Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm your host, Claire Pedrick. And today I am in conversation with the lovely people behind the brand new book, Poetry for Coaching, Transformation Through Verse. What a great title. Just a reminder, if you want to get the episodes as they drop, just subscribe or follow on your podcast platform and...
Watch out in the show notes for our open table at the Coaching Inn where the pub, the virtual pub will be open all day on Friday the 28th of March from 8 a.m. UK to 6 p.m. UK. Everybody is welcome. Come any time. There'll be tables where you can talk about books and poetry and coaching and whatever you like to talk about. And people from around the world will, I hope, be dropping in through the day. No charge, just fun. Virtual, online, bit of community building.
So 28th of March, get that in your diary, whether it's your evening, your morning, your afternoon, whatever. So here we are. So welcome to Ross Nichols, Sarah Moores, Tracey McEachran Kate Jenkinson and Anjli Gheewala You are all so very welcome. I am a bit of a poetry fan and I love it because it kind of helps us make meaning. when somebody else's words kind of get inside us and start doing things in a way that isn't loaded, is it?
Because when a friend says something to us, we think it's based on their opinion. Whereas when a poem says something to us, it's a very clean offer, which we can make our own. So let's meet you and then let's talk about this fabulous book. So... Let's hear about all your journeys. I'm going to get you to go last Ross, because you're the editor. So Sarah, tell us about your journey to this point.
Well, it's interesting you should use the word journey actually, because I came via a therapy called The Journey. So essentially I am a therapist, journey practitioner, I do energetic healing as well, and I'm also a Qigong teacher. And so really my coaching journey has been to incorporate all of that, including poetry, into my current coaching offering, which is to enhance the mindset aspect of my poetry.
So one of my poems in the book is Empowering Choices, and I have done this very thing to that poem. And that is to take the mindset aspect of it and add purposefully composed music and meditative movements. So the Qigong aspect of using healing and movement in the body and the... therapy, the journey is a therapeutic form of guided meditation. So I take people on a coaching journey with my poetry, all to music, so it becomes a transformationary, multi-sensory experience.
I've recorded these in and of themselves about 20, 30 minutes, depending on how long they are. And then I've encased them in a coaching framework. So if they want to be experienced live, then we can dive deeper, we can offer support on whatever comes up as a group. So it's my new thing, as it were, to incorporate it all, which makes my heart sing really, because that's where my desire lies in using all that I have, all the subconscious, the super conscious, the mindset and the poems.
Because as you say, they speak to us in ways that we're not expecting. So that's what usually happens is someone's a bit like, we've got a theme, don't know what's going to happen. And then it's, well, what's happening for you right now? And let's just drop the mind, step into the body. And what comes up is really different for everyone in the room and speaks to everyone in the room because we're all on the same journey. So yeah. love how you've incorporated everything into one space.
Thank you, Sarah. I just want to say I'm offering one of these on the Poetry of Coaching community page. So it'll be coming up in the spring. So anyone that wants to can join that page and then look out for the event or message me and they'll be personally invited. So it's one of my offerings for our launch. So we'll put the poetry for coaching page in the show notes, everyone. yeah, it's the community page. Tracey, tell us about your journey.
Hi, I, well, I suppose I'd start with I did 20 years in commercial roles in sales and marketing with Cadbury Trebor Basset Bassett as a senior leader. And after my sort of door coming to the end of that time, I really wanted to change and I considered, should I become a coach at that stage? So that was around 2007 or should I do something radically different? And I I went for radically different. I went and studied fine art photography. Yes, it did something really different.
But what was so magical about that was it was in a way it was quite close to coaching in some way of being the observer and the listener of people and culture and things. And so it was much more holistic experience than I thought was, you know, go and study photography. and I did my masters. And when I came out of doing that BA and the masters, I didn't want to be a full-time artist. I've carried on teaching, but I then went into coaching.
What that enabled me to do is bring all that sort of commercial and leadership experience along with that creative thinking process and critical thinking process. into my coaching. So that was back in 2013, I think I started coaching. And since then, I've also I've carried on developing my art. I write poetry, build installations, make photographs, all sorts of things. However, I want to express a curiosity I have. That is the magic of art and coaching. They both come from a place of curiosity.
