Be the alchemist of your own wellness
Helping women achieve wellbeing is a driving factor for The Wellness Edge coach and physio, Jen Edge.
Mental Health Month in October each year is important to Jen because it was after a period of challenging life events that caused her to experience a deep state of depression which required medication. Unfortunately, medication and counselling didn’t give her the results she wanted and needed to bring her out of her depression to get her life back on track.
Then, a friend suggested she try personal development.
“I thought it sounded like rubbish, that it was so self-involved and it’s all ‘me, me, me’, but then I thought, you know what, what I’ve been doing isn’t working and I had to admit, I needed help. “I stumbled across coaching (or was it the universe guiding me?), and it just helped me to look at things in a different way and address them from a different point of view, which hadn’t really come up in counselling.
“It was about looking at my beliefs, my
values and my repeated thought patterns and getting down into what was driving my results, my behaviour and how I was feeling.
“That was really helpful for me. I thought if it helped to pull me out of a depressive state, then it’s good. “That’s why I’ve gone on to offer health and wellness coaching for others. Much of my coaching is around personal transformation for better health. It is such powerful work.”
One-on-one coaching and Online Group Coaching
Jen offers a 12-week, one-on-one or online coaching program aimed at mums with independent, kids. “When their kids are older, Mum’s have got more time for themselves. They’re thinking, ‘it’s time to now start looking after myself better and getting back on track with my health’. They want to stop feeling so exhausted and reenergise.”
Jen compliments the online program with content on her website, and does a weekly, live webinar. “Generally, I find myself working with women (mums in particular) because they are more willing to do the work on themselves, to talk about their feelings and seek help to get out of whatever situation they’re in.
“In my experience as a coach, I’ve seen how mental health can affect your emotions, your behaviours, the results you’re getting in your relationships, how motivated you are to work, to exercise, to eat a healthy diet, how well you sleep, every decision you make. “It’s a cycle…our mental stress and emotional baggage can start to manifest as physical pain in the body as well, and ongoing pain can then cause more mental stress and emotional pain and the cycle continues…until we do something different to break the cycle.
Focusing on Mind Body Health
Everything is so intertwined when it comes to mind body health and wellness. It’s not like you can just say mental health happens on its own or physical or emotional; every aspect of health and wellbeing…every aspect of you is interconnected and tied together. What hurts one aspect hurts the others and what helps one also helps the others.”
Jen is often approached to help
women who are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.
Women, especially mums, tend to put everyone else first and therefore frequently find themselves in that burnt out state.”
“Chronic illnesses are at an all-time high. These develop over time because of unhealthy habits, chronic stress, enduring fatigue and burnout. “When you’re juggling looking after your kids and running a household, working full time or running your own business, that’s a lot to take on and a huge load to bear.
“Its not difficult to understand that mums can then lose sight of how to get out of that state on their own. Having an outside perspective as a coach can be invaluable in helping women identify problem areas and support them to come up with effective, sustainable strategies to get them out of a negative state, and back to being healthier and happier. “I help women come up with their own strategies - it’s not me telling them what to do.
"The coaching is focused on helping people to move forward, asking questions like, ‘What is it you want to achieve? Where do you want to be with this area of your life? Where are you at now? What have you tried? What’s going wrong (and right)? What has or hasn’t worked?”
Creating Sustainable Change
“I keep them accountable to support them and shine a light on strategies that work for them long term.” Each week in both the one-on-one coaching and the online group coaching program, clients come up with their own action steps.
“After each session you will walk away with specific action steps, that you set for yourself. I guide you through any obstacles you may be struggling with to keep you moving forward.” No change however happens quickly which is why both programs are 12 weeks long.
“You can’t get rid of old habits, because the neural pathways are set in your brain, but you can lay over new habits and try and work on reinforcing those, rather than reinforce the unhealthy or unhelpful habits.
Complimentary Wellness Visioning Session
If this story has resonated with you, contact Jen for your no-obligation Complimentary Wellness Visioning Session, to see if coaching can help you start feeling more energised.