Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey, Brian.

Brian
Yo, Ani.

Ani
Hey, yo, yo. What’s up?

Brian
What’s going on, bruh?

Ani
What are we talking about today?

Brian
We are talking. So this is episode 42. First of all, let’s just. Let’s just say that. Let’s get. We’re getting up there.

Ani
Yeah, we are getting up there.

Brian
And today we’re talking about helping change professionals understand what exactly is the point of somatic coaching.

Ani
What exactly is a change professional, Brian?

Brian
Well, I think I see change professionals as anybody who is in the profession of change, like, it could be coaches, it could be leaders, it could be managers, it could be therapists, it could be teachers. Yeah.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
So people who are really about helping other people change, get the kind of improvements in their life that they want, quality of life.

Ani
So people who help people change for a living.

Brian
Exactly.

Ani
The change professional.

Brian
Change professional.

Ani
Are you a change professional? Did you know that? I’m a change professional. Yeah, I do that professionally for a living.

Brian
I do. I do that professionally for a living as well.

Ani
What the heck are we talking about with change professionals? What’s the point?

Brian
What’s the point of somatic coaching? Yeah, because your coaching is obviously a pretty popular thing nowadays. A lot of people are finding themselves taking coaching training courses, certifications, conferences, like all those sorts of things.

Ani
Yeah, well, coaching is pretty popular. But I’ve got to be honest with you, I’ve heard some, you know me, I’m not going to have exact statistics, but I’ve heard some disheartening statistics recently around how many coaches are actually working professionally, even though there’s a lot of people with coaching certifications and how much money coaches are making. And I’m not talking about making millions. I’m talking about making like a livable wage kind of thing. And I’ve actually heard a lot of buzz recently about how hard it is right now in the coaching industry. I just want to debunk that myth from the standpoint of our students and graduates. Our people have clients and are seeing clients. So we’re not hearing that here, but I’m hearing a bunch of that out there. But you were talking about how popular it is. Yeah, I was just talking with Spirituality and Health magazine and we were talking about how many people are feeling like they’re finding their calling now through coaching.

Brian
Interesting. Yeah, interesting. So, yeah, coaching is a path to finding a person’s calling. That’s pretty cool.

Ani
You know, I think a lot of people talk about it like that, actually. I don’t know if it’s because, and I’m going to have to talk about why I’m saying this, but I don’t know if it’s because coaching actually is a profession that is inherently spiritual and that’s why people say that or what? I’m going to have to quantify that, though. The reason I say that is because the coaching industry, the coaching professionals, help people to determine meaning and purpose and values and things like that. And those are inherently spiritual, spiritual kinds of things. So I think people probably feel like coaching is a calling, actually for maybe two reasons. One is because of that inherent spiritual, even though a lot of people don’t talk about it like that kind of quality of coaching. But the other one is the inherent nature of the kind of psychological integration work that happens in coaching. I mean, let’s face it, a lot of people go into coaching because they’re interested in psychology and how the brain works. A person works, they’re not going to go back to school for a psychology degree, or maybe they already have a psychology degree, but coaching actually deepens our capacity to help with that integrative, like how a person works and then making it practical kind of thing.

Brian
So, yeah, so all great stuff I’d like. That’s a great conversation. I really like that conversation. Sounds like that would actually be a whole podcast in and of itself.

Ani
What’s that? With the spirituality?

Brian
Spiritually and coaching and how they kind of blend together and looking at those things?

Ani
This is a conversation I’ve been having with a lot of people and actually I’ve been doing talks for the International Coaching Federation, Brian, and talking about how coaching is actually inherently spiritual. And we’ll have to talk about it in another podcast about how not a lot of people talk about it like that, but actually somatic coaching is really the intersection of body, mind, and spirit in a way that I think is feeding so nurturing, feeding so many people.

Brian
Yeah. Okay. So since you mentioned the ICF, since you kind of mentioned International Coaching Federation, when I think about somatic coaching, I kind of like to get underneath stuff to try to understand it a little bit more and then build a model of understanding around it. So we just look at somatic coaching. So what’s the point of somatic coaching? Well, if we just look at coaching first, that’s kind of what we’re talking about right now. So the definition, I have it right here that the ICF uses kind of like for what is a coach or what is coaching is this: the ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity, and leadership.

Ani
I actually really love that definition. In our somatic coach program, we talk about this definition and other coaching definitions to kind of tease them out. And as I’ve been teaching that class over and over, I love this definition. I also want to say real quick that the International Coaching Federation is not a regulatory body for coaching. Just in case you didn’t know, people who are listening are like, “Oh, it’s regulated?” No, it’s not. The International Coaching Federation is one body that kind of oversees.

