client stories

I have the wonderfully humbling pleasure to work with some incredible humans. 

Facing some major life transitions (career change, possible move, infertility) I knew I needed someone to listen and help. Nancy created a safe and welcoming space to do just that. I look forward to our meetings as they leave me with a renewed sense of peace and balance. She has provided me with tools that have truly been helpful and are easy to implement in my daily life. I am so thankful to have found this space and I would highly recommend speaking to Nancy if you are feeling the stress and fear of life transitions like I was.

Liz M.

road with falling leaves in between of trees

Working with Nancy has rejuvenated me more than I thought possible. I am thankful for the relative clarity and purpose I now enjoy. Upon reflection, I see that when I first began to meet with Nancy, I was floating rather aimlessly with brain fog and residual fatigue from health issues, experiencing difficulty adapting to sudden and unplanned retirement, and facing ever-increasing isolation resulting from both lengthy illness and the pandemic. 

I had no clue what I wanted to do with my remaining time after retirement and how to adapt this to the realities of my abilities, financial situation and the limitations imposed by the pandemic. 

The mountain of personal business and household tasks that had built up seemed so overwhelming that I couldn’t get myself to even get started with the most basic tasks I wanted to complete.

Session by session, Nancy helped me to develop and employ strategies for re-engaging in my life in a meaningful way. Lately, I’ve been realizing how far I’ve come in recognizing conditioned responses of negative self-talk and body tension when it begins and rerouting my thought process to more positive mindsets.

Nancy has a way of leading me to make my own realizations and asking questions that inspire further thought. I shudder to think where I would be now if I had never received coaching from such a talented life coach as Nancy Kalina.

Here I am, a year in, feeling inspired to initiate new activities and projects, take care of business and find ways to enjoy myself. I feel enormously grateful for all Nancy does.

Kathy

Working with Nancy Kalina opened my heart and my mind to a new path filled with compassion, love, kindness, balance, intention, and choice. She empowered me through our calls, challenged me when my thinking was misleading, and helped me learn new tools that I can say have actually been integrated into my everyday life toolkit. Together, Nancy helped me transform my life and find a renewed passion for its experiences. If you are debating hiring Nancy as a life coach, I can assure you the journey will be worth the work and she will be a valuable and trusted advisor to you on your way. I recommend her highly!

Daniel Coleman

Chief Development Officer at Humane Society Silicon Valley

Photo by Aaron Burden
Photo by veeterzy

Facing divorce, potential loss of wealth, and other major life-changing issues, I knew that I needed someone to listen and to help. I couldn’t have been happier with the results of Nancy Kalina’s “Safe Space Life Coaching.” Through coaching, I was able to uncover negative and unproductive ways of thinking that were blinding and paralyzing me. I learned to “turn around” those negative ways of thinking, which provided me with renewed energy to grieve, face my problems, take action, and heal. I am a different, smarter, more vivacious, and more confident person because of life coaching, and I have recommended Nancy to countless friends and relatives that I have witnessed struggle with issues in their lives. If you are ready, and are willing to expend effort, Safe Space Life Coaching WILL change your life for the better.

Sandy

When I first contacted Nancy, my dream was that a few conversations with her would quickly solve the major puzzle in my life I wanted to work on with her. While that puzzle is not solved exactly, I am navigating it with much more ease and love of myself, my workmates, and my family than I ever had before. Nancy taught me many tools, and those are with me now. I use them all the time, it's like I can feel them in my hands. Constantly summoning them. And she taught me while truly creating a Safe Space, the name of her business. Conversations with her are fun and free. There is zero self-consciousness and a session with her is packed with discovery. 

Anonymous

Bloomington, Indiana

As a professional career consultant I truly understand the necessity of building your resource team to achieve your personal and professional goals. Even coaches need coaching and I can say with enthusiasm that Nancy helped me overcome some career blocks and fears that were getting in the way of my master plan. Her coaching style is empathetic and energizing and the action steps and exercises she provided gave me the tools to make changes. It’s refreshing to work with someone who reminds you how important each step is along the journey. I subscribe to her mantra of always learning, always growing and would highly recommend Nancy as a Certified Martha Beck Life Coach to help you create your unique destiny.

Caroline Dowd-Higgins

Vice President of Career Coaching and Employer Connections for the Ivy Tech Community College System statewide

Photo by Zach Reiner
Photo by Olivier Collet

I had no idea what a Life Coach was when I first met with Nancy. I only knew that I really liked her and wanted to learn more about her work. I gained so much from our very first session and left feeling very grateful for the tools she gave me to take into my life.. This was not therapy per se, although it felt similar. This was a whole new way of encountering and relating to my thoughts, my essential self, my relationships, and reality itself.

Our sessions are full of practical guidance and techniques. The work I’ve done with Nancy has resulted in wonderful insights, awakening and transformation. I had no idea how many unexamined thoughts I believed and lived out of, until I began to question them. I have now become much more aware of my thoughts and how to engage them without letting them take over. I know how to process my thoughts to get down to what’s really true, instead of letting my anxieties, worries and unexamined beliefs take me for a ride. Overall, I have a much better and more truthful relationship to reality. I have become more attuned to sensations in my body that are communicating with me at all times if I stop to listen. I know what my body experiences when I’m heading in the right direction, and when I’m not. I am learning about inquiry and how to do “the Work” whenever I come up against a situation that I can’t resolve, or a judgement I have made about another person or myself that needs healing.

