Kailey Cooper, 

Title:

The Role of Self-Compassion in Health and Wellness Coaching

Abstract:

Self-compassion involves fostering a supportive mindset that encourages individuals to learn from mistakes and treat themselves with kindness. It is a key factor in promoting resilience and improving mental well-being. In the context of health and wellness coaching, self-compassion can benefit both coaches and clients. Coaches can use self-compassion to navigate challenging sessions, while clients can apply it to maintain motivation after setbacks. This project aimed to explore the role of self-compassion in health coaching and its practical implementation. In the first phase, a self-compassion training module for health coaches was developed. During this phase, research was done on what exactly is self-compassion, what research has currently been done on it, and the different strategies one could engage in to practice self-compassion. In the second phase, the module was implemented and evaluated to assess its impact on the effectiveness of health coaching sessions. The results indicated that both clients and coaches benefited from the practice of self-compassion, with clients gaining from its application in overcoming setbacks and coaches using it to recover from challenging sessions.