Why Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality Belong at the Heart of Coaching — and Lifestyle Medicine Is Finally Catching Up

A landmark paper in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine argues that what coaches have always known is now a clinical imperative

For twenty-five years, Wellcoaches has trained health and wellness coaches to start where the client is — not with a diagnosis or a diet plan, but with what matters most to them. What gives their life direction? What they’re willing to fight for when motivation fades, and old habits reassert themselves.

Now, a sweeping new supplement published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine argues that mainstream medicine should do the same. The paper, “Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in the Clinical Practice of Lifestyle Medicine,” represents the output of a national summit convened by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the Global Positive Health Institute, bringing together nearly 100 experts to examine how meaning, purpose, and spirituality — collectively termed MPS — can be woven into clinical care. We’re proud that one of the paper’s authors, Tracy Yates, NBC-HWC, ICF-PCC, is a senior Wellcoach whose work exemplifies the integration this paper calls for.

The Core Argument: MPS Is the “Why” Behind Behavior Change

The paper’s central insight will sound familiar to any trained coach: sustained behavior change doesn’t come from information or willpower alone. It comes from connecting daily choices to something deeper — a sense of purpose, a web of relationships that matter, a framework of meaning that makes the effort worthwhile.

The authors frame MPS as the motivational foundation beneath lifestyle medicine’s evidence-based behavioral interventions. When clinicians help patients link health behaviors to their sense of purpose — exercising to sustain energy for caregiving, preparing nourishing food as an act of love for family, caring for the body as sacred — motivation and adherence strengthen. Purpose-driven goals create what the authors describe as a mutually reinforcing cycle: pursuing health goals promotes positive affect, which in turn deepens purpose.

This is not a peripheral add-on. The paper argues explicitly that MPS is “not an optional add-on but a foundational component of quality whole-person lifestyle medicine practice.”

What the Evidence Shows

The evidence base is substantial. Decades of research link MPS to reduced mortality, improved quality of life, greater resilience, and stronger health behaviors. The paper notes that the Joint Commission has recommended spiritual assessment in hospitals since 2001, and that the American Medical Association passed a 2024 resolution formally recognizing the need for spiritual care access and education in medical training.

Public demand is there too. Gallup data from 2023 indicate that 80% of U.S. respondents identify as religious or spiritual. Research shows that a third of patients want clinicians to ask about their beliefs — a number that rises to 70% among those facing serious illness.

Yet despite this convergence of evidence, policy support, and patient preference, MPS remains systematically underaddressed in routine care. The authors point to a deep cultural bias: modern Western healthcare was built on biomedical reductionism that effectively defined the spirit out of human nature. Academic and scientific communities tend to be less religiously affiliated than the populations they serve, and this gap has shaped what gets studied, taught, and valued.

Where Coaching Fits — Front and Center

The paper identifies health and wellness coaches as essential members of the interprofessional care team for MPS integration. Coaches are positioned alongside physicians, behavioral health professionals, chaplains, nurses, and social workers — each contributing complementary expertise to whole-person care.

What distinguishes the coaching role is precisely what Wellcoaches has always emphasized: helping patients translate their values into achievable goals that support sustained behavior change. This is the connective tissue between what a patient discovers matters most to them and what they actually do on a Tuesday morning.

The paper presents several clinical tools — FICA, HOPE, CLEAR, the HOPE Note model — that give clinicians structured ways to open MPS conversations. But coaches will recognize that the underlying competency is one we train for explicitly: the ability to hold space for a person’s whole story, to listen for what’s underneath the presenting concern, and to help them find their own language for what gives life meaning.

Tracy Yates’s involvement in this work is no accident. Her career reflects the integration the paper advocates — bridging the rigor of board-certified coaching with deep attention to the spiritual and existential dimensions of health. Her presence among the authors signals that the coaching profession isn’t waiting to be invited into this conversation. We’re already there.

What This Means for Coaches in Practice

Several implications stand out for the coaching community:

MPS is not a specialty — it’s a stance. You don’t need chaplaincy training to ask a client what gives their life meaning. The paper emphasizes that MPS conversations can be brief, natural, and embedded in routine interactions. A question as simple as “What gives you strength?” can open a doorway.

The shift from “what’s the matter with you?” to “what matters to you?” is a coaching move. The paper names this reframe as transformative for clinical encounters. Coaches have been making this shift for decades. The wider healthcare system is now recognizing its power.

Self-awareness is a prerequisite. The authors stress that clinicians should apply MPS tools to themselves first — exploring their own sources of meaning, values, and biases before engaging clients. This mirrors the reflective practice that is foundational to quality coaching.

Community connections extend the work. The paper highlights group-based care, faith communities, recovery groups, and other community resources as essential for sustaining MPS engagement beyond individual sessions. Coaches are natural connectors to these resources.

A Moment of Convergence

This paper represents something significant: the formal recognition by a major medical specialty that the dimensions of human experience coaches have always centered — meaning, purpose, values, spirituality — are not soft extras but hard necessities for health.

For Wellcoaches, it’s a validation of what we’ve built and a call to go further. As lifestyle medicine expands its framework to include MPS, coaches who are skilled in these conversations will be indispensable. The evidence is clear, the policy environment is shifting, and the patients are asking for it.

The question was never whether meaning and purpose matter for health. It was when medicine would be ready to act on what it already knows. That moment is here.

Tracy Yates, NBC-HWC, ICF-PCC, is a senior Wellcoach and co-author of “Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in the Clinical Practice of Lifestyle Medicine,” published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (April 2026). With three other Wellcoaches, all part of the NIH UCSF Tools to Be Fit cancer survivorship study, Tracy Yates created Global Health Coaching, designed to interface with both primary care and oncology organizations, physicians, and patients to improve outcomes.