Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian.

Brian
Hey, Ani, how are you doing over there?

Ani
I’m good. We decided to change seats today because we are all about change. All about change, yeah. We’re at the Somatic Coaching Academy. If you haven’t been over to the website, somaticcoachingacademy.com, check it out because it’s new and amazing. Wow, it really made quite a transformation over there. We’ve got new all over the place, Brian. Yeah. I feel renewed.

Brian
Got to keep it fresh, keep it renewed. Today, we are talking about, well, it’s episode 47. I don’t know if we mentioned that or not. We’re 47 today. What we’re going to be talking about is what coaches need to know about creating somatic transformations.

Ani
I always think it’s funny when we talk about somatic, put that word in front of other things where it normally might not be, because I’m thinking, of course, we are talking about the body when we’re talking about making transformations. But let’s just talk for a second about what we mean about somatic transformation, Brian.

Brian
Well, maybe we can just back up a little bit and talk about transformation. What does that mean? Because people may think, Well, what about change? Change is change, the same as transformation. Is transformation the same as change. I’m looking forward to digging into that a little bit today. Transformation, if you look that up in the dictionary, one of the definitions for it is metamorphosis.

Ani
You’ll see a butterfly.

Brian
Yeah. Basically, the butterfly is the quintessential symbolic idea of transformation, is that something goes through a process and turns into something completely different.

Ani
And in the middle of that, it’s messy.

Brian
Yeah, it can be. Well, I think it gets very… It’s chaos in the middle of it. Just in terms of chaos is that there may not be an organized process that happens, but there must be an organized process that happens because caterpillars consistently turn into butterflies.

Ani
It’s not that they turn into something else.

Brian
It’s one of these interesting scientific things that we really haven’t really figured out yet. Even when they put little cameras inside of the chrysalis, the caterpillar turns to like a goo. It’s not like a caterpillar grows wings, in other words. It’s not like they’re just sprout wings. It’s like they turn into something that’s not a caterpillar at all. It deconstructs.

Ani
And then they turn into a butterfly.

Brian
It’s really a fascinating idea about the idea of transformation, which is different than change. The change might be they sprout wings. Okay, they’ve changed.

Ani
So often people will initiate and have some change in their life, and then they wonder why things aren’t different. And that’s the real difference. One of the reasons why I love somatics so much is because somatics can actually help somebody transform so that life is different. It’s not just that we changed seats. Brian and I have been in the same seats for every podcast up until now. We just changed seats. That’s a change. But we are not transformed humans. We’re just sitting in different seats. That’s it. But so often we change something like Brian and I sitting different seats in our lives. And then we wonder, why isn’t everything different? Why do I still attract the same guys? Why do I still attract the same clients? Why do I still have the same problems with my coworkers, with my spouses, with my kids? And you just made a change. You didn’t make a transformation. And I love transformation. I just got to tell you, having gone through a number of metamorphoses in my own life, is What’s the plural? Metamorphoses.

Brian
I think that’s right.

Ani
Metamorphoses, metamorphoses.

Brian
Metamorphoses, I don’t think- Somebody knows.

Ani
They’re going to leave a comment, which is great because I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve been through a number of transformations in my life, and it’s really one of the most satisfying things.

Brian
At the end- At the end, we can really talk about that a lot because the question is, there must be a new part of you that’s emerged in order to actually experiencing it as satisfying because there’s probably a part of you previously that wouldn’t… Well, we can talk about that. Oh, yeah. But that’s a whole other well we can dig into. But let’s think about coaches and somatic transformations for a moment. Because something you said, that you said somatics can be helpful in creating a client transformation, I would argue that you can’t actually do it without somatic. Absolutely. Because, again, most coaches, well, I don’t say most, a lot of coaches. A lot of coaches are trained and well-trained to help people change something very specific in their… The very tactical. They hire a coach to help them write a book. They hire a coach to help them lose weight. They hire a coach to help them start a business. There’s something very tactical in mind about it. This is the thing I want to get done. Can you help me get that done? The coach will set up a plan for them to do it.

