ABSTRACT
Mindfulness is not an approach to coaching per se. This is because mindfulness describes a particular quality of consciousness, one akin to a state of detached, psychological freedom (Martin, 1997) where current experience (including habits of meaning, thought, emotion or behavior) is registered in awareness and then attended to with curiosity and openness (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Cavanagh & Spence, 2013). As most psychological interventions (whether they be informed by cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic or human-istic theory) consider enhanced attention and awareness to be a fundamentally important outcome, it is not unique to any one approach. Rather, mindfulness seems more like a common factor (as has been argued in the psychotherapy literature; Martin, 1997), one that is also common to the reflective and growth-oriented nature of coaching.
