Spiritual Integration Coaching
Coaching to Integrate Your Spiritual Awakening and Awareness into Spiritual Purpose, Supportive Community, and Loving Relationships
More of us are experiencing spiritual awakenings and expanded states of consciousness than ever before.
We are doing ayahuasca ceremonies, yoga teacher trainings, tantric retreats, psilocybin journeys, cacao ceremonies, and ecstatic dances all over the place.
We're practicing advanced meditation practices from many traditions: Vipassana, Tibetan Buddhism, Joe Dipsensa, and Zen Buddhism, just to name a few.
We're doing online apprenticeships, YouTube classes nad study groups with the Diamond Approach, Adrien Mischler, A Course in Miracles, Pema Chodron, and Eckhart Tolle,
We're lucid dreaming, inhaling spiritual podcasts, meeting spirit guides, having kundalini openings, and communicating with Arcturians and Pleiadians in other dimensions.
Our consciousness is exploding!
The next level of spiritual growth after an awakening experience is integrating the new awareness into your life.
A spiritual awakening or other conscious expanding experience is not the end goal but rather the beginning of your new spiritual path.
All spiritual practices and experiences are intended to be either ascending or descending.
Ascending spiritual practices are awakening and liberating. They open the higher chakras and move you up and out of your body, illusions, conditioning, and sense of separation.
These practices are liberating, mind-blowing, exhilarating, and downright sexy. They liberate you and awaken new types of awareness and levels of consciousness.
They include ayahuasca ceremonies, shamanic journeys, tantric sex, sweat lodges, vision quests, astral projection, kundalini openings, lucid dreams, and psilocybin journeys.
Often following ascending practices, descending spiritual practices intend to bring your newly awakened awareness back into your body and integrate it into your life
These descending, integration, or embodiment practices include spiritual inquiry, coaching, yoga, journaling, meditation, and relationship and intimacy practice
Ascending and descending practices are the yang and yin of spirituality. They are complementary, and you need both to acheive lastin spirtual growth.
Currently, people are flocking to the ascending, awakening practices and often avoiding descending practices.
It's tough for the disclipline, vulnerabiltiy, and emotional work of the descending practices to compete with the excitement and relative ease of the ascending practices.
But if you keep doing ascending practices without the integration and grounding of the descending practices, your spirituality becomes unbalanced.
The things we've acknowledged for those ascension practices need to be integrated, embodied, and grounded before we can awaken new levels of consciousness.
If we just do awakening practices, we can become disembodied and ungrounded. If continued, it often becomes a form of spiritual bypassing.
We adopt a spiritual identity. We float above the feelings and challenges of being human. We subtly disconnect from our marriage, career, family, and community.
This can be subtle and difficult to see. Our spiritual mindset is great at rationalizing things. But if you look really close, something seems a bit off.
Besides, until you integrate those spiritual awakenings into your relationships, family, and community and uplift others' lives with them, they're not truly yours.
One day, my spiritual teacher gave me a hawk feather. He wrapped the stem with multicolored threads. It was beautiful.
It was a big deal and an honor, as he rarely gave things like that out. The red-tailed hawk was a symbol of the spirit messenger between this world and the spirit world.
I was ecstatic. I had devoted myself to this work for years. Now I must have finally completed my training. The spirit messenger symbol was surely a sign that I had become a shaman.
And then he said to me: I see that potential in you, now go become it.
And so I went back to work. It was time for the integration.
Perhaps your spiritual awakening was kind of like me getting that hawk feather. Spirit saw that potential in you. No, it's up to you to become it. That is, to integrate it by being that beacon of light to your people.
So let this be your hawk feather. Now go become it. Let me know if I can provide you with some guidance and support.
3 Pillars of Spiritual Integration
Integrating Your Spiritual Experience
Directly experiencing your spiritual nature provides a direct connection to life. A spiritual teaching can point the way, but integrated spiritual truth has to be experienced directly. Then it becomes part of you and provides an orientation for your life.
