INT. LIVING ROOM. LATE MORNING
ANA and I sit in the living-room, tea cups in our hands. It's raining outside. We've been talking for about 40 minutes. Checking in on the body, and where ANA feels the tension when we talk about what she has brought in today, she takes a deep breath, and sighs.
ANA
I can't meditate. I can't empty my
head of thoughts.
ME
What is the purpose of emptying your head of thoughts?
ANA
Isn't that what meditation for? Isn't that what meditation is?
ME
I see meditation as the noticing of your thoughts. Not banishing them.
ANA
And then what?
ME
And when you see your thoughts, when you notice them, you remember your breath, and go back to noticing it.
ANA
Mmmm.... Yes, the breath.
ME
For me, meditation is the act of remembering your breath, and when you do, going back to noticing it - that's when your 'thoughts' - the ones you are trying to "lose" make way for the breath.
ANA
I need to try...
ME
Coaching for me is similar to meditation in that for me, it is a remembering - of who we are.
ANA
How is that?
ME
When we talk, you hopefully get the space to remember who you are out
of context of what you are dealing with. Then you can access your core, so you can act in alignment with it. We very rarely get this perspective in our day to day. A coaching conversation is when we get a glimpse of that. We remember.
ANA
It's true that when we talk - it makes me see things differently.
ME
And when you do, you create some distance - a gap - and your reactions become responses, your actions become internally motivated, because you can see - and distill - your internal motivation.
ANA
That's how I know what I want.
ME
Yes. And - you have the back to do, and indeed be, what you want.
*names and places have been change to honour privacy
Illustration by Evie Fridel