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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Sara is a Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness and Life Coach. Is she a trauma specialist?

 

No. Coaches are not therapists. Trauma-sensitive mindfulness coaches are trained to recognize trauma and help clients stay inside (and slowly expand) their "window of tolerance" within the context of meditation practice. Importantly, T-S Mindfulness coaches are trained to know when to refer clients to experts in the field of trauma.

 

The "Life Coaching" industry is wildly unregulated. Buyer beware. Sara's position is that "Life Coaches" stay within their lane by serving primarily as "accountabilibuddies" (to borrow a South Park term); working with clients who have clearly defined goals and who need help following through on them.


What are Sara's qualifications?

 

Certification 2012: Life Coach, Radiant Coaches Academy Nashville, TN. 

Certification 2024: Advanced Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness with David Treleaven

Amrit Yoga: I AM Yoga Nidra™ Immersion Module One, 2020

 

For more on Sara's coaching go HERE.

 

What meditation technique does Sara teach?

 

STILL/WILD: Contemplative Practice for Change-making Women offers tools as opposed to techniques. Sara's own practice most closely resembles a traditional Centering Prayer practice (20 min sits), but our program takes a very individual approach. Some women are ready to begin a more traditional practice right from the beginning; some have to work up to it (especially those who are on the hypo or hyper aroused ends of the polyvagal ladder - i.e. really anxious or really tired). As a precursor to more traditional sits, some women find other ways of leaning into Stillness initially. At the outset, the question we ask is this one: What grants you entrance to a deeper, calmer, more peaceful place? Waking in nature? Listening to music? Guided meditations? At S/W, we respect the plurality of many modalities. Eventually, the goal is to have a sitting practice, but we're in no hurry.

 

Importantly, Sara makes a distinction between those mindfulness practices which engage the powers of focused attention and the kind of "Still" practice she teaches, which is more interested in the release of attention (a la Centering Prayer Practice) with the ultimate goal of turning one's gaze toward the "Holy Mystery," as mirabai starr would say, and letting it "follow you back out into the world." (If this devotional understanding does not appeal to you, that's ok. We'll adjust our language accordingly.)

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"And this is why you cultivate contemplative practice. The more you intentionally turn inward, the more available the sacred becomes. When you sit in silence and turn your gaze toward the Holy Mystery ...

the Mystery follows you back out into the world."

 

Is this program designed to help me overcome my chronic condition? ME/CFS, chronic pain, etc? 

 

This is not our primary purpose. There are many programs out there designed specifically to help folks recover from these chronic conditions, which are often far more debilitating than the more common burnout/fatigue (which is debilitating enough in and of itself). That said, Sara herself has recovered from a fifteen year bout of crippling ME/CFS and, after years of  trying everything under the sun to heal, can offer fairly specific guidance on the path to recovery.* There are lots of programs out there, but individual coaches are harder to come by and often much more expensive. If you're suffering form a chronic fatigue, post-viral symptom, chronic pain, headaches, or any other chronic condition for which you've found no biological cause or medical solution, reach out to Sara. If she can't help, she will help you find someone who can help you explore alternative methods of healing. 

 

Is this program designed to help me overcome or prevent the sort of burnout change-makers and caregivers often experience? 

 

Yes. Through a combination of trauma-informed mindfulness techniques, slow, incremental lifestyle changes, and brain retraining, activists and care-givers develop skills to recover from burnout and to prevent it in the future. 

 

*Ultimately, Sara's path to recovery led her away from western medicine and toward the more experimental polyvagal theory and the (no longer controversial) world of Mind/Body medicine. Like Sara, many practitioners now helping sufferers of ME/CFS recover have no medical training and suggest practices that lack robust empirical data proving their efficacy. That said, Western medicine offers little help to those suffering from conditions for which no biological cause can be found, while Mind/Body Recovery programs have, by now, a huge and hopeful catalogue of anecdotal evidence. 

 

We feel strongly that we have found the path to healing, but encourage you to make informed decisions.

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