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If a thing is humanly possible, consider it within your reach. ---- Marcus Aurelius
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| Coaching for Excellence and Success |
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Caitríona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki have more than twenty-five years experience as facilitators of deep personal change. They have extensive training in Buddhism, Clinic Hypnotherapy, Deep Ecology, and the Martial Arts. As artists they also value creativity, authenticity, and personal integrity as essential elements which they bring to their work with clients.
As coaches for excellence, they are available to work with individuals, couples, organizations, teams, and corporations. They offer a powerful array of finely honed skills to help you transform your career and work, as well as your personal and professional relationships. Most of all, they will help you refine and deepen the understanding you have of your own life-path, transforming perceived limitations into strengths, and allowing you to perform to your own epitome of excellence.
They always work with the understanding that there is no essential difference between what we imagine to be spiritual or personal, and how we perform in the world. They are committed to helping you define your priorities, clarify you goals, and fulfill your vision. They are also committed to honoring your phenomenal human creative capacity—in the unique form that it takes within YOU. Their work is based on recognizing your inherent strengths, and systematically changing behaviors that get in the way of those strengths, They will help you align yourself with your highest positive values—intrinsic to your well being and the well being of those you love; and now—more clearly than ever before, to the collective well-being of the planet.
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Spectacular achievement is always preceded by spectacular preparation
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A Buddhist Approach To Coaching |
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A detailed account of the life of Shakyamuni Buddha survived. It is the record of a life dedicated to eliciting the very best from others—men and women, lay people and monastics alike, without regard to their rank or social status. He was a master of creativity, varying his approach so that it was always accessible, and always eliciting from his listeners ever deeper understanding, and respect and love for others. Radically innovative for his time, he taught that personal and collective well being are mutually interdependent, and that we cannot truly work to improve ourselves without benefiting others.
Underlying his approach was the recognition that all things are subject to change, that everything arises out of a multitude of circumstances, including how you construct your own core identity. He taught that when you transform the limiting conditions of your own thinking ultimate happiness, effectiveness, and freedom are available for yourself, and through you, for others.
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Everything is interconnected, and so everything you do matters |
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A User's Manual For The Mind |
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It has been said that the human mind, brilliant as it is, is not always user friendly. We will provide you with the tools you need to create your own user's guide, and the means to maintain the full potential of your imagination, your intelligence, your heart, as well as the ability to maximize your physical health and well-being.
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M.C. Esher
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Gregory Bateson gave the example of a blind person walking with a cane, learning by sound and touch the shape of the streets along which they were walking .
He ask the question, "Where is mind for this person?"
"Is it in the brain? Is it in the ear, or the hand that holds the cane, or the arm that moves it? Is it in foot that is placed on the ground with each step? The body as a whole? Or does it extend to the tip of the cane that taps the pavement, to the walls that echo the sound of the tapping cane? To the passer-by who hears and sees and offers a word or a helping hand?"
How do we define, how do we imagine, the boundary of the mind? |
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Any generalization we make about the mind is inadequate and incomplete. There is no one single model that encompasses the entirety of our experience and capability. Most models of the mind—psychological, biological, behavioral, political, religious—are intrinsically limited. Theorists are likely to have a vested interest in their own point of view, their own interpretations, and their own methodologies.
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While the traditional model of psychiatry and psychoanalysis is strictly personalistic and biographical, modern consciousness research . . shows the human psyche as being essentially commensurate with the whole universe and all of creation. --- Stan Grof
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While working as your coach, we begin by assuming an intrinsically limitless potential. We treat the mind and the imagination as a microcosm of a much larger whole. When we work together, it is not important HOW we understand 'the mind'. What is important is that you use the tools we provide to effect change that will empower you towards your full potential. Our approach is above all PRACTICAL. We will teach you unique skills for your own particular use. As you refine them, they will become part of your own user's manual—for your mind and for your life. |
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A Short History of Change |
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A Short History of Change
Over the past hundred and fifty years Western culture has completely transformed how it thinks about learning and change. This transformation has been so profound and all-pervasive that it is hard to imagine a time when these things did not form the backdrop to our collective thinking and culture, even though the changes are actually relatively new. Among the many changes, there are three important currents:
The First is the introduction of non-Western, especially Asian, religious practice to the west, in successive and continuing waves—Theosophists and Swamis, Zen Masters and returning western neophytes, Lamas and Tibetan healers. In addition is an interest in indigenous, shamanic and earth-based practices from all parts of the world. Modern Western culture hungered, and still hungers, for renewal from outside.
