I asked Clean Genies Valerie Galvin and Soula Kallinis to explain more about their specialism in ‘Breathexperience’ and how learning Clean Coaching has supported that.
This is the first in a series of ‘Spotlight on’ blogs about Clean Coaches who have trained with the Clean Coaching Centre.
Firstly, Valerie, what kind of experience is Breathexperience?
I have invested decades seeking freedom, trust and courage in myself – as a singer, a coach and a human being. I have been a meditator for 40 years and have explored many disciplines and modalities, both from curiosity and a commitment to supporting myself and my clients to access who we know ourselves to be when we are at our best. In 2009, Breathexperience appeared in my life. The penny dropped. After years of seeking and striving, I could be with myself as I am, with others as they are, and the world as it is, with the simple choice to sense my breath moving as I let it come and go. I had access to an inner wisdom that had eluded me in the past. And I could listen to that wisdom.
And then Clean Coaching. Then what happens?
Four years ago, Soula Kallinis introduced me to Clean. Who knew that another penny could drop! Clean Coaching (with Clean Language and EK) has opened the gate to a world populated by inner guides waiting to support me. It is as if the inner wisdom I sense in my allowed breath is given language by Clean. Now, Clean Language informs all my interactions, as does my Breath. As I allow my breath and sense its movement, metaphors emerge, without effort, like unimpeded messages from Self.
When I facilitate a Clean inquiry, I receive my client’s communication from ears that are in the middle of me, opened by the movement of my breath. And that same breath guides me to offer another question. Or to wait and listen some more. When I lead a Breathexperience session, Clean gives me the capacity to hear the metaphors that express a person’s true experience, and I can ask questions that deeply honour that experience.
And I think, of course each complements the other! They both spring from the same source — the wellspring of Allowing.
And Soula, with Breathexperience and Clean Language, what do you know, now?
Breathexperience practice connects me to myself. The idea is to stay present to that and I have access to so much more that is stored within me, my intuition, my senses, what else? If I am not present to myself, how present can I really be with the person I am interacting with. When I am connected with me, listening to me, taking care of me, when I am open to receiving all that, I am also equally open to receiving what is outside of me, whomever I am interacting with. I bring that to facilitating a Clean Language or EK process.
I am present listening to me, and to the coachee. Exquisitely listening. I can sense from me, when the coachee has said something important or that deserves attention, I have a response. Because I have heard my own response, I know what to respond to with my next question. I can have a logical thinking process go on in me about what to focus the next clean question on, but if I go with what I have sensed in me, I trust it will be more relevant.
I may also at one point sense in myself ‘ahhh, what do I do next’? I am in distress, I have stopped breathing, this distress has taken over. But I notice, and I bring my awareness back to myself, my breath, and something else becomes available. I stay with my breath and the clean questions, and something has shifted. As if what felt like a tight distressing space just opened up wide, quite expansive. What shifted? Was the coachee going through a wobble, and I was responding to it, feeling it too? I cannot answer that, I don’t know what the coachee was feeling, but I do know what I was feeling, and when I could be with it, and stay present to that which showed up, something became possible in the space between us, and something was different in the coachee. This is what I feel my breath practice brings to facilitating a Clean Language/EK session.
Thank you to Valerie and Soula for sharing this. You can learn more about their approach combining Breathexperience and Clean Coaching through an upcoming 3 hour online workshop here