Transcript
Ani
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian.
Brian
Hey, Ani.
Ani
Hi. How are you?
Brian
I’m doing great.
Ani
Awesome.
Brian
Great. Ready to kick off episode 119 here.
Ani
- I’m actually just as excited as you are about this topic, I think.
Brian
Yeah, it’s a great one. We’re going to talk about the surging need for sensation-based trained health coaches. And before we start, though, I want to give a special shout-out to.
Ani
Pop Pop my dad.
Brian
Yeah. So my father-in-law, Pop Up Claude, is the name, but we call him Pop Pop lovingly. A few weeks ago, he heard me kick off flannel shirt season because it’s like five degrees here. Yeah, it’s right now. And so Pop up got me this, this handsome flannel. Flannel shirt.
Ani
Very nice color.
Brian
Yeah. For the, for the holidays. And so I wanted to say, hey, I’m nice and warm and soft and handsome. Pop Pop. So thank you.
Ani
Thanks, Papa.
Brian
All right, so there you go.
Ani
Thanks for listening, Papa.
Brian
All right, you got it. Thank you. Papa listens to everything. So I just wanted to make sure, you know that, you know, we care about you and thank you and appreciate you and all those kinds of things. All right, so let’s jump in with the topic. So we’re talking about the surging need for health coaches, gang. There are some things that are happening in the world, especially here in the US where health coaches are going to be in massive demand in the upcoming months and years. Decade.
Ani
You want a crystal ball? Here it is.
Brian
Yeah. There’s three primary drivers for this. But before we dig into that, let’s just give a shout-out to health coaches. We’ve done some podcasts with health coaches in mind before.
Ani
Yes, we certainly have. I think health coaches are kind of the unsung hero. But I gotta be honest with you, I think that a part of. And we’re going to, I’m sure, talk about this too. Part of what needs to happen is not Just that you got certified as a health coach is that you’re working and seeing clients as a health coach and, you know, some really important things about how to grow your business that are really important to being able to move the needle. Because there are plenty of health coaches out there who are not practicing, not working, don’t have clients. So we’re talking about, like, you know, if you’re a health coach, now is your time.
Brian
Yeah, yeah, it’s happening right now. It’s really going to jump up. So what do health coaches do? Right. So they help people. Well, guess what? Get healthier, right? Help people maybe with getting the. To a healthy ideal body weight, Eating, nutrition. Eating, nutrition, exercise, exercise, fitness, all those kinds of things.
Ani
Health and wellness.
Brian
Yeah, health and wellness.
Ani
A lot of health coaches are trained in very specific kinds of things. So, for example, you know, you might be trained to help people to exercise better or eat better. A lot of times the track for certification is a specific. It can also be more general, but usually it is a specific thing that you do. And the reason, part of the reason I’m saying that is because as a coaching professional, kind of the thing about coaches is that coaches help people to find the answers within. And there, there are things that health coaches learn that are more, we could say, health mentorship kinds of things that when integrated with coaching skills, can really be super powerful.
Brian
Right? Yeah. So there’s two as. As with almost any kind of project people get into here, there’s two parts to things, right? There’s strategy side of things, and then there’s, of course, the mindset side of things. And there’s a lot of health strategy out there, right? So health strategy is like, okay, so get enough regular zone to cardio. Eat a low fat, high protein, low carb. I’m not actually giving advice right now. I’m just saying that health coaches can or should be trained in helping people to devise strategies, certainly to help them get where they want to go.
Ani
Yeah. Well, to use my dad as an example, my dad was having some gut issues and he was going to his doctor and his doctor was telling him what was going on and prescribing more and more meds. And he said to the doctor, can’t I use food as medicine? And the doctor had a blank stare in her eyes. And so we got him some health help from a health coach professional who was able to say, yeah, use food as medicine. Eat this. This is going to be good for you. Do that kind of thing.
Brian
Right?
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
So that’s strategy. That’s really important. Right. So every health coach has to have under their wing or somewhere in their knowledge base, knowledge base strategies to help people get from A to B. But that’s only. That’s only part one, because part two is what happens when people don’t actually do the strategies. They have resistance to the strategies.
