Tina Geithner, Ph.D., ICF-PCC,
CMC, Presence-Based® Coach
I am a seasoned co-journeyer and facilitator of learning and development with over 4 decades of teaching and mentoring experience, more than 200 hours of coaching training, 11 years as a certified coach, and 7 years of mentor coaching. My experience also includes designing and facilitating workshops and retreats on a variety of topics for corporate teams from diverse fields, teaching and mentoring (undergraduate and graduate levels), experiential and outdoor education, Yoga training and teaching, and using somatic approaches to support transformation.
The integration of my education, training, and experience allows me to support you in developing more awareness of the whole of yourself, or somatic awareness (extero-, intero-, and proprio-ception), and connecting with and clarifying what matters most to you. These serve as the foundation for intentions or commitments which provide direction - a compass - for co-creating and implementing a personalized development plan - a map for your journey of transformation that continues to emerge as you grow and change from within. Important components of that plan are disrupting old patterns and designing and engaging in practices that will support you in building the capacities and new patterns that will help you navigate life’s challenges with greater fluidity, stability, joy, and fulfillment.
I am grateful for the honor and privilege to get to know and support other human beings in their learning and development journeys. I’d love to support you in yours. What are you waiting for? Let’s have some serious fun together and get you moving toward the life you’re dreaming of!
“Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.”
~ Rachel Naomi Remen
How we work…
We start where you are, we identify your current strengths and challenges, and we clarify what matters most to you. We co-create the conditions for working in a space that feels safe, respectful, and supportive of who you are, what you’re bringing, and where you want to go.
We invite all of your innate intelligence and develop your somatic awareness by incorporating exteroception (your senses and information available in the outside environment), interoception (information from your inner environment in the form of physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, energy, and intuition), proprioception (awareness of your parts, their relationship to each other, and where you are located), and neuroception (emotional regulation, dysregulation, and returning to a regulated state with greater speed, consistency, and ease).
We play with metaphors, polarities, movement patterns, and practices that deepen your felt-sense and knowing. We incorporate approaches that challenge and help you examine your ways of thinking, being, and doing and explore alternative perspectives and ways of engaging with yourself, others, and your environment. We co-create fieldwork that will support you in moving in the direction of and achieving your desired outcomes - who you want to be, how you want to show up in your life and at work, and the impact you want to have. We assess progress regularly and adjust as needed to help you hold ground when needed and move forward when ready at a pace that is sustainable and chosen by you.
Because no two individuals or teams are alike in their history, capacities, challenges, or desired outcomes, the approach we take is customized.
Options for our work include, but are not limited to:
Somatic Practices
Centering, grounding, meditation, journaling, and movement exercises support awareness and discernment. A somatic practice can be combined with a commitment or intention to strengthen an existing pattern or habit, or support the development of a new pattern or way of thinking, being, and doing.
Simple practices linked to other things you do regularly are most successful. Practice happens under low pressure situations so that the capacities and responses you’re developing become more accessible in high-stakes situations, when how you show up and the actions you take really count.
LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) Methods
Hands-on thinking with LEGO® bricks engages our visual, auditory, and kinesthetic capacities in constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing mental models. In the process of mapping and making our mental models visible, we can experience, understand, and work with them more effectively.
LSP Methods can be used in individual or team coaching to explore questions , gain new perspectives, and solve problems. LSP also supports playing with the current challenge, envisioning the ideal, and finding ways to bridge the gap.
Metaphor-Play
An exploratory process and evidence-based approach that involves hands-on thinking and visual mapping , similar to LSP. You bring a question, situation, or challenge around which you’d like more understanding, a new perspective or insight, or a new approach, and create a visual mental model of it with small objects. You are guided to explore the elements and their relationships via Clean Language. You can deconstruct and/or reconstruct the model as part of the exploration.
See the peer-reviewed paper that Lily Seto and I co-authored on Metaphor Magic in Coaching and Coaching Supervision on the Resources page for more information.
FEBI (Focus Energy Balance Indicator)
The FEBI is a validated psychometric assessment for individuals and/or teams that can be combined with coaching. It measures 4 patterns in our nervous system that link mind, body, and behaviors and map to 4 dominant personality factors.
FEBI identifies strengths and the relative balance among the energy patterns that show up in all we do. Understanding how these patterns manifest (e.g., strengths, over-/under-expression) allows us to use practices to shift the balance toward more productive use of the patterns and offers ways of leveraging them for more effective living, leading, and working with others.
Touchstones
Personalized physical reminders of what matters most, chosen by you and created by me in collaboration with you. I use hand-selected waterstones, paint, gel pens, and other materials to create customized pieces of inspiration with themed images, words, colors, and designs. You might choose a commitment or intention, a word for the year, or a special design - with or without words.
Commission a single touchstone or a set that can be used along with your practices or be given as unique gifts to yourself or others. Contact me to discuss ideas and for information on pricing.
Your Engagement Makes A Difference
Water makes up roughly 60% of the human body. The most basic human need for health and well-being is access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. The Ocean is the world’s largest ecosystem, covering 3/4 of the Earth’s surface. It contains 97% of the Earth’s water and represents 99% of the living space on the planet by volume. Healthy oceans are essential to all life on Earth.
Two United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are dedicated to providing access to water and sanitation and conserving the oceans (www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment). In 2024, 5% of my income from Waterstones Coaching was donated to Charity: Water (www.charitywater.org) and The Ocean Conservancy (www. oceanconservancy.org).
Thanks for helping support clean water for your fellow human beings and the planet!