Brian
It’s a credentialing body, but it’s not a regulatory body.

Ani
Yeah, and there’s some other ones too. Do you actually have the…

Brian
Yeah. So the other credentialing body that we kind of like to work with and reference off of, because a lot of the people who work with us in our somatic coaching program are health and wellness coaches, which is a big part of our background. You know, my background, I think maybe even a bit more with some of the training I’ve had around really coming out from this health and wellness. So we also have a definition here from the National Board-certified health and wellness coaches. So from the National Board of Health and Wellness. So what is the definition of coaching from the National Board Certification of Health and Wellness Coaches is these coaches support clients in activating internal strengths and external resources to make sustainable and healthy lifestyle behavior changes. The National Board-certified health and wellness coaches use a client-centered approach wherein clients decide their goals, engage in self-discovery or active learning processes, and self-monitored behaviors to increase accountability, all within the context of an interpersonal relationship with their health coach.

Ani
I love both of those definitions. I think they’re actually really similar. And I love that you’re starting here because there are also definitions of what somatic coaching out there and different people have defined what they think somatic coaching is. And I think it’s interesting because we’re saying, like, hang on, bring it back to what’s coaching, first of all.

Brian
Right.

Ani
Right. And these are two bodies that are credentialing bodies that oversee, like, a lot of coaches, and there’s a lot of similarities in there.

Brian
Right. So what are the.. I just kind of want to just pull out those similarities for a moment. Client-centered approaches are similar between both of these definitions.

Ani
Right. So just to point that out for a second, because it seems really obvious, but it’s not when we watch how people work with people. And I’m not saying coaches because there’s a real difference between the kind of definition of a coach and how a coach works and another professional. So, you know, a therapist, an expert, a mentor, a counselor, a consultant. A consultant is probably if you’re watching one of those sessions with one of those professionals working with a client, there’s probably going to be a lot of telling somebody what to do, you should do this or why didn’t you do this? Have you tried that? Whereas a coach, if I need another asterisk after what I’m going to say, but with a coach, you will hear a lot of helping the person to develop their own ideas, and that’s really inherent in the coaching profession. So here’s my asterisk, though. There are a lot of coaches out there who don’t operate like that, and so especially ones who haven’t been trained because they, I’ll be honest, it takes kind of a while for people to get in the habit of actually asking questions rather than telling.

Ani
We noticed that with our students, it’s a number of months into the program where somebody really gets the hang of that. And that makes perfect sense, actually, because I think we’re used to as a society trying to help people out by telling them what to do and not by asking questions. That’s not really how we operate. So there’s some unlearning that has to happen for a person to do that. So I’ve found in the marketplace, especially coaches who don’t have training programs that they’ve been a part of inherently will tell more than ask questions just because they don’t know how and they’re not practiced to do that. There’s also then coaches who are actually quite proficient coaches who may, as a part of their coaching, suggest things to people, but they’re masterful coaches who have still, who are still operating under the idea that the coach’s job is to really help people to come up with their own answers and they masterfully can do this thing where they can kind of suggest or observe, but make sure that it’s not kind of overriding the person’s own ability to advocate and empower themselves, which is cool.

Brian
Yeah, right. Love it. Love it.

Ani
So that’s a similarity – is helping the client-centered.

Brian
Yeah, the client-centered. The other interesting similarities I saw amongst both of these are… (What was I looking at?) So what I thought was interesting, actually, what popped out for me at the ICF was their focus on thought-provoking.

Ani
That’s… Yeah, it’s actually part of their core competency.

Brian
Thought-provoking, yeah.

Ani
Evoking awareness, which is.

Brian
But thought-provoking. Thought-provoking. I’m just going to kind of tag that one for a second.

Ani
I think I know where you’re going.

Brian
Because we’re going to come back. We’re going to come back to that. Right. Whereas a little bit of… A little bit of contrast, kind of similar, different with the National Health and Wellness Board was activating, I like this, internal strengths. Activating internal strengths and external resources. What I liked about that is that internal strengths kind of encompasses more than just thought.

Ani
Yeah, sure. Absolutely.

Brian
And you might think that might happen because you’re coming at it from national health and wellness is you’re coming out from a body, maybe for more of a body or more holistic kind of bent than potentially the ICF might be. Now, I haven’t talked to anybody at the ICF to understand, like, really how they’re semantically breaking down their definitions. So this is just all me just kind of opinionating and looking at it and those sorts. I just want to be honest about it. So if we have any ICF professionals or national health and wellness professionals, you know, please reach out. Let’s have a conversation about it.

