With Chad Herst

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Full Transcript

Michael Balchan 00:00

David, what's up? Welcome, Kathy, Thomas. Welcome. Fired up. Give folks another minute or two, but it's so fun to have these interviews in front of community and connection, Chad. Before we turned on the recording and everything, we were talking about staying in the body, I noticed in my own being, you know, my own physical body, the appreciation for you, the joy for you, the heroic community, and just the level of energy and enthusiasm and excitement and desire to do well.

You know, and to do right by you and by the community. So I just want to acknowledge that.

Chad Herst 00:49

I notice even just as you say that right off the bat, I notice a little bit of a flutter in my throat and chest, a little sense that there's an audience, and so my heart is beating a little bit faster and a little bit more, and even the acknowledgement brings a little, "Oh, okay." I can feel the performer coming out right away.

Michael Balchan 01:16

Add to that the jackhammers, which I'm glad that you all cannot hear, but they're doing construction in the building. So folks who are joining us often will notice they got a different background. They're doing construction in the office and literally like fixing the cement, whatever. So I've got in the back of my head too, like, oh my gosh, can anyone hear the jackhammers? And that's so distracting and all that. I'm glad the microphone is working. But we'll go ahead and kick it off.

So AJ, I don't know if you got the recording already, or we're good. AJ says yes. Let me do this one too. All right. So fired up. Welcome, Chad, Heroic Coach, luminary guest, faculty session, coaching excellence, author of The Performance Trap. So coming in September. The book comes out then, right?

Chad Herst 02:06

Yeah, September 4. Actually, I want to give the full name for it. It's The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix.

So that's an important caveat because we're talking about what happens when we get caught in performance, and that there are so many different forms of performance, but at its essence we learn to override our body signals, and so as we start to override more and more, we develop a kind of an ache in the system, and that ache can show up, you know, with our clients.

If you're coaching, it can show up with your clients as fatigue or depression or anxiety, or it can show up even as burnout. And so The Performance Trap story is really, it's partly my story, but it's also the story I tell of clients of mine, and how the ache ends up forming through performance.

Michael Balchan 03:25

I cannot wait to dig deeper into your story, the tools in the book, that overriding the body's signals and just creating different narratives that keep us safe, etc. But before we dive in, I want to celebrate. So we got connected several years ago, and folks in the community here will know. Like I am, I love coaching. I love being worked on. I love trying to help my authentic expression be seen and also come forth.

And that's part of looking for mentors and coaches and guides and a dear friend I was having dinner with, and he was talking about working with you, and just celebrated you so fully, and what you bring to the work. I'm like, oh, I'd love to have a conversation with him and see what it looks and works like. I think in our first conversation, you described it felt like me reaching through the screen and saying, "Meet me here."

Chad Herst 04:28

I'm laughing because I can still remember that moment. It is your nature. It's like you bring such an intensity, and you were bringing such an intensity in that moment. It was like, "Get me! Somebody get me!" You know, it's like, "Do you get me? Get me!"

Michael Balchan 04:45

Yeah,

Chad Herst 04:46

And that's so funny. I mean, really, that's such a fundamental thing that we long for. But you have a very unique approach to it, which is there's a strong demand and hunger for that. Oh, there's a dear friend.

Michael Balchan 05:01

Yeah, exactly. And got the opportunity to work together, and folks have interacted with a lot of people in these sessions and seen different coaches and authors. But really, your ability to even that first session to really, the language that's typically used is holding space, right?

But to me, there's elements of holding space that are there's something that you do that's deeper than that, and there's a degree of attunement and physiological awareness, really being in the moment of exploration, being in the witnessing, being in the two people navigating an unknown set of history, future, all the things, and of all the coaches I've worked with, I've not experienced that level of attunement and what felt like that purest essence of someone on my side here, who is actually picking up what I'm going through, even if I don't know what it is, and the physiological cues and all of those.

So I just want to start there and celebrate that.

Chad Herst 06:20

I just want to say that what you said made me flush, not embarrassed, but flushed and excited, and my heart got warm when you said somebody on your side, and yes, that attunement. We can talk about attunement, but you can hear like my heart is touched by that because that is what I feel we're doing as coaches.

It's like we're on our clients' side in a way that's helping them re-embody their own truth that we learn at such a very young age to disconnect to our own embodied experience that we learn in order to belong, in order to feel connected, that we have to override what we see or experience. Sometimes it's a parental relationship where the message is, "I love you. You can tell me anything," but the body is saying stay away, or I'm actually really angry, and so we learn to override those signals.

And so, with our clients, I think as coaches, one of the gifts that we provide is to remind them that their body has a knowing that they have perhaps forgotten, lost touch with, and that we are allies as coaches in the remembering, the remembering of the body. That's what I was hoping that would occur out of our relatedness, Michael. So that you say that is like, oh, that brings me great joy.

Michael Balchan 08:26

It has the added benefit of being true, right? I think that when I've experienced, call it poor coaching, for lack of a better word. That's only partially true. I can get great coaching. That's more advice, consulting, feedback. That's not actually about meeting me and taking on my perspective, all those kinds of things, and that's powerful and great.

But for someone who is committed to trying to be that on the client side and take on their perspective and all those things, if it's missed, and it feels like a tool or a thing that I'm trying to do, it actually creates more separation, erodes the trust, and it's like, "This is not for me. I'm not interested." And so when someone's able to do that with a with a skill set for doing it, some sort of natural tendency for doing it, and it's done in such a way that there's an earnestness of like no bias, no dog in the fight.

I just want to know, "What's going on there, and how can we go through that?" And you're using your system to identify when you're there, when you're not there, the number of times you jump in and call me out on any number of things, like I don't buy that, or like what's really going on, or go back.
There's a beauty and a power in that, and I think it's a gift that you have, and I know that you wrote about it as a tendency that you had that you also cultivated. It's something I'd love to unpack for folks, but also maybe we circle back and a little bit more of your backstory.

Chad Herst 10:11

Well, you know, it's that the bottom line is there are all sorts of coaching tools that can be expressed, and I'm happy to go through the acronyms I've come up with. I'll be transparent: I pooh-pooh acronyms, coaching, coach-talk, and coach skills, and I know they're important.

I know that they matter, but I think at the essence that when we're in the act of being one another's partner, one another's friend, one another's coach, whatever role that we're in, that thing that you named, which is when we get missed, it's so painful. It's really painful, and it's so common that we get missed. So the point I'm trying to make is that I didn't learn the skills that I learned.

