"To learn with a virtuoso, someone who is literally reformulating the limits of coaching,
is a rare and remarkable thing. And is also, an incredible opportunity
for self-improvement and stronger coaching competence."

WHAT GRADUATES SAY

 


“I am a business and personal coach and I use the work I learned through Stuart and Carol Heller with every client that I have.  Whether it's creating awareness with Centered Presence, offering new ways to approach a challenge with the Defending Spirits, or discovering new ways to approach an endeavor with Moving-as-a-Whole, I find this work broad and deep.  At the same time, I found it accessible to use from the very first day I worked with it.


"Their program is a highly nuanced and pragmatic approach to working with the non-verbal.  The practices are simple, powerful and generate immediate results for my clients and myself.  At the same time, there is a lifetime of exploration possible with this material.

The most valuable part of the training was becoming a more astute observer of my own and other’s movement patterns and how these correlate with the results one gets in life.  Beyond that, Stuart and Carol are both delightful human beings to learn from and with. I highly recommend this training for learners who bring a depth of curiosity and passion for deepening their understanding of the human condition.



“My experience working with Stuart and Carol and their team has been profound. From a personal perspective, the work was transformational for me: I was prepared for the experience to change me but was truly amazed at the depth of understanding and knowledge I found hiding within myself. These experiences led me to see with crystal-clarity what was holding me back in certain areas of my life – Ahaa moments x 10!!!
 
“From a coaching perspective, my clients very quickly “get” the models we work with and find it easy to make a physical change in themselves. Clients quickly become comfortable with different “body dispositions” (and their associated moods, energies and language), resulting in changes to both working and personal relationships. They rapidly gain new distinctions around their own behaviour and that of others, creating understanding and resulting in new outcomes.

“As a coach, it is a complete delight to witness the “getting” of it and the speed at which the potential for a different future is understood, and then realised.
 


"The non-verbal learning gives me an edge and something very different to offer my clients which sets  me apart from other coaches in and around my area. Easy to use, simple, and you see and can begin to understand the power of this work instantly. It's transformational.

"If it is any testimony of my belief in this non-verbal work, I am continuing my studies with Stuart Heller, working toward my certification and currently taking the Non-Verbal Emotional Intelligence Webinar, which is tremendous. ”


“Since the completion of The Five Rings Program, I have continued with almost daily movement exercises.  Recently, in my personal life I had to make some very important health and family decisions.  I used exercises that I learned in the program to define the boundaries of each of the issues I faced, make critical decisions about my health and future, open a space where my family, friends and I could share our anxieties and fears, let go of unnecessary stress, and keep myself grounded and centered throughout the process.
 
“I am finding what I learned to be an invaluable support to me, both personally and in my business.  As a result of this work I have also developed and am offering a new seminar series, “Dealing with Difficult People.

"To attempt to describe what I learned about transformational change cannot be easily accomplished using our more familiar verbal language thinking.  With a seemingly simple change in the way we move, the essence of our natural humanness begins to manifest.  Many thanks to you, Carol, Linda the entire staff for your commitment to bring your work to all of us."



"The executives and leaders that I work with are bright, well-ready and very savvy. Already viewed by their bosses and colleagues as highly successful, they look to me to bring them new approaches to take their personal best to the next level."

"This program gave me the foundation to bring them that powerful new way of thinking and operating. In one instance, we uncovered and dealt with a habit that had been previously unknown, so therefore unreachable.

"Even though we've just begun our experiments in the realm of the non-verbal,  my clients are already reporting significant breakthroughs in their performance. And they enjoy stretching with a new way of seeing and moving that's different from what they've done before!"

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Why it is important. 

It addresses why and how the many excellent methods for producing change that are currently taught are not working as well as they “should.”  Said in another way, words alone are often not enough to make the kind of changes we want to and need to make.  Also, multimedia resources can make a tremendous difference in both depth and speed of learning.
 
What it does.

Our Cultivating Excellence Learnware has been specifically designed to be used in the midst of your life, when you really need it.  It complements and supplements verbal methods.  It includes readily accessible movies and mp3, exercises, nano-practices, and written papers that can be combined to effectively address specific concerns and goals.
 
How it works. 

Leveraging the non-verbal offers support to verbal methods by working with the archetypes, energies and forces that sustain them. For Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who has proven that you can build the body and life of your dreams, the key is, “one movement done consciously is worth ten done unconsciously.”  To accomplish this, we work with a systems model of Action. 
 
How you use it with your clients.

You can leverage learning for your clients by using our state-of-the-art Online Learnware Modules.  These carefully crafted movies can be used:

• To elicit responses to clarify the meaning of your client’s requests, stories and desires.

• To make visible and visceral the implications of their words, responses, and actions.

