How Wellness Coaching Took Me Up to

My Ankles in Alligators and Saved My Life

#1 in the How to Find the Right Coaching School Series

By Jana Beeman, CHHP

Ok, so maybe I started out being up to my ankles in alligators – at least that’s what it felt like.

My hubby and I had relocated to Washington State, and I went to a dance performance just to meet other dancers, and for the first time in my 33-year dance career, I was seriously hurt. I tore a tendon, and was off my feet for many weeks, and when I was finally back moving around, there was something wrong in my ankles, and over the next few weeks, it kept getting worse until I could no longer walk or barely even stand up. My ankle cartilage had broken down in both ankles. Completely shattered.

I spent a lot of time on the couch in between doing my own physical therapy – I couldn’t walk or drive, so there was no choice there, and I have the background on the physical side. I started wondering what I could do in the way of nutrition and supplements to help the healing. It took a while, and a LOT more alligators, before I found my way to the wellness coaching path.

My search and an article in Yoga Journal brought me to one coaching school. I looked at a few others, but this one seemed to be the most well-rounded, and they said they would give me all I needed on the wellness side, they’d teach me how to coach, and they’d help me make a business out of wellness, and I believed them. I signed up.

I’ll be telling you a lot more about my journey as I move through different articles, but my main point is that while there are a lot of schools out there, they are not all created equal, yet even attending the wrong one first really saved my life.

Huh?

Well, the wellness education I got there helped me rebuild my ankle cartilage – over time – but the biggest result I got from my schooling was FINALLY finding the solutions to my chronic migraine pain.

I’d had migraines since I was 7, and on a 1 – 10 scale, my pain level was a 25. Ya, way off the charts. And, just for fun, I had them about 25 days a month, and they would last for DAYS, not hours. So, in the average month, I might have 2 – 5 clear days without pain, and the rest of the time, I was in agony, 24/7. I’d looked for solutions, whether medical, conventional or unconventional, my whole life. I estimate spending over $100,000 over my lifetime on anything that might possibly help. I gained a little control and had some measures that would often help, but I didn’t have a solution.

In the first month or so of coaching school, I went through some information that lit up some other connections I hadn’t seen before, and I was able to completely cure my migraine pain once and for all. I’ve not had a real migraine since then – I have had a couple of aura migraines and some headaches, but none of the debilitating pain I’d suffered for 40 years of my life, and I’ve helped a lot of others do the same.

So, wellness coaching saved my life – literally.

I finally got to exit the hell I’d lived in for nearly my entire life, and started building a new career to take me through the second half of my life.

This is where I hit a roadblock.

My first school, which will remain nameless, as I am not out to bash them, said they’d teach me coaching and how to build a wellness business. Unfortunately, while the wellness education was excellent, I knew even then that what they called ‘coaching’ was inadequate and ineffective, and their business ‘training’ was like filling a dump truck with EVERY business strategy on the planet and dumping it on your head. There you go – good luck!

I have been in business my whole life and eventually was able to figure out what I needed and what was missing – because strangely, in all that business muck, there were pieces that were missing that make a coaching business successful! Go figure. I researched, asked tons of questions, got connected with successful coaches, and figured out what I needed to learn to succeed.

The moral of this story is, that while there are tons of choices out there, there are still lots of bad choices, and only one or two really good ones (in my rather expert opinion at this point) when it comes to wellness coaching. If you want to shortcut your path to the good ones, check this one out – I’ve finished their program and it’s amazing, and fills in all the blanks my first school left gaping open.

I’ll be sharing more about my wellness coaching story and how it brought me to where I am today in upcoming articles. If you know anyone looking at wellness coaching as a career, or current wellness coaches, please share this with them, as it is my passion to help people shortcut the circuitous routes I ended up taking, so they can be changing the world faster and easier.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to start coaching, and you’re looking for the right training for you, here are some things to consider – and I’ll use wellness as an example, because you can do almost any personal coaching direction with a wellness coaching training, and it’s the most intricate of the personal-service coaching directions – so here’s what to watch for:

• Do they cover wellness, coaching and business?
• Do they have a system for everything you want to learn?
• Do they have more than a handful of successful graduates?
• Watch for online reviews and e-pinions – you may find some surprising results
• What kind of personal support do they provide?
• And one last thing for now – really understand that bigger isn’t always better. If they have thousands of grads a year, they may also have thousands of students who were unable to make a living as a coach. Talk to people who went there and see what they say aside from ‘drinking the cool-aid’. Are they making money? How long did it take? Ask real questions.

Want to know more about me (so you know why you can believe me)? Google my name plus ‘migraine’ or ‘stress’ and I bet you’ll find one of the hundreds of interviews, articles and podcasts I’ve done over the years. Or email me and I’d be happy to share some. If my missteps can help you move forward, then they were even more worth it.

Wishing you wellness…

Jana