Integrating Your Intention & Purpose
We all came here for a reason. We all have unique spiritual gifts that are a blessing to the world. When we offer these gifts, it heals and uplifts those around us and allows the world to evolve in beneficial ways. It feels fulfilling, like you're finally doing what you came here to do.
Living Your Life as "One of the People"
Human beings are herd animals. We are not to live in isolation. A spiritual community is comprised of people who can support you exactly as you are. You can be yourself and be vulnerable about what you are experiencing in your life. It's a place where you belong.
The Good News is...
Integrating spiritual purpose, supportive community, and loving relationships in your life is entirely possible.
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Directly experience your spiritual nature for yourself so you can recognize it in your everyday life.
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Enjoy deep spiritual connection and intimacy with your significant other and all the relationships in your life.
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Have your work and life align with your passion, sense of purpose, and what’s most important to you.
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Fully accept your humanness and fully integrate your spiritual nature with all the human aspects of your life.
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Confidently speak your truth and walk with your heart open.
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Feel the joy, aliveness, and well-being of your spiritual nature throughout your daily life.
Hi, I'm Michael
When I'm not playing the drums, exploring the Pacific Northwest, or interpreting dreams, I offer psychotherapy sessions with my root cause approach, which both relieves current symptoms and heals the underlying core issues to provide lasting freedom to fully enjoy life.
I bring 30 years of postgraduate experience and extensive training to create a personalized program tailored to your specific needs and situation.
My specialties include: 1) relationship issues and intimacy; 2) anxiety, depression, and social isolation;
3) men's issues and masculine roles; and 4) life transitions such as empty nest, divorce, and breakup.
I'm happy to guide you. Therapy works. Find someone you can work with. It's worth it. Whether it's working with me or somebody else, you owe it to yourself. If you'd like, schedule a free 15-minute consultation. I'm easy to talk to, and I'll help you get the ball rolling.
Spiritual Integration Coaching
A Path of Direct Experience, Healing, and Integration
Phase 1
Directly Experience Your True Nature
Meditation and ceremony awaken your spiritual nature and connection to all of life. Self-inquiry and evaluating what is most important to you deepen your life purpose.
Phase 2
Heal the Wounds that Conceal your True Nature
Coaching sessions, sharing circles, and retreats disempower the misinformation and fear that block spiritual well-being, intimacy, and purpose in your life.
Phase 3
Integrate Your True Nature into Your Life
The clear guidance and ongoing support of coaching sessions and sharing circles help you integrate the connection of your true nature into your work, relationships, and everyday life.
Spiritual Integration Coaching Workflow
This is for those of you who like to see things broken down in the specific work we will be doing together. For some, the above section of the three phases will suffice. Either way is fine. We will address what we need to as we proceed in our work together.
While each client's symptoms of anxiety, depression, and isolation require specific interventions, the following is a general therapy workflow to treat current symptoms and underlying issues to achieve lasting personal freedom.
Phase 1: Directly Experience Your True Nature
1. Determine What’s Most Important to You.
Effective and lasting change begins by understanding what you truly value. This changes as your life moves through different phases. It provides orientation for your life and helps you align it with what matters most to you.
2. Discover Your Unique Spiritual Path.
Effective spiritual coaching needs to be intuitively tailored to your unique spiritual and human signature. We work together with spiritual inquiry and intuitive listening to disclose the ideal spiritual coaching approach for your spiritual path.
3. Create your Personal Program.
Together, we will design a personalized program that provides a new orientation for your life. This spiritual program will keep you attuned to your heart, intuition, and internal resources, replacing the external orientation you were conditioned to rely on.
4. Establish a Spiritual Practice.
A spiritual practice allows you to experience the sensation and feeling of your spiritual nature on a regular basis to provide orientation for your life. Spiritual practices include things you naturally enjoy, such as yoga, meditation, journaling, music, and being in nature.
