Transcript

Hi and welcome to the
Somatic Coaching Academy Podcast.

Hi there, Brian.
Hello, Ani.

How are you today?
I am doing well.

You’re doing good for episode 149.

149.

Nice.
Getting close to 150.

Woo.
Wow.

Getting up there.
Although that’s just also just a number.

Just a number.
That’s just a number.

Yep.

Yeah, I hear you’re gonna
take us on a journey today.

I have a journey planned for us today.
Ooh.

Yeah, so you brought a question,
I don’t know, a month or two ago,

from, I don’t know if it was
a conversation you were having

with a prospective student or client,
and the question was something

to the effect of, does somatic
coaching always have to include trauma?

Yeah.
Stuff.

Yeah.
People are wondering about that.

I’m really glad we’re talking about it.

And how did, how did somatic,
somatics, somatic coaching get woven

together kind of so tightly with trauma?
So tight.

Because if you look in social media stuff
right now, it’s— you almost

always see them together.
Almost always.

They’re almost never really separate
in terms of trauma, somatic stuff,

always wove together.

But yeah, and sometimes people want
to know if they can come take our programs

or if they can come get certified with us,
but they’re like,

I don’t want to do trauma.

We always say great, right?
Sure.

So the, the answer— if the question is,
does somatic coaching

always refer to trauma?

Here’s the short answer.

The short answer is it didn’t originally,
and now it might, but it doesn’t have to.

Oh, I love that.
That’s so good.

So that’s the, that’s the short answer.

Um, so if that’s all you joined
us for, thanks for coming.

See you next week, right?
Kind of thing.

But if you want to understand,
unpack that short answer a little bit

and go on a bit of a journey,
that’s what we’re going to do today.

So we’re going to talk about how do they
actually get kind of woven together

in the cultural norm,
the way that they are right today.

Okay.

And then we’ll unpack it.
Okay.

So let’s, let’s kind
of go way back in time.

Let’s go back to the
late 1800s, early 1900s.

There was a
French psychologist and physician

by the name of Pierre Jeannet,
and we actually teach a little bit of his

stuff in Level 3, actually,
the model he had around this.

But Pierre Jeannet was the first

physician-psychologist to systemically

observe that trauma doesn’t just live
in people’s memory,

it lives in people’s bodies.
Mm, okay.

So, and this is like,
and this is why we teach a little bit

of Genet’s stuff from in our Level 3
program, because he was the original kind

of founder of this idea that trauma
is somehow linked into the body, okay?

Now,
when Genet was working with his patients,

he was working with patients
that he called hysterics.

And there’s all bunch of understanding,
not understanding, history

around that, why that term is.
Built the way that it is.

Well,
there’s a lot of stuff about hysterics

within, uh, Freud and Reich’s work too.

So yeah, so we’re gonna get—

oh, that’s pump, sorry.

Well, yeah, we’re getting to that.

It actually— there’s a thread through.

Yeah, because I mean,
when people hear that term, I mean,

nowadays it’s like, don’t— okay,
don’t say that about women, right?

Which is not inaccurate,
but also there— that was a word people

used to describe certain
patients back in the day, right?

Exactly.
Yeah.

So what, what Piaget documented was
that traumatic memories stored themselves

as bodily sensations and movements,
not coherent narratives.

Mm-hmm, right, right.

So they store themselves as sensations
and movements, not coherent narratives.

Um, he noticed that dissociation was
a core psychological response

to overwhelming experiences.

That actually when people had overwhelming
experiences, they actually dissociated.

They jumped out of their body
sort of thing.

But that was big, big work for that time.
For that time, right?

And, and the organism, uh, the, uh,
an organism, a human organism splits

off the experience from the conscious
awareness of the experience.

Like, that’s a part of what happens
with dissociation as well, right?

So it’s kind of like a split
in consciousness, but the information

is still stored somatically somehow.

Again, late 1800s, early 1900s.

Also Like, big work for that time.

Also not that long ago in,
like, the history of medicine.

Yeah, 100, you know, 100-plus years.