Ani
And that’s really important and awesome when that happens. And a lot of health coaches don’t know that that’s a part of the change process because they’re trained as health coaches, but they’re not necessarily trained as change professionals who know how to help people navigate resistance to change. That is an. It’s a master’s degree. It’s an elevated training that you go through. And so what can happen is you have all of these awesome skills. You’re awesome at what you do, and by the way, you love it. And you go to help clients and they have resistance to change come up. You can get extra education like the one that we offer here with our certification programs at the Somatic Coaching Academy to help you become somebody who can help people navigate change. Because that’s the other thing that really comes up.
Brian
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s just talk really quick about chronic disease, because a lot of health coaches work with people with chronic disease. And what we know from the research states that between 75 and 90% of all doctor visits in the US are directly attributable to stress, like an uncontrolled stress response. There’s something going on in their system that’s out of balance. That, by the way, behavior change can be a huge benefit for so people. You know, with chronic disease, what we know is that a very high percentage of chronic disease is caused by behavioral choices that people are making, right? That people are not eating the foods that help them become healthiest. They’re not moving their bodies in a way that help them become healthiest. They’re not getting the sleep quality that would make themselves healthiest. And so really, we’re making ourselves sick is essentially what the research is showing us right now. Our behavioral choices, our decisions, our perspectives, our perceptions are what are making us chronically sick. And the chronic kind of these chronic disease conditions. This is where health coaches can make a massive impact in helping people to move the needle in their health and wellness.
Ani
And one of the things that’s happening right now and has been for a long time is, like Brian said, people are going to the doctor to solve any and all of their problems. And by the way, just a caveat, we here at the Somatic Coaching Academy are advocates of the healthcare system and going to see your doctor and all of that, go see your doctor. We’re not saying don’t see your doctor. And, you know, in the past, it’s been the reflex for people whenever they have anything, just go see their doctor. And because of some of the changes that are coming down the pike, it’s going to be even more on people’s minds to be looking for alternatives. So in the past, health coaches might have been sitting around going, where are the clients? Oh, they’re going to the doctors. Now these people are going to be looking for other people to go to because of some of the changes.
Brian
Yeah, exactly. Because some big changes that are happening, which I’m sure that you’ve heard about.
Ani
So, you know, just to highlight what you’re saying, again, it’s not that the problems necessary that people are going to be having are changing. The thing is, there are already so many things that health coaches could be doing to help these problems. And now it’s going to be even easier, I think, to be able to access the minds of the people who make the choices to be your. Your clients.
Brian
Yeah. Because just to Ani’s point, I just want to put a punctuation mark on this for a second. The way that at least here in the US that most people operate is that we make behavioral choices that make us sick. And then after we’re sick for a while, then we go to the doctor in order to get medications to help get rid of the symptoms of what we’re sick for, not the causations of it. And so we’ve just been in this loop for decades where as, as residents here in the US we make ourselves sick and then we go to the doctor for help. But here’s the thing. If you’ve been kind of looking at what’s happening in the, in politics and the government with all these, you know, things, the health insurance subsidies cuts. Right. The massive kind of, you know, struggle over health care. Oh, and by the way, you know, I’ll just say this too. We record these. We record these podcasts ahead of time. Right. So you’re actually getting this delivered into your inbox on February 5th, but we’re recording this earlier actually in January. So there’s things happening right now policy that could be different by the time that this podcast actually airs.
Brian
I just want to point that out.
Ani
Yeah, that’s true. Things. Things are in a rapid, rapid change place. Right.
Brian
But what, but what probably isn’t going to change between now and then. There might be a change in the subsidies or those kinds of things in the, you know, Affordable Care act subsidies and people’s ability to access affordable health care. There might be some changes in policy. What’s probably not going to change is the fight over it.
Ani
Well, the trajectory of where we’ve been going has kind of been going on for a while and now it’s, you know, the trajectory is still going that way.
