HOLISTIC HEALTH COACHING
with Matthew Stephen
MY COACHING IS FOR YOU IF…
• You desire to overcome fatigue and increase your overall energy and vitality
• You want to overcome addictive habits
• You want to understand how to detoxify your body, leaving you with a radiant glow
• You are trying to conceive a baby, or just want to improve your sex drive and fertility
• You want to heal inflammation and injuries
• You wish to improve the quality of your sleep or stop relying on sleeping pills
• You are seeking to eat and live in a more embodied and intuitive way
• You wish to reconnect with your body and stop living so much in your head
• You wish to live with more confidence in yourself
• You want to learn how to cope with stress and anxiety
• You want to explore your spirituality and what your purpose here is
HOW THE COACHING WILL WORK & PRICES
Each session will go for 60 minutes and will be over zoom, or via phone call if that suits better.
Each session will be $50usd, or $60aud if you’re from Australia.
To enquire about a session please contact me at matt@seedsofawareness.com.au
ABOUT MYSELF AND MY PHILOSOPHY
I’m 34 and live in Melbourne, Australia. I’m married and have beautiful little 1 year old son.
I’m a certified coach in holistic nutrition and am deeply passionate about health and nutrition, however I am also deeply passionate about overall personal and spiritual growth. I am also an author of 2 published books – 365 Days of Wholeness, & Free Range Humans.
For 8 years, from the age of 17-25, I played as a professional athlete in the AFL (Australian football league), and this taught me so much about how the body works and what it is capable of. However, after a number of years of pushing myself too hard I began to experience a wide array of health problems. My sleep suffered and I became addicted to sleeping pills. I was riddled with inflammation and highly reliant on toxic anti-inflammatory drugs and other pharmaceuticals. I was deeply fatigued and therefore also reliant on stimulants such as coffee and sugary snacks.
The high toxic load on my body mixed with mental and physical exhaustion meant that I was often irritable and not my best self, and it also meant that getting up for each day required a huge mental effort. On top of this I was operating much more from my ego, which caused me to sabotage a number of relationships around me.
Eventually my mental, physical, and emotional suffering got so bad that I knew I had to make dramatic changes in my life, otherwise something within me was going to seriously break down. This led me to pursue some deep inner soul searching, which eventually caused me to completely change the way I lived my life.
Overtime I realised that our suffering is most often our greatest gift, and if utilized properly it can be a major catalyst for personal growth and awakening. Suffering is often the only thing powerful enough to jolt us out of our self-sabotaging patterns, out of our ego, and to awaken us to certain parts of ourselves that we were previously completely unaware of.
Suffering can function like a fork in the road whereby we have the choice of two different directions. One direction is the path of the victim, in which we feel like life is out to get us and we refuse to learn the lessons our suffering is attempting to teach us. The other path is the path of awakening, whereby we surrender to our suffering and use it as a catalyst for explosive personal growth and evolution.
The second path is by far the most courageous one because it involves confronting the parts of ourselves that can bring up powerful feelings of fear, shame, and guilt, and are most often linked to past repressed traumas, which triggers great pain as they are brought up to the surface light of our conscious awareness. As well, this path involves a lot of hard work if we are sincere about pursuing personal growth, for old habits and patterns of behaviour can be extremely stubborn and difficult to change. This is why having a coach to help us through this process can be highly beneficial.
It is important to choose a coach that you trust and feel comfortable with, and who you know won’t judge you in anyway. You also want someone who will push you and challenge you, but also understand when to be gentle and nurturing.
During my years as a professional athlete, I worked with some of the best coaches in the world in all different areas, ranging from nutrition, psychology, to fitness and exercise. This taught me a great deal, but many of these areas were also quite mainstream.
After my football career I began exploring more alternative ways of achieving health, vitality, and personal growth. I studied intensely for a few years, and then once I had achieved fantastic results myself, I began teaching what I knew to others. Over the years I have run a number of health retreats in Bali and Melbourne, and have had countless sessions with 1 on 1 clients.
In 2017 I took a hiatus from coaching to once again work more on myself. This was because whilst I had achieved great results on my physical health, I knew my emotional, mental, and spiritual selves still required much more work. So, in the last 4-5 years I have delved much more deeply into esoteric studies such as Jungian shadow work, embodiment work, as well as various methods that address trauma healing, with a particular focus on overcoming self sabotaging patterns and addictions. I also became a father 1 year ago, which as every parent can testify to is a profoundly transformative experience.
Everything I learned during this period I incorporate into what I teach, as I now deem these as integral aspects of health.
Now that my 5 year hiatus is over, I am really excited to get back into 1 on 1 coaching.
