Why decolonize coaching and personal development?

What does decolonization have to do with coaching, healing, therapy and space holding? 

Do you need to decolonize your business and practice?

What does decolonizing coaching and healing even mean and look like?

These are all fantastic questions to begin your journey to becoming an even better healer, space holder, coach or leader. 

Let's start with the first question - what does decolonization have to do with your coaching or healing business? First let me say if you're wondering what "decolonization" even means, check out this blog post I wrote on the topic (from my lens as a Mohawk/Kanyen'kehá:ka woman, professional inclusive communications manager and decolonial educator/mentor). 

Once you have a basic understanding of colonization, colonialism (the ongoing process of colonization) and decolonization - it's time to connect the dots and see how colonialism shows up in the coaching, wellness and healing space. Then look at how it perpetuates harm, exclusion and isolation for many of your clients or potential clients that you may be missing out on or accidentally excluding. 

As shared in my free e-book, which you can grab here,

“Like every other industry, personal development and coaching is deeply impacted by colonialism and capitalism. It began as a luxury for middle to upper class white people, and still remains largely dominated by white folks, even though many of the teachings that are shared belong to those in the global majority.”

The global majority is a term you can use to replace “BIPOC” or Black, Indigenous, People of Colour as it centres the truth that together these groups make up more than 80% of the global population. My understanding is that this term was coined by Rosemary Campbell-Stephens.

So personal development and coaching (as a highly profitable industry, not as an ancient practice) began by and for white, settler folks - what’s wrong with that? Can’t everyone still benefit from the teachings and practices? 

My answer: yes and no. 

As mentioned, so many of the tools, practices and teachings being used in personal development, healing and even psychotherapy spaces stem from Indigenous and global majority cultures across the globe. But they’ve been watered down, stripped of honouring their origins and whitewashed to be “backed by science” or white men to give them more validity or credibility in a society which, to put it frankly, values whiteness over all else. This in and of itself is extraction and cultural appropriation: taking only the "shiny" parts of a culture that is not yours, without acknowledgement, credit, reverence or reparations, for one’s own gain or profit. 

The element of cultural appropriation alone leaves many people of the global majority with conflicted feelings when entering healing spaces. On one hand, it feels nice to have sage burning and be able to smudge myself when I walk into a healing circle but on the other hand it feels harmful that it’s being called “saging”, it’s led by a white woman who bought a sage stick online (not from an Indigenous trade post) and there’s no acknowledgement of the Indigenous peoples who put their lives on the line to keep this practice alive. Most people aren’t aware that smudging (burning sacred plant medicines) was illegal in Canada until 1951 under the Indian Act. In these spaces, there often doesn’t seem to be any real relationship with the plant(s) and there’s usually no acknowledgement of the land and territory we are gathering on. Therefore, my partaking brings up deep stings of colonialism and all that has been done and continues to be done to my people - in a space that is supposed to be about healing. 

South Asian friends have shared with me how uncomfortable it is practicing yoga, something that comes from their own lineage, with white teachers who hang “Om” symbols on the wall, wear “spiritual gangster” t-shirts and end the class with “namaste” (a greeting for hello) with no other acknowledgement of where yoga comes from and no reverence for the people who kept it alive for thousands of years. They don’t attempt to pronounce the pose names in Sanskrit, they don’t focus on the other aspects of yoga outside of the physical and often completely miss out on honouring yoga’s roots. By the way, if you're a yoga teacher, I highly recommend checking out Susanna Barkataki’s work. I’ve learned so much from her yoga teacher training and books.  

I could go on and on with endless examples and stories that have now been shared with me from folks all over the globe who have watched their culture be extracted from and used for the benefit of white leaders and “healers”. It’s especially painful when you understand the history of how our cultures and ways of being were belittled, banned and literally outlawed and are now being repackaged, rebranded and sold back to us by the descendants of the ones who stole it. Stay tuned for another article on why cultural appropriation is so harmful.

But cultural appropriation is just one issue in the personal development space.

There are many more ways that colonialism manifests in this industry, including the culture of hustle and grind, toxic individualism, spiritual bypassing (ignoring real, systemic issues and oppression in the name of “love and light” or “good vibes only”) and of course straight up biases and racism - conscious and unconscious. This can make us, folks of the global majority, feel anything from unseen to unsafe in spaces even including private one on one sessions. I expand on these aspects in that free e-book I mentioned so be sure to grab your copy and sit with the journal prompts provided at the end of the book. 

Even if you don’t think that you are bringing colonial biases into your practice and even if you are Indigenous or a person of the global majority - we all have unlearning and learning to do, myself included. There have been so many ways that I, even as an Indigenous and disabled woman, have perpetuated harmful narratives because I was regurgitating what I was taught by so many dominant (white) thought leaders, coaches and healers. We live in a society here in Turtle Island (so-called Canada and the USA) that is so deeply entrenched in white supremacy AKA colonialism that it can be hard to even notice at first.

As I also mention in my e-book “every business is either a vehicle for upholding white supremacy and toxic systems of oppression, or a vehicle for dismantling it” and this is especially true for coaches and healers. Why? You’re in the business of helping people heal, grow and transform - and this can’t happen without the acknowledgement of the systems designed to keep the majority of us from doing just that. Any practice that focuses on personal development and does not consider cultural and oppressive influences is frankly negligent, potentially dangerous and ineffective. 

Plus, as a business owner you'd be remiss not to learn how to serve the global majority - a wildly underserved group of us that make up more than 80% of the global population! But I hope this post helped you begin to see that decolonizing your business isn’t just about being inclusive — it’s about being intentionally disruptive of and opposed to colonial systems of harm that do have relevance to the work you’re doing, even if your previous mentors have taught you otherwise. 

It took me years of navigating the personal development world before I realized that the lens of antiracism, ancestral healing and decolonization was missing and was critically needed for my truest self to blossom and grow. And frankly, the Tony Robbins and Jack Canfields of the world were never going to help me come to this realization…but that leads to another aspect touched on in the e-book which is that diverse representation of leaders is severely lacking and this is also by colonial design. 

So while you might think decolonizing has nothing to do with you or your business, I urge you to think about clients and potential clients like me who can only heal when systems of harm are named and dismantled together. Even if it begins with a simple acknowledgement of privileges you may hold or the land and territory you’re working from — a little goes a long way and most are not even doing the bare minimum. By beginning this work, you’re already ahead of the curve and on your way to being a safer, more caring and more effective healer and I’m grateful for you. 

To deep dive into this work in a supportive, non-judgemental community, get on the waitlist for the next live round of the Decolonized Coach Community. Details are here.