Transcript

Ani
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We are on episode 101. Hey, Brian.

Brian
Hello, Ani.

Ani
How are you?

Brian
I’m feeling unlimited.

Ani
That’s great. I’m so glad because I’m sure that many of our listeners would like to feel that way too. What are we talking about today?

Brian
Gosh, yeah. What are we talking about? So the question of the week is how do I identify and overcome my core limiting beliefs?

Ani
I will bet lots and lots of people Google this one, Brian. I did too. Did you Google it?

I actually did. I remember years ago, I don’t know, probably like right around when we first got together, I was trying to identify my limiting beliefs. And I remember taking a course about it, actually.

I printed out all the information and I had it. There were so many handouts in this massive, whatever the biggest binder you can buy, it’s like a three inch binder. It was so full.

And I took the whole course, I think it was like six weeks online or something like that. And I got to the end and I thought, I don’t know what my beliefs are. And I was still like mired down in the whole bit.

So I hope we can make things a lot less complicated than that for folks in the next 20 to 30 minutes.

Brian
To your point, it’s interesting about trying to reveal what a limiting belief is. If we do it intellectually, there are defense mechanisms that the subconscious uses to manipulate the conscious mind to keep that information out of awareness. So our conscious mind is very limited in being able to actually help us do that.

Ani
Right. And the subconscious mind’s job, the subconscious is about 95% of our mind power. Its job is to help us stay the same, run the programs.

And it’s not because it’s nefarious. It’s not in there with the evil plan. It’s just its job.

It’s just doing its job. Its job is to stay the same, keep us going the same. So yeah, we need to use the little bit we have of our conscious mind to be able to understand what’s going on in there and be able to peek in.

Brian
Yeah. So of course, I did a little snooping around to say, hey, what do other people have to say about the idea of a core belief just alone? Like, how do we define a core belief?

And I came across a really great definition.

Ani
Hang on a second. I got to stop you.

Brian
Okay.

Ani
So we’re talking about core limiting beliefs, but now you’re talking about core belief. Why’d you do that?

Brian
Well, because core beliefs don’t have to be limiting.

Ani
Oh, well, that’s not where I was going. I was thinking that you went from a belief with an S to no S on the back end, core limiting belief, core limiting beliefs.

Brian
Oh, well, I’m just…

Ani
But I think that’s an interesting part of it because…

Brian
Oh, like, can you have more than one core limiting belief? Is that what you’re asking?

Ani
I think that’s an interesting part of the conversation. I wasn’t sure if you were going to talk a little bit about it because… Go for it.

Well, I think one of the things that can keep people really stuck in this conversation is that they feel like they have so many limiting beliefs that they’re just never, ever going to figure it out. So that’s why I was asking.

Brian
Right. And so then we can ask ourselves the question, and this is why I think we wanted to define a core belief because what we’re going to figure out here is that we can have lots of limiting beliefs that all link back to one or two core beliefs. That actually express themselves in lots of different ways.

Ani
I think probably… Have you seen Inside Out?

Brian
Yep.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
Yeah, it was with you, several times.

Ani
I love it. But did you see the second one?

Brian
No.

Ani
Okay. I think it’s…

Brian
You didn’t take me. You went by your thoughts. No.

Ani
It was awesome to go by myself, by the way. But I think it was the second one where they actually talk about core beliefs. So if you’re listening and you’re imagining those little islands with the strands coming off of them, I’m imagining that too.

I just wanted to say that as you’re talking about this.

Brian
I guess I’m going to have to go check it out.

Ani
Well, I know a lot of our listeners like that movie. I’m not the only one.

Brian
All right. Cool. So let’s just come to the idea of…

Let’s define a core belief for a moment because beliefs are not inherently limiting or something else, which we’re going to talk about in just a moment. And so as I looked at definitions, I can’t even tell you where I… I think AI actually sourced this one.

So I couldn’t find an attribution for this particular definition, but I thought it was really good. I thought it was good. Okay.

So here we go. Core beliefs are fundamental, deeply ingrained ideas about oneself, others, and the world, which influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They act as a lens through which individuals perceive and interpret experiences, shaping their responses and decision-making.

