Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We’re here on episode 133. Hey there, Brian.

Brian
Hello, Ani.

Ani
How are you?

Brian
I am feeling great. Ready to transform some things.

Ani
All right, what are we talking about today?

Brian
Oh, we are talking about the transformational books that have changed the way that you and I live our lives.

Ani
I did know that because I brought my list. Haha.

Brian
Yep, so did I.

Ani
Books have been a very important part of my life. It’s always funny whenever I’ve moved that half of my boxes are books.

Brian
And they’re the hardest to move too. They’re heavy. Yeah, somebody else just to carry the books.

Ani
And I think like, gosh, I should really get rid of some of these books. Books. But then I can’t get rid of them. Actually, this summer I did a little Marie Kondo cleaning. What the heck is her book called? I have it still. But anyway, she talks about how to systematically release things that are no longer serving you in your life. Things that do not spark joy. And I am. Have never done this before this summer, but I did my books, I cleaned my books, and I think I lovingly released, oh goodness, well over a hundred copies of books. Big deal. Books are really important.

Brian
Yeah, I noticed you were lovingly releasing some of my books, too.

Ani
Well, I try to lovingly release your things whenever I can.

Brian
I get that.

Ani
Yeah, I do. Actually, the running joke around our house and our company is that I love to throw things away. I actually really enjoy, like, releasing things, but books.

Brian
Some things that are still being used, by the way. And some things I just put down literally 35 seconds ago, I turned back around, and it’s gone.

Ani
Okay, now I do not like to throw away books. Books matter.

Brian
All right, well, here we are. We’re talking about transformational books and the books that we’ve read. When we actually started thinking about this podcast, we were like, do we do like the top five transformational books? But then I realized, how do you really choose I mean, there are so many really amazing books to. On to your point. Like, I have a whole bookshelf full of them. You have a bookshelf full. We got books. We got books. Books in the bedroom. We have books in the basement. We have books in the living room. We have books in our offices.

Ani
I think we have books in every room.

Brian
Every room in the house you have books in. And so how can you really pick, like, the top five? I don’t know. But the way I wanted to kind of think about today’s podcast was what are books that you and I have read at certain points in our lives that really spoke to us and felt like they transformed something for us?

Ani
They’re really important.

Brian
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ani
So that’s where I. Oh, I’m so excited. All right, who gets to go first?

Brian
Take it off. Kick us off.

Ani
One of the books that I have on my list is the Untethered Soul. I found the Untethered Soul late to the game, and I say that because it’s a book that I wish I had found many years ago. And to be fair, I do believe it was recommended to me on a few different occasions. And I think one of the reasons I didn’t pick it up earlier, ironically, because I know, like, the find your soul’s agenda is proprietary process that I discovered, but I have kind of like a soul thing. Like, I don’t really like to read things like soul things. It’s not really my jam usually. And I think that’s one of the things that kind of turned me off. The Untethered Soul is a book that I have on audiobook and in hard copy now, and I listen to it actually fairly regularly still. Every once in a while, I just pop it in, and it’s one of those that I don’t need to read from COVID to cover. I just pop in wherever, and it really refreshes me. And the big take home point for the untethered soul for me is that I am not.

Ani
My thoughts. Not my thoughts.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. I also enjoy the Untethered Soul. I think it’s an. I can’t remember the first time I read it or listened to it multiple times on audiobooks. And, yeah, that was one of the big takeaways for me as well, was the idea and the continued practice of kind of separating from one’s personal experience.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And kind of stepping more and more into that witnessing role. Yeah, yeah. I think very, very powerful lessons. Just a great book in that regard.

Ani
Yes. I really love that one.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
I Recommend it on audio. Audiobook too, like I said, because you can just pop around and after you’ve listened to it once, just get little nuggets.

