A practice with Kelli Bohannon
Coaching and meditation for community leaders.
The person behind the responsibility
I’m a coach and meditation leader. I offer Rest & Resolve for the moments when you need to hear yourself think, attend to what you’re carrying, or choose how to move forward.
Community work brings decisions, relationships, grief, and hope into the same day. Your own needs can become the item you keep postponing.
I consider restoration an essential part of supporting the people who serve a community. Here, we can give it time and attention through coaching, guided meditation, and reflection.
Leadership coaching
You may be weighing a decision, adjusting to a role, struggling with a relationship, or trying to name what needs to change. Coaching gives us a focused conversation about the question you bring.
I draw on more than two decades in nonprofit and association leadership. I know that a decision can involve your judgment, your values, your responsibilities, and your own limits all at once.
We examine your options and the assumptions behind them. You decide what fits and what you want to do next.
Meditation practice
I lead guided meditation and reflection for community leaders, organizers, activists, and people working to dismantle racism and other forms of oppression.
We pause long enough to notice our experience and give it some care. Rest, grief, anger, hope, and the need for support can all have a place in that reflection.
You choose how to participate. You can sit or move, keep your eyes open, take a break, and decide what you share. I guide the practice with respect for your agency and the circumstances you bring.
Ask about a meditation sessionThe Sacred Pause
I adapt the Sacred Pause for leaders, activists, and people doing justice work. We slow down, recognize what asks for attention, and consider what the moment calls for.
Sometimes that means taking action. Sometimes it means grieving, resting, setting a boundary, or asking another person to share the responsibility.
Notice the demands, emotions, and responsibilities asking for your attention. You don’t have to resolve them all in this moment.
Consider your need for rest, care, support, or time to grieve. Give those needs a place in the conversation.
Ask what matters here and what you want your response to express.
Consider an action, a conversation, a boundary, a period of rest, or a request for help.
Personal restoration and changes to harmful working conditions both deserve attention. In this practice, we consider the systems and power dynamics that contribute to exhaustion, as well as the care you need.
Research & practice
Research gives us useful reasons to take coaching and mindfulness seriously. It also asks us to be precise about what the studies show.
Workplace coaching · 2023
A review of workplace and executive coaching studies found benefits across the leadership and personal outcomes studied. The authors also identified publication bias and stronger effects in self-reported results.
Erik de Haan & Viktor Nilsson
Academy of Management Learning & Education
Mindfulness · 2024
A review involving healthcare workers found short-term improvements in stress, anxiety, and burnout-related symptoms. Longer-term effects varied, and the authors called for more research.
Ong and colleagues
General Psychiatry
These studies examined specific coaching and mindfulness programs. They support a research-informed approach; they don’t establish that every practice works the same way or guarantees a particular result.
Researchers have not tested my Sacred Pause adaptation. Bringing these practices to community leadership reflects my professional judgment and care for the people doing the work.
Ways to work together
Tell me whether you’re looking for a coaching conversation, a meditation practice, or support for a group. We’ll discuss your context and a useful place to begin.
Rest & Resolve can stand on its own or accompany your organization’s work with Equilibria.
Personal attention to a leadership question, a transition, a relationship, or a decision you’re weighing.
Restorative practice for you, your team, your organization, or a community group.
Coaching and meditation as part of a planning process, a period of change, or ongoing support for leaders.
The Work in Motion
Nonprofit leaders know how to care for the work.
Read the reflection
Recently, I confided in my inner circle—my closest girlfriends, my mentor, and my mom—that I was tired. Not unraveling, just moving at an unsustainable pace.
Read the reflectionSeeing the Whole Pattern — Even When the Path Isn’t Linear
Read the reflectionBring the decision, the tension, or the idea you keep returning to. I’d like to hear about it.