These beliefs are formed early in life through experiences and upbringing and can be positive or negative.

Ani
Or limiting and empowering.

Brian
Yeah. So I love the whole definition, that last part, that last word. I actually have that here also in mind.

So the positive or negative, I would scratch that part.

Ani
Everything else I liked.

Brian
Because I think that’s what the definition said, and I would scratch that if I was rewriting it. And for me, it would be, these beliefs are often formed early in life, often, not solely, in life through experience and upbringing and can be empowering or limiting.

Ani
Agree.

Brian
Right? Because nothing inherently by itself is positive or negative. It’s all what we do with it, how we perceive or approach it.

But it is true that core beliefs can either be empowering beliefs or they can be limiting beliefs.

Ani
And I agree with you that they’re often formulated in the younger life, but there’s definitely- But not exclusively. Not exclusively. There’s definitely powerful life events that reorganize.

Brian
Yeah. Core beliefs.

Ani
Our core beliefs.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Which is the idea, because people are asking the question, how do I overcome them? How do I change these core, people are asking about limiting beliefs, but here are these core beliefs.

And so far we’ve pointed out that we can have a lot of limiting beliefs and they’re tethered back to typically one, two, maybe three, in my experience, core beliefs that just express themselves as everything else. And sometimes you can have thousands of limiting beliefs just from one core belief.

Ani
Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the reasons why this course that I took years ago really wasn’t, didn’t really serve me all that well is because it had us swimming around in all of these different beliefs, but it didn’t really bring us back to core beliefs and it just felt like it was way too much.

Brian
Yeah. So when you try to snip out all the limiting beliefs, it’s overwhelming. But when you can understand how to get to the core and you change that core belief, then all the other tethers kind of fall apart.

Ani
That feels doable. I mean, perhaps challenging, but definitely I can identify- You can conceive how that would happen, right?

Brian
Conceptualize how that would happen.

Ani
Definitely. And it feels like a worthy pursuit then rather than chasing beliefs all over the place forever.

Brian
Right. Yeah. Okay.

So let’s dial into limiting beliefs now just for a moment because that’s part of the question for the week is how do I identify and overcome limiting beliefs? So what’s a limiting belief? A limiting belief is a belief that limits you, right?

It limits your growth. It limits your potential. It limits your life results.

It limits where you’re going. It feels like a ceiling. It feels like a cage.

It feels like something, right? So you want something outside of the experience that you have now, but you just can’t seem to get there. And there’s something limiting you.

And in the way of a belief, there’s a belief that’s limiting you from doing it, right? So I do want to just point out about even limiting beliefs is oftentimes, maybe not even oftentimes, maybe even I would say, what’s more often than often? Like very frequently?

Almost always?

Ani
Almost always?

Brian
Yeah. I’m a little hesitant to say almost always because I’m trying to stay away from polarized certainty with this one.

Ani
Frequently is definitely more than often.

Brian
But highly frequently, almost always. Limiting beliefs served you at one time. Right.

And now they’re no longer serving you. They got you to where you are. And typically, they get you where you are to keep you alive, keep you safe, especially if they’re set up early in life.

If they’re set up early in life, that limiting belief was a survival belief. And so it kept you alive, but now it’s limiting you. So it’s not like we’re born with a limiting belief.

We’re born with whatever we’re born with. And we go into life with an ingrained genetic striving to survive. And so we create beliefs that help us survive.

So they actually may help us. But then when we survive and we end up in another situation, that same belief could actually limit us.

Ani
And we can vibrationally, even when very, very young, learn the limiting patterns and beliefs that helped our caregivers and our tribes stay alive. So it’s not like this little baby trying to figure it out. These things can happen vibrationally.

Oh, sure.

Brian
Yeah. And they can actually happen. They can happen in utero.

Ani
In utero too. And that is now proven, by the way.

Brian
But my point is, is that when we learn them the first time, either in utero or through a neural hormone threshold setting from the womb from our mother, they aren’t inherently limiting yet.

Ani
Correct.

Brian
They’re just core beliefs. They’re just beliefs. They don’t become limiting until we want to create something outside of that belief.

