We recently connected with Meredith Segan Sarason and have shared our conversation below.
Meredith, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
Thanks for having me. Before becoming a health coach, I was a dedicated environmental attorney. I loved the work and had the opportunity to participate in pivotal climate change litigation to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for intentionally misleading the public on the impacts of climate change. But my health was suffering. I had been struggling with chronic migraine for over a decade and getting out of bed each day was a battle. For a long time, I just kept pushing through, not wanting to miss my life.
In 2019, thanks to the encouragement of a few thoughtful souls, I finally took a leap of faith. Trusting I could get better if I devoted my energy to healing, I decided to pause. I went on short-term disability to focus on my health. That decision really changed everything.
In the months that followed, healing became my full-time job. My days were stacked with cooking for a rigorous diet, reading books on healing, practicing yoga, spending time in nature and with friends, and cultivating elevated emotions to regulate my nervous system and rewire my overstressed brain.
After 9 months of diet and lifestyle change, self-work, and a powerful mindfulness practice called brain retraining, I was in shock at how much I had recovered. I felt incredibly empowered. But I also felt angry–after a decade of countless practitioners and protocols, no one had ever told me I was not broken, that I had everything I needed to heal.
I looked around and saw too many others stressed, overwhelmed, burnt out, and experiencing stress-related conditions. I know how hopeless of a place that can be, and I wanted others to know their power. I enrolled in a health coach certification program and founded Inner Compass Health to empower others to reclaim their health and their lives. While it was incredibly difficult to leave this critical work, I really felt called to share all that I had learned.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and your work.
I am a certified health and life coach, enneagram facilitator, and founder of Inner Compass Health—a coaching practice empowering passionate professionals, artists, and activists to break free from stress, overwhelm, and burnout and reclaim themselves and their lives. I help clients go from unproductive, over-committed, and under-resourced to feeling revived, aligned, and deeply satisfied with their lives. My work is inspired by the research, science, and wisdom I gained in her journey healing from over a decade of chronic migraine and episodic burnout.
Prior to coaching, I graduated from Berkeley Law and worked in environmental impact litigation. I am passionate about working with highly motivated professionals and artists who are dedicated to their work in the world and could use support giving themselves the care they need to thrive so they can get back to living their purpose, because it is only when we have taken care of ourselves that we are able to go out and do our work in this world.
The Inner Compass Health coaching framework helps clients envision and aspire to a holistically healthy version of themselves, so that they can create their most satisfying, aligned life. Through deep listening, inquiry, and accountability, I work with clients to access their personal wisdom and discover their unique path to aligned living. Instead of receiving advice, clients are given the tools to find their personal truth. This approach empowers clients to listen, build trust, and implement more balanced, authentic, and nourishing practices that lie at the foundation of health, well-being, and contentment.
In addition to private coaching, I also bring these tools to teams through workplace wellness programming around stress-management and the Enneagram.
Stress-management is such an important topic right now. For readers who may be experiencing stress, what do you want them to know?
I want readers to know that if they are feeling overwhelmed by stress and on the road to burnout, they are not alone. In the American Psychological Association’s 2022 Stress in America survey, a third of adults reported that stress is completely overwhelming most days and over a quarter of respondents reported that most days they are so stressed they cannot function. Those are serious numbers!
The stressors of modern life require active management, and most of us are not taught skills or tools to truly support our health and well-being. We think this stuff should be easy, but it’s not necessarily intuitive. I want readers to know it’s ok to get support, and that it doesn’t have to be so hard. Clients are consistently shocked to learn that such little shifts in habits can make such drastic improvements to their health and well-being. I think getting support around stress-management needs to become normalized like going to a personal trainer or a nutritionist.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
We live in a culture that emphasizes the role of the expert in telling us how to achieve health and well-being. We are taught to choose our diets, exercise routines, and sleep schedules based on what the science tells us. The problem with this paradigm is that it centers scientific findings at the exclusion of personal experience and wisdom. Each person is a unique constellation. They have unique genes, lifestyle, personality, etc. And so there really is a level of experimentation needed to find what works best for us. And the reality is many of the norms we have are not designed around health at all. For example, the workday isn’t designed to maximize health. It’s designed to maximize profits.
Moreover, as humans we are in a constant state of change. Our body is aging. Our life circumstances are changing. For women, our hormones are shifting throughout the month. If we stick to “THE” healthy diet, we have no capacity to sense and respond to our ever-changing needs.
This paradigm also centers our choices on “shoulds” instead of internal alignment, and the science shows that when we are doing something for purely extrinsic reasons, the habits don’t last.
In my healing journey, I had to unlearn this strict adherence to external guidance. I had to rediscover the messages my body was sending me and learn to honor them. This is one of the most important skills I help my clients develop. This isn’t about denying science. Instead, it is about bringing the wisdom of our bodies back online in addition to the wealth of information science provides us.
This learning is the source of the name of my coaching practice, Inner Compass Health. It is the rediscovering of our inner knowing and learning to create a responsive relationship where we are listening to the messages and honoring our needs and desires.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
It is life experience and personal development work that sets apart an exceptional coach. When a coach has done the personal development work—when they have walked through the fire so to speak—they can relate to what the client is experiencing. They can anticipate and spot obstacles that are bound to surface. And, they bring the wisdom, knowledge, and tools necessary to overcome those obstacles.
When a coach has done the work, their own story acts as an embodiment of what is possible inspiring continued commitment in the client. The wisdom of lived experience allows the coach to extend a hand from the “other side” and support the client as they find their own way across. This is not something you can learn in a textbook or a training. It has to be earned through the coach’s own transformational process. We as coaches cannot lead people where we have not yet gone.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.innercompasshealth.com
- Instagram: @innercompasshealth
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-segan-sarason-bb289811/
- Subscribe: https://innercompasshealth.beehiiv.com/subscribe
- Other: https://flow.page/innercompasshealth
Image Credits
Calendar/Coffee Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash Journal Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash