When Coaching Becomes Sacred: 3 Practices for Deep Transformation

You've seen me write before about practices that make coaching a spiritual experience. Today, I want to share three more of the practices that make Awaken's way of coaching so deep and life-changing.

When I first started coaching, it shook my world entirely, as I've talked about more deeply in my memoir, Holy Rebellion: Waking up from Religious Abuse. I had spent the first decades of my life in a patriarchal, hierarchical worldview built on success and failure, right and wrong, and other black-and-white binaries that kept me completely disconnected from my own body and from trusting myself.

My emotions were considered untrustworthy and needed to be squashed quickly and ruthlessly. In coaching, my world opened up in unexpected ways. I began to feel, and ever so slowly to trust that my emotions were friendly messengers with truths and wisdom to impart. I learned that my body can guide me to make powerful choices.

But the first few years as a coach, I still bought into a goal-setting, achievement, and success orientation. It was exhilarating in many ways, and was already a huge step forward from how I had lived previously. Over time, though, I became aware that I still subtly believed that people needed to be better, and that I needed constant improvement. In my career, I had been a "Continuous Improvement Leader," which tapped into my core strength as a maximizer, and also my core fear of not being good enough.

Ever so slowly, I dropped away from the coaching industry's unwitting leaning toward fixing people, and began to feel into the innate wholeness of the soul, and our deep connection with one another and with a creative force that's upholding and pulsing through us all. This was not a distant, male deity in the sky making commands about right and wrong. It's a pungent power coursing through all things, constantly creating me while I'm also creating.

This exhilarating spiritual awareness became increasingly solid as I saw it also transform others, almost before my eyes. It's like watching people wake up. Going from tense, striving bodies to a childlike flow, joy, and ease. Not fighting with life, but instead moving with What's Wanting to Happen (my current favorite phrase for God).

Our ICF-accredited coach certification programs tap into these deep truths. You're already loved right now in the mess of being human. The great paradox is that the more you love yourself exactly as you are, the more the creative force moves through you effortlessly. Working so hard to change and improve becomes irrelevant. Like "shaking trees to create the wind," as our faculty member Rishi would say.

Trusting in a client's inherent wholeness, and releasing our desires to help someone be a little better, opens worlds of possibility in the collective imagination.

Often people ask about the "how" of all this in coaching. In my humble opinion, the how takes care of itself once you're tapped in. Yet, there are ways that support transformation beyond the usual levels of listening. When you treat coaching as both a sacred and creative act, you open doors that standard questioning simply cannot touch.

These three practices sit alongside others we've written about before. In 6 Core Practices of Spiritual Coaching, we explored how listening at multiple levels, trusting silence, and rooting in the Great Love shape transformational work. And in Expanding Time, Expanding Love, we introduced the idea that a handful of masterful tips distinguish competent coaching from truly transformational coaching. Here are three more:

Holding Sacred Space

At the heart of masterful coaching is the ability to cultivate a reverent field of presence. This goes beyond just being present physically and mentally. It is a conscious, fully embodied, silent invitation where you signal to the client that their soul, not just their story, is welcome in the room.

When you hold sacred space, you are essentially inviting a loving wisdom that is greater than both you and the client into the conversation. You might begin by simply recognizing that both you and your client are "being breathed." Even if you tried to stop breathing, a life force energy would breathe you anyway.

You and your client can lean into this effortless knowing that you're both held. That Love itself is the ground beneath your feet. You aren't just facilitating a session. You are hosting an encounter where the client can feel grounded enough to be fully, authentically alive.

Allowing Emotion to Guide

Some people approach emotions as obstacles to be navigated or problems to be resolved. In spiritual coaching, we see emotions differently: they are gateways.

You can notice both the verbal and non-verbal emotional expressions of your client. When you detect that shift in tone or a change in breath, you can allow that emotion to open a door to awareness about mistaken identity beliefs, and touch at the truth of their spiritual nature.

Instead of pushing past the sensations that emotions bring, you can invite the client's true Self to speak to that specific part of them. By contacting the Self, and recognizing its wholeness, each emotion is honored and integrated into the inner team. Sometimes the emotion's work is done, and it's able to dissolve and rest. At other times, its job aligns with the greater purposes at play. Through embodied emotional exploration, you allow the client to access deeper layers of their identity and beliefs that would otherwise remain hidden.

For more on how emotion shows up in the body before it becomes words, watch the video below.

Letting Coaching Be Art

If coaching feels too heady or procedural, you can invite your client to broaden their awareness with tactile elements. You can encourage them to bring intuition, poetry, imagery, movement, music, or even artwork into the session.

These creative expressions serve as portals to what words alone cannot touch. When you invite a client to move or create, you are bypassing the rational mind and accessing a deeper well of knowing. Coaching, in this light, is not just a conversation. It's communion with what the collective unconscious can offer.

By integrating these practices, you move away from the robotic nature that can sometimes plague the coaching industry. Gone is the focus on productivity, speed, or achievement. These are a natural byproduct when you're anchoring your work in a real and deeply human connection. You aren't just a coach; you are a witness and a fellow human, walking with your client as they return to the truth of who they are.

If this way of coaching speaks to you, Transformational Coaching Certification: What It Trains You to Do, and Why It Changes You Too goes deeper into what this training actually equips you to do, and why it changes the coach as much as the client.

If you feel called to coach this way, with reverence, emotional depth, and creative freedom, we'd love to welcome you. Explore our ICF-accredited Coach Certification Training and discover which pathway is right for you.

Already a certified coach and craving more of this depth in your own practice? Our Coaches Community is a place to keep deepening these skills within a loving community, while gathering renewal or upgrade education hours along the way.

About the Author

Christi Byerly, MCC, is the founder and CEO of Awaken Coach Institute. Her coaching process motivates you to build a community of empathy and grace around you, and to live your mission as part of something bigger than you are. With over 15 years of coaching experience, Christi has trained hundreds of new coaches and maintains a thriving practice focused on depth, presence, and authentic transformation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean to hold sacred space in coaching? Holding sacred space means creating a field of presence where the client's whole self, not just their story, feels welcome. It goes beyond active listening; the coach's own grounded presence signals that something larger than technique is at work in the room.

What are spiritual coaching practices? Spiritual coaching practices are the specific ways a coach brings depth into a session, holding sacred space, honoring emotion as a gateway, and inviting creativity, rather than relying on standard questioning alone. They shape how a coach shows up, not just what a coach asks.

How do emotions function in spiritual or transformational coaching? Rather than treating emotions as problems to solve, spiritual coaching treats them as gateways. A shift in tone or breath can open a door to deeper awareness, letting the client's true self speak to the part of them that emotion is pointing toward.

Is creativity part of professional coach training? Yes. At Awaken, coaches learn to invite intuition, imagery, movement, and art into sessions as ways of reaching what words alone can't touch, alongside the core ICF competencies taught throughout certification.