Yeah.

I just think it’s so profound.

This work was also done before
we realized that the heart had

an electrical current associated with it.
Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, which was early 1900s.
Right.

So much interesting stuff
around that timeframe.

So what Genet also noticed is
that physical symptoms like paralysis, uh,

had sometimes had no organic cause
but traced directly back

to unresolved traumatic events.

So he definitely linked back— there was
physical symptomology that linked directly

back to trauma that didn’t have any
other potential cause other than that.

So he was documenting these things.

He couldn’t explain these things,
of course, but he was

definitely documenting that.

And so one of his key insights basically
was that trauma-related impressions,

they bypass ordinary consciousness
and are stored somatically, right?

So that’s a lot of the Genet’s work,
late 1800s, early 1900s.

Big deal.
Of course, his work was eclipsed by Freud.

Mm.

And Freud was primarily
interpretive therapy.

Why do you think that was?

He took it all back to— he took it
all back to cognitive approaches.

I mean, do you think part of that was
it really bought into the “I think

therefore I am” kind of thing
that people were coming from?

I think, I think probably marketing team,
like, yeah, I think he had

a better marketing team.

I think Freud was probably better
connected, and so he had a better, yeah,

better publicist, better
network, better marketing.

I mean, he was really popular, you know.

And, and also I think the way that Freud
approached it too was that if you can try

to explain everything through a cognitive
lens,

then it stepped over all the messiness
of the stuff you couldn’t explain.

Which at that time frame too, I mean,
still probably, I’m just thinking what

a relief that must have felt like
to people because life was messy.

Yeah, so Freud made incredible
contributions to psychology.

Absolutely.
Obviously.

Obviously.
Right?

And, um, and Janet did too,
but a lot of Janet’s work got

kind of eclipsed by Freud’s.

More cognitive interpretive approach where
you’re going to talk about,

you’re going to talk about the, uh,
the traumas and talk about this stuff.

Um, and so it set back a lot
of the somatic work for decades, right?

I remember reading,
and I hope this doesn’t get too off,

off track or give something away,
but I’ve, I’ve read that, uh,

some of Freud’s work that did find more
somatic connections,

he had colleagues and stuff that like he
was noticing those things, but he decided

he wasn’t going to say something about it.
Exactly.

He wasn’t going to say something about it,
and colleagues or

assistants or whatever of his
then decided they were going to make it

their life’s work to do some of that work.

Yeah, yeah.

And there was a lot of political stuff
around Freud too, around a lot of things

he was noticing with his
patients who were, who were women—

hysterical, right—

who were women who were actually, uh,
sexually traumatized

by people of political influence who —also
might be paying the bills for the therapy.

Right.

So for him to go down the roads of
investing in that further would have

been politically costly to him as well.

So there’s some of those things
that obviously disrupted— Yeah.

I don’t get into history too often,
but I think that stuff is

incredibly fascinating.
Yeah, right?

And fascinating and horrifying
at the same time.

Yeah, because it shapes a profession.

Shapes a whole profession.

And it’s still how we think about things.

Yeah, so let’s, uh,
let’s keep moving forward.

And so you mentioned Reich, like,
you know, Wilhelm, Wilhelm, Wilhelm Reich.

So Wilhelm Reich originally studied
as a student of Freud, right?

Right.

But he broke off from the psychoanalysis
in a very decisive way, right?

Because where Freud saw
the psychological symptoms as products

of repressed thoughts and drives,
Reich saw them as literally

encoded in the musculature.

So the whole idea of how
our drives are wired in,

our beliefs are wired in to the fabric
of our physiology, a lot of that work

kind of began with Reich.

I mean, Pierre Jeannet, yes.

It’s interesting that Reich kind of went
back and took a lot of Pierre Jeannet’s

work forward into what he was doing.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen direct
connections in literature or things,

but there’s probably something there.

Yeah, because you start
to see a lineage of practice.

Yeah, right.

So what, what Reich really contributed
is that this idea of character armor.

