Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We’re on episode 48, Brian. 48. Hey there. How are you?

Brian
Good. How are you?

Ani
I’m very good. I wanted to thank… We got some really great community feedback about the new website. So thank you so much for those of you who have reached out and told us how much you like the new website. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Before we get started here, I want to let people know that enrollment is open and closing very soon for Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program. If you’ve been wanting to become a certified cross-mapping practitioner, that is the program that you want to take. And it’s only run twice a year, and you really want to hop in now so that you get started in that journey before 2025. Enrollment is going to close soon. If you haven’t checked it out, go to our website, our new and improved website, somaticcoachingacademy.com. You can click over there on the Programs and see some more information about that. Our team is always really excited to welcome conversations with you about whether or not the program is right for you.

Brian
I’m excited. So excited to be leading that, co-leading that program again. It’s just can’t wait to get in there with the students and help them make their changes. It’s super exciting.

Ani
It’s such a fun time. Oftentimes, this is the first time that students are really doing somatic transformations with us. Gosh, it’s so exciting to have them have their big epiphanies and breakthroughs. There are so many big epiphanies and breakthroughs in that program in particular. It’s so fresh and new, and people are so oftentimes really hoping for some change in their lives, or they don’t even recognize how much change they really want, how much transformation they really want for themselves. They get in that program and the light bulbs and the bright eyes and the excitement And the joy is so palpable and fun. It’s such a wonderful program to be a part of. Love it. So today we are talking about…

Brian
How can coaches distinguish the difference between the four levels of trauma training?

Ani
I’m really glad we’re talking about this, Brian, because there is so much information now, which is amazing, about trauma training. And I’ve seen the words that we’re going to be talking about all mixed up. I think it’s really tough to be a consumer right now, to be a person who’s trying to make decisions about what’s right for them also as a practitioner. Like, what training do I have and where do I fit in? I think it’s really challenging right now because people aren’t necessarily using the same words. There’s no agreed upon language. So I’m glad we’re talking about this today.

Brian
We’re going to share the language and the terminology that we use to talk about these four levels. Now, these are the four basic levels, no matter who’s talking about them. So as we go through these levels, pay attention to the characteristics of each level so that you know what the characteristics of each level are. And then you can take those characteristics And then when you’re out looking for getting trauma training, if that’s what you want to get, you understand what level you’re actually working at, regardless of the words that the organization that’s doing the training is using. Yeah.

Ani
Right? Sort of thing. Yeah. Fantastic. Yes. Some people think they have to be a trauma coach. We have people who will contact us and say, I think I need to be a trauma coach. Then we have other people say, I don’t want to be a trauma coach, but I want to have some idea around it. We have a lot of people say, I want to become trauma-informed, but that’s not what they mean.

Brian
That’s not actually what they mean, right?

Ani
But that’s the most common, I think, terminology that’s used out there to mean a whole number of different things as trauma-informed, but it’s actually in the middle.

Brian
Well, partly that’s because trauma-informed is the phrase that’s used in research a lot around trauma-informed care. There’s a whole movement around trauma-informed care. A lot of the research that’s been done in the world has been that that’s the word that’s been associated with the research. So it’s the one that gets most of the press.

Ani
That’s happening in education now, too. There’s more and more education in trauma-informed education, which is so awesome. I mean, both that trauma-informed care and trauma-informed education. It’s so great. But you’re right, it’s a research term, and we’re really helping to take that into the practicality of working with people.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let’s dive in. We’re going to talk about these levels from most superficial towards the deepest. I like to think about these levels as like those Russian nesting dolls. You have the outside and then one deeper and one deeper and one deeper. So that by the time you get to the deepest one, you actually have all the other levels also. But when you’re only on the superficial one, that’s the level that you’re aware of until you go one level deeper. The very first level of trauma training, we talk about it as being what we call trauma aware. Now, someone else might call it something different. But trauma-aware training, the first level, no matter what you call it, is when you’ve been trained to recognize the widespread prevalence of trauma and its impact on human behavior. In other words, you understand, okay, so what are the statistics around people and trauma? What actually does it look like? How does it show up? How does it impact a human’s health and well-being and those sorts of things? Now, we’re not digging down into how that happens or why it happens on a physiological basis.

Brian
It’s a very high look at ‘Oh, my God. I’d never realized that was… Those are the statistics around trauma, and I didn’t realize that that’s how trauma shows up in people’s behavior.’

Ani
When I hear you talk about that, what I’m hearing is an understanding. Not I’m getting in there and doing something. Correct.

