Transcript

Ani
Hey, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. It’s our birthday.

Brian
It’s our birthday.

Ani
Happy birthday, Brian.

Brian
Happy birthday to us. Yay, Ani. Can you believe it’s been a year of podcasts?

Ani
I can. I can believe it’s been a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, a whole year.

Ani
You did it for a whole year.

Ani
That is such a big deal.

Brian
Big deal. Happy birthday. I’ve got my party shirt on.

Ani
I have my party shirt on, too.

Brian
I’m partying. I look a little more festive than you do.

Ani
You do. I got to tell you. But I like this shirt. You’re good. Thank you. I went with a classy party.

Brian
Typical?

Ani
What are we talking about today?

Brian
Well, I thought it would be fun since it’s our one-year birthday to look back and do our favorite episodes over the past year.

Ani
I like that.

Brian
Let’s just have a chat about our favorite episode. I had Adnan—everybody say thank you to Adnan. He’s the guy behind the scenes.

Ani
We would not have this podcast without Adnan. Yeah.

Brian
Thank you so much. Big shout out to Adnan. And so I reached out…

Ani
He’s done so much.

Brian
Amazing. He pulled some stats for us. Fantastic. And I asked him to pull out what were the top three downloaded episodes over the last year. I can’t find out. Some of these episodes, they might be more downloaded because they’ve been out longer than others. So that could be, too. So I don’t know what value judgment to place on, or why some were downloaded more than others. But anyway- It’s fun to talk about. I thought it might be fun to review the top three most downloaded episodes, but then also for each of us to toss one or two of our favorite episodes in. That can’t be the downloaded ones.

Ani
Oh, okay. Well, I have some in mind, so let’s see what the downloaded ones are. Okay.

Brian
All right. So the number three… We’ll go counting backward.

Ani
So exciting.

Brian
The number three most downloaded episode was on using somatic practices, tools, and skills to enhance vagus nerve function.

Ani
Vagus nerve.

Brian
The vagus nerve, baby. The vagus nerve.

Ani
The vagus nerve. Used to like, nobody knew the vagus nerve, and now the vagus nerve is the popular guy at the party.

Brian
Cool kid on the block.

Ani
Cool kid on the block. We do have prospective students ask us all the time, You’re going to talk about the vagus nerve in class? Everybody’s talking about the vagus nerve.

Brian
Everybody’s talking about the vagus nerve.

Ani
That one doesn’t actually surprise me.

Brian
Doesn’t surprise you? Just in a really quick review, you might want to go back and check out that episode because a lot of people apparently liked it.

Ani
Somatic practices, too, I think is really cool because it’s one thing to just nerd out about the vagus nerve, but it’s another thing to talk about somatic practices in regards to the vagus nerve.

Brian
We actually talked about somatic practices, somatic tools, and somatic skills with the vagus nerve. Look at us go. A little overview of what that episode looked like. Actually, when I got this list, I went back and I listened to these episodes. I really listened to them. And you know what? They’re really good. Sometimes, I don’t think I have a habit of going back to the podcast again and listen to them a lot. But I should because there’s a lot of good information in there. I was like, hey, that sounds really smart.

Ani
Hilarious. Happy birthday to us. We don’t stink.

Brian
Exactly. I thought it was pretty good. We talked about three operations of the vagus nerve in that episode. We talked about vagus nerve toning, like why and how it’s important to help the vagus nerve become stronger. Tone means to become stronger. How do you do that with somatic practices? Get it buff. Yeah, that’s right. Get it buff. Now, we also talked about heart rate variability.

Ani
Oh, which is a very important topic, too.

Brian
Very important topic, right? We had a fairly robust conversation for the amount of time that we were on the podcast on heart rate variability and the importance of using somatic tools in order to help enhance heart rate variability and what that’s all about.

Ani
That’s another really big time thing people are talking about, heart rate variability.

Brian
That’s the vagus nerve. The Vagus nerve has everything to do with heart rate variability because that’s actually one of the ways you measure the health of the vagus nerve.

Ani
Does this make us cool that we’re talking about cool topics people think are cool?

Brian
I don’t know. We’ll have to ask you to give comments.

Ani
Comment below.

Brian
Don’t ask our kids first, because then we will not be cool. All right. And then the other thing we talked about in that episode was resilience, nervous system regulation resilience, and then brain areas that specifically have to do with being a resilient human and its coordination with the vagus nerve.

Ani
There were a lot of cool things on that.

Brian
A lot of great things in an episode.

Ani
Well, no wonder it was so highly downloaded. Yeah.

Brian
If you haven’t listened to that episode, and even if you have listened to it, go back and listen to it again. That was the number three most downloaded episode over the last year.

Ani
Boy, that was a good one. I can’t believe that was just one. What’s number two?