And of course,
Lowen’s work, which we lean into pretty

heavily here at Somatic Coaching Academy,
that we do the bioenergetic work

that Alexander Lowen has done,
was a student of Reich, right?

So where chronic muscular contractions—
and if you haven’t listened to our episode

on chronic muscle tension from 2 weeks
ago, like, go back and check that one out.

But what Reich was talking
about is character armor.

Armor— character armoring is a pattern,
a kind of an archetypical pattern

of chronic muscular contractions
that form in response to emotional

overwhelm,
and they actually become a structure

of psychological identity and defending
against the change of that identity,

right?

So Reich really came up with that idea
that’s chronically armored in the body.

I just want to pause for a second because
what you said, like,

some people might have to rewind
and rehear what you said to really like,

what the heck did he just say?

Um,
so another way to say kind of like what

you’re saying is,
hey listeners, you know how there’s like

archetypes and people get into like, oh,
archetypes, like there’s the queen

archetype and the king archetype
and the prince archetype or whatever.

There’s chronic muscle tension archetypes.

That’s kind of what Brian’s talking about.

It’s so cool.

Yeah, it’s really pretty cool.

And Lowen really— and how we define—
Lowen really organized that a lot.

He took that information from Reich.

So Reich also, uh, can
really kind of thought about and

demonstrated that different segments
of the body like jaw,

throat, chest, diaphragm, abdomen,
and pelvis, um, kind of exhibit emotional

states or kind of hold emotional states.

He was maybe leaned a lot into like
specific emotional states.

I’m not sure that that’s ever really
panned out, but we do know that body

regions do tend to encapsulate,
let’s say, sensation and meaning.

Sensation and meaning.

Put those things, two things
together, you get emotion.

And I think we talk about that very kind
of clearly here, or as clearly as we can,

Somatic Coaching Academy,
because as soon as you say like, oh,

emotions emotions are stored in the body,
there’s all kinds of inaccuracies

that can arise from that.

So what we want to be very clear about is
like what the body has effect around is

interoception, exteroception,
and proprioception, the sensors.

And then of course, the meaning we
make about those sensory experiences.

Put those two things together,
then you have emotion.

So we’re always working on kind
of evolving the conversation,

but it really— Reich kind of really
started talking about that.

And then, uh, what Reich also was really
kind of honing in on is that trauma was

not a memory problem,
it was a tissue problem, right?

Trauma wasn’t a memory problem,
it was a tissue problem.

So we’re still talking about trauma here.

Yes, we’re still talking about trauma.

Okay, so we’re kind of setting this up
like this is again back in the— this

is the 1920s to 1950s with, with Reich.

And, um, by the way,
out there in the marketplace,

like on Instagram or TikTok or wherever
people are like listening to somatic

stuff, especially in short-form content,
but also, also long-form content,

I rarely hear,
uh, Reich and Lowen mentioned,

to be perfectly honest with you.

I hear more people talking about not Reich
but Lowen’s work in like the energy

medicine kind of field, or, or
like that energy medicine kind of thing.

So I just think that’s interesting because
a bunch of this work did come from those

folks, but I think some of it
got segmented off somewhere.

Well, partly with Reich anyway.

Partly Reich’s work was deeply
controversial at the time.

A lot of his books got burned.

He was actually imprisoned
and he kind of went off the rails

and went into orgone therapy.

Like, like think about
what Lowne calls bioenergy

or what you might call chi or prana.

Reich called it orgone,
and he was trying to find ways

to measure this energy in the body.

And he kind of went really like way way,
way, way in that direction,

which you can imagine in the 1920s, ’30s,
and ’40s was not— it

was so not acceptable.

Like, did not go well.

Um, uh, so did not go
well for Reich for sure.

But all of the modern kind
of bioenergetic, um, work kind

of blossomed off of Reich’s work.

So we’re talking about Lowen’s
bioenergetics, we’re talking

about Hakomi therapies.

Yeah, like those kinds of things
are all lineages of Reich’s work.

Work.

