Garden Company grows a nationwide audience

SANDPOINT — It’s not unusual to flip the calendar to a new page with a few lifestyle tweaks in mind. Starting off a new year with the goal of completely transforming one’s entire life, though, requires some help.

For the past 20 years, a Sandpoint-based firm called The Garden Company has been providing that kind of assistance and direction. Its clients reside all over the U.S. and they are, for the most part, successful individuals who have found themselves stuck in one aspect of life or another. Their occupations are diverse — doctors, dentists, homemakers, students and business owners.

“We’ve had clients as young as 13 and as old as 88,” said Cyndi Goerig, a coach and program development specialist with The Garden Company. “These are people who are looking to enhance their lives, people wanting something more.”

What they want, she explained, is not material, tactile or tangible. They are in search of answers.

“People come to us for different reasons,” Goerig said. “But they’re all looking for something — more balance in their lives, a crisis they can’t get over, or they’re just stuck.”

Some clients come with their personal goals already defined, she added, such as a desire to open the floodgates of untapped potential or a path that puts them back in touch with themselves.

 Goerig was first introduced to the company when she worked as a professional dancer in New York City. She attended a three-and-a-half day session called the Mountain Experience and went on to take part in subsequent trainings. Not long after, she found that the skills she picked up had applications in everyday life.

“I lost my job, which, for a dancer, could have been a real identity crisis,” she said. “My entire life was falling apart — but I wasn’t.”

The transition from client to coach helped Goerig realize that the experiential nature of the training sessions was what gave them staying power.

“That’s why we call it an experience, instead of a workshop or a seminar,” she said. “Because, if you experience something, you take it away with you afterward.”

The Garden Company’s teachers — president Kyle Mercer and Janice Lindgren — take the Mountain Experience to approximately 20 client groups in several states on both coasts each year. The groups, which average about 30 people, work through a two-stage process of establishing emotional awareness and defining personal values.

Step one involves identifying and letting go of the “heavy emotions” that cause stress, Goerig explained.

“And then we ask, ‘What are my values and how can I bring more of them into my life?’” she continued. “The values in our country have totally shifted. They used to be retirement-focused, but now that has changed. People are saying, ‘OK — if I have to keep working, I’m going to do something I enjoy.’”

Life skills programs got a bad name in the 1970s and ‘80s, when group sessions were led by instructors who either bullied or embarrassed participants into states of “awareness.”  But you can’t threaten a seed to make it grow. Lasting personal awareness, Goerig pointed out, springs from more secure ground.

“We don’t challenge, manipulate, control or criticize,” she said. “Our highest values are safety and confidentiality.”

Later this month, The Garden Company is scheduled to bring its Mountain Experience home to Sandpoint, offering locals a discount that amounts to about one-fifth the usual fee for the multi-day session. The overture comes as an expression of appreciation and gratitude for being able to base the company in idyllic surroundings, the coach said.

“And it also benefits us to live in a healthier, happier community,” she added. “We all struggle in some way, whether it’s our career, our relationships or the search for our meaning in life. And we don’t like to see people struggle.”

The Mountain Experience in Sandpoint will be held Jan. 14-17. For details, call (208) 263-4586. For more information on The Garden Company, visit: www.thegardencompany.com