They don’t become limiting until they’re limiting you. So I just wanted to say that. It’s not like we inherently learn them as limiting.

Ani
I love that you’re having this bit of the conversation because I think, I may even have seen this out there on the Google world, like, download my PDF of limiting beliefs. No, they’re limiting when they’re limiting. Right.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
So you can’t just get a PDF of them.

Brian
Yeah. And I think when we think about them that way, then it allows us to have some compassion for ourselves and for those beliefs. Because I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who are bumping into a limiting belief and they just beat themselves up for it.

They hate it. They hate it.

Ani
They hate the belief.

Brian
If they could just recognize maybe that, hey, you know what? One time that actually served me. And so thank you.

Thank you, belief. It’s not calling it a limiting belief. It’s just like, thank you, belief.

Thank you, belief. Thank you, belief. Now it’s time to actually create a new belief, which by the way, will actually in the future become a limiting belief.

Ani
Exactly.

Brian
Right. Because that’s, again, that’s the way that we’re growing. There’s the natural, perpetual transmutation of energy.

Right. We just keep going.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
So let’s kind of just chat for a moment about the question of how do I identify these things? I think you were saying that you took a course where they asked you a bunch of questions and intellectualizing it and you actually weren’t able to identify it.

Ani
I was not. There was a little bit of somatic work in that they had you dance, which I’m not knocking. I’m a dancer.

I love dance. Let’s jam right now. But that wasn’t helping me to unlock my conditioning.

It was just kind of getting me in a good mood to talk about it.

Brian
Yeah. Kind of like step one, right? Like step one is starting to kind of loosen up the system a little bit, maybe shift you into that parasympathetic state, some relax the body.

And that’s actually a really good step one.

Ani
It really is.

Brian
Because limiting beliefs, once a belief becomes limiting, by the way, because it wasn’t always limiting, but once it becomes limiting, we know it’s limiting because when we try to do something or take an action that’s outside of that belief or that threatens that belief, it creates constriction in our body. So if the question is how to identify it, that’s how you identify it.

Ani
Say it again for the people in the back.

Brian
So how do you identify it? You have a belief. The belief becomes inherently limiting when you try to take an action or grow outside of what’s accepted by that belief.

So when the belief feels threatened, it will create constriction in the body. So you will sense it as some sort of constriction in the body. It could also be a super hyper activation in the body too.

So it could be like a lot of energy, but there’ll be something that happens somatically that will draw your attention to it in such a way where you will not want to proceed.

Ani
Okay. So what most people think is that they can pre-identify these ahead of time. But what Brian’s saying is when you get into action, that’s when it comes up.

And a lot of people can’t get themselves to the place where they get into action to be able to get the information. So that’s a key important ingredient in this conversation.

Brian
So the best way to identify it, just again, just to say it one more time and bounce off The best way to identify it is actually to do something outside of your normal to activate the limiting belief, right? As soon as limiting belief feels threatened, it’s going to feel activated. It’s going to show up as some somatic marker of resistance for you.

By the way, it’s probably not unfamiliar to you.

Ani
Oh no, it’s probably really familiar to you.

Brian
Probably really familiar to you.

Ani
And just to, I hope this isn’t too much, but it may come up actually as an emotion. And we of course would say, bring that down to sensation level. So I have an example.

I get a phone call from somebody in my family and they ask me for help. And my tendency is to say, of course, I’ll be right over. Yes, I can do it, whatever.

But I decide that the action step I’m going to take is to say no, because I’m too overcommitted already. I do not have time. And so I’m going to say no.

When I say no, all of a sudden I feel constriction in my body. I’ve done something wrong. I could identify it as guilt, as an emotion.

But when I really cue into my sensations, I feel a churning in my stomach. I feel a flush in my face and a constriction in my shoulders.

Brian
There you go. Exactly. So now you know that you are threatening a belief and that threat is limiting you, right?

So it’s limiting you. That belief is limiting you from being, doing, having.

Ani
What you want.

Brian
What you want or different in the world in a certain way, right?

Ani
So why is the body be like, okay, say no, whatever, whatever.

