Program for 2023

 8:15PM - 9:30PM

Chris Cooper, Tim Kincaid, Pete Simmonds & Craig Cullinane

(Great Room)

9:30PM - 9:45PM

Pete Simmonds

(Great Room)

7:00AM – 8:00AM

Yoga

led by Tim Cooley

Meditation led by

Tom Keydel (7:15AM START)

9:15AM - 11:15AM

Exploring Identity For Ourselves and Our Clients

Chris Cooper

“Be Yourself” is a phrase we hear from others many times in our lives. But who is this “you” that you are being advised to inhabit?

Our identity comprises many component parts and yet we don’t always know or appreciate what they are and how they make us the person we are.

During this session we will explore what identity means, identify the many facets of our identities and make the link between identity and happiness - including how the latter is amplified when you fully embody your true identity.

The workshop is designed to involve self exploration to help you learn more about yourself, while using questions and tools that you can employ with your coaching clients. We will discuss the work we do with our clients around their identity and why this is an important part of the coaching process.

This session will kick off the conference, creating a space for conversations with other attendees about the identities we hold across different areas of our lives, and how all the parts link together to make us who we are.

It will be fun, insightful and highly interactive.

11:30AM - 12:45PM

Unlocking Possibilities with Floor Pattern-Based Coaching

Reed Waller 

(Great Room)

Participants will experience how to coach clients using a fun, physical approach that taps into body wisdom to shift perspectives and become unstuck. Inspired by kinesthetic, floor pattern-based coaching methods such as the Bigger Game and Balance Coaching, participants will come away with tools to help clients generate their own frameworks to ideate possibilities, generate solutions, and unlock creative growth. Help them create their own Happiest Place on Earth!

How To Maximize Client Potential By Being Your Fabulous Self

Kyle Elliott

(Temple)

Bringing the ‘real’ you to coaching sessions can feel like a significant risk, particularly if you identify as a gay man. In this session, you will learn what may be holding you back from being genuine and fully authentic with clients. You will also uncover strategies to maximize your impact with clients through intentionally sharing your fabulousness during coaching sessions. Lastly, you will leave with tactical strategies and a renewed sense of confidence.

2:00PM - 3:15PM

Beyond Self-Care: Vitality for the Coach

John O'Brien

(Great Room)

Coaches are trained to work with clients to enhance their quality of life through clear problem identification and development of effective coping strategies. Our training helps us to show up for our clients to support their self-development both physically and emotionally. However, we may be less skilled at considering our own needs, especially when confronted by the demands of a highly stressful work environment.

This session will help participants to define aspects of wellness and well-being, assess their own level of wellness, and identify key strategies to avoid burnout and live with greater vitality.

Discover Your Erotic Blueprint

Pete Simmonds

(Temple)

How familiar are you with your erotic blueprint? Not too dissimilar to love languages we can also start to learn the language of sex.

This workshop is an opportunity to connect in a deeper way with yourself, fully understand your own erotic Blueprint and understand those of others, in a way that relates to your love life and intimacy.

At the same time, you will be learning a new tool that you can use to help your clients connect with thier own sexual blueprint, a resource to help you frame conversations around sex and eroticism with your clients.

We often go our entire lives without fully understanding who we really are and what we really need when it comes to life, love and especailly inside (or outside of) the bedroom. This can cause incredible conflict within ourselves and between people in relationships.

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3:30PM - 4:15PM

No Seriously, Who Are You?: A values-based peek at our ever-developing identity

Michael J. Kline

(Great Room)

Based on the Barrett Values Center research and assessment tool, you will identify and explore 7 levels of your own psychological development and life journey. Discover the levels you've been through, and those parts of you still inviting exploration and enjoyment. More than just where you've been and where you're going, we'll learn how we bounce around, retreat back and leap forward as the beautiful, messy creatures we are. You will leave with a deeper sense of who you are and what really matters to you, as well as a deeper acceptance and appreciation of all the variations, derailments, setbacks, joys, and fears of being human.

A Taste of the Body Electric

Craig Cullinane

(Temple)

This clothing-on workshop will explore conscious, consent-based eroticism, breathwork, and the relationshiop to pleasure. Erotic energy is one of the most powerful forces in our world. This workshop asks coaches: Who am I as an erotic being? What healing and growth can I experience if I am willing to explore my relationship to the erotic, to pleasure, and to embodiemnt? And, most importantly, how can coaches support clients in doing the same?

This will be facilitated in a workshop space with clearly articulated norms, agreements, and boundaries.

The workshop will also include large group work, exercises completed in pairs (which will be assigned during the workshop), movement exercises, breathwork, and heart-centered sharing.

8:30PM - 10:00PM

Fireside Story Night: Deepening Our Relationships with Self and Others

Michael Kline

Since the dawn of man, we have used stories to make sense of who we are and our experiences. Gathering in circle, and sharing our stories is part of our DNA. It's how we support, grow, learn, and connect to know we art not alone in our journey, our struggles or our potential.