Brian
Just an awareness.

Ani
I’m watching, that thing. I feel like a student who takes notes. Like, Oh, I didn’t know that before. That’s the feeling I get when I hear you describe trauma-aware.

Brian
Yeah. It’s just trauma-aware. A lot of people, for instance, aren’t aware that people who’ve experienced trauma, especially adverse childhood experiences, trauma, early life trauma, are 300% more likely to have chronic pain.

Ani
300%, wow.

Brian
Most people don’t realize that thing. Yeah. Right? And 220% more likely to have cardiovascular disease. There’s all these links to physiological health issues that are directly associated to trauma. Now, if you knew those things, you’d be aware of that. Then you’d be trauma-aware. Right.

Ani
I was just thinking when I was listening to you talk about those statistics that I’ve seen time and time again. I’ll bet in a number of years, we’ll have even more statistics linked to other stuff. But right now, most of the statistics are linked to health concerns. Yes. But in the future, we’ll have statistics linked to things like productivity or other behavioral kinds of things, too. It’s new that we’re really looking at these links.

Brian
Yeah, true.

Ani
Okay, so that’s trauma-aware.

Brian
That’s trauma-aware. That’s that first level. Really important to understand and get trained on that level. Absolutely. For anybody and everybody. Get trained on that. And by the way, anybody can be trauma aware. You don’t have to be a physician or a health care practitioner or anybody in particular to be trauma aware. We can be trauma aware. Yeah.

Ani
It’s a great, great idea for everybody to be trauma aware.

Brian
Totally. Okay, now the next level is what we talk about is being trauma-informed. So trauma-informed, again, anyone can be trauma-informed. A bus driver can be trauma-informed. A teacher can and I think should be trauma-informed. Meditation instructors can and should be trauma-informed. Everybody could be trauma-informed. What does that mean? What trauma-informed really is, is when you’re trauma-informed, you understand the basic five components of the trauma-informed framework that you use with everyone, all humans. Whether the humans have experienced trauma or not doesn’t matter. It’s a framework for living. It’s a framework for being in the world and applying that five-step framework to everyone. So again, a bus driver could apply this five-step framework. A massage therapist can apply this five-step framework. A teacher can apply this five-step framework. The cool thing about the Trauma Informed part 2 is we love going into organizations and helping organizations set up trauma-informed policies and guidelines so that all of the employees within the organization are now trauma-informed, which includes being trauma-aware. Let’s say we go into a school and help a school become a trauma-informed education center or trauma-informed school. That means that everyone in the school, from the administrators all the way down to the teachers and all the way down to the support staff, they all understand the five-step trauma-informed framework, and they apply that framework on a daily basis with all of the students in order to create a trauma-informed environment.

Brian
Trauma-informed training is really around these five primary steps. Some people stretch it out to six or to seven. It has fluxed a little bit over time. Originally, it was these five basic steps of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment, and how you actually go and create systems built around those five steps in order to have a trauma-informed organization.

Ani
The thing I love the most about this is it’s just a really fantastic, compassionate, being an awesome human way to treat other humans. It really is. It’s a great way to… It feels great to be in places where there’s trauma-informed policies and trauma-informed people. It’s such a wonderful way to be a great human being. And again, we’re not getting involved. We’re not getting our hands in and doing something different with certain people. It’s just this is the way we do for everybody.

Brian
It feels really wonderful. I love that we are a trauma-informed organization. So we do training with our faculty and with our support staff here at the Somatic Coaching Academy to follow these five principles. So we meet all of the people that come into our universe, whether they are prospective students getting on the phone with a program manager, program advisor, administrator, or whether they’re talking to a faculty member, we’re all coming at it from these five steps. That’s a part of how we… When we ask ourselves, what policies do we want to create within our organization to meet the community and the environment, we always run through that filter. We say, are these filters, are they… We’re ticking those five boxes? Yes.

Ani
This is really a culture thing. A lot of organizations specifically talk about culture. I think every single organization out there should have this as a part of their culture.

Brian
A hundred %. Because it feels good and it feels productive for not just people who’ve experienced trauma. Any human nervous system appreciates these five components.

Ani
Every human nervous system. Here’s a fun fact that you might not believe. Every human has a nervous system. How about that?