Brian
Like right now, you have a running coach to help you learn to do a marathon, right? Yeah. The coach is helping set up a plan for you.

Ani
Every week, I get it.

Brian
You might say, Hey, the run went this way, and they’ll give you a little bit of support around it. You have a running coach, and her job is to help you get to the point you can run a marathon. Correct. Okay. So very tactical, very specific. Now, that does not necessarily mean it’s going to be a transformational coaching experience.

Ani
I don’t believe I need a transformation to be able to run a marathon, to be honest with you. I need to exercise in a certain way every day. I don’t need to transform who I am. I think I’ve already been through the transformations of who I am enough to be able to do this very specific thing. Yeah.

Brian
And some people who have an aspiration to travel or run a marathon or to change where they live or to change their relationship, they actually in order to do that, they actually need a transformation to do it. Absolutely. Because their identity is so baked into their current reality that they actually can’t do it just by changing a behavior or two.

Ani
Yeah. And the ability to now manage, navigate the resistance that comes up with true transformation, to be able to actually change your body, your mind, your emotions, your subconscious, to be able to become new, that’s a skill in and of itself. That’s a skill in and of itself to be able to navigate that resistance. Some people want a change like to lose weight or whatever it is, grow business, but they don’t know how to navigate that resistance. So they can’t actually make the transformations that they need to make within themselves to be able to get the result. Which accounts for why coaches and other professionals usually only get a certain percentage of clients who can do the thing that they’re promoting to do unless they have the somatic transformation skills to be able to help people to become different if they so need to do that to get the change. Yeah.

Brian
And this really started to see the awareness of this push happen a decade or two ago with psychotherapy. A lot of psychotherapy, remember, way back when was, we’re only going to work on your thinking, your memories, your cognitive processes. And people were seeing very limited change. People would go to a therapist for decades and not actually get any better. They had somebody they could talk to every week. I’m not saying all therapy is useless, but you obviously saw a very profound shift, especially around some of the awareness of trauma history in people, that people experience trauma are very resistant to cognitive-only therapy. That’s because the trauma, of course, exists in their bodies, and there’s a huge function of that. Psychotherapists made a big push towards more somatic psychotherapy methods, body-mind psychotherapy methods, and started to see a bigger change. We’ve got a lot of data, anecdotal research data, to show that people who engage in change processes that don’t include their soma or their body are much less likely to create true transformation compared to when they do include their body. So somatic coaches don’t just help people write the book, don’t just help people lose the weight, don’t just help people start a new business.

Brian
They actually help clients to change deeply ingrained underlying patterns of perception. And when those patterns of perception change, everything changes. Then all of a sudden, the book writes itself. The business starts itself. The body goes naturally where it’s supposed to go. There’s no more trying to change it. It just automatically changes because the underlying pattern has changed. And that’s one of the most fascinating things I really love about the transformation in terms of helping people change the deeper patterns. When you change the deeper patterns, everything all of a sudden changes organically now. It’s almost like, Man, I lost a bunch of weight, and I wasn’t even trying. What happened? What could you change a fundamental feature about how you perceive and live in the world and your identity around that. When you change that, the weight just goes naturally like it’s supposed to go. Like, Oh, my God, now I have a business that I love. One of the favorite things I hear from our students is when they say, I cannot believe it. I am doing the work I love with the people I love every single day. I’m like, Well, how did you get there?

Brian
Obviously, they went through a transformation in order to do that. We didn’t just teach someone how to, ‘Oh, this is how you set up your business. This is how you do your books.’ We helped somebody get a deep transformation, and then their life just blossomed from changing the underlying pattern. That’s what a somatic transformation is.

Ani
One of my favorite things with the students is when they’re in the Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program, because for a lot of our students, when they’re doing the somatic practices, they feel better, they feel great. But it’s that somatic transformation that they start to get in the Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program where they’re like, Oh, my gosh, it was here in me, and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t have access to it five seconds ago. And then poof, there it is in me. And that’s the way it is. Everything we do actually want to access is in here right now.

Brian
It’s all here. It’s all here.

