Up the Tube

naomivladeck
Jul 10, 2025
2 min read

“Going Up the Tube” sounds like a 🧪 science experiment gone terribly wrong.

Maybe it does describe a botched experiment? 😬 IDK, I am not a scientist!

But in the coaching world, “Up the Tube” refers to the experience of feeling joyful self-connection, acceptance and love.

And to go “Down the Tube”? Naturally, the opposite.

We are generally, if surprisingly, as resistant to going up the tube - toward joy, as we are to going down the tube - toward shame, hurt and grief.

I work with my clients on "Going Up the Tube” as often as possible.

Not only are we entitled to feel the sensations that come with joyful self-connection - allowing those feelings to be fully expressed is a winning growth strategy.

We build resilience not just by tending to our hurt places, but by allowing ourselves to feel abundant self-satisfaction!

The pluming that goes up and the pluming that goes down, connect to the same healing source.

I witnessed several beautiful “Up the Tube” moments this past week:

A client left me a voice message bursting with excitement after she walked of stage from her first public speaking event:

"I was awesome. I crushed it. I kicked it’s little ass! It was great!”

After crushing her speaking event, she sat in her parked car and released the energy that her joy unlocked, which was a momentary and precious expression of grief.

Taking risks to grow reveals how vulnerable we are, whether we are going up the tube or down.

Becoming skillful at traveling up and down builds resilience - our capacity to take more risks and weather more of life's inevitable challenges with more compassion, more ease and more efficacy!

That's what coaching does - it invites our courage to try hard things and gain facility with feeling the full force of being alive.

You are entitled to feel confident, competent, exuberant and loved, First name / my friend.