Of course, I learned a few skills in coach training, and you know, I got my certifications and all that kind of stuff. But I learned in the hard knocks of growing up. You know, I grew up in a household. I had a brother who had mental illness, who was extremely volatile, so you never knew what you were going to get from one moment to the next. That had its own effect on my nervous system. You know, you can imagine what that's like, where you're hypervigilant.

Somebody else's pathology, we'll say somebody else's volatility. But then I had a father who was completely at that time, not so much today, but at that time was very emotionally absent. He was very distant, and that did its own thing. Instead of it being, "I'm going to be attuned to you," it's, "I'm not going to need anyone. I'm going to be fine, absolutely on my own. I'm tough, and I'm fine." And then I had a mother who was dealing with the fact that her one of her sons had severe mental illness, and her husband was on the road, traveling, working hard, and emotionally distant.

She was very fragile at that moment in her life, and so my role became that of an adult at a very young age. At 14 years old, I was emotionally attuned and absolutely independent. Hence, a perfect, unfortunate setup to be a great coach. I say that because we all come into the world with some map that's handed to us that gives us some ache we are responding to.

We come into the world and we say we hope and wish that nobody should feel the same ache or pain as I did or I do. That's where our gifts lie. So I think that what I'm trying to say is that kind of attunement that you're describing is partly skill-based, but mainly it's coming out of a necessity of survival, the need to belong.

Michael Balchan 14:07

It strikes me that folks will have different versions of that story, right? Everyone's childhood is different. Everyone's upbringing is different, and it may be an overlap where more folks who are drawn to things like coaching, etc. As a space, have a story that's more like that than different, and that seed of, I mean, in some ways, it's a human condition, but a certain skill set that is that is attuned to that capacity to listen. So let's step back then and set some more context. I read the book.

I love the book. We worked together.

Chad Herst 14:56

Wait, let me interrupt you. What is it that you liked about the book?

Michael Balchan 15:01

So we worked together for six, nine, 12-plus-or-minus-ish months, right? And it helped me to be more in tune to my own physiological responses, unblock some stories that I had, bring more awareness around what is that wound, that ache that I was seeking to fill in different kind of ways, and felt like the recipient of these gifts of connection. And you had mentioned a little bit about some of the stuff, and it was in kind of some of the print materials and guided audios as examples.

But what I love so much about the book, I don't know if it's because I knew who you were and had the personal relationship before, or just felt it. But there's such a degree of rawness, authenticity, ownership of the hurt, the suffering, the pain, all those things. But from a place of both having navigated it and having toolkits. It didn't feel project-y or like blaming or any of those things, and it also felt acknowledging or like the continued need to navigate.

And that later in the book, in your story you're talking about your wife, and you know she asks, "Don't you think I look beautiful or whatever?" And your default response is going to be like, "Well, of course I think you look beautiful." And then you're like, "That's a pattern, but it's also true." And how do I respond in a way that honors her and what she wants and where she is without discrediting myself and what I want and where I am, and say, "Well, of course, but I'd prefer not to be put on the spot in that way." And so, this level of like just realness and rawness in who you were and how you show up and how you continue to navigate-that I think is, frankly, I love the first half much more than the second.

The second has all the tools and frameworks, but there's just this degree of like, this is life, and this is me, and this is what I've had to navigate, and I'm willing to own my own experience, own their experience, no shame, no judgment, no blame, no better or worse, but like this is just the journey that I've been on. I felt deeply connected to you, more so than any of the times that we'd actually worked together.

That sense of like, oh my gosh, I see this guy, I feel this guy, like this is just beautiful. That invited me to have greater authenticity and depth and honesty and all of those things in my own relationship, so that's why I loved it.

Chad Herst 17:44

Wow, just taking that in. Thank you. That's real. It warms my heart again. It's like my heart is very warm here. So thank you for the acknowledgement, really, and thank you for reading it from that place because you have to understand that the book didn't come out of, initially and transparently, anything more than a marketing idea. It was a bad marketing idea, and my marketing idea was, as coaches who are listening will know, we're often taught in marketing to make a funnel.

It's like you have the top end, the thing that people grab at, and then you bring them in, and they come into your ecosystem slowly. And so one of my clients said, "You need to build a funnel to build your practice." So I built this thing. I mean, initially it was stories, because my primary clientele has been entrepreneurs. So the idea was that I was going to build this training that was going to draw in entrepreneurs and bring them into my ecosystem, so to speak.

And so I wrote this thing, and I thought it was very good. And my friend who was the marketing guy was like, "We're going to sell the heck out of this," and he put it up, and we sold two of them, and it was a complete failure. But I kept looking at this thing that I had written, and there was something true about it because it was stories about my clients, but also there was something not true about it.
One of my clients who read it before we went live was an entrepreneur. He said, "Why should somebody like me trust you?" And so it had me going back. That statement had me going back and asking, "Why should entrepreneurs who are my clients trust me? What is it that I have in common with them?" And at that very moment in my life, I was in a complete burnout. That was the truth. Even, Michael, while we were working with each other, I was struggling. My gut was a mess.

My sleep was a mess. I had finally achieved the success I thought I always wanted. I was in demand. That was the thing. I grew up in an upper middle class Jewish family where the orientation was always about success, and here I was. I was finally making enough money. I was in demand, but I was a wreck. And so, the book became a necessity for me.

It was like that first part that I wrote, which was the marketing pitch, which you could kind of see a little bit in the second part of my book. I'll be transparent. I don't love that I'm saying that on a podcast, or you know that people can hear that. But that's a little bit of the truth. I could have cut that, but it's still got something in it that I think is, as you said, I like the first part. The second part's pretty okay. Yeah, it's okay.

But the first part is that's where I had to dig and discover who is the guy behind the one who knew how to ask good questions and hold space? Who was that? I had to be brutally honest about that because whatever it is that I was doing, where I knew how to hold space for people, I was overriding myself constantly, and I didn't know that I was even doing that. So I know you're celebrating me, you're celebrating my capacity, but I'm also saying it's dangerous territory too.

Michael Balchan 22:29

I'm glad you're starting to speak to that because one of the things I wanted to dive into deeper, Again, we've got that capacity, and I do want to explore, here's how I think about doing that and holding space and aligning and using the body and the breath and all those things, but part of reading the story and feeling that authenticity and that rawness, for me, was like, man, I had no idea, and I'm mapping it over time.

I was like, I'm sure this stuff was still happening too while we were working. I didn't even ask one time. I'm like, this guy's got it all together. He's studied in India, and the meditation is dialed, and he's great at yoga, and he's got this beautiful integrated practice and this toolkit that's got Western ideas, Eastern ideas integrated together, beautifully laid out system.

