Transcript

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

Brian
This is episode 39.

Brian
We’re so excited that you’re here. Ani, how are you today?

Ani
I’m good. How are you, Brian?

Brian
I am feeling really well-regulated.

Ani
That must be why I’m feeling so good today.

Brian
Wait, I’m feeling really good.

Ani
That must be why I’m feeling really good.

Brian
Wait, is that why I’m feeling really good?

Ani
Maybe. Maybe that’s why you’re feeling really good.

Speaker 3
That’s why we’re both feeling really good.

Ani
Because we’re co-regulating.

Brian
Oh, we are co-regulating.

Speaker 3
Yes, in today’s episode, we are talking about how coaches can use co-regulation to get better client results.

Ani
Do you think husband and wife teams can use co-regulation to get… That’s another episode.

Brian
Well, I tell a funny story about that a lot of times when I travel and teach that I don’t think I’ve ever told you about before.

Ani
Oh, fantastic.I love it when I hear news stories that about me.

Brian
The thousands of people that I’ve taught when I’ve been on the road all by myself.

Ani
Great. Let’s hear, Brian.

Brian
Well, the joke I tell is about how sometimes two people are vibrating at the same frequency, and other times they’re just not. If we dare to make a meaning about all all how we feel about things, we can come up with all kinds of crazy ideas when the plain fact is you’re just not vibrating at the same frequency, and that feels really chaotic inside of your physiology. Yes. We’ve just jumped all the way to the end of our episode today.

Ani
That’s it, folks. Thanks for joining us.

Brian
Thanks for coming today. Exactly.

Ani
I think that co-regulation… Well, specifically today, we’re talking about how coaches can use co-regulation to get better client results. I think that that’s I know that’s something that more people are looking into nowadays as an actual thing, but there’s also plenty of people who are listening today saying, “Back up this train. What the heck is co-regulation?” So tell us a little bit about that, Brian.

Brian
So co-regulation from the research says that people have a vibrational effect on one another. And maybe to even have this conversation, when I first started learning about things like co-regulation and vibrational frequencies and people’s bodies, I had to back that train way up. So for me to bridge the gap between understanding things that I couldn’t see. For me, I really just need to look at the science. I spent a long time unpacking the vibrational science of being a human in a way I could really understand it, and then, of course, share it and teach it to other people.

Ani
What does that have to do with physiology at all? We’re talking about vibrational frequency. I’m assuming I know that this has something to do with energy, but what does that have to do with physiology? Because We’re all about helping people understand physiology and the nervous system and making things really practical. Sure.

Brian
Well, way back in 1978, there was a guy by the name of Barrett who discovered that our connective tissue or our fascial tissue in our body produces electricity. What’s connective tissue, first of all? Connective tissue is the most ubiquitous tissue in your body. You’re more connective tissue than anything else. I like to think about it. There’s two ways I like to think about it. One is like paper mache. Paper mache is there’s newspaper there, but what holds it all together is water and flour. That’s basically the water and the flour is the connective tissue. It holds everything together. The other way I like to think about it is the Jell-O mold. Have you ever had a Jell-O mold before?

Ani
No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t. I’ve been listening to you talk about the Jell-O molds for 15 years now.

Brian
You’ve never had a Jell-O mold?

Ani
No.

Brian
Come on. Really like a lime Jell-o mold or orange Jell-o mold?

Brian
You’ve never had a Jell-omold?

Ani
No, I’ve never had a Jell-o mold.

Brian
All the nursing home that you’ve worked in, you’ve never seen?

Brian
Have you’ve never seen a Jellamold?

Ani
Well, I’ve seen I have pictures of it.

Brian
Oh, my God.

Brian
This is unheard of.

Brian
You might be the only human on the planet that has never actually had a…

Brian
Okay, anyway.

Ani
That was like a ’70s thing, right?

Speaker 3
For any people listening out there who are normal humans. I’ve actually had a Jell-o mold before. You’ve got this Jell-o mold. Inside of the Jell-o mold, you have little pieces of fruit in there, like grapes and mandarin oranges and pineapple or bananas or whatever it happens to be.