Okay,
it’s funny that you mentioned Hakomi

because, uh, sometimes when
folks are looking at doing certification

programs in somatics and they tell me
what other programs they’re looking at,

sometimes they’re looking at that program
when they’re looking at Somatic

Coaching Academy certifications.
Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of those are driven out
of therapeutic models,

let’s just say that, right?

Yeah, right, exactly.

Freud, Reich, Hakomi, Lowen,
those are therapeutic models, right?

And they’re, and they’re based on, uh,
trauma

physiologically wired and structured
into the body

in some, in some way that’s unexplainable
but definitely documentable

that it’s happening.
Okay.

All right.

So let’s just go to, um, the 1950s,
the 1970s, and let’s talk about

the coaching lineages, lineages here.

So we’re talking about around
the same time, like Abraham Maslow.

Yeah, right.
Maslow’s hierarchy.

And, uh, Carl Rogers started shifting
psychology from, um, human,

uh, pathology to human potential.

Right, right.

So they started saying, well,
let’s not pay so much attention to what’s

wrong with people, let’s pay
attention to where they can go.

This was the start of coaching.

Yeah, right.

So Maslow and Rogers were kind of the key
drivers of that, of that movement, right?

And so then you start to bring in like
Feldenkrais and Alexander techniques,

which were embodiment techniques, right?

And so both Moshe Feldenkrais
and Alexander developed these body-based

learning systems, not therapy,
body-based learning systems, right?

And they were rooted in the idea
that habitual movement patterns

encoded self-concept.

Limiting self-concept,
that your habituated movement patterns

were, um, well, they’re saying
encoded your limiting self-concept.

Let’s, let’s look at it this way: the way
you move all of the time basically tells

you how you think about
things in the world.

And I noticed this certainly as a movement
and bodyworking therapist for many

decades,
is that I noticed that people who had very

rigid habitual movement patterns and a lot
of chronic tension in their body

were less likely to change.

Let’s put it this way,
more resistant to change.

The first time I heard about these things,
Feldenkrais and what was

the other one you said?
Alexander Technique.

Both of those are techniques that are
used in the performing world.

Yes.

So I was raised a performer,
started professionally performing at

the age of 9, uh, through the age of 17.

And both of those techniques were
techniques that were used

in the performing world to help
actors to embody different characters.

Yeah, right.

And be healthy in their instrument,
because your body and your

voice is your instrument.
Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Um, the first time I was introduced,
I would also add to this group

of characters here
Thomas Hanna’s somatics work.

Yeah, right.

So he wrote a book called Somatics in the,
in the, in the early ’80s, I believe.

And so That was one
of my first introductions.

And a lot of Thomas Hanna’s work
in somatics references back to Feldenkrais

and Alexander techniques as well.

So I would love Thomas Hanna in there as
well as kind of being

a pioneer in this area.
Yeah, definitely.

And so I’m hearing you say is like these
techniques were really coming forward,

not in a therapeutic way necessarily,
as human potential, as human potential.

And it’s interesting, like acting,
it’s interesting interesting to think

about the kinds of people they might have
been working with to be

able to do those techniques.

Um, and still, still do.

I don’t know the answer to that question,
but I do know the performers

and dancers definitely get in on that.

Um, health practitioners definitely
get in on those kinds of things.

Um, so those— that was happening,
and that was not trauma-based,

not trauma-based at all.
It was really based in human potential.

So, but what they’re saying is that, um,
if you want to create something new

in your life,
right, then what you have currently right

now in your life is, is by definition

mirrored in your physical body.

And though— and the amount of,
let’s just say again,

chronic tension that you have and habitual
tension, habituated tension in your body.

And if you want to create change most
rapidly in your life, you need to shift

those levels of habituated tension.

And so Moshe Feldenkrais and Alexander
and Thomas Hanna

used body-based practices in order
to shift those levels of tension

in the body so that people could begin
thinking, acting,

believing, feeling in new ways
so that could create a new

reality for themselves, right?

Not based in trauma,
but based on human potential

and the human potential movement.