• As exercises to reveal their habits and then to retool them.

• As analogues or simulations of everyday realities as well as abstract thoughts.

• As exercises to stretch their repertoire, enhance perceptions and build capacities.

• To design personally tailored practices for your client.

When speaking or via email your client can tell you exactly where in a particular movie they had their reaction or thoughts.  Knowing what was intended by the particular slides, you can now lead them more effectively to their next step.  Also, you can ask your mentor for clarification in a way that simplifies the process for both you and the client.  See two email examples.

In former times, we always worked with our clients in person.  Currently, and more so in the future, most practitioners coach over the phone and via the internet.  

And given gas prices and the complications of air travel, the idea of professional training that you can do wherever you are and whenever you can schedule the time is becoming more and more attractive.

Because of this and taking advantage of what is now technologically possible, we have completely redesigned our learning system.

As we began to explore this new frontier, we discovered something quite surprising. That is, it is actually possible to teach  difficult to learn yet crucial ideas and practices easier and more effectively in this new medium.  
 
A graduate of our earlier program had a first look at some of the new Learnware modules in a webinar series designed for Newfield.  She reports,
 
“I think I got more out of the subtleties of Samurai Decisiveness (as an example) on the webinar than I did in person!  Using the movies allowed for your articulation of the subtle ways we can observe self and others. Learning the subtleties is what makes this work so powerful...and what makes a great coach.  I feel I know the material in greater depth because of the new format.”

Thirty-five years of training professionals has made it inescapable that experiential learning without learning the basics of the language cannot produce desired and expected skills. 

Because everything that happens during one of the live webinars is also on your online training webpage, you can miss a session without missing anything.  You can work with the material at your own pace.  And since you will have access to these pages for years to come, you can relax about having to get it all - right now.

It is well accepted in business circles that a broad, deep, flexible, and profitable system
must be modular in nature.  By combining the appropriate modules it becomes possible to not only offer “solutions” that produce fast, effective, and authentic results but to be able to upgrade and create new and better support for your clients quickly and easily.

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Instead of assignments, we will find suggestions for experiments – for yourself and with your clients.  Since our goal is to give you immediate skills, it is more important that you explore than write. 

We recommend conversations with your fellow students and mentor coach as a way to foster your learning.

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Because everything that happens during one of the live webinars is also on your online training webpage, you can miss a session without missing anything.  You can work with the material at your own pace.  And since you will have access to these pages for years to come, you can relax about having to get it all - right now.

If you have familiarity with tele-classes, you know that often you can call in a special number and listen to the whole session.  This method is also being used with many webinars where you click a link and go to a website where you can watch a movie of the session.

We are doing something very different – which hopefully will make it much easier to both catch up on what you’ve missed PLUS review the material in your own way.

Beyond giving you a whole new language of distinctions and tools as well as deepening your understanding of the material for yourself, you will also learn how to use our new multimedia movies a.k.a., Learnware Modules, with your clients.  

To this end, we have created a new kind of structure to the web-sessions.  Using the same slides that are used to make the movies, you will be led, step by step, through each module.  Then we will debrief, that is, gather your comments and questions which I will either answer live or write up answers that will be placed on our training webpage.

On the training page, you will find links for each process so that you can go through it in the same way it was delivered at the live session.  Directly under the link for the movie of the module you will find a link for an mp3 file of our discussion. (These will be added within a few days of each session.)

This means that you will not have to find an hour and a half out of your day to catch up – or review.  You can go over the material in small chunks of time.

Also, if you had to miss a session thereby not having the opportunity to voice your comments or questions, you can email them and if your question is personal, we will respond as soon as possible or your question and answer will be added to the training page.  This way you can make your contribution to everyone. 

To help you make your way through the learning you also have your study partners and your mentor coach.

The development of Five Rings Coaching and how to teach it has been central to my mission.  Like many coming of age in the sixties, I “knew” that something very important had to change, both in the society and in our selves.  I was superbly lucky to have been introduced to the ideas and practices that form the foundation of this body of work in my early teens.  Although I did not recognize it yet, my goal was to find, invent, create, and deliver to the mainstream public the same level of skill normally available to the masters.

Traditionally, skill is acquired through repetition.  Tibetan lamas, martial arts masters and professional athletes develop their high levels of skill through millions upon millions of repetitions.

How many are prepared to undergo this process?  Very few.  But how many people need these skills to accomplish their goals, satisfy their heart’s desires, and make this world a better place?  Countless numbers!

In the search for a shorter path that produces real skills and changes, I realized the incalculable importance of several factors: habit, the non-verbal, and the more of yourself.

Instead of focusing just on the goal and your motivation, if you notice, appreciate, and accept your habits, a.k.a., earlier learning and choices, and their natural and unavoidable tendency to resist any attempt to change them, then a whole new path to the goal opens.  And this path is much faster, more effective, and yields more authentic results.

