Becoming a Change Agent
“You can have all the exercise skills in the world, but it won’t matter if you can’t help your clients achieve their true goals,” says online coach, author and former health club owner Tom Terwilliger. “You’ll just be a technician rather than a change agent.”
How can you manifest your own dreams and goals—and help your clients realize theirs? Here are some basic manifesting tools:
Be responsible for your energy. “If you come into a class or session with negative, tired or overwhelmed energy—say you just broke up with your girlfriend—you infect your clients,” says Terwilliger. Tai chi instructor David-Dorian Ross adds, “When you’re in a balanced, authentic state as a trainer, you will lift your clients to a higher state. It’s not about motivating, it’s about being. It’s similar to what a Reiki or qigong master does, redirecting energy flow.”
Meditate. Rewiring the brain through meditation or stillness is universally acknowledged as a powerful manifesting tool—perhaps the most powerful tool for accessing the subconscious mind.
Write it down. Ross suggests making a list of three important actions that will get you closer to your goal. Sometimes images, symbols or sounds reach the subconscious better than words do. “If a client is having a hard time with articulating a life statement, I’ll ask [him or her] to draw it,” says Kate Larsen, life coach and personal trainer.
Stay in the present tense, use “I Am,” and feel the experience fully. “Once you crystallize your intention, write it out and say it in the present tense: ‘I am now . . . ,’ ‘I am ready to . . .’ or ‘I am open to . . . ,’” says kundalini yoga instructor Wahe Guru Kaur. “When I coach people, this can be a very confronting exercise. But I notice that when I get to the place of fully believing, feeling and acting as if it has already occurred, that’s when it manifests. That’s the golden moment.”
Wayne Dyer, author of best-selling book and PBS series Wishes Fulfilled, calls this “living from the end.” He emphasizes that assuming the feelings of the outcome is more important than intellectualizing, because feelings make a stronger subconscious impression, and that the strongest feeling to assume is love.
Pay attention to your mind-body practice. “Yoga can help you clear away mental, emotional and physical blocks that may keep you from realizing your intentions,” says Wahe Guru Kaur. “Balancing chakras is one way that yoga helps align your energy, clear your mind, regulate your hormones and emotions, and open your heart.”
“Tai chi is very specifically about creating internal and external balance to put you in a state of harmony and flow,” says Ross. “There is a parallel between the physical and energetic worlds. The more time we spend being in balance and alignment physically, the more we seem to align with the energy of the universe, and that’s when manifestation really takes off.”
To read the full article from the July-August 2013 issue of the DEA Fitness Journal click here.