Brian
So the trajectory essentially is that health care costs are rising astronomically.
Ani
It’s already been bad.
Brian
It’s.
Ani
Right.
Brian
So it costs a lot to go to the doctors, costing more and more to go to the doctor. And so if the subsidies do not get restored, then you’re going to have people that are paying three times more for their health insurance than they, than they were just last year. And so health care is becoming unaffordable for people. Which means that if people have been using their doctor as a way to get rid of the symptoms of the chronic disease that they’re creating in their life and is no longer affordable to go that route, they’re going to have to find different routes and ways to help manage or even reverse course what they have going on in their life. So in some ways, you know, the health care system is just so upside down right now. Let’s just, I mean, let’s just say that first of all, but in the other way is that we’ve been so conditioned to do it the way that it’s been set up that that’s a problem also in and of itself. So as far as the health insurance subsidies cuts and those kinds of things that we’re looking at right now, the tragedy of this, it’s a tragedy that people are not having access to health care, especially people who really do need those services.
Brian
And by the way, when I’m. Chronic conditions and chronic diseases, people do need, still need health care. Even if we’re going to turn the ship around, even if we’re going to change things, behavioral change, if people have been on medications for a long time, you can’t just come off those medications cold turkey. You have to be weaned off them. You have to have a plan to be able to move out of a place where you’ve been in disease care for so long and moving towards health.
Ani
Care and people are watching you who know what they’re doing. Yeah.
Brian
So we have to. That’s a really important interface between the health coaching community, the medical community. Right. All that stuff is really important. But it is creating a massive opportunity right now for health coaches also because if the affordability of healthcare just goes so high that people can’t afford it, they’re going to be looking for alternative possibilities. That’s where health coaches enter in to help people be more health focused rather than disease focused, which is awesome.
Ani
I think that’s an amazing thing to finally change over.
Brian
And enough people will do that. Enough people will finally get, get fed up with the healthcare system, which means that they’ll have to look at themselves more closely and say, wait, I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to change something. Who can help me with this?
Ani
I’ve got to empower my own health.
Brian
Enter health coaches.
Ani
Absolutely. Yeah. When Brian and I started our, our own holistic, private, rehabilitative practices, this is a really long time ago now, like 20 years ago, we primarily only, I only took private pay, I didn’t take insurance based. And back at that time we had so many people say to us, oh my gosh, nobody’s going to pay you private pay. And they did. We, we both had thriving practices, private pay, private practices. At that time, it still comes up for people like an old record playing, oh my gosh, people won’t pay for these services. Hey, if that record plays through your head, just take the needle on the record and pick it up for just a second. Because look at the cost of health care. People know how much health care costs. They know what a problem this is and if they can go get some really good support and help. And most health coaches I know charge really reasonable fees. Like charge as much as your neighborhood awesome massage therapist or naturopath or whatever. Like those kinds of prices, people are so willing to pay because they have problems that they need solved.
Brian
Yeah, I mean we could just keep going on about health insurance and the health care system for hours, if not days. I mean, I have all kinds of sure soapbox thoughts and ideas about this.
Ani
Right. And the thing is, this whole thing we’re talking about, rising health care costs actually is only a part of the issue. We’ve been hearing for a long time now that there’s like this mass exodus of health care workers too. So there’s actually a shortage of people who are, who are going to be in the doctors and nurses and even physical and occupational therapists and all of that stuff in the healthcare system because people are leaving. Plus now there’s some problems with loans and things like that to get educated. So there’s actually going to be more people who aren’t going into those professions.
Brian
Yeah, since COVID there has been a, an outgoing of People who working in health care, they’re like, we just, you know, because of the stress and because of all this stuff, they’ve been moving out. But then also if you look what the Department of Education did recently, they just reclassified nurses and physical therapists and occupational therapists and speech and language pathologists as non professional degrees. And you might think, well, who cares? Well, here’s the thing, who cares is that you will lose access to loans, to government loans. So what happens is loans are now going to be go into the private sector. And in the private sector rates are not guaranteed or protected. Like, you know, interest rates are not. The thing about federal loans is that then the federal government, the Senate, the Congress, which you can say whether they, whether they’re functioning or not functioning, at least they have to. A bunch of people have to make a decision. It’s not just one person making a decision. Set the repayment rates for loans, which means that loans for becoming a physical therapist, an occupational therapist or a nursing student, you know what you’re paying back, you know, those terms likely won’t change, although everything’s changing right now.