Brian
That’s how our our physiology is based on our framework or our structure. That the jello is like our connective tissue, and then everything inside of the jello, these little pieces of fruit are like our nerves. By the way, nerves are wrapped in connective tissue. Or the pineapples are like our muscles. By the way, our muscles are wrapped in connective tissue, or there are organs. By the way, our organs are wrapped in connective tissue. We’re really this jello mold of connective tissue with a whole bunch of other things invested within the connective tissue. We’re mostly connective tissue. What Barrett discovered is that when connective tissue is stretched or stressed in some way, like stretched, compressed, sheared, that stuff, it produces electricity. Special electricity called piezoelectric. Piezo means pressure. You get electrical conductivity through the connective tissue itself, not like down a nerve, but it goes all out in all directions. Like a nerve, the conduction goes in one direction, down the nerve pathway. But in connective tissue, when you shear or stretch, or breathing, moving, anything at all, walking will change the shape of that connective tissue, you get this electrical impulses go throughout all directions in your body, 1,080 degrees in all directions through the whole what we call net of connective tissue.

Brian
So we’re constantly producing electricity in our bodies just with moving and breathing and those sorts of things.

Ani
Yeah, it sounds like that’s just happening all the time. All the time. So some people will be like, I don’t know about this energy stuff. Guess what?

Brian
It’s happening. Guess what? So if electricity is a form of energy, then you’re producing energy all the time, and especially, well, in all kinds of different forms, actually. But electricity is one of them. Piezeoelectricity is one of them.

Ani
This is a little off topic, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Is this one of the reasons why when people have really tight muscles and parts of their body are really tight, they might have actually less energy, they feel like they’re less energized?

Brian
Sure.

Ani
Because things aren’t traveling really well.

Brian
Sure. Things aren’t traveling well. The other thing that happens is when we have chronic muscle tension, if a muscle is contracting chronically. Normally, muscles have two phases of activity, contraction and relaxation. A really super healthy person is one that never uses more energy with their muscles than they have to, like a cat. Look at our cat. Lucky never uses any more energy than he ever has to at any given time.

Ani
He doesn’t. But when he needs it, it’s there.

Brian
When he needs it. It needs it. Then it goes back to completely being floppy and relaxed again. Whereas a lot of humans have all this chronic tension in our necks and in our backs because the muscles are chronically tight. When muscles are chronically tight, they’re using energy to not do anything. They’re just being used to be tight, but they’re still consuming energy. That contraction consumes energy, which drains down your energy and just wasting it and holding something that is not really functional or helpful. But that’s also compressing and twisting connective tissue, by the way, also. So you’re not getting a lot of really good conductivity through the tissue either.

Ani
Yeah. And those tight muscles and connective tissues are actually also, we talk about our students, holding in place things like our limiting beliefs and thoughts and emotions that are challenging for us to let go of and conditioning that we’re working on, trying to condition. Our actual muscle tissues hold those things in place. So back to energy. Okay, so we have established that humans are energetic beings.

Brian
Well, we’ve established that they’re at least energetic on an electrical level at this point.

Ani
Right. But there’s also magnetic.

Brian
Yeah. So people are like, Well, let’s make that leap. How does that work? Well, if you have ever heard of Faraday, Faraday’s law. Faraday’s law, which is a law of how the universe operates, is that electricity is always paired with magnetism. They can never be separate. If you have an electrical current at all, you will always have a magnetic field around it. Now, it could be a strong magnetic field, it could be a weak magnetic field, but that really depends on the amount of electricity that’s going through the cable. A little electrical cord that is between your computer and the wall, very, very tiny magnetic field around that. But high tension wires, big magnetic fields are produced with high tension wires, which have been associated, of course, with people’s physiology, can be broken down, can create disease and distress. Physiology that’s around non-coherent energy fields. Let’s just back up again for a moment. So whenever you have electricity, you always have magnetism. So if we’re walking around and always producing piezoelectric flow of information, we must also be always walking around and creating magnetic fields. And there’s been a plethora of research on this. And one of my favorite researchers is Dr.