I'm like, this guy's dialed, and so then to see behind the scenes too, and to have a little bit of greater sense gave me both increased respect and admiration, some degree of like anger, frustration, shame, guilt on myself of like, man, I can't believe I missed it, which I know was not actually on me, but it was like, oh my gosh, I wish I would have known or different pieces.

But then that recognition, like for those of us who are coaches, who are leaders, healers, in any role where we're holding space for others, and trying to support others to acknowledge the difficulty and challenge and the need to continually make sure that we're replenished too, and we never really get done with that work.

Chad Herst 24:18

Yeah, you know, there's a beautiful story that I came across of Chiron when I was in my darkest hours. Chiron was a god in Greek mythology, and he was unfortunately, if you're a god, it means that you live forever. What is it? You don't die.

Michael Balchan 24:48

Immortality.

Chad Herst 24:49

You're immortal. There's the word. He was shot and wounded by a poisoned arrow. And that wound festered for the duration of his immortality. I can't say his life. That is what gave him his gifts. He was a wise teacher. He was kind of like Yoda. He taught. I think he taught music, and he also taught warfare. But he was known as an immensely compassionate god. And you look at, you know, there's this idea of people who are in the healing profession.

You've heard the expression "the wounded healer," that we come into this profession. Maybe I'm repeating myself, but I will say we come into this profession not whole. I don't think any of us come into the world feeling completely whole, or maybe we come into the world feeling whole, but we forget our wholeness. Whatever it is, I can't track it. I'm too human to figure that one out, but it is our brokenness. It's our woundedness that actually gives us our capacity for wisdom and for compassion.
I want to respond to what you said to me, Michael, just a moment ago. You said, "I feel so bad. I missed it. You seemed like you had your shit together, excuse my language. You seemed like you had it all together." And the truth of the matter is when I'm in the role, there is something that definitely comes through. That there is that kind of, and I will say that is the healing of the wound, like the wound coming forward and wanting to bring healing into the world.

The gift of the wound, right? I think our life's purpose comes out of that broken heartedness that we don't, it comes from that place. So that's real. But then there's this other side, which is, it is so. It has been so darn hard for me to admit my humanity. It's so easy to step into the role and stay in the role. Now I'm being forced. Even in this conversation, I'm being forced to sort of say, "Nope, that's not. That's only a part of me. That's only a part." And as coaches, that's only a part of us.

We need to embody those roles, but we also need to come out of them. And this is the hard part for me that I'm still in the struggle of learning this. What that's like to come out of that and to be a human being in relationship with others to say actually, no, actually I'm struggling in my marriage right now, or I'm struggling. My health is a mess right now. It's not, but it has been. So I do need help, is what I'm saying.

Michael Balchan 28:09

Well, and from the client perspective, I think there's insights here for both from us as clients, from us as coaches, but like from the client perspective, I would not have shown up any differently to the work and to your being in the role and to my being in the role and that dynamic in a negative sense. I might have shown up more open and fully and authentic. I was like knowing, like, okay, perfect. Like this guy's got his stuff too.

Like we all have our stuff, and when I'm in the coaching position and in that role, just that reminder of like humanity is what connects us and we've got this skill set of like okay you're coming in you're on my side, but it's when we're able to relate on the imperfections the difficulties the wounds the like things that are like make it a struggle, and that, combined with the toolkits, the role, all the skills, like that to me is what really creates

Chad Herst 29:12

Yeah, transformation.

Michael Balchan 29:14

Not from a place of brokenness, but

Chad Herst 29:17

It's a really unusual place to stand, and I think it's like the place where we're learning to stand in our role as coaches today. I think that if I look at my own background, I look at some of the mentors that I've had in my life. People like I studied yoga in India with a guru. I studied with some really amazing therapists, and I studied with people who were leaders of communities, and they all embodied a kind of charisma.

And charisma is dangerous because what it often implies is that it implies that they have somehow attained some kind of transcendental space, some space that is like you know, like the way you thought of me or you imagined me. It's like I really had my stuff together. I had this kind of unique system and way of thinking and the way of communicating.

But the danger of that is that at some point we all come down from our pedestals, and I think as coaches, it's this very like, and I'm thinking aloud transparently as we're talking, which is, I've had this, I've had this sort of basic belief when I'm coaching a client, I want to be human, but I have only brought forth my material as it pertains to my client's material, so it supports their own transformation and well-being.

So I'll bring forward my own stuff only insofar as it supports them, but I have held back a lot of my own because I have a story going, and this is where I'm thinking aloud and opening it up for the discussion, which is I've had this story going, which is I don't want to be narcissistic. I don't want to take over the client's experience. It is the client's agenda in coaching. That's how we tend to think about it.

It's client's agenda first, but as you said, it's like you said I might have been maybe even more open if I had known that there was a human being behind the role that you were playing, Chad. So I'm wondering where that takes you.

Michael Balchan 32:09

Yeah, to be clear, like I know you're a human. The AI overlords weren't here yet, but I feel like in any relationship, you're taking those little steps, and it's sharing parts of yourself, and it's met and reciprocated, and just that. I think what struck me about the book was the depth of, "Here's who I am".

Chad Herst 32:36

Yeah,

Michael Balchan 32:36

This is the fullness of it, and in a world where so often it is story and marketing material or a role or a persona or whatever it is, to have that degree of authenticity expressed felt like such an invitation. It spoke to something deep within me, and inspired me to continue to live and lean into even greater authenticity as well.

I don't know that in the coaching context, it's it is the dance of how much of you to share, and it is the client's agenda and all those things. But that invitation to greater authenticity and depth is powerful.

Chad Herst 33:28

Yeah, see, Michael, that's the thing I think we're longing for. I mean, look at the first TED Talk that Brené Brown came out with. Do you ever see that one?

Michael Balchan 33:41

Yeah, she wanted to take it down.

Chad Herst 33:44

What's that? She wanted to take it down. It is so real, and we see rare examples of that. I think that's what we're calling forth today, and even in this conversation.

Michael Balchan 34:00

So let's go. Let's go back then to you've talked about wounds. You've talked about childhood. Oftentimes, when people might hear about multiple family systems or inner child or those kinds of things, it gets put in the woo-woo crazy box or like, "I don't understand. I don't get what's going on." That's a kind of different piece. One of the things I appreciate about your work, the book more broadly, is an integration of this in a practical, tactical, let's make it useful and embodied kind of way.

So, if you can give a high level version of how you see development and the importance of the body communicating to us?

