Executive Zen Coaching
As a Spiritual Teacher as well as a Professional Coach, I guide your inner development together with your outer skills. Allowing your Whole Self to come forward in Presence instantly puts you in touch with what is most meaningful to you. Having a collective commitment to Purpose is also a primary requirement for true team and organizational success.
What Is It All About?
Zen@Work develops your Presence/Purpose dynamic, so your Whole Self can come alive in work. It is about aligning your body-heart-mind energies with your professional work-in-the-world, as they manifest in your specific roles and relationships, and as they support your personal visions and inspirations. You will learn to turn chaos, uncertainty and stress into allies, and transform persistent conditions of anxiety, overwhelm, distraction, reactivity and burnout by helping you re-connect to the purposeful inspiration for your work in the world.
Zen says that you have within yourself the capacity, balance and responsiveness to face any situation in your personal or professional life. I can help you re-Source from inside in a way that allows you to bring your Whole Self to your professional environment, meeting everyday stressors with equanimity, and discovering within chaos and uncertainty your path forward for personal growth and thriving.
My program distills classic Zen practices and insightful wisdom about body-mind and work into a manageable path of practices that connect Presence and Purpose. I custom design a program for each individual that addresses and transform blockages, maladaptive habits and questions.
Over the course of a six-month program, I work with each individual to become conscious of intentions, articulate commitments and help you honor your accountability to yourself. I meet with you 2-4 times/month (in person or via Zoom) to help you progressively explore your Presence/Purpose dynamic and develop measurable milestones in productivity, stress-reduction, and resolution of key questions. From day one, you will begin to reap the benefits of the Three R’s: Relief, Resolution, and Response-ability.
Who Is it For?
Zen@Work is for high-functioning professionals who seek expanded capacity in facing everyday professional challenges, and who have an experience of or interest in deepening their quality of Being, particularly as it manifests in their work-in-the-world.
I look forward to connecting with all who are called to this work. While my background gives me a special affinity with Founders/Leaders of Tech Companies and Mission-driven Organizations (social enterprises and non-profits), I also work closely with high-skilled “solo” practitioners such as doctors, lawyers, and caregivers.
Questions and issues you may want help with include:
Lack of focus, clarity, inspiration or energy.
Excessive busy-ness, reactivity or lack of resilience.
An unhealthy relationship with time, especially around your work.
A conflicted relationship with money, especially around your work.
A persistent sense of disharmony or discord in your mind, heart, or gut.
Specific challenges of leadership and decision-making.
Challenges in the “ecosystems” of your work-in-the-world (personal, local, global)
A feeling of “not living up to an unnamed potential”.
Conflict or discord between “job” and work; or questions around purpose.
Questions around your internal contracts, with Self, Other, and Work; balancing, prioritizing, and uncovering conflicts.
The practice of Zen is learning to source yourself from your deepest dimension of Being. This dimension has the quality of integrated body-heart-mind. If you have a body, a heart and a mind, you have this dimension, and it is available to you! Zen Coaching is a process of investigating your energies, feeling and thoughts in a way that dramatically expands your capacities and quickly resolves questions and issues.
Each individual has their own needs with respect to the practices of Presence and Purpose. You may have some clarity on your purposeful work, but need more guidance and support on mindfulness practices and principles. You may have a consistent mindfulness practice, but need help exploring how to function with purpose, heart and integrity in your work-in-the-world.
Or, like many of those I work with, you may need help with both. (I did.)
What I Offer
Few meditation teachers have long and broad experience in corporate leadership positions. And few leaders have engaged in a dedicated meditation practice over decades, or received transmission (teaching authorization) in a lineage that goes back to the Buddha. Because I have done both, I can easily recognize a leader’s common blockages and I can teach you specific practices to address them.
My one-on-one work is developed through decades of Zen practice, and literally thousands of individual sessions with my teachers, students, and clients. (Unlike most other meditation traditions, Zen puts a primacy on one-to-one work.)
In my individual work with you, I bring a trained sensitivity to your energetic flows as they manifest in your interconnected physical, emotional and mental patterns. Through my transmission, I help you bring alive your whole self, and teach you to access its power and wisdom.
What to Expect from the Practice of Presence
Over the course of your Coaching Program, you will develop and strengthen a mindfulness practice that will shift your relationship to your own mind, body and capacities. The potentials of meditative awareness are infinite, which is why dedicated practitioners engage their whole lives.
Each individual is unique, but specific milestones you may experience are:
More responsiveness and less reactivity/stress.
Clarity of judgment and discerning wisdom.
A healthier relationship with time and money.
The ability to turn uncertainty and chaos into allies.
Greater resilience in yourself, your family and your teams.
Establishment of supportive boundaries (in your schedule and environment) for a dedicated practice.
The ability to meditate for longer periods and all conditions.
What to Expect from the Practice of Purpose
Over the course of your Program, you will also develop and strengthen your relationship to your own life, as it manifests in your personal power and your meaningful work-in-the-world. Specific milestones or effects you may experience include:
Resolution of a dilemma with respect to a career decision.
More harmonious functioning of your business or team.
Resolution of an important strategic decision in your work.
A deeper sense of purpose.
Greater resilience and happiness.
Greater impacts on the world.
Free Discovery Session
For those interested in exploring individual work with me, I invite you to fill out my Discovery Questionnaire and schedule an Individual Session. From the Questionnaire, I will prepare a sample plan of practices and milestones based on your challenges and goals. In our 30-minute session, I’ll share the plan, and we can discuss if there is a mutual fit. There is no obligation to move forward!
My work is not for everyone. If you are interested solely in a “productivity hack” or developing leadership skills independent of your deepest capacities and inspirations, then you may want a more traditional business coach. But if you are willing to spend 15-30 minutes a day on simple Presence practices, and up to one-hour per week in session with me, I can help you establish more dynamic flow between your dimensions of Being and Doing, and give you the skills and practices to maintain and deepen it, even after we conclude our work together. Starting from our first week, you will experience the benefits of the Three R’s: Relief, Resolution and Response-ability.