The Certified Energy Coach^® Program

 THE  CEC PROGRAM

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What Is Energy Coaching?

In coaching, the Coach works with you in identifying, clarifying, and achieving your personal and business goals and aspirations and assists you in achieving them. The approach is focused upon supportive and challenging inquiry rather than providing a readymade behavioral mold, so you can create your own solutions to issues and design your work and personal life in the way that fits best for you. While generic coaching sessions usually last half an hour, Energy Coaching sessions usually last an hour to several hours, and are quite frequently conducted by phone - energy methods work extraordinarily well over the telephone. For more in-depth answers on the Coaching process, click here for extensive Q&A on Coaching by the late Thomas Leonard, one of the Coaching profession's early pioneers and founder of Coach University, CoachVille and the International Coach Federation.

How is coaching different from consulting or psychotherapy?

Consulting, coaching, and psychotherapy share a lot of common ground. All three focus on helping people make changes and accomplish goals that really matter to them. Energy Coaching in addition provides both client and coach with extraordinarily effective tools for permanent change.

There can be a fair amount of crossover between the three. There are consultants and therapists who use coaching skills and strategies as a basic part of their practice. There are coaches (particularly Energy Coaches) who have backgrounds as consultants or therapists who integrate those skills into their coaching. However, there is a different feel and focus to each of these three disciplines. They are different ways of working, and each has its own special value.

Caveat: Consulting, coaching, and psychotherapy, when they are at their best, are complex, challenging endeavors, with a depth and richness that matches the depth and richness of the human experience. As there are a wide range of practices in all three fields, what follows are generalizations which are intended to be indicative rather than definitive.

CONSULTING	ENERGY COACHING	PSYCHOTHERAPY
Focus is on problem-solving, action plans, strategies, and accomplishing specific, significant goals.	Focus is on learning through the partnership between self-discovery and sustainable action, on the client creating a fulfilling life and empowering the client to do so through the various EnergyWork modalities best suited to the client's particular situation. Past emotional situations are visited and cleared only as they relate to a client's difficulty in catalyzing appropriate action in the present, or future.	Focus is often on understanding patterns of feeling and behavior, reliving childhood experiences, rehashing feelings associated with past trauma, abuse, or loss.
Focus is on the expertise of the consultant. The consultant can make the difference between success and failure by filling a gap the client has in knowledge, skills, or experience.	Focus is on the inner guidance of the client and the process of self-discovery as guided by the coach. The coach has the questions, the client discovers the answers. The coach coaches the client in how to apply Energywork modalities as and when necessary. The coach is seen as a co-active partner in the fully empowered client's life.	Focus is often on the guidance of the therapist, until the client is ready to guide her own life. Initially, the therapist is often seen as a parental, authority figure and the client, as dependant upon the therapist.
Solving present day problems in service of achieving desired goals for the future. Providing teaching and mentoring to develop abilities and expertise.	Future-oriented in service of making the present come alive. The well-functioning client frees themself from blockages of the past, as guided by the coach. Focus is on the client's biggest dreams and deepest desires for her life, removing any obstacles, and making those dreams come true in the present.	Past-oriented in service of freeing the client from the past - so she can choose new possibilities in the future. On moving from maladaptive behavior to functionality.
Transference occurs when the client abdicates power to the practitioner, and views the practitioner in a parental or authoritarian role. In Consulting, transference is neithert encouraged nor used.	Transference occurs when the client abdicates power to the practitioner, and views the practitioner in a parental or authoritarian role. In Energy Coaching, Transference is actively prevented.	In a psychotherapeutic sense, transference is the client reacting in the here and now as they would have in the past in an attempt to resolve uncompleted business and heal emotional wounds. Skilled use of transference in psychotherapy is a central therapeutic strategy.
Consultants sometimes ask why.	Coaches only occasionally ask why. Energy Coaches rarely ask why if at all. "Why" questions tend not to lead to meaningful change, but justification and dissolution of focus.	Therapists often ask why.
Does not engage in deep feeling work on childhood issues.	While not the primary focus of Coaching, Energy Coaches may guide the client in how to work on their own childhood issues and if appropriately trained and licensed or in a state with consumer Health Freedom laws, may engage more deeply with the client in such work as it furthers forward movement in the client's coaching agenda.	Focus is often on early childhood experiences and patterns.
Generally focuses on the specific project at hand.	Focuses on the client's whole life.	Focuses on the client's whole life.
Clients are engaged in solving important problems, carrying out long-term strategic plans, building a career, an organization, or a movement.	Clients are engaging with meaningful challenges in creating the life they most want to be living. They are turning their dreams into action. They are having bigger and bigger impact in the world. Occasionally personal issues present as blocks in the coaching process and are dealt with by the client inline, sometimes (but not always) in the coaching session, sometimes (but not always) expertly guided by the coach.	Clients often are dealing with serious and complex personal issues. They are dealing with serious pain and suffering. They are getting their lives together so they can then go after their dreams.
Consultants may do specific pieces of work for the client, or produce specific products.	The client does the work. The focus is on the client taking their own action and being 100% responsible for it.	The client does more and more of the work as therapy progresses. When the client is able to be 100% responsible for themselves, therapy is frequently considered to be finished.
Focuses on finding the right plan of action as quickly and directly as possible. Views failure as feedback to improve the plan or system.	Has an experimental spirit. Welcomes failure as valuable feedback, and honors how the knowledge gained from failing can be the key to future success.	Views failure as unproductive and "bad". Focuses on getting to understanding and empowerment as soon as possible in order to help the client move out of distress.
Generally seeks to minimize resistance or find a path around it, in order to keep the focus on getting to the goal that's been agreed upon.	Welcomes resistance as a rich, juicy place for learning, and as an important, often necessary, stage in moving forward. Energy modification techniques are uniquely formulated to deal with internal resistance. Hence, Energy Coaching views resistance as transformative.	Sometimes welcomes resistance as productive and transformative. Sometimes views resistance as a problem, as something getting in the way, to be gotten rid of.
Is generally business-like in spirit and approach.	Has a playful, creative spirit of discovery even when it's being quite serious about tough issues.	Is generally serious in spirit and approach in line with how serious the client's issues are.
Consultants refer clients to coaches or therapists as needed.	Energy Coaches refer clients to consultants or therapists as needed.	Therapists refer clients to coaches or consultants as needed.
Consulting can be a godsend.	Energy Coaching can be a godsend.	Therapy can be a godsend.

The Certified Energy Coach Program is grateful to Rich Snowdon, and his classmates
at the Coach Training Institute for the basic frame on which the above chart was based.