Though I already took a coach training program between July 2018 and June 2019, even received two certificates as a professional coach and started working as a life coach (experimentarilly), I've decided to take another coach training program that will start at the end of this month and continue until the end of next July to improve my practical skill of life coaching, taking advantage of the second year of my sabbatical.
The one I took last year was more theory-focused and I complemented it in one of the practicum groups offered by the school. I had the privilege of practicing life coaching in Yiddish for six months with a supervisor who is a graduate of the school and a renowned hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn.
The new course I'm taking is more practice-focused and we'll meet physically (in a virtual campus located at a walking distance from my aparment in Jerusalem), which is no less important as there is a limit to what can be learned from online learning. I'm also looking forward to getting acquainted with other like-minded fellow students and exchanging our experiences, which is also no less important.
In parallel to the coach training program I took last year I also took a basic course in Chabad Hasidism - or to be more precise, Jewish psychology based on its teachings - here in Jerusalem. My plan was to study the subject only for one year, but it was so fascinating that I've decided to continue my study of Chabad Hasidism for two more years. Here again, the contents of what we study are important, but the very fact that I can experience the presence of our teachers and interact with other fellow students is no less important.
These courses give me fundamentally different learning experiences from those I had not only when I studied academic subjects at universities in Japan and Israel but even when I studied (how to study) the Talmud at a "Lithuanian" haredi yeshiva in Jerusalem on my previous sabbatical several years ago as these experiences have been having a profound impact upon me not only intellectually but also spiritually.