FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS ARE PART OF FINDING THE RIGHT PATH
You may be wondering what coaching actually looks like, whether what you’re experiencing belongs in a coaching conversation, or what it would mean to work together.
The answers below will help you better understand Mountain Awakening’s approach, the 12-week coaching partnership, and what happens if you decide to explore coaching further.
You don’t need to know yet whether coaching is the right next step. Sometimes clarity begins with understanding your options.
UNDERSTANDING THE COACHING PARTNERSHIP
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Wellness and behavior change coaching is a collaborative process that begins with understanding where you are, what matters to you, what your life looks like now, and what you may be ready to approach differently.
Rather than giving you a standard plan to follow, coaching gives us space to explore possibilities together and turn them into meaningful, realistic experiments you can take into everyday life.
What happens becomes useful information. If something works, we learn from it. If it partly works, we look at why. If it doesn’t work, we can explore what got in the way and what adjustment might make more sense.
Education, tools, and resources may also be part of our work when they’re relevant to your goals, but they’re offered to support your decision-making - not as prescriptions you’re expected to obey.
The goal isn’t to make you better at following someone else’s plan. It’s to help you become more confident navigating your own.
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Coaching can include many different aspects of wellbeing because the parts of our lives rarely exist in isolation.
You might come to coaching because you want to create more consistent routines around movement, nutrition, sleep, rest, or other aspects of your wellbeing. You might be trying to make more space for yourself while caring for other people or managing competing responsibilities. You may b e navigating a transition, trying to change a pattern that keeps resurfacing, or recognizing that the ways you’ve been approaching something no longer fits your life.
You might also be thinking about something entirely different and wondering whether it even “counts” as something you could bring to coaching.
We don’t need to force your experience into a particular category. Together, we can look at what is happening in the context of your whole life, identify what feels most meaningful to you, and decide where it makes sense to begin.
And if you’re not sure whether what you’re thinking about belongs in a coaching conversation, you don’t have to determine that on your own. The Trailhead gives us a place to talk about it together.
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No. You don’t need to arrive with a perfectly defined goal or a clear plan for what needs to change.
You may already know what you want to work on. Or you may simply know that something feels out of alignment, that a familiar approach is no longer working, or that you want something to be different but haven’t yet figured out what that means.
Part of coaching can be creating enough space to notice what is happening, explore what matters to you, and develop greater clarity about where you want to focus.
You don’t need to know the entire route before you reach The Trailhead. We can begin by understanding where you are.
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Coaching is a collaborative, forward-looking process that helps you explore what matters to you, notice patterns and possibilities, make choices, take meaningful action, and learn from what happens along the way.
It is not therapy or medical care. Mountain Awakening does not diagnose or treat physical or mental health conditions, provide psychotherapy, or replace care from a physician, therapist, registered dietitian, or other licensed healthcare professional.
There may be times when something comes up in coaching that would be better addressed by another qualified professional. If that happens, we can recognize that boundary together so you can decide what additional support may be appropriate.
Coaching can be one part of your broader support system. It doesn’t need to be the only one.
THE 12-WEEK COACHING PARTNERSHIP
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The 12-week private coaching partnership includes eight one-on-one coaching sessions. We meet weekly during the first four weeks, then every other week during the remaining eight weeks.
That changing rhythm is intentional. Early in the partnership, meeting more frequently gives us time to build the coaching relationship, understand what matters to you, and begin exploring what you want to try. As the partnership progresses, the additional space between sessions gives you more time to put what we’re exploring into practice in your everyday life.
The time between sessions is part of the coaching process. It gives you opportunities to experiment, notice what happens, learn from your experience, and bring that information back into our work together.
Your partnership also includes personalized practices and experiments, relevant education, tools and resources, and opportunities to reflect and recalibrate as our work progresses.
The changing cadence is designed to provide support at the beginning while creating increasing space for you to navigate your own path as the partnership progresses.
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Each coaching session is a conversation centered on you—what you are experiencing, what matters to you, what you are noticing, and what feels most useful to explore.
We may reflect on what has happened since our last conversation, notice patterns or barriers, explore possibilities, and consider what you want to try next. Sometimes that may mean continuing with something that is working. Other times, it may mean adjusting an approach based on what you have learned.
I may ask questions, offer observations, or share relevant education, tools, and resources when they can support your thinking. You remain the person deciding what fits, what you want to act on, and what direction makes sense for you.
You don’t need to keep up with a predetermined agenda. The conversation develops from where you are and what would be most useful to you at that point in your journey.
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Coaching sessions are held virtually via Google Meet, so you can join from a private, comfortable location that works for you.
Before each session, you’ll receive the information you need to join. You don’t need to travel to an office or be located near Mountain Awakening to participate.
Because coaching is a private conversation, I encourage you to choose a setting where you feel comfortable speaking openly and can participate with as few interruptions as possible.
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That’s part of the process.
Coaching isn’t built around the expectation that life will cooperate perfectly or that everything you try will work exactly as planned. Responsibilities shift. Priorities change. Unexpected things happen. And sometimes an approach that seemed right simply doesn’t work the way you expected.
