Pauline Bach and her husband, Robbie, have lived in West Bellevue since 1992, raising their three children here and enjoying all the beauty that Bellevue and the Pacific Northwest have to offer. With her passion for outdoor sports including golf, water skiing, swimming, hiking, skiing, and biking, Pauline knows the benefits a healthy lifestyle can have not just on one’s body, but also on one’s mind. And it is this passion for wellness that led her to become a Certified Wellness Coach in 2012 and open her business, Chéz Balance.

     

Pauline’s path has always been leading in this direction, even when she graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BS in Nursing and eventually became a cardiac care nurse working with critically ill patients in intensive care. As Pauline watched patients adjust to their lives’ post-cardiac events, she began wondering what positive life changes one could make to create better balance between the physical, spiritual, and psychological aspects of wellness.

     

She continued her nursing career once she was married, until Robbie’s job took them to Paris. “That’s when I decided to stop working,” she says. “When we moved to Bellevue from Paris, I was pregnant with our second child and we later had a third, so I stayed home for the next several years raising our kids.” Still, she kept her nursing license current just in case she ever decided to go back and, when her oldest child left for college, did a recertification stint for a year with a practicum in cardiac rehab at Swedish Hospital just for the fun of it. As fate would have it, the nurse who was her mentor there happened to be a Wellness Coach and, after hearing more about it, Pauline knew she had found her true calling.

     

She received her Wellness Coach certification from Vera Whole Health in Seattle and started Chéz Balance soon after. At the same time, she did contract work performing health screenings in the corporate setting and working with diabetes patients at Neighbor Care Clinics to help clients discover the path to improved well-being. She recently added two new certifications to her credentials from the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and NB-HWC (National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches).

     

As for what wellness coaching entails, Pauline describes it as ‘a Petri dish for growth and change.’ Her goal is to partner with her client to identify and modify their behaviors in order to achieve their goals by encouraging personal responsibility, reflection, self-discovery, and self-efficacy. To accomplish this, she uses skills and strength assessments to help clients create a vision statement followed by specific goals that keep the vision in clear sight. As she explains, “I assist the client in discovering their passions, strengths, dreams, desires, and values that align with this vision of their best self.” She also helps clients identify any obstacles that may be getting in the way of achieving better balance and the success one might want. “Once you peel back the onion layers, suddenly there is this ‘ah ha moment’ where the obstacles lift and clients are left feeling lighter, with the energy to move forward,” she adds.

     

Pauline uses tools such as mindful listening and powerful inquiry to support the client in achieving their self-determined goals and behavior changes. She coaches clients on stress and anxiety management, life transition, relationship with food (including healthy eating and weight management), and career and job satisfaction. “It’s really whatever the client needs at this point in time,” says Pauline. Her clients come from every age group, background, and life stage you can imagine, but all have the same goal of achieving better balance and wellbeing in their lives. The benefits to clients include:

All these things, however, start with three pillars that are crucial in one’s balance—sleep, diet, and exercise. “Once you have balance in these three areas, everything else begins to shift and improve,” says Pauline. For this reason, she uses her nursing background to do a whole health assessment with clients from the get-go. If there are red flags anywhere, she offers solutions for getting these three pillars back on track.

     

Pauline has several strengths that make her particularly good at what she does, all of which came through during our interview. She is a connector, she understands stress and life changes having been through so many herself, she is a fantastic listener, and she has a positive outlook. She was also born and raised until age 9 in Holland, lived in Europe, lived on both the East and West Coasts, and speaks four languages, so understands multi-cultural situations. With her practical approach and natural intuition, Pauline can truly tune into clients and guide them where they need to go through Zoom sessions or in person, whichever they prefer.

      

When Pauline isn't working, she loves spending time with her husband, Robbie, and their children and granddaughter. She is also on the Overlake Hospital Foundation Board and the Overlake Hospital Board.

     

So, if you are looking to find your best self, look no further. Pauline Bach is the perfect partner in your own journey to wellness! For more information, go to www.chezbalance.com.