Brian
All right. You ready for number two?

Ani
I am. I’m ready.

Brian
Number two was the first episode in a four-part series that we did called How to Make Pivotal Life Decisions.

Ani
That episode.

Brian
It was the first episode. The episode was Why People Play Small or Not at All.

Ani
Oh, that’s a great title. I really like that title. I would download that title. I was going to mention that for my favorite episodes, that series. We had so many people tell us that that series was helpful. I actually have people who are students and clients of ours already who said they downloaded those episodes and they’ve relistened to them and gotten super value from them. Yeah.

Brian
Those are great episodes. It’s interesting that just the first one was in the top three.

Ani
Well, especially since it’s a series of four, why did people not care about them?

Brian
Exactly.

Ani
They got so much information in that first one.

Brian
Well, that first episode is really, really cool. A couple of bullet points about that episode. Again, if you haven’t listened to it, you might want to go listen to that one and then listen to all four of them. Binge listen to all four of those. If you have listened to it, go back and listen to it again. Because some of the high points were you haven’t made a decision. You haven’t not made a decision until you’re actually wearing the blue shirt. The blue shirt. You were like, You got the blue shirt. I have a blue shirt underneath my party shirt.

Ani
I made a decision to wear the blue shirt.

Brian
To wear the blue shirt, right? Yeah. You haven’t made this decision until you’re actually wearing it.

Ani
I’ve literally had people send me text messages and stuff saying I chose to wear the blue shirt. But because we were talking about the blue shirt, but I know what they’re talking about. That was a good one.

Brian
If you don’t know what that means, go back and listen to that episode. We also had a little formula in that episode for how successful people make decisions. If you don’t know, go back and listen to that episode because it’s in that episode. Then at the end of that episode, I posed a question. When I listened to it, I thought, “That’s a really good question!” when I relistened to it. The question is, ‘What if I made decisions based on who I wanted to become rather than who I was supposed to be?’

Ani
That is a great question, Brian. That is a really great question.

Brian
If you want to learn more about what led us up to that question in that episode, go back and listen to that. Number one, first episode, listen to all of them about how to make pivotal life decisions.

Ani
Yeah, that’s a really good one. Cool. Okay.

Brian
Top Download? Yeah, what’s the top download? You ready? All right, here it is. You ready for it? You ready for it? You ready for it? It was our episode on ‘How to shift from emotional dysregulation into regulation.’

Ani
You know, that makes me so happy that that one is the most downloaded because I think that if we can impart just one wisdom thing, that is one of the things I would definitely want to impart, people being able to understand when they’re emotionally dysregulated, just being able to understand that what’s going on as I’m emotionally dysregulated, even if you don’t know what to do about it, just understanding that is so life-changing. That’s great.

Brian
Yeah. Again, that episode, I went back and listened that one, too, and it was really good. We went into that episode pretty hot and heavy. We got a lot done in there. We were really going after it in terms of talking about change in talking about emotional regulation, talking about autonomic nervous system regulation, talking about the window of tolerance, talking about how to do some regulation practices. Love being in my window. Love being in my window. You got your mug there. And one of the things that we really talked about was a foundational idea that we teach here at the Somatic Coaching Academy is that emotions are thoughts plus sensations. When we talk about emotional dysregulation, we really broke down this idea that emotions are thoughts plus sensations.

Ani
This has really been on my mind recently as I’ve had conversations with people who are thinking about coming into the somatic coach professional program next year. And people tell us all the time they’re trying to choose whether or not they want to study with us or other people. And one of the things that really occurred to me more recently is the sensation-based model that we use. There’s lots of people who do all kinds of things with somatics. The sensation-based model that we use is why the results are so profound. And I’m excited that we talked about that in that episode that was so highly downloaded, because one of the things I don’t think that we generally, as humans, have an awareness of is all of us work with emotions all the time, no matter who we are, the cash register, the grocery store clerk, or the leader, or the manager, or the coach, or the therapist. To say that emotions belong to a certain profession is ludicrous. We all work with emotions all the time. To recognize that emotions are actually two things give us the most tremendous amount of empowerment. So I’m really excited that a lot of people are listening to that episode and hearing that.

Ani
It’s a real different way of thinking. It’s true, and it can provide such amazing breakthrough moments.

Brian
Yeah, it is really awesome because like you said, emotions we’re all living and dealing and living and working and being in emotions. I mean, we’re emotional beings, and so that’s really important. And for folks who feel challenged around regulating their emotions, emotions can be really slippery. Now, why are emotions so slippery? Well, because they’re made up of something that’s slippery and something that’s tangible. Thoughts are very slippery. Thoughts, by slippery, I mean, you really can’t wrap your hand around a thought. They’re intangible. They’re intangible, whereas sensations are tangible. They are sensations, which means that we literally feel them. So when you feel something, that makes it tangible. Who even knows where thoughts are? I mean, are they in our heads? Are they out of our heads? I don’t know where they are. Are they collective? I mean, thoughts, are they local? Are they non-local? Are they even mine? I don’t know. But I know sensations are mine because I feel them in my body. And when I feel something in my body, you don’t necessarily feel the same thing in your body or anybody else. We can actually share a thought, which is funny, too.

