What is Gateways Coaching?

Gateways is a coaching method designed for artists and other creative professionals in transition. The method helps clients to master their creative process for optimal results: to sharpen presentation and marketing tools, and to bridge career transition successfully. Gateways Coaching is goal-oriented. While addressing thematic challenges of the creative process on the inner level, Gateways has expanded throughout the years to include coaching services related to presentation and marketing. As clients gain insight, they are led to develop action plans for sensible risk toward new goals, on their own terms. Each step forward is supported by momentum-building tools, custom designed to client needs. Gateways Coaching was originally inspired by the writings of Carl Gustav Jung, Robert Fritz and other mavericks of the creative process, as filtered through the lens of founder Barbara Bowen’s career life and training.

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About Barbara Bowen:

Barbara Bowen is a New York based writer/photographer and founder of Gateways Coaching and Gateways to Action. She has been deeply involved in artistic expression for over 20 years and a consultant to others for over ten. In Chicago, Barbara owned and managed a successful 12-year photography business. She was immersed in theatre and film during those years, and many of her original scripts were staged. She has long been fascinated by the creative process itself and holds a 500-hour certification in healing arts through the National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her career experiences and training led her to develop a unique coaching method for professional artists and others in related fields.

Barbara’s articles and essays about the creative process are published regularly online. In print, her work has appeared in Spirituality and Health Magazine, the Traveler’s Tales series about travels in Turkey, and the internationally acclaimed New City arts magazine, Chicago. In 2005 she designed “Write Through the Lens,” a class for New York’s Upward Bound program, teaching students the art of the essay using text and photography.

In the 1990s Barbara’s plays were staged in many Chicago theatres, including Dramatists Workshop, Circle Theatre, Writer’s Bloc/Theatre Building, Lifeline and Famous Door Theatres, as well as in New York at Urban Stages Theatre. In Chicago, she acted as script supervisor for Vital Vision Productions, and re-wrote play material from raw translation for La Barraca Theatre Company. Her poetry has appeared in Chicago’s Hammer’s Magazine and Needed Words Journal. Barbara directed and performed her own original material and adaptations with Cabaret Nomadica and Canones del Alma of Chicago in such venues as Cafe Istanbul, Urbus Orbis, Sheffield’s Cafe and Links Hall.

Barbara’s background includes a duel major in Theatre and Communications from Hope College, MI, whose summer repertory theatre season has garnered international acclaim. Through many trials and pitfalls, Barbara discovered significant Gateways to Action related to the creative process and the defining lines of positive global change. She is enjoying a balance between her own creative endeavors and helping others to reach their goals.

Gateways Philosophy:

We live in a society which often fails to nurture the creative aspects of our nature. Systems–educational, religious, corporate and family–are useful for their contribution to social order. However, when systems become rigid they cease to be life-giving and rarely foster the creative process. In fact, they often become life-depleting. The flow of the creative process and its disruption is a cycle composed of thematic aspects. These themes may be discerned and addressed according to individual need. Over the years, Gateways Coaching has developed a comprehensive program that strives to help clients on the outer levels of presentation and marketing as well as the inner levels of the creative process. Clients are guided to strike a balance between creative/art career demands and personal fulfillment. And to achieve success on their own terms. Whether you are a professonal artist, working in a related creative career, or simply wish to pursue a new creative goal, your obstacles can become “gateways” to deeper alignment with creative calling. (See How Does Gateways Work?)

More on Carl Jung:

The works of depth psychologist Carl Gustav Jung have significantly influenced Barbara’a artistic work.  His central ideas also inform the core of her Gateways Coaching method for artists and creative professionals.  Jung viewed the unconscious as a repository of wisdom. He asserted that human growth is an inner process whereby the “shadow” (or hidden) elements may emerge into the light of consciousness. The clarity that emerges from within the creative process brings us closer in touch with nature, self, society and spirit. By living more richly and fully, we enlarge our lives.  Jung gave us valuable insight into the bridges between spirit and nature, mind and body, self and universe.  Author Robert Fritz has also influenced Barbara’s approach to the creative process, especially his writings on the nature and enhancement of creative momentum. Gateways Coaching often employs universal themes to shed light on clients’ creative process.  Universals provide “windows” into creativity. As we look into the universal theme, our own uniqueness is revealed, and we are propelled into action by the understandings gained.  In this way, each window becomes a “mirror.” Ultimately, Gateways Career Coaching helps artists and creative professionals to build bridges between creative calling and its actualization.

Notes On Freedom:

Read what people from all walks of life have to say about the concept of freedom.

LiberateFreedom.com
(See: Shadow River by Barbara Bowen)

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