Matt Colaciello

About Holistic Coach Matt Colaciello

As a holistic coach, I guide clients through a transformative journey that connects them with their highest purpose. I specialize in helping clients navigate the limiting beliefs, habits, and past traumas that keep them from fully embodying their gifts and potential. My process involves engaging in profound dialogue with clients' inner aspects, mapping their internal systems, and empowering them to tap into their innate strengths.

Through our sessions, clients learn to identify and remain connected to their purpose, gaining lifelong skills for navigating challenges with resilience, authenticity, and vision. This holistic approach isn't just focused on one aspect of life but elevates clients' awareness and self-possession across mindset, spirituality, career, relationships, and wellness.

My Journey

From an early age, I felt called to spirituality and service. I knew that I was “different” by the time I was 4- or 5-years-old but it wasn’t just because I was a queer kid who didn’t fit into a box.

As a teenager, I began to understand the feeling better: I was meant to be a monk or a shaman. Options for such a path were non-existent in my suburban Floridian town. And I was in the body of a white person in a settler colonial society that had long ago banished the shamanic elders of our indigenous past.

Nevertheless, I left high school at 15 to embark on what has become a lifelong journey in pursuit of individual and collective awakening.

I spent my 20s in Mali, India, and Indonesia, where I studied extensively in Buddhist monasteries, worked for indigenous leaders and environmental advocates, led cultural immersion programs for American university students, and learned to make friends in several languages.

In my 30s, I returned to the United States to see how what I learned abroad might take root in my own community. I worked for several years in the world of social impact communications, but my heart knew that I would be of most service working with others at the individual level. This is why I became a holistic coach.

My Approach to Coaching

To guide clients towards healing and self-discovery, my holistic coaching practice is built on four pillars: mindfulness and compassion, Internal Family Systems (IFS), nature immersion, and Somatic Abolitionism:

1) Mindfulness and Compassion

My approach is rooted in my observation that presence and awareness are the foundations of a healthy and intentional relationship with one’s self and others. I bring to our work together my years of study of Buddhist mediation and philosophy as well as the heart of a veteran community activist who believes that healing is both an individual and collective practice.

2) Internal Family Systems (IFS)

IFS is an evidence-based therapeutic modality that approaches individuals as a collection of “parts”, or aspects, that work together to varying degrees to help you operate in the world. My training in IFS deeply informs the coaching I offer, allowing us to explore and heal the various parts within you. Key to this practice is the understanding that no part is “bad.” Rather than pathologize, we seek to understand, resolve, and unburden. Learn more about IFS here.

3) Nature Immersion

Returning to and communing with the more-than-human world grounds us in both a bigger context and the beautiful relationships unfolding in a diverse and healthy ecosystem. Clients have the option to conduct coaching sessions either seated or hiking in nature. I also regularly lead contemplative forest walks. I make every effort to make this experience accessible to all.

4) Somatic Abolitionism

Somatic Abolitionism was developed by visionary therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem to address how our bodies hold onto trauma, especially from generational wounds like racial oppression. This approach emphasizes bodily awareness and healing through practices like breath work, visualization, and mindfulness. It aids in personal healing and supports social equity—from the inside out.

How to Connect with Me

Whatever challenges you're facing right now, know that with the right guidance and a supportive ally, you have the power to shift your life in a meaningful direction.

Feel free to book a free 20-minute consultation. Whether you're curious about how spiritual guidance can reshape your perspective, the benefits of holistic coaching, the rejuvenating power of immersing yourself in nature, or anything else, I'm here to answer your questions.

I meet with coaching clients in person in Jacksonville, FL, and online, catering to a global community. Additionally, I lead mindful forest walks around Northeast Florida, and I'm open to bringing this experience to new environments and communities.