Yeah. And I think poetry, you know, what another thing, the connection with poetry and coaching is you give birth to a poem, you put it out in the world and you make no judgements and people meet it where they're at and there's no one way of meeting it. And so you have this wonderful magic that happens when you use art in coaching. So I do team coaching, do individuals, individual coaching, I do embodied work as well.
So I'm also, I've done a lot of spiritual work, so that comes into my coaching. For me, the magic happens when you allow things to pass through you, some creative energy, but also art, poetry, awakens the unconscious. And what we have been driven by as behaviors suddenly becomes clear through an artistic medium, because we've... part this cognitive piece. And so, yeah, and I work predominantly now in social housing and public sector.
I made a decision to work really with organisations that have a social purpose. And that's why I left Cadbury's I loved Cadbury's. It was a brilliant place to work, but I really didn't feel I was serving my purpose. And so hence why I am where Great, thank you. And so many insights in what you said about the difference that emerges when we process in a different part of ourselves. So thank you for that. So Kate, hello. Hi, Claire. Nice to meet you.
I don't think it's surprising, but one of the poems in the book is My Coaching Journey. So it seems appropriate to share the poem and then let people buy the book so they can read the story later and see if what I say matches up today. under acceptance because it's about accepting yourself when you go on a journey I think. It's a big theme in my coaching as well with neurodivergent people helping them find their own acceptance. My coaching journey.
I started off with GROW and ended up with FLOW and no it's not an acronym. It's finding out what makes your heart sing, where your soul needs healing, helping you find your centre from FLOW. anything is possible, but you've got to let go of other people's othering.
And on my journey to coaching, again, from a corporate place where I was an HR director for 25 years, in different places, not the same place, I'd get the feedback that I was good at coaching and I should do more of it, but because other people were saying it, I didn't listen to them. had to find it for myself. And I think I found it when I realized that my strengths were different from many of the people around me and that developing others was a joy, an absolute joy.
And I wanted more joy and happiness in my life. And the way for me to find that was to focus on what makes us grow, what makes us develop. And that's a coaching approach. the world and to life and to developing my own coaching business. It's also poetry. I love poetry. I know that people know me for this and I think we said something nice that poetry is a friend and it's always been a friend to me. So I like to try and help people find their way to poetry, find their way back.
because we're never really introduced to poetry as a friend. It's sort of a gatekeeper to a GCSE qualification. And sadly, that's the wrong way to experience poetry. So I try and help people back to finding poetry as a friend. And I'm sure the anthology that we've created is one brilliant way to do that. Fantastic and thank you so much for sharing your poem with us all. Beautiful, it got me. We could have a whole episode on your poem. I've got more where that came from as you know.
Yeah, I think you and I need to have an offline chat, Kate. Please, because Othering is a real thing and it's an exploration for me. So let's do that. Anjali, hello, welcome. Tell us about you. Hi Claire. So for me, I started my journey in a creative area of textiles and then eventually I moved into admin work. Then I wanted to go back into something creative, which led me to something like I wanted to do interior design. I wanted to kind of connect to the textiles again.
And I ended up exploring more esoteric things like feng shui and crystals and a whole arena of different things. And that's when the coaching journey started coming through because I started meeting people that were coaching or doing NLP and just a whole host of areas that it expanded into and that's what kind of introduced me to the idea of coaching.
Eventually I did do my qualification but I think all of the experiences if I look back it's that combination that came in textiles, the logic of design as well as the math. So a lot of my interests were in organizing and in decluttering and it's again it's taking like the big amount of things, all the threads, organizing them, having them be functional and come together. So all that kind of stuff is what I am.
guess what I still do, what you do always is what you continue to do, it's always there. And another thing that I think has also been part of my creativity was writing. So when I was on my coaching journey, it opened me up to reading more about expressive writing, and then I started blogging and eventually doing poems, and then writing the story. because I have the art and design background, I also wanted to create a visual story with whatever I wrote.