Brian
Yeah. So one of my. One of my favorite books early, early, early on in my experience of kind of, I would say kind of waking up to things was this is probably 20, you know, over 20. 25o. Over 20 now. Wow. 30 years ago, probably at this point, a book called the Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. And Dan Millman. I’m a big fan of Dan Millman and he’s written. I don’t know how many books he’s written now. You know, is it. Is it 15? Is it 20? All really just great reads. And one of the things I like about Dan Millman’s books is he makes it very engaging and very entertaining and. And very kind of simple to kind of lean into and pick up the practices, you know, so often I tend to read books that are difficult to get through because there’s a level of either really having to twist your mind around how it’s working or very kind of complex or very technical kind of things. Dan Millman’s books are just really easy to read and really powerful. And one of his first books, the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, um, the.

Brian
And this was a movie too, but the movie is nothing compared to the book. The book is really, really great. And it spoke to me at the time in my young life when I read it. But the. The one lesson from that that I really grabbed out and he wrote another book of this title called no Ordinary Moments, that one of the big lessons from that book is that there are no ordinary moments. Like every moment is unique. Every moment, every single moment in your life is unique and special and worth experiencing fully and worth valuing fully. And it was one of the first kind of ideas I got about becoming present, you know. You know, kind of. You know, one of the books that didn’t actually make it on my list but is now it’s coming to me is the Power. The Power of now by Tolle.

Ani
Right.

Brian
Because. So this book came out before the Power of Now, but it kind of started moving me in that direction around really leaning into every single moment as being special and reverent.

Ani
One of the books that’s on my list, that’s one of my earlier books, is a book that my mother gave to me when I went to college. And now that my kids have gone to. My daughter’s gone to college and I’ve given her a book that mattered to Me to have on her college bookshelf. Like, I kind of get that special nature of it is Carolyn Mace’s Anatomy of the Spirit. Now I’ve read, I think, all of Carolyn Mase’s things. She has been really cornerstone, foundational in how I think about the world and myself. I love her stuff. Anatomy of the Spirit makes my list because I do think it’s that real. Like, it can really turn how somebody’s thinking about themselves specifically as energy. And the Anatomy of the Spirit. I haven’t picked it up in a really long time, but it kind of like lives in, in my brain as showing how the energetics, specifically going through the chakras in a really practical way can impact how we’re perceiving life and thinking about things and shift our capacity to make decisions and tackle hard things based on the energetics that are. That are in the chakra system.

Ani
It was, it was. I credit it to being an introduction to energy medicine for me and certainly into a different world because after I read Anatomy of the Spirit while I was having a health crisis actually in college, is when I decided to pick it up for the first time. And because what I read worked, like, to your point about transformation actually really transformed something for me, I wanted to know so much more about the topic. And I read everything else that Carolyn Mace wrote and really continued or it really got me on the path of energy medicine.

Brian
Yeah, you know, as you’re, as you’re talking about, as you’re talking about Anatomy of the Spirit and the books that you’ve read too, on you, like what’s Going Through My Mind are all the other books that didn’t make my list because of the way I was categorizing for myself around kind of educational texts versus transformational texts. But the, but the fact for me is, like, a lot of the educational texts I read ended up being transformational for me as well. Like Energy Medicine by James Oshman, Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber, Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. Like a lot of those books, I kind of categorize them as being more educational, but they’re very transformative to me in terms of Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anadia Judith. Like, a lot of those books really educated me in terms of understanding more about somatics, energy, medicine practices, those sorts of things.

Ani
Don’t forget Candace Pert.

Brian
Candace Pert, Yeah. Molecules of Emotion. I mean, I can just go on my bookshelf and just read right across all the book either Gay and Caitlin Hendricks books. And, you know, there’s so many great people have influenced the work and the way that I like moving through the world. But another kind of another transformational book on my journey early on was a book called Mastery by George Leonard. So George Leonard. And at that time it was like in this little pocket edition. You know, I love pocket edition books. I have my pocket edition of the Tao Te Ching, which also didn’t make my list because I put that under more of a spiritual thing. But it’s very transformational text in my mind as well. But the idea behind Mastery was how we become masters of something in particular. And he has different archetypes kind of in the book, like the dabbler and how people go about trying to learn things or become more masterful with things. And kind of the big takeaway from that is that in order to gain mastery, you have periods in your life where you show rapid improvement. And those are the shorter periods.

