Expand with Laura Poburan

What can you do when you find yourself in a position where a client presents something they’re struggling with that you haven’t come close to resolving within yourself?

At some point we all arrive in this uncomfortable place with a client. At first, we may straight up avoid poking that bear because we feel too unqualified to support our clients through something we clearly haven’t found the answers to. But do you need to resolve everything in your life before helping a client with that same thing?

On the other side of the same coin, what can you do when your client feels so opposite to who you see yourself to be? Can you still powerfully coach someone into a deep transformation when you don’t have the ability to relate to where they are + where they’re trying to go?

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Something that feels really alive within me right now and I've witnessed being mirrored back to me from many of you is this longing for space....

...this craving for presence within that space, and the permission to take up space without feeling guilty for what we're not doing with that time.

There are many layers to this that I have personally been moving through recently that I want to share with you from personal experience in hopes that it will allow you to explore this for yourself.

I think for many of us, the idea of having space in our schedule feels like this far off fantasy. It feels like this dream scape, this poetic reality that 'one day if I work hard enough' space will be my reward. But, I know from personal experience, that is just simply not the case.  From my heart to yours, let this episode land as you need it to.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

We’ve all experienced those periods of painful disinterest, lack of desire to work towards what we say we want and overall discomfort with our present situation without the “energy” we think is required to escape it.

Especially as business owners, it’s easy to fall victim to the pressure to push forward and do something (literally anything) to numb the discomfort of staying where we are… which sometimes just means “doing” unhelpful things like scrolling, unnecessarily working and keeping our minds busy in any way we can.

In this session, we discuss what we call “burnout” and what it really is (and isn’t), why our typical approach to moving through it is temporary at best, ineffective or even harmful at worst and offer some ways you can be with yourself and explore these periods differently.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

The moment you decide as a coach that you are no longer okay skirting along the surface, offering your clients the expected external result that they've come to crave, and you actually want to take them beneath the surface to better understand the inner workings of their mind, the inner workings of their emotions and how they're orienting to the world...curiosity needs to come into play. 

In this episode, we're going to explore curiosity and awareness through the lens of coaching. 

Take this approach on your next coaching interaction and see how it lands...and if you need further support, grab the links below.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

This is a clip from our new workshop inside The Secret Garden. This month we explored strengthening our business through building community. 

In this episode, Laura takes us on a journey through a visualization practice that she guided us through in the workshop. 

This visualization is designed to tap into your value system, what you envision yourself holding experientially for your people, and creating an opportunity to experience what it might look like and feel like from the position of your client.

We recommend setting yourself up in a cozy space for this experience and allowing yourself time to process what comes up for you.

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼Watch the full workshop replay, get personalized support, and experience The Secret Garden for yourself for 14 days free.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

In today's episode, Laura takes us through a journey of common, relatable experiences we have when we're seeking alignment in our coaching business, both internally & externally. 

If you've gone back and forth between striving for growth in your business and wanting to find more internal peace and space within yourself, listen to and save this episode for the future. 

You will go through many phases on your journey, and as Laura gently reminds us in this episode, it's all about how we are with ourselves in these moments of awareness.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

This is a clip from one of our weekly live coaching calls from inside The Secret Garden. Inspired by questions + themes from inside our community, these rooms are designed to guide your exploration of new ways of being, thinking & leading.

This week, we explore what happens within us as we start going deeper and more niched in our work. It can feel like we’re speaking to such a smaller group of people who are willing to raise their hand and admit they “have this problem” (more so than when we just ask them to raise their hand if they want to “lose 5lbs in 5 days”...)

So, how can you speak to the people who have so much shame around having the “problem” that we are proposing we have the solution to? Especially when people are so conditioned to not acknowledge the “negative” for the sake of staying positive? Tune in to this episode to find out.

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼Join our next live weekly coaching call and experience The Secret Garden for yourself for 14 days free. 

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

When it comes to hiring a business mentor, so many of us are used to searching for someone who we think can give us the outcomes we think we need to be successful.

Maybe that's a promise to grow our business, make a certain amount of money, or automate things so that we don't need to be 'in the weeds' and can work on other things or have more free space. We've all experienced these promises in different ways - sometimes they're helpful, and other times we learn that it's not for us.

In this episode, Laura discusses the deeper layer of hiring a business mentor and what to look out for to ensure stability within that coaching container. 