Brian
So who knows? And you know it’s going to be a potentially reasonable rate, interest rate. So you’re not getting absolutely killed with the loans. But if loans looks like they’re going to be going into the private sector, now you have private companies, which the goal of private companies is to what, earn money, make money. So they’re going to be setting interest rates in a way that, where they make money. So you could be looking at loan interest rates that are more equivalent to look what your credit card is, not necessarily what a government loan would be. So there’s no more federal loan guarantees for people going into allied health professions. Which means that over the next year, two years, three years, decades, there’s going to be a massive shortage of nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, rehab professionals, SLPs, you know, speech and language pathologists, all the people that would help people rehab or seek services either inpatient or outpatient. And the people who are going to be prioritized for care are the people who are post surgical, who are stroke, cancer, those kinds of things in house, in hospital care, which means that you’re gonna see a shrinking of outpatient access for these services.
Brian
All to say that there are not gonna be enough healthcare professionals to take care of people who right now in this moment need care. Which I’m thinking is going to wake some people up and say, oh my God, like I have a friend who is waiting for four months to go to physical therapy or something like that, like I better start taking better care of myself. It could really shake people’s rattle the cage a lot right now. It’s going to require that people really change their behavior and you know, in some ways, maybe even their, the way that they look at the world, their identity structure. But what it’s going to do is the, the gap in allied healthcare professionals is going to create an opening for health and wellness coaches.
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
Also strength and conditioning coaches too. Right. Exercise physiologists. I know in our local area right now there’s a pretty big shortage of physical therapists and I have some of my old PT patients who I don’t see anymore because I’m, you know, teaching and traveling and my clinical practice isn’t as robust as it once was because of all the other things that I’m doing. But they’re actually going and working with exercise physiologists and trainers in lieu of physical therapists to help them reclaim their health, their body, their strength, all those kinds of things. So it’s already happening. Right? There’s already a playbook for this that health and wellness coaches can step into.
Ani
Yeah. And people are going to be looking in ways that before they were pigeonholing their idea of who could solve their problems into certain professionals. Now they’re going to be way more open to considering other professionals.
Brian
Yeah, exactly. So we have these two things so far. Right. We have these health. Health insurance subsidy cuts and the whole fight over health insurance. We have this looming shortage of allied healthcare professionals. And then the third one is kind of an interesting one, ani. It’s these GLP1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic and I can’t remember the other ones, but there’s these, the new weight loss drugs that are on the market right now that I don’t really know.
Ani
A lot about this.
Brian
Yeah. So, but you see influencers taking them and celebrities taking them and you know, having rapid weight loss and those kinds of things. Right. So this, there’s an interesting.
Ani
So queued out.
Brian
Yeah. Talking about right now, interesting economic phenomenon going on right now with these GLP1 weight loss drugs that’s happening. So I’m sure if you’re, if you’re a health coach, you’ve heard of these things. And so what’s happening when you look at an economic result of people taking these weight loss drugs that affects Glucon insulin levels. They’re really designed for diabetes and obesity to help people manage diabetes and obesity, but they’re being taken up by the general population as well for weight loss.
Ani
This just seems like a train not going to good places.
Brian
Exactly. So here’s what’s happening though. In the economy. People are buying, the research says right now is people are buying less food overall. People who are on these weight loss drugs are buying less food and they’re specifically buying less like less fast food. So like, like, so McDonald’s like share dropped pretty precipitously over the past really and like chips and those kinds of things. And so now those companies, they’re not just going to say, oh well right. So now they’re remarking a lot of what they’re doing is more health related food, more protein related stuff.
