The Evolution of a Coach – When Traditional Methods Meet Soul Work
August 25, 2025
After 15 years as an ICF-certified professional coach with over 4,000 coaching hours, I’ve witnessed countless breakthrough moments. But something was missing—not in my clients’ progress, but in my own methodology.
The Corporate Foundation
My corporate years in leadership development weren’t just career stepping stones, they were my first education in human transformation. I learned to create systems, design processes and programs, and most importantly, hold space for others’ growth. Those skills became the bedrock of my coaching practice, grounding me in structure and professionalism.
But corporate life taught me something else: the parts of ourselves we’re trained to leave at the door don’t disappear. They go underground, waiting.
The Coaching Awakening
Somewhere around coaching hour 847, I realized my clients were teaching me as much as I was teaching them. They were showing me that transformation happens not just through conversation and insight, but through accessing deeper layers of self-knowledge that words alone couldn’t reach.
My training in Jungian coaching psychology and Integral coach training prepared me to understand the psyche’s hidden depths. Gestalt practitioner training taught me about contact, awareness, and the wisdom of the here-and-now. Integral coaching revealed how development unfolds across multiple dimensions of human experience. Yet I found myself longing for something more tangible, more visceral, more… visual.
The Missing Piece
I could guide clients through profound verbal processing. I could help them uncover patterns, integrate shadow material, and develop new ways of being in the world. But I began to notice that some of our most profound moments happened not through talking, but through the silence between words—the space where something wordless was trying to emerge.
That’s when I remembered the girl who found solace in the flowing lines of calligraphy. The child whose grandmother’s patient hands guided her through intricate needlework and sewing, teaching her to create beautiful garments with purpose and intention. Each project began with a vision, required careful attention to color choices and design elements, and transformed raw materials into something meaningful through deliberate action.
This process of moving from concept to creation—of making beauty while processing the chaos of a difficult home life—was developing the same essential skills I now bring to visual journaling: the ability to work with intention, express meaning through color and visual elements, and transform insight into tangible action. I had unconsciously abandoned these ways of knowing when I entered the professional world, believing they had no place in “serious” adult development.
I was wrong.
The Integration
The Visual Journaler™ isn’t an addition to my coaching practice—it’s the missing piece that makes everything else more complete. When clients engage with images, symbols, colors, and textures, they access parts of their psyche that pure verbal processing cannot touch.
This isn’t art therapy (though I deeply respect that field). This is coaching psychology expressed through multiple dimensions of human experience. It’s Jung’s active imagination made tangible. It’s Gestalt’s creative adjustment happening in real-time on the page. It’s integral development unfolding through visual narrative.
The Visual Journaler™ methodology integrates everything I’ve learned about human development while honoring the creative wisdom I carried as a child.
The Science of Visual Integration
Neuroscience confirms what ancient wisdom traditions have always known: the brain processes visual and verbal information through different pathways. When we engage both simultaneously, we create new neural networks, access embodied memories, and unlock creative problem-solving capacities that remain dormant in purely verbal work.
My clients report breakthrough insights emerging through color choices they couldn’t explain. They discover aspects of themselves through symbols that appeared spontaneously on the page. They access grief, joy, and transformation through their hands in ways their minds had been unable to reach.
Why Now?
This evolution feels less like a career pivot and more like a homecoming. After decades of helping others find their authentic voice, I’m finally expressing mine fully. The Visual Journaler™ methodology integrates everything I’ve learned about human development while honoring the creative wisdom I have carried since I as a child.
This isn’t about becoming an artist. It’s about remembering that we are already whole, creative beings whose deepest wisdom often speaks in images, symbols, and felt sense rather than words alone.
The girl who found resilience through calligraphy, sewing and needlework didn’t disappear when I became a coach. She was waiting to be invited back home.
Hi! I'm Terri Altschul
I’m a Mixed Media Depth Coach and the creator of Visual Wisdom Keeping — a practice for women in the second half of life who are ready to excavate the wisdom of their becoming.
If something here resonated, I’d like to invite you to stay close to the work—a note now and then from inside the practice—and to be the first to know when a new map or offering opens.
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Terri altschul, icf pcc
Terri Altschul is a Mixed Media Depth Coach and the creator of Visual Wisdom Keeping.
A lifelong curiosity about how people think, learn, and create carried her career in leadership & org development into coaching, and then into a coaching practice pairing the inner journey with creativity, for women in the second half of life.
Her work draws on Jungian depth psychology, Celtic tradition, and the mixed media art materials. She is an ICF PCC with more than 4,000 coaching hours. Her gift is holding space for what's emerging and helping you become who you haven't yet been.