Traditional marketing tactics often make us feel small and deny us the ability to connect with the energy of the person leading the space, but it is crucial that we ask ourselves if we feel safe and seen before saying yes.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

This is a clip from one of our weekly live coaching calls from inside The Secret Garden. Inspired by questions + themes from inside our community, these rooms are designed to guide your exploration of new ways of being, thinking & leading.

This week, we jam on our experiences + learned techniques for supporting clients who put up a stone wall anytime you try to go deep with them. 

There are plenty of clients who are going to struggle opening up because their default is to protect themselves from the perceived threat of vulnerability. Even if they’ve expressed a desire to explore their mindset and emotions more deeply with you, that conscious desire is often overrun by their unconscious desire to feel safe.

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼Join our next live weekly coaching call and experience The Secret Garden for yourself for 14 days free. 

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Today on EXPAND, we're joined by a special guest, Jonah Richman, who is best known for his expertise in compassionate marketing for coaches & wellness practitioners.

Laura & Jonah discuss the ins-and-outs of business trauma and what trends they're seeing in the coaching space when it comes to marketing our services. Jonah shares his insights and how he found his way back to his purpose after feeling jaded by deceptive practices.

You will also learn how to transition from a program or strategy that doesn't feel quite right to something that feels more aligned with your heart.

This conversation not only highlights the intricacies of business-trauma, but also, the uplifting truth that once we notice what doesn't feel good for us, we can create meaningful shifts that change the way we move in our businesses.

To connect with Jonah on Instagram: @jonah.richman 

www.jonahrichman.com

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

In this episode, we take a deeper dive into our bodies ability to constantly take in information from our environment through our senses and how it naturally orients us based on what it perceives to be safe or unsafe. 

When we are in session with clients, it is normal for our stress response to be activated. This activation can sometimes signal to our body that we are under attack, and that we are being threatened. When we can better understand this process within ourselves, we can better notice how the same thing may be happening within our clients and create safety within our coaching structure.

Laura leads us through concepts such as resourcing, the 'window of tolerance' and how meeting our threshold can cause us to react in ways that we normally wouldn't. When we can practice and build the skill of staying present with the experience, we can help our people to learn to do the same. 

This episode is an insightful reminder to stay present and mindful of our stress responses and to be kind and empathetic towards ourselves and our clients.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

The 'patterns' that our clients come to us with and are wanting us to help them change are often the same coping patterns that they're using in their day-to-day life to help them manage their feelings. 

In this episode, Laura leads us through a beautiful lesson that even though there might be an expectation that we want to create change rapidly & efficiently, we actually don't want to try to remove their coping patterns immediately. 

She teaches us that these mechanisms are a really wise adaptation of their body to get their needs met...it's the way that their system has learned to orient to the world in order to keep them feeling safe, taken care of, and to access love or belonging. 

Oftentimes, by demonizing those patterns and trying to shift them away from those patterns too soon, without having resources in place to offer them the same conditions that their coping mechanism was creating for them, we can actually cause more dysregulation and reinforce the pattern that we were trying to shift them away from in the first place.

(You might want to save this one for the future 💫) 

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

As we begin to deepen our coaching practice and invite our clients into conversations that involve emotional awareness or exploration of their thought patterns, it's really important that we also invite in the conversation with ourselves around the line between our scope of practice as a coach and what would be better served in a therapeutic environment. 

This line is going to be different for all of us depending on our formal training and the knowledge/experience that we're coming into the coaching space with.

In this episode, Laura guides us through a few tangible, real-life examples to help us better understand where our limit is and how to create peace of mind within ourselves and our clients.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

Today, we chat through the importance of obtaining consent from clients before delving into deep, unconscious work. As coaches, we cannot assume that just because we desire our clients to move through deeper work, that they are ready and willing to engage in that kind of work.

This episode teaches us how to pre-frame the journey and offers us ways to confirm whether our client feels safe to be engaged in that type of relationship with us, and whether they are ready for it. 

One of the most important things we can look out for as coaches is noticing when a client verbally consents to the work, but their body language may indicate that they are not ready or are uncomfortable with it. Learning to read the subtleties of our clients is one of the greatest tools along our journey.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

Download Power Questions Here 🌹

Have you ever experienced a moment with a client where you offered a solution, idea, or action item...& they agree to give it a try, but somehow you sense that they aren't fully onboard with what you're offering? Perhaps it's something in the tone of their voice, or their facial expression changes suddenly...you might even sense a shift in their body language.