So when I joined the book, when I joined the group, I also shortly after that started working full-time and now that's evolved as well and I'm working in marketing which is giving me a great opportunity to bring more, put more poetry out there and to also use poetry at events and sharing words and and also content writing. So I think what the coaching journey has done is brought together all of my strengths and put them together and now I'm able to put them forward wherever I am.
I'm still pushing forward the creative side and writing and organizing words and that kind of thing and then also having the logic with it. One thing I wanted to say is I noticed just the other day as I've been on this journey, there's still something new that comes through or something new that gets highlighted about poems and poetry. And I was watching a podcast by Anderson Cooper. He's a well-known presenter with CNN. And I think in recent times he's been exploring a lot about grief.
So anyway, I was watching a podcast and... beautiful language in the interview and the conversation and the depth but also the relatability you know by anyone who was listening but I was multitasking and the minute they started reading poems because they brought poems into this I had to stop what I was doing. and I had to just listen because I think that it's what you said, it's an offering and it requires all of you.
You cannot be distracted and do other things and I think for me that was the beauty of it and having written poems and getting involved in the book, I'd had no formal training or I haven't tried to study how to do a poem and things to follow. It just came out of a flow. and I think it still requires that even when you're listening to it. Okay, thank you so much, Anjali. Letting the poem do its good work.
I had an insight as you were talking, building, think probably from everything that everyone was said, I've been carrying a Maya Angelou line in my soul really for probably six or seven years. And as you were talking, I suddenly thought, I think I think, about it quite often, but I've just had a new so I appreciate that. And that's built out of what several people have said. Thank you very much. We will continue with the podcast.
Why I actually want to go for a walk with a cup of coffee, but I will be back here right now. Ross, tell us about you. I'm an old soldier and a flawed human being who's on a journey back to himself. Sounds a bit woo-woo, but I think that's a fair description. It's been quite remarkable and unscripted. So I left the army in going through a difficult experience, a slowly unfolding car crash, nothing noble, no battle shock, no PTSD, just personal stuff that I needed to deal with.
And I stumbled into volunteering as a business mentor. I loved that, sorry. quickly got up to nine different schemes and organisations I was doing it for and I thought, I should do this. So I started my one man band company. And then on the voluntary side, I got a client referred to me who didn't want mentoring, he wanted something else. And they said, well, you've been in the army, you know about these things. know, I said, okay. But it turned out he wanted career coaching.
I now know it's career coaching. I had no idea what I was doing, but I really enjoyed it. And on the third session, it's like a different guy turned out, know, jacket off, tie off. hair all over the place, waving his arms about everything and I thought, wow, that's what coaching can do, I wanna be a coach. So I trained in NLP, discovered that I wasn't coaching, trained as a coach and it just kept evolving.
So it started off with a career flavor, a business flavor, then it became about leadership, then it was into wellness and it's into cancer. I lead the cancer coaching community. I lead the Salzburg coaching circle. And it just kept on rolling of its own accord. And I found that I was spontaneously using poetry in my coaching. I would just throw in a line or offer a poem and quotable quotes that we all use. And then a few years back, a couple of poems on social media really caught my eye.
One of them was by Anjli called Red Love. Another was by Basia Henderson called Encrypted Love. And both those poems are in the book. I don't know whether the fact that love is in the title is significant, but they're both really... caught me and they both had the story behind the poem and I thought these are too good just to let them wuff through and disappear. need, you know, there's something here. There's something here that I certainly find a powerful resource in my coaching work.
So I wonder if others do too. So why don't we collect these things, make them available as a resource for the profession. And so I sort of umbed and hard about this and I was having a networking chat with a peer coach, Hazel Martin one day. And I get in good coach, which he said, well, what's stopping you? I thought, my God, nothing. And in that moment, I gave myself permission to bring this project to life. So I put the word out and the people on this call and others answered it.
And here we are. So thank you and you know what an amazing thing it is and there's so much stuff in here to bounce off or to bounce into or to let sort of sit and float and all those beautiful, beautiful things. In your wildest dreams, what do want this book to do? Be. Create. Who's that question to? Okay. I've thought a lot about this. I think I want it to be a resource for the profession, the helping professions, whether you're a coach, a counsellor, a therapist.
