One of my best friends joined the Army Reserves and is now at boot camp.  She sent me a long letter detailing how her basic training is the hardest thing she’s ever done and how punishing it is.  She also described how it’s one of the most transforming experiences of her life. 

While I did not want her to join the Army, I supported her decision, no matter how batty I thought it was.  Reading of her experiences, I am left wondering about a system that trains people by being purposefully mean to them. I fully understand that she and her other new soldiers are training for war, which is, as one General commented, “an ugly thing.”  To prepare for this eventuality, she’s endured intentional, systematic intimidation, sarcasm and cruelty.    As alarmed as I am to hear of what she went through, I try also to reflect on the benefits gained and at what cost. 

I can see some benefit for my friend.  She’s now in the best physical shape of her life and could probably kick my sweet little new earth bootie all of the way back to the yoga retreat I took last fall that I found just so terribly grueling.  Her letter to me also detailed how she has learned a lot about herself and her inner strength.  She is not alone in this regard - many people have expressed that they found the experience very transformational in that it pushed them beyond their accepted limits. 

Yet, I am curious about the long-term impact this experience will have on her person, and on her soul?  How does one’s potential shift if a person is motivated from a place of fear and intimidation versus loving kindness?  Of course, I’ll side with love and kindness to motivate people.  Yet, within our society, there are a number of institutions that rely on this de-humanizing, testosterone-laden approach.  Football teams, fraternities and police forces are a few better known ones. 

I also have a number of friends and business associates who once served in the military and they are some of the most self-disciplined and effective people I know.  So I do recognize that physical and mental challenges in life cause people forge stronger selves in the fire of duress.  The question is:  what is the balance?  And can the same results be achieved in alternative methods?  Or must we all endure 4 a.m. screaming Sergeants if we seek to become the full potential of our lives?

Deconstructing the boot camp experience may offer some insight.  In boot camp, individuals are stripped of their uniqueness (remember Richard Gere’s hair cut in An Officer and A Gentleman?).  They are then physically and mentally pushed beyond what they thought themselves capable.  This process of being taken apart then allows the instructors to put the recruits back together again in a way that is supposed to make them stronger and resilient.  Nonetheless, the military does not encourage individuality – the goal is to create physically tough, but uniform beings so that everyone looks, acts and functions the same way.  And the military wants people to act with the least amount of thought when ordered by their commanders.  If, heaven forbid, my friend is ordered to a combat zone, they want her to respond with “where” and “when” but not “why”.

Is this the only way to  gain such self-growth and inspiration?  As a vinyasa yoga instructor and practicing yogi for number of years, I recognize that a yoga practice that also challenges a person in similar and yet potentially more powerful ways.  While embracing that each person’s yoga practice is her own, a person is challenged in strength, balance and limberness.  Try taking an Army private and having him strike an asana like eka pada galavanasana, flying crow pose, and this highly motivated, physically fit warrior will struggle…unless he’s been a practicing yogi beforehand. 

One can achieve such a pose only after practice and only after setting your mind and training and pushing your body to reach and move through your previous limits. 

So, if yoga offers one option at developing and expanding our physical boundaries, what can one do to move beyond the mental, emotional and perhaps spiritual barriers in our lives?  Having endured the crucible of an obstacle course under-fire, my friend emotes a refreshed abundance of self-confidence.  Certainly, one has options beyond low crawling through the mud and under barb wire with bullets flying overhead to gain a sense of inspired vitality in life.

As a personal life coach, I’ve seen men and women engage in this process and demonstrate tremendous personal courage as they confront emotional and mental barriers in their lives.  One client shared his hopes for a renewed relationship with his sister, whom he had not seen since he was a teenager.  Listening to his excitement, I pressed him on why it was important to him and what he wanted out of this seemingly normal setup.  I challenged him to look harder at his motivation for what millions of siblings do and enjoy all the time – a relationship where they interact routinely.  He admitted, after some soul-searching, that they had gone separate paths after their parents split as he went with their Dad and she with their Mother.  It led to years apart as a result of a bitter, very emotional dissolution of the family.  And, he had felt bad about letting the parental feud keep them apart until the parents passed away and they found fresh ground to renew their relationship.