Like the idea around
an intention behind coaching.

Right, exactly.

So what they really were locking into here
is that The body is a primary

site of intelligence and change.

So you can see they’re not based
in trauma, but they hold the same

premise as Reich’s work, right?

So the premise is the same, right?

The premise is the same that, um,
and this, this eventually becomes

a lineage for somatic coaching.

This is the start of the lineage
for somatic coaching,

that body-centered development work
that doesn’t identify itself

as clinical treatment.

Right, because as somatic coaching,
we’re not doing clinical treatment,

but we’re tapping into the same
body that people who do clinical treatment

use, because it’s the same body,
which we’re going to— it’s kind

of the punchline, we’re going
to get to that in a little bit.

But so now we’re going to start to see
actually these things start

to come together, okay?

Because in the 1970s and 1990s, like, the,
the Vietnam War changed everything

in terms of trauma research, right?
Right.

Because after the Vietnam War,
trauma then become came designated— PTSD

became a designated disease process,
I guess, if you want to think

about it, in like the DSM.
DSM.

So now it could be billed for, recognized,
like all that kind of stuff, right?

That changed a ton of things.

And then a character that everyone really
knows well now,

Bessel van der Kolk, right?

He was working in the ’70s with people
that were veterans

of the Vietnam War, right?

And he noticed that, um,
uh, that talking about,

about talking about these traumas alone,
um, didn’t work, right?

Like,
at that time,

it was still mostly talk-based therapy
based in a lot of Freud’s work.

But he noticed that the problem kept
emerging, that the cognitive-based

approach often didn’t
work for severe trauma.

So Bessel van der Kolk started working
with and playing with body-based

things like yoga and qigong and tai chi
and breathwork and those

kinds of things, right?

Peter Levine also started to rise
at that time,

and he made a really important recognition
that in nature,

animals, like, they shake and they move,
and animals have a built-in way

to use their bodies to balance

experiences that would become traumatic

if they didn’t do those things.
Yes.

Right?

So Levine kind of comes up with this idea
that trauma is frozen,

a frozen incomplete survival
strategy in the body.

So that’s another segue.

So really in the ’70s
and ’80s and early ’90s, they’re seeing

the limitations of strictly
talk-based therapies in order to help

people overcome severe trauma
and the importance of bringing somatic

practices and somatic methodologies
into that, into that work.

Okay.

So you still have kind of two separate
camps here at this point in time.

You have the coaching human potential camp
that’s using body movement to help people

break through barriers
and create new lives.

And then you’ve also got this camp now
of therapeutic psychological professionals

who are incorporating more body-based
practices in order to help their

people heal and overcome trauma.

Okay, so now in, in the ’90s and 2000s,
it starts to converge with this

explosion of neuroscience.

Really?
Yeah.

Okay, really, really had.

So, so we’re talking about Stephen Porges,
who was a huge player in this.

So we’ve talked about polyvagal
theory in other, in other podcasts.

So Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory,
um, coming up with the idea of autonomic

nervous system hierarchy states
dorsal vagal, you know, sympathetic,

ventral vagal states,
those kinds of things.

And understanding that, uh, again,
trauma is when an organism gets stuck

in a survival state
and is unable to access the ventral vagal

network or these, um, you know,
more socially engaged, um,

socially engaged networks.

Bessel van der Kolk also writes Body Keeps
the Score, which became a—

it’s still like a bestseller.

Yeah, like how many people
have read that book?

So looking at a lot of, again,
the neuroscience around trauma and what

Bessel van der Kolk is really showing
in Body Keeps the Score is that trauma is

stored subcortically, right,
below language and narrative,

stored in the deeper parts
of the brain and the body.

And that brain imaging shows that trauma
survivors can’t access verbal

processing very well, right?

And so body-based approaches are critical
in order to help people

to heal and move forward.

Now, because of the explosion of those two
books,

Polyvagal Theory
and Body— and The Body Keeps the Score,

they really became— they merged together
the idea of somatics and trauma.

Oh, that makes sense.

