Dr. Angelika Maria Koch shares a powerful story about how her career and life path ultimately came out of a “primal experience” as a young mother when her son was sick many years ago. During this experience while living in England, she shares she wasn’t getting the guidance she needed from the doctor, so she then consulted a homeopath and the remedy didn’t work and she was facing the weekend with a sick child.
After discussing taking him to the emergency room, her husband suggested she get quiet, go inside herself, and then encouraged, I know you’ll know what to do. She said this was not a typical conversation they would have and it was out of character but she went along with the idea.
She said she was surprised but she was able to get in touch with her inner voice. She recalled thinking, this is an intense situation and I need it (the remedy) in a higher potency. She went back to the pharmacy, got the remedy in a higher dose, and within 24 hours her son was doing well.
A week later, she enrolled in a 4-year homeopathic training.
Fast-forward many years later, Koch is now living in the United States and has consistently continued her education. She is a doctor of Natural Medicine with her own practice Medica Nova, has a master’s in herbalism, and has accumulated 18 years as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico. She teaches courses in Integrated Health Coaching & Integrative Medicine.
Koch continues to share her personal story to illustrate how important it is for people to tune into themselves.
For her students at the University of New Mexico, a health coaching course is part of the Bachelor of Science and Liberal Arts Degree. She said they start out in the course, because it’s a requirement but, “down the road, they realize this is fantastic.”
She says they learn life skills and how they can apply these skills with clients but with themselves first. “They realize this is really interesting,” and she says usually halfway through the semester, she gets calls asking if there is a way to learn more about coaching.
For Koch, she has one answer, “Wellcoaches, that is what you have to go for.”
“Wellcoaches has such a kaleidoscope of resources. Although it’s based on health and wellness it’s really a universal and unique school which provides a diversity of life skills; from positive psychology to the meditative part to truly hands-on coaching skills.”
Koch became a certified coach because, as she says, “for myself as a person, I like to learn.”
When working with a client or a patient, she says it’s about “asking them to take charge of their life, guiding them to that place of self-efficacy, self-empowerment…get in touch with that natural impulse to be well.”
It’s about taking charge of their life and the health issue is the trigger to catalyze that decision. “It’s not just about how to quit smoking or change the glycemic index. That’s just the entrance.”
“Coaching skills provide the client with a sense of wholeness, coming back to oneself. They learn how to meet the obstacles in life and have the skills to overcome them, transform them. This doesn’t mean they are perfect. But they will not forget anymore that experience of self-empowerment. No money can touch that,” she said.
“That is the core essence of my practice going within and listening to the truth within. The voice within.”