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Revealing the hidden power of metaphor in Nature Based Coaching

    Metaphors have real power. Revealing this hidden power in Nature Based Coaching means reflecting on what metaphors are, how they might show up, how they may be used by our clients, and what this means for our practice as coaches.

    This paper explores the topic, which is one of those featured in our Nature Based Coaching Skills training. The course is open for bookings now.

    Life on the rhizome

    Carl Jung described true life as invisible, and hidden.

    “Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. then it withers away – an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilisations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”

    Carl Jung in ‘The Earth has a soul’, Sabini, M. 2016 (1)

    What a beautiful idea, that there are deeper, essential forces at play under the surface of things if we care to really look. How apt for coaching! And how unsurprising, perhaps, that Jung should choose a plant for his combination of simile and metaphor, given how connected he was to the earth, and how often natural features show up in language.

    Think of a metaphor…

    Imagine you are in a coaching session outdoors – connected to your coach by telephone. They notice the sun come out, and cast long shadows through the trees. Perhaps nature is telling your client something. That, as a leader, they cast their own shadow. That they have a choice in how they want that shadow to touch people, and how they could make those interactions beneficial ones.

    Or you’re struck by a nature metaphor in a song you hear, as I was the other day by ‘One Fine Morning’, by Bill Callahan. He sings “…the mountains bowed down / In the morning sun / Like a ballet of the heart.” A lovely image. Although there is evidence that the lexicon of ‘nature’ terms in song lyrics has waxed and waned over the years (2), popular music is still jam-packed with nature metaphors, as a quick scan of the Human Nature Partnership’s playlist ‘Inspired by Nature’, will show you.

    Not just a linguistic device

    Hungarian Professor Zoltán Kövecses notes that metaphor is not just a linguistic device, but ‘a conceptual tool for structuring, restructuring and even creating reality.’ (3). In 2002, he surveyed all of the available metaphor dictionaries and relevant cognitive linguistic research on conceptual metaphor to see, quantitatively, which sources were most used as the basis for everyday metaphors.

    Kövecses found that the six most used source domains were:

    • The human body (including health and illness). e.g. ‘The heart of the problem’
    • Living things (e.g. animals, plants) e.g. ‘A budding beauty’
    • People-made things (e.g. buildings, machines, tools) e.g. ‘He’s in financial ruins’
    • Human activities (e.g. games, sport, war, money, cooking, food) e.g. ‘He’s a heavyweight politician’
    • The environment (e.g. heat, cold, light, darkness) e.g. ‘A cloud over the friendship’
    • Physics (e.g. space, forces, movement, direction) ‘He swept me off my feet’.

    Metaphors come easily in Nature Based Coaching, perhaps because four of these six source domains are in the living and natural worlds, rather than in ‘ourselves’ or in ‘people-made’ things. This is important not because of the individual words, but for concepts generated, and the meaning we make from them. According to the ICF, metaphors show up as part of communicating effectively with our clients, and in evoking awareness – facilitating “client insight and learning by using tools and techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor or analogy.” To this, I’m sure, we can add nature in simile and allegory.

    An example session

    In one recent Nature Based Coaching session outdoors, my client explored a huge range of metaphors. These included: large oak trees as pride in self; spaces between tree branches as ‘windows’ to view self and other; bridges as carriers from current to desired future state; cloud speed as a metaphor for thinking styles; two acorn cups to represent the connection between father and daughter; and the blue and empty sky as the spirit of a lost loved one.

    Although quantity isn’t everything, of course, it is not unusual to see a range of metaphors arising in a single Nature Based Coaching session. In my experience, however, it is unusual in a traditional indoor coaching session – when perhaps a single metaphor may emerge.

    Studies on meaning and identity

    Various authors have explored the potential of metaphor to enable the exploration and even formation of identity through coaching. Manahan-Vaughan & Papworth found metaphor was valuable in enabling nine subjects to re-author their life post-trauma (4). Steyn & Barnard have highlighted the value of metaphors as a self-reflective tool for sense making, especially for identity work (5).

    Another recent study (6) added to these themes of identity, by discovering the value of metaphor for relieving pressure and providing rationality through a ‘meta’ perspective; and in encouraging a more expansive than contractive approach to transformation.

    I have no doubt that being outside – in particular – is a coaching modality which increases the availability of metaphor, and offers greater potential for increased awareness, new options, and therefore more choice for the actions our clients decide to take. It seems likely that the additional creative thinking potential of being outside in a calm and pleasant natural environment plays a key role in releasing more metaphor.

    Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, in writing about the cognitive biophilia of symbolism in animals, says it is ‘remarkable to contemplate the paucity of other categories for the conceptual frames of references so preeminent, widespread and enduring is the habit of symbolizing in terms of animals.’ Which Stephen Kellert (7) noted also applies to other forms of life including plants.

