What is coached here.

What is coached here, and what is not

This document states the boundaries of the service. It is written for clients, and also for properties, employers and clinicians who need to know where coaching ends.

1. What health and wellness coaching is. Coaching is a structured, client led process. The client sets the goal. Elevate provides the method, the programming, the measurement and the accountability. Progress is the client’s to define and the client’s to own. Coaching is educational and supportive in nature.

2. The four pillars coached. Lifestyle medicine is a defined field with six pillars: nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, social connection, and avoidance of risky substances. Elevate coaches four of them: physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management and social connection.

3. The two that are not. Nutrition is discussed as general guidance for healthy adults and is never prescribed; a client who needs a prescribed diet is referred to a registered dietitian. Risky substances are not coached here at all, in any form, and are referred out. Naming these is deliberate rather than defensive: a scope that excludes nothing is not a scope.

4. What is never provided. Elevate does not diagnose, treat or prescribe. Nothing here is medical advice, physical therapy, clinical nutrition therapy, psychological counseling or mental health treatment, and nothing here replaces care from a licensed professional. Elevate does not interpret laboratory results, does not advise on medication, and does not provide rehabilitation for an injury under active treatment.

5. When Elevate refers out, and says so. Where something needs a person who can examine the client, or a license Elevate does not hold, Elevate says so rather than coaching around it. This applies to pain that is new, severe or changing; any suspected injury; disordered eating; mental health concerns; substance use; pregnancy; and any respiratory condition or suspected sleep apnea where breathing work is concerned. A referral is not the end of the coaching relationship and carries no charge.

6. Credentials, stated exactly. Ian Kendall holds the Wellcoaches Certified Health Coach certificate, the Lifestyle Medicine Coach certificate from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, NASM Certified Personal Trainer, NASM Women’s Fitness Specialist, and Pain Free Performance Specialist. The Oxygen Advantage Functional Breathing Instructor qualification is in progress. He is preparing for the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching exam and is not a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. A training certificate shows that a program was completed. Board certification additionally requires an independent national examination. Elevate holds the first and not yet the second, and will not describe itself otherwise.

7. Confidentiality, and its limits. What a client says is held in confidence and is disclosed only where the law requires it. Where Elevate delivers sessions for a property or an employer, that organization receives participation in aggregate only and never individual information, no figure is reported where fewer than five people responded, and a participant who later becomes an individual client is never identified to them. These limits are set out in full in the Privacy Policy and the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, and they are limits on Elevate rather than settings a client can change.

8. Ending it. A client may end the coaching relationship at any point and for any reason, subject to the payment terms in the Terms and Conditions. Where Elevate believes a client no longer needs paid support, Elevate undertakes to say so in writing, which is recorded at section 10 of those Terms.

9. Questions about any of this. Write to ian@elevatewellbeing.coach.