An in-depth, transformative online course

What are your options when a chronic illness, pain and/or disability have all but eliminated your previous work, function, recreation, income and so much more?

This course will support you when you are in dire need of renewed motivation and discovering alternative avenues of creativity, self-esteem, work and future direction.

Among many other things, you will learn:
• What real self-validation is
• The many ways in which your specific condition impacts on your life
• The wide range of work and employment options that can still be your
share and provide you with income
• The importance of and means to emotional expression
• To re-invent your creative self
• To set and achieve goals in the context of your circumstances
• To recognize and access the life of the soul

Length: 10 Modules
**Duration: ** 10 Weeks
Purchase Fee: $ US 120 *****
Category: Transformative online course

pdf documents - audio recordings - worksheets

***** please note that this is a once-off payment – there will be no additional charges

A fully-facilitated, transformative online program

How can a high quality of life be restored and re-established when much of what before constituted quality of your life has been lost due to a chronic illness, pain and/or disability?

Your life purpose, your values, beliefs and personal needs are just some of your unique dynamics that get severely challenged and need caring attention.

This very comprehensive, in-depth program, based on the internationally-certified New Insights™ Program, will guide you along the powerful aspects of your personal foundation.

Among many other things, you will learn:
• How to set goals within the conditions of your circumstances
• To identify your beliefs, and how to design supporting beliefs
• To discover your highest values and how to live in alignment with them
• What taking responsibility really means
• Recognize and meet your most important needs
• How only you are in charge of the quality of your life
• To discover and formulate your own, individual Life Purpose

Length: 12 Modules
Duration: 12 Weeks
Purchase Fee: $ US 250 *
Category: Facilitated transformative program

pdf documents - audio recordings - worksheets - email consultations

• please note that this is a once-off payment – there will be no additional charges

When, in our search for insights to support us in the challenge of living with a chronic health condition, we consider possible spiritual views, we soon encounter the concept of karma.

Now, karma is a multi-layered and complex cosmic dynamic, and in our current state of consciousness we can only hope to get superficial and very limited glimpses into its workings. The idea of cause and effect is one example of such a limited understanding, which says more about the nature of our consciousness than it says about karma.

Workings from a ‘past’

In that context, it is sometimes implied that a current disposition, affliction, illness or disability would be the result of, or even a punishment for actions, behavior and choices of previous life or lives.

Apart from the danger of adding yet more shame and guilt to the illness experience, and therefore being counterproductive to healing, it would be erroneous to think that the Law of Karma is about punishment. Karma will look for renewal, evolution and balance. In this wisdom, a physical or mental illness in this earthly life would allow the individuality to eliminate that which otherwise would hold him back in the whole of his development.

But there are other dynamics at play also.

A deed of love

It is possible, for example, that in preparation of one’s earthly life, one may have offered to take on some part of the karmic debt of another person, or even to take on something of the karma of the world. To take on karma that is not one’s own, is a profound deed of love.

Future potential

Next, in considering possible karmic dynamics at work in the case of a chronic health condition, one aspect remains as yet unattended; one that would deserve more attention than it is currently awarded. This is the development of the future potential within the individual’s deepest essence as a result of living with and inwardly overcoming a chronic affliction.

When confronted with circumstances and deprivations that cannot be changed, you are asked to change yourself. In this, there is a reciprocal relationship between the severity of your restraints and limitations and the caliber of strengths, insights and wisdom that can be developed as a matter of inner transformation .

Right here, it might be helpful to distinguish between karma and destiny. Whereas the karma with which you enter this world is a given, your destiny is not. You create your destiny by what you do with your karma.

In conclusion, I just want to refer back to what was presented as possible karmic dynamics.

Illness does not always have a karmic foundation. Sometimes prolonged damaging behaviours manifest eventually as a physical dis-ease. Sometimes traumatic (childhood) experiences move ‘underground’, so to speak, to later re- emerge symptomatically. And sometimes ‘a sore foot is just a sore foot’: we live in complex organic bodies that get exhausted, get sick, become frail and old. Just so that we don’t get too attached to this precious, yet transcending cloak.

