Rev. Amanda Sisneros Ganley shares with MysticMag the core of her work and how she focuses on mindfulness and creating the lives of others with presence and intention.
Do you believe WE are our biggest obstacles – a hindrance to our own growth and development?
So, what I absolutely believe is that we are incredibly powerful – each one of us, and that the ways in which we interact with ourselves and our healing work and the perspective that we bring to things deeply impact our experience of life and love and the world around us. I don’t know that I would describe ourselves as obstacles in that way.
In my opinion, it’s the understanding that we’re all evolving in consciousness, and when we start to put mindful attention to the ways in which we relate to the world we make some really powerful changes. So, that does feel like we’re removing obstacles in a sense. What we’re really committing to is doing our healing work and living our lives in ways that are more aligned with the truth of who we are and what we’re really capable of. It’s important not to see ourselves as a problem or a project but as an opportunity to live and love and do all the things that have value for us as individuals in more meaningful ways.
It’s also a really necessary part of life for us to learn about who we are and the ways that we interact with the world. We are absolutely very powerful and able to make changes when we’re ready to, to do some wonderfully transformative work and take some deep dives. And at the same time, when we understand that we relate with the world, we also need to understand that the state of the world is a product of collective human consciousness.
Effectively, it’s important to understand that our internal changes not only make our own lives better, but they have the potential to make the world better for everyone. All of that is so much more empowering and impactful than to think of ourselves as obstacles or as a set of problems to be solved.
It’s especially vital at this point in time that we understand that things like systemic oppression do exist and that not everyone is starting at the same place, and we’re all responsible for that. The same exact obstacles and roadblocks don’t look the same for any two people; whether that looks like race, whether that looks like ability, or whether that looks like other life circumstances.
The fact is we don’t know where anyone else’s starting point is. And it’s essential to understand that while we are powerful for ourselves, we are powerful for the world around us. We’re being called to have some empathy and understanding and do some real work around a world that is not created with equity. Those obstacles are just a real part of lived experience for many humans.
Absolutely we are powerful and able to make changes and not just to make those changes for our own benefit, but for the benefit of the world and others around us. Doing our healing work, our spiritual work, becoming self actualized humans on the planet is courageous work and when we do that in service of the world, then that’s when we start to move mountains.
What would you describe the core of your work to be?
The core of my work has always been to give people tools that empower them in their own lives and in their own spiritual practice. Our biggest calling as human beings on this planet right now is to step into our own gifts, our own beauty as well as the unique ways in which we see the world and are able to be of service to the world. So at the center of everything that I do is guide people to step into themselves, into their truest hearts, into their truest ways of being, and to honor everything about themselves and how they have come here to be.
I’ve done that in a variety of ways, but I love to hold space for people. As a one-on-one coach, it gives me the opportunity to create a space for people to feel safe and take some deep dives into their work. It gives me the opportunity to bear witness as people step into their own beauty and their own greatness and the unique ways in which they love the world and the people that are closest to them.
All of those things are really integral to what I am doing and why I love what I do. You know, there’s nothing like being able to see the light bulb go off, to watch people embrace all of the wonderful things about themselves and their lives even when the world around us has told so many of us for so long that something about ourselves is less than ideal. It’s amazing when people step into who they are and fall in love with themselves and fall in love with life all over.
That’s really what I love about my work. And, it’s so important for me, for people to understand that that’s not intangible, that that’s not something that is only set aside for a certain few, that those things are actually accessible to all of us, regardless of where our starting line is. It’s essential to me to be able to make spiritual and personal change tools relatable and accessible to folks wherever they are; to be able to meet people where they are in life, and in their healing and spiritual work and to give them tools that help them blossom and grow while fostering their peace and maintaining a safe space for them.
How does spiritual coaching differ from the more conventional types of life?
Spiritual coaching gives clients the opportunity to honor spirituality as a part of their growth and transformations in ways traditional coaching might not. It’s a space that allows people to feel validated around the things that we might not normally discuss in day to day life and to accommodate growth involving our spiritual work for those who do not resonate with traditional spirituality or religious communities and spaces.
It creates a space where we not only are welcome to share our spiritual experiences, but also a place to embrace the intangibles of these experiences, the ways that we connect to our own inner wisdom and the wisdom of the world. It validates the experiences that feel like they’re mystical, or sometimes defy traditional explanation and that are so deeply ingrained in who we are and our experience of the world. This wisdom that we’ve all come into the world with and that has been sort of eradicated out of us by traditional education and the way the world works. This creates a space for people to come back to that, to that inner knowing, to that sense of truth.
The tools that I use might be a little bit different as well. I focus on mindfulness and creating our lives with presence and intention. I am a New Thought minister so I utilize the tools from that training such as affirmative prayer, which I find to be deeply healing and transformative, and the way that the practice is reframed from the way many of us were raised to think of prayer helps to reframe so much of our thinking about ourselves and life.
I’m an accredited sound healer and Labyrinth facilitator which add to the depth of experience for myself and those I work with. And, since I feel that systems and tools give us great information for understanding ourselves, I have incorporated Enneagram, Gene Keys, and Human Design into my practice for clients who resonate with those approaches. At the core is an understanding that we all live better lives when we step into our truest selves, which is spiritual.
How do you navigate with a new client and are all sessions customized?
For new clients, I offer a 15 minute introductory call where we can sit down face to face, via zoom, and develop a connection and see if my methods and the way that I view coaching work for us together as a team. My goal is to create a space for people to do their work and that 15 minute call gives us an opportunity to get acquainted.
During that time, I get to learn about the work that people want to be doing in their lives, around their spirituality or making transformations in all areas of their life. Then I am able to hone in on how I can be a guide for them and some of the tools that I would want to utilize in our work together. That also gives the client the opportunity to check in with me about what their spiritual practice is and to get a sense of the tools that I share with clients.
So, absolutely, everything is customized for my clients. Since everyone’s personal relationship with themselves and spirituality is unique, it is important that stepping into their highest and best good resonates most strongly and deeply for them at their core. It is my work, to best be able to guide them with this to the best of my ability.
How would you define ‘relationship’ and how it resonates with you?
Relationship really boils down to the ways in which we love the world around us. We are in relationship to everything around us. Relationship is how we relate to nature; the birds in the sky, the sun shining, the clouds, the breeze in the air. Then we have a relationship with ourselves; the ways that we talk with, interact with, and love ourself. We have a relationship with our higher power which has its own form of intimacy and connection. Then there are all the myriad of relationships that we have with the humans in our life and even animals that we share our home with. Then, there’s the relationship to life itself. In all of those areas, relationship is distinctly defined by connection and our willingness and ability to be present with those connections.
Most often, humans crave deep and meaningful connection, and we find ourselves looking to facilitate that experience in our lives. That’s why it is such a rich area of interest and an area of most lives that provides opportunity for growth and healing. Deepening our relationships begins so much with love and connection. All of the ways that we can bring our presence to that is deeply transformative and such a strong motivator for us to make change, even if that change is simply learning about how to be more at peace with ourselves and the world around us.
Want to find out more about Amanda visit http://www.amandaganley.com/ or follow on https://mobile.twitter.com/BlissfulAmandaG