I think this is what I designed, you know, my intention when I set out. But of course it can be a tool for oneself. And I'm using it at the moment. I'm working on self acceptance that I'm really hard actually. And I was sitting with the chapter three. acceptance just the other day for an hour quietly just really finding a whole new layer of things because sometimes a poem can be better than a coach. Sorry, coaches. because it has no agenda. I like that. Tracey.
mean, for me, it would be to enable coaches to be more adventurous and more confident in using poetry or any creative form within their practice. and the, I have a strong belief that we are all creative. We're all able to write. We're all able to do multiple things that are creative. And a lot of I've encountered lots of people that say, I am not creative. And I actually did a TED talk on that, but we are all creative.
So that's what I'd like it to be, a facilitator to enable others to have the confidence to read the right poetry or use more poetry and creativity in their practices. Nice. Kate and then Sarah. I think anyone who knows me well knows that I'm on a mission to make poetry more accessible to organisations and leaders. So this for me would be a resource not just for coaches but for leadership because it's about being human.
And poetry is one of the most long lasting forms of creativity I think that connects us all as humans and in a world that is full of distractions and disconnection, I think poetry for anything can help connect us all on a human level. So it's an antidote to AI. It's EI, it's emotional intelligence. And anything that kind of brings that into focus like this book does in bucket loads. I mean, it's just a resource for life, you know.
The chapter headings were really considered and worked on by the group. Mine was forgiveness, my route to finding myself was forgiveness and then acceptance. So those headings and those poems are in here. So anything that helps people connect with themselves and others is incredibly valuable and this book will do that for a long time for people. Yeah. And I love the vulnerability in how you're bringing yourselves to the book, to the anthology and to the way that you've crafted the shape.
Thank you, Sarah and then Anjali. It's interesting that creativity wasn't something I was brought up to embrace and so everything everyone said about creativity is so funny because I can actually remember saying to myself how there was kind of no point in creativity. You know, it was almost like because it wasn't valued. Nobody showed me the value.
So it's very interesting if someone's on a coaching journey that someone's showing you the value in something creative and then that lo and behold, I'm a really creative being. I live creatively, I do everything creatively. And it's so interesting that the complete swap happened because you've got to find it in yourself sometimes. Like Kate was saying, all these people told me I'm a great coach. And then it's like, it's only then it's like, hang on a minute, I seem to be a great coach.
It's like, it's got to be found sometimes. And I think that's the journey of a lot of us. You know, if we were to use it as a metaphor for what everyone's going through. You can be told something that's good or bad or useful or not and then something bubbles up and it inspires you and that's your thing. That's your purpose. That's your motivation. That's your why. And it can be found in poetry.
And poetry for me as a journey literally started, I mean mine started as sort of a GCSE thing that was mentioned before, know, and so it was taken off a shelf and put back on it. And then I joined Ross's coaching circle on the day that he was using How to Use Poetry for Coaching. And the reason I joined that was I thought, well, that doesn't sound scary, you know, because when you're going to join a group, we all have that thing of like, am I going to be accepted? Am I going to fit in?
And I just thought, well, that's the title. I'd looked at it for like months. And each month was a different subject. And it was like people that turn up for that. going to be nice and therefore they're going to be accepting. Acceptance was my chapter that I put together. So acceptance is evidently a big thing for me. And you know, who knew? Except you suddenly discover it, don't you?
And I turned up for that and quite literally the next day I found myself writing a card and I thought I'm going put a poem in it. And then The next night, I woke up early in the morning as I had to write down a poem. I where did that come from? And I literally became this secret poem writer. My husband said within about three days, are you writing a book? And out of my word, out of my voice, said yes. And I thought, where did that come from? And here it is, here's the book.
I didn't know it was going to be a mix of everybody's words, but I said that within like five days. of turning up at that meeting that it's like Ross was saying, everything is a flow and it's sort of something picks you up and goes, excuse me. You're a poet, by the way, you didn't know it, but here we are. so writing poetry for me is about expression of my inner journey. I started writing it because something would bubble up.
