Thank you for reading our book Relational Mindfulness for Coaches.
We hope that the following resources help you integrate Relational Mindfulness (RM) into your coaching and your life. As we gently cautioned elsewhere, for some of these resources, it is vital to have read the book before using them. Despite best intentions, without an appreciation of the context and guidance offered within the book, certain resources may not only be misunderstood and misrepresent what RM is about, they may end up not being helpful – or worse, being actively unhelpful – when drawn on with clients and colleagues.
Guidance for formal RM practice
You will have read about the RM guidelines and different ways to practise them in Chapters 8-13 of the book; and you will have seen the guidance sheets on how to practice mindful dialogue with each of the guidelines provided in Appendix 1.
Here we provide each of those guidance sheets as a separate PDF to support your practice:
Formal RM practice with the guideline Pause
Formal RM practice with the guideline Relax/allow
Formal RM practice with the guideline Open
Formal RM practice with the guideline Attune to emergence
Suggestions for coaching activities based on elements of mindful dialogue
You will have read about bringing RM into coaching in Chapters 14-18 of the book; and you will have seen the guidance sheets designed to accompany Chapter 18 in Appendix 2. The suggestions provided in these guidance sheets should only be used by coaches who have deeply embedded and embodied RM, have the capacity to offer mindfulness/compassion practice in coaching and have sufficient fluency with the RM guidelines to bring elements of mindful dialogue into coaching.
It is very important to recognise that the heart of mindful dialogue is not a structure or set of steps, it is relatedness – being fully with one another and opening to insight that arises in these conditions. To support this, it is essential that we embody the RM guidelines when offering any of these suggestions in coaching – see Chapters 15 and 16 of the book.
Here we provide each of the guidance sheets from Appendix 2 as a separate PDF to support this process of integration:
Audios
We have recorded brief audio guidance for mindfulness/meditation practice supported by each of the RM guidelines. As mentioned in the book, these audios can be used as part of your individual practice, to support your preparation for coaching sessions, or to help you embody the guidelines in your coaching and other relationships.
Brief practice supported by Pause
Practice supported by Pause | Listen:
Brief practice supported by Relax/allow
Practice supported by Relax-allow | Listen:
Brief individual practice supported by Open
Practice supported by Open| Listen:
Brief practice supported by Open for use at the start of mindful dialogue (see Appendix 2 in the book and/or the guidance sheet about formal RM practice with the guideline Open)
Preparing for mindful dialogue supported by Open| Listen:
Brief practice supported by Attune to emergence
Practice supported by Attune to emergence| Listen:
Brief practice supported by Listen deeply
Practice supported by Listen deeply | Listen:
Brief practice supported by Speak the truth
Practice supported by Speak the truth | Listen:
Videos
The two of us have recorded some brief videos of us practising RM together to give you a feel for how this practice works (in this case on Zoom – if you are practising together in person, we recommend sitting facing one another).
Formal RM practice with separate speakers initially, then shared dialogue …COMING SOON!
Formal RM practice with speaker/listener loops …COMING SOON!
Research Report
As we started writing Relational Mindfulness for Coaches: Enhancing Presence, Awareness, Wisdom, Compassion and Courageous Collaboration , it felt important to us that we draw not only on our own experiences and understanding of Relational Mindfulness (RM), but also on the experience of others who were bringing RM into their coaching. We therefore decided to conduct interviews with coaches who had been through one of our RM programmes and/or were seeing the benefits of RM for their coaching and their wider lives. This report is an outline of how we went about conducting this informal qualitative research and using the information gathered in the book.