Oh dear... I am about to debunk one of coaching's sacred cows - i.e. that coaching is about the present and the future, not about the past. Yeeesssss....

That's like saying a tree is about its trunk and its branches, not about its roots. 

I understand that we coaches are not qualified to go digging into people's past. We are not trained counsellors nor are we psychotherapists, let alone psychiatrists. Having acknowledged that, I ask myself this question: how can a human being be fully aware of his present without any awareness of his past? How can a client be powerful in her current and future actions without an understanding of her long-standing relationship with her own power? I have come to realise that I have never been able to start over from a blank sheet, much as I thought I could. I am who I am in great part because of whom I have been.

This does not mean that I believe coaching should focus on the past, of course not. I do believe that coaching is precisely about focus: when I throw the light on a particular sentence, thought, action, belief, emotion, I bring them into the light so that I may see them, acknowledge them, AND recognise them. But how could I recognise anything unless I have 'cognised' it in the first place? Recognition, Awareness' sister, cannot live without its past, and neither can I.

Throughout my illness, I have observed myself going around in my own little circles mostly centred around fear. To my great annoyance and regular despondency, I saw myself going over the same ground again and again. Prior to my recent experience, I would have sworn blind that this was counselling territory only. I surprised myself by discovering that it may not be quite as clear cut as first appeared.

This is what I am learning:

• The counselling I received throughout my illness was particularly powerful precisely because my counsellor 'behaved' more like a coach than the counsellors I had experienced hitherto. She didn't sit there as a detached observer - she became a gentle and yet firm companion on my journeys.

• I experienced at first hand the delight of exploring an 'old' question without necessarily having the answer. It is as if 'I don't know' was becoming my most faithful friend, past and present.

• Without ever 'raking over the past', I came to understand the progress I could make by including my past in my current awareness. I never felt I was travelling backwards but rather that I was integrating the full me in my current struggles. As a consequence, my little circles became bigger, feeling less and less like an irritating recurring rash and more and more like a recognised rhythm.

•  Interestingly, my counsellor told me she enjoyed working with a coach. We used to treat (and still treat) each other as two 'professionals' working together. I never felt like 'the sick one'. In my other experiences of counselling/therapy, I always felt like there was something wrong with me that needed curing. My counsellor spoke to me as a human being in charge of her own life - very coaching like.

So, what am I saying? Simply this: whilst it is important to know what my coaching boundaries are, it would be a shame to reduce my coaching to less than it could be. I would lose out as a coach and my coaching clients would too. The past is an important part of what I would call Integrated Coaching, because we are all integrated human beings who cannot be artificially fenced up in little territories to fit professional boundaries. Is this not the same argument as is made by holistic medicine, without negating the need for specialists in specific medical areas?

Good questions to ask myself might be:

• Within the boundaries of coaching, what is the dimension of what I do/want to do?
• In what way could I stretch the boundaries of my coaching without breaking the ethical rules of my profession?
• What does it mean when I speak of Integrated Coaching?
• What would Integrated Coaching look/sound/feel like?
• What, if anything, needs to be added to top level coach training so that coaches become more at ease with their own past and that of their clients?

It is often said that past behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour. In my view, that is both realistic and defeatist which is why coaching is such a powerful way to helps us break free of our past limitations. I just think that those past limitations need to be included in the coaching process without fear of committing professional blasphemy.

What do YOU think?