Chad Herst 34:44

Yeah. Okay. So let's get a little technical. Forgive me if this is not your jam. If it is your jam, just see if you can follow along with me. I try not to get too geeky about it. But if you look at it, all human beings come into the world with one basic need. I mean, there's a few things that we long for, we need for our very survival, but one of them is belonging. Belonging is at the core of what it is to be a human being.

So there's this beautiful experiment that was done in the 1970s by a guy named Ed Tronick. It's called the Still-Face Experiment, and you have a mother and a child in a room together, and they are in synchrony with each other. The child is laughing, the mother's laughing. The mother is smiling, the child is smiling. There's this beautiful interplay between the two of them, and then all of a sudden, the mother is instructed to give what's known as a still face, just a neutral face.

It's not like there's no aggression or anything like that. Just a neutral face, and not to react to the child's engagement, and the child will initially not notice, but at some point the child notices, and the child starts to gesticulate more, gets louder and bigger, and says, "Can you see me? Can you see me? Can you see me?" And the mother still has a still face.

At some point, if the mother continues to not see the face or to not respond to the gesticulation, the child will turn away, and will often suck their thumbs as a way to soothe themselves, which is a way of saying that we come into the world needing that connection; otherwise, we emotionally shut down. So that's one theory that I'm starting with, which is we really need this, but we also have this other experience, and it's this very interesting thing.

I named it at the beginning of our conversation, but I'll name it again. It's called the double bind. A double bind is a very interesting thing where there's two channels of relating that are going on simultaneously. The first channel of relating is what is expressed. It's what's explicit. "Oh, I love you." Or if we're in a job, our boss says, "You know, my door is always open to you." Usually, we get lots of these as children. They're what's known as mixed messages. "Oh, I love you. Come close. Anything you say is safe here." But the parent's body is saying something else.

That's the second channel. So we have our own embodied experience of relatedness, and we also have what they're saying, and it's confusing. It's confusing. We don't quite understand. Well, my body says one thing, but what they're saying is very different. But I can't express that. I can't say, "Hey, why am I getting mixed messages?" I'm either too young, or it's hard to fathom to make sense of that.

So slowly over time, in order to stay bonded, because remember at the beginning of what I said, which is connection is the most important thing. Without connection we shut down. So we override our body signals, and as we start to override our body's signals more and more and more and more, we develop. I say we develop an ache. I don't know if that's exactly true, but I do know that we develop disconnection. So the tools that I'm teaching have two parts to them.

The first part is how do we reconnect with the body's signals? How do we reconnect? Because we lose touch with that in order to stay connected. The second part, and we can go into more detail, is how do we start to let the body speak, let the truth be actually expressed of what we're actually feeling in relatedness without severing connection? It's like we can often say, "I hate you," or "I hate the way you respond in this way," and that severs connection.

Is there what I call the third option? Is there a way of responding from the truth of our bodies to what we're feeling in a way that allows us to say, "You know what? That really hurt." Like you gave the story of my wife. Like my wife last year, we're actually in the same vacation spot where we were last year. We're in Lake Tahoe in the Sierras. It's this beautiful spot, and she

Michael Balchan 40:12

still looks beautiful.

Chad Herst 40:13

She still looks beautiful, my wife. And she says, "Do you find me beautiful?" And my first response is always like, you know, that was what my mom always requested. "Am I beautiful? Am I enough? Do you love me?" And so the first response is I'll just say, "Yeah, you're the most beautiful woman in the world," and my body's going, "Do I have to? Do I have to perform for you? I'll perform." You know, it's like, and I had to stop and slow it down enough.

This is one of the acronyms I'm teaching. It's called STEP. S is slow, slow it down, and then tune into the trade. That's the T. This is the trade. It's like, what am I trading in that moment? I'm trading my honesty. I'm trading like real, genuine connection with Melissa in that moment, and then it's expand options. That's the E in STEP. It's like, okay, well, what are the possibilities here? Well, I could just fall into the same old pattern, or I could say, you know, "F you. Stop. You always ask me this question." I could feel the urge of that, but that's not actually creating the connection that I want.

And so there's the third option, P, which is practice. It's practicing: "Well, of course I find you beautiful, but I hate being put on the spot like that. I want to tell you spontaneously." I want to tell you the truth when it's coming from my heart, and that's practice.

It's like learning how to start to tell the truth of what my body is actually saying over and over, so that we can change our world, as opposed to keep feeling something in our bodies and not saying anything about it and hoping for a different outcome.

Michael Balchan 42:21

This universal need to belong, the remembering that experiment with the still face is like no, it is it is hardwired. This sense of belonging and connection and all those things. How we can learn to override what our experience might be, quote unquote our truth, etc. In order to get that belonging, that we're willing to adapt who we are, how we show up, what our behavior is, because that sense of belonging, that need to belong, is so important.

At risk of our own authentic expression, we learn these strategies, techniques, tools, patterns for maintaining that sense of belonging shows up in lots of different ways, and then what might have been helpful or useful at certain points in our life becomes then less useful, less helpful when we're not aware that it's happening and we're bringing our prior patterns to this moment, and/or it's closing us off of what might be real for us in this moment.

So if we can slow down, recognize what's there in the body, and then first just stay with that pause of what's in the body. Then look for like, okay, what information might be here? What opportunities might be there? Run through the STEP acronym, but that sense of trying to maintain connection without tamping down who we are and what might be true for us.

Speaker 00:00

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Chad Herst 43:49

Yes.

Michael Balchan 43:50

While also not requiring or asking the other person to tamp down or discredit what might be true or real for them, and that's the thing that I see so often is like you need to hear me and know me and what's real for me. It's like, but I don't actually care what's real for you. Like it's all about me here, right?

Chad Herst 44:12

Yes, that's the important thing that you just named. In the moment when we're in the heat of the moment, it is all about us. Like when we are triggered, when we're in fight or flight, we do not have access to the sense of the other. So before we get to STEP, we start with the acronym SENSE, which is that we have to figure out first and foremost. Okay, I'm triggered. I'm going to be useless in this relationship, in this relating, or in getting what I want.

So we start with our nervous system. We start with the breath. The only thing I really know, and yeah, I've been a pretty intense student of yoga since I was 19 years old, and I'm 52 now. I don't want to count. It's kind of embarrassing, but if I really look at what I have learned in all of those years, comes down to two things: awareness and the breath, and everything else is sort of like, you know, it's nice, but really, what's useful is the breath.

We'll start with the breath. Why? Because if we can regulate our nervous system, we can slow the breath down, or at least pace the breath to some degree or another. That's our first avenue to move out of, "It's all about me. You need to hear me and my perspective," and then the next step is in what I call SENSE, which is enter the body, and what that just basically means in the simplest sense, is to bring that awareness into what's actually happening in the nervous system, like I described earlier.