7:00AM – 8:00AM

Yoga

led by Tim Cooley

Meditation led by

Tom Keydel (7:15AM START)

9:15AM - 11:15AM

The Potential Me

Facilitated by: Peter Simmonds

(Great Room)

Get one step closer to discovering your "reason for being" and let's put it to work for you! Pete will use innovative, fun methods and tools to facilitate meaningful discussions and insights around putting your identity into action. Each participant will revisit or unlock the potential in who they are with deep opportunities to share, and listen to stories of past, present, or future self. The Point Of YOU tools we will explore can be used with your coaching clients to explore new perspectives and possibilities too.

11:30AM - 12:45PM

Mind/Body Workout

lex Benedict

(Temple)

An important facet of identity, for coaches and clients, is how we feel about our bodies. Many clients feel disengaged due to their lifestyles which include nearly constant connection with technology rather than to their bodies. But that’s not the only issue—especially for gay men, who often experience body dysmorphia and unreasonable expectations for their appearance.

The Magic of YOU: Bring More of YOU to Unleash Your Coaching and Speaking Practices

Jeff Nally, PCC, SHRM-SCP

(Great Room)

It may seem obvious that you’re bringing the real YOU to your coaching clients and your audiences. But are you bringing ALL of YOU and what your coaching clients really need from you? And do your audiences leave challenged knowing more about themselves because you brought the real YOU to the stage? Discover the magic in YOU that will grow your coaching and speaking businesses, attract the clients and audiences you really want, and live out your purpose with the real YOU front and center in everything you do.

2:00PM - 3:15PM

From Tech-Savvy Coach to Podcaster

Dean Meyers

(Great Room)

Are you comfortable with technology, now that coaching remotely via Zoom, Teams is here to stay? Or wondered about what else you can do with the tech you’ve invested in, now that you’re used to being on camera, such as creating video-based programs, podcasting, or live streaming? Here’s an opportunity to ask questions about video/audio tech you can manage (and afford) and how to create and run podcasts and programs for online marketing and other services.

Getting to "Who" with a Well Formed Outcome

Chris Cooper

(Temple)

Helping our clients to grow and develop means we need to help them explore ‘who’ they are as a person rather than just ‘what’ they want to achieve. As we develop as coaches our competency at focusing on the ‘who’ increases, and the power of our coaching conversations with clients intensifies.

3:30PM - 4:45PM

The Card Game: Choosing Your Avatar

Matthew Bennett

(Great Room)

The three presenters of this workshop, Matthew, Mr Bennett, and English Leather Master, will discuss how avatars and personas can help you achieve your goals. By deciding who you want to be, when, but always being true to yourself, you can access different scripts to become more effective and successful. We'll play a card game that allows us to try out different personas and see how they help us as coaches. The game can also be used in coaching situations to help clients achieve their goals, particularly around confidence, empowerment and overcoming imposter syndrome.

Hearts Alive!

Wil Fisher

(Temple)

How do we bring the intelligence, strength, and alchemizing power of the heart into our coaching? It starts with finding ways to open our hearts. It continues with finding strategies to do this in ways that maintain professionalism, honors boundaries, and keep us (and our clients) protected. In this playful and experiential workshop, we will explore what it means to be open hearted in the context of coaching. We will discover strategies to tap into this way of being. We will discern ways to work with this loving energy mindfully and responsibly. We will also have a lot of fun as we co-create a dynamic space that welcomes the ever-expanding energy of love. 3

8:15PM - 10:15PM

Movie: Everything All at Once (2.5 hour runtime)

(Great Room) 

The Ocar winning Dromedy and celebration of LGBT+ identities shown in the Great Room for your viewing pleasure.

Exploring Erotic Energy - A Deeper Dive into the Work of Body Electric

(Temple) 

This evening session invites you into a clothing-off space where we will explore erotic touch, consicous breath, and pleasure. We will establish clear agreements about how we engage with each other. In this playshop, we touch with hands only! You will learn tools about how to pleasure yourselfand others. You will explore their personal relationship with pleasure. This is an opportunity to raise sacred, pleasurable erotic energy and deepen your emodied experience of your pleasure body. Come join the fun!

7:00AM – 8:00AM

Yoga

Meditation led by

Tom Keydel (7:15AM START)

9:15AM  - 11:15AM

Coaching the Emergence of a Non-Heteronormative Identity through LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®

Dean Meyers

(Great Room)

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a facilitation method that promotes all possibilities to be the normal in the moment, because everything is done from the safety of being “at play”. This is the perfect environment for coaching people to explore and potentially emerge as their authentic, non-heteronormative selves, even if only in the safety of a world made and told by him/her/them through the LEGO models they make. This workshop will give you the experience of being both facilitator/coach AND maker/coachee, where you can first experience discovering the unknown unknowns that lie at the heart of your own identity, and then discover how to help others on that journey.