Brian
John Zimmerman, who was in Colorado doing research in the early 2000s, 1990s, that stuff. He created a special chamber called the squid chamber, where he could measure subtle bioenergy fields. He measured that the magnetic field frequency of the heart extends outside of the body at least 15 feet. That’s how far they were able to measure it. Now, it could go farther than that, but the sensitivity of the equipment they had could only measure it up to 15 feet.

Ani
That’s bigger, they found, than the brain.

Brian
Yeah. The magnetic field of the heart is a thousand times greater than the magnetic field of the brain.

Ani
I mean, I think that’s so cool on a lot of levels.

Brian
On a lot of levels.

Ani
And in the very intellectual, brain-based society that we live in, For example, whenever I see something out there around, come learn neuroscience, it’s got a big picture of the brains, the physiology and neuroscience is so much. Anyway, the impact act of the heart is profound.

Brian
Yeah, the heart is what we call the primary biooscillator. The brain takes its cue for coherent vibrational oscillation from the heart. If you think about it, the heart is beating all the time. There’s always that stress, and it’s surrounded by connective tissue. The pericardium, which is the heart protector in Chinese medicine, is all connective tissue. So it’s surrounding a heart that’s beating constantly. It’s constantly creating a piezoelectric flow, which means it’s constantly creating a magnetic field all of the time. Now, the brain doesn’t have that connective tissue activity and stress on it because some of the brain is myelinated and some is unmyelinated. Myelin is forms of connective tissue. They’re wrapping the nerves. You don’t have a lot of that activity going on in the brain, but you have a lot of that activity going on in the heart and in distribution through the rest of the body.

Ani
There’s more connections going from the heart to the brain than vice versa.

Brian
The brain to the heart, exactly.

Ani
Yeah. So what does resonance have to do with this whole thing about the heart?

Brian
Yes. Okay. So magnetic fields are measured in hertz, and electricity is measured in volts. So they’re always correlated with one another, but they are measured differently. Anything that is measured in hertz is vibrational. And so now we talk about That’s what we’re talking about in terms of resonance. The word resonance is specifically talking about vibrational field frequencies.

Ani
Can I say something real quick? Yeah. I think that’s so fascinating, and I knew that, but you just helped me click in because so many people talk about what they are or not resonating with. I make this joke about how everybody, even McDonald’s, is talking about authenticity nowadays. But it’s the same thing with resonance. But I love that because people are actually talking about vibrational energy medicine. When they’re saying that, they just might not even know it. Yeah.

Brian
So, yeah, we’re always talking about that. And think about drums. So a drum is a cavity that’s covered with traditionally like an animal skin or something. And then when that’s hit, depending on the size of the cavity of the drum, you get a different frequency of resonance. That makes sense? Yeah. So resonance is all about vibrational frequency. So we know in our bodies, our bodies certain vibrational frequencies actually will stimulate healing in tissues, and other vibrational frequencies will stimulate breakdown and disease in tissues. Disease being basically when it’s out of the range of homeostasis. Homeostasis is when everything in the cell is operating the way it’s supposed to be happening. Everything’s in balance. Now, that balance tends to be dynamic. Sometimes it’s catabolic, sometimes it’s anabolic, sometimes it’s sympathetic, sometimes it’s parasympathetic, but there’s a relative balance there. Where if you spend too much time out of that balance, that’s when you create disease. Certain wave-like frequencies actually create disease in the body, like those high tension wires, and other frequencies stimulate healing in the body.

Ani
Right. So we’re talking about coaches and coaching, and all of a sudden, I’m like, he’s talking about the H-word. Hang on a second, because as soon as we start to talk about healing, some people are going to be like, change a channel. Hang on. They’re not talking about coaching because this conversation about coaching and therapy gets very… Well, it’s talked about a lot in the coaching industry. And when you’re not talking about humans as vibrational beings, which they are, then a piece, a big important piece is missing from that conversation. But just to use the words that you’re using and use other words, too, it’s like the energy the resonance can create destruction or it can create creation. We can use energy to destroy or to create.

