Introduction: A Moment of Collective Becoming
Imagine sitting in a learning circle. Your heart stirs, a mix of enthusiasm and vulnerability. As you share a personal story, you feel that you’re not just expressing thoughts; you’re revealing your humanity. Around you, others nod, leaning in, as if you are all breathing together, creating something new.
This is the essence of ontological learning, central to transformational coaching, leadership, and learning how to ‘human better’. This kind of learning is not merely intellectual study, but something far richer. You learn with your whole being, and together you co-create a living, evolving learning environment.
What happens when we let down our guard and step into our authenticity, bringing our emotions, our physical selves, and our cultural and historical identities into a learning space? What magic emerges when a group of individuals learns not just about a topic, but from each other, as full beings who are a living expression of the topics being presented? When this happens, the depth of our learning expands because we move from acquiring information to experiencing what is being taught with our whole being, in relationship with others.
What Is Ontological Learning?
At the heart of ontological coaching is the study of our ways of being — how our body, language, emotions, culture, history, and meaning-making structures shape our experience. It’s an invitation to expand, not just by adding information, but by evolving who we are in relationship with the world.
Domains of Learning
Ontological learning and coaching involve multiple dimensions:
- Body (Somatic): Our posture, gestures, and way of inhabiting our body shape how we experience the world and what we believe is possible.
- Language: The words and narratives we use and speak internally and externally, and the co-creation of reality through the generative power of language.
- Emotions & Moods: Our emotional patterns influence how we ‘see’ and experience reality. Discovering this opens new choices.
- Culture & Systems: Our backgrounds shape and impact what we assume as “normal” or “possible.”
- History: The stories, pain, and gifts we inherited help form the deep structures of how we understand the world.
When we bring attention to these domains, we begin to notice the patterns that unconsciously shape our actions, and we gain the freedom to shift them in ways that are in alignment with our deepest values and cares.
Sympoiesis: Learning as Co-Creation
An essential principle in our learning at Newfield is sympoiesis, which means “becoming-with.” Newfield’s Coaching for Personal and Professional Mastery coach training program isn’t just about presenters delivering content; it’s a co-creative, participatory exploration where each one of us grows and discovers in relationship to one another:
- Everyone contributes: Each participant, team member, mentor, and facilitator’s wisdom and knowledge enriches the learning environment
- Relationships evolve: Throughout the coach training program, the participants who were initially strangers become lifelong friends and colleagues.
- Shared responsibility: This isn’t a consumption model; it’s about collaboration. Each voice matters and contributes something meaningful to the whole.
This is a collaborative approach where participants engage in a dynamic generative learning process that fosters deep collective and personal transformation.
Embodied Intimacy: Courage to Be Vulnerable & Whole
Ontological coaching calls us to be intimate with life, with all its messy richness:
- Engaging in direct experience
- Practicing authenticity through sharing pain, joy, and uncertainty.
- Learning from each other’s experiences, stories, and challenges
- Contacting a place within us that is already whole, wise, and capable of facing life’s challenges
The Transformative Power of Ontological Coaching
1. Expanded Language → Expanded Possibility
Language does more than reflect what already exists — it helps bring new worlds into being. Words birth worlds. If I invite you to meet me at the park to start a revolution, and you agree, we have just used language to create a new future. The way we speak shapes what becomes possible, influencing our emotions, our relationships, and our choices. When you shift from saying “I’m stuck” to “I’m curious,” you invite new ways of seeing and acting. In this way, conscious language becomes a doorway to possibility, sparking realities that were hidden before.
2. Emotional Intelligence → Responsible Leadership
Emotional intelligence is a domain that supports us in navigating through life’s challenges with authenticity and resilience. Human beings with emotional awareness are natural leaders in their communities and families because they learn not to be afraid of the difficult feelings and develop the skills to be with anything and everything that arises, from a place of loving strength.
3. Somatic Resonance → Aligned Action
Your body carries its own wisdom about what matters most. If you pause before a hard conversation and notice your chest tightening, you are in touch with a signal that wants to guide you. If you allow your breath to deepen as you step forward, you choose to act from courage instead of fear. Somatic resonance allows your actions to match your commitments, letting people feel the sincerity in your words. That congruence builds trust, and trust builds a better future. When your movements and your values line up, you become a leader others can rely on, someone whose presence alone invites others to stand tall and act with heart.
Anchoring Ontological Learning in Practice
Here’s how you can begin:
- Notice your body: Where are you tense or relaxed? How does your posture support presence?
- Attend to emotion: Is frustration a signal? A habit? Let it inform you, not consume you.
- Reflect on language: What stories are you telling yourself? Are they generative?
- Invite co-creation: In your relationships, ask open questions. Let others shape the flow.
- Honor your history: Who shaped your observer? What inherited lenses guide your worldview?
These small shifts are how ontological coaching begins — through self-observation and relational practice.
Why This Matters for Coaches, Leaders, and Changemakers
- Coach Training: Ontological methodologies enrich ICF competencies, adding depth, embodiment, emotional intelligence, the wisdom of language, and most importantly, wholeness.
- Personal Transformation: You become the site of your own learning or you live the learning from the inside out — revealing hidden habits, cultivating embodied clarity, co-creating meaning.
- Leadership & Culture Shaping: As you transform, you influence group norms and practices — co-creating cultures of courage, intimacy, and creativity.
- Executive Coaching & Business Coaching: Helps leaders align intention and action through body, mood, and conversation.
Your Invitation: Learn With Your Whole Being
Ontological learning is an embodied, intimate journey:
- Bring your full self — body, emotions, language, culture, and living histories.
- Engage as a collaborator of learning spaces.
- Lean into authenticity— the doorway to deeper insight and connection.
- Become a conscious observer — notice how you see the world and design new ways of meaning-making that better serve you and the world
This is ontological learning and coaching in action, an invitation into profound transformation for the sake of our own personal development and to have a meaningful impact in the world.
Reflection Questions
- How often do you check in with your physical presence during conversations or decisions?
- What emotions or moods guide your automatic responses, and what might happen if you observe them first?
- What story are you telling yourself right now, and is it serving your highest possibility?
- How do you contribute to a co-creative culture in your work or learning circles?
Conclusion: The Journey of Becoming With Others
Ontological coaching is a way of being and becoming — a vibrant exploration of the ways we make sense of the world and a process of deep transformation that supports us to expand who we are to include unbroken wholeness. This wholeness is the ground from which we engage in the world. The impact of this changes everything.
If this resonated, we invite you to explore Newfield’s Coaching for Personal and Professional Mastery program. Learn how to ‘human better.’
This article is based on excerpts from the Coaching for Personal and Professional Mastery program.
About the Author:
Veronica Olalla Love, M. Ac., NCC, PCC is the CEO for the Newfield Network. She is also an international facilitator for the Newfield Network Programs and is the lineage holder for the Newfield Network’s ontological coaching tradition. In her unique and passionate style, Love invites us to remember the depth of potential we have as evolutionary beings.