Ani
Day Brian. I saw, I was not wholly paying attention, but we were watching a football game or something. There was a ad, I swore it was for fast food and it had a guy with a sweatband which I thought that that’s what caught my eye. Cause I was like, who were sweatbands anymore? But he was like, you know, 60 years old or something. He was wearing a sweatband and he was eating something that said protein. It’s like what it was from like.
Brian
Some fast food chain or something like that, right? Yes. Yeah, exactly. So you’re seeing a mark, a pretty big market shift right now with the way that people are consuming, consuming food when they’re on these GLP1 weight loss drugs. And more and more people are taking these and of course pharma pushing it hard I’m sure, because this is a, an amazing market. This is a gravy train market for especially people in the western world around things. The other thing that’s happening is apparently clothing stores like Targets and Kohl’s and those types of places, they are showing loss in revenue because they’ve ordered the wrong size clothes. So you think about a store like Target or Kohl’s or some type of clothing store, right. They order the clothing to stock into their stores a year in advance based on the previous year’s consumption.
Ani
Right.
Brian
Now what happens if all of a sudden a large percent of percentage of your customers drop a size or two? Now all those sizes are gone. So they have shortage of sizes, but then they have overstock in sizes that they. So it’s changing the economic.
Ani
Landscape.
Brian
Landscape. Yeah, thank you. Of these, of these stores.
Ani
Big stores.
Brian
Yeah, big stores. Right. So they’re, they’re seeing loss in market share also because of that.
Ani
So boy, I’m really interested to see the boomerang of all the people on weight loss drugs.
Brian
Yeah. So what the research is also showing that people who take these drugs. Right. People that take these drugs and that this isn’t. Shouldn’t be a surprise. And then stop taking the drugs.
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
They boomerang back, gain the weight back and of course then gain even more weight.
Ani
Right, right. And have all kinds of mental emotional stuff that goes along with that.
Brian
So this is where we got to tap into why is it important for health coaches working with people that are doing weight loss? And we could probably do a whole podcast just on this too.
Ani
We could have a whole podcast.
Brian
But so here’s what happens when people, when people drop weight especially quickly. Okay. What We’ve seen this a lot with people who have like a lap band procedures.
Ani
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian
So we’ve worked with Nelly, many people who have had weight loss surgery, and by the way, there are far more people on, on the GLP1 weight loss drugs than there are people having weight loss surgery. So this is, this is where my concern rise up. Because what happens with people go through weight loss surgery and they lose a lot of weight quickly. There was a reason that that weight was there to begin with. And because all of the results in your life are direct expressions of the subconscious patterns and beliefs that we have, then when you lose weight quickly, what happens is a person will especially lose it quickly. We’ll need to confront the limiting beliefs that are. Were the causation for the weight to begin with.
Ani
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Brian
And that’s.
Ani
We’re going to have to do a.
Brian
Whole podcast on this frightening on for.
Ani
People because I know some listeners are like, what? We’ll, we’ll follow up with some more information about that. So. Yeah, when people lose weight quickly, it causes mental emotional breaks that are challenging even for really experienced practitioners. Which is one of the reasons why the sensation based model is so very important for working with these folks.
Brian
Yeah, so the two, let me just talk about just the two, the two tiers here of why it’s so important to be a sensation based health coach with the GLP weight loss drugs. The first level is that the drugs themselves don’t change anything long term for people. People come off the drugs, they gain the weight back, they didn’t actually learn how to change their behavior. And behavior change is what we do here really well at the Somatic Cushion Academy, the sensation based methodology, what it’s all about is helping people learn how to change a deep rooted belief system that fosters certain behaviors for someone. And so if you don’t know how to do that, you’re not going to be really effective at helping people change something long term. And the weight loss drugs are simply just another way to change the something for a short period of time while the drugs are being taken. Right. So that’s the first level. And then the second level, what we were talking about is if we all of a sudden have a critical mass of people losing a lot of weight quickly, which you might think, oh, that’s a really good thing, right?
