Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian. Hey, Ani. How’s 41 treating you?

Brian
41 is feeling fine.

Ani
We are on episode So 41 today. And I’ve got to tell you, 40 hit me a little bit hard. Like, 40 was like a ton of bricks there.

Brian
Like, 40. A little midlife crisis.

Ani
We’re 40. Yeah. I don’t know what it was. It was just a little jarring for me. But 41, I feel like I’ve got my feet on the ground now. Yeah. And I really want to thank you if you’ve been listening to the podcast. Hey, especially if you have listened to all 40 episodes. And thank you so much to those of you who share your comments with us, especially in public, so we can have conversation, right? Those of you who are sharing your ratings and your reviews, and we’re having conversations about these things on social media. We really, really appreciate you because It’s so great to be able to have a conversation about these things and to hear your wisdom and insights and, of course, questions. Yes. Yeah. So today we’re talking about wellness professionals and how you can have better results. Yes.

Brian
How can you get better results by using somatic methods.

Ani
Yeah. Last episode, we actually touched in on some of this concept of wellness. Wellness has really taken quite a transformational ride over the past whatever amount of years. You were talking about the ’80s, and I was thinking about, did people even say wellness in the ’80s? They said, Let’s get physical. Exactly. We talked about exercise. Exercise. Exercise is actually a big deal, right?

Brian
That was the primary thing of wellness. Yeah.

Ani
Yeah. But then it started at some point to turn more into a wellness thing. And spirituality & health also started to come together in some sense. I’m laughing because I remember one of the people who was a foundational teacher for me, Caroline Myss, who I’ve been reading about a long time, many years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I remember her saying publicly, When did this happen that spirituality and health became this part of the same conversation. So wellness and preventative and medicine and health and spirituality and body mind and all of these things really have matured or whatever. I don’t know where we are in the trajectory.

Brian
The funny thing is I was just listening to a report a couple of days ago about a huge study with 5 million people that has been done that has completely debunked the idea that alcohol has any protective effects for your health at all. You remember in the ’90s, there was that Moralie Schafer 60 Minutes episode where he holds up a glass of wine and he’s like, This has been shown to be good for your heart. Well, it turns out that science was completely erroneous. They had just had all this data and they had grouped some of the people in the study inappropriately to make it look like that alcohol, wine especially, actually helped your heart. Those researchers, over the last few decades, have gone back and looked at it and pretty much completely debunked the idea that alcohol is any protective at all. We might have just lost a few listeners. If anything, it’s actually a bit deleterious for your health in any measure with increasing quantities. But what I’m saying is even the alcohol industry is trying to get on the wellness bandwagon. Totally. That’s what made me think of that.

Ani
Dunkin Donuts, right? They have the runner man on their sign now. It’s like, Everybody’s running on Dunkin. We’re healthy, too. Yeah.

Brian
I mean, there’s nothing but bad about a donut. There’s nothing- It’s just funny, right? Yeah. It’s all the… Anyway, but it’s just everybody’s looking to get on the wellness bandwagon now, right? It’s so funny that it’s happening.

Ani
We’re poking a lot of fun, but it’s also so totally awesome because people are way more interested in being healthy and being preventative. People are way more willing to talk about all kinds of ways that that happens. That’s really exciting. It’s a fun time.

Brian
It is fun. I mean, with that movement, right? Maybe it is emblematic that the movement is gaining speed when other characters who aren’t so well are trying to promote themselves as being well, thing. Because the winner as far as diet is kale. Kale has got a pretty good marketing campaign. Kale is increasing its marketing capabilities. But kale and spinach and greens, we know those things are good.

Ani
Okay, so hang on a second because I was just talking about this with some friends. One of the reasons that I think vegetables were getting a nasty wrap is because when I was growing up in the ’80s- They were boiled? Bless my mom, but everything was boiled. That was just so bad. Everything was boiled. I was roasting some beets this up a few days ago. I was like, When did we discover that this was an okay method, that it was way far superior than boiling all vegetables? Boiling things.

Brian
I know.

Ani
Because all of a sudden, we started roasting things. We’re like, Yeah, I can eat kale.

Brian
I can eat brussels sprouts.

Ani
We have had some of the best roasted brussels sprouts ever on the planet.

Brian
I love just traveling to restaurants and always ordering the brussels sprouts. I got to try them everywhere.