Phase 2: Heal the Wounds that Conceal Your True Nature
1. Trace Your Symptoms of Anxiety, Depression, and Isolation to Their Underlying Core Emotional Issues.
Now that you have identified your symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social isolation, we can walk them back to identify your underlying core issues. Your symptoms point to your core issues if you know what to look for. By addressing your core emotional issues, you can free yourself from experiencing future symptoms and enjoy greater happiness, love, and freedom in your life.
2. Challenge your Limiting Beliefs Associated with your Core Issues.
We acquire various core beliefs about ourselves and the world in childhood, which are reinforced as we grow into adulthood. While these beliefs serve you for a while, they limit you as you grow and mature. We will explore the beliefs and stories you tell yourself that obstruct your life.
3. Disempower the Underlying Fear Associated with Your Core Issues.
Fear keeps limiting beliefs intact. It's directly correlated to anxiety, depression, and isolation- especially anxiety. Since fear is future-based, you can break each fear down to an if/then statement about what you believe will happen. This format clarifies how fear limits your life and presents it in manageable terms. As you challenge your fear by taking action, you see it for what it is: an illusion.
4. Heal the Core Emotional Wounds Associated with your Core Issues.
Beneath all the symptoms, core issues, limiting beliefs, and fear, deep-seated emotional wounds reside. They may arise when you become triggered by experiences. They often involve trauma, betrayal, abandonment, and loss. These wounds surfacing offer an opportunity to feel and heal them, creating lasting emotional freedom.
Phase 3: Integrate the Connection of Your True Nature into Your Life
1. Embrace your Partnership with Life.
When you offer an intention, you initiate a natural partnership with Life to create something together. Many of us have been conditioned to put ourselves below God, and by extension, below Life. Our sessions guide and support you to offer your intention as an equal partner with Life.
2. Create a Clear Intention for the Life You Want.
When you offer your intention, it initiates and activates a new way of being. We work with what you choose to create in your life and boil it down to an intention for your life. This creates a crystal-clear focus for working with and integrating the things you want into your life.
3. Offer your Intention.
Taking action and practicing trial and error brings the things you want into your life. Introduce new approaches to your life, and notice what works and what doesn't. An updated personal program and therapy sessions provide the guidance and support to sustain these approaches long enough to integrate them into your life. The reward is enjoying the things in your life that matter most to you.
4. Recognize the Doorways that Open.
When you offer an intention, Life responds by presenting doorways for you to actualize that intention. Doorways include relationships, opportunities, and connections. Our sessions support you to recognize the doorways that open and find the courage to step into them in the spur of the moment.
Word on the Street
"The real core of the work I did with Michael is seeing how I have always been looking outward to define myself. What I have found in working with him is that I already had the resources within me to actually create the changes I wanted to make. For me, this has been the pivotal change. I have to say, Michael held my feet to the fire and that is what I really needed. He helped me get in touch with trusting my heart and moving from that place."
Spiritual Integration Coaching Session
$125
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60-minute Spiritual Integration Coaching Session.
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Facilitated by Michael Hoffman, LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist and spiritual teacher with 30 years of experience.
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Sessions offered on a weekly, every other week, or as-agreed basis.
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Weekly or every other week sessions for 3+ months offer more significant and lasting benefits for spiritual integration and purpose.
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Sessions occur on Zoom, Phone, or In-person at the Ashland, OR office.
Spiritual Integration Coaching, Personal Programs, and Shamanic Apprenticeships
Natural Way of Being Spiritual Integration Coaching Sessions offer a foundation for embracing spiritual purpose, fostering spiritual community, and cultivating loving relationships. They walk you through a complete transition to a new way of being.
Spiritual Integration Personal Programs are ongoing coaching sessions and prescribed practices that occur weekly or every other week. You receive a scheduled session time that becomes part of your practice.
You can also combine Spiritual Integration Coaching Sessions with Weekly Sharing Circles. Combining individual and group work (such as individual sessions every other week and a Weekly Sharing Circle) is powerful and synergistic.
Committing to a personal program of consistent Spiritual Integration Coaching Sessions over time is the most effective and efficient way to integrate spiritual purpose, supportive community, and loving relationships.