Ani
Yeah. Right now. It’s not in the future. It’s right now. And the light bulbs, it’s so much fun to be in that program. Yeah, it’s awesome. The light bulbs in that program when the students realize that… It’s one of the reasons why we say it feels like a miracle because it actually does. It wasn’t there, and then it’s right there. We do like to talk more specifically in the Somatic Coach Pro program about how there’s breakthroughs and there’s transformations. And so those breakthroughs are those moments of epiphany where people are like, oh, my gosh, it wasn’t there, and now it’s right here. Actually, those are really breakthroughs. You can create transformation when you continue to practice, when you continue to rewire the nervous system for that new experience. And that really creates the transformation. That’s what’s going on in the chrysalis thing is that rewiring. The cross mapping method that we use is so good at that rewiring. You practice cross mapping and it rewires your nervous system to be that new thing that you experienced in the breakthrough.

Brian
I do just want to say, too, the Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program, of course, a graduate from that is certified in the cross mapping method. They become a certified cross mapping method practitioner. But we want to say, too, that the program itself is so much more than that. Because for a coach, and by the way, a book coach can be a somatic coach. A business coach can be a somatic coach. I mean, definitely a wellness coach and a weight loss coach. My God, those folks who actually get somatic coach training, the results are just knock-it-out-of-the-park, sister. It’s amazing what can happen in the body when you start working directly and changing our patterns within the body itself. For a coaching professional to learn about, Well, actually, how do I make… This sounds really great. How do I actually learn to help someone to make a true somatic transformation? We’re not just talking about guided visualizations. We’re not just talking about doing some breathwork with people. We’re not just talking about having people practice mindfulness. All those things are really, really important. But as a professional, learning to do these things, there’s some key things you really have to understand how to do.

Brian
Now, one of those things is just setting up a trauma-sensitive container. That’s really, really, really huge. That’s something we focus a lot on on this program is setting up this trauma-sensitive container. You also have to understand how to teach your clients what we call interoceptive literacy. How do they actually learn to read and understand the language of their body, of their nervous system. Our nervous system has a language, and the language is all based around our sensory experience. It’s not just about noticing the sensory experience. It’s actually about interpreting the sensory experience and understanding the communication and the information that’s being brought into our conscious awareness from that experience. That’s a big part of that. We have a whole part around just teaching interoceptive literacy, the natural laws, where we’ve talked a lot about natural laws, and hopefully, we’ll talk about a little bit more on the podcast. But to understand that our bodies act in accordance with natural law. We’re natural beings.

Ani
Body, mind, and spirit.

Brian
Body, mind, and spirit. So when we understand how to apply natural laws in the body through actual practices, we come into alignment with the way that everything in nature works. And that starts to free up a lot of tension in the system. So we do a lot of work with that. We teach our students how to read what we call subconscious flags, how to identify the subconscious opportunities for transformation. Because the subconscious mind is not always ready for change, but there’s periods of time that it is ready for change. Yeah.

Ani
And we can identify actually what’s ready for change because the subconscious is telling us. We can read it. It’s like reading somebody’s mind. Yeah.

Brian
We do work around life force energy or what the Chinese would call qi, right? What the Ayurvedic would call prana. However you want to, whatever word you want to use, there’s an animating energy in the body. And we did a podcast in the past, I think around co-regulation or something, where we started talking about some of the science around that. So there’s good strong science to show that there is energy. The body is full of energy, whether it’s electromagnetic energy or thermal energy. Let’s talk about that all day long. I love that conversation. You can consciously learn how to direct that energy. All of that builds up to being competent and certified with the cross mapping practitioner method, cross mapping method. That’s the method that you actually use to get a somatic transformation, to actually become aware of, decode, and modify, and reframe. In other words, to rewire deep patterns in the body to create basically a new human from it.

Ani
There’s a lot that goes into somatic transformation. It’s a big deal. It’s one of the reasons why not a lot of people actually create true, sustainable transformation in their lives is because there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it. We make it, like we were talking about in the last podcast, as efficient as possible for people to get the information they need. It’s this breadth of information because when we talk about somatics, we are talking about body, mind, and spirit. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into it. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it can be very practical. You learn the science, you learn the practicality, and you those miracle moments with your client.