Brian
As emotions, when we want to come into regulation or we’re working with challenging emotions, and so many people are trying to work with thoughts in order to shift their emotional state, I feel like you’re trying to grab a fish or something like that. It’s just way too slippery. Wind. Grab the wind, even a better analogy. But when we’re working with sensations, it gives us something tangible to begin to modify and reframe in order to create a different emotional state. We went deep into that podcast about all of that.

Ani
That makes me so happy. That’s the birthday present for me to know that a bunch of people heard about that philosophy. That’s really great.

Brian
Yeah. That was the number one downloaded podcast. Fantastic. Before we shift into what our favorite episodes, our personal favorite episodes were that were either top downloaded or not. I don’t know where these are going to land, but we’ll talk about them. As a listener, if you have topics, if you have questions, specifically, that you would love to have us explore here on this Somatic Coaching Academy podcast, please let us know.

Ani
Yeah, and there’s a way to do that. You could actually just click on the podcast section of our website and it says submit a question. It’s really easy. We would love to talk about what matters most to you. Yeah.

Brian
If you’re like, Brian, I’ve always been curious about X or Ani, I would love to hear your point on Y, then please let us know because next year, when we do this review, it might be your episode. That is the one that has been the top downloaded one.

Ani
That’s so true. Man, it makes me really happy to know that not just that we have something to say that people want to download and listen to again, but that there’s wisdom out there that people want to integrate to help themselves to feel better and live better lives. I think that’s real personal freedom. It makes me so happy.

Brian
Yes. So please let us know. Give us those prompts. Give us those ideas. We’ll go after it. I’ll get into the library and I’ll just figure some stuff out. Yeah, you will.

Ani
All right.

Brian
Hey, what were our favorite downloads? What was one of your favorite episodes that we’ve done over the past year together, Honey?

Ani
I’m sitting here telling myself that I can’t still pick the four-part series, Brian, because you already mentioned episode one, and that maybe I should mention episode two or something like that. Actually, I am going to mention episode two, but because that was the episode that I got the most engagement from our students, from my clients, and our community about. I know that in general, our community is not a community that enjoys social media and doesn’t enjoy giving superficial thumbs up and shares and things like that. When there’s no engagement, I don’t really know that things have landed. So thank you to those of you who engage by putting comments and likes and shares and stars and reviews and things, because for me, it helps us to know that that’s important to you and to help us organize our thoughts around what is important to you so we can serve you better. I’m mentioning the second episode in that four-part series some decision making, because when that came out, I remember where I was, actually. I was on the elliptical at the gym, and it was the afternoon. It had come out that day, and I had messages in Slack from our students, and I had emails, and I even got a few text messages and some messages on social media telling me that they had listened to the episode and people listened to the episode, and they were downloading it, or they were thinking about it, or thank you so much for it.

Ani
That’s one of the ones I’m mentioning because I know for a fact that that had an impact with people. Fun.

Brian
Well, that’s great. Yeah. That’s great.

Ani
What’s one of yours?

Brian
All right. One of mine was… I also did love that four-part series, by the way, too. I think that was really fantastic. I did enjoy that quite a lot. One of my favorite ones was when Art and Science made their debut. That was one of my favorite ones when Art and Science made their debut on the episode about Setting Healthy Boundaries. I really like that episode.

Ani
I was actually thinking about Art and Science recently and wondering if they were going to come join us again. It’s funny that you mentioned that.

Brian
We’ll have to see. We’ll have to see. They can come back and join us again. Yeah, that was fun. I thought it was just so much fun to watch Art and Science, have that exploration together. I thought it was fascinating the metaphor of creating healthy relationship boundaries based on how a single cell stays healthy.

Ani
Well, you would think that that was the coolest part of that episode, wouldn’t you, Science?

Brian
Yeah, I thought that was just a cool way to think about it and the way that art was integrating that with examples in her own experience for healthy boundaries.

Ani
I think I think that episode is the one that I’ve referenced the most often for people to go and watch or listen to as I’ve talked to students or clients, actually, because the more that I dive into the idea around boundaries, which is such a big deal out there in the world that people talk about boundaries, the more that I am super committed to having a different conversation about boundaries and why that matters from that metaphoric, not so metaphoric somatic idea around cells and how it can really be in healthy relationships with other people and things around us. I’ve asked people to go and listen to that as I’ve described setting healthy standards for themselves and maybe thinking differently about that.