It's something that's happening inside of me and it needs to be expressed. And because I'm a transitional therapist, It all expressed in the same way. was like every poem knew how to write itself. It was, you if it was about anger or something that's happening, I would start writing about it, but I couldn't help myself but tell myself, oh, but hang on a minute, this is just one of your mind thoughts about it. What if, you know, this, this and this?
And then by the end of the poem, so however many verses, seven verses later, I'm telling myself totally the answer, which is greater than myself. Because for me, as a therapist on the subconscious and super conscious, that's where the answer lies. It's not in us, it's in something greater than ourselves. And by that time I've transitioned, I'm out of my mind and something greater than myself answers it, I write it down, mindset poetry. Oh, there it is.
And that's how I realized this is for others as well, because if it takes me on a journey, it takes others on a journey and it's coming through for that reason. So my way of using a book like this, is to feel into oneself and just go what needs to happen. I open the book and I've just opened it on, it is interesting, mother. I've just opened it on mother. So read the poem. What does it want to tell me? Now, is it about my journey as a mother?
Is it about, like I just shared there, creativity wasn't valued in the same way? Is that to do with the way my mother sees it? In fact, is? It is, because she isn't interested in it and said she wasn't interested in even seeing it. Yeah, trust, trust that whatever comes up needs to speak to you. Yeah and then make it your own which is such a beautiful thing isn't it? Kind of take it and build it and make it your own.
Anjali. So I wanted to say about the book that I know it's poetry for coaching and I know we've talked about it in the coaching framework, but it's not just that. It's for anybody, anybody interested in poetry, anybody interested in wanting to connect to something because there's so much here that anybody can relate to. So it's not limited to that, but it is one of the frameworks.
But I think for me, the book also represents somebody who has not even tried to do anything like this, but if they have an urge to do it, because they're all original poems. And the other thing that's unique and really beautiful are the stories that go with it. And sometimes the story and the poem, I mean, the story in and of itself is as moving as the poem. And they don't, they connect, but they're also independent. They create, invoke independent feelings for people, for the reader.
And I think for me, the book represents people. not feeling that they have to be an expert or have to have the knowledge or the skills or training to explore their own creativity but to just go for it and really sort of let it happen. You've so motivated me, you know.
a friend who writes music and we went and saw him at a gig the other day and the band that he was playing with as a guest said you've got to have lyrics because we don't just play instrumentals and he said I don't write lyrics so the lyrics were outsourced to the person who normally writes lyrics for them. Well by the end of the gig we understand this person's life entirely because they had disclosed their entire life in the lyrics. And they're a bit, they're all about broken relationships.
So the whole of the, every song in the whole gig was about broken relationships. And he said, you know, she's quite good, but actually I don't want my, I don't want my music to be about broken relationships. So I went, I'll have a go. So he sent me the music, it's very inspiring. I've got a kind of a word came to me as I was listening to the music, but now I'm stuck and I've said to him, you need to come round for dinner, you need to bring your guitar and we need to be with it.
And then let's see what happens. But you lovely people have so inspired me that maybe we might get something out of that. Sarah.
That's literally how my new way of coaching with this started because in Lockdown I was so inspired because of course we're all separate aren't we and I was so inspired doing I do yoga every day yoga or qigong now but at the time I was just doing yoga every day and I've got a friend of 25 years who's a professional musician and he's also a yoga teacher we do the same yoga so we're in the same mindset we we both have the same wish to empower people and what have you in different ways.
I basically did double yoga one morning. So I did it with who I normally was doing it with and then I did it as he was taking a yoga session. And this is all online, of course. And I was so inspired. I wrote a yoga poem and I thought I'm going to send it to him. And he was so inspired by the yoga poem that he wrote. He can I write music? And I was like, you know, my god, someone wants to write music to my poem. And what he wrote was so fabulous, I just couldn't believe it. It's so beautiful.
So we started, we literally wrote an album in lockdown separately, but I would write the words and he would listen to it and he would intuitively create music from it. And then I just couldn't believe it. So that's where it all came from. And we've just turned it around that he's now, he's written some music and said, cause we talked about what we wanted to do. Now this is something new. And he created this music.