Usually we equate ‘healing’ with ‘cure’ or with eliminating the disease. This can, however, be cause for great anxiety, pressure and feelings of failure when such ‘healing’ does not take place. In the case of many chronic diseases and in the case of disabilities, for example, the concept of ‘healing’ cannot be limited to a preconceived result. Here, we would do well to consider that living with one’s condition in a courageous, dignified and graceful manner also represents a high degree of healing. And for this, an entirely different kind of support is needed.

With this in mind, Heart and Soul Coaching authored a short book, as an emotional guide for those whose life is themed by a chronic health condition. The Amazon link to “This Strange Land” – a Reluctant Pilgrimage cannot be included here, but below you will find a collection of quotes from the story that takes you, the unwanting traveler, through the strange realm where you never thought you would find yourself.

The very things that make us human are not to be found in our biology in the first place. When our biology falters and fails us, we can either collapse with it or access from within ourselves a strength, a vitality, and a sense of meaning that surpass our mere body.

For you, as for each of us, there is a place you would rather be. But healing is found in making the best of where you are.

Your shadow is not here to bring darkness, but to allow you to find your light behind it.

When themed by a chronic health condition, your life, this brief passage between two Oceans of Light, exists in the vast space that separates what you want from what you can. Yet it is in that often barren, bleak space where you can develop your greatest strengths, insights and wisdom.

The fate of chronic illness is reserved for only those who have it within them to bear the highest task a human being can possibly bear: to create meaning and purpose and light when they appear to be missing most.

Although you may not survive this passage, healing can be found, because healing means becoming whole, even if your body, that transient cloak, falls away.

Before this is over, you will learn that love is not a feeling in the first place, but a force that is accessible at any time.

Your heart will discover that the abandoned, the castaways, and the scatterlings are in reality the warriors and the mighty. As are you.

Here it is for you to be your worst self or your best self. Please do not ever doubt your strength and abilities. This may not be the life you expected, certainly not the life you would have chosen, and yet it is yours. Not because you do not deserve any better, but because you are the only one in the world who can make something of it and, in so doing, realize your life’s purpose.

In your own unique way, you carry your wound in this life. Always remember that it has found you not to destroy you and keep you from what you wish to become, but to destroy your illusions and push you into who you really are.

Is it possible to say that your illness has not taken away your life’s meaning, but that it is the very purpose of your life right now, and that meaning is created by how you will live with your condition?

Maybe your ‘loss of self’ is not an end result, but the first step in the search for your real identity?

What makes us really human is not our biology, neither is it to be measured by performance and achievement, but by how we ennoble our existence in the face of deprivation and suffering.

As only ploughed and fallow earth in the midst of winter can receive new seed and give it life, maybe so your psyche and your sense of who you are, need to be broken up and surrendered before who you truly are, can be given life?

Shadows are caused by the light behind them. And so, your capacity for suffering intensely reflects also your capacity to love intensely.

Suffering is a formative force in the universe, as are light and love.

The limitations and restraints you are burdened with matter not, but it is in your response to them where you can develop your highest values.

Maybe, in a way that you cannot right now perceive, this illness has brought you into the very place you actually need to be: your ‘Soul’s Waiting Room’?

Surrender is not what we usually consider it to be: giving up or showing defeat. Surrender is the voluntary stepping back, putting yourself out of the way and defusing your inner conflict so that a space is created in which another impulse can enter.

This can be considered one of the deepest mysteries of human existence: to transcend physical life itself by finding meaning when it appears to be missing most.

This could be a less well-known process of recovery: the transformation of what at first is experienced as being without hope, without a next step, and without an imaginable solution into a new and higher expression of the conflict.

In the vast universe that surrounds us, there are nebulas and enormous areas without clear form. These are realms that exist between being and non-being. And it is in these nebulas that stars are born. They are like cosmic incubators, shining with brilliant light, yet they have no substance of their own. Likewise, it is within your seemingly formless experiences where your stars are born.

