What Is Exploration Coaching About?

At the heart of “just feet ahead” is the belief that change is never behind us but always up ahead, and though we might not know exactly what’s around the bend, the only way to find out is to continue moving, even if only one step at a time.

Specific issues exploration aids with:

• Life transitions

• Identity questions

• Self-compassion and self-acceptance

• Deepen individuality

• Better understand your personality

• Challenge limiting beliefs

• Counter perfectionistic tendencies

• Develop autonomy and your authentic voice

• Courage to be yourself and follow truth and intuition

• Increase patience and resilience during an increasingly chaotic time

• Break free of loops and patterns that no longer serve you

• Create lasting changes rather than trying out yet another podcast protocol, AI tip, or social media-inspired life hack

How does exploration help:

• Enjoy the pleasure of exploration for its own sake through curiosity and playfulness

• Learn to love the questions rather than seek quick-fix, superficial answers

• Explore options without a rigid predetermined outcome or agenda

• Become more comfortable with uncertainty

• Accept that there is no one right answer or way of being and that total control is an illusion

• Make decisions based on your true values rather than fears or social expectations

• Tap into your unconscious to find creative solutions and a more integrated self

• Make meaningful changes as you remap your path and make it your own rather than follow another’s

• Create a more flexible identity that can adapt to life’s many challenges

• Discover or rediscover parts of yourself you lost touch with or ignored

• Strengthen the muscles necessary to do the hard work of change

• Unlearn and deconstruct harmful internalized messages from oppressive systems - capitalism, patriarchy, White supremacy, high-control religion

We belong in nature - nature does not belong to us. Exploration of self, life, and the world is deepened through an enhanced connection to the natural world of which we are a part.

Specific issues nature aids with:

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Feelings of safety

• Regaining and retaining wholeness, healing, restoration, and joy

• Burnout

• Physical health

• Mind-body connection

• Centering and concentration

• Identity questions

How nature helps:

• Grounding, calming, peaceful while also being untamed, exciting, and pleasurable

• Feeds the soul

• Enriching and engaging the senses

• Regain the sense of awe and wonder from childhood

• A break from being stuck in front of screens all day

• Provides ancient ways of gaining wisdom and insight

• Connect to the source of life and the oneness and interconnectedness of all things

• Enhances exploration and seeing in new ways

• Allows change to take place naturally and slowly without being forced

• Balances action and movement with reflection and contemplation

• Multifaceted - find something new with each experience and unique to each individual

• Phytoncides provide physical health benefits

• Gain perspective on modern, micro concerns

• Not made by humans and cannot be controlled, an important illusion to break

• Comforting yet wild

• Beautiful and ephemeral

Creativity is not limited to making art or inventions but extends to how you approach your entire life and self. Creativity is not merely the icing on life’s cake but is the entire cake.

Specific issues creativity helps with:

• Identity questions

• Self-expression

• New and original solutions to problems

• Exploring options

• Finding freedom

• Getting unstuck from loops, patterns, and habits

• Choosing authenticity over acceptance

How creativity helps:

• Tap into the innate creative power of the human species and discover new parts of yourself and ways of seeing the world

• Be a creator rather than a consumer

• Enhance your ability to process, participate, and express

• Engage with the world, others, and yourself more deeply

• Insight is more liberating when it comes from one’s self

• Facilitates change without forcing it

Beneficial movement is not limited to running or hiking but includes breathing while sitting still, walking slowly, and expressing through use of the body. We discover autonomy as children through movement, and the physical and psychological benefits continue into adulthood.

Specific issues movement helps with:

• Physical health

• Mental and emotional clarity

• Nervous system regulation

• Self-expression

• Personal growth

• Independence and autonomy

• Courage and confidence

How movement helps:

• “Movement is medicine” and “motion is lotion”

• Learn to go beyond your comfort zone

• Aids in exploration of the world and of life and self in general

We are social creatures who need relationships with others, as well as with nature and ourselves. Many issues people face involve interpersonal dynamics on some level, and developing our relationships also creates a stronger sense of self.