Brian
And the longer periods is where you’re on a plateau for a really long time. Integrating, kind of preparing, like learning, so that when you get to another jump in ability, it happens very quickly, but then you end up on a plateau for a long time. And one of the points from the book he said is that when you are living in the way of mastery, you know that most of the growth actually happens on the plateau. He says you need to learn to love the plateau in order to become a master of something. And the people who can’t do that are the people who don’t gain mastery. Because people are just addicted to the rapid improvement. And as soon as they’re not making rapid improvement for a while and they’re on a plateau, they drop out because they’re not seeing the improvement. But he says really the delaying thing about mastery is you have to learn to love the plateau. And so I’ve really tried to adapt that into my life of being very appreciative of when there’s big jumps in growth or capability, but also really loving when I’m just in the day to day of facilitating forward movement and cultivating.

Brian
And even though it looks like nothing’s changing, still know that building a lot of potential in that area. So that was a huge lesson for me at a really early time in my life when I was trying to learn, you know, some things intensely.

Ani
Well, I can see that reflected in your behavior because you’re really like patience waiting things out. Another book that did not make either one of our lists that I’m reminded of while you’re talking is Transitions.

Brian
Oh, yeah, great.

Ani
As you’re Talking about this idea of plateau, that idea of the void between. Yeah. Between the old and the new, is one that I think also both of us found at a transformational time in our life didn’t make it to our list. Okay, so another one that I have is the Four Agreements by Don Milo Ruiz.

Brian
Yeah. Wow.

Ani
And honestly, I think when I first read was when I was probably in my 20s and I was reading spiritually based, you know, books like that. It’s a classic. I mean, it’s such a classic. Right. So I read it, and I’m trying to figure out how to describe this. I think I just kind of read it and was like, oh, that’s a great book. And I should try some of those things. But I wasn’t really serious about it. But it was one that I pulled back out every once in a while to inform how I was making decisions. And so it was just a book I’d pull off my bookshelf. What had actually transformed my life was that book started my coaching career. Because when I decided I was going to start coaching and I didn’t quite know how to get into it, I decided I was gonna run a book club. And I picked that book.

Brian
I remember that.

Ani
And working through the book as a facilitator with clients and seeing how they were taking the information, integrating the information and using the information really helped me to take the book and make it meaningful and, like, actually use it in my life in a deeper way. And now when I see that on my bookshelf, I actually was just telling a student about it yesterday. How, you know, that that book, I. When I see it, I think about that transition in my life and how big of a deal that was.

Brian
Yeah, it was a really big deal for you. I remember that.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Yeah, I remember that. One of my. My biggest takeaway from the Four Agreements was the whole idea around not making assumptions. That was my favorite. Like, I. I have come back to that again and again and again. And I think that one agreement, just for me, like, leaning into that one agreement has changed a lot for me in my life. Just always, like, just don’t make assumptions. Just clarify, clarify, clarify. I know that can get irritating to some people, like me, when I try to just keep clarifying. But what I have recognized is that when. When I do leave it up to an assumption, there’s almost always some type of miscommunication that ends up being problematic in the future. And so for me, it’s like, I just keep clarifying it. Like, never make an assumption of how People thinking about it, what they thought, what they heard me say. And when I do get slack on that, it usually ends up there some problems.

Ani
So one of the things I’m realizing about my list, I don’t know if you would say this about your list is for me, these are the classics. Like I. There’s books that I have read that have been important and then there’s books that I would definitely never throw away, keep on my bookshelf and pick out from time to time as like a way to reorient my compass. And each of these books is one of those books for me.