Ani
I remember growing up, there was no way. We’ve come a long way, folks.

Brian
What are we talking about? We’re talking about wellness professionals using somatic methods

Ani
Yeah. By the way, Wellness professionals are trying to help people to eat Brussels Sprouts, Brian, and do things like get healthy and exercise and- Get better sleep. Absolutely. There’s so many different ways to use wellness now. There’s so So many different kinds of wellness professionals. Let me finish my thought. And somatic practices, somatic work, can help wellness professionals to get better results. I do think that it’s still a little bit of a shame that we don’t expect better results in the wellness industry, to be perfectly honest with you, because there’s still, and I can speak to this because I have been there and I am there. There’s still this this okayness around the fact that only some people are going to get results because not everybody’s going to try hard enough, and not everybody’s going to do their homework, and not everybody’s going to fill in the blank on the things that then we can blame not getting awesome results on when the fact is we can actually make a bigger difference in more people’s lives and get 100% results with 100% of people when we really know how to use somatics and the specifically, trauma sensitive somatics within the context of the other changes that we’re trying to help facilitate for people.

Brian
100%. Yeah, 100%. Let’s just say that all the focus on the exercise and the sleep and the diet, it’s critically important. It’s actually so important that when we think about working or if someone is struggling with a mental health issue or a mental wellness issue, let’s say, that we know now that the physical body, the gut biome, all those kinds of things, massively affect our mental health. It is a bit frustrating for me sometimes when people are experiencing mental health challenges, mental wellness challenges, and they are seeking therapeutics for it. Nothing against those things. But they’re not even eating broccoli. They’re eating really highly processed foods, a lot of sugars, all those kinds of things, drinking alcohol, and their gut biome, I’m sure, is all whacked out, and that’s affecting their mental health. Wellness professionals, it’s like, that’s why it’s so critical to help people make those changes first because you don’t have a prayer of helping anywhere above that if you don’t do that work.

Ani
Absolutely. It can be really frustrating to be a wellness professional who is helping people to make these changes that we know are so massively important to their lives, and we can’t, quote, unquote, get them to do it. And so that’s what we’re really talking about today. And one of the things I want to point out is, in particular, on this episode, we’re talking about helping people to make body changes. It can be really challenging.

Brian
It can be really challenging to do that. So wellness professionals, you’re really focused on that, like Amen. That’s so super important. And at the same time, it’s not the end all and be all. Because a lot of the reasons people have, as you point out, Ani, have trouble making those body changes is because there’s something else standing in the way of doing it.

Ani
Well, an inner thing. If you just think about it like this, if we’re talking about food or we’re talking about exercise, we’re talking about our schedule, we’re talking about our wellness routine, we’re talking about self-care, whatever it is. That is a change I want to make in the external environment. When we really look at how somatic coaching can help you to make the internal change that then allows a person to easily make the external change. And I’m bringing that up because coaching, as we were talking about in the last episode, is a very broad range of how coaches operate. And one of the things that draws people to somatic coaching, in particular, is the fact that there are a lot of coaching methodologies and ways in which to coach that are all about the external thing, helping people to be more productive, helping people to use their calendar They’re helping people to change their diet and things like that. And those are all fantastic. And when paired with internal transformation, when paired with the somatic rewiring, reprogramming of the nervous system, actually do create those sustainable changes. So it’s the inside change that allows the outside change to happen easily and sustainably.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
One way we could talk about that inside stuff is our belief systems and our perceptions. In interesting and traditional Chinese medicine, there’s a beautiful concept, actually a a framework within and itself. They have this body level that people work with. But then there’s also what we call the heart mind level, heart mind. I’m not going to try to even pronounce it. Well, actually, it will. Shin. Shin is the word. If I do not speak Chinese, I’m sure I just ruined that word for a lot of people. But that’s the idea of heart mind. In traditional Chinese medicine, there’s no word for heart all by itself, and there’s no word for mind all by itself. That the idea that the heart, our mental emotional self is linked together. It’s not like our heart pumps blood, and our brain thinks and has emotions. It’s like that’s all one system of thought in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s also the way that the housing, if they want to think about it that way, for our belief systems and the way we perceive the world. And that has so much to do with our physiology, with our wellness, with how our bodies operate, and even with the choices that we make, with the decisions that we make, behavioral change.