Ani
Leave a comment.

Brian
Yeah, leave a comment. Let me know. Like, Brian, you’re not thinking about whatever it happens to be. I’m just taking it from the definition. Like, this is right off the website.

Ani
It’s interesting. They say strength with the National Health and Wellness Board. I mean, just that word strength, it feels like a health and wellness kind of word that we use. And I imagine people sitting around a round table being like, we should use the word strength. And everybody’s like, brilliant, let’s use that one.

Brian
So we have things like, you know, monitoring behavior, accountability, active learning processes. So these are all, all the kinds of things. I think if we look at coaching as a profession, that’s what coaches do in a lot of ways. Client-centered approaches, empowering the client, to make their own decisions, helping them activate their internal resources, their external, external opportunities, external resources, rather internal strengths that they have to be able to move forward in the world. That’s basically what coaches do.

Ani
I’m not sure where you got the definitions, and I’m assuming it was Google, but I’ve seen definitions for both of these things.

Brian
These were right off their websites.

Ani
Okay. So I’ve seen an ICF definition also that talks about maximizing potential, and I don’t see that exact thing in the national wellness board, but it’s something that’s always stuck out to me with ICF, about maximizing potential, I think is such an interesting word. And partnering is in that ICF definition. But I’ve also seen it in the National Board certified health and wellness coaches definition, partnering. And I think that’s a really important word to the idea that a coach partners with. It actually reminds me just visually of two people looking in the same direction rather than two people who are even looking at each other. Right. We’re looking, I’m partnering with you. And that there’s so much about. I think that’s such an important word. There’s so much to that whole other podcast. Yeah.

Brian
Okay. So we have kind of coaching kind of maybe outlined frame, that kind of stuff.

Ani
Right, right. Well, what’s the point of somatic coaching?

Brian
So let’s go on to. Yeah, so let’s go to somatic.

Ani
Yeah, but let’s just say one more time, somatic coaching is coaching.

Brian
Correct.

Ani
I think this is really important to me, actually. The Somatic Coaching Academy that somatic coaching’s coaching. We’re not redefining coaching, actually. We’re partnering with other organizations like the National Board-certified Health and Wellness Coaches and the ICF. We are partnering with them. Like, hey, we believe in your definition of coaching and we can help with that, which is, I think, part of what I feel like is the point of somatic coaching.

Brian
So, yeah, so let’s go to somatic now. So what’s somatic? Well, it’s the body. It’s not complicated. Like, if you look up somatic in the dictionary, it’s the body. It says somatic equals, like, body, body focus. I mean, that’s kind of what it is. So you might think, well, that’s really simple. So we’re kind of doing body coaching. And so this is where I think when you look at definitions for somatic coaching out there in the marketplace, that’s where you start to get all these different definitions of what that kind of means. Yeah, because now we’re spun off into a whole different discussion about, well, what’s the body? And so then that can start to get a little bit interesting. Right, right.

Ani
And there are somatic coach training programs that really are just about body coaching. I mean, here our tagline is complete human intelligence. We’re really looking at the body completing the information that we can gather as individuals so that we can profoundly impact our lives, which is different than how some other people train on somatic coaching. Some people are looking at doing body coaching, and we’re actually looking at completing complete human intelligence.

Brian
Yeah. For what we do is here at the Somatic Coaching Academy, if you’ve been hanging around with us on this podcast for any amount of time at all, you’ll probably pick up that we have a pretty strong bent towards understanding the physiology of humans, and not only our biology, not only our internal chemistry, not only our internal neurology. Not only are internal neuromuscular reflexes and autonomic nervous system and those types of things but also the way that our body is bioenergetic. And we have a biofield, and there’s information in that field. We did a recent podcast on co-regulation, and if you want to go back and listen to that one, we talked a little bit about vibrational field frequencies, and the influence we have over one another. So this is all associated with a person’s body, with a body, which is actually an interesting bridge into the spiritual things we were talking about at the beginning of the podcast today.

Ani
That’s what I’m talking about.

Brian
So I start to see all these bridges, but we really come back to this core of understanding it on a physiological perspective. And I just wanted to outline that it’s not just the physiology of the biology, it’s all of us. It’s our whole complete human experience, complete human intelligence that we include kind of in the idea of the somatic.

Ani
Right. So it’s not just the physiology that you’re talking about in terms of somatic, it’s also the energy body and stuff like that. Yeah, the energetics of the body.

Brian
Exactly.

Ani
We’re energetic beings, too. It’s not just flesh.

