Welcome
Touchstone Coaching – Zen Self Help
With A.J. Mahari
The word Zen, which has ancient and historic roots in philosophy and religion has become part of the English language. The word and a broadening philosophy of Zen have been adopted by western culture.
I am often asked, by coaching clients of mine, ”What is Zen?” My response to that question is that Zen is what is. Zen is NOW!
Zen practice, which does not have to include a specific religious adherence, is in many ways, simple, and easy. It is practicing being fully present right here and right now, one moment at a time. The action of Zen is direct perception without filtering your perceptions through beliefs and preconceptions. Zen is about being NOW and not about thinking about what NOW might mean.
Zen practice and philosophy invite you to dissolve into the eternal unfolding now and to realize that the Universe itself sees through your eyes, hears through your ears, and breaths each breath you breathe. Unity beyond all conception.
Why Zen?
Why not Zen? Zen is an active practice. Zen is doing. Zen is authentically being. Zen is being fully open to what is mindfully. Zen practice encourages you to move out of thought-traps, rumination, self-destructive and self-absorbed focus on thoughts of ”what-if” or ”if-only” and into the now of the unfolding moment in an active way. Zen self help has at its core learning new ways of being who you authentically are. Learning to free yourself from old patterns of thought that keep you blocked from achieving your goals and dreams. That keep your from experiencing the NOW of each moment of your life.
Zen is NOW. If not Zen, if not now – then when?
How Am I Using the Word Zen?
You might be wondering what Zen actually means in the way that I am applying it here. Zen in the context of my Life Coaching and Self Help information refers to the pursuit and practice of becoming fully aware in and of your here-and-now. Authentically coming home to the present moment. This is truly where you live. This way of engaging your authentic self, others, and the world awaits you. It awaits you choosing to open to it and to engage it.
Zen brings us face to face with our true original nature, undefiled by cultural conditioning and painful neurotic tendencies and the insecurity of the false-self – the masked-self.
So what do I mean by Zen Self Help?
People are blocked in many ways that have to do with how they think.
People seek to have and want to have, one could say to achieve even, peak experiences. A peak experience is an unfolding one that involves being so totally mindfully aware of and engaged with life that one’s sense of separateness (thinking creates this sense) dissolves into the experience of each here-and-now moment in a much more experiential way. A way that engages activity. A way that isn’t stuck in thought and all the traps that thinking can create to block you from being who you authentically are and from creating what you want and need in your life now.
Living fully and authentically in the present moment makes each instant of your life a peak experience.
You deserve to find a happier you! You deserve to live your life knowing how to navigate its challenging emotional waters. You are worthy of an inner-emotional life of lovingkindness that nurtures you so that no matter what is going on around you, you can calm your emotional water. Learning skills and becoming more aware of who you authentically are, in Life/BPD/Mental Health Coaching with me, will help you to find smoother sailing in your life.
This is a blog designed to facilitate and support personal growth, education, inspiration, information, insight and much more to provide you with food for thought that will hopefully help you to further awaken the awareness that will arise out of your learning to identify and then live the questions of your life.
Questions that once identified will provide the fuel for you to be able to live into the changes that you desire and/or need in your life. So much of the coaching I do with clients has as its center a process of growth that revolves around change.
Change is not easy for most people. Change is challenging. Often people will benefit from the support of a life coach like myself during times of shifting perception, personal growth, relationship change, questions, and coping with the process of burgeoning or on-g0ing change. Sometimes change is thrust upon us due to a loss of some sort. Sometimes we become aware of a need for change when something in our lives isn’t being experienced in healthy or positive ways.
Touchstone Life Coaching with A.J. Mahari is process that you can explore via telephone or email from anywhere in the world. Life coaching is a supportive, caring, compassionate, vehicle for creating change, identifying goals, healing and recovery, life and relationship enhancement and for breaking self-defeating and/or unhealthy patterns that may be holding you back from all that you desire in your life.