Your strength does not come from what you can do, but from overcoming what you thought you couldn’t.

Did your sorrow, in some mysterious manner, perhaps refine and strengthen everything that is best in you?

Fate has pushed you away from the shore: the end of the world as you know it. But we know that no person who feared losing sight of the shore ever discovered new worlds.

This then, is the essence of your journey through this Strange Land – the ordinary is lost so that the extraordinary may emerge.

Arjan Bogaers

‘This Strange Land’ © ISBN 978-0-620-90324-0 (e-book)

Chronic Disease vs. Chronic Illness

The professional support offered by Heart and Soul Coaching recognizes and adheres to the distinction between the concepts ‘chronic disease’ and ‘chronic illness’.

Chronic Disease

Chronic Disease refers to the pathology of the condition, based on the biomedical disease classification. Diabetes, asthma and clinical depression are just three examples of the many chronic diseases that exist. In this approach we rely on the clinically-agreed and universal classification.

Each disease has its associated signature and symptoms. Symptoms, in turn, can be mild, medium and severe.

Our coaching support for chronic disease consists of evaluating your symptoms and all the contributing factors that may be involved. Next, together we will design and implement your individual care support to help you to best manage your condition on a daily basis. Your individual program could include certain lifestyle changes, dietary considerations, adherence to beneficial therapies and medications, setting up your support framework, a workable activity / rest routine, and so on.

If you find that this is your need, Heart and Soul Coaching offers a comprehensive, professionally-accredited and fully-facilitated coaching program. With unlimited consultations, this in-depth support of 4 – 6 months will assist you in integrating supportive and beneficial practices in your life.

Chronic Illness

Chronis Illness is the term used for your personal experience of living with your disease.

So on the one hand, there is your actual disease, as explained above. Next, there is your personal experience of living with your disease.

Your reality of living with your disease is defined by how you experience living with your condition, and this experience is mostly evident in your emotional and psychological life. Thus, the chronic illness experience can vary enormously between many individuals who have the same chronic disease.

Your personal experience of living with your disease is determined by many factors:

The severity of your symptoms. This includes the degree of pain, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, and so on, as well as the random and unpredictable behaviour of your symptoms.

The degree to which your symptoms impact your function in the areas in your life: professional, personal, social and financial. The more your symptoms negatively affect your function, the more distressed you feel.

The losses suffered as a result of your disease. These include the losses of ‘everything that was’, but also of ‘everything that could have been’. In addition, when a disease is progressive, we talk of so-called ‘infinite losses’: the continued process of gradually losing more and more function and independence.

Social stigma. It is a sad fact that certain conditions carry a high degree of negative social judgment. For example, there is compassion for those living with, say, chronic migraines or asthma, whilst few will have similar understanding and compassion for mental conditions, such as BPD or Depression. Negative social judgment usually filters through into our own negative self-judgment.

Your own ideas and opinions about your disease. It is possible that you perceive your condition as an enemy in your life, something that needs to be eradicated. Or you could find that having your disease is a sign of weakness or failure. Another possibility is that you are so attached to a certain self-image, that your disease and its associated symptoms and need for care make you feel useless. Any manner of negative self-judgment exacerbates your suffering, isolation, despair and distress, to the point where you can get stuck in depression and anger.

Your ability to manage your disease. The better you adapt to your changed reality and the better you handle your disease and its associated needs for care and self-management, the more empowered, in control and confident you will feel.

Your resilience. Some people are by nature more resilient than others. They have a generally positive attitude, they meet their challenges with hope and resolve and they will focus on what they can do, instead of getting stuck in what they cannot Like most other personal qualities, however, resilience can be developed.

Your support system / team. Any burden in life becomes bearable when it is carried by many. So too with a chronic disease. Support is an essential aspect of positive coping, and support is enhanced when you expand your support team. Friends, family members, coach, therapists, medical professionals, online support groups – the list is long and varied. For your emotional and psychological well-being, it is necessary that you hand over the things you cannot do, so that you can focus on the things you can do.

