Health coaching: holistically empowering change

The four pillars of health coaching: preserving the heart of a movement

In this special themed issue of Global Advances in Health and Medicine and in articles published on the journal's website (www.gahmj.com), you will read all about this new and maturing approach to health behavior change and the social and cultural conditions in modern medicine that have called this practice into being. You will learn about its inception and history,¹ the philosophic constructs of its application,^2,3 and its proposed mechanism of action.⁴ There are multiple case reports^5–7 and clinical studies^8–10 expanding our scientific understanding of coaching in health and wellness and descriptions about how to educate professionals to provide this new service.^11,12 A review of existing literature in the field demonstrates the rapidly growing reported demonstration of its impact.¹³ I believe coaching is poised to have a major transformative impact on health and healthcare internationally; it also is at risk of being usurped and thereby deformed by the power of the existing paradigm of Western disease care and reductionistic scientific thought. That is the issue I wish to raise: How do we ensure the integrity of this new approach so that it can serve as a bridge from a broken system to a new horizon of holistic health and well-being?