Brian
Yeah. So if we look back at these definitions of coaching, it seems to me in these definitions, what a coach is trying to help someone else do is change their behavior in order to get a different result in their life. I mean, is that basically kind of a filtering down of these definitions? I mean, the definitions are great. They’re really kind of whole, you know, complete and those kinds of things. But the underlying thing is, that a coach partners with a person to help them change their behavior in order to get a different result in their life. Right.

Ani
So even if we make it even simpler than that, coaching is about helping people to maximize potential. Coaching is about people to get a better result or get a different result to. I’m going like, like in a direction because it’s like forward, like forward motion. Like, how do I maximize forward motion? And if we’re going to maximize forward motion, we have to maximize behavior change. That’s inherent.

Brian
Exactly.

Ani
In making forward motion. So coaches inherently, ideally, should, I was trying not to use the should word, should be able to really help people to create behavior change. Because behavior change needs to happen in order to move forward in doing exciting ways.

Brian
Exactly. Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. So I think when you start looking at different coaching methodologies, there may be some differences in the way that people approach the most effective way to promote behavior change. Well, for sure, here we are, change professionals, right? So this is what we’re talking about. So here you’re a change professional. You’re here, you’re on that list we talked about right at the top of the podcast today.

Ani
And that’s really true.

Brian
That’s.

Ani
So people approve of. Yeah.

Brian
Approach this totally differently. So this is where we start to understand what’s the point of somatic coaching, because coaching is to help someone create behavior change that they’ve outlined for themselves that the person wants. It’s a client-centered approach. Let’s just say, let’s all agree on that as far as coaching is concerned, every time I’m coaching, and now we get to the point, well, wow, if one helps someone change their behavior, how do we go about helping them do that in an effective way? And when it comes to somatic coaching, the point of somatic coaching, for me anyway, is understanding that our behavior change, when you think about it from a body perspective, is always underwritten by our metabolic state and how regulated our autonomic nervous system is. No matter what you’re doing, you’d be doing something very simple, like trying to brush your teeth or not brush your teeth, whatever it is. And depending on how regulated or dysregulated your autonomic nervous system will be a predicting factor of how successful you are for even very, very simple actions and very, very, we might say, easy behavior changes.

Ani
I’m down with you because, you know, I remember a time when my dentist was saying to me, do you brush too hard? And I was like, I don’t know. I was really stressed out. Like, life was really hard at that moment. And they were saying to me, I think you’re pressing too hard on the toothbrush. And, man, it was challenging to get to the place where it actually took. Maybe I used to say this, but it’s true. Maybe a year and a half before the hygienist I was working with was able to give me a really super awesome tip on how not to brush so hard based on how I was holding my toothbrush. But it was because it’s such a subconscious activity, was really hard to change that behavior.

Brian
Yeah. And maybe if. Maybe if your dental hygienist was a somatic coach, she would have said something like, you know, well, what’s going on underneath that horizon and you might have lightened up.

Ani
There’s the metaphor, right? I’m being too hard on myself.

Brian
Yeah. And things could have changed for you right there. So it’s the body metaphor. So I think it’s always there. How I kind of come at this is that it’s all of our behavior change is always regulated through our body and our subconscious nervous system. And anybody who thinks that we are purely thinking beings is deluding themselves. I mean, I’ll just be glad to have that conversation with anybody. It’s just we are not purely thinking mechanisms as humans. We are. It’s always being driven by subconscious processes and our autonomic nervous system. As far as coaching is concerned, I have a very strong belief, research background base, anecdotal evidence, and long experience in history, that the most efficient way to change someone’s behavior long term is to be able to work directly with someone’s subconscious experience, their subconscious mind, which is their body.

Ani
You know, you said something like, people who think it’s just thoughts or deluding themselves kind of thing. It’s my experience, Brian, that not a lot of people have thought about it, but it’s just not what we’re kind of taught. And so unless you have an awareness that brings awareness to the fact that we’re not just thinking beings, most people wouldn’t have the opportunity to even question that. Right? Because it’s just kind of how society operates. When I was about, oh, gosh, I must have been about 14 or 15. I must have been about 15. I bought a book called How to be Twice as Smart. I’m not 100% sure why I bought the book, although I did have some kind of fascination about maximizing my intelligence in my later teen years. And I don’t remember everything in the book, but I do remember one thing in the book, that’s where I learned how to speed read, which I don’t do often, but as you know, I can do. And I remember going through the book and I was looking for, I think, more magic tricks than I found, but I did, you know, there were these tips like speed reading, and I remember thinking to myself, I’m not sure how this makes me twice as smart, but I can see how I can read twice as fast so I can gain twice as much information.