Ooh, I feel a flutter, or I feel warmth in my body. Like right now, as I'm sharing this, I feel an aliveness. Let me see if I can find the language for it. This is important because the next step is naming what we're feeling in the body. It's like an aliveness. A staccato quality in my nervous system? It's like, "Yeah, okay. We're on it. We've got to stay on this." So right, so we're naming. So we name what's happening in our nervous system.

The body is a tuning fork, helping us attune to what's actually occurring in the moment. Can I attune? Can I bring my awareness to that? And you can see I'm moving, and my body's dancing a little bit. It's like, yeah, I'm starting to feel the energy of what it is to be in my body. And then we learn to stay. This is something that we are miserable at as human beings.

We're great at noticing, "Oh, I feel crummy," or, "I feel joyful," or, "I feel excited and alive." But the staying is a different story, and I think this is the work. A lot of the work you and I were doing together, which was learning how to stay and ride the wave of what's occurring. And so I want to kind of hand the reins over to you and say, do you remember what it was like to stay and what you experienced?

Michael Balchan 47:43

I was terrible at it. I still am terrible at it in many ways. I try, and I got so good at regulating my system that staying in the emotion was hard. There were times I felt like I wanted to, and the emotion would run away because it was like, "Take some breaths, do a cold plunge, get a workout in, and my body will be great." And so it's quite hard for me.

Chad Herst 48:10

But there were some breakthroughs that occurred when you did stay in your relatedness and your relationship, right?

Michael Balchan 48:20

Yeah, it continues to be a work in progress, but the staying began with acceptance, which helped me in relationship. I feel like it helped me more than individually, whereas I was learning to better accept and stay with what I might be feeling, without judgment, without label, without whatever. It also made me more capable of safely allowing and accepting when other people might be feeling things. It was like, "Oh, this isn't a sign that they need fixing, that something is wrong with them, or that I'm doing something wrong. Oh, interesting. That's just whatever is in their system. Cool. I can stay with that too." I don't need to fix, heal, change, shape, whatever.

My own body is getting more attuned to like sitting and staying, and it still moves through. But that's where it helped me most fully is in the co-regulated spaces.

Chad Herst 49:31

Yeah, it's this thing that happens because a lot of what we experience in the stay is that if we stay with an emotion, anything, it usually gets more intense before it subsides, and it's really an unpleasant experience if you really stay with anything for long enough. Here's my own theory of what's happening as we stay.

I think we're reattuning to our body's signals, and that the dysregulated experience of staying with an emotion is all of those times that we have dissociated from what we feel, the buildup, the residue of the pain of the disconnection, and so initially, when we stay with anything, or we have our clients stay with anything, there is an initial like, "Oh, whoa! I don't think I can. I don't want to stay here. This is really unpleasant." You know, it gets bad, but at some point it subsides, and then often with the subsiding, what's amazing is if we can stay with it, we develop capacity, the ability to stay with the unpleasant.

If we offer that to our clients, and we're capable of doing that ourselves, we provide a great resource to our clients. If they can learn to stay with the unpleasant, that is the greatest gift. Because on the other side of the unpleasant, it's not just to be sadomasochistic, per se, or you know, that's not the point. The point is that if you stay with the unpleasant for a sustained period of time, on the other side of that is often resilience.

As in your community, that's an important, like a very important resource, and the other one is insight. You know, before mindfulness was called mindfulness, it was called insight meditation. And what I'm actually teaching is mindfulness right here, which is awareness of sensation and staying with it for a long duration, so that insight develops. We develop clarity. We do not develop clarity by simply noticing a feeling or emotion and then moving from that.

We develop clarity when we learn how to stay with things, ride them all the way through, where we're less triggered, and then we can actually move to the step. We can actually see, "Oh, this is what I've been trading, and here's a new way of responding."

Michael Balchan 52:27

What's the E in SENSE? Slow down. Enter the body. Name it. Stay with it.

Chad Herst 52:34

E is equanimity, and it's a funny term. It's often translated as non-attachment, and I hate that because non-attachment means I'm not feeling anything about that anymore. That's total BS. We do feel things. Equanimity, as far as I'm concerned, is this dual ability. One is I can be aware of what's happening. I can step outside of myself while it's happening, but here's the other part, and this is the hard part of equanimity. I can also feel what's happening, like I'm aware that I'm having this conversation with you.

I'm aware that my hands are gesticulating and blah, but I'm also attuned to the subtle feeling of what's occurring in this conversation in my body. So equanimity is that ability to sort of ride all of that material. It's like learning how to ride the wave all the way to shore, which means I'm aware that I'm in a crummy place, or I'm stressed, and I'm simultaneously sensitive to the feeling of that and riding it all the way through. Okay, somebody wants to know the SENSE process.

Let me slow down and repeat it for everybody, which is slow the breath down. E is enter the body. N is name what you're sensing in the body. S is stay with those feelings, and E is equanimity, staying with those feelings while remaining aware and sensitive, that ability to be aware and sensitive at the same time. That gives you the space. Once you're on the other side, you get insight, and you can start to move into STEP. STEP is where the urge is to rush in a reaction.

This is just to slow the reaction down just a moment. It's to tune into the trade. What is it that I'm about to compromise within myself in this moment? When Melissa, for example, is saying, "Do you find me beautiful?" E is to expand options to see what the possibilities are. And P is to practice. Just practice saying your truth in a way that hopefully doesn't totally disturb the other person. Sometimes you will. You're going to make a mistake.

Michael Balchan 55:14

Let's go circle back right in the ways. I want to go back to that. Share your truth without severing connection. Easier said than done. That sense of listening, and then love step, love sense, any other like tools or frameworks that you find yourself coming back to on a consistent basis. But starting with that, speak your truth without severing connection, right?

When you have done a lot to silence your own body, silence what's real for you in service of connection, then there comes the action of okay, well let me get connected with myself, and part of that is bringing it out into the world in general, and yet if it's without severing connection, Kim might pop in here and say, "Hello. You need to be the one hearing my truth right now," and it just becomes, "This is who I am and how I'm showing up." I'm actually putting you down the same way that I put myself down, and I've reversed the direction of what is not going to be included in this, in this, in this relationship.

So, how do you recommend we hold that dichotomy of expressing myself without severing connection, while inviting the other person to maintain themselves and their reality?