Brian
Yeah. So this next one for me is right on my bookshelf, like right at hand all the time. And this is a book that came into my life. I would probably have to say right around 2006, maybe 2007, I found the Science of Getting Rich. Yeah.

Ani
Oh, that’s on my list.

Brian
Yeah. So we could talk about this together. So I remember. So Science Getting Rich for me. I found it on an audiobook first. Actually, I didn’t have it in written form for a long time. I only had an audiobook and the job I was working at the time. I had a half an hour drive each way from home to work. And it was one of those things where I was languishing. I knew I wanted more, but I also felt like I needed the job and needed the money to support my young family and those sorts of things. So I was kind of trapped in this place and I really wanted to. And money was an issue too, like financially. It was really struggling. So I was like, I guess I’ll pick up this book, Science of Getting Rich. I don’t even know how I found it, to be honest with you. I don’t even know who recommended to me. I can’t. I don’t remember. This is before I was doing any kind of formal. This is before I was paying for mentoring and that kind of stuff, paying for coaching. I was just doing all my own self study.

Brian
But I got it on a. I got an audio book and I had it on a cd.

Ani
CD for your car?

Brian
Right. I ordered a CD for it. And so I had a cd and I think it came with like a whole little learning pack or something. But it didn’t have a written copy of the book, which is funny. But I listened to it. It had to be for a year, every day, back and forth to work for a year where I could literally recite like every chapter by heart as I was going back and forth. And that really, for Me started to open up my mind around richness more than riches, just in money form, but richness in life. And it also opened me up around the two kind of primary ideas I had for that was one, that in order to become rich, you needed to become. I had to become bigger. I had to become larger than the my present place, which means I was working as a staff physical therapist in a small local hospital. And if I wanted to get rich, what I needed to do was become bigger than that place. And so I needed to add, I needed to grow beyond the place. Like personally, what I could, what I could give to the place, what I wanted the place to be like and all those kinds of things.

Brian
And then the other part of that which is kind of goes hand in hand with it was to always be in the way of increase. So no matter what, I did present every relationship with every person in a way that I could offer them some type of increase in their life. You know, maybe it was just offering a smile and gave them an increase of lightness in their. In their day to experience, or I gave an increase in some other tangible form in their life. But those are the two practices that I really, I really took to heart. And there’s a whole chapter in there. I’m becoming the advancing man. And like, there’s a whole kind of part around that that I really kind of began to embody as I listened to this book every day for a year on audio format, back and forth to work.

Ani
So I think I found out about the science of getting rich from you at first and that it turned me off to reading it because you were talking so highly of it. And the rebel part of me did not want to read the thing that you were reading. And then I was reintroduced to it again by a mentor who uses it for teaching. And then I remember being turned off to it again, again because it’s very masculine focused terminology. But such is all of the books that were written in that early 19 time period. They’re written for a guy. It says he shall, blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t say he or she shall. And I was just like, screw you guys. Like, I don’t even want to read this stuff with the men, blah, blah, blah. So the reason it made my list is because although I rejected it at first, I have come to appreciate it quite honestly as the only book that I recommend when it comes to Money Manifestation. So people ask me quite a bit, what book would you recommend for Money Manifestation? And up until this point in history, I have said the science of getting rich.

Ani
Because the other. Quite frankly, I just find the more that I know about this stuff fallacies in other books that I read or they’re just not really all that worthy of our time. But if you look at the science of getting rich and you really dissect it and you really like Brian did like over and over and over again and you really. It is a map.

Brian
It is a map, but you have to work through the language of the early 1900s to understand it.

Ani
Of a treasure map.

Brian
Because it is a treasure map.

Ani
Just like read it and it doesn’t say A, B, C, like you got to read again, know what they’re talking about. I love being able to work with that with my clients and really tell them, like, you use the map here. And I think it was actually informative by how beneficial that book was that when we started writing our book to actually have things be more map like was helpful.