Brian
How about that? Yeah. Wow. So let’s go deeper. Now that we’ve laid that there, that every human has a nervous system, yes. The next layer deeper is what we talk about as being trauma sensitive. So trauma sensitive training, we have an enhanced sense of trauma awareness at this point. So yes, we know the statistics around trauma. We know how many people have experienced trauma. We know the impacts that it has on their physiology. We understand the impacts that it has on a person’s behavior. We understand these five levels of trauma-informed training, that when we do these five things, we actually create more safety for all human nervous systems. So trauma-sensitive, it’s not likely that a bus driver would be trauma-sensitive trained, or it’s not likely that a janitor would be trauma-sensitive trained. I’m not saying they can’t be, but it’s not likely that they would be. Because trauma-sensitive training is when you’re in a position where you’re working directly with someone’s nervous system in order to help that person make a change in their nervous system. So we’re talking about health care professionals, I think, should all be trauma-sensitive trained. Nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, massage therapists, physicians, meditation instructors, Tai-chi and Qigong, and yoga teachers, teachers, just all teachers, I think, should be trauma-sensitive trained because they’re working with humans that are either going through difficult crises in times or they’re working young humans, as teachers do, that have developing nervous systems that are very susceptible to traumatic changes in their nervous system that can be prolonged for the rest of their lives.

Brian
So trauma-sensitive training is we’re really working deeply in a human nervous system’s body mind survival mechanisms. We’re doing things that focus on body awareness, focus on reducing hyperarousal, focused on engaging sensation and sensory aspects in the body. We’re really working on, if you wanted to all sum that up, we’re really working on self-regulation strategies, autonomic nervous system regulation strategies when we’re doing trauma sensitive work.

Ani
As I’m listening to you talk about this, I’m recognizing that some people might be thinking, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like me.” If you’re a person who is helping people create change and transformation, Brian is talking about you.

Brian
Yeah. Because as we’ve talked about in a past podcast, last one or a couple of ones ago, I don’t remember exactly, but we talked about how transformation always includes the nervous system. It always include, you actually can’t have transformation. You can have change without really engaging the nervous system a whole bunch, but you can’t have transformation without engaging the nervous system. And as soon as you start engaging the nervous system, you start dealing with the whole history of the nervous system. And by the way, we’re not even talking about trauma content. That’s a deeper level. We’re talking about trauma sensitive. And this is one of the things that is so important in our Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program is we’re really working on this trauma sensitive level where we’re not helping people become therapeutic, like therapy professionals. We’re not talking and going deep into content. We’re actually just working with a person’s nervous system. And there’s some good research to show that that is the most important part of transformation for people who have traumatized nervous systems is learning to self-regulate their nervous system. And that’s where that trauma-sensitive piece really is so super important and so fundamental to actually help people get transformation, but do it in a way where they stay stabilized.

Ani
If you’re a change professional or you work in teams where there are change professionals or there’s changes being made, then you want to make sure that there’s a trauma-sensitive person on team so that they can do this really important work.

Brian
Yeah. This is that trauma-sensitive level. Depending, again, on who you’re talking to or programs you’re looking at for what level of trauma training you’re really interested in, realize we’re three levels in now. That first level is just a broad level awareness. The trauma-informed level is understand how to set up a system of your policies and your procedures of how you meet every client you work with. This third level is the trauma-sensitive level. This is where you’re working specifically with an individual’s, or I guess it could also be a group of individuals, nervous systems, to help them learn self-regulation strategies for their nervous system. There’s all ways to create safety and strategies around that trauma-sensitive level. Okay, let’s go one deeper now. So the deepest level is trauma-specific. So what trauma-specific training does is it specifically engages traumatic memories that people… So interesting thing is, trauma-aware, trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive work can be done with any humans, and it can be certainly done with humans who have experienced trauma in the past, whether that trauma has resulted in the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder or not. Because if you understand at the trauma-aware level, what you might learn is that there’s way more traumatized nervous systems out there than we realize, but they’re not all diagnosed diagnosed as PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Brian
So if we go all the way down to this trauma-specific level, this is usually the level that is reserved for trauma coaches and trauma therapists who are trained in specifically working with the specific traumas that people have experienced in their life. So now they’re working with the actual content that someone was experiencing, the trauma content. So they’re working with the memories. They’re working on teaching really specific processing skills that are people working with, a lot of psychodynamic modalities and those sorts of things. So you can go really deep into that trauma-specific world. And not everybody wants to go into that trauma-specific world. And by the way, not everybody, as far as professionally, probably should go into that trauma-specific world because you have to know yourself. You have to know who you want to work with and the work that you do. We have coaches that train with us that have a lot of trauma-specific training, which is interesting. They’ve learned to help learn people to navigate through their trauma content, but they actually haven’t had a lot of trauma sensitive training, which is interesting, right? Yeah. Sort of thing.