As you can see, any and all of the above issues are potentially complex and delicate. Then again, all of the above issues can be taken hold of, learnt, developed, and managed, so that it is possible for you to live a life of renewed quality and purpose within the context of your condition.

The coaching support that meets all the challenges and needs associated with your chronic illness experience can be found in:

The in-depth and beautiful ‘This Strange Land’© email workshop, and/or

The short and to-the-point ‘My Life Purpose’ email workshop, and/or

By means of a series of email consultations.

Heart and Soul offers a free and detailed intake procedure.

Living with chronic illness / disease is not just an inconvenience or a temporary interruption. It is a life-changing event that has a deep emotional and psychological impact, the burdens and demands of which cannot possibly be underestimated. To allow yourself the assistance of this coaching would be a major ingredient in building your support, compassion and coping skills.

When the question of and search for the concept of a life purpose or meaning of life first appeared in human consciousness, answers were found mostly in the religious sphere. This implied that there was a divine design to creation, and that the human being had a place in that creation, and consequently had a duty associated with that position.

Later, freedom in thinking was expressed in philosophy, which offered a counterpoint to religious dogma. In philosophy, everything was questioned, even if there was a meaning to life at all.

Next, existential psychology brought the concept of Life Purpose into the realm of the individual person. The question: “Why are we here?” has become: “Why am I here?”

Each potential development in consciousness needs a measure of resistance to strengthen its existence. In this time, in the individual’s deep need for knowing why s/he is here, we encounter the resistance presented by natural science.

Through natural science we are told that everything in the entire universe, including the human being, exists as a matter of chance and natural selection. By definition, in a system of chance, in which elements enter and depart at random, there is no aim and hence no purpose, except a purpose that is determined by the requirements of that system, which is not purpose really, but compulsion.

Yet we see that for the human being, meaninglessness is a condition which our mind and soul find quite intolerable. As a result, a deep subconscious emptiness is experienced, leading to boredom, depression, and neurosis.

In religion and philosophy, a certain given with regards to life’s meaning was still expected and assumed. With bringing the search into individual consciousness, however, we discover that each person is asked to decide on and create her/his life purpose.

In that arduous journey, we are likely to lose our way at least once in this life. And although indications are looked for in various spiritual approaches, they are ever entirely satisfactory.

Neither are the many quick-fix workshops these days, one-sided in their insistence that all you need is to discover your passion and talents and express them in your vocation or other worldly actions.

• Is life purpose only expressed in what you do?

• How do you get to know your life purpose?

• How can life have meaning, when it is so vulnerable and subject to apparently random accidents, sickness, and death?

• Is there such a thing as individual destiny, or are we mostly the result of environmental influences?

• What about the limitations and burdens put on those who suffer from serious health conditions or disabilities? How ‘free to create’ are they?

These questions and many more will be explored, reflected on and worked through during the in-depth and fully-facilitated email coaching program called ‘My Life Purpose’. Offered by Heart and Soul Coaching, it consists of five Sessions, each with its reflections, themes, and associated questions. This is an interactive workshop, in that you will actively explore and work with your own values, your truths and, in the end, your unique life purpose through the ideas, tasks, and questions provided.

“Do not ever doubt your strength and abilities. This may not be the life you expected, certainly not the life you would have chosen, and yet it is yours. Not because you do not deserve any better, but because you are the only one in the world who can make something of it and, in so doing, realize your life’s purpose.” ‘This Strange Land’© – a Reluctant Pilgrimage Arjan Bogaers

Many of us are familiar with the definition of health as it is proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO): “The complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Naturally, we need to understand this statement in the context of the WHO’s constitution and associated politics and legislation.

But to make this view a bit more personal: how many people do you know to whom “ complete physical, mental and … etc” applies?

How realistic and people-friendly is a definition of health that excludes most of humanity, most of the time?

Definitions can bring clarity and common understanding, but standardizing fluid and complex life issues can also be very limiting and lead to rather one-sided evaluations.