Brian
Yeah. So, so from a somatic lens, those limiting beliefs, how do you identify them? You identify them as these sources of constriction or some other type of, it’s kind of like a dramatic sensory experience in the system that would cause you to stop moving forward.

Okay.

Ani
Yep.

Brian
Now I do want to say this too, cause you, cause you mentioned this before. Let’s segue now from limiting beliefs to kind of like core limiters.

Ani
Oh, right. Yeah.

Brian
Okay. Cause we said, so a lot of different limiting beliefs can act like that.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
But how do we get to the core? How do we get to the core? Well, so core limiters, they do tend to, to our definition a little earlier, be developed very early in life or even pre-birth right in utero.

And how do they show up in utero? Well, genetic predisposition can get passed down from earlier generations that experienced trauma. We know, and that’s, again, that’s been shown scientifically.

The other thing that can happen too is if a mother carrying a child experiences excessive imbalances and like neurohormone profiles, like if the mother’s really stressed and there’s like a lot of cortisol on board or a lot of dopamine on board or something like that, then that will become kind of like the baseline, the baseline normal for the child when they’re born. And they, that’s just how they’re going to feel all the time. They’re actually, they’re, they’re going to have out of normal ranges, neurohormone profiles that feel like normal to them.

So to them, it’ll actually feel like just inherent to them. They won’t be able to identify an origin for it because of the imbalances in the profiles.

Ani
They won’t be able to identify an origin for it. Right. Now, I want to address the fact that some of our listeners at this point are now beating themselves up because they have had children and they have been pregnant and they have been stressed.

I have been pregnant twice. I have two children. Was I stressed in my pregnancy sometimes?

Absolutely. And then we can go down the rabbit hole of I’ve screwed up my kids. So if that is happening to you, because we see that happen with clients and students quite a bit, that is something that you can work on as an experience that you’re having to help you identify your core limiters.

Just say, okay, this is, that’s a valuable experience that you might be having to, to be able to look at where your core limiters are.

Brian
Yeah. Right. That can track back to your core, to your core limiters.

Right. So how do we start to differentiate between a limiting belief and a core limiting belief? Because the question is like, how do we, well, so we walk people through the core limiter discovery process in our trainings, our private clients.

Like that’s what people, one of the things that people get certified in when they come and go to school with us sort of thing. And so it’s a, it’s a specific, a specific process, a somatic based process that we walk people through to get right to the core issue. Because again, then when we begin working with the core issue, all those other limiting beliefs kind of, they just dissolve.

Right. They weaken. Right.

And people are able to move forward in their lives better.

Ani
Yeah. And we don’t spend a bunch of time chasing a million different beliefs. We can really bring it down to one thing over and over and over again.

So the conversation isn’t going in 10,000 directions all the time, but we can just get down to one because the awareness building that happens with somebody when they know their core limiter, to be able to go back over and over and over and over again and ask, am I coming from my core limiter right now? Or my core expression is a tremendous amount of awareness building to be able to change, you know, your life for the better for the rest of your life.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Ani
One of them going back to that thing over and over again really is quite profound.

Brian
So just to kind of touch on that process really quickly, because you’re asking the question, like, how do I overcome these things? So I can share how we do that work. Right.

So the first step is actually very much like what you were talking about, Ani. We do some type of somatic practice to help to kind of quiet down the overactive or dysregulated nervous system. Right.

To help people become more centered.

Ani
More present.

Brian
More present. More, yeah, present, centered, embodied, all that kind of stuff. And then we have someone approach this pattern of resistance, like what you noted.

Like, you know, someone calls you, you decide to say no, and then you feel a whole bunch of resistance in your soma.

Ani
Yep.

Brian
Right. And so those are somatic markers of resistance that you’re feeling in your body based on challenging or threatening this limiting belief. And it’s important that we help people kind of stay regulated through that process.

Because if you get kind of too, and that doesn’t mean people don’t become sometimes a little dysregulated. But we use all our somatic tools and practices to kind of keep people as centered as humanly possible. Because it’s important to be able to stay present through the whole process.

And that doesn’t mean that sometimes we start the process and then kind of go in and out and kind of things. But that’s all the things we kind of train our students on. So once you’ve identified or have been experiencing this somatic resistance pattern, then we ask some specific questions about it.