Armed with this understanding, he talked to his sister about his feelings, asked for her perspective and thoughts.  It turns out, both had latent guilt and anxiety over what happened and sharing their thoughts took not just courage but also cleared their path forward by getting it out in the open and bringing it to some resolution.  Both had set up an emotional barrier and both found the moral courage to reach across it and break it down together.   

Although certainly coaching focuses on finding strength, it is based on individuality, on a person’s unique values, goals, talents, thought processes and nature. Yet I do believe as a coach I benefit from having some of the energy of the drill sergeant – the capacity to be fierce at calling my clients forth in to find their strength.  I can think of nothing I’d want more for my clients than to reach in to themselves and see the magnificent person I see when I look at them, and to push beyond their limits to create the life they imagined.  I’m not going to serve my clients very well if I am a marshmallow.

There are days when we as individuals need a tougher form of love. Many refer to this concept as fierce courage.  It is the willingness for the coach to be fierce and courageous in service to the client.  The big difference between the drill master and me (or should I say one of the big differences) is that my clients as individuals get to choose   This is important for coaching clients to realize - I am prepared to meet my clients where and how they need me to meet them in service to their growth. 

As individuals seeking to grow, we need to embrace that fierceness and discipline.  We need to be called to task when we are falling short of the physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional capacity we have.  We need someone to be relentless at holding us accountable for taming the inner voices that hold us back.  That person can be uncompromising in calling you forth when you’re playing small.  Or they can be gentle and allow you to peel back your layers of resistance, all the while ensuring you make progress. 

Just as my friend’s drill sergeant has gone through specialized training for the physical and mental regime she’s exposed to, a specifically trained person known as a life coach will have the skills I’ve described to help a person move beyond self-imposed emotional, spiritual and yes, physical boundaries that restrict a person’s todays and tomorrows.  When you find a good life coach, you need to be aware of what you need.  Take inventory of where you are on your inner spectrum.  What you need from the coach will be different when you are in a zone of high energy and activity and need to pause and deepen your experience versus when you feel you are having trouble energizing yourself to move forward.  

Second, you need to trust your coach.  He or she is completely in your corner.  As a coach, there is nothing I want more from our relationship than for you to become your version of your best possible self.   Everything I say is because I see that at your essence, you are a magnificent human being.  It’s the stuff that gets in the way of that magnificence – your ego, saboteur, gremlins or demons – that sometimes prevents you from seeing that too. 

In coaching at times, there is a dismantling of the ego, the protective shields a person keeps up around them that prevents the true person from coming forth.  On some level, this probably has something in common with how a drill sergeant breaks down in a person.  Yet, in coaching, when focused on the individual, this is never forced.  It only occurs within your agenda.  The coaching relationship respects your edges so that that transformation can occur at a rate and in a style that suits you, and in service not only to your physical strength, but also the strength of your soul.

That is a huge difference – you get to decide how the coaching relationship will shape you.  I’m not churning out soldiers – you and I are developing your soul, and this process will be guided by your soul’s voice. This makes coaching less of a boot camp and more of a place to grow wings.

My friend’s story of her Army boot camp experience creates a tantalizing thought of creating a new earth boot camp. What would that be like?  Would they make people do 108 sun salutations for failure to make eye contact?  Might the drillmaster smile benignly and say, “Drop and give me 50 chaturanga dandasana, but only if it feels in alignment with your authentic self to do so?” There are interesting intersections in the differences between pushing oneself physically and spiritually.  Both are needed.  Both are of value.  I will be curious to learn how my friend thinks she’s grown with the latter when she stops by when her training is done and we go out for a run.  I’m sure she’ll run circles around me but where will her heart and soul be?  It’s a defining question for each of us in how we see the physical and the spiritual influencing each other. 

And while I may have fun fantasizing about my new age boot camp, my mind drifts back to a dilemma.  I mentioned a variety of institutions within our society that have adopted this harsh, de-humanizing approach – the Army, police departments, fraternities and so forth. From time to time, each of these entities is associated with harsh and sometimes tragic events where the abuse of authority wielded over others results in cruelty and loss of life.  If these approaches are warranted, then what is our responsibility to the people who endure it…to revive and refresh their individuality, personal values, and strength of their soul? 

I am not naïve enough to think a few sun salutations by Army recruits is the answer…but I also know the Drill Sergeant would be better for embracing it. 


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