Brian
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great. Very well described.

Ani
So I’ve got one more on my list. No, two more on my list. Brian. I have the Dance of Anger on my list. And this book I actually found in more my. My more recent history, I think maybe three years ago. And it is so great. It’s another book that I have in hard copy and on audible and I just pull it out and listen to a little bit of. Gives you how to take personal responsibility. Not just when you’re angry, by the way, but certainly when you’re angry. And as a female identified person who has stuff that happens in society that feels like, you know, I can’t get ahead or whatever, like I come back over and over and over to this book to, well, you’ve benefited from it, but you might not know it, to be perfectly honest with you. How to take responsibility for myself and use anger to clarify my emotions. And it’s like the Bible on setting boundaries. Boundaries, I think is a bugaboo topic for me because how a lot of people talk about boundaries is like actually putting the responsibility on somebody else and really masterful boundaries. And I guess I would say like responsible boundaries and boundaries that go with the universal principles and actually work are boundaries that you have with yourself.

Ani
They really don’t have anything to do with anybody else. They’re about having personal responsibilities. And the reason the Dance of Anger is so good is because she gives you examples like actual scenarios and says, you could have the conversation like this, you could have the conversation like this, or you could have the conversation like this. And seeing through contrast how those different conversations sound and look, then, you know, you can listen to it and say, oh, I see myself in this, or I see myself in that. And I. And, oh, and this is how I can navigate. It’s very clear with the examples. It’s great.

Brian
Yeah, Great, Great. Sounds like a great book. I have not read that book, but I’m glad I benefit from it.

Ani
You have benefited greatly.

Brian
All right, so I have one more, too, actually. I have two more. One more. And then we have a joint share, so I’m counting that.

Ani
Right. Yeah.

Brian
So the Alchemist.

Ani
Oh, it is one of my favorites.

Brian
How can you have a conversation like this and not talk about the Alchemist?

Ani
So good.

Brian
It’s like, such. And I just picked it up again recently and read it. Yeah, I’ve read it years ago and then again. And I just picked it up actually a couple weeks ago and read it again. It took me like three days. I just plowed through it and it was just. It’s a.

Ani
It’s.

Brian
We can’t put it down. It’s just, like, so wonderful. And the big lesson for me from the Alchemist, there’s so many lessons in that, but I think the big one for me was that the treasure. The treasure is right in front of you.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
But you often have to take a really long journey in order to find it.

Ani
Yeah, exactly.

Brian
You know, that’s like, I think the lesson from that book.

Ani
Yep. Yeah. It’s so good. And it’s a story. A bunch of the other. Well, some of yours, but a bunch of the other books that we mentioned aren’t stories, and that one’s a story. And it’s really good.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. So it’s really entertaining. And like, a lot of just wonderful imagery and metaphor baked into it. It’s really great.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Yeah. So the. The last book on our list, basically, if you want to capture the essence of all of those books that we’ve mentioned and more. In one book. In one book. The most transformational book we can recommend

Ani
is Manifestation for Dummies.

Brian
Manifestation for Dummies. We just got this hot off the press.

Ani
It’s hot.

Brian
Just. We just unboxed this. Literally, actually, today we just received our advanced copies of the book.

Ani
Yeah. And pre orders are now available, so you can go to your favorite bookseller and order your advanced copy of Manifestation for Dummies. Now, to. To Brian’s point, within the pages of Manifestation for Dummies is all of these books. Right.

Brian
By the way, if you. If you’re not watching this on video and you’re only listening to It. We have written Manifestation for Dummies. So on the COVID you can see our names. Say our names on the COVID But if you’re not watching this, then you wouldn’t know that. So, yes, this is the book that we have written and it’s going to be released July 7, 2006.

Ani
Yep.

Brian
Right. Yep. Yeah, it’s coming out.