Brian
Yeah, that Semi-permeability of the membrane, the membrane, and how the epigenetics work and environment is so important for all of us, but especially a single cell. The health of the cell is based on the environment it places itself in. That’s really not that much different than multicellular organisms. Anyway, so I could just watch that episode all day long because I’m watching Art and Science. That was one of my favorites. Do you have another one?

Ani
I do. Yeah. The first one that popped into my head, actually, to remark it was my favorite was our episode about imposter syndrome, Brian. As I think about the things that are meaningful to me and the legacy I want to be able to leave with our work, one of the biggest things I want to be able to do is change the conversations that we’re having. In imposter syndrome is a huge conversation that a lot of people are having that leaves us disempowered. I know you know about me. I feel like my purpose in the world is to bring holistic philosophy to mainstream systems. When I think back, that is an episode where we really got to talk about systemic change. I’m passionate about talking about how we can reframe what it means and looks like to be a human. We did that on that episode. I don’t think that you can really take somatic work and not have some conversation about systemic change. I appreciate how we do it here because I appreciate how a lot of different companies talk about somatics and their own flavor of how they talk about systems change.

Ani
It’s something that we think about a lot and we bring up from time to time and talk about. I’m really proud of how we do it here. That’s mine.

Brian
That’s a great one. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Awesome. How about you? This is hard, actually, to go back and pick. It’s like, which one of your kids do you like best? That’s not 52 kids. 52 kids. Which one do I like best? I had a tie between these two. You did? Yeah, I had a really hard time deciding between the episode on emotions and chronic pain, actually chronic pain being an emotion.

Ani
Yeah, that was a good one.

Brian
I think that I like that one because I teach that a lot to professionals, the interaction between chronic pain and emotions, and also my personal experience with chronic pain, and really understanding the emotional construction that went along with the chronic pain construction. I just think that’s such a fascinating topic of how a seemingly material experience is created and informed by and woven with an immaterial experience. An episode like that, really, for me, hallmarks the whole body-mind idea. That’s something I’ve been working with for decades. It’s so good. And teaching on for a long time. I’ve done a lot of research around. It ends up being a lot of my life has been built into understanding that specific issue around emotions, chronic pain, specifically. How do we remediate chronic pain? There’s so much great science in that episode. If you’re interested in chronic pain and you want to understand really how chronic pain is constructed, that’s a great episode. The other episode was also an episode on emotions, and it was when we were on the fourth of July. It was how to declare your independence from lower emotional states. The reason I like that one so much is because I love practical tools.

Brian
I love very practical, tangible, clear tools that you can write down on a piece of paper. And when you look at the map of consciousness, understanding that emotions actually have logometric resonance or vibrational frequencies along with them. You can actually see where the map goes. You can start to understand, Oh, if I just move my emotion from there to there, actually, if I go from shame to guilt, that’s an improvement. I don’t have to remediate the lower emotional state completely to actually be moving in the right direction. I loved that, but probably the reason that if I had to pick between the two of them, this would have been the one that tipped it over, is that the hopefulness that as each one of us as individuals, leaps our state of consciousness and our own emotional resonance, that it has an exponential effect on the people around us, that it actually offers an opportunity for not just people in our immediate environment, but people we haven’t even been in touch with ever. It raises the whole level of consciousness on the planet for all of us to be able to have an opportunity to step into that higher.

Brian
So for me, the idea and the evidence that each of our individual work really matters, that the more we raise our own level of consciousness, the more it raises the opportunity for everyone else’s level of consciousness as well.

Ani
Yeah, it can feel really tough to go through those moments where we’re so dedicated to our personal work and remembering that every time we choose to do it, it makes a difference for everybody else in a massive way. It’s so awesome.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
Well, thanks for the year-end review. This has been really fun. I look forward to seeing you here.

Brian
Happy birthday. Do you want to sing?

Ani
No, I don’t want to sing. Thank you for asking. Did you want to sing? No, I’m good. Thanks. Okay, good. I look forward to sing with you again a year from now and being able to talk about our year in review. It’s been really fun, Brian, to be able to do this and create this. It’s also been all kinds of things. I feel really accomplished to sit here and know we did it.

Brian
It’s been a great year together, Ani, doing the podcast. I loved every minute.

Ani
I did it. Awesome. Well, we want to, in particular, give you a big shout-out because none of this, listeners, would be anything without you. Building this community is why we’re here.

Brian
Happy birthday to you, too.

Ani
Happy birthday to you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for being a part of this as we see somatic work get out there, bigger, bigger, and better in the world and it is so awesome to see ripples of change that we can create.

Brian
Together.

Ani
Together, yeah. All right. Well, we’ll see you next time.

Brian
Thanks so much, everybody. See you next time on the podcast.

Ani
Bye-bye.