THE 7 CORE PILLARS OF HEALTH
DIET
It is impossible to rank any of these core pillars as being more important than another, because each one is so integral to one’s overall health, however, if I was forced to rank them diet would be right up near the top. This is because your body is literally made up of what you eat. Food is the building material of the body just as wood and brick are the building materials of a house. If a builder were to use terrible quality wood and brick during their build, everyone knows that they will produce a terrible quality house. It is no different with diet, and yet so many people still don’t truly understand the value of a quality diet.
I don’t push any particular type of diet, because there are just so many variables that determine what is the right thing to eat. For example, we may require different foods in winter than in summer. We may require different foods when we are in heavy physical training or are under stress. Women may require different foods when they are trying to conceive or are pregnant.
All in all, there is no one fits all blanket diet, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise just doesn’t get it. I have tried many diets such as veganism and paleo, and whilst I got great results I found that there were times that my body was telling me I needed something different. Every time I ignored what my body was saying my health suffered.
This is why I truly believe in what I call ‘embodiment eating’, which is learning to listen to and allow your body’s incredible wisdom to guide you towards what it needs to always remain in balance.
In saying this, there are obviously core dietary principles that I believe are always true. Such as eating real foods over processed foods. Eating as much raw food as possible. Eating in-season foods. Eating simple combinations of foods to improve digestion and absorption. Eating moderate amounts and having periods of fasting, etc.
DETOXIFICATION
The reality is that we live in a highly toxic world and are bombarded with toxins from every single angle. We have toxins in our water supply, sprayed over our vegetables and fruits, sprayed into the skies, in our processed supermarket foods, in many of our meats and fish, in our cleaning and personal care products, and in so many other things. This is a sad reality, but one that we must adapt to, and if you are someone who lives with high stress and drinks coffee and alcohol regularly, or smokes cigarettes, then you are placing an even higher toxic load on your body.
This is why we must learn to detoxify ourselves on a regular basis. If we don’t do this then toxins will accumulate and overload in the blood stream, and then begin seeping into the muscles, tissues, and vital organs. This is where tissue degeneration, rapid ageing, and eventually disease can occur.
The body is actually amazing at detoxifying itself, but because of the toxic world we live in it is always fighting an uphill battle. One of my greatest joys is teaching people everything I have learned about how to help the body stay toxin free and in vibrant health. The result of this is energy, vitality, and a clarity of mind that most can only dream of.
EMBODIMENT
Most people live completely in their heads, and are disconnected from the incredible instinctive wisdom of the body. I highly value the intelligence of the head, with its masculine qualities of problems solving, analysing, logical thinking, and its ability to project into the future and plan for various events. However, I see the head as a great tool but a terrible master.
There is another type of intelligence, which is the body’s intelligence. The body’s intelligence contains more feminine qualities such as intuition, instincts, feelings and emotions. I believe that body’s intelligence is supposed to be our primary intelligence, with the knowing of the heart and the instincts of the gut functioning as our main compass as we navigate through life.
The head intelligence is there to complement the body’s intelligence and to help us figure out how to get from point A to B, after the body’s intelligence has guided us which direction to go. For example, all of my instincts and intuition told me that it was time to start coaching again and what direction I should take it. But it was my head-brain that has helped me with the logistics, such as how to structure it, how to create a new page on my website, how to market myself and get the word out there etc.
The problem is that most people have it around the wrong way, as they move through life letting their head intelligence completely control how they perceive and navigate through the world. Some people have very strong intellects and this allows them to gain a certain level of material success in the world, but it often comes at a great cost. The cost is that they lose their connection with their body, and therefore they lose their connection with the world and others around them. They lose their intuition, their sensitivity, and they often live in great anxiety and fear of losing what they have accumulated.
This is why one of my greatest passions is now helping people learn to move out of their heads and come back down into the body, and thus living their lives more intuitively, instinctively, and with a greater level of connection to themselves and to the world around them. The result of this is a level of peace, contentment and joy that nothing else can provide.
NATURE
How is your connection to nature? Do you regularly go outside for sunshine, fresh air, hikes, sport, picnics, and having fun with your friends and family? Or are you mostly inside staring at your iPhone, computer screen, and T.V.? In our modern world many people are disconnected from nature and this leaves them feeling anxious and discontented.
In our coaching sessions we will look at your life and plan how we can get more nature into your daily schedule, if you aren’t doing so already.
SPIRITUALITY
How deeply do you ponder your true essence? Do you sense that your true essence is something eternal that exists beyond this temporary human experience you are having? Do you feel like you are connected to and guided by a higher power? How often do you work on and nurture this connection?
I truly believe that at our core we are eternal spiritual beings having a temporary human experience.
This allows me to live life to its fullest, but at the same time never be overly attached to the experiences I am having. This is because I know that all of this at its deepest core is temporary, and anything that is temporary is illusory. The only thing that is truly eternal and thus real, is our spiritual core self, as well as the higher power that we are all created and guided by. This higher power is called by many names, such as God, the Creator, or Great Spirit.