In the cultural narrative, right?

In laypeople’s experience, right?

So we’re talking now it’s out
of the professional world, right?

Right.

Because between now is just professionals,
just professional coaches,

just doing doing somatic work,
and then just professional therapists

doing somatic work,
and now all of a sudden explodes

into the mainstream populace.

And so now what happens is
when people are coming for coaching,

they’re already coming
to coaching with some base understanding

of the information in Stephen Porges’
and Bessel van der Kolk’s book, right?

Even if they just saw it on social—
even if they just heard on social media.

And so they’re already coming informed
about the connections between the body

and trauma and their past history, right,
and what might be holding them back.

And so clients now, laypeople,
are creating their own internal

cognitive structures around how their body
has to do something with them,

and they’re bringing it to their coaches.

Their coaches are like, uh,
I guess I better figure this out.

And so now,
now the coaches have to kind of play

catch-up and understand more about
somatics because their clients are more

informed than they are about about it.

Therapists too.

And the same thing’s
happening to therapists.

Cognitive-based therapists as well.
Yes, right.

Right.
So like psychotherapists.

All of a sudden you get this drive where
the consumer is actually

asking for something.

The consumer is driving
the forces of change, right?

Yeah.

And this is how it becomes
mainstream in the coaching industry.

Right.

This is how trauma and somatics get
linked together in the coaching industry.

Right.
Yeah.

Oh my gosh, that’s really interesting.

Yeah, and so trauma-informed coaching
begins to emerge as a framework.

So that starts to grow.

Wellness and personal development market
booms created by the demand

for these, these tools.

You know, van der Kolk’s processes
just kind of grow and expand.

And all the results are is that somatic
coaching and trauma work eventually become

culturally infused in the public mind.
Can I add something?

Yeah.
COVID also did something for that.

Yes, yes.

Because trauma became part
of a big conversation around COVID.

So that became more of a conversation
that more people were having.

Also, more people were getting on social
media and devices

around COVID because we were all locked
up in our houses and we needed people.

And so more people started to go online.

And then,
um, we started to see more people creating

content about somatics, which by the way
further confirmed the stuff that you were

saying about the mainstream linkages,
because most of the stuff that you’re

going to see I see that’s out in the media
that people are consuming every day

from creators is,
uh, things that are further confirming

Stephen Porges and Bessel
van der Kolk’s work, right?

Yeah.

And sometimes these short-form videos
aren’t actually even well-informed, right?

But they are moving the narrative forward.

They’re moving the narrative, exactly,
so that people understand something.

I’m not saying what, but people understand
something that then they

bring to their practitioners.

That tipping point that you were
describing where these things are being

done in sessions to people, laypeople

understanding them, totally different.

I’m just thinking about my whole
professional career and all the things

I’ve learned through the years,
whether it was therapeutic or coaching,

you know, to have people reading about it
and then bring it forward,

it’s just profoundly different because
the understanding when you’re not

a professional who hasn’t been trained
And then, of course, to your point,

when we’re consuming short-form content,
we get a 30-second video and then want our

practitioner to do something
or tell me about this thing.

Like, that’s just— that’s crazy, right?
Yeah, yeah.

And it can— yeah, that short-form

content can become so, um, reinforcing.

Yeah, even if it’s not accurate.

That’s the thing,
the short-form content really does

reinforce what we’re already thinking
rather than shape how we’re thinking.

Correct.
Yes, yes.

That’s, that’s kind of the purpose
of short-form content,

more than creating new thought,
is to reconfirm what we already think.

Yeah, right, right.

So, so let’s just kind of round this out
and summarize this with the, with the 3

big reasons, like, why somatics

and trauma got merged together.

Well, the one thing is that
it all happens in the same body.

Right.
Right?

The nervous system is the same whether
you’re healing it or pursuing growth.

Yeah.
Right?

Because we all have bodies.

We all have bodies.

And that— we’re all
gonna always have bodies.

I mean, so whatever you’re doing with it,
whether you’re talking about doing

therapeutic healing work or whether you’re
talking about doing human growth

and potential work, you still have a body.

