Claire Molinard is a Master Integral Coach with over 30 years of experience as an acupuncturist, coach, and somatic psychotherapist.  She offers a variety of programs on Sutra that support individual and group work; each of these distinct programs incorporate features like discussion and content spaces, automated journeys, and coaching calls on Zoom.  Reflective of the coaching work she provides her clients, the spaces Claire creates on Sutra are multilayered, supportive, and rich.

Inspired by the work and teachings of Dr. Marc Gafni and Ken Wilber, Claire has developed a signature coaching process, Unique Self Emergence, in which she blends psychology, energy healing, and spirituality.  On the Sutra platform, Claire designs growth experiences for her clients that stretch over the course of several months, hosting her Unique Self Emergence coaching program as well as a program designed specifically for women, called SHE (Sanctuary for Her Emergence).  Another of Claire’s programs, begun in 2012 with Dr. Marc Gafni and Chahat Corten, is the annual Outrageous Love Festival.  Originally held in-person, this weeklong spiritual festival needed an online home during the pandemic; Sutra became that home.  At the time of this writing, in 2022, the Outrageous Love Festival will be offered as a hybrid experience, part in-person and part online on Sutra.

For each coaching experience, Claire tailors her approach to meet the particular needs and abilities of each client, supporting work that is expansive in heart, body, and soul.

Hosting a variety of transformational programs on one platform

Prior to hosting her first programs on Sutra, Claire was a participant in Sutra’s Transformational Teaching Online (TTO).  The timing of this training, paired with the onset of the pandemic, led Claire to realize that online learning was the direction in which her work was heading.  Claire easily envisioned how the Sutra platform could be a container for all her coaching programs. 

In Summer 2020, the first summer of the pandemic, Claire and her colleagues hosted the Outrageous Love Festival on the Sutra platform.  Following the success of that online gathering, Claire was inspired to develop Sanctuary for Her Emergence (SHE) which she describes as “a practice laboratory for embodying these new ways [of being and loving together as a human family]—through a profoundly feminine lens.”  Claire opened the doors of her Sutra learning space to participants of SHE in December 2020, and again in December 2021.  Alongside SHE and the Outrageous Love Festival, Claire brought her Unique Self Emergence coaching program onto the Sutra platform as well.

Studying self and the collective in intimate online groups

Central to Claire’s work is the belief that the healing of the world calls for collective change.  Her program for women, SHE (Sanctuary for Her Emergence), is a wonderful example of this. 

Gathering over the course of nine months, a group of no more than twelve women engage in deep self-reflection as well as group reflection.  Beginning on the Winter Solstice and ending on the Autumn Equinox, the program moves through twice-monthly Zoom meetings coordinated with the new and full moons, each month honoring a dedicated theme.  The themes revolve around women’s embodied spirituality, with a focus on connection to the cycles of the moon, cycles of the seasons, and cycles of nature.

Because the program spans nine months, there is ample time for participants to work individually as well as collectively.  One aspect of individual work emerges within automated journeys.  Each month, Claire creates a themed sequence of journaling prompts that the women can move through at their own pace; when they respond to one prompt, they automatically receive the next prompt, until they move through the entire sequence of prompts.  Journaling is a key component of integration in SHE, and Sutra’s automated journeys allow Claire to support her clients’ in this way.

Collective work lives within discussion groups as SHE participants dialogue on topics related to monthly themes and the program’s overarching material.  For Zoom calls, Claire sometimes uses breakout groups but, because this program is intentionally limited to twelve participants, she frequently chooses to have the small group of women work together, each person’s unique life experiences and energies playing off those of the others.

Online learning and the lived experience

The experience of self-reflection alongside collective work is powerful.  With a generous container of nine months, the women can take their time integrating materials, resources, and practices as they get to know one another and themselves more deeply.  One of the outcomes for the program is that participants embrace the idea of being a woman as its own spiritual practice, and realize that everything they need is already within.

As self-awareness strengthens, and as the women of SHE practice collectively with twice-monthly Zoom calls and via conversation in private discussion spaces, this work expands.  The women embody this new awareness in collective spaces that ripple beyond the private spaces of SHE—into relationships with their children, with their partners, and with people in their workspaces and communities.

Sutra features that support distinct programs

Whether hosting a festival, coaching in small groups, or coaching 1:1, Claire creates distinct programs and journeys for her clients that involve the exploration and actualization of the True Self.  She designs experiences on Sutra that are rich in inquiry, gentle in support, and varied in approach.

Of value to Claire and her clients is that everything is hosted in one place.  In addition to the automated journeys that she creates for the women in her SHE program, she also automates journeys for 1:1 clients in her Unique Self Emergence program; these automated journeys provide private spaces for her clients to self-reflect and integrate material at their own pace.  For all programs, Claire easily uploads PDFs to share with clients, schedules and posts recordings of Zoom meetings, creates content spaces to share resources and supporting practices, and sets up discussion spaces where she can engage with clients 1:1 or where group participants can engage with one another and with her.

The ease of communicating between Zoom sessions in private discussion spaces is an important element in Claire’s programs.  It’s become especially important in a pilot program in which she currently trains a coach in the Unique Self Emergence coaching process while simultaneously supervising this trainee as he coaches two of his own clients.  Sutra allows Claire to create content and discussion spaces for her trainee as well as the ability to supervise her trainee’s work with his own clients.  It’s another example of Claire’s rich and multilayered work on Sutra.

The capacity to hold space online

In three words, Claire describes Sutra with: community, intimacy, and creativity.  Versatile functions allow Claire the creativity to build private spaces and sub-spaces for her clients that look and feel the way she envisions them.  The Sutra platform allows Claire to be creative as she builds and shares her coaching experiences, developing a style and aesthetic that is uniquely her own.

With each of Claire’s programs, she holds space for her clients, those with whom she works one-on-one and those with whom she works in group settings.  Sharing practices and reflections during Zoom calls and in private discussion spaces, Claire’s clients immerse themselves in the experience happening in real time, online.  Claire guides her clients in transformational work, allowing for what is ready to emerge within the individual to actually emerge; the comfortable and safe spaces she creates on Sutra assist in this emergence.  It is work that is truly expansive in heart, body, and soul.

What’s next?

Registration is open for next year’s group of twelve women to experience SHE, beginning December 2022.  There have been numerous requests for a French version of SHE; Claire is entertaining the idea for the future.  Alongside next year’s offering of SHE, Claire intends to launch her group coaching program, Hearts in Action, which will move through her signature Unique Self Emergence process; her current coach trainee, in the pilot program mentioned above, will be her assistant coach.