Brian
It’s really, again, what is in harmonic resonance with the tissues or the body. I like to think about it like a symphony. If you were going to watch a famous symphony play, it’s like the Boston Pops or something like that. Highly skilled musicians, they all know their roles. They play beautifully together. Now, If they don’t tune their instruments before they play, it sounds horrible. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been playing or how well they know their stuff. If they don’t tune, it sounds like a third-grade band. It’s horrible. The primary thing is first they’ve got to tune their instruments to the same frequency. Our bodies have, again, vibrational frequencies that are within normal and healthy ranges. Every tissue in the body actually heals at a different frequency, like bones are stimulated to heal at 7 Hz. Nerves are stimulated to heal at two hertz. I mean, researchers know what every frequency in the body is stimulated to heal at. Bone stimulators are set at seven hertz to stimulate bone healing. In physical therapy practice, we used to use infrared lasers, ultrasound, Tens machines, all this equipment technology in order to try to stimulate healing in the body.

Brian
It turns out that since humans are vibrational beings, we can actually channel energy through our own body in order to stimulate our own healing and potentially stimulate healing in somebody else.

Ani
Isn’t it funny, though? We’re way more comfortable talking about when technology is the thing that’s going to stimulate that healing rather than us. So as we’re talking about this co-regulation thing and how we can have an impact with other people, it’s really reminding me of the ICF, which is the International Coaching Federation, which is just one organizing body around coaching, and how they talk about the coach’s state And they don’t necessarily use the word resonance. I’m not even sure that they know the energetics behind it. I’m not sure. But they do know that they define coaching as this partnership with another person. In order to be able to partner, we are talking about co-regulation, and they understand, and it’s in their competencies about being present as a coach and mindful and doing your own work and clearing your own space and being ready for calls and stuff like that. And really the science and the physiology behind what they’re talking about is what you’re talking about here.

Brian
Sure. And when we come into highly coherent states, which means that my brain is resonant at the same frequency as my heart, is at the same frequency as my spinal cord and nervous system, is resonant at the same frequency as my liver. So if I was a symphony within myself, that all my different parts that need to get tuned to itself. So when I… That’s what coherence means. Coherence means when all of my stuff is playing the same tune, is on the same frequency. If it’s on a healthy frequency, then my whole body will always be in a healthy relationship of cells dying and growing, dying and growing. Because cells die all the time, and we replace cells all the time. That’s happening constantly. That’s called cell apoptosis. I mean, it’s just a normal thing that happens. Millions of cells, if not billions of cells every second die, and we grow new ones every second all the time. It’s fascinating, just a little sidebar that every seven years, you actually have a whole new body. Every cell in your body has actually turned itself over every seven years. You get a new skin every two weeks, every three months, you get a new liver. So they’re constantly turning over these new cells. Now, depending on your vibrational frequency, your level of coherence will determine what new cells you grow. That’s what we’re saying. So for each one of us to do our own work, to stay in our own sense of coherence is number one, the most important thing that we can do for ourselves, for ourselves. And then just by being human, we can’t help but always interact and influence other people’s vibrational fields. Because vibrational fields are always… If the vibrational field of my heart goes 15 feet outside of my body, and yours is 15 feet outside of your body, Then right now, our heart fields are co-mingling with each other in some way.

Ani
All the time.

Brian
All the time, right? All the time. So this leads me to my little joke that I tell. It’s that in physics, there’s a principle, A principle called constructive interference. That’s the idea that if you’ve ever thrown a pebble into a pond and it creates a wave, if you throw another pebble in, if you get another wave and they match each other in phase, two waves that meet in phase make a bigger wave.

Ani
Oh, yeah.

Brian
That feels really good in your nervous system. Because the way we process information, if you look at our physiology, it’s first, we always process stuff first, vibrationally, second, emotionally and third, rationally all the time. That’s how we process things in our physiology. The little joke I tell is this. I said, remember the first time you fell in love and you’re just a wave. You’re minding your own business. I got this little wave thing I do with my hand here. Just mind living your own life, mind your own business, going along. Then suddenly you meet another wave and you’re like, Oh, my God, that feels so good.

