Guiding Practice with Khuyen
Bad news: life is messy.
Good news: you can learn to love the mess.
Hello there,
I'm Khuyen, and I work as a guide, after being guided by so many wonderful people in my journey of discerning the inner direction while being present with the messy, wonderful outer world.
I want to pass on that gift of knowing clarity.
In my work, I've heard all sorts of laments about personal life, work, dating, relationships, lack of community, a nagging sense of purposelessness and sometimes moms... These are all important clues that I will mirror back to help you become more aware of the stories you tell yourself . Then, I will invite you to craft for yourself a different one, more open, generous and closer to the mature person you are becoming.
What clients have particularly come to me for help
- Dealing with The Conflicting Voices in your Head: including the Inner Critics, the What Would Others Think Of Me, the Why-Can’t-I-Be-More-Confident etc... many are the basic patterns of relating that we have received from our surrounding.
- Life Design: frameworks, tips, troubleshooting, accountability. Embrace periods of lostness and what to do in transition.
- Work Dilemma: handling tricky organizational dynamics, standing up for oneself, discerning and prioritizing what matters.
- Messy Relationships clarifying tangled feelings, sharing alternative perspectives, practicing relating skills. In romance & family. Also, understand relationships in a psycho-spiritual context and how they fit into the greater interconnectedness of all.
- Meanings: Spiritual crisis, awakening, making sense of uncanny upheaval period.
- What Your Mom Would Nag You For Good: Remind you basic stuff like drinking enough water, sleep properly. I'm surprised you need reminder, but oh well, competent leaders can forget self-care too....
Now you know what kind of help you can get, let me share with you some of the qualities that you may want to look for in a guide, based from my own experience of being guided by many people.
- someone who would not get caught up in your confusion or your games, who could be lovingly objective about what is going on with you.
- someone who wouldn’t impose upon you some preconceived notions about you and your problems, or some standard process for you to go through.
- I mean, it will be really nice to have a 5-step formula towards total freedom & happiness, but in reality it's much messier. Your situation is so unique to you. That's why you want someone who genuinely wants to cultivate a deep understanding of you.
- someone to help you work out your own solutions, keeping you on track, yet patiently waiting for you to do whatever you needed to do in your own time and manner.
Does that sound of any interest to you? If so, read on for..
Offering details
- 2 deep conversations per months, depending on your needs and current capacity to do this work.
- From my experience with clients, usually it takes 3~4 months for significant change in terms of inner clarity & direction to happen, so I'd recommend that level of commitment.
- A conversation usually runs from 60'-90' via Skype or Whatsapp, with highlighted post conversation notes.
- Personalized “homework” in between:
- Readings: fitting with whatever is present for you, sometimes poetry, articles, book excerpts.
- Journal: I'll ask you to keep some forms of journal to collect and deepen what you discover as well as generate self-knowledge for our next conversation. It can run from 3 daily bullet points of gratitude to pages of grief work.
- It's often fun and engaging. For example, I once asked a client to dress up in traditional costume so that she can experience what it is like to receive more attention. We had a big breakthrough in debriefing on it!
- THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! Doing the homework really allows you to get a lot more out of our work together.
To see more of my influences, check out the Resource page. I also wrote about some of those themes in my blog on Medium.
What you can expect from me
- Accept everything you share, including things you feel ashamed of.
- Affirm you that I trust you fully to cope with your life and support your creative steps towards doing so.
- Methods to work with issue during sessions: Role play, visualization, movement exercises.
- Framework & models to help your mind cooperate with the necessary confusion stage of growth.
- Share my insights about your process, without imposing them on you.
Better yet, the first 45' diagnostic call is free.
then it is's Pay-What-Feels-Right / Gift Exchange.
- $40+ / session.
- $40 is my baseline cost of operating, which includes rent & getting food.
- For reference, $40/hr is what I ask for my private tutoring for high school students.
- $50-80 is what most of my working clients in the US give.
- $100 is when you are so generous to support me to do better work to more people.
- Let your gratitude and self awareness guide you for the right payment. If it's helpful, you can increase the gift and vice versa.
- I will ask your payment at the end of each month via my Paypal link here paypal.me/khuyenbui
- If you are from a developing country and really cannot afford, please send me a note. We can work something out. You can let me stay in your place when I visit your hometown, bring me out for dinner etc..
Take your time to consider the offer. I'm not rushing you to close a deal.
In choosing to work with me, you will stay true with the process. Whatever results and betterment in your life then will be a happy byproduct of your deeper growth.
Looking forwards,
Khuyen
A note on my money philosophy
- My friends have asked me: “Aren't you cheapening this sacred work by putting a price tag on this?”
- That's only true if you think money cheapens things, which unfortunately is what most of us think most of the time.
- I think of money as a gift, when you give me money, you are trusting that I'll use them for good, to better serve more people, get a gift that makes someone's day or simply get a nice plate of food.
- If you give money with loving intent, it too becomes sacred. That's why I often ask clients to write a nice message accompanying the payment. It makes a big difference :-)
- Lastly, our relationship with money is also an fertile area to discover our hidden assumptions, heal and flourish.
Some of the main influences for my work, if you want to know more.
- Enneagram: really helpful tool for work, life and psycho-spiritual development.
- Theory for personal development: Robert Kegan's 5 stages.
- Guiding work from psychosynthesis & depth psychology (Bill Plotkin's work, particularly Wild Mind)
- Charles Eisenstein, especially The More Beautiful World Your Heart Knows is Possible, The book beautifully paints the context for our work together as serving a greater purpose.
- How to Be an Adults series by David Richo, in Relationship and Love (despite its cheesy title, it's a phenomenal. Here is a really good shorter workbook, Human Becoming)
- Co-active Coaching, particularly Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart.
- Money Life planning, from Seven Stages of Money Maturity.
- Peter Drucker. With too many business & management books in recent times, it's good to go back to the timeless classics.
A note about the terms “Guide”
“For millennia, we have probably always sought help from each other and tried to help one another with life’s problems. Only recently has this practice been formalized into psychotherapy and counseling, and even more recently into coaching and spiritual direction.” - Molly Young Brown.
The purpose of counseling (or therapy or coaching or spiritual direction) is simply to cooperate with and enhance the inner direction. Hence it seems more precise to call the process “guiding”and the practitioner “guide” because we aim to guide life travelers in finding their own paths and directions.
“Therapist” can suggest the diagnosis and treatment of illness.
“Counselor,” “coach,”and “spiritual director” may imply giving advice.
A guide, on the other hand, draws on his or her familiarity with the terrain of personal development, its hazards and joys, and lovingly offers this knowledge and skill to the traveler. A guide does not, however, presume to know what is ultimately right for the traveler, who must finally make his or her own choices.
A guide can help us
- perceive more honestly the dynamics of subpersonalities and to transform their energies.
- discover our inborn qualities and capacities.
- walk with us through the anguish and darkness that may accompany transformation.
- perceive more honestly the dynamics of subpersonalities and to transform their energies.
- discover our inborn qualities and capacities.
- walk with us through the anguish and darkness that may accompany transformation.