ABOUT + CONTACT

(all the contact details are at the bottom of this page)

.nutshell

I’m Michele Lisenbury Christensen, and I’m on a mission to help happy, well-loved women save the world.  The Hot Love Revolution isn’t for everyone.  It’s just for smart, soulful, couples who can take me up on this dare: pour your passion into your monogamous relationship, demand that it excite and nourish you as much as any affair or adventure, and let yourself be transformed by the process.

For those daring, red-hot monogamists, the juice and fullness created in their homes helps them initiate changes they want to see in the world.

.coach

I’ve coached a lot of people since 1997, all over the world, including stay-at-home moms, bestselling authors, artists, professional athletes, and tons of corporate executives and business owners.

The core of my work has always been what I call sacred ambition – the way our aims in the world (like building a business or career, creating a home, running a half-marathon, or improving our relationships) can stoke the fires of our spiritual development – and vice versa.  We pursue the outer game in service to the inner quest.

With that as my gig, I’ve worked with thousands of self-aware, spiritually devoted people who also kick ass in business, politics, and social ventures.  And I love helping them do better in those concrete areas.  But at some point I realized that my greatest secret thrill always came when a so-called “leadership coaching” or “business coaching” client brought me a situation from their love life – intimacy, sex, and emotional fulfillment were never the raison d’etre for our relationship, but we often went there anyway.

.love doctah

With my long ‘n’ strong business background and track record as a leadership coach, something in my ego thought it was less-legit to come right out and focus on relationships.  But since I have, I’ve seen that my own attitude was merely reflecting my clients’experience:  our culture is biased toward getting help (let’s call it consulting, shall we?) on business matters.  But relationship support?  Are we supposed to need that?  Is that cool to invest time and money and energy into?  Or “if it’s right, shouldn’t it be easy?”  Whew!  So glad I’ve seen past that self-defeating fog of myth, so I’m now able to walk with individuals and couples through their own resistance to – and desire for – bona fide, ninja-precise relationship help.

Clients say that my same incisive intelligence, quick insight, and loving yet no-punches-pulled candor that helped their businesses are equally powerful aids for their relationships.

.mama mojo

Since I started trying to conceive my first child in 1996, I have been immersed in and fascinated by the journey from woman to mother and all the power, vulnerability, emotion, and intimacy that journey entails.  Even before I was on that path myself, I intuitively knew and loved this process and supported a number of clients through these passages.  Through my motherhood journey, I have blossomed as a wife, come into my body in an entirely new way, rewritten my relationship with work, money, and time, lost my sense of sexiness and juice, and earned it back.  In the arena of parenting and parent coaching, I am a passionate ally of conscious conception, conscious pregnancy, ecstatic birth, and turned-on motherhood.  I believe we must pioneer engaged fathering, receptive mothering, and better-than-ever marriage after children.  If joy and full self-expression (rather than duty, resignation, and bedragglement) can characterize the parenting years, I think there’s hope for our species and our planet.

.biz

My business background started in middle school, when I began working for my family’s international logistics company. With early and long experience in a hard-driving, primarily male field, I am a powerful coach for men and for women immersed in intense environments. My corporate background spans operations, finance, marketing and sales, and organizational development. By my early 20’s, I was responsible for negotiating complex $100 million contracts with steamship lines.

.soul

My spiritual development began with visits to fundamentalist churches with my grandparents as a small child.  I knew God, and my experience didn’t match what I heard other people saying about sin and hell.  I taught myself to meditate inside an empty refrigerator box when I was eight, and found “The Book of Ki: Co-Ordinating Mind and Body in Daily Life” in an Asian grocery store when I was twelve.  I trained my mind to focus and my body to calm (I’ve slept soundly on a Greek bus full of chickens and loud music, among other places!) and my spiritual training and transcendent experiences continued from there.  I’ve been a yoga practitioner since 1998 and a yoga teacher since 2003.  Today, my spiritual connection feeds me as I move through a busy life as a mother, business owner, transformational coach, and vibrant romantic partner.  My connection gives me a ground from which to guide and support you to be divinely fed in ways that work for you.  My clients are Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Baptist, Wiccan, agnostic, and “spiritual but not religious.”  I can meet you where you are, too.

.credentio-rama

I earned a Bachelor’s Degree with Honors in Economics and Business Leadership.  My Master’s Degree in Psychology is rooted in the 5000 year old tradition of Yoga Psychology.  I’m the author of “Brain Yoga for Lasting Change: Using Yoga Psychology to Transform Your Habits and Your Life” which merges ancient Yoga wisdom with contemporary Western research on the neuroscience of change.  It’s cool, if you want something to be change for good.  My Master’s experience and my view of my clients and the world were also shaped by Antioch University’s dedication to social justice and cultural competence.

My interest in catalyzing others’ career and personal potential drove me – in my early twenties, no less – into a career in transformational coaching, leadership training, and writing.  Thomas Leonard, the father of the professional coaching field and an early mentor of mine, called me“23 going on Yoda.” I was among the youngest coaches ever awarded the Professional Certified Coach credential by the International Coach Federation.

A leader in the coaching field for more than 14 years, I am a senior faculty member at CoachInc., the largest coach training organization in the world. My work has been featured in print and broadcast media from the Puget Sound Business Journal to Consulting Today and the UK’s “Today” show equivalent, “This Morning with Richard and Judy.”

.produce

I am the author of the book “Succeeding Without Side Effects: Burnout-Proof Your Leadership and Life.”  With Michael Neill, I created the year-long program “Success Made Fun.” I’m the creator of the audio programs “5 Minute Meditations”, “Your Business Can Be a Spiritual Path” and (with Sara Harvey Yao) “White Space: The Only Productivity Tool You Need.” Sara and I discovered the 12 Elements of Power together and in 1995, we co-founded Working with Power.  Through that firm, I continue to provide corporations with meaningful solutions for work-life balance, leadership team effectiveness, and executive presence with conscious, positive impact.  I also deliver the amazing Elements of Feminine Power Retreat (nine times and counting).

.personal

I’ve been married to my best friend Kurt Christensen since 2000 and we were happy to welcome our son Cooper to our family in April of 2008.  Our daughter Mira will make her debut in February 2012.  We love both the comforts of the house we designed and built in Seattle and the adventures we share, like trekking in Patagonia, visiting archeological sites in Turkey, kayaking and dogsledding in Alaska, and swimming with dolphins in Mexico.

I love Anusara Yoga, dancing my ya-yas off, Seattle’s year-round farmers’ markets, writing at Neptune Coffee, nurturing our garden back into shape after remodeling our 1942 house, and parenting Cooper and Mira (and myself) with the Steiner/Waldorf approach.

.contact

.email: use the form below or mail to michele lovingwithpower com

.call:  (001) 206.696.1460 (pacific time)

.tweet: @lisenbury

.send me persimmons:  14419 Greenwood Ave N. Suite A #201, Seattle WA 98133