The Second is the development of psychoanalysis, social studies, anthropology, depth psychology, a recognition of the power of myth and dreams, and the discovery/invention/reinvention of the unconscious.
The Third is General Semantics, emerging out of the work of Alfred Korzybski in the 1930s, and paving the way for transformational work from Gestalt therapy to EST, as well as the discipline of Ecology, Neurolinguistic Programming and the multitude of ways by which we continue to change the understanding we have of our place in the world and our methodology for realizing it.
We acknowledge all three of these strands as essential elements of our work, they are ancestor roots to the tree of our understanding and practice. We recognize that life and culture in the west, from the late nineteenth century until now, is inconceivable without these elements. All the more reason then, to acknowledge them as having a particular chronology and development pertinent to any change work you do with us.
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Alfred Korzybski
One day, Alfred Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students. He suddenly interrupted the lesson in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row, if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit.
"Nice biscuit, don't you think", said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously.
Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies". The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to throw up, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet.
"You see, ladies and gentlemen", Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter."
Apparently his prank aimed to illustrate how some human suffering originates from the confusion or conflation of linguistic representations of reality and reality itself.
Alfred Korzybski
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THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
"The map is not the territory" does not mean that there are no useful maps. There is a story of a platoon of Gurkhas, elite Nepalese troop, fighting with the Indian Army in the Second World War. They were trapped in a remote part of uncharted mountainous forest behind enemy lines. Months went by and they were given up for lost. When they eventually showed up, hundreds of miles away, at their base, their commanding officers asked them how they had escaped.
"We had a map, sir."
"But there are no maps."
Oh yes, we had a map."
They showed the officers a map of the London Underground. By using it, they had found a way to cross the dangerous mountains and endless forests, and to return home to safety.
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Full potential living. Moving into your Strength |
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In his book The Man Who Planted Trees, John Giono tells the story of Elzéard Bouffier, who devoted his entire life to reforesting a desolate portion of south-western France. He single-handedly planted 100 acorns each day before, during, and after two World Wars, and transformed a sorrowful place into one full of life and joy. Jean Giono's words offer a tribute to how much good one person can accomplish in a lifetime and advise on how to live life with deep meaning.
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Everything you want is on the other side of fear
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We owe our own well-being, and the realization of our full potential, not just to ourselves, but to everyone around us, and ultimately to the world, to the universe.
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If you keep doing what you have always done
You will keep getting what you've always got
If you know that you can change any |
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Values Alignment for Individuals, Couples, Families , and Organizations |
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Values can be understood set of internal filters that determine our model of the world, and thus our experience. We accumulate them over a lifetime of learning and modeling. We may have different sets of values for different areas of our life, and our values also naturally change with time.
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Sometimes our values may be in conflict with each other. For example we may value our personal freedom, while also valuing the intimacy of a long-term relationship; or we may value job security while also valuing the autonomy of being an independent contractor. We may also experience conflicts within a single value, for example we may imagine we value money and prosperity, when our motivation is really coming from our fear of poverty.
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When are own values are out of alignment we experience internal conflict, stress, and failure. When our values are in alignment huge resources of energy become available to us, allowing us to sustain awareness, maintain a consistency in what we do, and ultimately to fulfill our goals. More importantly when our internal values are in alignment we experience well-being, clarity, and joy.
