Claudia Boers
Claudia is an ontological coach helping people see and access their amazing potential.
Transform your way of being
About
Ontological coaching is an exploration into your perception of the world and your way of being. Based on existential philosophy, it uses three areas – language, emotion and somatic awareness – to focus on how you interpret and make sense of reality. We are meaning making machines, and each of us has a unique view of reality. This view affects how we feel and our actions. This coaching system specifically looks at how we perceive reality.
As humans, it’s easy for us to take our interpretations of reality for granted, as if that’s just how things are. If someone sees the world as dangerous, they are likely to be risk averse and say no to opportunities. Alternatively, those who see life as an adventure are more likely to say yes to opportunities and to take risks.
How we see and make sense of the world has been shaped by longstanding personal narratives we have told ourselves. Most of the time, these narratives are invisible to us like water to the fish. The stories we believe to be true are really contexts and filters through which we experience life. Ontological coaching seeks to challenge our presuppositions and helps us to recognise that what we think of as ‘the truth’ is usually nothing more than learned narratives. These narratives are held in language, our emotions and also our body.
Bringing awareness to these encoded stories, coaching allows us to identify new ways of being, to go beyond the old self and build something new, a different structure free of the past. Ontological coaching is a transformational system that helps us to see life in a new way. In changing our perspectives, it opens up new opportunities for experience, conversations and action. When we realise who we think we are is largely a function of what we learned, we can choose to embrace something new and learn to be in a new way.
Ontological coaching can be useful for many different life challenges. You might be dealing with relationship or career challenges, maybe you are struggling with your emotions and lifestyle. Ontological coaching can help give you a new perspective, a new way of looking at your circumstances.
8 Week Course
Ontological coaching is an approach that’s deeply grounded in a practical understanding of language, moods and conversations. It is both straightforward and profound. It enables significant behavioural and cultural transformation in individuals, families and organisations
Week 1: What is Ontological Coaching?
What does ontological actually mean, particularly in terms of coaching? Learn about some of the key aspects of this approach, which we’ll be exploring in more detail about in coming weeks. In each of the sessions, participants will be encouraged to discover and develop their own resourcefulness by exploring a personal challenge through the lens of a new ontological distinction. The first coaching session will help introduce you to content, and people and put you on the path of your coaching journey.
Week 2: Some Basic Moods of Life
In the second coaching session, learn more about your moods and how they are the lens through which you see and interpret your world. Learn how to recognize your moods and understand how they might be helping you or holding you back from creating the sort of future you want for yourself. More crucially, learn how to consciously cultivate more helpful moods if your current one isn’t serving you.
Week 3: Change and Being a Learner
Lean about life-long learning and having a growth mindset. How does learning to observe how you learn enable you to learn and change? What enemies of learning – certain aspects of your ‘way of being’ – might be at play to hinder your learning and growth? And what allies of learning might you consciously deploy to support you in learning and change, and creating the life you want? Ontological coaching helps you to transform how you learn and evolve.
Week 4: Listening – The Crucial and Invisible Factor in Communication
Learning how to listen is at the heart of Ontological coaching. Learn more about the importance of listening – both our own listening and our listener’s. We speak to be listened to but speaking well does not ensure that we are heard as we intend. Understand how listening is a “meaning making” activity, through which we impose our meaning on to the world, and why understanding this is a crucial factor in communication. Learn to listen with greater awareness and have more effective yet more respectful conversations.
Week 5: Learning to Separate Fact from Fiction
Discover how to tell the difference between the facts and fiction. By the end of this session, you’ll be able to see two actions in language that are possibly invisible to you right now, enabling you to use them more consciously, responsibly and effectively. In doing so, set yourself free from all sorts of limiting beliefs – beliefs you may not even realize you have. Coaching can help you to clear the lens you see reality through, seperating fact from fiction is at the heart of this process.
Week 6: The Mighty and Humble Request
Discover the everyday language tool that has the power to bring new things into being: the mighty and humble request. Learn how to explicitly share your standards and take care of what matters to you without blame or shame. Understand what goes into an effective request and learn how to recognize and work with the different types of answers you might get so that you can coordinate your life more effectively. Coaching helps you to make powerful requests, set your boundaries, and set the rules.
Week 7: Our Body is our Biography and also a Powerful Tool
“Everywhere you go, you take your body with you. Your gestures, comportment, and sensations affect every action you take and even the very fabric of your worldview. Your body is an instrument – of both perception and action. It affects every last thing you see, say and do.” – Alan Sieler. Learn how your biography becomes your biology, and more importantly, how your body can be a powerful resource for generating change. The coaching process helps you bring new awareness to the way you experience the world.
Week 8: Conversation for Learning and Reflection plus a bonus piece of learning
Deepen your learning with a review of the course and an invitation to find ways to continue practicing the core ontological coaching distinctions. Gain one final new perspective: trust – what it means and how to cultivate it. Here we integrate the coaching principles of Ontology so that you can apply them for the rest of your life.
Training Class
Our training classes are can be larger group experiences, depending on how many people sign up. They allow you to learn key skills in an online group hosted by our expert therapists . They are a mix of teaching, therapy skills and learning about the different systems and therapies that you can apply to your life. Ultimately we are teaching you new skills so that you can help yourself and deal with the challenges you are facing.
Our training classes are a great way for you to begin your learning experience.