Speaker 3
I’m in love. We’re so in love. Oh, my God. We’re going to get married and have babies and live together forever. All that stuff, right? And then you move in with each other, you get a pet, and you’re like, Wait, no, the dog’s on the bed, no, off the bed, no, on the bed, off the bed. No, off the bed. No, on the bed. No, off the bed, right? And then you have kids, you’re like, no public school, no private school, public school. And all of a sudden you’re out of phase now. And then one day, you’re like, I swear to God, if one more pair of socks on the floor, we’re getting a divorce. Because now we’re processing this, you’re out of sync, what we call destructive interference. I’m vibrating at one frequency, you’re vibrating at another frequency, and when you bring them together, it just feels chaotic in the body. We feel the vibrational frequency, and the emotions we give it are, I don’t like that. Then we rationalize it as, You are idiot kind of thing, right? But on the other hand, if you’re in phase with somebody, it’s crazy, right? If you’re in phase with somebody, you’re like, I love you so much.

Brian
Oh, my God, you’re so amazing. It’s meant to be. Well, but it’s meant to be. But then you let the craziest things go by. It’s like, I don’t care that you disappeared for three days to Vegas with your buddies and never called me. That’s okay because I love you so much. You know what I mean? So it’s like, if we’re in that vibrational phase, we’ll rationalize away the most obvious cues that something is not good. And we’re a little out of phase. We make the little tiny things the worst things in the world.

Brian
But it all really comes back down to that vibrational frequency.

Ani
Just thinking. That’s another reason why it’s a really good idea to get in sync with your clients when there’s a little… They forgive you.

Brian
That’s totally right. Co-regulation. Well, co-regulation is that we’re using the principle of constructive interference in order to make the two waves in sync to create a bigger wave.

Ani
This is how you get better testimonials and case studies.

Brian
Yeah, on an energetic level, that’s how you do it.

Ani
Just in case you’re wondering. That’s really funny. In all seriousness, from a client perspective, also, it feels so good to be co-creating that wave together. And that really is, again, one of the reasons I love coaching, partnering with your clients. And so we can partner from an energetic place. I know we’re going to wrap up here in a second, but just give us what’s one great way for somebody to start to cultivate this stuff within themselves so that they can be that powerful co-regulator.

Brian
Right. So here’s the thing. If we talk about tuning your body, all parts of your body like a symphony. Well, if we’re magnetic fields, and it’s really based on resonance and magnetic field frequencies, the most important thing we do is tune to the big magnet. The big mama. The big mama, which is the Earth. The Earth has a magnetic field frequency. It’s called the Schumann Resonance. And what research shows is that when living things are shielded from the Schumann Resonance, they actually become very dysfunctional in their systems. Their cells start to break down. They start to become diseased. So all living things on the planet, including us as humans, it’s very important that we have some level of resonant capacity with the vibrational frequency of the Earth itself. So the best thing we can do, a lot a lot of times is get out in nature, get away from the artificially created vibrational fields that we have. Be around grass and trees, especially, are really great because they’re so rooted and grounded. By the ocean is great. Along the sand there, there’s all kinds of great places where we can start to tap in. But even with that, it’s really about becoming very present, practicing the core centering practices that we teach.

Brian
We don’t talk about this a lot with core centering, and we do for a little bit. But one of the really magical things with the core centering practice is helping people to come into coherence and resonance with the human resonance.

Ani
When you practice core centering out in nature, especially, it’s just so profound. It’s one of my favorite things to do with groups and when we lead retreats. It’s to go out in nature. It’s so much more fun, and you can feel it.

Brian
When you feel it, people will say they feel more relaxed, and they feel more present, and they feel more centered, and they feel more inspired, and they feel more compassionate and forgiving. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the levels of consciousness, in power versus force, and those higher levels of consciousness always, always, always, always, always correspond to higher levels of coherence in our bodies. And as coaches, if we are practicing and living in those higher levels of coherence, that’s another way we can actually support our clients in raising their own levels of consciousness. So when someone’s really stuck at that lower level, just showing up at a higher level of consciousness, invites them and invites their nervous system then to tune to your frequency.