Ani
Yeah. So pre orders go to our website and social media links and all that stuff. So like you were saying, part of the reason that, that all of these books matter to us is that they have the. The essence of them or direct teachings is found in the Manifestation for Dummies. And we’re not just being cheeky here, honestly, with sharing our book as one of our top books because Brian and I, as we have spent months writing and then reviewing this book and a unique experience to write the book like this together. Because everything that I have written, Brian has read and reviewed and we talk about and everything he has written, I’ve reviewed and we’ve talked about. Like it’s been a genuine joint project. But as we reviewed what we wrote with the publisher and we got back with our author reviews, every time we would pick up the book to read and review it, we would think, this is really good. It’s really. And I think when I say that it’s a Dummies book, so it’s a reference book. And when we had the intention or the initial spark for the project, the idea was we want to write the most practical manifestation book that has ever been written.

Ani
So that all of the times that I can remember picking up a manifestation book and reading through it and putting it down at the end and going, but I still don’t know how we didn’t want that. We wanted people to pick it up and know how. And to our point, with the science of getting rich, to have a map. And so this book has our roadmap in it and so many nuggets and tools and principles and things and it’s, it’s. I. I really do believe it’s so practical and I’m very proud of that.

Brian
Yeah, one of my. I agree with that 100%, Ani. So one of my kind of takeaways from the book because I have also really enjoyed reading it and reviewing it and working on it. And just for me personally, writing this book has been transformational.

Ani
Absolutely.

Brian
Because it required me to go back and actually soak into a lot of the old experiences and knowledge and my past and my history and looking through old client notes and patient notes because there’s a lot of stories in this book of the people we’ve worked with, like over the past 30 plus years and what they’ve been able to manifest in their lives, in different realms of their experience. And so for me, one of the overarching themes of this book is to help people really understand that manifestation is happening all of the time. I think when we think about manifesting something, we think, oh, I’m going to manifest something once in my life or twice in my life in the future. But the point is, you’re manifesting your life right now and really the questions are, are you manifesting it unconsciously or consciously? And are you manifesting an undesired something or a desired something? Because you could be manifesting unconscious undesired results or unconscious desired results, or you could be manifesting consciously undesirable things or consciously desirable things. And so it’s going to be one of those four things, but they’re happening all of the time.

Brian
And when talking about taking personal responsibility, which you were talking about just a couple minutes ago, I really like to think that this book allows someone to really take personal responsibility for their own manifestation processes that are happening constantly in their lives. So they can bring the unconscious into the conscious and really then choose to consciously manifest desirable things. And if you do that long enough, then you will begin unconsciously manifesting those desirable things. And that’s what we really give you a roadmap for that in the book.

Ani
Yeah. To that point, one of the things I appreciate about it, just like you said, is other manifestation books that I’ve read. Sometimes it puts a lot of the responsibility on the universe is like the universe needs to show up for me and sometimes I remember for myself. And maybe it was just speaking to my conscious level of consciousness at the time, but like it really fed into my victim consciousness around I needed the universe to do it. And this book has been written in a way that it’s really about universal co collaboration with ourselves as our fully empowered beings. So it’s like this, this two fully empowered being kind of thing. Co collaboration.

Brian
Wonderful. Co collaboration.

Ani
Yeah, yeah. So, and.

Brian
And you’ll be hearing more about Manifestation for Dummies in upcoming podcasts too. Just want to let you know.

Ani
Yep, we’re going to share a lot more about that with you. So we hope that you enjoyed the book. You can pre order it now, go to our website, go to social media, basically anywhere we are, you see this book attached to us at least the next few years probably. So we hope you enjoy it and please tell us about it because we want to know your favorite parts as well. So we look forward to commenting, sharing, sending us emails, and all that great stuff. We can’t wait to hear from you about it.

Brian
Cool. Thanks so much for joining us this week. We’ll see you again next week.

Ani
Bye bye.