As relational life coaches, “the foundational lens we coach through is that we believe you are your own best expert in yourself, and we help you access that expertise and wisdom through learning to cultivate a skilled, compassionate relationship with yourself. This is how we blend coaching in its pure form with teaching relational skills. Our relationship with self impacts all other relationships… e.g., with our partners, our friends, our colleagues, our families, even the relationship we have with the earth, the challenges we face, and with life itself,” explains Kiley and Christy, a mother-daughter relational life coaching team, who joined forces and created their coaching practice after a unique journey building a successful intergenerational family living structure through the pandemic.
This inter-generational living arrangement was intentional. “Our family moved to Colorado after 18 years in Maryland and came under one roof during COVID. Knowing this was a new chapter in parent-child relationships, we built off the structure my husband and I developed ever since Kiley was in my belly, having a vision, values and agreements for how we would Be together and support each other. But this was next level.” explains Christy. “Through that experience, Kiley decided to become a certified coach. Both of us started out being individual - focused coaches which is the ICF primary model. And we’re glad we did because we really built foundational skills as coaches to help people access their own intrinsic intuition and wisdom and sovereignty.
Recognizing the unique relationship we have, we then followed our passions and explored Mother-daughter relationship coaching as our joint business. That quickly evolved into coaching families and romantic partners. 4 years later, we’ve really come to understand the foundational nature of building a compassionate relationship with yourself as the primary relational skill to build in service of every other relationship we have,” continued Christy.
To give you a sense for their coaching style, “Imagine an individual, couple, or family comes to us with tension and confusion within themselves and their relationships.” Kiley proposes. “Before jumping right in to solving their issue they believe they have, as relational life coaches, we’ll start with questions like ‘What kind of relationship do you have with this tension, with discomfort, with conflict?’ And we come to discover that their issue isn’t what they came in with, it’s actually much deeper and is rooted in how they treat themselves and how they react to their own experiences in life” she explains. “How we respond to discomfort and tension is pivotal and we are all primed differently based on how we grow up in our cultural and family influences. Living in a Western, capitalistic, and consumerist society, we don’t inherit very sophisticated relationship skills, particularly with how we relate with discomfort within ourselves and with each other. For nearly any problem you can think of, there’s an app, a pill, or a professional who is offering to solve it for you.” She continues. “Right, and this doesn’t help you be able to navigate it on your own, with your own inner wisdom. Those are the skills we help people learn.” Christy adds.
“It’s not like there’s one magical relationship we’re all supposed to have with discomfort. An example of a healthy relational skill with this or any other experience is your own unique way you discover to be with it, witness it, feel it, and ultimately be able to listen and engage with it compassionately. To let it speak to you rather than through you. To be able to actually welcome discomfort as a guest at our table and hear its wisdom is honestly such a powerful experience it feels like magic.”
“The relationship that we have with ourselves is the primary relationship. If we’re not engaged in honesty, curiosity, openness, and compassion with ourselves, then we can’t actually hear our souls deepest whispers, or our hearts deepest desires.” Christy continues. “Yes, very important parts of us speak only very quietly and do not reveal their wisdom till we’re actually able to listen...so that’s one of the main skills we teach our clients...how to slow down and listen to themselves so they can actually hear their own intrinsic wisdom. Then we help people scale these skills and apply them in their relationships with others.” Responds Kiley.
Since Christy began coaching 8 years ago and Kiley 4 years ago, they have coached over 5,200 sessions between them, and have honed their understanding and approach to strengthening relationships.
“We are rooted in the philosophy of self-compassion. When a client is able to approach inquiries from compassion, their whole system relaxes and the door opens to their intuition and inner wisdom. Through this process, different “parts” of a person’s experience emerge with a cascade of insights that clients come to, parts they are carrying that they couldn’t initially see because they were meeting those parts with criticism or doubt or security or blame. We work with that initial contact point to massage it out so clients can access it compassionately,” shares Christy.