I love that Nancy draws from the work of Martha Beck, Depak Chopra, Byron Katie, Lissa Rankin and Brene Brown (among others). These teachers are exploring the edge of consciousness and Nancy is right out there with them. She blends many approaches into her own in a way that feels contemporary and authentic. Being exposed to these new concepts always leaves me feeling paradoxically exhilarated and wanting to delve deeper, as well as content with simply being and accepting.

I was trying to explain to Nancy why I loved working with her so much, and why I was so grateful for the tools she has shared with me. She is easy to talk to, insightful, open, loving and challenges me in just the right ways. The work we’ve done together has touched every aspect of my life. It’s not so much about self-improvement (although that’s part of it). It was just that once I became aware of all of this, once my eyes had been opened, I couldn’t stop! I now feel as though I’m unravelling and reweaving myself. As Nancy put it, once you begin to become aware, it becomes a personal responsibility to continue the work. This is a responsibility that I am extremely thankful for. And I love working with Nancy!

Maryellen

It takes a village and Nancy has certainly played an important role in our daughter’s journey.  Recently, our daughter wanted to see Nancy about her fears about her lead role in a professional play. After the session, she said that she did not realize how much she needed that space to make sense and refocus her energy for this experience. She thanked me deeply for bringing her to see Nancy.  It clearly had a huge impact.

Additionally, our 11-year old daughter had a last-minute request to speak at the local rally for immigrant children who have been interned. She confidently accepted the request to speak, wrote her speech and delivered with confidence.

I hope we can continue working with Nancy and that her work reaches many young people that have so much potential and so much to say but who have not found the tools to move forward with peace and confidence. This is important for all, but when Nancy’s work results in building youth advocates for social justice, then Nancy’s life coaching acquires a whole new meaning.

Photo by Dennis Buchner

Nancy created a welcoming and safe space for me to explore life’s possibilities. I deeply appreciate Nancy’s practical and intuitive coaching style. My time with her helped me move along significantly in pursuing what has meaning and purpose in my life. What a gift!

Reverend Mary Ann Macklin

Photo by Johannes Plenio

Nancy is perhaps one the most intelligent, open-minded, and down-to-earth human beings that I have had the honor of knowing. Her attitude towards others surpasses being positive and is very infectious. You can’t help but be happy when you’re around her.

Her passion to listen to others speak of their personal lives while she offers guidance is truly inspiring. Even when you meet her for the first time, you feel as if you made a new friend. She always keeps her clients’ information confidential and respects every person she meets regardless of their background.

From my personal experience, Nancy has helped me understand certain things about life that have made me a better person today. She is one of the people that has contributed to my overall success, and I cannot be thankful enough for it.

Alex

Nancy coached me during a challenging job search over several months. Ultimately, I got my dream job and a clearer understanding of what I was really looking for in a job. In our early coaching sessions, Nancy took a lot of care and genuine interest in getting to know me and my goals for coaching. Throughout our sessions, Nancy asked questions which allowed me to gain insights about myself. She also provided tools and resources.

Anonymous

shroomlandscape
Photo by Filip Zrnzević

I worked with Nancy in a 3 session series. I was struggling to make a job decision but I was also feeling lost in finding my sense of self awareness. In addition, My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and I needed to figure out where I fit in. Nancy was able to direct me and guide me in the most kind and non judge-mental way. Each session, she listened, asked me questions, and instructed me with tips and guidelines. I really felt at ease with Nancy and was very impressed with her knowledge and ability to explain things. I will most certainly return to see Nancy and I would highly recommend her to anyone who is curious about what life coaching can offer.

MS

I have 30+ years of experience with various alternative healing modalities and therapies and I am very open to looking inward to find solutions for problems or for a clearer vision of where I am meant to be. When I received life coaching from Nancy, I didn’t know what to expect. Nancy introduced me to my body compass. We talked about the aspects of my attempt to make a mid-life career switch. The conversation was not new to me. But there was something about the questions Nancy asked me and the observations she made, using the tools of The Body Compass, that gave me energy and focus that has carried over weeks after I did the session. It’s almost as if I found a way to sub-consciously connect my head, heart and body so that they are communicating and guiding me even without my actively trying to direct the process.

Barb

I love working with Nancy for so many reasons they would be too numerous to list. As a coach, she has a lot of tools in her toolbelt and adapts dynamically to my needs as I am trying to achieve my goals. She is a perceptive and respectful listener and takes the time to absorb the full context before responding. She is very supportive but she also challenges me and always provides excellent perspectives I’m not seeing on my own—or am trying to avoid. I have had only a handful of sessions but I’ve already made positive personal changes, I am moving into a better suited career path, and have jump-started a stalled social life (due to death in family). Nancy works with me on several fronts at once to coach me through the challenges in achieving my goals. She is very effective and she is a lot of fun too.

Don

Photo by Dan Freeman

In working with Nancy, I found her to be positive, caring, enlightening, and intelligent. Nancy has the amazing ability to have multiple perspectives and different ways of looking at any given situation. Her ability to see things from different perspectives and teach me how to view things differently was what helped me the most. I have taken what I’ve learned and applied it in so many different aspects of my daily life. I love and use the strategies I learned from Nancy on a regular basis. I love reading her articles and find them supportive to my growth. When I begin to stress about something, I turn to the strategies that I learned from our 10 sessions together. I feel my life has changed in such a positive way since working with Nancy.

Denise

one-on-one

coaching

things that

inspire me