Valerie Gilman

What type of coaching do you offer and to whom?

Most of my clients are committed to making the world a better place: givers either in professional roles like teaching, counseling, and community organizing, or in personal and family roles where they attend to the needs of others. If you are committed to serving in this way, the challenge is that it is hard to prioritize your own needs, and this can result in health issues, emotional eating and a deep unease and sense of not knowing yourself.

My coaching is both grounded in the practical and searching into the creative unknown. Through guided visualizations and dream work, we reveal your inner wisdom, deep needs, and true passions. We look at the patterns and dynamics at play and as you set goals and strategies, I provide affirming witnessing, compassionate questions and safety to explore. I have a firm belief that you have the wholeness, health and wisdom that you need, and my job is to help you access and believe it. It is thrilling to see the movement from tangled dis-ease to grounded clarity and focus.

Why did you get into coaching? What motivates you?

Life is fascinating: the twists and turns, the unexpected and the slow revelation.

Having been a college professor teaching art for more than a decade, I became aware that I was witness and guide to the life lessons and personal journeys that my students were discovering through their creative work. In my own work as an artist, I was aware not just of the mirror and deep information that the creative process provided, but also the transformative healing that took place as I fell in love with the forms that emerged. I began to hear the phrase “art as a healing process” as an internal mantra. I believe strongly that there is a wholeness and wisdom that we carry, and that can be masked by confusion and shoulds. My joy is in helping people, artists and people who would never consider themselves artists, access their creative wisdom to reclaim their wholeness, balance and wonder. I love to see my students and my clients creating a life of meaning and richness even as they face the challenges that life offers.

What differentiates you from other coaches?

All coaches bring not just their training, but their life experience to bear in their work with clients. My psychosynthesis training, based in the work of Roberto Assiagoli, provides a theoretical framework to understand how both the transpersonal (spiritual and universal) and the pre-personal (sub-conscious stories that live in us) function in our daily lives and how we can support the unfolding of the Self. My background as both a professional artist with a strong exhibition record and a professor give me a very practical understanding of how to break things down into doable steps while envisioning the whole, and also how to trust the process even as it is confusing and unknown. Life is a creative process and if we know exactly where we are going, we are not allowing the full scope of what is possible. In order to live fully into ourselves we need to trust ourselves to walk into the unknown and emerge with greater wisdom and clarity.

What values are important to you when working with clients?

Humor, compassion, presence, trust, openness, confidentiality, pleasure, witnessing, honoring the wholeness of the individual and the essential roles we play in the collective.

What do you do for fun?

Hike in the woods, play and dance with my daughter, yoga, swim in lakes and oceans, make pottery and sculpture, garden, bike, run, cook and eat with good friends and family, read juicy novels and eat popcorn at the movies