“My life began to pivot and expand quickly when I found myself separating from my fiancé, really putting our relational philosophy and skills to the test. I bought myself and my smashed and bleeding heart a one way ticket to Mexico, something I’ve always dreamed of doing. Over the last two years, I’ve spent nearly a year’s worth of time in 6 different countries. My curiosity quickly led me to learning and living with indigenous people in Guatemala, Ecuador and Brazil, exploring the plant medicines of the jungle.” Shares Kiley. “At this point in time, over the last 6 years, I have sat in close to 50 ayahuasca ceremonies with 6 different indigenous traditions in South America. I realized how difficult it was to weave all this experience into my life back home. So, as I do, when I want to learn something I usually go about it in an extreme way, I continued my travels while earning a certification in psychedelic integration coaching from an organization called Entheonation, that specializes in honoring indigenous traditions, providing trauma informed care, and emphasizing harm reduction practices. This education helped me understand that a huge aspect of what I was learning during my time in the jungle was that I was being shown how to be in relationship with life.” Explains Kiley. “Yes, as Kiley began to share her experiences with me, we began to realize that our indigenous teachers were unexpectedly turning into our most valuable mentors for our relational life coaching practice. This evolved naturally into an important aspect of JourneyOn’s mission, which is to bridge and harmonize indigenous and western wisdom together to mend the wound of separation that the modern world is suffering deeply from.” Christy replies.
“You see, citizens of the western/modern world have inherited the wound of colonialism just as much as we’ve inflicted it upon the world, and that wound is the wound of separation. Separation from our respect for the earth, from community, and from our own soul. My travels have really lifted the veil and shown me this first hand. We are primed for toxic relationships and loneliness in Western culture, given the consumerism that is psychologically manipulated by promoting addictive behavior that leaves us disconnected from ourselves, each other and dependent on quick fixes.” continues Kiley.
“So, in this modern psychedelic revival, we are concerned (and you can already see this happening in many ways on small and large scales) that people in modern society will form unhealthy relationships with these medicines, and expect quick fixes for their depression or trauma.” Adds Christy.
“A psychedelic is a type of psychoactive substance, specifically in the category of hallucinogens. Psychoactive substances can be stimulants, suppressants, opiates, etc. Psychedelics open up a pivotal mental state, often referred to as neuroplasticity” explains Kiley, who has degrees in molecular biology and physiology. She explains further that “psychedelics activate our 5H2A receptor system, which is our built in machinery for psychological evolution. When that system is heightened, we are in an impressionable, vulnerable, and very open state. Neuroplasticity gets a lot of positive hype in the media, but the full picture isn’t actually being shared. This malleable state of consciousness is a double edged sword, it’s not only a positive thing. It can be leveraged to make healthy positive psychological and behavioral shifts, or it can be misused or abused to reinforce negative, unhealthy behaviors. Understanding this makes it obvious to us that psychedelics need to be treated with utmost care and respect, with particular care to how people care for themselves after their experiences.”
They’ve seen personally first hand how people get into a cycle of just taking psychedelics, without professional preparation, guidance, or integration, expecting them to be a magic bullet that solves their problems. Then, a few months later be right back where they were, in their same job, same relationships, same situation that created all the stress in the first place, struggling to apply their experience in a practical manner that’s relevant to their life, leading to a sense of disorientation, confusion, disappointment, and further anxiety.
“This is why we offer psychedelic integration coaching. We really believe these medicines can help heal the modern world significantly, so we want this movement to be successful. Out of deep respect for these medicines and for the indigenous wisdom keepers that have carried their traditions for thousands of years, we help our clients to embody their insights, reconnect deeply with themselves, and experience real sustainable growth through practical application and action.” Christy shares.
“As humans, we protect what we love” adds Kiley. “So let’s fall back in love with life together, and realize we have a very precious human experience here on Earth that’s worth protecting and cherishing.”
Close Up Radio will feature Kiley and Christy Hartigan in a two-part interview with Jim Masters on Friday, July 19th at 1pm EST and Doug Llewelyn on Friday, July 26th at 1pm EST
Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio
If you have any questions for our guest, please call (347) 996-3389
For more information about Kiley and Christy Hartigan, please visit https://www.journeyon-coaching.com
Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
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