Ani
Well, so much. So people are trying to make body changes on a body level, but we’re not just body beings. We’re multifaceted beings on many planes. And so the heart mind is going to play a humungo part in the change process, whether or not we’re addressing it, because if we don’t address it, we’re going to be banging up against something we don’t know what. But if we have it as a part of, then we can create more profound transformation on the body level.

Brian
That’s exactly the point. If we’re trying to help someone change behavior to have a healthier weight, let’s say, or even better sleep, or lower their blood sugar, we can be trying to help people have behavioral changes for that. It might just seem like they’re not able to make the change. Like, they’re not able to do the thing to create the effect in the physiology. Then there’s a block in the heart mind. And so there’s a block with the way that likely the person is perceiving themselves in the world and their belief systems about the world. That’s one of the coolest things about doing somatic coaching work is really helping people to understand exactly what those things, with those things are on a really simple level. On a really simple level, there’s two primary perceptions that will massively drive someone’s physiology. It’s either, do you have the perception that you’re safe in the world, or do you have a perception that you’re threatened in the world, or you’re not safe in the world? That’s right. Just that alone, that alone will have massive driving implications for your choices, behavior, and certainly in your physiology itself.

Ani
That right there is the missing piece that a lot of wellness professionals, once they start to learn this work, they’re like, that was the thing that I was missing, because I’m trying to get the body on board, and the person is telling me that they want the change, and their body is suffering, or their mental emotional state is suffering, and they know that the body can help, and they want it. They told me so. And yet we still can’t do it. And why not? What’s going on? It’s like that safety piece is really the missing piece so often for folks. The body is trying to protect us. The subconscious mind is trying to protect us. And when we recognize that, we can see that the person who says they want the change, it’s not that they’re lying, and it’s not that they don’t want it, and it’s not that they’re being resistant or bad, or wrong, or unmotivated, or unproductive, or lazy, or all of these things that we use to judge ourselves. Something is protecting them. And I have a great example for you. Let’s do it. I’m not somebody that people would find to coach on weight loss.

Ani
I would not hang that on a shingle and say, I’m a weight loss coach. And a number of my clients have been interested in having a more healthy weight. Every time, every time, I have coached somebody who wanted to have a healthier weight, whatever that meant to them. And by the way, they’re all women. There was some a belief structure, belief system that if they were a healthier weight, then it would not be safe for some reason. And just to point out a general what that might be for people like that, and it was exactly what was going on with my clients, it’s not always safe to be an attractive, sexy woman in our society because that can invite potential threat. And when my client was able to see and identify that mental emotional construct that was going on for them, and then to be able to tie in some evidence and past experience to say, That actually was true for me, then they were able to make profound transformation in their lives. And by the way, they didn’t care as much about the weight or the number or any of that anymore.

Ani
They really to be a healthy, mental, emotionally well individual who loves themselves and feels safe in their skin.

Brian
Perfect example. It’s a really perfect example. It’s interesting from a coaching perspective. If you don’t, one other thing that can be helpful to know. So a lot of times when you’re looking at it from the outside, so I can’t speak for all of your clients’ experiences, Ani, but my guess is that at least for some of them, from an external viewpoint, if you were to look at their life, you think that they’re safe. They have a safe household. They have plenty of money to feed themselves. They have a safe car. They have a safe job. They have a safe partner. So from the outside, you could be like, This doesn’t make sense. They’re sick. This is actually even more distressing for the person. Yeah, because it’s not rational. Because they’re like, In their body, they don’t feel safe But they look around and say, But I look at it, and it looks like I should feel safe.

Ani
Then they say, What’s wrong with me?

Brian
There’s a mismatch, a disintegrity, if you will, between what’s showing up on the outside and what’s showing up on the inside. And that’s something that if you can help someone work through that, you can bring things into alignment like you were doing with your clients, and then create really, really powerful changes for people. But if you don’t know that, then it’s just a hamster wheel, and clients will just jump from one wellness professional to the next because they’re not getting the result that they want. They have no idea why. So one of the ways that wellness professionals can help, again, help their people get better results or to recognize that there’s an additional level above just this body level. There’s the level of perception and belief that is also massively impacting the person’s decisions and choices in their physiology. And one of those beliefs is, do I have a perception or a belief that I’m safe in this world? A deep, an embodied belief. An embodied belief, yeah. That I’m safe in this world or that I’m not safe in this world. That can be driving a lot, a lot of stuff.