Specific issues connection helps with:

• Relationship questions

• Isolation and loneliness

• Identity formation

• Attachment wounds and patterns

• Purpose and meaning

• Develop support systems and a sense of safety

• Express and receive love

• Feelings of worth and belonging

• Nervous system regulation

How connection helps:

• Regain and strengthen your ability to be with self and others

• Allows perspective from constant self analysis that too often spirals into anxiety and worry

• Offsets the great disconnection experienced in modern life that is becoming increasingly virtual and disembodied

• Resist oppressive systems and replace them with true community

• Connection creates avenues to escape feeling directionless and stuck

Change is most significant when it is led by you in a way that leads to wisdom that serves for a lifetime.

Specific issues this helps with:

• Embodied wisdom

• Personal insight

• Self-understanding

• Confidence in one’s full self

• Authenticity

• Value formation

How this helps:

• Knowledge alone is not enough to produce lasting, significant change and cannot be taught by AI or others

• Insight that leads to integration

• Not just conforming to social expectations or selecting from a prepackaged menu of approved options

• Moving beyond short-term, quick-fix life hacks

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: 45-50 minutes on a couch or chair in their office space (possibly with inspirational posters strewn about).

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Just Feet Ahead: You decide how long you want your session to be and where. It can be a favorite trail, coffee shop, your home, virtual, etc. - whatever serves you best for that session. And the location and duration can change from session to session. See the “Structure and Pricing” tab for more details.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: The session ends promptly at time. 

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Just Feet Ahead: I will never schedule someone directly after you, so we can spill over time when needed. The focus is on you, not an assembly line.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: Sometimes you get on a roll just before the session ends and really want to continue while you have momentum but instead have to wait until next week or month to pick back up, with no contact in between sessions.

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Just Feet Ahead: You can almost always extend a session at a reduced rate as well as communicate via email in between sessions.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: The therapist or coach's theoretical orientation dominates the approach to sessions with little room for flexibility, variety, or adapting to the client.

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Just Feet Ahead: I can pull from an eclectic bag of approaches and options as desired. At heart I am a humanistic, person-centered practitioner who uses an existential lens as my foundation on which I layer tools from various theoretical orientations, such as IFS, CBT, and DBT, coupled with the power of nature, art, writing, sound, movement, mindfulness, or meditation to create sessions truly tailored to your needs and personality.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: Often life coaches will focus almost solely on external success, such as climbing the corporate ladder, and behavior modification, and therapists might adopt an overly medical and pathologizing stance.

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Just Feet Ahead: Our focus is on identity and values that lead to your internal transformation, which then results in changes to your external world that reflect who you are and what you’re actually seeking, in a way that honors your full self and not solely external action, though that is also involved. A humanistic and relational approach replaces a diagnoses or profit focus, though referrals can be made for issues that might require medication or deeper trauma work.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: Too often the therapist or coach tells you what to do and hijacks the decision-making process, sometimes unintentionally though other times a pattern they develop as the “expert.”

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Just Feet Ahead: Ultimately you are the expert on yourself, even when you feel unsure, so we will work together to co-create sessions that lead to a sustainable life and decisions that are self-led beyond our time together.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: Therapy often involves a long-term plan based on excavating your past and addressing specific traumas, while coaching tends to act as though the past doesn’t exist

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Just Feet Ahead: We will first seek to remove immediate barriers to growth and only address the past if desired - but not required. My approach is trauma-informed but not necessarily trauma-focused. If that's a place you want to go together, we can. Or I can refer you to a trauma specialist if we feel that's what's needed for growth and change.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: Too often therapists can be detached and distant, while coaches come across as slick or arrogant.

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Just Feet Ahead: I will always do my best to be a genuine human being by being open, interpersonal, transparent, humorous, empathetic, real, and honest.

Typical Therapy or Coaching Approach: Even without intending to, many therapists and coaches position themselves as the "expert".

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Just Feet Ahead: My belief is that nature, art, movement, and self guide the way, and you are the expert on yourself. My role is to offer unconditional acceptance, compassion, and a perspective on yourself that is often difficult to achieve from within alone. There is nothing you can do or say that will shock or offend me, and I know the incredible power of being seen and accepted exactly as you are, of being met with curiosity and empathy rather than judgment. I enjoy fumbling around with clients, getting to know you as we try to fit the puzzle pieces together to form a picture of you and your life that feels genuine.