On a personal note: the chronic pain and disability associated with lower spinal damage, has me walk with sticks and work from my bed most days. I am no longer the person I was, nor am I the person I once hoped I would be. And yet, I am also healthy.

And so it is with you. Whatever the condition that makes your life an exercise in perseverance, courage, giving up and trying again, you are not your illness, you have it.

Within the person who aches, grieves, falls down, crawls up and goes on, there resides a healthy human being.

No matter your trials, you are always a whole person.

The professional support offered by Heart and Soul Coaching recognizes and adheres to the distinction between the concepts ‘chronic disease’ and ‘chronic illness’.

Chronic Disease refers to the pathology of the condition, based on the biomedical disease classification. Diabetes, asthma and clinical depression are just three examples of the many chronic diseases that exist.

Chronis Illness is the term used for your personal experience of living with your disease.

Depending on your need, coaching support for a chronic health condition and/or disability, consists of two main aspects:

1. Evaluating your symptoms and all the contributing factors that may be involved. Next, together we will design and implement your individual care framework to help you to best manage your condition on a daily basis. Your individual program could include certain lifestyle changes, dietary considerations, adherence to beneficial therapies and medications, setting up your support framework, a workable activity / rest routine, inventing new and stimulating activities, and so on. We can call this Structural Support.

2. Addressing and working with your associated feelings of loss, grief, frustration, depression, anxiety and more, through sharing, therapeutic writing, creative activities and compassionate interactions. We can call this Emotional Support.

Few events challenge all areas of life as does the entry of a chronic illness and/or disability. Not only does the entire background in terms of your work, your finances, future vision, and your personal relationships and roles come crashing down, and your very sense of self and of your life purpose is threatened.

As you find yourself like a lost traveller in a strange land, many deeply upsetting emotional and psychological processes take place whilst you try to find your way.

In all of this, eventually you are emotionally and psychologically ready to map out a new direction to your life. Questions relating to your life purpose and meaning which were at first overwhelming, now begin to take on a more definite shape: ‘What is still possible for me?’, ‘How can I still express my values?’ and ‘How can I still find enjoyment?’ In other words: Who can I be?

Much of the values, beliefs, expectations, and ambitions that provided your inner foundation and sense of purpose before, may have vanished. And so it has fallen to you to reformat and re-establish those concepts and inner foundation.

Living a life of quality, function and relative enjoyment within the reality of a chronic condition does not request, but demands severe adjustments in just about all areas of your life.

The number of changes that are needed, as well as their profound impact can be very overwhelming. Given your already limited energy, possible pain and your emotional distress, it is likely that most of your time and stamina, such as it is, are spent on making it through the day and tending to the most necessary chores and tasks. As a result, you may find it daunting, if not plain impossible to know even where to begin, how to find the relevant information, assessing recommendations, and how to introduce changes and maintain them.

This is where you need experienced assistance and caring attention. And this is exactly what Heart and Soul Coaching is equipped to provide.

What’s more, the convenient and encrypted email format of the consultations, workshops, programs and resources will allow you to engage safely in this coaching without the pressure of travel, scheduled appointments, and real-time video sessions.

Now you can have your own, in-house coach whenever you need him.

A chronic health condition and its associated symptoms and resulting losses inevitably lead to profound and fundamental emotional experiences. Loss of function, of independence, self-image, personal and professional roles, and loss of what was once expected of a future, just to name a few, have severe emotional consequences.

Especially when the daily burden of a disease is exacerbated by chronic pain, as is the case with migraines, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and neurological ailments, the person experiences what is known as emotional overwhelm in grief, anxiety, depression, anger despair and loneliness.

For reasons that are too numerous to elaborate on in the context of this brief article, chronic disease sufferers have little opportunities to express their emotional experiences in current clinical settings. Especially in this time, when real-time, face-to-face consultations are subject to restrictions, the needs for emotional expression are insufficiently provided for.

