Developing the Coach Body (Main Character Energy and Living from Embodiment)
It’s been a while.
And if you look at my drafts folder, I have many different blog posts started and never finished. Fragments of thoughts and ideas I never managed to translate to paper.
The other morning I woke up with such a deep soul longing for myself. Summers have a way of doing that to me. Something about the heat, the long days, it brings me to a sort of reckoning. Without fail, every summer, I am in metamorphoses.
And so I did what I know how to do when I’ve lost my way, which is I picked up a pen and paper and began to write. I signed myself up for a poetry class, I took pages and pages of notes, chasing the tail of my own creative genius, and then I wrote a poem. I wrote a poem about the kind of person I wanted to become and all the things I wanted my life to count for and all the ways I wanted to show up and be big and bold and brave.
I’ve been working towards a lot of things, and one of the things I know about myself is whenever I’m working towards something, trying to make a goal happen, I tend to lose sight of who I am as I try on the role of who I want to be.
When I was in the beginning of the program I’m now at the very end of, one of the things my instructor talked about was developing the coach body. The coach body, she said, is who you show up as when you enter the room as a coach. I never really knew what she meant, but something about that phrase stuck with me.
It came back to me that morning, spread out writing poems. I think that coach body my professor was talking about was the same main character energy my poetry teacher had me write. I think all of it has to do with the person I’m becoming.
One of the promises I made to myself post transplant was that I wanted to be fully, radically alive. I was alive and I wanted to act like it. And now a huge part of my life is giving back to this community, and sharing my life story with huge audiences, and I lead groups to help people do the same thing and people with very fancy credentials believe in me. And it hit me as I was preparing to walk into a room and teach people about resilience that there is no reason anyone should believe anything I say if I’m not also living it.
I survived, yes, and I said I wanted to live this beautiful life and I’m grateful for this opportunity and living so close to death changed me but if I don’t live like it, what does it matter? If I’m not first being the embodied patient I teach other people to be, if I’m not practicing the tools I teach, why should anyone believe me?
Anyone can teach what I teach. When I show up to support groups or patient advocacy meetings or doctors offices, what they are asking for isn’t a big list of every tool I know but ME. Me, showing up in all my energy, embodying what I say I embody.
That is the coach body, that’s the main character energy, that is practicing what you preach.
Today I’m getting ready to go facilitate a group where a lot of people will come and trust me with their beautiful stories and I get the privilege and honour of helping them alchemize those stories and turn them into living poetry and be in their bodies. It’s really important work, and it’s part of a movement where doctors are telling their patients and organizations are getting behind this mission that we need emotional regulation tools for patients. And do you know how I’m prepping?
I’m dancing. I’m taking the longest afternoon nap. I’m being so in my body, so radically alive, that when other people walk in that room what they are there for isn’t the tools I have but the energy I will share. I’ve walked through the fire, now let me hold your hand while you do too. I’ve got you.