Ani
Absolutely. The other thing that comes up is sometimes people just pop right into that purpose-driven vision that they want for themselves, and that also can create a real disconnect. I see myself as the athlete I want to be or as a healthy person. I can see it. I know part of my purpose here is to be more well, and I just can’t get there. It seems like this massive chasm between… And it almost tends to shrivel if we can’t feed it. And I think that’s one of the reasons that people ping-pong back and forth, back and forth, because it’s in our acorn. It is in our purpose, but we can’t reach it through the level of the body. And then we get all junked up with all of the mental emotional stuff that not a lot of practitioners, let’s face it, can really help people navigate. And then they can’t really feed that spiritual purpose. Sure.

Brian
And if you had a methodology to help someone really tap into their purpose state, because, again, we look at purpose as a state, not a doing, but a being. When you can help someone tap into what they understand what their purpose state is, then that really can draw… It’s amazing how much that drives decision making, to be able to start making decisions based on your purpose.

Ani
Yeah, and it can really clarify a lot of the muddiness that happens in the emotional perceptual space. Yeah.

Brian
So just as an example for myself, So my purpose is to influence people, to be able to step into the highest aspect of themselves and embody the natural laws. I mean, that’s my purpose here on the planet. And when I get up in the morning and I think about that purpose, that’s going to help me decide what to eat breakfast. It’s going to help me decide what exercise to do. It’s going to help me decide what meditation or mindfulness practices to do. It’s going to help me decide what work to do. It’s going to help me decide everything. If I’m basing everything based on knowing what my purpose is.

Ani
Yeah. And it’s going to help you decide whether or not you’re going to have that glass of wine that the scientists said. Exactly. Because by the way, the scientists told us that it was good, now they’re telling us that it was bad. And what do we believe we say to ourselves? Well, if we can align with our purpose, we’re always going to do the thing that is most on purpose with us. Exactly. Including having a glass of wine when it’s important for all the multitude of reasons why having a glass of wine might be important. I don’t really drink a lot, but when I go to your parents, your dad offers me a glass of wine. I don’t have a glass of wine because I like wine. Sorry, Josh, if you’re listening to this, it’s not really that. It’s because I love you, Josh. It’s because I have such a respect for your dad, and he loves wine. So there’s all of this. Everything that we’re talking about, about wellness, has this multifaceted meaning associated with it. And there are many reasons why. So we can really align ourselves with the exercise that really… Gosh, Brian, I was just thinking about a client who was like, I want to exercise, and I just can’t get myself to do it.

Ani
How many times we heard that? I want to fill in the blank. I just can’t get myself to do it. And I was like, well, what are you trying to do? Well, I’m trying to run, or I’m trying to swim. I said, what do you want to do? Like, what feels good to you? What do you like? Well, I like to dance. Well, are you dancing? Well, no, I didn’t know that counted. But that’s what you’re talking about, right? About aligning with your purpose and being able to make the decisions. I got an email from her, and she’s like, I’m dancing and I feel great because that’s what it’s about. We’re going to find out that the numbers that they said didn’t matter or we’ll talk about cupcakes and muffins here for just a second. Oh, yeah. It’s a conversation. Or what’s the body mass index? That was created by… We’ll find out that those things, those numbers that were attaching were created by people who wasn’t really meant to do those. We’re constantly finding those things out. Cupcakes and muffins. You’ll find out that if you eat a cupcake and you call it a muffin, that your body metabolizes it differently.

Brian
Yeah, true story. There’s some good research around that. If you eat It’s crazy, right? But it just- You eat a cupcake, you call it a muffin, and you’ll metabolize it in a more healthy way than if you call it a cupcake.

Ani
There’s so much mystery. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. There’s so much mystery. And we could weigh ourselves down in all of the things and then get really disappointed when it changes. Or we could find and live in our purpose and make decisions in alignment with our purpose, make it simpler, enjoy our lives, and do things that are really aligned.

Brian
If If we just backing up for a second. With that said, I think I agree with you that the purpose, if we can really fully embody and live in our purpose, that’s the prow of the ship that’s going to bring us whatever we want and towards whatever we want in our lives. And If we’re really exhausted, if we’re really tired, if we’re really malnourished, it’s going to be really hard to do that. Yeah, certainly. We have to go back. The reason I have it in this down and up I’m talking about is because in my mind, I’m seeing this traditional Chinese medicine model of what we call the lower energy center being the body energy center, the middle being the heart mind, and the upper being the spirit or shin center. That’s what I’m seeing in my mind when I talk about the up and the down. Sure. I’m not putting value judgments on these.