Of course, we ask like your point, like, hey, where do you feel that? What does it feel like? We get all kinds of kind of description around those things.

And then we ask some questions about what meaning kind of are they assigning to this experience that they’re having? And we do it in a certain way where it ducks right underneath a lot of the intellectual defensiveness that goes along with like what you’re talking about, not being able to intellectually identify what’s going on. We’re actually having the body, the nervous system itself is actually identifying what the core limiter is by the way we’re asking the questions about what kind of meaning they are ascribing to the resistance pattern that they’re having.

Ani
Ducking under the radar is such a great way to put it because somebody can go through the process and not pop out to be like, yeah, but this or that the other thing like I should have said yes to my person who was asking me to do something. I’ve been in sessions before we really had all of this like process routinized where that would happen sometimes. And it would feel like you’re losing your client.

If you’re listening, has that ever happened to you where you’ve got a client, a client session, you feel like you’re on to something and then they pop out of the experience. One of the reasons that that can happen is because you’re not following a process. And that used to happen to me.

It was so frustrating because we were on to something and then they pop out of it. I think you were saying that there’s defenses going on that just like help us come on out. So ducking under the radar and getting the information is so important because the subconscious is really on to us and trying to defend.

Brian
Exactly. Exactly. So the process has all these kind of tools built into it to help the subconscious kind of relax and not defend so much kind of what we’re doing with it.

So once we’ve identified that pattern of resistance, once we’ve kind of helped the person to identify what meaning they’re assigning to the resistance pattern and noting that it’s a pattern, oftentimes right in that moment, someone will just spontaneously reveal what the core limiter is. It usually just comes out right there.

Ani
And oftentimes very quickly.

Brian
Very quickly. Yeah. Very quickly pops out.

Okay. Now we have a sense of what the core limiter is. And sometimes it can be surprising for people that that’s what the core limiter is like, oh, wow, I thought it was something else.

I didn’t realize that was it.

Ani
I would say probably about 50% of the time it’s surprising. Sometimes people are like, yep, well, I know that’s the one. And other times people are like, really?

Brian
Yeah. So regardless, whether surprising or someone was like, oh yeah, it totally makes sense. Now we have a core, this core belief, going back to our definition earlier, right?

This core belief that is fundamental and deeply ingrained idea about someone themselves, the world. And this core belief is limiting their growth. Again, it may not have always been a limitation, but now it is.

So it’s limiting their growth. Depending on that answer, depending on that answer will determine where we go next. Because we teach cross-mapping here at the Somatic Coaching Academy and we do basic cross-mapping in level two, but then people learn advanced cross-mapping methods in level three.

Ani
To specifically work with core limiters.

Brian
Exactly. So each of the advanced cross-mapping methods is matched to the most common core limiters. And so what people do then is, oh, so I’m going to use this advanced cross-mapping method to meet that specific core limiter in a way.

And then the advanced cross-mapping method, that we’re not going to talk about how to do all that here. You’re throwing out the time, it’s not appropriate, all those kinds of things. But it does, it goes in, it helps to meet and remodel the limit, the core limiter at a sensation level.

Ani
I think what you’re saying is so important because we think, I thought, that as soon as I knew what it was, it was going to be like this. And then my life is never going to be the same because I’m going to know. Well, it’s not true.

What happens is that it’s identified and it’s either so well understood that you’re like, yep, I know that comes up all the time for me or really. And then from there, you can totally forget about it. It’s like, we never even had this conversation kind of thing.

You forget to work on it. You forget to pay attention to it. You forget the tools to be able to use, to be able to rewire it.

And all manner of things happen after that moment of forgetting. And the reason why is because your subconscious up until the point where you learn your core limiter is operating the way it’s operating. And then you learn your core limiter.

And after that moment, your subconscious mind is still operating the way it’s operating. So it takes work and it takes subconscious reprogramming to get to the place where you can actually do something with that information. Of course, we can’t do anything we’re not aware of.

We have to start with awareness building first and then go from there.