Chances are, if what you offered was pre-planned, you may have been blocked from witnessing the subtleties of your clients' current experience. One of the most difficult shifts we can make as coaches is moving away from pre-planning our coaching sessions and instead, learning to be whole-heartedly present with our clients experiences as they're reflecting them back to us. 

In this episode, Laura offers us the idea that becoming aware ourselves and our clients in these moments and pulling them to the surface is the key to catching patterns that are playing out in many areas of their lives. When we can become present enough and hold them in that experience, we can disarm the power that unconscious pattern has over them. 

With time, we begin to create new patterns, where they can feel safe to look at the discomfort that's coming up, or why they didn't feel comfortable doing the action step that you ask them to do. 

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

In this episode, we explore the concept of spiritual bypassing, a phenomenon that was first introduced in the 1980s by Buddhist teacher John Welwood. 

Throughout this discussion, Laura helps us to better understand the ways in which we might use spiritual practices to avoid facing the emotional undercurrents that are taking place within us. 

& while it's meaningful to embrace spiritual practices in the coaching space, Laura shines a light on how we might be using this to avoid or remove ourselves from our own experiences.

In the exploration of this within ourselves, Laura also speaks into the importance of being emotionally present and holding space for clients in order to build trust and safety, first. She encourages us as coaches and leaders to explore our own emotions so that we can provide safe spaces for our clients and meet them where they are.

Through opening our awareness to this, we get to ask ourselves: "How can I become the space holder, the guide, and the leader that I dream of being by being that for myself first?"

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

In this episode, Laura coaches listeners of the show through questions that they've been coming up against over the last month. 

Today, we cover topics from listeners about their morning routines and how to create an adaptable practice so that they can meet themselves with the demands of their day, regardless of how much time they have. 

We also talked about what it's like to begin a coaching journey when you feel like you're different or you don't fit in with what you see other coaches doing.

Lastly, we chat about regulating our nervous systems in a moment that a client is getting activated in session and the invisible value that our presence has in moments like this.

This is a really beautiful room that Laura holds once per month for listeners just like you to join us in a live setting and receive direct support on exactly what you need.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

This month, Laura guides us through a practice of presence. 

Simple in theory, presence is one of the most challenging states to consistently live inside of. It asks us to learn how to stay WITH the full experience of a moment that would previously cause us to unconsciously react or mentally spiral.

The techniques Laura teaches us in this ritual are ones we can use inconspicuously right in a client session or on a sales call to stay grounded and open...or can be layered together to create a more nourishing ritual that will set us up for inspired creative blocks or longer coaching days.

Find a quiet, gentle space to land as you immerse yourself in this ritual. We hope you enjoy and come back to this anytime you need a breath.

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼 Join The EXPANDfam Community Sessions Live

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

There has been an ongoing conversation around authenticity circulating the greater coaching community. What it means to be authentic, what authenticity looks like in practice, how to build an authentic business, realigning with what feels authentic to us...sound familiar?

In this episode, Laura offers us a beautiful & hard truth around authenticity, vulnerability, and showing ourselves to the world without a calculated outcome. She helps us to better understand when vulnerability is coming from an ego-based, calculated place versus a heart-felt, expansive place that serves both us and others.

Laura also invites us to explore past experiences of vulnerability and to reflect on whether there was a sliver of hoping for something from someone else to feel safe to share...and to practice accessing true vulnerability so that we become a reflection for others that it is safe to honor themselves in that way.

Join The EXPANDfam Community Sessions Live to share your thoughts on this topic and receive support from Laura directly. 

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura

This is a clip from our new workshop this month inside The Secret Garden. In this workshop we explored creating an experience where our unique energy guides our creation. Where we ascend from being a coach to being a leader for our people. Where we create intimacy, connection, potency, and transformation from within.

In this clip Laura leads us through a beautiful discussion on the illusion of control. If you've found yourself in a constant spiral of wanting to 'fix' your clients or have had doubts on your ability to hold your people through transformation - this episode will offer you a perspective on control that you may not have considered.

🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼 Watch the full workshop replay and experience The Secret Garden for yourself for 14 days free.

---

A few beautiful ways to continue journeying with me:

☁️ Read Softer, my free weekly-ish newsletter

💌 Email me if you'd like to connect 1:1

💬 Inquire about mentorship for your team

🛠️ Download My Free Power Questions

xx, Laura