Ani
And it makes them better trauma practitioners.

Brian
Exactly. To understand this level is really, really important. To understand when you’re doing coaching work with people that may invariably, and so somatic coaching work will invariably go into these levels. It will invariably bring up trauma content with people just because we’re working in people’s bodies and trauma content comes up. So the question is, if you haven’t been trained to deal with the trauma content, then what do you do? Because you just opened up a little bit of a Pandora’s box for people, and that’s not someplace we want to leave people hanging. So we have to have a way to work with trauma-specific issues enough in order to create stability and then connect clients with professionals who have deeper trauma-specific knowledge. We do a little bit of trauma-specific training in our Somatic Coach Pro training, just with the idea of creating stability when content issues comes up. We want to be able to create stability for people and then be able to help people resource deeper trauma professionals if that’s what the person needs. It’s this two-phase approach. We don’t want to shy away from it because that can create not distrust with the client, but uncertainty with the client.

Brian
We want to make sure the client is feeling certain about our capacity to really help them through the whole thing. We have to have enough of an understanding about trauma work without claiming that you’re a trauma coach.

Ani
That’s a really interesting point, Brian. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about, but it’s true. If you want to be a trauma coach, that’s not what we’re going for. But we do do trauma-specific work, but it’s just enough so that you understand how to completely support so that if something comes up, you can totally handle it. Our clients’ clients, our students’ clients feel that. They feel that confidence. They feel that certainty. Like, I got you. I totally got you. But it’s because we do a little bit of that so that people can get it and have that capability. And that’s not where our students and graduates are going most of the time unless they come into the curriculum already having trauma training, already being trauma coaches or trauma therapists.

Brian
Or they go further and get more trauma-specific skills afterwards.

Ani
Exactly. But it is that knowing that allows the students in their trauma-sensitive work to be just so capable. Yeah.

Brian
So it’s really important. So understanding those four levels. So again, when you’re out there looking and reading and reading articles or looking what organizations do. And remember, we have a really strong feeling that any somatic coach training program actually has a responsibility to be teaching at least to the depth of trauma-sensitive work, which means those three layers, which means the broad awareness, the structural awareness, and then the working in the nervous system directly around self-regulation strategies. Every somatic coach training program has a responsibility to be working at least at those three levels.

Ani
I think this is a really good conversation for people to be having with themselves and others when they’re considering what programs to be taking, for sure. Not all somatic training programs, not all somatic coach programs are going to mention anything about the trauma stuff. So you actually want to ask questions if you don’t see it laid out for you. And by the way, I’m really glad we’re doing this episode because, again, the language might be different. So you want to make sure you understand what’s happening. But also, Brian, I’m thinking about graduates as they’re talking about either getting jobs or being in teams and working with people, be having these conversations because there’s so much value that the graduates can offer to teams and communities and organizations, things like that, to help to set these things up and have a common language, if nothing else, about it. Because these are really, really important concepts, and they’re going to continue to become really important concepts, I believe, over the course of our next whatever amount of years of history until it becomes the normal way that we operate. So there’s so much value that somatic coaches can offer in the world when you really understand this delineation.

Ani
No matter how other people talk about it, you can create common language about it and then be on the same page and put some really solid systems in place.

Brian
Yeah, I love that. So focus on the way that each of the levels was described, not necessarily the title of the… Because, again, those titles may change a little bit.

Ani
Unless you’re in our universe, that’s what we use.

Brian
But if you’re out there, ask questions. Ask questions about when you’re looking around for training, do you do? How much of your training is involved around trauma, and what level do you do that training at. And now you have a way to think about as they describe to you what level they do their training at, put them in a bucket. So here at the Somatic Coaching Academy, we train into all those levels and love to have any conversation or questions that you have about that. Just reach out, let us know. We’d love to have those conversations.

Ani
I think this is a really great podcast to share with communities and organizations that you’re a part of so that you can all be on the same page about it. And you don’t necessarily have to be the teacher. Brian just laid out for you. So think about an organization or community that you’re involved in that you can share this podcast with so that you can all have the common language about it and all do this amazing, great work in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much, Brian. It was a really powerful conversation. Yeah.

Brian
Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Thanks for being a part of the podcast, and we’ll see you soon.

Ani
Bye-bye.