The COACH State Video Transcript

Deborah Bacon Dilts: And I am Deborah Bacon Dilts.

Robert: We know that these are challenging times for everybody. We wanted to offer something, a practice, that we have been practicing ourselves for a long time that I think can help to sort of help your inner game during these kinds of challenges when things can come up so quickly.

Deborah: One of the things that happens – when things are uncertain, they are different than they usually are – is that uncertainty, very naturally, can bring up feelings of anxiety or fear. Those energies of anxiety and fear can have a tendency to make us ungrounded and even then create loops and in our own thinking. So what is really useful is to have some kind of ways, some kind of practices that help come right back here to what is actually happening right now so we can be with these difficult feelings of a place of some kind of resourcefulness. 

Robert: So the practice that we want to share with you and guide you through here, and we also have more information on the website, there is an article and we also are making available for free our recording, a longer recording about the notion of the inner game and this process that we call the COACH State.

Deborah: So COACH is an acronym for five things that we are going to give our attention to in the sequence. And the first one is the first C is for being Centered. So we invite you to come along with us as we explore a sense of centeredness by simply bringing our attention to the physical center of the body. You can have your eyes closed or open be standing, seated, however, it is comfortable for you. But just turn the attention inward to sense the center in the valley, the center in the seat of our body, and just connect with the sensation of centeredness, feeling your body connected to the ground, the feet on the floor, or the seat underneath your chair, just centered here in the physical body and just take a moment to kind of it is like letting a pebble fall to the bottom of a pond settling down into the sense of I am here, I am centered in my body in this moment. 

Robert: And when there is that sense of centeredness, the second part of COACH State C-O-A-C-H is O. And O then is about the Opening from that place. Once we are centered we can start to open our eyes, open our minds, open our hearts to others, to other possibilities to create a kind of a sense of greater spaciousness. So from that center, we open, and one simple way to open is actually to open the chest, open through the breath of that sense of a growing spaciousness around us kind of like a bubble coming out from that center and in there then instead of feeling kind of pressure and stress, there is more possibility. So this sense of open center, open. 

Deborah: So from that grounded centeredness and the quality of more openness or opening then we invite the A of COACH which is Awareness and Attentiveness to what is actually here right now around us. Aware of the surroundings, aware of also what is going on inside just the quality of the invitation of awareness and I never had relaxed alertness in the mind.

Robert: And when we are centered and we are open and we are alert and aware. Then we can start Connecting to our resources, Connecting to ourselves, we like to say, Connecting beneath and Connecting beyond what is ever might be creating the fear, the anxiety, the stress, reactivity. So this sense of connecting and often, we like to start by connecting the head-centered to heart-centered to valley-centered to your feet, to the Earth, to all the space above us, the space to the left, to the right, behind us, in front of us. So there is a sense of connection and also connecting to our resources and realizing we are all in this together, we are all connected. And even if we are not physically connected in any that we are not allowed to be physically connected, we can really have that sense of a greater connection.

Deborah: So from this grounded centeredness to the invitation to the opening and then awareness, alert and attentive mind, to connection aligned in our selves, connected with different parts of ourselves to the ground, to the environment, to each other, to the greater field, that creates a state in which it becomes possible to hold, to welcome with hospitality whatever is actually happening. 

Robert: So we say that H of the COACH State is this sense of Holding space, a Holding environment from a place of curiosity, of resourcefulness, of welcoming whatever is there so we say we can be with it without becoming it, without being taken over by it. So this is something that we can also do, we can actually, with this notion of a COACH State one day when we were not in a COACH State and we said we need to find a way to get back to this place quickly and this acronym came to us. And sometimes I find just reminding myself of those five things. I am centered.

Deborah: I am open. 

Robert: I am alert and aware. 

Deborah: I am connected to myself and with what is outside of me.

Robert: And I am holding what is here from a place of resourcefulness, curiosity, and welcoming.

Deborah: And the wonderful thing is, the more often you do this, the easier it becomes the place we live from.

Robert: It becomes the baseline. So we hope this is helpful to you and there will be more resources on the NLPU website, the Dilts Strategy Group website, and the IAGC website, International Association for Generative Change.

Deborah: Be well take care of yourself. 

Robert: Be safe.