    And as for the shadows we cast, research by Harvard Business School shows that good leadership is contagious (8). In fact, ‘developing self’ was found to be the most contagious behaviour. Of course, coaching is excellent at developing selves.

    Communicating Nature Based Coaching

    There is one final dimension of metaphors we should consider, and that relates to how we wish to communicate our work. Whether it is in marketing and sales to attract clients, promoting benefits of our work as Nature Based Coaches, or speaking and communicating our work more generally, which metaphors are most likely to strike a chord?

    There are some strong clues in a study of the power of metaphor to evoke the human-environment relationship, and inspire action for climate change by Thibodeau, Frantz and Berretta (9). The researchers explored three main ways in which different metaphors land.

    First, they explored to what extent different metaphors evoked positive emotions – as positive affect is a key driver of environmental engagement and behaviour change.

    Second, the value of a metaphor to provide a mental model for thinking about the issue. For issues of climate and nature, for example, it may help to represent the complexity of the systems we are dealing with. Work by others (10) suggests that thinking about the human-environment relationship as a complex system encourages recognition of the risks posed by climate change and the ‘co-benefits’ of environmental action. They found that system thinkers tend to believe more in scientific consensus – and not in conspiracist and free-market ideation. They also found that system thinkers ascribe more value to the natural world in monetary, social and ecological terms.

    Third, Thibodeau, Frantz and Berretta measured how accurate the metaphors were considered to be by experts and the general population. Goethe himself felt this was important, saying we must guard against cleverly relating things that are in fact unrelated, and instead seek “true relationships.” (11).

    The earth is our home

    So what did the Thibodeau, Frantz and Berretta find out? Well, foremost in terms of positive emotional impact were metaphors related to ‘home’. These were also the metaphors most frequently selected by experts and general population alike. ‘Home’ (allied with metaphors like ‘kingdom’ and ‘community’) was received as a more positive metaphor than ‘mother’. This is interesting, given how common ‘Mother Earth’, ‘Mother Nature’, and other female gendered and personified terms are. Parent, child and ancestor are others in this bracket.

    The ‘home’ metaphor was also considered the most systemic – significantly more so than ‘community’. People felt that ‘home’ carried less ‘baggage’ than metaphors related to ‘mother’ – and that it captured the reciprocal relationship with the earth. Metaphors that were much less popular included earth as ‘spaceship’ (metaphors of mechanisation), ‘park’ (spatial or emergent metaphors) or ‘bank’ (earth as resource metaphors). These seemed to devalue the environment. (9)

    ‘The earth is our home’ is a powerful metaphor indeed.

    I wonder what will show up in your next coaching session.

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    References

    1. Carl Jung (The Earth has a Soul (2016) C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology & Modern Life. Edited by Meredith Sabini. North Atlantic Books
    2. Kesebir, S., & Kesebir, P. (2017). A Growing Disconnection From Nature Is Evident in Cultural Products. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(2), 258-269. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616662473
    3. Kövecses, Zoltan, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2002 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311403391_Conceptual_metaphor_theory
    4. Manahan-Vaughan, Elfreda & Papworth, Julia. (2024). The role of metaphor in coaching when re- authoring narratives in post-traumatic growth: a thematic analysis. 22(2). 130-148. 10.24384/0a17-6b72
    5. Steyn, Linda & Barnard, Antoni. (2024). The coaching experience as identity work: Reflective metaphors. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology. 50. 10.4102/sajip.v50i0.2132
    6. Beadle, Corri & Papworth, Julia & Brookes, Oxford. (2024). “The Experience of an Embodied Metaphor-Based Positive Psychology Coaching Intervention for Transformation and Insight”, The International Journal of Evidenced Based Coaching and Mentoring.. 22. 109-129. 10.24384/y2px-1t50
    7. Kellert, S.R. & Wilson, E.O. (Eds) The Biophilia Hypothesis, 1993. Island Press, Washington DC
    8. The Trickle-Down Effect of Good (and Bad) Leadership by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, 14 January 2016, Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2016/01/the-trickle-down-effect-of-good-and-bad-leadership
    9. Thibodeau, Paul & Frantz, Cynthia & Berretta, Matias. (2017). The earth is our home: systemic metaphors to redefine our relationship with nature. Climatic Change. 142. 10.1007/s10584-017-1926-z.
    10. Lezak, Stephen & Thibodeau, Paul. (2016). Systems thinking and environmental concern. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 46. 10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.04.005.
    11. Root, C., The Proteus Within: Thoreau’s Practice of Goethe’s Phenomenology, 2005, Janus Head, 8(1), 232-249, Trivium Publications, Amherst, NY

    Photograph of Lededouria rhizome by Ton Rulkens, Flickr