Ani
But is that really what it’s required to be twice as smart? Now, many, many years later, I think about that Be Twice as Smart thing a lot, actually. I still have the book on my bookshelf. I should look at what else is in there, but it’s not somatic practices. I know that. For me, becoming twice as smart is using body, mind, spirit as a way to be able to use all intelligence that’s available to me. And that’s actually how I can become way more than twice as smart. Like ten times as smart for me. Everything you said is totally accurate. And the point of somatic coaching really, is to be able to leverage all the intelligence that’s available to me to be able to make better decisions and create behavior change.

Brian
Yeah. And that intelligence, the bulk of that intelligence is being driven subconsciously. I mean, that’s, I think that’s where we’re kind of coming from, right? Unknowing that the bulk of, bulk of your intelligence you’re not even aware of most of the time or at all or ever. And it’s driving our behavior without understanding that that’s what’s driving our behavior.

Ani
Absolutely.

Brian
So to create behavior change, we really have to be able to become aware of, decode, modify and reframe, which are the four… If you look at any change process, they include those four steps. They might call them something different, but those four steps are included in every change process that anyone will ever go through. It has those four parts. So from somatic coaching perspective, for a person to really create this sustainable behavior change that become aware of, decode, modify and reframe the subconscious patterns that are driving their behavior to begin with. And when you know how to access that information, to understand it, when you understand how it has been set up there, so then you can do something with it, and then you actually know what to do with it, and then you can very organically and quickly turn it into something else in order to create a very fluid and easy change in behavior that starts to automatically, instantly create new results in your life.

Ani
That’s sustainable.

Brian
That are sustainable.

Ani
Right. The fact is, all of us have bodies. It’s amazing to me, actually, that we don’t really realize when we’re talking about behavior. Behavior happens through the body. The body is the thing behaving. When we’re talking about change, change happens through the body. The body is the thing changing. So if you’re not including aspects of body, when you’re talking about behavior and you’re talking about change, you’re just missing some of the information that you could be using, that you could be using. We can’t. We’re never going to leave. Well, maybe not. Not never. Maybe there’s some distant future, but at least right now, we’re not leaving the body at home. You know, we’re bringing it with us.

Brian
Yeah, as long as you’re who bring it with us.

Ani
It’s the. Yeah, it’s the vehicle through which we experience the material plane and the other planes of existence. Like the intellectual, the emotional and spiritual planes are still experienced through the vehicle of the body.

Brian
Through the vehicle of the body, exactly. And through the subconscious patterns in particular. And this is, I just want to kind of just put my little, my little asterisks on that whole idea of thought, of thought is that, you know, a lot of people talk about how powerful thought is, and sure, thought is actually pretty powerful. However, it’s very limited in changing behavior. Thought alone. I think this is kind of a myth that people like power. Thought is so powerful that I just think differently about something, I’m going to be able to change my behavior. And that has not fleshed out to be actually very true or successful.

Ani
Well, for a vast majority.

Brian
For vast majority of people, because thought is primarily driven by those subconscious patterns.

Ani
Right.

Brian
And so the subconscious will defend against change using the very thoughts that we’re trying to use to change the subconscious patterns. And the subconscious, since it’s 24/7 it will wear somebody out long before those thoughts percolate down. Which is why it’s so important to use the body to help change the patterns from a bottom up perspective and meet that top down with specific ways of thinking.

Ani
It just, it doesn’t even make sense because the thoughts, the conscious thoughts are in the cortex, and everything goes through the other systems before it even gets to the cortex. Like, it actually doesn’t physiologically make sense. That idea of change of thoughts. So many people have tried that the change of thoughts change your life stuff and are disappointed by it. There’s just a vast majority of people who can’t actually change based on that, and it’s not physiologically correct, so it makes sense.

Brian
Yeah. And I think it’s perpetuated a lot of challenges and issues for people. So just, again, to put kind of, what’s the point of somatic coaching? So, again, if you’re a change professional, you’re a coach, you’re a teacher, you’re a therapist, you’re a leader, manager. If it’s all about your job to help people create change, whether you’re driving change in an organization, whether you’re driving change with individuals, whether you’re driving change in groups or at local government, whatever it is, the point of somatic coaching is that if you want to create the most sustainable change for people, we need, you need to understand how to become aware of, decode, modify, and reframe a person’s or even a collective group’s subconscious patterns in order to organically have that change become real.

Ani
Yeah, real change.

Brian
Real change.

Ani
Now’s the time, man. That’s the time for real change. This is a great conversation. I’m buzzy and excited.

Brian
All right, well, we’ll leave you on that. Hopefully you’re buzzy and excited, too, as we wrap up today’s podcast. Thanks so much for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.

Ani
Bye bye.