Meet the Coach: Shireen Jilla
Shireen Jilla is an online mindfulness coach
What attracted you to becoming a coach?
My mindfulness practice transformed my own life. It made me happier, calmer, more decisive, more at ease with myself, who I really am.
It also gave me the insight and wisdom to calmly meet the inevitable difficulties, the inevitable ups and downs that are the stuff of all of our lives.
Mindfulness is simply mental attention training with a far more profound goal: greater peace, happiness, wisdom, clarity and decisiveness, better sleep, more productivity.
So I wanted to share this simple yet transformative practice with others.
Where did you train?
I trained with the transatlantic Mindfulness Training Institute with two well-known mindfulness teachers Mark Coleman and Martin Aylward, who both learned meditation in India decades ago. They are part of the initial wave of teachers who brought the practice to the West.
What kind of coaching do you offer?
Mindfulness reduces stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, overwhelm, emotional difficulty, work difficulties and tensions.
I also give specific work and life coaching, pain management coaching and mindful eating sessions.
What does mindfulness coaching help with?
Mindfulness coaching reduces people’s stress, anxiety, sleep problems, overwhelm, distraction levels, reduces weight and increases productivity.
Very quickly my clients find they become calmer, more relaxed, more aware of what’s going on for them.
Mindfulness coaching simply holds a mirror up to your daily work and home life. Whatever is going on in your body and mind becomes crystal clear.
It is easy in the stillness and silence to see our own experience clearly without the usual wealth of distractions. We have 60-90,000 thoughts a day, 90% repetitive, so being able to see our thought patterns and drop a lot of mental clutter is immensely helpful.
What sort of coaching clients do you usually see?
I see a wide variety of clients, but many professional high-achieving people, who recognise their lives are out of balance, often feel a sense of overwhelm and that they are racing behind time. They quickly recognise their need to re-balance their lives.
Do you ever suggest books or other materials to clients?
I give my own recorded meditations to all my clients.
Here's a brief self-compassion meditation I recorded for welldoing.org:
What do you like about being a coach?
It’s deeply rewarding to see how much the process transforms my client’s daily lives.
What is less pleasant?
Seeing how much most people suffer without knowing how to meet it, shape the experience and ultimately free their mind from it.
What is one life lesson you try to live by?
To stay present and see the truth of what’s going on without my knee-jerk habits and reactions.
Mindfulness is not about being calm, but is about calmly facing all your experience with ease and equanimity.
What do you wish people knew about mindfulness coaching?
It’s such a simple practice of letting go of holding of all the tensions and habits we think we need to rely on to survive.
We learn to consciously relax and no longer lean on external distractions and zoning out with food, media, or Netflix in an attempt to find peace and happiness.
Do you have a favourite client testimonial or particular success story?
Working on mindfulness with Shireen was the best decision that I made in 2020 and it has transformed my outlook. Although I still have a huge amount to learn and to practice, I feel much more able to face the ups and downs in life, particularly the pandemic. Shireen is fantastic on Zoom; the platform feels like it’s perfect for this kind of coaching.” – New York based corporate executive.