Chad Herst 56:51

Yeah. Just even as you say that, I can feel my heart sinking a little bit, because there's this, you know, there's the honest truth that relationships are difficult, and so I'm the last person to make a prescription of how to do something. I'm sort of giving you a very lean framework, but I don't have a clear answer here other than to be humble in our experience of relationship. We are babes in relatedness, all of us. It's hard. Relationships are hard.

Michael Balchan 57:44

I'm thinking about not just the intimate partnership relationships, but like the friendships and work relationships, and so much of belonging is that core need that we have, and also belonging and relatedness are where human authenticity and expression happen, and that's what this whole game is.

Chad Herst 58:06

Well, I think that one of the things that we provide as coaches is that we are great practice partners. We become practice partners for our clients. First and foremost, who we are for our clients is we are on our clients' teams. Our clients know we are there as their teammate and as their support, and it becomes a safe space.

At the same time, you know, I'm going to switch gears on what I'm saying a little bit, which is that there's also the point at which you know our clients can get angry and frustrated with us and disappointed with us, and we are great practice partners for our clients to experiment with telling the truth about their experience with us, and we become a safe container for that to occur, and you know, and it takes a certain something, you know, to not get defensive when a client is upset.

I think that is one of the greatest gifts that we can actually provide is to become practice partners. Yes, we can teach skills. Yes, we can stay with our clients through difficult things. Yes, we can support them and ask really good questions. But can we actually be willing to be projected onto, and to help them find their own language, to find their own truth, so that capacity then builds, and then they can bring that out into the world, whether it's at work or at home.

But I'm not talking about role-playing, I think that is useful and it has its place. But I'm talking about, and I've been talking about the whole time, real relationship. Who we are as coaches is not just a set of skills. Yes, we have skills, but we're human beings with another human being. We are people. We are other people. Our job is to be relational. Did I answer your question, or did I take it in the wrong direction?

Michael Balchan 1:00:36

No, but I love the relational aspect, right? I love the practice space of coaching. And like, it's one of the things I've gotten the most out of in my coaching relationships. And then my relationships with other people who are coaches or have those skills is the capacity to lean into what relationship can look like with friction, with anger, with frustration, with all the things that might make one want to exit,

Chad Herst 1:01:04

yes,

Michael Balchan 1:01:04

and have a degree of goodwill and an opportunity to practice what relatedness can look like and the power of that, and relationships are the hardest thing, right? You've got your intimate partners or that type of relationship. You've got family and friends,

Chad Herst 1:01:22

yeah,

Michael Balchan 1:01:22

which are also relationships that come and go based on a lot of different things,

Chad Herst 1:01:27

yeah.

Michael Balchan 1:01:27

And you can introduce friction, and as you're learning to speak more of who you are, how you show up, or about boundaries. A lot of people talk, "Well, I've got to put boundaries up with this person," and sometimes they are responsive to it. Sometimes they are not, and the relationships evolve. I love that you said you don't have an easy answer to this.

You wish you had an easy answer, but don't buy anyone who claims to have one.

You have to stay in it and keep practicing and keep practicing. A coaching relationship can be a container for practicing. And when you have more and more relationships that don't need to be perfect, you don't need to be acknowledged all the time. No one's going to get it right all the time. But there's a relationship that stays, and that's a beautiful, sacred thing. I've talked about it four times now. I don't want to bury it. All right, how does one hold good space then?

If we want to be in relationship, be a good coach, communicate that sense of I'm with you, we're here, tune into our bodies, what's real for us, and help other people learn to do so. What are some of those skills we might work on practicing to be with somebody?

Chad Herst 1:02:50

I feel like I've been saying that the whole time, and hopefully I've been actually demonstrating it in a way that I'm trying to say in essence, "F the skills." You know, I'm really trying to say, on some level, how do we hold space for another human being? Well, we become another human being too. And yes, we're in a different role as a coach, right? There is a role. I'm not just saying we just hang out and chill with somebody.

I am saying, you know, I think one of the things that I will say that is a basic skill, and it's a basic skill that irks me because it's a skill that very few people actually have, and it's the most fundamental skill that we are taught as coaches. It's curiosity, like genuine curiosity. It's lost on us as a culture. I don't know why.

Maybe it's that our attention span is getting as short as a fish's because we're looking at social media all the time, or maybe we're so fascinated with ourselves. I am certainly fascinated with AI and what's possible with AI. I'm learning to become less relational. I'm even wondering whether I'm going to fall in love with an AI who's going to like me more than my wife does. I just mean that as a joke.

But you know, our curiosity is the thing that if we're going to hold space and we want to hold space, it is curiosity. It's genuine interest. I think I know what you're saying. You know, you said that word, but that word can mean, if I really look at the definition of that word, it can mean five different things. What did you mean by that word? Not in a pointed way, but it's like I want to know. I want to unpack what it is that you're trying to say.

Somebody wrote "compassionate inquiry" in the chat. That's exactly right. If you can hold a compassionate inquiry, a curiosity for what is it that you're actually trying to convey, that is the thing that unpacks. The body wants to heal, but it needs to be related to. Remember, the fundamental thing is connection. That if I can stay curious about what it is that your body and soul are trying to unpack in that very moment, you will find your own healing path.

You will find your own way into the truth of what you're trying to say, or what got severed in your mind and body. But I have to be curious about that, I have to be willing to unpack what you're actually trying to say and what your body is holding simultaneously.

Michael Balchan 1:06:13

If I can stay connected to what your body and soul are trying to unpack in that moment, that's driven by curiosity, a genuine curiosity. We've talked a lot about the breath, the breath and awareness. Two big things. Boom. That's what it boils down to. You use the breath a lot as an instrument in coaching. I guess also as an instrument in staying connected to what is this person's body and soul trying to tell me? Oh well, I've stopped breathing. Perfect. Start breathing again. Tune into my own body.

Would you be open to guiding us in a little body-and-breath meditation practice, wherever we are?

Chad Herst 1:07:08

Yes. Can we open it up to the chat and ask, is that what people are wanting in these last 15 minutes of our time, or what would people like from our time together? I'm happy to do that if that's what's wanted. Could people who are listening and engaged, just write in the chat and see what we get?

Michael Balchan 1:07:38

And then context too. I was thinking we might do five minutes of breath and then coaching. So, folks, if something resonated, Anthony's excited for that too.

Chad Herst 1:08:09

We do have a question in the chat from Michael O'Connell. He says, "Could you perhaps first share how your wife responded to you in that story?" Yeah.

It actually deepened the conversation between the two of us because what has happened over time is at that stage of our relationship, there was much more of me feeling like I needed to perform for the relationship, and what's happened is it's opened up a whole discussion of how do I stay authentic and related in our relationship, and it also brought up a lot about her own insecurity about her value as a woman. Am I beautiful? Do I matter?

