What if coaching as a spiritual practice meant something genuinely transformational — not just for your clients, but for you?
Most coaching frameworks are built on a useful asymmetry: the coach has skills and knowledge; the client has goals and challenges. The coach remains, more or less, the stable professional on one side of the conversation. The client does the changing.
Our understanding of coaching at the Center for Transformational Coaching is fundamentally different. In the Deep Coaching Method™️ — developed by Leon VanderPol over more than two decades and documented in his book A Shift in Being — coaching is not merely a professional service. It is a genuine spiritual practice, one that transforms the coach as profoundly as it does the client. The journey of becoming a Deep Coach is not a course of study in the conventional sense. It is a path of interior development, a discipline of presence, and a form of spiritual growth.
What Makes Coaching a Spiritual Practice?
When we describe coaching as a spiritual practice, we’re pointing to something specific: the quality of inner work required of the coach in order for genuine transformation to occur.
A technique can be learned in a weekend. A framework can be memorized and applied. But the kind of presence that makes Deep Coaching possible cannot be acquired — it must be cultivated. And that cultivation is, in its nature, spiritual.
In A Shift in Being, Leon outlines nine transformative practices at the heart of Deep Coaching. These are not session techniques — they are practices in the fullest sense: disciplines that develop over time, that live between sessions as much as within them, and that gradually reshape the interior life of the coach who commits to them.
Coaching as spiritual practice means anchoring in these disciplines not as session strategies, but as a way of life. And over time, they reshape the interior landscape of the coach in ways that the clients are the direct beneficiaries of.
The Prime Directive: The Guiding Principle of the Spiritual Practice
At the center of Deep Coaching as a spiritual practice is what Leon calls the Prime Directive: “To hold a space which fosters connection with one’s deepest sense of Self and which makes room for the presence and action of Spirit.”
This is the single most important guiding principle of the work. And it is, by definition, a spiritual commitment — not just a professional one.
Upholding the Prime Directive means that the coach’s primary orientation in every session is not toward results, insight, or even transformation. It is toward creating the conditions in which Spirit can move. It is the recognition, held practically and not just philosophically, that we cannot see the full spectrum of what is unfolding within another human being — but nothing is hidden from Spirit. When the coach partners with Spirit in the coaching space, what needs to be known will be made known.
This partnership — what Deep Coaching calls Spiritual Partnering — is one of the five key roles of the Deep Coach, and it is what distinguishes this approach from any model that depends primarily on the coach’s own intelligence and skill.
Anchoring in Deep Presence: The Core Spiritual Discipline
At the center of coaching as spiritual practice is the capacity to be fully here, fully open, and fully available in every coaching moment.
This is not a small thing. In ordinary life, attention is constantly drawn outward — to tasks, to thoughts, to past and future, to performance and evaluation. The mind rarely settles into genuine present-moment awareness. And when it doesn’t, the depth of contact available in a coaching conversation is necessarily limited.
The spiritual practice of the Deep Coach is, in part, the ongoing discipline of returning — again and again — to a quality of presence that is genuinely here. This is cultivated through regular contemplative practice, through deliberate pre-session preparation, through ongoing self-inquiry into one’s own patterns and edges, and through the cultivation of genuine acceptance — of oneself, and of whatever the client brings.
These are not techniques to apply before coaching sessions. They are a way of life. And over time, they reshape the interior landscape of the coach in ways that the clients are the direct beneficiaries of.
The Role of Spiritual Energy in Coaching
In our approach, we teach that coaching at its deepest is not just a conversation — it is an energetic encounter. Both coach and client bring a field into the room. The quality of that field shapes what becomes possible.
When the coach’s energetic field is clear, grounded, and loving — when they have genuinely done the work to arrive in a state of peace and openness — that field becomes part of the coaching container. Clients co-regulate with it. They settle into their own deeper stillness in response to the coach’s. What was inaccessible in a noisier state becomes available.
This is not metaphor. It is something coaches begin to feel directly as their practice develops, and something clients consistently report — often without being able to name exactly what made the difference.