And those processes are going
to be used through the body.

So the tools overlap, right?

Because the substrate,
the body is the same.

So that’s the one— what’s the one reason
why there’s such a powerful

convergence sort of thing?

It’s like when you’re doing coaching or
when you’re doing therapy,

you don’t— you don’t send a different body
to either one of those sessions, right?

Same body is going to show
up in both those things.

Yeah.
Okay.

The neuroscience, right, arrived
a little bit like a little bit later.

For the most— for the first part
of the 20th century, um,

trauma was a psychiatric category, right?

And body-based development
was a wellness category.

Think about this, right?

Early on, trauma was a psychiatric
category and body-based development was

a wellness category, and they
lived separately for a long time.

But then when the neuroscience collapsed
that distinction By showing that all—

all— I want to pause for a second.

All significant psychological experience
is encoded in the body,

not just traumatic experience.

Right?
So just say— let’s just say that again.

Neuroscience showed that all significant

psychological experience is encoded in

the body, not just traumatic experience.

So what that means,
that an experience of deep and profound

love, which most people wouldn’t consider
traumatic, is also encoded in the body,

right?

An experience of elation or accomplishment
is encoded in the body, even though we

wouldn’t call that necessarily traumatic.

So it’s all encoded in the body,

but with a, with a trauma focus, you’re

also going to say that’s in the body too.

So when we’re doing any somatic work,
you can’t get away from the fact

that trauma is stored in the body,
but so is love, right?

So you have to be able to— when you’re
doing somatic coaching,

you have to be able to do all of that.

You can’t just do one side of it
because everything has a body, right?

We all have bodies, and within
our bodies is all the potential.

Both sides of that, right?
Yeah.

And then the third thing we’ve already
kind of talked about is,

is how fast the culture caught up,
especially after these huge books

by Bessel van der Kolk and Stephen Porges,
where a lot of the change is being

driven by the consumer, right?

And the idea of the nervous
system regulation really exploded.

The idea of trauma being stored
in the body somehow really exploded.

The idea of somatic release
really kind of exploded.

And so again,
we just kind of come back to the short

answer that we started with today,
like, does somatic coaching always

have to be intertwined with trauma?

Well, it didn’t originally, right?

And now it might, but it doesn’t have to.

Yeah, that was a journey.

You said it was gonna be,
and it— cool journey, right?

It was cool.

Listeners, I have a favor to ask you.

If you liked this episode,
please share it on social media.

I don’t know how to do
it on Apple Podcasts.

I know how to do it on Spotify.

You click the little button that says
share, share it on your story,

share it as a post,
share it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

I don’t care where, share it wherever you—
where you are social media connected.

Okay, here’s why.

We want to help further the conversation
and understanding about somatic coaching.

And it takes conversations like— and not
just Somatic Coaching,

but human potential.
Yeah.

Yes.
Human potential.

And it takes conversations like this
to be able to do that.

It takes conversations like this to be
able to elevate levels of consciousness

on the planet, and it
requires something of us.

Not a lot, but a little.

And that little is taking your finger,
clicking the share button,

and sharing on social.

Somebody you know might find out
that you’re interested in somatics.

Somebody that you know might find out
that you’re interested in consciousness

or whatever, however you’re
listening to this conversation.

But it’s important because somebody else
that you know is confused about this stuff

and you’re sharing it is going to help
them to understand further because we

really don’t understand as a general
population what’s going on with this.

And the more that we talk about it
and the more that we open up

the conversation,
the more people who understand,

the more people who can be
helped by the information.

So thank you for helping us
out with that favor today.

Brian, this was just one
of my favorite episodes.

It was so much fun.
Thank you.

Yeah, for sure.

I love the— I just was geeking
out the whole time on this.

So super excited to do this research
and understand that history

and how it all worked together.
So thanks for entertaining me.

Love it, love it.

All right, folks,
we will see you next week.

Thanks so much.
Bye-bye for now.

Bye-bye.