How can I learn to touch people professionally in a way that is comfortable for both of us? So that the client learns something through my coaching, and at the same time, I respect her boundaries at all times?

Learning to touch people—that was a completely new challenge for me during the CANTIENICA® training. I’m generally a pretty physical person—I hug my friends, and I’ll sometimes touch someone on the arm when I’m sharing something personal. But touching people I barely know during training—that’s something else entirely.

I was definitely apprehensive about this task. Can I even do this? Do I want to? How much closeness will feel right for me? I didn’t know. With coaching, I was entering uncharted territory.

The manual has quite a bit on this. I’d tried at home to imagine situations like that. But how exactly do you touch someone professionally? What do I need to keep in mind? And what will it be like when I’m standing in front of a class? How will I know which client I’m allowed to touch? How can I tell if my coaching is welcome? Many questions were swirling through my head as I arrived in Zurich for the intensive training days for the Bronze certification.

And then it actually became quite simple.

The trainers conducted the coaching sessions so naturally, clearly, and respectfully that my reservations soon vanished. We learned to observe attentively, treat each other with care, and keep asking: How does that feel? Is it comfortable? Does it feel right?

We experimented, switched roles, and gained experience. Every now and then, laughter rang out, and then someone would say, “Stop, that makes me uncomfortable.” That was all part of it, too. We were allowed to set boundaries. Feedback was welcome. By the second day, it already felt quite natural for all of us to touch one another during the training.

Another thing I had to learn: to see coaching as something positive. At first, I flinched at every touch and thought, “Oh, what did I do wrong?”

Coaching, however, means much more than that. It can be an invitation to become more attuned to your own body. A posture suddenly becomes clearer, a movement more understandable, and a possibility—one that previously existed only in the imagination—becomes tangible. Together, we explore what the body allows. Step by step, we approach a new experience and support one another in the process using what we’ve learned in our training.

On the second day, I was able to slowly relax and let myself get into it. On the third day, I began to enjoy the coaching. On the fourth day, my body suddenly understood something that I had previously only sensed while practicing. A mental image became a real sensation. A movement that had previously been almost impossible for me to perform suddenly felt easy and natural.

These moments are hard to describe. From the outside, there may be hardly anything to see. Inside one’s own body, however, a whole new world opens up. Connections become palpable, the body responds, and with the right guidance, something can change in just a few moments—something you’ve been searching for on your own for a long time.

Thanks to the attentive guidance of our trainers, we made great progress every day. We experienced physical sensations and personal achievements that we would hardly have thought possible.

For me, that was the most fascinating thing about the training: how much growth is possible in such a short time.

At the end of those five intense days, we all sat differently, stood differently, looked at one another differently, and viewed the world differently. And we felt ready to begin teaching and to pass on what we had learned.