When individuals undergo core challenges and need clarity and support to move forward, an integrative life coach is a guide they can turn to for help.
In this guide, you’ll learn about everything you need to become an integrative life coach, including:
- What integrative life coaching means
- How it’s different from the traditional life coaching method
- How to become an integrative life coach
- Integrative life coaching certifications
What is an Integrated Life Coach?
An integrative life coach is a professional who helps individuals achieve balance in their holistic well-being.
As a guide giving integrative life coaching support, you use several personal development strategies and modalities to help your clients find the clarity and fulfillment they need in different aspects of life, including mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health.
What is the Integrative Coaching Method?
Source: Integrative Wellness Academy
Integrative life coaching is a comprehensive approach using different transformative techniques to enhance personal growth.
“Integrative” means combining more than one thing to form an effective system. The integrative life coaching model uses various healing modalities to achieve holistic growth in every area of life. These modalities and techniques include:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a psychological approach that helps your coaching clients identify negative thought patterns and harmful habits and develop effective coping mechanisms to improve their overall well-being.
Integrative Breathwork
Integrative breathwork is a holistic approach that enables individuals to release distorted thoughts, psychological trauma, and unresolved emotions through conscious breathing techniques.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is another method you can use as an integrative life coach to understand thought processes and reprogram negative thoughts in an individual’s life to overcome limiting beliefs and enhance self-improvement.
Positive Psychology
Positive psychology is another technique in the coaching toolbox that enables individuals to use positive thoughts and actions, such as identifying strengths, cultivating a growth mindset, and showing gratitude to create lasting changes and have fulfilling lives.
Mindfulness Practices
Integrative life coaching uses mindfulness practices like meditation and journaling to help clients achieve meaningful goals by creating a solid sense of self-awareness, focus, mental clarity, and self-discovery.
Enneagram
The Enneagram is an effective system for understanding the personality of a coaching client based on the nine personality types. This system guides integrative life coaches and their clients toward insights for personalized solutions.
By providing your clients with different effective strategies tailored to their needs, you can help them overcome their issues and limitations and create meaningful changes in their lives.
Integrative Wellness Coaching vs Traditional Life Coaching
Traditional and integrative life coaching both help clients achieve fulfillment in their lives; however, their approaches differ.
Traditional life coaching focuses on goal-setting and creating action plans to achieve specific goals. Life coaches focus on clients’ issues and devise effective strategies to achieve these goals and improve their overall well-being.
Integrative wellness coaching, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive form of life coaching. Like manifestation coaching, it takes a holistic method that sometimes shows that what a client believes to be “the issue” is, in fact, not the root problem. Holistic life coaches are not fixated on achieving a “goal.” Instead, they employ practices that integrate all areas of a client’s life so that they can solve the main problem from the inside out and, in turn, enhance their health and well-being.
How to Become an Integrative Life Coach
Becoming an integrative life coach doesn’t have to be a complicated journey. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to become an integrative life coach:
1. Acquire the Knowledge
To start an integrative life coaching business, you need to understand fundamental coaching principles, human psychology, and diverse holistic wellness practices. Practical experience is also essential.
You can learn through volunteer training, coaching communities, mastermind programs, or accredited certification programs. These coaching resources will also help you be more efficient.
2. Plan Your Business
It’s important to first plan instead of launching straight into coaching because you should treat your career as a professional and profitable venture if you don’t intend to offer volunteer services.
Start by mapping out a business strategy. Clarify your mission, goals, target audience, and marketing plan.
3. Start Your Coaching Practice
Next, you must create coaching packages through which people can work with you. Here are some free coaching package templates to get you started.
You’ll also need systems to simplify and streamline your business processes, including:
- Services landing page
- Invoicing and payment processing
- Contracts and surveys
- Onboarding and client management
- Scheduling
- Client nurturing and coaching sessions
- Instant messaging
- Client notes feature
Using a one-stop solution like Paperbell, you can create your coaching packages and business systems. It’s an all-in-one software tool designed for coaches to run productive businesses.
4. Market your offers
Once your offers are ready, it’s time to promote them. Getting coaching clients and qualified leads for your business requires effective marketing.
You can use marketing strategies such as blogging, Pinterest marketing, expert features, or collaboration with other coaches and niche experts on social media and community forums.
Integrative Life Coaching Certifications
While getting a certification is not compulsory to become an integrative life coach, it can boost your credibility in your industry.
Here’s a list of credible training programs accredited by reputable organizations in the coaching industry, like the International Coach Federation (ICF).
Professional Certified Coach Program by Institute for Life Coach Training
This intensive ICF-accredited life coaching program equips you with resources and techniques to become a traditional and integrative life coach. It takes 1.5 to 2 years to complete and costs $7700. By the end of this training, you’ll earn a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) certification.
Integrative Life Coaching (ILC) by Integrative Wellness Academy Coaching
This self-paced course by Integrative Wellness Academy Coaching will give you the education and skills to become an integrative life coach. Although it has not received ICF accreditation yet, it has an in-depth curriculum about holistic coaching that covers mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being. It takes about six months to complete and costs $1200. After completion, you will earn a Master Practitioner of Integrative Life Coaching (MILC) certification.
Holistic Coach Certification Program by Holistic Coach Training Institute
The Holistic Coach Certification Program is another comprehensive, ICF-accredited program that can help you become a certified holistic (aka integrative) coach. This training costs $3850 on outright payment, or $350 every month for 13 months. It also has an advanced level (which costs the same amount) and a mentorship program. By the end of this program, you’ll earn a Holistic Coach Certification and an ICF-Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential.
CBT Integrative Wellness Life Coach-Accredited Certificate
This integrative life coaching diploma, created by Patrick Howell and accredited by the Coaching Studies Academy (CSA), is a self-paced course that costs only $10.99. Upon completion, you’ll earn a CSA-accredited certificate. This is animation representation training (ART) for visual and auditory learners.
Launch Your Integrative Life Coaching Career
In a world where uncertainty, stress, depression, and burnout are all too common, becoming an integrative coach—one who uses a transformative approach to help clients achieve personal growth in all spheres of life—is essential.You’ll need systems to run your business smoothly. With Paperbell, you can do everything in one place—from creating your coaching packages to receiving payment, scheduling sessions, and messaging clients. Get started with a FREE Paperbell account.