Ani
And boy, that’s just so… It’s so much fun, and it’s so easy. It’s one of the things I love when we watch our certification students really integrate the work and just become the person who can hold the coaching skills. It’s one of the reasons why, by the way, our certification programs are more robust than other programs. Some people are like, I want to do it in six weeks. And with our somatic coach training program, it takes a number of months to become a person who can hold, like you were saying with containers, holding these frequencies. And then it’s so much fun and so easy to be able to do that so effortlessly with your clients. And they’ll say things like, “You’re the secret weapon, and you’re magical, And I don’t even know why”. And what we know is there’s these really awesome energy principles behind it. Yeah.

Brian
And I’m surprised. You haven’t asked me the question yet that you always ask. What? Well, it’s around the idea of if you have two people, and they’re resonating at different frequencies, and they’re in proximity to one another, and it feels incoherent, at the same time, our nervous systems are always trying to find balance and coherence. So these nervous systems are influencing one another. So if you have a certain frequency and I have a certain frequency, and our nervous systems are trying to influence one another, who wins? Who wins? I do like to win. Who wins?

Ani
The person who is…

Brian
It’s not the person with the highest frequency. It’s the thing always people are always like, I’m just going to be high frequency. High vibe. High vibe. And I’m just going to change everybody around me by being high vibe. Now, that’s not true. But the thing is, the person who actually leads the vibrational frequency in the relationship is the person with the most persistent vibration.

Ani
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you say the word persistent. Usually, I say the word consistent. Yeah, the most persistent.

Brian
The most persistent vibration is the one that actually will end up being the big tuning fork in the relationship.

Ani
Which is why this can be so frustrating for people when they’re in groups because they’re like, so-and-so is dragging us down, but I’m the leader, or the leader just can’t seem to raise everybody up or whatever. But it’s the person who has the most persistent, consistent energy about them.

Brian
It’s interesting because I think in relationships and family dynamics and employee-leader relationships and team relationships, all those kinds of things, it’s so easy for us to point the finger at the person that we feel like is dragging everybody down and say, “I wish they would change” and not go like, “Wait, if I just became more persistent in the vibrational frequency that I wanted to be in, it’s really just a matter of me becoming more persistent for myself. It’s not about me trying to force someone else to change.”

Ani
Yeah. That’s something we can do with our clients and in our groups and our teams all the time. It reminds me of that. It’s really from the Tao Te Ching. I was going to say Chinese saying, but it’s really from the Tao Te Ching about how water is the most powerful thing on Earth.

Brian
The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing.

Ani
The hardest thing. If you think about how water just time after time after time, rub, rub, rub on the rocks until they’re smooth. I mean, that’s the power of a really resonant leader or coach or parent or teacher or something like that.

Brian
Yeah. There’s just another little saying I love that’s coming to me, too, is “the thing with no substance enters where there is no space”. Yeah, that’s good. Again, if you think about you’re in a relationship and someone’s dense, right? There’s no space. They’re so dense in their vibrational frequency, the thing without substance enters where there is no space. You actually can start I have to imagine how having higher vibrational frequency starts to actually change and infuse itself.

Ani
I’ve definitely found that there have been client scenarios where my rational mind is going, Oh, my God. There is no space in how they’re thinking or how they’re feeling or their perspective or this is we are rock and hard place people. The more that I can be in coherence, then I get in there and influence naturally and invisibly. Yeah, so fascinating. We love talking about the energy medicine. It’s one of the things that we get complimented on so often at the academy, Brian and our students say all the time about how awesome you are at taking this science stuff, these energy medicine principles and the physiology, making it really practical and understandable because most of our students love to learn about this stuff. They don’t want to be science nerds, but they want to be science nerds. They want to hear about, they want to understand it, but they really want to be able to utilize the principles. And you explain things so well to be able to let us go ahead and do that, even when there’s Jell-O molds.

Brian
Even when there’s Jell-O molds. Well, thank you so much, Ani. I really appreciate that. Thank you. And I’m looking forward now to going and making a Jell-O mold and making you eat it.

Ani
I was really hoping you weren’t going to say that. Now my frequency is all out of whack.

Speaker 3
But Jell-O has its own frequency. You can jiggle it, right? And it’ll make it better.

Ani
I’m going to have to go deal with myself. So I’ll let you all go. Thank you so much for joining us, and we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.