Perceiving this world as temporary and illusory does not mean that it is meaningless and that nothing matters. Quite the opposite in fact, because if as eternal spiritual beings we chose to come here, then clearly it is an important to experience to have. By identifying with our true spiritual self and less with the illusory material world, we allow ourselves to live with much more courage and less fear. We also allow ourselves to handle challenges and stress much more effectively, because we understand on a deep level that all of this just a temporary experience.
By connecting with our true spiritual self, we also allow ourselves to confront and overcome the fear of death, which is a deep unconscious fear that controls many people. Personally, I do not see death as the end, but just a transitionary phase, and something that allows us to return to our true spiritual realm until we decide to return again. This is why death is not something I fear, and because I don’t fear it, it is something that I confront and think about all of the time. By confronting death, I allow myself to fully accept that all of this will be over one day, and everything I love, from my family, my wife, my friends, my pets, my beautiful son, and myself, will all one day be gone.
Of course, this brings up sadness and grief in me at times, I’m only human after all, however it also allows me to fully understand on an embodied level how precious and beautiful life is. By knowing that everything will be gone one day, it makes me want to make the most of every single moment. It makes me want to take care of my health better so that I have the energy and vitality to life to the fullest. It makes me want to nurture and cherish the relationships around me. It makes me want to have more fun and joyful experiences whenever I can. It makes want to deepen my relationship with nature, my true self, and also my Creator.
Do you feel that you live life to the fullest and cherish each moment, or do you find yourself often going through the motions and taking for granted everything around you?
This can often mean that you have lost connection with your true self and are also being driven by an unconscious fear of death that you have not yet confronted.
Reconnecting with our true self and confronting death can be very challenging, and this is why it is only something I would work with you on only if you felt ready and comfortable with it. However, even just talking about it with someone who understands these concepts and who you know won’t judge you can be extremely helpful.
RELATIONSHIPS
Even if we consider ourselves to be quite independent, there is no getting past the fact that our happiness is very dependent on the relationships in our lives. Healing and mending or even letting go of broken relationships can be very painful, but it is crucial. This is because if we are holding on to relationships that are toxic and drain our energy, then we will be left depleted and deeply unfulfilled. As a coach, one thing we may do is to scrutinise the relationships in your life and figure out what relationships need mending, or which you may simply need to let go of.
SLEEP
No one disputes how important sleep is, but it is something many people struggle with, particularly now that we have such easy access to technologies that can keep us wired right into the night. During my 20’s I had terrible problems with sleep, caused largely by stress and anxiety. Unfortunately, this also led to a 12 year long sleeping pill addiction that really got its hooks embedded deeply into me. The benefit of going through this experience was that I learned an incredible amount about sleep, and also how to calm the body before bed if we’re experiencing stress and anxiety. Now I am an excellent sleeper and love teaching others the strategies I have discovered.
TESTIMONIALS
Melanie Bate
With Matt’s help and extensive knowledge I have learned so much about my body and how best to fuel it in order for it to function at its highest level. In a world where there is so much information, it is so refreshing to learn simple and manageable ways to feel amazing everyday. Matt has dedicated many years to his research and study and it shines through his work. I am so grateful to have Matt as a mentor, not only for my physical health but mental and spiritual too. I highly recommend his guidance for anyone seeking some clarity on how to live a life full of vitality.
Greg Madder
Matt’s knowledge and passion for holistic health is second to none. I have been fortunate enough to see him constantly master and evolve his craft over the past 8 years. His drive to always be looking for deeper levels of truth, leaving no stone unturned, not only allows him to heal himself, but to also heal everyone he comes into contact with. Through his very being, leadership, living example, and genuine care to uplift humanity you will see dramatic shifts in your life. Matt has passed on an incredible wealth of knowledge to me that has deeply impacted every aspect of my own. If you want to get to the root cause of your health and mindset challenges, Matt will change your life.
Andrew and Anneke
If your looking for someone to help simplify the very complex world of health and give you a practical path to better health, Matt is your guy! He has played a massive role in both of our health journeys and we often comment on how we didn’t know what true health was until we met Matt. With all the contradictions and overload of information in the health arena, we found after years trying our best to improve our health, that we still struggled with many of the usual challenges; Our energy levels were up and down. Our weight would fluctuate constantly and we just couldn’t find a good balance – it just seemed like constant effort with little or short lived benefits. Matt helped us change all that! Through his coaching he gave us the knowledge to be able to do the basics properly and then equiped us with some core principles to work with in our daily lives that took away the confusion and really just made things easier.. Of course health takes effort but we both feel now we actually put in less effort overall and yet are feeling and looking better than we’ve ever felt. All because Matt helped align us with what our bodies really needed. We hold Matts advice in the highest regard and would recommend him to anyone!
