"After having a relationship with a married man, I had decided to 'pay for my sins' by beating myself up on a daily basis and carrying around a ball and chain of guilt. I had been to traditional therapy to help ease the darkness in my heart but always felt like I was talking myself into deeper and deeper spirals of despair. I had built walls around me that no one could penetrate, and I was generally miserable. Although my professional life was functioning well, my personal life was a living hell.

"In the first session I had with Jaya, we worked on the statement "I can't trust myself," leading to me truly KNOWING that I CAN trust myself. A weight was lifted that I had carried with me for too long to even mention. I left feeling free! And wonderfully, I have felt free ever since! Once I left that thought and story about myself behind, I have never picked it up again.

"I'm still working on other issues in my life with Jaya, but now I am OPEN! I still have walls here and there but every time I meet with Jaya, these walls come crumbling down. She points out the negative stories I tell myself and helps me see things clearly. I am truly grateful for her presence, grace, and support. She has truly helped me rise above myself and land into myself at the same time. I'm becoming stronger, more secure, and happier every day."
-- Ithaca client

What is personal-growth coaching?

Coaching with someone allows you to work in a focused way to clear out what you don’t want in your life and your way of being and to move consciously toward what you do want. It allows you to create your life while being accountable to someone who’s a staunch supporter, who’s persistently on your side, and who holds up mirrors for you to see what you may not see in yourself—and often, especially in the case of your best qualities, what you may not fully own. A coach helps you to step into your power and live into your full potential.

How does coaching differ from therapy?

In coaching, we don’t go back into your history to understand why you operate as you do. We look at how you’re operating and how you might operate more effectively to have the life you want. Coaches tend to work with specific, focused issues in a goal-oriented way, with assignments and action points to move you along. The process therefore lasts for a much shorter duration, as opposed to the open-ended, ongoing, years-running therapeutic approach. Finally, coaching doesn’t address deep trauma or any sort of “emotional surgery,” though emotions and your “stuff” will inevitably come up.

In my coaching I use The work of Byron Katie, a powerful system of self-inquiry that allows people to get an often unprecedented level of clarity and insight into their own thinking and feeling patterns. My clients consistently express amazement at how quickly and deeply and concretely they experience change.

"Jaya, I didn't have the best experiences with therapy. It seemed I just kept going over the same stories and I would just get bogged down in them and feel even worse--please, not another word about my mother! It wasn't actually changing anything. In coaching, you keep bringing me back to the here and now--what do I want to do with my life right now? I've been able to catch myself in my mind when I go into how I didn't do it right in the past or start predicting how it'll all blow up in my face in the future. The decisions I've been making since we began our work together are changing so many things: I'm being more active, spending time with people I enjoy who aren't complainers, allowing myself to spend money and time on what makes me happiest. It's so great to feel connected to life!" 
-- Ithaca client