This, while it has been well researched and documented that people who are able, with appropriate support, to establish and maintain a good level of emotional well-being, are highly motivated and committed to on-going positive coping methods, effective self-management and adherence to medication, lifestyle and self-compassion regimen, with significant benefits to their physical well-being.

There is a currently a need for good-quality, accessible and affordable emotional support by means of user-friendly, online options, such as telephonic / video / email counselling, therapeutic practices such as facilitated therapeutic writing, and a range of facilitated (as opposed to self-help ! ) emotional wellness and resilience programs.

In the aim to accommodate the needs and limitations experienced by people living with a chronic health condition, Heart and Soul Coaching offers convenient and immediately accessible email coaching. Professionally-accredited and fully-facilitated, in-depth coaching programs, confidential email consultations or facilitated therapeutic writing and/or creative exercises are just some ways in which you can enjoy sensitive and compassionate guided assistance in the emotional distresses you might experience as the result of your changed life.

As part of the struggle with the fundamental and profound changes as a result of living with a chronic health condition, we encounter the sometimes-overwhelming feelings of failure, shame, self-blame and weakness. Instead of acknowledging the courage, perseverance and strength it takes to carry the fate of a chronic health condition and all its symptoms and demands, we can get trapped in the dark illusion that a ‘sick’ person is ‘less than’ or not whole.

These inner battles cannot possibly be underestimated. They are furthermore unknown to the people around us, since we hide them in our quiet, solitary hours.

Yet, would you negatively judge anyone else whose days are scarred by a chronic illness? Would you find them to be weak or a failure?

Can you be as understanding and compassionate toward yourself as you would be to others?

The approach of self-compassion is derived from Buddhist philosophy and re-conceptualised in a secular manner to refer to the compassion expressed towards the self when experiencing suffering, whether it be due to circumstances beyond your control or within your control.

We could summarize self-compassion ‘as taking a kind, accepting, and non-judgmental stance towards yourself in times of pain and difficulty.’

There are three recognised components of self-compassion that work togther to promote a kind rather than a critical response to your limitations, fatigue, emotional/psychological instability as a result of your chronic health condition. From this you will understand that self-compassion is not a matter of simply ‘having it or not having it’; it is a skill that you can develop.

1. Self-kindness (versus self-judgment)

means that you take a kind, caring and nonevaluative position towards your perceived inabilities, special needs and unpredictable symptoms. This is of particular value when encountering negative self-evaluations that can accompany you for not being able to meet your expectations (or those of others) due to the restrictions of living with your disease, pain or disability.

2. Common humanity (versus isolation)

refers to your sense of connection to others that arises from acknowledging the common human experience of imperfection and making mistakes, and being more aware that others may face similar challenging circumstances. Framing hardship from this perspective can help you let go of self-blame, guilt, shame and self-criticism which can compromise adjustment, and instead foster a greater connection with others who live with similar conditions.

3. Mindfulness (versus over-identification)

is the third component of self-compassion, and refers to you taking a balanced and non-judgmental view of your emotional experiences, grounding them in the present moment and neither ignoring nor becoming overly embroiled in the negative feelings that accompany painful experiences. Mindfulness helps counteract possible overidentification with your suffering that can reduce objectivity and taking a larger perspective on your situation. This mindful stance may be particularly beneficial for dealing with your ongoing pain and suffering of living with a chronic condition, and encourage healthier ways of viewing the limitations associated with your challenges.

Self-compassion encourages and motivates you to use coping styles that are adaptive and problem-focused (such as pacing and planning, emotional-support-seeking, and positive reframing), and prevent you from using so-called maladaptive coping styles (such as escape / avoidance strategies, negative self-talk, freezing, hiding, giving up, etc). This leads to direct beneficial results in mental and emotional well-being and thus elevates the quality of your life.

Events and situations present themselves many times in each day that ask you to make a choice. In this, you have a wide range of options available.

Developing the skill of self-compassion begins by evaluating those options, and asking yourself for each option: will that course of action or that decision honour me and benefit my well-being?

Just that one question will be a defining step, because you will always know the answer.