Brian
Yeah. And there’s likely a lot of survival energy tied up in that core limiter. So it’s not just going to let it go.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
But that first awareness of it is critical because then once you’re aware of it, you never like, you know, that’s what it is. You know, whatever comes up, whatever other limiting belief that seems to come to the front, you know exactly what the core of that is. And then you can stop messing around with trying to slot the flies, slot the flies.

Yeah. Like swatting flies of these limiting beliefs and just go right to the nest of flies and take care of it.

Ani
Yep. I had seen people identify their core limiter, but then not work with it, Brian, who then go right back to identifying the 10,000 core. You know, I wonder what my limiting belief is.

Again, I’m like, oh my gosh, we actually did this work, right? And it can be that easy. And I think it can be that simple.

Brian
Yeah, simple.

Ani
That’s the word I want to use. It can be that simple. And I think a lot of us, especially smart folks and all of our listeners are pretty smart, savvy professionals.

You know, we have conditioning about that things have to be hard, a lot of us so that we feel like we have value so that our experiences feel like they have value. Making things complicated and hard is wired into our subconscious minds for many, many smart people.

Brian
That used to be one of my limiting beliefs. That things had to be hard. Had to be hard to prove that it was worthy.

Ani
And mine was more about complicated, like I had to make things complicated, more emotionally complicated. But anyway, yeah, it can actually be that simple, but because we have conditioning around things being hard, then we have that also coming up to make this potentially more challenging to move forward from in a way that you can really transform.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. And so just kind of one last thing to say about this core limiter kind of discovery and release process is that we’ve discovered that core limiter. And then the work that we’re doing through that advanced cross mapping is, remember we live kind of as humans, often we live in this world of duality, that everything has two sides.

And so believe it or not, the empowered, the limiting belief has an opposite side. That’s an empowered belief. The limiting belief itself has an opposite side.

That’s an empowering belief. So it’s interesting. A lot of people are like, I want to find an empowering belief.

I can’t find one. I don’t know what it is, where it should be. It’s attached to the limiting belief.

It’s actually attached to the core limiter. Attached to your core limiter is an empowering core belief.

Ani
And when you can identify that semantically, you can actually do something really powerful with it. I say that because I know plenty of people who have identified limiting beliefs and even core limiting beliefs, Brian, who believe what you just said, that there’s an opposite. And they think they can intellectually identify it and intellectually move forward.

And what happens is I’ve had plenty of clients who years after identifying their core limitation and trying to work with it, are still trying to intellectualize it and haven’t really transformed their lives. And it’s because if you start with the body, then you can transform these things completely. But of course, that makes sense without going into all the science, because our brains are not functioning in a silo. The brain is taking information from the body all the time to figure out how to move forward. So of course, we need to include the body. And if you are listening and you haven’t been able to figure out how to transcend your limiters or your core limiters yet, it’s probably because you haven’t done the sensation work to be able to embody that. Yeah.

Brian
And most people don’t realize, Ani, that they can consciously learn. They can learn to consciously shift their sensory experience. That’s a lot of what this process is all about. Because when you can learn to consciously shift your sensory experience, you can tap into the empowering side of any core belief that you want. You can consciously shift from the activation of the limiting core, core limiter to the core expression. And that’s just a conscious practice that happens. And when you can do that, the world is your oyster, really. Because then you’re operating not as a response to what’s going on in the outside. You’re actually operating as the cause to all the effects that you create on the outside because you are consciously shifting your own sensory state on a regular basis. So you’re really creating from the inside out in the purest sense. Yeah. So if this was… Anything else on Core Limiters that you want to share?

Ani
I really feel like this was pretty complete and awesome. I know it’s going to help to enlighten a lot of people who have… This is such a common topic, and so many people have not felt like they actually know what to do or can get to the bottom of it. I think it was really well done and complete.

Brian
And you can let us know as well. So if you have any thoughts on it, leave a review, leave a comment, send a letter.

Ani
Oh, he’s just poking fun at me because I said something about that a few episodes back.

Brian
Or send an email or something like that. But please don’t be a stranger. Let us know how these topics are impacting you and any other questions that you have. And we would love to host your questions here on the podcast.

Ani
We sure would. We’ll see you next week. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.