When that happens, we don’t treat it as failure. We look at what happened, what you noticed, what you learned, and what that information may be telling us.
From there, we can decide whether to continue, adjust the approach, change direction, or focus on something that has become more important.
The goal isn’t to follow a plan perfectly. It’s to become more capable of noticing, learning, adjusting, and continuing as life changes.
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For many clients, the appropriate next step may be to continue independently. That is a successful coaching outcome.
The 12-week partnership is designed to help you strengthen your ability to notice what is happening, make choices, learn from your experience, adjust as needed, and move forward with greater confidence in your ability to navigate change.
There may also be times when continued support would genuinely add value. When that’s the case, Mountain Awakening offers a lighter Continued Coaching option on a month-to-month basis, with one private coaching session per month for $450 per month.
Continued Coaching isn't an automatic next stage of the program, and you don’t need to decide about it when you begin. It is simply available when we both believe ongoing support would be useful.
The end of the 12 weeks isn’t designed to create another dependency. It’s designed to help you recognize what you can carry forward.
GETTING STARTED
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You don’t need to have everything figured out before you consider coaching. You may know exactly what you want to change, or you may simply feel that something in your life could be different.
Coaching with Mountain Awakening may be a good fit if you’re looking for a supportive, collaborative space to slow down, understand what’s happening, explore what matters to you, and begin finding a way to forward that fits your life.
You won’t be handed a predetermined route or expected to navigate change perfectly. I’ll walk alongside you. My approach is shaped not only by my professional training and experience, but also by seasons in my own life when the path changed, familiar ways no longer fit, and I had to learn what it meant to navigate change in real life.
That doesn’t mean I assume my experience is the same as yours. Your life is your own, and you are the expert on your experience. What it does mean is that I understand something about the uncertainty of standing in a place where you know something needs to change—even when you can’t see the whole route ahead.
You bring the knowledge of your life. I bring coaching expertise, perspective, and support. We bring those together in a partnership designed to help you move forward with greater clarity and confidence in your own ability to navigate what comes next.
And if you’re still wondering, “But does what I’m dealing with belong here?” you don’t have to answer that question by yourself. That's what The Trailhead is for. It gives us a chance to talk about where you are, what you’re looking for, and whether working together feels like the right next step.
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The Trailhead is a complimentary, approximately 30-minute conversation where we can meet, talk about what’s bringing you here, and explore whether coaching with Mountain Awakening may be a good fit.
You don’t need to prepare, and you don't need to arrive knowing exactly what you want to work on. You can bring your questions, tell me a little about what’s happening in your life, and learn more about how I approach coaching.
The Trailhead is a conversation, not an assessment. I’m not evaluating whether you’re “ready enough” for coaching, and it isn’t a sales presentation designed to move you toward a predetermined answer.
It’s simply a place for us to begin—so you can get a sense of me and the coaching relationship. I can better understand what you’re looking for, and we can decide together whether taking the next step makes sense.
And sometimes the right outcome of The Trailhead may be recognizing that Mountain Awakening isn’t the support you need right now. That can be a useful outcome, too.
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If, after The Trailhead, we both feel that working together makes sense, I’ll guide you through the next steps so you know what to expect before coaching begins.
You’ll first receive the Coaching Agreement, which outlines our coaching relationship and gives you a chance to review the terms of our work together.
From there, you’ll complete an intake and screening process that helps me understand what brings you to coaching, what you’re hoping to explore, and any health, wellbeing, or other considerations that may be important for me to understand so I can coach you responsibly.
I’ll personally review the information you share. If I need clarification or additional information before we move forward, I’ll reach out and explain what is needed and why. The intake process isn’t an audition for coaching or a test of whether you’re “ready enough.” It’s a responsible step designed to make sure we begin our work together with the information and context we need.
Once the intake and review process is complete and we’re ready to move forward, you’ll receive the payment information for your coaching partnership. After we receive payment, you can schedule your first coaching session.
You won’t have to figure out the process on your own. I’ll walk you through each step so that when we reach our first coaching session, we can begin with clarity about the partnership and where you are strting from.
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The investment for the 12-week private coaching partnership is $3,000.
You may pay $2,900 in full or split the investment into three monthly payments of $1,000.
If you choose the payment plan, you are still enrolling in the complete 12-week coaching partnership. The monthly payments divide the investment into three payments; they do not create a month-to-month coaching arrangement.
Payment is completed after the Coaching Agreement and intake and screening processes are complete. Once we receive your payment, you’ll be able to schedule your first coaching session.
You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions about the partnership and investment during The Trailhead before deciding whether you’d like to move forward.
Still have a question?
You may have a question that isn’t answered here—or something about your own circumstances that you’re not sure fits neatly into an FAQ.
You don’t have to figure that out before reaching out.
The Trailhead is a place for us to talk. Bring your questions, tell me what’s on your mind, and we can explore together whether coaching with Mountain Awakening may be the right next step for you.