Each person has a soul. Each soul yearns, often, underneath the everyday lives that we lead to be much more fully known, felt, and expressed. Our lives have connection and meaning to the universe. Each life holds sacred purpose. It is in this universal garden of life that life truly is full of new beginnings. Each new beginning is a further conscious awakening on the journey that is living an examined life. © A.J. Mahari
“Dreams are the touchstones of our character.” -Henry David Thoreau
Life Coach A.J. Mahari on Time For the Self
In this excerpt from a workshop that Life Coach and author, A.J. Mahari, held with a group of her clients working on learning to create and practice skills that help them achieve healthy time and space for self and for spiritual connection and resting, relaxing, and re-charging A.J. begins to layout the work that lies ahead on the journey to taking physical space and time and transforming it to an inner equanimity. What you think creates your experience and A.J. stresses this to her clients and also points out that it is the meaning that we attach to each and every moment that might be the roadblock to healing, recovery, balance, and being on the pathway to self-understanding and your the here-and-now unfolding of your happiness.
Touchstone Life Coaching reflects my philosophy. As a life coach I believe that I act as a touchstone in the life of each client. The journey is the client’s. The client takes the lead and I, acting as a touchstone, can provide a reference point, a basis for comparison, against which the client’s thoughts and feelings can be further explored.
New beginnings beckon to us from what are experienced first as losses, failures, and painful experiences. There are times in life when transitioning from one phase to another the journey can be augmented positively by sharing part of it with a life coach like myself. Someone to walk a few steps of this explorative transition with you in a supportive, compassionate, and caring way.
Life coaching is a collaborative process with between the coach and the client with the mandate of supporting the client in achieving his or her personal goals. The process of life coaching, unlike psychotherapy, does not focus on the past or involve delving into one’s past. Life coaching focuses on effecting wanted and needed change in a client’s current and future thinking, attitude, feelings, and/or behaviour.
Personal Coaching is a process of supporting the client in his or her learning more about him/herself. In my experience, as a life coach, asking the client questions in a reflective way that is in response to what the client shares encourages the client to seek his or her own answers. Answers that will make themselves known through the kind of self-examination that produces both a deeper self-awareness and an increasing personal insight. Personal coaching is a learning experience.
Most clients seek me out as a life coach because they have come to some type of crossroads. They have come to realize that there is change needed in some area of their lives. Change is not easy for anyone. In some cases, where change is not possible, clients are exploring ways of coming to terms with challenges. In other cases clients are in search of more effective coping skills and techniques. And some clients face certain life challenges that call for adapation and strategizing when change itself isn’t the goal or is not a possible solution. Many clients seek support to find their way to the kind of personal understanding that enhances theirconfidence in being able to identity their needs and wants in ways that are the harbingers of the taking of the action required to create desired change or enhance personal coping strategies and to achieve personal, relationship, or career goals.
Some clients find that life coaching can also be very helpful in developing strategies to cope more effectively with on-going challenges in life as well.
As a life coach, I am an advocate for helping others to help and empower themselves by fostering and nurturing the liberation of each client’s authentic inner self. It is important to identify the path of change for each individual that is the way toward choosing and creating the change that they hunger for. It is the change that will further reveal each individual’s own personal path of ever-increasing authenticity. Change is a constant in life. We are always learning, growing, healing, and changing. Developing a personal style of mastery with one’s own change is not only a way to recover, heal, or grow, but it is the sacred path of spiritual change. It is the path upon which each soul seeks to leave its footprint in the ever-shifting sands of authentic self-actualization.
As a life coach I provide a caring, compassionate, safe, confidential, non judgemental, validating and supportive relationship within which clients can feel empowered to explore their present-day needs. I essentially act as a human mirror for my clients. I share with my clients an outside and unbiased perspective as to what I observe in listening to their feelings, experiences, and concerns.
© A.J. Mahari & Touchstone Life Coaching Services – 2002 – 2010 – All rights reserved.
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