Continuing personal professional development can help build our Self, allowing us to meet clients in the depths of their experience.
Jane Brendgen explains

At Coaching at Work’s conference on 14 November last year, I attended Elizabeth Crosse and Julia Carden’s session titled ‘CPPD: Putting the personal into our professional development.’ The first reflective question posed to us was: “What did I do last year that had the greatest impact on my development?”

The chat immediately lit up with responses centred around personal life experiences. The question many were answering was closer to: ‘What has had the most impact on me as a human being over the past 12 months?’

As coaches, we all recognise the importance of CPD. This is more about horizontal development, ie, building on our knowledge, skills and tools, enhancing our competence and keeping us aligned with best practice in the field and in our respective working contexts. 

In contrast, CPPD (continuing personal and professional development) is the domain of vertical development where our life experiences hold the potential to transform our instrument of self, changing how we see, think and relate to ourselves, others and the living systems we are embedded in. 

A recent convergence of events drew me into the tender terrain associated with the activation of early childhood trauma. In the November/December 2024 edition of the magazine, I wrote about my experience of developmental fallback – a temporary regression to a previous stage of adult development in response to stress or overwhelming life conditions. This occurred in the context of my 10-month active engagement with the heartbreaking ongoing human rights crisis in Gaza. Simultaneously, a difficult dynamic was playing out in a particular work context which left me feeling deeply unsettled. For a year I carried grief, sadness and pain and spoke about these experiences regularly in my Internal Family Systems therapy sessions and with my supervisor. 

The underlying trigger remained in plain sight until 3am on a Thursday morning when I literally woke up to the realisation that what was being resurrected in these two particular contexts was the wound of abandonment. I recognised that an 11-year-old part of me was resonating, caught in the lived reality of that Sunday afternoon when, without warning, my family unit was torn apart and I was separated from my mother, my twin brother and my sister. Inter-generational abandonment trauma had unconsciously shaped this parental choice. I went back to my Leadership Development Profile (Harthill Consulting) of August 2024 and was amazed to see this pattern reflected so clearly in one of the stem completions where, in relation to Gaza, I expressed rage regarding the fact that those political agents who could affect change were choosing not to act. 

I felt – and still feel – that political leaders and much of the world’s press have abandoned the Palestinians in their time of greatest need. This is a grave injustice sanctioned by silence. 

 

My awakening

A few days after receiving the insight I was thrown back into the cauldron of transformation as the fires of Kundalini were re-ignited. Kundalini is a Sanskrit term referring to a powerful life force said to be coiled at the base of the spine. This dormant energy can be awakened through challenging life experiences or practices such as yoga, meditation and breathing techniques. 

Once unleashed, Kundalini catalyses a psycho-spiritual transformation through opening energetic centres in the body, integrating trauma and restructuring the architecture of the nervous system. 

In August 2015, I experienced a spontaneous awakening in the context of the deepening of a committed nine-year meditation practice, a self-inquiry into embodied relational authenticity for an MSc thesis and teaching relational mindfulness based on the practice of Insight Dialogue – an interpersonal meditation practice that brings mindfulness, compassion and insight into the dynamic of real-time conversation. 

The insight of abandonment re-activated this energy and I involuntarily entered another period of rapid vertical growth, where the body’s innate neuroplasticity – its capacity to reorganise itself, both structurally and functionally in response to inner or outer experience – becomes highly activated through Kundalini’s powerful surges of life energy. 

I experienced symptoms characteristic of this extraordinary phenomenon which include heightened interoceptive and sensory awareness, hearing a loud rhythmic pattern, pleasant and very unpleasant unusual visceral sensations, spontaneous shaking and breath-holding, terror of annihilation and deep despair associated with feeling totally forsaken. I entered a non-ordinary state of consciousness that blurred the boundaries of reality, reflecting a descent into the unconscious. The inner scaffolding that props up the sense of ‘me’ gave way and opened the door to the fertile depths of the underworld where I encountered both personal and transpersonal material. 

In Jungian and depth psychology, this is considered a vital part of the individuation process – the inner alchemical work required for deeper integration, wholeness, and transformation. In spiritual traditions, it’s sometimes referred to as the dark night of the soul.

 

Seeds of connection

The fires subsided five weeks ago as I write and I’m now in the ambiguous transitional space of integration. When we’re pushed into a liminal space, either through challenging inner or outer experiences, evolution weaves her way through the delicate threads of our neural networks, pruning that which is no longer needed and seeding new connections that reach into areas previously estranged. This process of developmental transitioning feels both disorientating and joyful. There’s a sense of not knowing who ‘I am’ and rejoicing in the mystery of what is emerging. 

Kundalini has repeatedly led me into the heat of transformation, a crucible where descent is a necessary part of renewal. Jung captured this when he wrote: “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell” (Jung, quoted in AZQuotes, 2025).  

At times, I felt I was teetering on the edge of a deep abyss, uncertain whether I’d survive the terror of unravelling. Over time, I began to recognise the blessings of Kundalini’s fierce grace, not as capacities or competencies but as living boundless jewels – surrendering, illuminating, humbling, untangling, dissolving, reweaving, presencing, loving. 

Many of the imprints of developmental trauma have been metabolised and my ‘instrument of self’ has been and continues to be transformed in ways I could never have imagined. I experience this most vividly as a deepening into embodied presence, a place to rest where a resilient stability of safety lives increasingly untouched by context. 

I’m also aware of a growing tender conversational intimacy with life and experience joy and gratitude when unhealed parts still casting shadows in the light are revealed. Through seeing these unclaimed fragments of self, acknowledging and feeling them deep in the soma, healing becomes more inclusive.

I notice that the ecosystem of Self is held in an ever-expanding coherent space which takes form as open loving responsive listening with my clients. Through learning to compassionately feel whatever’s showing up somatically, my window of tolerance has expanded and I’m able to meet my clients in the depths of their experience. There is also ‘being’ the paradoxical reality of intervening in coaching contexts where there is an agenda for change, letting go of any agenda for change and surrendering more fully to the life that is wanting to be lived through my client and myself.

The coaching process has become organically emergent, an intelligent open living relational system – dynamic, unpredictable, creative, evolutionary, revelatory, tender, beautiful. I feel immensely grateful. 

• Writing these reflective pieces brings me great joy. And, I wonder how they land with you, dear reader? If you’d drop me an email to let me know I’d be truly delighted to hear from you: jane@compassionate-cultures.co.uk

 

Reference

• AZQuotes (2025). Carl Jung quote: “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” Available at: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/652331 (Accessed: 26 June 2025)

 

• Jane Brendgen is founder of Compassionate Cultures. She is an executive coach specialising in authentic leadership, adult development and therapeutic coaching. She is a mindfulness supervisor.