Body
Energy, breath and somatic cues. Where a pattern is carried before it is named — the tight jaw, the held shoulders, the sleep that will not come.
The published framework
Aware, Align, Act
Five layers of a client, four phases of a programme, twelve weeks of work — and a single return point. This is the part a collaborating coach needs in order to judge whether the method belongs in their practice.
At a glance
The premise
Standard coaching works on goals, behaviours and beliefs. It is good at that. This framework adds a deeper layer: the client's relationship with awareness itself.
Change happens at two levels. The outer is what a person does — the habit, the decision, the plan, the conversation they have been avoiding. The inner is who is doing it: the identity, the inherited story, the awareness that watches all of it. Most coaching works the first level and trusts the second to follow. Sometimes it does. Often a client achieves the goal and finds the same person waiting there.
This framework works both levels in the same programme, and always points back toward the fifth layer. Over time clients stop being identified with their patterns and start choosing from a wider self. That shift is the outcome the method is built for — everything else is a means to it.
No belief is required. The contemplative layer is offered as an inquiry the client can take or leave, in their own language, at their own pace. Nothing in this method depends on the client accepting a metaphysics.
The five layers
Where a client can be stuck.
A session works at one layer and always returns to the fifth. Which layer to work is a clinical decision made from the assessment, not a preference.
Mind
Thought loops, emotional habits and the commentary underneath the day. Recognised, named, and watched rather than argued with.
Story
Identity, roles and the beliefs inherited rather than chosen. The "I must be…" that runs the show while the client believes they are choosing.
Purpose
Values, meaning and contribution. What the work is actually for, once the performance stops being the point.
Witness
The awareness that observes all four. Not a state to achieve but a capacity to notice — and the one that makes change durable rather than performed.
The twelve-week arc
Four phases. Each has a purpose, a working layer and an exit condition that tells the coach whether to move on.
Ground · weeks 1–2
Safety, contracting, and a baseline. The client maps where they feel stuck across the five layers, using the assessment instrument. Goals are agreed, boundaries are explicit, and the first short daily practice is introduced — three minutes, breath and attention, nothing more.
Exit condition: the client can describe the work in their own words, and has completed the practice at least four days out of seven.
Notice · weeks 3–5
Building witness capacity. Pattern awareness, somatic check-ins, and the shift from "I am anxious" to "I notice the thought that…". This phase is slower than clients expect and it is deliberately not about solving anything.
Exit condition: the client can catch a pattern in the moment it happens, not only in retrospect.
Loosen · weeks 6–9
The story is questioned — identity inquiry, inherited roles, shadow and resistance — using powerful questions and self-inquiry rather than analysis or advice. The midpoint review at week nine re-rates the layer map and recalibrates the remaining goals.
Exit condition: the client can hold a previously fixed belief as one option among several.
Embody · weeks 10–12
Insight becomes structure. Goals are set against the newly visible values, a sustainable personal practice is designed, and the closing session re-maps the layers and shows the client the arc they have travelled.
Exit condition: a practice and a plan the client owns without the coach, and a final layer map to compare with the first.
How it pairs with standard coaching tools
The framework does not replace a coach's method. It sits underneath it, which is why it can be added to a practice rather than compete with one.
- GROW or goal-setting with a values and purpose inquiry before the goal is fixed.
- Powerful questions with self-inquiry — the question turned back toward the questioner.
- Wheel of Life with the five-layer map: same visual habit, a different set of categories.
- Active listening with presence and silence, treated as technique rather than mood.
- Accountability with a daily awareness practice — the commitment to the practice, not only to the outcome.
Scope, boundaries and referral
Coaching is not therapy
This framework works at the edge of identity and meaning, which is precisely where a coaching relationship needs to know its own limits. In the collaboration model the partner coach remains the coach of record, holds the clinical boundary, and carries the referral decision. The depth module never displaces that relationship.
Any client presenting with acute distress, clinical symptoms or a history that reads as trauma is referred out rather than worked with at depth. A written referral protocol sits with the partner agreement, and the module is scoped to the shallow end — clarity, decision-making, role transition, meaning — until the client and the coach of record judge otherwise.
What is published here, and what is not
This page publishes the framework: the layers, the arc, the pairings, and the boundaries. The working parts — the session-by-session structure, the question banks, the practices, the assessment instrument and the referral protocol — are not published. They are handed over under a partner agreement, with training, because a framework without the discipline of its delivery is only a diagram.
That boundary is deliberate. It is also the reason a coach can adopt the method without finding it already given away to their own client.