner self, without feeling the need to control the story, and I never knew where it was going to go. Through a questioning technique which dug deep into myself, I seemed to go on a journey which took me through all of the things that I had been over-intellectualising in a quest to find out who I was. It was a journey of a woman lost deep within and suppressed by the messages of socialisation and patriarchy which left me with a feeling of “you are not good enough” and this came out through story. But it wasn’t a story without hope. It was a story of finding space, and as the questions from Lisa took me to the edges of the unexplored territory, where possibilities opened up, I could feel a shift inside me. In this space there were no wrong answers and instead, everything was dug into, in a safe space or warmth and laughter, where language attempted to explain the depths within me and up came monsters and golden coals from my stomach rising up to take control of the darkness that threatened to continue to control my mind. Through the same questioning technique which sought again to go even deeper into the edges of the story, taking my thoughts and finding even more spaces in there to which I was able to go deeper within myself and find that voice of power and hope, and find tools and metaphors to explain what was happening.
Some sessions I could feel myself growing, then shrinking a little, and then growing even further and by the end of each session a tool of empowerment was discovered via a range of these metaphors that emerged which I could take into my life each week. One time it was my family as a warm blanket that kept me safe from the monsters but which also helped me to keep them safe. Other times it was a golden light inside me which was that elusive woman within, taking power back, occasionally with rage at the world, and other times with the press of a magic button which could erase neural pathways that had been created in my youth without me having any control and had guided me through a life which threatened to be dominated by the grey cloud of socialisation. And through each of the sessions, a new tool of empowerment emerged which I could take into my life.
I could gather together physical items which reminded me of these tools, be it something golden, an actual blanket or a button of some kind which I could hold onto when the clouds threatened to gather in order to summon up my strength and feel that kick ass woman inside again, taking control of my life without fear, and in becoming more powerful, being able to lift up others around me as well.
I would certainly recommend others to go on the journey. I think it is important work to find that person who has been hiding away from the world and let them have a voice and I believe this type of practice allows that voice to emerge – and that voice is of course your own voice. I think Lisa has a great skill in listening very carefully, in drawing out further depths by nailing the questions so perfectly and then the magic way that she draws all of these ideas and visions together to leave you with a feeling of “oh hell yes, that is amazing” which is how I felt at the end of each session.
This has been a wonderful experience which I highly recommend.
