Your Training Program Diploma speaks to your expertise. If you don’t believe you have any, this is a great place to start shifting your mindset!
One of the important things you got from your training was your diploma!
It may sound silly even to bring it up, but if you’re like the majority of Feldenkrais® practitioners I’ve worked with, you may not give enough weight to what you learned in order to get that diploma!
I’m not suggesting that you don’t see the value of the training, or of having a diploma, but it’s quite possible that you don’t see that it gets you any closer to finding clients because you don’t understand the edge it gives you when you’re seeing a prospective client for the first time.
The problem is that many Feldenkrais® practitioners graduate from their training feeling just the tiniest bit overwhelmed by the idea that they’ve just been unleashed on the world! If that happened to you, then despite your 800 hours of training, you may feel like you’ll never know enough to really help anyone.
But in reality, all you need to be able to do, is begin. And your trainers knew you were capable of that.
Let’s face it — there are a lot of clients who land in Feldenkrais® practices because they’ve tried everything else and nothing has worked. Many of them can’t even pronounce Moshe’s last name. Above all else, they need hope. Experts give them hope, whereas people who are unsure make them wonder if they’re in the right place.
So one of the first jobs you have as a self-employed practitioner is to give people hope, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to acknowledge that you know more than they do about the Feldenkrais® Method!
This doesn’t mean talking about it endlessly, or convincing people that they need it. It means that you sit comfortably inside your skin, aware that you know something that will help them, and that you can do things for them that no one else has done before.
Right now, make a list of 5 things you can do for people who come to you. It doesn’t matter what they come for. It doesn’t matter how difficult their situation might seem. Write down 5 things that finish these points:
I know how to:
1. make people aware of ________
2. touch a person so that _________
3. respond to ___________
4. help people feel __________
5. expand a person’s ______________
I don’t need to see what you wrote to know that it’s valuable for you in your quest to fill your practice.
Each of us attended our own, individual Feldenkrais® training program, where we learned the things that would help us attract the clients we are each meant to serve. What you learned resonates with you in a different way than it did with your classmates. What you remember is different. What affected your life profoundly is different. What you pass on to your clients is different.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Each of us develops our own handwriting in the Feldenkrais® Method. You earned your diploma for having the basis to develop your own handwriting. Who you are is the most important part of what you bring to prospective clients.
If your knees get weak at the idea, just remember that you’re at least 800-hours ahead of anyone who doesn’t know how to pronounce ‘Feldenkrais’!
~~~~~
If you haven’t signed up for automatic email notification of new posts, do that now — just enter your email address below… because helping you reach more people is why I’m here, and I don’t want you to miss any of these posts!! 😉
