What I love the most about being a Life Coach and Meditation Guide is the connection, the vulnerability, the humanness, the transformation, and the privilege of seeing people coming back from the edge and become whole again. The process of seeing people claiming their lives back, living beyond limitations, and growing brings me great fulfillment.
My name is Luis Carvalho. I’m a Certified Strategy Coach, Strategic Interventionist, NLP Practitioner, and an expert in Self Awakening. My background is Art & Design, specialized in graphic design, videography, and photography. Slowly, my life journey is moving me to Coaching and to what I believe is my life purpose: to help people to bridge the gap between trauma, lack of fulfillment, and stagnation to flow and purpose in life. We get so caught up with life that we forget how to live truly, deeply, lovingly, kindly, meaningfully. As a Strategic Intervention & Awakening Coach, my focus is on helping people to fully express and realize what they came here to be and do. When we do (the work, the business, life, and relationships) will be joyfully rich, fulfilling, and abundant.
I was originally inspired to choose a career in tech because I’ve always been a very visual person – through arts, I’ve found a way of expression that helped me for years to find a place in society where I could create and express myself. After college, I was invited to be a teacher in that same art school. It was an amazing nine-year journey to be able to connect with teenagers through the classes, conversations, socializing, but most of all to be able to listen to them, their worries, concerns, passions, and feelings. That uncovered the passion for connection, and going beyond social images and masks. I started very early to develop an interest in self-development; I could see in myself unresolved aspects, questions, and concerns. So, I started to look for information, reading, and travelling to meditation retreats and seminars around the world.
I’m originally from Coimbra in Portugal, a lovely city full of history and knowledge – most of all, though, it is a place where I’ve spent most of my life. Economical circumstances and a call for a change brought me to Cork, Ireland in February 2014, and it’s where I’ve lived since then. Cork is also where my main family is, and it’s where I call home for now.
My decision to become a Life Coach at Oaklift began with my own healing journey. I dealt with more than a decade of spiritual and emotional abuse with a physical illness, economical problems, my divorce, the loss of my parents, and later my beloved brother to chronic disease. As a survivor of over a decade of narcissistic abuse and coercive control, I know well the dark face of spirituality and how so many get caught in co-dependency states. On the other hand, I understand how the material world keeps us disconnected from our true nature and finding fulfillment outside of us. This process of the dark night of the soul led me to awaken and pursue a new direction in life. Coaching was the way I found to express my beliefs based in the middle way of the heart.
After 20 years as an Art & Design Professional and Lecturer, I’ve trained extensively in the holistic healing arts and personal development for over a decade. I am continually researching and training in this field of interest. The diversity of my studies spans strategic intervention coaching to insight meditation, somatic approach to trauma, healing the inner-child, recovering from narcissist abuse, NLP, life stages, family therapy, etc.
The main strategies and techniques I use as a Life Coach are:
- Strategic Intervention Coaching (also known as SI – From Robbins Madanes Training) practices extract the most practical and effective forms of strategic action and communication from a variety of disciplines: Ericksonian therapy, strategic family therapy, Human Needs Psychology, organizational psychology, neurolinguistics, the psychology of influence, strategic studies, traditions of diplomacy and negotiation.
- Insight Meditation, or Vipassana, is a simple and direct way to “see things as they are,” free from distortion.
- Active meditation – is an optimized “meditation” distilled from the most effective practices designed for the modern lifestyle. These two practical disciplines will blend on every intervention, and because I believe that every area of our lives is important, they will work together designing and shaping life on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level. I’m trained to identify the obstacles that hold people back (such as internal values, communication styles, personal relationships, and their life stages). From there, I prescribe strategies to create different results in those areas. Clients learn about themselves and their needs, triggers, key relationships, safe problems, traumas, and they learn to shift their mindset to thinking more creatively, while seeing the great potential that exists in all aspects of their life. This allows them to overcome any obstacles and fears that have had limiting effects on having more joy and development.
My specialty is a holistic approach based in the middle way of the heart, to help people find their purpose, their way, and what they are here to do. There is a creative part of all of us that lives in the moment, and my goal is to help people that want to do more with their lives, to connect with that, to find their creativity, their sparkle, and their aliveness. We all have a story that disempowers us, something that happened to us, or something that we did in the past. The story lives on in us, in our language, physiology, and in the way we replay it with our mind’s eye. The goal is to get control of our story, that we have a choice, that we are not what happened to us; we are so much more. Using this approach, it brings me a lot of joy to see people changing and finding purpose in their lives.
The Covid pandemic has hugely impacted my role as a Life Coach, especially as I started a business in early 2020. But I kept myself very active; I’ve been posting regularly on my Facebook page. I am interacting there on very important topics to help people cope better. I post informative topics on coercive control, emotional abuse, and relationship issues, trauma bond, co-dependency, and inner-child work. I also offer regular awareness and uplifting articles to which my Facebook community participate. I’m offering monthly free meditation sessions via Zoom, and the subjects so far are: How to raise your vibration and emotional resilience, Mindfulness and manifestation, letting go of stress and anxiety, resolving internal conflicts, loneliness and inner-critic, circle of compassion (Connection, gratitude, and forgiveness), freedom from anxiety and fear.
One of my future goals as a Life Coach would be to incorporate meditation and wellness practices in the schools’ curriculum. That would be very beneficial for children and teenagers, to help them to deal better with life challenges. A recent study from Harvard finds that mind, body, and spirit are very connected. In fact, kids and teens who are raised with wellness or spiritual practices tend to have better physical and mental health outcomes as they get older. Companies can also benefit from these practices by incorporating them. So I believe that Oaklift can offer solutions in this area too. In fact, we are seeing that more and more companies are bringing wellness programs to help the employees cope better with stress and anxiety associated with work.
Daily meditation is also a life-changer. Hundreds of studies have proven that meditation radically improves our wellbeing, both psychologically and physically. I would love that, in time, Oaklift could bring self-development events with different speakers, retreats, and maybe could grow into a foundation for knowledge and education. My deepest wish in life is to give something beautiful to this world, something that breaks through our barriers and reaches the human soul. I believe that those who consistently help others are happier and fulfilled, and will overcome any obstacles in their lives.
When technology and coaching started to blend in my life, I think the biggest improvement was my communications skills. I started to feel more alive, part of the team, and I started to think outside conventional rules and dream bigger without fear or worry (still a work-in-progress) that lead me to create Oaklift, which is a dream coming true. I learned the importance of being happy in the now, with acceptance and gratitude for who you are, and what you have. Many people live miserably expecting someday in the future to be happy – “when I get this, then I’ll be happy”. I’ve been there and it only leads to frustration and a meaningless life. But it doesn’t end there. In parallel with being happy in the now, we need to think about where we want to go – to have a vision of the future. Both are imperative in the creation of our reality.
The best advice I would give to anyone interested in being a Life Coach is to have an understanding that every person is unique, and has their own personal journey ahead. Be yourself and be authentic – there is a tremendous freedom in just being you. You can learn all the best modalities, strategies, and techniques, but the way you function, work, or live is your own experience. No one has your unique gifts, strengths, or personality. Don’t be afraid to show up in the world.
There is always more than tech. In people, we find their beliefs, passions, and stories, and we find what makes us so unique and distinct. We all like stories – they are so rooted in our society; we grow up listening to stories, and they are part of who we are. We often think about technology as the latest innovation (the latest Smartphone, the latest 3D printer), but behind that innovation, there are human beings, with all their complexities, life stories, passions.
To reaching more about Oaklift and the available Coaching, be sure to check the following link: https://oaklift.com/.
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