11:30AM  - 12:45PM

Queering our Minds in Coaching

Mike Findlay

(Great Room)

It’s an unfortunate reality that many of us LGBTQ+ folk have poorer mental health overall than our heterosexual counterparts. The stats tell us so. Many of us still experience prejudice and discrimination against us, and some of us deal with internalised shame we have felt since childhood.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Things are potentially improving and arguably, there are more mental health services for LGBTQ+ people than ever before.

This session invites participants to examine their own personal contributions as coaches to improving the mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people globally. We will also discuss the ‘boundaries’ of coaching when it comes to our clients’ mental health.

Aligned to the component of ‘Bringing more of the real you into your purpose as a coach’, this interactive session will invite participants to talk honestly about how much of themselves they bring into the profession as a coach (and any other professional hats they wear). We will explore the gains of being authentically you, including better connecting with clients, as well as the setbacks and pitfalls i.e. what does and could go wrong?

Rainbow Release: Identifying, understanding and healing the impacts of internalized Homo Shame

Frank Kewin

(Temple)

In this experiential workshop coaches will explore the ways that internalized homo shame arises in their lives and experience multiple ways of identifying, understanding and healing in order to liberate their original blessing. Coaches will deepen their undetstanding of the science of shame and how shame drives negative self talk and self sabotaging behaviour and how to become shame resilient in order to bring their shameless selves to their lives and their coaching practise. "if you haven't got it, you can't give it away!"

This workshop is intended to be clothing optional. Feel free to dress in as little or as much as you choose for this workshop and to adapt that decision as the workshop progresses. This is a safe space and all men's choices are accepted and celebrated.and I will facilitate this workshop naked.

2:00PM - 3:15PM

"Un-Conference #1"

(Great Room)

"Un-Conference #2"

(Temple)

3:30PM  - 4:15PM

and Thomas J. Leonard Award Presentation

(Great Room)

4:30PM - 5:30PM

CONNECTION HOUR - 
Well Being and Self-Care

CONNECTION HOUR - 
Well Being and Self-Care

8:30PM  - 10:00PM

Talent Show

(Great Room)

Hosted by Julio Alvarez and Mark Schall

It's time ot let your light shine andshow off your talents! Are you ready to sashay down the runway, sing your heart out, or dance the night away? Then join us for an unforgettable evening of celebration and fun.

From drag erformance to singin, and everythign in betwee, this is your chance to let your creativity soar and show Easton Mountain what you'remade of.

It's all about love, laughter, and letting loose.

Massage

(Temple)

7:00AM – 8:00AM

Yoga

led by Tim Cooley

Meditation led by

Tom Keydel (7:15AM START)

9:30AM - 10:45AM

Allow Myself to Introduce Myself

Joe Carapella

(Great Room)

The interactive workshop is designed to equip coaches and their clients with tools designed to expand one’s perspectives and to experience new insights on their own life’s narrative. They apply these tools in the context of writing their own story as it relates to their identity journey in the context of their past, present and future self.

As a means to connect and bond, participants work in small breakout groups. They use diverse images and text cards from the Points of You Punctum ‘My Story’ process. These images, words and questions are used to stimulate thought from the perspective of the person owning the story as well as the perspectives from the other participants in their groups. This gives the owner of the story multiple perspectives to consider. They will also explore using feedback from the perspective of receiving it prior to sharing their story. A word association mapping exercise is another tool that is used to develop the title of the story and expand the perspective of exploring beyond the first thought that comes to mind.

The workshop closes with participants reflecting on the experience and verbalizing their takeaway in one word or one sentence.

Introduction to Shadow Work: Unlocking Power and Wisdom in the Parts of Ourselves That We Hide, Repress, Deny, or Don't Know

Matt Winters

(Lodge)

Rage, envy, greed, lust, resentment, lying, blaming—these feelings and behaviors all emerge from dark, denied parts of ourselves—what Carl Jung called the personal “shadow”. It’s as if we carry a bag with us everywhere that contains all the things that weren’t OK. Throwing those things into the bag helps us fit in to other people’s expectations, but it comes at a cost: we often throw a lot of our power and gifts into that bag along with them. And it becomes heavier over time and sometimes things fall out of the bag and we do things unintentionally that harm ourselves or others. “Self-sabotage”, compulsive behaviors, and angry outbursts are just a few examples.

Shadow Work is a process of transforming these parts with compassion and understanding, so that we can change behavior patterns and have more of the experience we want in life. It’s the process of carefully taking things out of the bag and working with them, with the support of a coach or facilitator. This is sometimes done in a small group setting where participants role-play parts of the client. This way the client can see externally what had been internal and invisible.

This session will give an overview of the concept of shadow, address how the shadow might show up in working with a client, and will include a live demonstration of Shadow Work facilitation.

11:00AM - 12:00PM

CONNECTION HOUR - 
Well Being and Self-Care

Noon - 12:30

Closing Circle: Bringing Our Conference to a Close

Craig Cullinane

Don't miss our final farewell gathering of the 2023 Conference, to hear important information about next steps and acknowledge those who served.