Understanding values systems is also essential in helping us to communicate with family, friends, and co-workers. Simply learning to communicate within others' values system can improve our effectiveness many times over. Values alignment for individuals, couples, organizations, and teams, are a central element of our work, and a key ingredient in any work for personal and organizational transformation.
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How We Work |
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Coaching with us is your log-term investment, so that you can move forwards towards excellence and effectiveness in all areas of your life. We offer:
short term interventions, utilizing hypnotherapy, NLP and counseling;
a package consisting of a series of sessions as a specific intervention;
a Breakthrough Package (usually lasting between eight and twelve hours and ideally concentrated within three or four days); and ongoing coaching to help you maintain your peak effectiveness in all areas of your life.
In addition to values alignments we use skills drawn from Buddhist Practice, Neurolinguistic Programming, Neurological Reprogramming, Hypnotherapy and Gestalt. If you work with us, you will also be able to contact us in the future, whenever you need, for a complimentary session on any of the issues we have dealt with in our work together. Usually, this requires little more than a reminder for you to use some of the tools you have already learned—though it is always a pleasure to re-connect with old friends!
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Coaching for excellence is also coaching for balance,
for happiness, authenticity, and integrity
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Breakthrough Package |
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Our Breakthrough Package is an intensive coaching and training session which lasts from between eight and thirteen hours, concentrated into between three and six days. These are available at our Westwood office in Los Angeles, or at Manzanita Village. These sessions are designed to totally restructure your behavior and attitudes, to remove and transform internal obstacles, and to give you tools to maintain your new learnings.
Please contact us with questions you may have and for an application form.
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Coaching by Phone |
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We are available for coaching by phone. Please contact us for details. Ideally we would meet in person for at least one session. If this is not possible due to distance other plans can be made.
Typically we would have phone sessions between one and three times a month from between thirty minutes and an hour, depending on your needs and your budget.
Please contact us for information.
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Caitríona Reed |
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Caitríona Reed is trained in Neurological Repatterning and NLP. She is a Performance Consultant and Master Results Coach, and certified as an NLP trainer by Christopher Howard. She has been in practice as a clinical hypnotherapist since 1985. She trained with Gil Boyne in Hypnotherapy and Gestalt and subsequently studied with such luminaries as Ormond McGill, Don Motin and David Quigley.
She has also trained as a Buddhist teacher in the Theravada tradition since 1978, and in the Tien tradition of Thich Naht Hanh who formally empowered her as a Zen teacher in 1992. |
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She integrates her work as a coach with perspectives derived from Buddhist Practice, Transpersonal Psychology, the poetic sensibility.
In addition, Caitríona is as a 'woman of transsexual experience', who has lived part of her life as a man, she has a unique perspective on identity, relationships, life-transitions, and the issues that emerge from the basic instinct to live with integrity and honesty.
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Michele Benzamin-Miki |
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Michele Benzamin-Miki trained in Clinical Hypnotherapy and Gestalt by Gil Boyne. She has been in practice since 1987. She also practices Neurological Repatterning and NLP. She has three Fifth Degree black belts in Aikido and Iaido. She has taught Iaido and Aikido in Shoji Nishio Sensei style since 1984. She has also trained as a Buddhist teacher and taught Vipassana since 1985, and Zen in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. She currently leads retreats and workshops in the style of Manzanita Village.
"Much of the focus of my work with clients is related releasing limiting patterns and fears. Old traumas, frozen in the psyche, emerge as inappropriate behavior and inexplicable anxiety, stress, a sense of powerlessness, and feeling overwhelmed. To understand the cause of our fear may be comforting, but to transform it at its roots transforms our entire life. I feel that this is at the heart of all healing". |
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Contact Information |
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If you have questions please call, write, or e-mail
Caitríona Reed cr@fivechanges.org
mobile 310-339-1660
Michele Benzamin-Miki mbm@fivechanges.org
mobile 310-339-3531
Mail: PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086, USA
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