Clare Josa's Natural Resilience Method ® is a coaching model that helps us to understand why we need to create nervous system safety, before clients can tackle mindset and identity-level change.
The Natural Resilience Method® is derived from her 2018 Imposter Syndrome research study, published in 2019, and was first shared with the public in 2020. The model covers the five stages of change required to create trauma-safe, lasting transformation for any coaching client who has experienced Imposter Syndrome, burnout, or a toxic workplace - with any signs of trauma-responses.
Clare's five-step process is a cycle that clients repeat more deeply each time, ensuring coaching work is safe and effective, and never drifts into accidental therapy. Her research-backed Imposter Syndrome assessment tool shows the Natural Resilience Method ® can cut someone's Imposter Syndrome severity from over 80% to just 20% (background noise) in as few as eight weeks.
Read on to explore this model in detail.
Sharing Policy For The Natural Resilience Method ®
Clare Josa is on a mission to free the world from Imposter Syndrome, so she encourages sharing the name and key aspects of the Natural Resilience Method ®, to help others. Please follow these guidelines:
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Thank you for wanting to make a positive difference in the world, whilst also respecting Clare Josa's intellectual property rights.
Why Clients Need The Natural Resilience Method ®
Most coaching interventions, whether they be from external coaches or people managers, focus mainly mindset - what someone is thinking. The same goes for many talking therapies. The focus is on changing actions by changing thoughts.
But Clare Josa's two decades of research into what really creates lasting changes shows this is the wrong starting point.
Unless a person feels safe to change, that change will at best be superficial and short-term, and at worst pushing on through that fear could create lasting harm, especially if the person has a lived experience of trauma. The World Health Organisation estimates that's the case with 70% of adults. And our research studies show that 82% of adults have a trauma-style nervous system response to being criticised at work.
Insights aren't enough to create change, if the client doesn't feel safe.
Clare Josa's work has a different starting point. She used her research studies, plus her decades of study in the holistic world (she's a certified yoga teacher, meditation teacher, and Reiki Master Teacher - all blended with an engineer's evidence-led common sense) to dare to challenge the coaching and therapy world's assumptions that the 'mind-first' approach works.
Coaching Is Stuck in the 17th Century
Clare realised that classic coaching and therapies are stuck in something called 'Cartesian Dualism' - from the 17th Century philosopher Descartes. He believed that mind and body are separate, and although modern medicine proves this is no longer the case, that incorrect assumption still forms the basis of most 'life change' work.
Obviously our thoughts play a major role in our experience of life and the actions we take, but Clare's work shows they are the surface-level-symptoms, not the driver. Thoughts are the effect, not the cause.
It is proven by neuroscience that the body responds to stress and threats before the thinking mind engages. The nervous system fires off the fight-flight-freeze response before the cognitive mind catches up.
It's the role of the 'autonomic nervous system' - the bit that keeps our heart beating and digestion running - which is outside of our conscious control. It plays an essential role in survival and safety.
So if you create change only at the cognitive level, without resolving the learned safety habits developed by the nervous system over the years, you're relying on the thinking mind to undo the protective behaviours and self-sabotage that the nervous system has already fired off.
To create meaningful change, you first need to help a client to regulate their nervous system - not just in-that-moment, but longer term. You need to help them to lower their baseline cortisol levels (the stress hormone), so that their body feels safe to make the change their thinking mind wants.
Then you can rewire the body and brain to safely clear the automatic stress responses to stimuli that aren't actually dangerous (you might want to find out about the two types of fear here). And when the nervous system feels safe, you can use techniques to harness the power of neuroplasticity to rewire the neural pathways and brain architecture - including the amygdala - to help someone 'unwire' the fear response to things that were never meant to scare us.
And that's why the Natural Resilience Method ® is so effective at creating deep-acting, identity level change, especially for clients who feel like nothing else has worked.
The thinking mind isn't making your client's biggest decisions; their nervous system is.
Clare Josa
This video explains how the Natural Resilience Method ® works.
It's a five-step cycle, which is designed to work more deeply each time. This helps people to create profound transformation, safely and effectively, without crossing the boundary between coaching and therapy.
Clare shares the exact processes to this in her coaching certification programmes (you can work with her to train up to Master Coach level), but this video is an overview to help you understand how and why the Natural Resilience Method ® can help people.
Although the video covers Imposter Syndrome and burnout, Clare's process is highly effective for anyone who wants to create identity-level change, in any area of their life.