My studies began with the realization that language not only shapes everything, it is a whole person affair.  Therefore, I emphasize the exponential leverage capacity of the non-verbal dimensions of language, mind-set, presence, style, intention and learning. 

It has been said that in the world of words we each live in our own worlds.  At the heart of the non-verbal, we all share the same universe and feelings.  Since unnecessary distinctions (divisions) generate unnecessary problems, we are very careful in our use of the terms “body” and “somatics."

For Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who has proven that you can build the body and life of your dreams, the key is, “one movement done consciously is worth ten done unconsciously.”  The following diagrams illustrate some of what is included in “the more of yourself.” 

 

	Human Systems Action Model		The Five Rings Movement Matrix

             

Another threshold was crossed as I truly accepted that no method, no matter how good could prove successful if it could not reach and be used by the customer.

The first generation of what has become Five Rings Coaching was communicated hands-on in silence with the client lying down, an approach that blended qi healing and yoga visualization with a method similar to what was taught by Dr. Quimby, the teacher of Mary Baker Eddy.  

Next I was asked to create a curriculuum to "bring the body" to transpersonal counseling master’s students at JFK University in Orinda, CA.  Although the language and practices were effective, it was still too far removed from the everyday.

Still at JFKU, I had the opportunity to create an entire master’s degree specialization in Movement Psychology for the first accredited MS program in Clinical Holistic Health Education – one of the grandparents of the coaching profession.  For them I developed some of the core practices you still use today.

In 1988, after ten years teaching and developing graduate curricula, I went out into the field with both corporate and public programs.  I wanted to find out what people really wanted, in their own words, and what would it take for them to feel like they actually got it.  In the autumn of 1989, I met with Fernando Flores and was asked by him to co-lead his new upscale Leadership Program with my Five Rings of Power program.  

In 1991, Julio Olalla and his then partner Rafael Echeverria asked me to create the coaches version of this program for Newfield’s first coaching training.  I attempted to add the non-verbal (and missing) dimension of language to their “ontology of language” coaching.

We continued to travel around the USA and abroad testing and refining the methods and its limits with a very broad audience.

Since 2003, we have been working with the NASA/Goddard SEED program (Systems Engineering and Educational Development) which has the mandate to rapidly develop the next generation of Systems Engineer-Leaders.  Our Applied Human Systems module is an integral part of this program.  To learn more.

One of the biggest obstacles to bringing these missing tools to the mainstream was the seeming tenuous nature of movement learning.  Very few have the non-verbal memory skills for ongoing self-learning.  This is why I took the time to create the Five Rings Operating System DVD wherein all of the basic practices where transformed in movies and papers that could be accessed on one’s computer.

Using this new learning technology, we created the very successful Five Rings Coaching Professional Training with two four-day conferences and a series of tele-classes and assignments. We offered it in 2006-7.

Even though I might have wished it otherwise, I knew that there were several more major obstacles to transform.  Around two years ago, Terrie Lupberger, CEO of Newfield, asked if would lead a tele-call on how to coach with “the body.”  My first internal response was “can’t be done.”  I recognized that voice and realized that therefore I must do it.  To my happy surprise, the feedback was excellent.  People reported that they walked away with skills.

The next step was to lead multiple session tele-courses on various topics.  With this practice and having to lead many preview calls, I was ready to take a further into the world of webinars with two programs entitled, Non-Verbal EQ. 

A normal webinar or internet based seminar involves the participants calling on the phone and signing in to a special website.  This adds the visual dimension of slides.   Since my goal is enduring and deep learning, I decided to add something else to the mix.  The webinars I offered added a special website that the participants could visit in between sessions that contained individual movies of the exercises and concepts.  I felt that this was an important contribution to their learning.

In February 2008, in collaboration with Newfield, we offered the Five Rings Webinar series. First Ground, then Water, then Wind, and we just completed Fire.   I used this program to build and test the final missing pieces to my almost fifty years of study.  Seventy new movies were created that run from 1 to 13 minutes. Very shortly, everything of importance that is on the 5R-OS DVD plus over one hundred new Learnware movies will be available on our subscription-based website.

We recently travelled to Moscow for a three-week marathon of workshops and individual sessions.  Even working through a translator, it was clear that the language of movement is truly universal.  In the next few years, we will develop a Russian language version of our online training.

For thirty years, my primary focus was building and testing the Five Rings Matrix.  That phase is now complete.

Imagine what you can offer your clients now!

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1.  Three Client Case Studies


2.  Learning with Movement


3.  Five Rings Self-Assessment

This assignment does not require a lengthy thesis.  We want to discover what and how you see and work with the language of movement.

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