And so it actually created a deeper relatedness, but it required us to slow down and actually have the conversation. All right. Should we just do this? Should we do a little bit of breath work? Is that how we want to do it?

Michael Balchan 1:09:28

Yeah. Anthony, Were you wanting to connect for some coaching? Is that a thumbs up? You're still muted.

Anthony 1:09:37

Just a question.

Michael Balchan 1:09:39

Go for it.

Anthony 1:09:40

Can you hear me, Michael? Tremendous job, Chad. Thank you so much. Quick question: Definitely need the book if it's an audiobook. I love it. You said stay in the emotion or stay in the feeling. Well, how can you coach someone who has come out of an environment where certain emotions have been heightened through trauma or through domestic violence? Yes, you want to be able to get through them, but being in anxiety or a state of primal fear is different.

Chad Herst 1:10:24

Anthony, this is such an important question. I mean, I'm so glad you asked it. This isn't what I'm talking about. Staying is an art form, but I will give you the essence of how you work with somebody who is working with real trauma, and I will say I'm not a trauma-informed therapist. It doesn't mean that I don't or haven't worked with trauma. I've been in the healing profession for 30 years, so trauma is something that does come up.

So the word I love as it relates to staying is the word titration. How do we titrate? How do we sip a feeling or emotion rather than gulp it? With titration, we once again remember awareness is the most important thing. If we can bring our awareness to the sensation, we stay with the sensation for only a short time. Usually, it's about three to five seconds, especially if it's trauma-based sensation. Then we have an alternate place to rest the attention.

It could be the hands like the tips of the fingers, or the feet. In other words, if you bring your attention to your hand right now, you'll notice that it doesn't have a lot of unpleasant sensation. It has warmth. Usually, it has some moisture. It has some tingling at the tips of the fingers. It's not an unpleasant place for your clients to rest their attention. So, what you have them do is you have them alternate between the hands and the torso.

Torso is often where we feel most of the sensation. Usually, it's the throat, the chest, or the belly, and it moves around and it can even be behind the eyes. But the bulk of most sensation that we're exploring is in what yoga calls the central body or the central channel.

Most of it is there in and around the heart, so we alternate between hands and chest, or hands and stomach, and we learn how to slowly sip those sensations over periods of time, rather than trying to take them all at once. I will say, Anthony, that what I'm giving you instruction in is a bit of an art form, but here is a useful guide, which is that when you're working with your clients, your eyes need to be attuned to their eyes.

You need to be looking at their facial expression, but particularly around this region of the face, and the reason why is because we have mirror neurons. You understand mirror neurons. So, when our eyes are attuned to their eyes, we can feel in our own bodies what the other person is feeling. Okay, not exactly, but we can kind of feel what they're feeling. All of those micro expressions in their face, our nervous systems are picking up on and then feeling in ourselves.

So, if you start to notice that they're starting to leave their body, or they're getting numb, or they're getting shut down, then the attention needs to move right back into the hands, and then remember I said awareness is the first part, and breath is the second. Then you have them work with the breath. We use the breath to settle the nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is stimulated by the inhale. Parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated by the exhale. Right, exactly. So you do the straw breath.

You blow out through pursed lips, and you lengthen the exhale. If you can help your client exhale for about either twice as long as the inhale, or maybe a little bit less, it's fine. So inhale for a count of five and exhale for a count of seven or eight, or inhale for a count of four and exhale for a count of eight. That really will settle the nervous system. You can experiment with that, but you can count it out.

Once their nervous system is more settled, then you have them come back to the sensations again, sipping them, coming back to the hands, back to the sensations, hands back to the breath. It's a dance, but that's kind of how you work it. At some point, though, and this is the hard part for people who've experienced severe trauma, is that there's a point at which it's like there's this stopping place where it's like I don't think I'm ever going to get past this.

This is how it's going to be for me forever. And if, in your own embodied sense as a coach, a friend, or a support, you can say, "I'm here," then often they can make it to the other side, and there's this "whoof", and often that "whoof" then gives a little bit of space for, "Okay, I actually made it through. I actually have a new resource. I can stay with this." Oh my God, that's a miracle.

That's mainly the miracle for trauma because the trauma is the experience of, "This is too much. I can't handle this," so I keep diverting my attention away from this, which keeps the trauma going over and over and over again.

Anthony 1:16:16

Powerful. Thank you very much. I'm sorry I missed the first half of this interview, but I'll get the copy and the book. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Chad Herst 1:16:26

Thank you. That was fun. Appreciate it.

Anthony 1:16:33

Do we have any other questions?

Michael Balchan 1:16:34

Perfect. One more. If someone else has anything that came up through the session today, curious mostly about applying this to your own life, maybe you struggled with communicating your own sense of self, authentic self-expression, and struggled with holding connection with the other person. Questions about how to apply SENSE, how to apply STEP, and then we will close. Am I unmuted? You can hear me. Yeah.

Chad Herst 1:17:01

You are like, "You can hear us."

Michael Balchan 1:17:02

I got a pop-up. I was like, "Oh no!" But I forgot about the jackhammers. So we've got space, and then we'll close. I do want to get a couple different pieces from you, Chad, and also just a short demonstration what it can look like to slow down and connect to sensation in the body.

Chad Herst 1:17:24

Sure,

Michael Balchan 1:17:25

Timo, welcome.

Timo 1:17:28

Thank you. Timo is what I go by, typically. Hi, Chad. Thanks for being here. I only caught, as with Anthony, I only caught the last about 25 minutes or so, but I really appreciated what you've been saying. The thing that comes to mind for me is that there are times when I am interacting with someone, and you know, it might be a customer service situation, or it might be you know negotiating something, and I feel in some way slighted or not considered, or they discount my perspective.

I've been on a journey throughout most of my adult life in how I respond to this. You know, years ago it was getting completely irate, maybe yelling at them, maybe hanging up, whatever. I respond differently now, and it can still be activating for me.

Chad Herst 1:18:46

Could I pause you for one second?

Timo 1:18:49

yeah.

Chad Herst 1:18:50

Could you, just for a moment, even as you're sharing this little bit of the story of what that's like for you, sort of describe maybe what you're noticing in your body

Timo 1:19:05

as I'm relating the experience. I noticed some tension and energy in my upper chest, a little bit of constriction.

Chad Herst 1:19:19

Yeah. Thank you. But by the way, it's okay if I do this with you.

Timo 1:19:25

Yeah.