And then I, I fell into it, sat with it a while, did a meditation around it, and then I wrote what needed to come out. And so we're now mixing and matching how it goes. And then it was just a no-brainer to put meditation to it because I always knew that my... So the book that's in May to come out, my personal individual book, is to use my poems with meditation around them so that it's an auditory book, if you like, how I create it. but somehow or other you've got the two working together.
So it's just so many different options. So good luck with that, Claire, because why not? If your message is better than broken relationships, then why not? Do you know, I could write her whole life. I could write the lyricist, I could tell you she was in a relationship in this year with this person and this went wrong. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it was a whole evening. It was a whole evening. The music was amazing.
But you kind of go, her husband was sitting next to me, the lyricist's husband, and I'm thinking, do you really want her to be going public on all of this? Kate and then Tracey. I think what we've just heard shows that this is actually a book of inspiration. It inspires us all to tap into something within ourselves. So I think, you know, we've just said it could be lyrics, so it could be a book for musicians to gain lyrics or inspiration. But art begets art.
Creativity creates more creativity and that joy. So, yeah, I think this book could go. so many different ways of people. He's coming for dinner next week with his guitar. I'll lend him the book. Do that. He'll write some music to it. It'd be amazing to hear it. Poetry for coaching the album. Absolutely, Tracey. Then we'll begin to wrap up. Yeah, I was gonna, I was actually gonna say what you said, Kate.
My partner's son, who is, music and he'd never written the lyrics, but just by me writing and also sending him some things. So he's now writes all his own lyrics. And the funny thing is I've him a couple of pieces, just as sort of a skeleton for him to work. And then, He wrote the music, wrote the lyrics based on my lyrics, sent it back and said, I'm so pleased. Well, look what you've helped me do. It was unrecognizable what I'd sent, you know, yet he still felt there was an essence in it.
But that is the beauty of it. And I think that's, you know, from what Kate's saying, it's that really giving somebody that they somehow permission. And that really goes back to what Sarah was saying that, you know, we don't always have feel we have permission. We think that people have got to be trained or, you know, a certain way in order to produce anything creative. And of course, that's not the case. That's our natural state is to be creative.
Yeah. Ross. just briefly want to say that I think everybody's said it here, but we didn't start out to be poets. It's an accident. It's just something that happened to us. For me, 2018 is my mother-in-law's funeral. And a message was run out by my distant younger son who was on his university holidays the other side of the world. couldn't get back. And it instantly triggered delayed grief for my grandmother's funeral 20 years before. I was serving in Germany at the time, I couldn't get back.
was exhausted after an operational tour, so chose not to go back. And I decided to be without grief. And after a couple of days, two poems started writing themselves in my head. Now, I'd never written a poem before in my life. I didn't get poetry. It's just something that went over my head. A lot of times was writing this stuff, as well as just using other people's poems in my coaching. So, you know, it can happen. Sometimes the urge to write poetry can strike out of nowhere.
but I have noticed that quite a few people, it's born of difficult emotions like grief and loss. It's some sort of, but also as a few poets say in the book, it's not like it's really their poem, it comes through them. And I didn't really write my poems, they somehow came through me and just appeared on the page. Yeah, it's my hand and the pen, but actually it's something greater. It's not just me. I don't know what to make of it, but.
There's something going on which is quite creative, spiritual, super conscious, I don't know, but it's quite magical. Wow. So huge anthology of amazing poems with the different areas of love, connection, acceptance, forgiveness, resilience and life by some beautiful people, including the people here. So you can buy this. Where can you get it from, Ross? It's on Amazon, it's in all the usual outlets, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble's in the USA, you'll find it online very quickly.
Great, and I'll put the group link in the chat that you were talking about earlier and everybody's contact details so that you can contact whoever you wish. So go have a look. I put my endorsement in here too. Yeah, it's, you know, holding it is different from reading it in a PDF, right? So thank you, Anjali, Tracey, Sarah, Kate and Ross for coming to the coaching in today. Thank you everyone for listening.
We'll be back next week with another episode and do go out and get your poetry for coaching book. I think we should hold it all up for YouTube if you've got it there. Fantastic. And have a good week and we'll see you next week with another episode. Bye bye. Thank you, Claire. Bye-bye.