Brian
Yeah. So just know that there actually is a map of what to help someone do inside of the chrysalis. If you’re a caterpillar or your clients are a caterpillar, or you want to be someone who helps shepherd people from caterpillar to butterfly, then we don’t want to leave that chrysalis experience to chance.

Ani
No, there’s a process. And when you follow the process, you can go through the period of uncertainty as you’re like “I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but I am confident that on the other side, the process is going to reap the fruit.”

Brian
Yeah, that’s such a great point, Ani, because the beautiful thing about these practices and these methods are we actually know how to facilitate the process without knowing exactly what happens in the process. So there’s this mystery, and that mystery is wonderful. And I’m also a little debunker of mysteries. I love to be a detective and learn about the science and understand exactly what’s going on. I’m still working on that. I’m always digging into those fields and those awarenesses. At the same time, there’s still this wonderful mystery that occurs. But what I love not to be mysterious is that we know exactly how to shepherd people through that process so that we can do that with confidence and safety. The change on the other side is always wondrous. It’s still wondrous.

Ani
Let’s just say this, too. It gets messy when you think you can just follow your intuition through the process of that transformation because it takes many, many, many years to be able to even discern whether or not you’re following your intuition or you’re following your conditioning. Yeah, right.

Brian
Exactly.

Ani
So oftentimes what happens… I was just listening to a psychotherapist that I really respect on a podcast talking about how many times therapists and coaches start leading people down their own path unknowingly. So following a process allows you to actually be in that wonderful, amazing mystery, but still have the map. So using your intuition can get you all caught up in all kinds of side paths and not get where you’re going and all that stuff. But the process allows you to be in that beauty, in the mystery, and still know that you’re going to get the result on the other side exactly like you wanted to before you started.

Brian
Yeah, that’s so true. It’s true. I think we’ve talked about this before in some of our trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive training podcast and places. I can’t remember all the places I teach these things, so maybe I haven’t said this before. But one of the most distressing things as a coach or change professional is that when you lead someone into the chrysalis, and then you drop them because you don’t actually have the skills or abilities to be with the person through their whole change. That creates more problems than “I shouldn’t even start it at all”, really, because you can actually create a lot of problems for your client if you’re not able to hold them through the whole process. That’s an invitation we make to coaches who are doing transformational work. I just wing it, I’m just not sure, figuring out…. I’m like, “How fair is that to your clients to just be doing this on intuition or winging it, not really doing what you’re doing? Is that really safe? Is that respectful of your clients?”

Ani
Well, we don’t have a credo about doing no harm. There’s a credo in the medical profession. It’s not that everybody follows it. There’s the credo. I’d like to think that all of us want to do no harm. You really have to follow the process in order to do that.

Brian
I think most coaches are really well-intended or really open-hearted. They really want to help people change. They really want to be able to do it right, and they want to be able to do it safe, and all those things. I’ll raise my hand and say, I had stepped into places that I should not have been and have dropped people in places that were really vulnerable and really important and really had to do a lot of repair work with the client, with myself. I never want anyone to have to ever experience that again. We’ve done a lot of work to help create those bridges for people through the Somatic Transformation Fundamentals course and the Somatic Coach Pro training process to help have really stable bridges, to help people walk across that chasm of transformation, to really come out on the other side as being changed people, this wondrous experience, and to do it really safely in a really light-hearted, loving, and connected way.

Ani
So leaving this podcast, one of the things that I’d love for you to be aware of for yourself is whether or not you’re making changes or transformations. Because just having that awareness and then being able to have the intention about what you are trying to create. ‘Am I trying to create a change or am I trying to create a transformation?’ is so huge. You’ll be able to look at that for yourself, and then you’ll be able to look out at the world, at your clients and other people in your life, and be able to see the same thing. Having, of course, the awareness is the first thing that’s needed before anything has changed or transformed. It’s just a really wonderful awareness activity for you this week. We’ll see you next time. Cool.

Brian
Thanks so much for joining us.

Ani
Bye-bye.