Brian
Well, yes, and the challenges are around that is that it can create massive identity challenges for people when they confront the limiting beliefs that were the causation of their body formation to begin with. And if you are not able to help someone manage that, then that can be really problematic for a person.
Ani
I want to turn the conversation, but I don’t want to get you off track. I’m just having a pain as I’m listening to all of this, Brian, because I think you’ve made a really good case for the fact that health coaches are really, it’s a real huge need, it’s a surging need right now. And I know there’s people who are listening who are health coaches. I know there’s people listening who want to become health coaches. And one of the things I just want to plea to our listeners is if, if this is calling to you and you’re like, yeah, it’s really, it’s time, like it’s time for me to go bigger, it’s time for me to do this, it’s time for me to really like make this a calling. Please do not go try to get a bunch of clients and make a movement on social media. Please don’t try to make yourself all kinds of web funnels so that you can get people to come to your website. Please people, if you’re listening to this and you want to make a difference, please go into your communities and make a difference with real people in your communities.
Ani
Please talk to people you know. Please use the business development, relationship based business development that’s really going to go out and help people. Because the thing I would just, it’s. I can feel the pain in me, Brian, to feel the passion for health coaching that so many people feel. But then they don’t know how to develop their business, they don’t know how to develop their practice and they go take the advice of a lot of the popular marketing that tells them they need to be content marketers or web based marketers or social media based folks and you don’t. But we’ve just helped so many people who have fallen into those Rabbit holes. When you really need to talk to people, to go be visible in your local community, to go reach out to local practitioners so that you can have this, so you can really help people, folks. Because, you know, health coaches don’t want to be behind computers fiddling with a bunch of widgets. But that’s what we hear out there is the way to get clients. And it’s not, you know, the conversion rates on helping you to get leads and clients that way is so very, very bad.
Ani
So if you feel impassioned by this topic, the number one thing you can do is go reach out to a local practitioner, go do something in your community to make a difference. And you’re gonna have to confront your own stuff when you do that. You know, your own fear of visibility and putting yourself out there and things. But it’s actually what’s gonna make a difference.
Brian
Amen.
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
I don’t have much to say after that. I think that was great.
Ani
Okay, thanks. Yeah. Wow. I do think that it would be great to do another podcast about the weight loss stuff because we have some experience with that that can be really helpful. And then I just wanna round back to what Brian was saying about. Listen, folks, it’s not just about health coaching. It’s about understanding how to help people navigate resistance to change. So the sensation based model, we believe is the best model in the world to be able to do that. But make sure that you understand that it’s not just a personal failing on the part of the practitioner or the client. When a person is having trouble changing, when they have trouble changing, it’s just resistance to change. It’s perfectly normal and natural. And there are techniques that you can use to help people to do that. When health coaches go and get the extra education that’s required to help them, not only be a great health coach, but also really be great at helping people to overcome resistance to change, then the whole job of being a health coach will be elevated, the reputation of health coaching will be elevated, and I do believe it will create some of the changes we’ve been trying to see for years and years about people being able to take more empowerment over their bodies, over their health, and being able to really help our societies and our communities be healthier in body, mind and spirit.
Brian
Yeah. Wouldn’t that be amazing to live in a society of people who all are in relationship with health and wellness professionals so that they’re constantly consistently getting customized advice for what they need in order to live their healthiest lives and helping.
Ani
People to empower themselves and their bodies and their health.
Brian
Yep. Absolutely.
Ani
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian
So, great episode. If this episode was activated in something in you and you’re like, yes, then listen to it again and share it with a friend and let us know your thoughts and send your questions and let us know what you’re thinking about this stuff.
Ani
Yeah. If you know a health coach, send it to them.
Brian
Yep.
Ani
Yeah. And you can always send us an email info@somaticcoachingacademy.com or of course, comment below where there’s a place to do that. We want to hear your thoughts about the this topic too. And until next time, we’ll see you next week. So have a great week.
Brian
Yep.
Ani
Bye.
Brian
Bye.