Ani
It’s It’s not just about value. It’s also about the fact that it’s not like we get there and then we’ve arrived to nirvana and then it’s over forever.

Brian
You need to integrate the whole system again and again and again.

Ani
Again and again.

Brian
In order to move into working productively with beliefs and perceptions, we have got to have some minimum amount of vitality in the body in order to do that. How do we get vitality in the body? We get it by getting enough sleep. We get it by eating food that’s vital enough to energize us. We get it by getting some exercise, and we get it by doing some mindfulness practices, somatic practices, like those types of things, a core centering. That’s how we elevate. Core centering is brilliant for that. It brings us up into this, getting a level of vitality that then someone can use to reach further into changing beliefs and perceptions. Absolutely.

Ani
It’s just like your car. If you have no gas in the gas tank, you are not going to go anywhere. You got to put some gas in the gas tank and then you can go somewhere. It’s just like that. Just like that. And by the way, if there’s no gas in the gas tank, we’re not like, What is wrong with this car? I never should bought this car, the car, the car. No, we’re like, Oh, I got to get some gas. But we do that to ourselves. When there’s not enough gas in our own gas tank, what’s wrong with me? I’m broken. I can never do anything. No, go get some gas in your gas tank. That’s it.

Brian
If we’re going to follow this metaphor, I think the beliefs and the perceptions are like the windshield wipes.

Ani
Oh, really? Yeah.

Brian
Because if you’re in the car and you’re driving, and you can’t see out the windshield, how do you know where you’re going? So when you cleanse your perceptions, you can actually see where you’re going. You can clear up all the emotional junk and emotional stagnation and chaos. That’s like the rain just pounding on your window.

Ani
That’s perfect. People ask us all the time, How do I know what I should do? It’s like being in the car with a gunky windshield and not being able to see. We’re supposed to tell you, you’re supposed to use the wipers, people. Turn the windshield wipers people, then you’ll know.

Brian
I love that. Well, this professionals can learn to help people clean up their windshield wipers by cleaning up and clearing up their basic perceptual blocks and challenges. Then once you have a clear windshield, finding your purpose isn’t that hard. Because you can see it’s right there. Because you can see it’s right there. But even if you knew your purpose, If your windshield’s dirty with mud, you can’t go anywhere. Again, if we just think about that hierarchy, this is why this conversation around wellness professionals and wellness is so important. Like, yes, work the body. This is where we’re going. Then work the mental emotions, work the purpose. Then once the purpose is turned on, it helps everything else move in the direction that is the most productive and rewarding for the person as an individual.

Ani
A hundred %. I have one more thing to say. Go for it. I do hear quite a bit people are like, But I’ve got all these certifications in physical fitness, in yoga, in diet, in whatever it is for wellness professionals, whatever the modalities are. They have all of this. And by the way, a lot of people also have a lot of medical expenses trying to figure out all of the right, what was going on there. And then they figure it out, and then they invest in the coaching certification, right? And they’re facepalming the fact that they’re like, Now I got to learn somatics? Yeah, dude, because it’s like we’re constantly evolving. We’re We’re constantly growing. We’re constantly learning. And that’s how it goes, is that there’s more. There’s more to the story. I do want to say, too, that our students, especially our wellness professional students, do have a sigh of relief with our programs because they do tell us all the time, this was the missing piece I was looking for. I knew there was a missing piece, and I didn’t want to invest more money and more time into learning something else.

Ani
And thank God I did because it was the missing piece. So if you feel like there’s a missing piece, don’t stop looking because finding that is so great.

Brian
You might just have to turn on your windshield wipers. You might have to. But that’s it, right? And it’s right in front of you. It was right there all the time.

Ani
Yeah. A hundred %. We’re going to have to get a sub business in auto repair.

Brian
I’m not sure. That sounds like a really bad idea.

Ani
All right. We’ll stick with people.

Brian
Thanks so much for joining us again for this week’s Somatic Coaching Academy podcast, and we look forward to seeing you again next week. Bye-bye.