What you percieve inside yourself is reflected by your outside world.  Clarify your perception of the outside can change the way you deal with things on the inside.  That is what Gabriel Colella calls The Law of Reflections. 

"I've termed it that throughout my studies I've found it to be consistent.  The Law of Reflections is that what's inside of you is reflected outside of you.  The Myans had a word for it: in-lakesh.  It means I am another you."

Colella calls himself a transformational teacher.  He works with individuals, couples, and groups, and teaches a Law of Reflections workshop, which covers the basics that lead to further work.  Typical clients include people who have tried other alternative approaches such as meditation or self-help techniques, but are looking for more.

"I go into their story," he says.  "I define it as an event that was traumatic enough to create a belief and/or behavioral pattern.  It can be something like abuse, or the death of a parent, or something as simple as your Mom not buying you a candy bar in a store and you make it mean something like 'I can't get what I want', or 'I don't matter'."

Originally from Skaneateles, Colella originally thought he would be a civil engineer.  He switched to Sports Medicine and Athletic Training in his second year at Canisius College, then switched to English with a concentration in science, philosophy and religion.

"That's where I really got into symbolism and archetypes," he says.  "I studied the transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau.  I also got into the beat generation -- Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac."

He studied secondary English education in graduate school, then started teaching a remedial philosophy class at Canisius.  Then he studied with a Tuscarora Nation native American elder for six years.

"That solidified a lot of what I had been studying about how to create our reality, the interweaving of science and religion and psychology and philosophy," he says.  "I learned a lot about the culture, but learned a lot more about the Law of Reflections and how and why our reality shapes up outside of us."


"I realized this is what I love doing, and I had the understanding to carry this forward and help other people to break through things that were keeping them stuck," he says.  "I started working with friends who were curious about what I was doing.  That's when I realized I was good at it.  I started my business about five years ago."

He began working with friends, then took a business course and began marketing his business in earnest as he expanded his client base.  Colella says Ithaca is a good market, but the challenge is to differentiate himself from life coaches.

"It's so much more than coaching," he says.  "It works on a whole other level.  It makes the coaching almost obvious when they break through.  Life coaching doesn't always bring you to the cause of those patterns.  I really get at the root cause."

He works from a home office, by Skype or by phone, or in neutral spaces in town.  Clients include people from as far as Washington D.C., New York City, and Long Island.

"I love seeing the transformation in a person't face when they break through a lifelong difficulty," Colella says.  "When they have that 'aha moment' where they understand why something has happened over and over in their life and now they can change it."

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