As the founder of Tamara Bey Coaching, I offer somatic trauma informed coaching – a holistic and integrative approach that addresses the mind, body, and spirit of my clients.I am certified by the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, the UK International Health Coaching Association, the International Coach Federation, and the Continued Professional Development.
Tamara details her path to health coaching, highlighting personal growth, trauma, and issues with food. She champions functional medicine for its focus on health issues' root causes versus traditional drug prescriptions. In collaboration with practitioners, Tamara assists clients in behavioural changes, emphasising nutrition, movement, stress management, and the critical role of addressing traumas. The importance of self-compassion and self-value is underscored. Certifications and personal experiences, like Tamara’s mother's Alzheimer's, shaped her coaching philosophy. The conversation also explores the impact of deep connections, upcoming articles, and retreats.
How did your journey into coaching begin?
I started my own personal growth journey when I felt stuck and I had to shift something.
I was also struggling with my relationship with food. It wasn’t healthy and I knew I needed to change. Even as a 16 year old, I wanted to be a nutritionist. I’ve always had this interest in living my life, being the best version of myself and nourishing my body.
With all the self-compassion work I have done on myself as part of my own journey, the most organic next step for me was to take what I have learned and spend my life helping others to become the best versions of themselves too.
Why did you choose the path of functional medicine?
I'm so grateful for conventional medicine, but at the same time, I think we have so many other options before taking prescription drugs. The difference with functional medicine is its main focus is to get to the root cause of our problems. I started getting into functional medicine and I had my own practitioner. This led me to wanting to do more with my coaching, again teaching what I have learnt.
When we go to doctors with a headache, if we have chronic headaches, we're given painkillers and that's great, you know, they serve their purpose and manage the symptoms – The pain is gone. We manage to live our life with little impact caused by the pain. But then they come back again. Same with migraines. Same with bloating. These are just a few examples of chronic health issues that can keep returning.
We become aware of our triggers. Sometimes, health issues are triggered by stress.
Sometimes, they're triggered by the weather. Sometimes, they're triggered by something we eat. All of which have underlying causes. Where functional medicine comes into play, we look at the root cause. Please note that I'm not a practitioner – I'm a health coach.
The practitioner does all the lab work and provides the necessary supplements to treat the problem.
How does a functional medicine health coach work?
As a health coach and behavioural expert, I look either independently or work in collaboration with a practitioner in supporting the clients in making necessary change. When I talk about making change, behavioural change, we're looking at all aspects of you as a person. We look at modifiable lifestyle factors – anything that impacts you and your general well-being. This can be nutrition, movement, sleep, community, career, environment, and relationships, as well as change in terms of how you navigate your stress and manage stress.
Everything is interconnected.
Everything is part of our personal environment.
If we're in an environment that is very stressful and toxic, we're not going to be able to show up the way we want to show up. I support clients in making the necessary changes and helping them to set goals.
Where did you do your training?
I trained at the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, which is really extremely renowned. Mark Hyman, for example, often refers to our school for hiring any health coaches to support his team. All my certifications in functional medicine and trauma coaching are ICF Accredited.
How do you begin to help a client to make change?
I empower my clients to want to make a change simply by asking the right questions. We refer to them in coaching as motivational interviewing. I work a lot with positive psychology and my client’s values and vision. I let you feel your vision through the right questions. You feel what it would be like if you were to make that change.
How would you show up differently in the world physically with people?
How would this affect your confidence?
What are your obstacles?
At the end of every session, we always leave the session with a goal set by the client, and it can be a small goal. It can be as simple as I'm going to research what nine hours of sleep would mean to me. Or I am going to write 3 gratitude.
How does trauma coaching fit in with functional medicine coaching?
I noticed that when my clients and I would set goals, initially they would be motivated, but over time they kept returning back to certain patterns.
There was always a setback.
And whilst setbacks are very normal. 95% of our goals end up with a setback of some kind so it is important to normalise this and not punish ourselves. But when there's a certain pattern that's repeatedly happening, I think we need to dig deeper. And usually this is where trauma comes in.
This is then why I combined my functional medicine health coaching certification with a somatic trauma-informed certification. Also accredited by the ICF.
Let’s talk about an example of a pattern, a setback of someone who is trying to improve their sleep.
We know that to have a healthy sleep cycle, we need to reduce the amount of screen time before bedtime. If this was a habit that a client couldn’t form very easily, I would question the client a bit deeper.
What is the screen time trying to fill? I often find we use screen time as a way of trying to escape certain emotions that we don't want to sit with. And maybe it's a feeling of loneliness, it is very common for people not to wish to sit with this feeling of discomfort. So we go deeper and this is where the trauma work kicks in.
What does loneliness feel like in the body?
When were you lonely? What happened? What are the triggers? How did it make you feel?
We often go back to even deeper work, which is also working with our core wounds. The core wounds could be: I'm not good enough. I don't matter. I'm unlovable. I am not important.
I invite my clients to be a bit more patient and self-compassionate with themselves. So, part of the somatic trauma-informed coaching also involves a lot of positive psychology, and I work a lot with self-compassion because in order to make changes, we need to understand how important we are to ourselves.
I matter.
Could you tell us more about self-compassion?
It's very difficult to make any change without doing the self-compassionate work. When you start shifting your perspective of what you've always thought you were, that you don't matter into I matter, automatically, you want to better yourself. For example, you'd want to eat better automatically. You'd want to nourish your body with good food.
The shift happens because you're much more self-aware of how beautiful you are and what a miracle you are. This is why I've chosen to combine it with my work as it is very, very powerful.
A lot of my clients come to me with changes such as wanting to eat healthier, trying a new hobby or a sport, wanting a more fulfilling community around them. These are just examples…The first few sessions we spend setting goals; then the sessions change and the client ends up talking about emotional issues and this leads to childhood wounds and healing the inner child, and this is where it takes a bit more time. But then you see incredible empowering light bulb moments. We need to remember that building trust is a very important part of coaching. Once trust is established with my clients and a sense of safety is set, they feel safe top open up.
Childhood wounds could be…
You started keeping yourself small.
You started not shining.
You started not speaking out.
Once we become aware of these wounds and bring compassion to this new awareness, we start shifting things. Within my coaching we often work with the adult self – the current situation – then we move to the inner child; I often work within the internal family systems framework. Here, our goal is to heal these wounded parts of ourselves; reparenting the inner child.
The magic happens when we start working with the wiser self. And this is where my clients start shining and taking full charge and seeing how beautiful they are.
Is there a reason that you wanted to do functional medicine over a typical route of a nutritionist?
I believe in the power of understanding the root cause of our problems.
With my mother having Alzheimer's, I decided to do a genetic test to see if I had the gene. I felt powerful enough that I can do things in my lifestyle that would hopefully reduce the risk of this disease being activated, with the tools functional medicine has given me.
It turned out not to be genetic, but this shows how much I believe in this. I tested and had no fear.
This work empowers me and I love empowering others in the same way.
Read more from Tamara Beydoun (Tawil)
Tamara Beydoun (Tawil), Trauma Informed Functional Medicine Health Coach
As the founder of Tamara Bey Coaching, I offer somatic trauma informed coaching – a holistic and integrative approach that addresses the mind, body, and spirit of my clients.I am certified by the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, the UK International Health Coaching Association, the International Coach Federation, and the Continued Professional Development. I am also trained in "Trauma Informed Positive Psychology Coaching Method™ and Non-Violent Communication. As a result of my own journey of war, displacement, and childhood sexual abuse and an adult relationship of emotional & psychological abuse, I fully appreciate the impact of how our traumas & epigenetics can have on all aspects of our current health.
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