Note: The Natural Resilience Method® is Clare's proprietary coaching system and it is neither permitted nor client-safe to use it without formal training from her in how to do so safely and effectively.
going back round the cycle is its hidden power
It's what keeps the breakthroughs client-led and trauma-safe, creating nervous system safety at each stage that positively impacts every area of a person's life, health, and performance.
The Natural Resilience Method® - A Summary
Here are the five steps of the Natural Resilience Method ® - the cycle that clients repeat to use techniques that support them in safely creating deeper shifts each time.
This is the nervous system work - helping a person to feel calm, grounded, and safe, before they get into the changework. By resetting the stress cycle and giving someone strategies to regulate their nervous system, they can lower their baseline cortisol levels, escape from chronic stress, and become less reactive and more naturally resilient.
You can't rewire fear-driven brain neurology while a client is stuck in active fear, which is why this bit is step two - after 'press pause'.
Step two is where clients can harness the magic of neuroplasticity to change the architecture of their brain's neurology. This goes far beyond just 'mindset'. You're sharing strategies that help to rewire neural pathways and even reverse fear-based structural changes in the brain so a person can ditch the mind-story fear and negative self-talk, without white-washing or pretending.
Building on the 'press pause' work from step one, step three is where clients do the deeper work on preventative nervous system regulation. This can 'deprogramme' decades of threat-response neurology, in ways that are safe, effective, and stay firmly on the right side of the coaching/therapy boundary. Longer-term nervous system regulation has a profoundly positive impact on someone's life, and it's especially effective for anyone who is neurodivergent or who has a history of trauma.
This is all about the behavioural- and values-level changes from the Imposter Syndrome Iceberg. When a person has rewired their brain and their nervous system, they're ready to release the habits that are now out-of-date. This is actually the point where most coaching starts, but hopefully now you can see why it's step four. This is about resetting toxic boundaries, releasing out-of-date coping strategies, building healthy relationships, and reclaiming your personal power, with courage, confidence and compassion, not anger and regret.
This is where the 'magic' happens - a client who feels safe, grounded, with a regulated nervous system and neurology that no longer fires off existential fear every time a trigger event happens - is ready to step up and become who they really are.
This stage of the Natural Resilience Method ® is about the profound identity-level work. And because we have already done steps one to four, there's no need for therapy to create these deep-acting shifts.
And because the client feels safe, and they're fully aligned with the changes they want to make, they're easy and they last. Clients will experience breakthroughs even for blocks where they felt they had tried everything, and nothing had worked.
These five steps form a cycle that allow client to create progressively deeper change, safely and effectively. Here's how to find out about training with Clare to share this with your clients.
Want To Find Out More?
Here are some ways to find out more about the impact of the Natural Resilience Method® on how we approach Imposter Syndrome, self-doubt, confidence, and personal performance.
ditching imposter syndrome book
There's a whole section on the Imposter Syndrome Iceberg in Clare's 2019 book. It guides you through the model, then shares practical strategies that have helped many thousands of readers to create breakthroughs.
Available in hardback, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook formats.
The imposter syndrome hacks™ app
The app is grounded in safe to THRIVE™ work and the Natural Resilience Method®, creating shifts in ways that are fast, fun, and forever.
It also has hacks for taming your inner critic, turning it into a genuine cheerleader, and waving goodbye to Imposter Syndrome, once and for all.
coaching imposter syndrome book
Written for managers, leaders, HR professionals, coaches and consultants, Clare Josa's 2025 book - Coaching Imposter Syndrome - guides you through how to use strategies developed from the Natural Resilience Method® to spot the early warning signs in team members and to know when to offer support.
Want to share strategies with colleagues & clients?
Only currently certified coaches who have trained with Clare Josa are licensed to share the Natural Resilience Method® and its identity-level with clients. Clare covers how to spot who in your teams might be experiencing Imposter Syndrome, in her keynotes and corporate workshops. Scroll down to find out about working with Clare.
Don't Know Clare Josa Yet?
Clare is considered a global authority in the fields of Imposter Syndrome, burnout and sustainable performance for individuals and teams. She has been an international keynote speaker for over 20 years.
Her research is cited in PhDs and taught on MBAs, worldwide, and she is the creator of the life-changing Safe to THRIVE™ and Natural Resilience Method® frameworks, which she teaches at Facilitator and Master Coach levels, as well as in the world's first Imposter Syndrome App - Imposter Syndrome Hacks™.
The author of ten books, a reformed engineer, and the former Head of Market Research for one of the world's most disruptive brands, she blends science-backed practical inspiration with demystified ancient wisdom, to help you create breakthroughs in ways that are fast, fun and forever.