Practice 2 speaks to this directly: “Turning spiritual values into spiritual energy.” The coach who has genuinely embodied their core spiritual values — who is living them, not just aspiring to them — brings a different quality of energy into the room. And that energy is itself a healing agent.
Bringing one’s full, clear, loving presence to every coaching session is the most important service a Deep Coach can offer. And it is a service that requires ongoing spiritual discipline to sustain.
How Both Coach and Client Are Transformed
One of the most remarkable gifts of understanding coaching as spiritual practice is that the transformation is not one-directional.
Yes, clients are transformed by the quality of presence and depth of contact they encounter in Deep Coaching. But coaches who genuinely engage this path are transformed as well — often in profound and lasting ways.
Coaches who practice Deep Coaching over time find their own presence and awareness deepening. The repeated discipline of coming into genuine present-moment contact with another person — of releasing agenda, releasing judgment, genuinely arriving — gradually reshapes the interior life. Their own Personal Gravity — the conditioned patterns that limit their own potential — comes into awareness in ways that allow it to soften and shift. The coach becomes a more conscious version of themselves, not because they’ve worked on themselves in isolation, but because the practice of coaching has been their teacher.
And the work begins to permeate their life beyond the coaching room. Presence, openness, genuine non-judgment, loving awareness — these don’t stay in the session. They become the texture of every relationship, every difficult conversation, every moment of genuine human contact.
This is the gift of coaching as spiritual practice: a path that is genuinely reciprocal, that deepens both the practitioner and the practice with every step taken.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean for coaching to be a spiritual practice? It means that the development required of the coach goes beyond learning techniques or frameworks. It requires genuine interior cultivation — the development of presence, depth of awareness, and the capacity to meet clients at the level of soul. In Deep Coaching, this cultivation is structured around nine transformative practices (outlined in A Shift in Being) that develop the coach’s interior life as much as their professional skills.
Do I need a spiritual background to practice Deep Coaching? No particular background is required — only a genuine commitment to interior development and a willingness to do your own work. Deep Coaching is Spirit-based, not religion-based. As Leon writes, it draws on the spiritual commonalities that all human beings share, without being defined by any particular tradition.
Is this kind of coaching appropriate for corporate or business clients? The International Coaching Federation recognizes the growing importance of presence and whole-person engagement in professional coaching contexts. Yes — the deepest questions about leadership, purpose, and human potential are inherently spiritual, whether or not they’re named that way. A coach who has developed genuine presence, who has worked with their own Personal Gravity, and who can uphold the Prime Directive in a business context will be distinctly effective compared to those working primarily from technique.
How is Deep Coaching different from traditional coach training? Traditional coach training focuses primarily on skills and techniques. Deep Coaching training focuses primarily on the coach’s own development — on cultivating the interior qualities that make genuinely transformational work possible. The nine practices that form the heart of A Shift in Being are all practices of the coach first, and of the coaching relationship second. The skills are taught within that larger context of interior growth.
What does the Deep Coaching Intensive offer coaches seeking this path? Through the Deep Coaching Intensive, coaches develop the presence, soul-level awareness, and spiritual grounding that make truly transformational coaching possible. The curriculum is built directly around the nine practices of A Shift in Being and the five key roles of the Deep Coach, including Spiritual Partnering and upholding the Prime Directive. This ICF-approved training is a genuine path of development — not just a certification program.
The Path That Transforms the Traveler
There is a particular integrity to a coaching path that genuinely transforms the coach. It means the work is not a performance — not a set of techniques deployed from behind a professional persona — but a living practice, grounded in real development and genuine commitment to what is most true.
Coaching as a spiritual practice offers exactly that. A path that grows the coach even as it serves the client. A discipline that deepens both parties even as it deepens the work. And over time, it creates coaches who are genuinely more present, more awake, and more alive — in the coaching room and beyond it.
If this path calls to you, we invite you to explore the Deep Coaching Intensive at the Center for Transformational Coaching. Begin with what transformational coaching really means, and let The Deep Coach Podcast accompany you as you go deeper.