Chad Herst 1:19:25

Could you just stay with that for a moment? Just that little bit of constriction there, and you can look down or you can close your eyes, whatever feels comfortable for you. I know eyes are on you, but just see if you can just stay with the actual experience there, and just find a little bit of breath and see what it's like to relate to that part of you that's getting triggered there.

Timo 1:19:53

What I notice is that the energy is shifting up into my throat and like really the top, like kind of behind, underneath my jaw, the muscles right in here. Some of the energy is shifting up into there.

Chad Herst 1:20:07

Yeah. And okay, good. So let's stay with that quality in the throat, and then maybe even give it a little bit of a name. Is that maybe sadness, or is it anger, or is it something else?

Timo 1:20:22

Hmm. Godzilla is what came to mind.

Chad Herst 1:20:30

Godzilla. Yeah, right. See if you can sort of unpack just for a moment. What makes it Godzilla? That's a better way of asking it.

Timo 1:20:45

I think the feeling of not being heard or not being acknowledged and really wanting that, some aspect of that.

Chad Herst 1:20:58

Yes, and see if you can just let that land in the body. What you just said, not being heard and not being acknowledged, creates a kind of a Godzilla effect, like, "Ah," right? And to see how the body is responding now.

Timo 1:21:25

Yeah, I mean, it helps a little bit, but there's still like that need, that desire to be heard and acknowledged.

Chad Herst 1:21:38

Right, and notice that touches into this. I'm acknowledging it, but there's something deeper there. There's like this deeper ache there. It's like, "I'm still needing to be acknowledged, and feeling the ache of not being acknowledged." Yeah, and to see if you can let yourself touch that deep ache. That's the one, right? It's like that's the one that's screaming. "Hear me. See me. Know me. I'm real. I matter," or something. Maybe I'm not matching your language. What's your language there?

Timo 1:22:15

It's definitely about mattering underneath all of that. I mean that's something that I've also, you know, wrestled with as a lot of people have, throughout my adult life and as a child.

Chad Herst 1:22:33

Yes, and then just coming back right to that ache again. We'll just stay here for one more breath, just to acknowledge it, and when you're ready, you can bring this to a close. I'm just curious. Before we do, just what did you get from that little bit of contact that you made?

Timo 1:23:13

Hmm. I'm not sure I can articulate something different or distinctive. I mean, I guess in general, what I take from this is the value of slowing down whenever I notice that, which is something that I've been learning progressively. You know, when I feel activated to slow down, to notice that I'm activated, and not just respond.

Chad Herst 1:23:47

Yeah. If I may say, we had just three minutes of doing it.

You can feel that we're hitting a layer of something, which is, on one level, the first layer is, "I get so irate when I'm dealing with customer service or I'm dealing with somebody and I don't get heard or listened to." The pain of that is the doorway in and then there's the first layer, which is what I call your protectors, these parts of you that are coming out that are making it about the other, and then we get another layer below that, and that's where there's this ache, this not-mattering layer where the deeper work is.

That is where you said, "I'm doing work around that." So you can see that on the surface, that's the tip of the iceberg, the customer service person being a jerk, but at the deeper layers is, "I have this big learning that I'm going through around actually mattering in life and mattering first and foremost to myself. The way I learn how to matter to myself is as I come back to this ache, because this is the thing that I have spent my whole life overriding to belong, to matter to somebody else." But now, first and foremost, I've got to matter to myself, and that means I've got to slow down.

Does that land?

Timo 1:25:24

Yeah. It's reinforcing stuff that I've been wrestling with myself. I can't control other people's behavior, but I can control how I take care of myself and how I respond to myself.

Chad Herst 1:25:38

Yeah. Thank you for being willing. I appreciate it.

Timo 1:25:46

Thank you.

Michael Balchan 1:25:49

Thanks, Timo. Chad, on our way out here, one. Where can folks go to find you, connect with you? The book comes out in September. The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix. I know you've got some book resources. You're building a book launch squad too. If anybody wants to be part of that, but where would you point folks?

Chad Herst 1:26:15

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Speaker 00:00

Okay, here's the main thing. Go to HerstWellness.com, and in there, you'll find a link. If what I'm saying resonates with you, I would love you to be part of my launch team. There's a link at HerstWellness.com to be on my launch team. Basically, it means you click on something, you give me your email, I send you my newsletter. It comes out every two weeks. I don't load you with a bunch of crap, and it gives you access to my book. You get to listen to my book.

I have it in audio form. I have it in written form. The book comes out September 4. If you'd write an Amazon review, that would be amazing. If you want to do deeper work with me, or you want to explore and have a conversation with me, there's also an opportunity on HerstWellness.com to sort of set up a 30-minute consult. I love consults. I don't care if you become a client or not. I love just like that little bit of time that Timo and I had.

That was like five minutes. Imagine what you could get in 30 minutes. That's my joy. I love to do that.

Michael Balchan 1:27:18

We didn't get into it today, but one of the things that was different working with you than other coaches too, outside of the session is like every session felt like three or four sessions worth because there are genuine, practical takeaways where there are guided audios, there are reflection worksheets, and so in the session it isn't just surfacing ideas. It felt like high leverage density of time and was really useful and valuable in learning how to practice some of these inquiries on an individual basis.

So I know we didn't get to everything I was hoping we'd talk about today. I know we're at time, but really just a powerful, unique way to think about coaching relationship and supporting clients, and what the role is in transformation. What's one thing we can do for you as individuals, as a community, outside book launch? You want to spread some ripples out in the world? We're here, ready to spread some ripples out that you'd love to see spread. What's one thing that we can do?

Chad Herst 1:28:21

I think the one thing that you could do that would really touch me is that you spend a few minutes at the end of today connecting with your own ache, and actually let yourself touch it, and relate to it, and relate from it, and not see it as an error, but see it as the doorway back to who you are. That was the kind of ask that I was really looking for.

Michael Balchan 1:29:03

May we connect to that, see it, touch it, not to heal it, if it can ever be healed. Separate conversation, probably not. But to connect to it, treat it as a doorway back to who we are at our essence.

Chad, I know I celebrated you a lot, but I appreciate you sharing who you are in your essence and that demonstration and invitation to us to do the same and appreciate the work you've done, the personal impact, broader impact, and all the folks you've touched in the work and I'm excited to see what's next in store for you with the book.

Chad Herst 1:29:36

Thank you, my friend. Thank you for including me. Thank you all for listening. It's been an honor to be here and to share a little bit about me and what I'm into. Thank you all.

*This transcript was generated using AI speech-to-text and may contain inaccuracies.*