Transcript
Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast, and happy New Year. Happy New Year. Brian. How are you, Ani? I am happy. We’re in the new year.
Brian
We are in the new year. So maybe you’re listening to this and you’re still waking up from last night’s revelry, if you reveled last night.
Ani
Yeah, we did.
Brian
We revel all the time.
Ani
We revel on the couch on New Year’s Eve.
Brian
We’re revelers, for sure. Well, welcome to episode 114. And this episode is important to us because we wanted to share something from our heart. Oftentimes, these podcasts, we’re so interested in giving everything we can in terms of education, support, challenge sometimes, too, as we talked about last week, those sorts of things. But we wanted to let you know what we are standing for here at the Somatic Coaching Academy in 2026 this year.
Ani
We know that this is a time where you’re probably collecting for yourself around what you’re standing for, what this year is going to mean, and how it sets you up for the trajectory of the things that you want to accomplish. So we hope that by hearing what we’re standing for and how we’re thinking about things, it can inspire you and your perspective as well. Yeah.
Brian
So we just want to say two off the top, we’ve made a really concerted effort here at the Somatic Coaching Academy and on the podcast to really not be overtly political about things that are going on in the world and certainly in the country that we live in and those sorts of things. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have our own personal political views for sure. But at the academy, we want to make sure that we’re creating a space that’s inclusive, that is open and respectful and accepting of anyone’s political views and the way that they… How they feel about what’s going on in the world. So we just want to make sure we’re creating an open and a safe space as well for people to have to communicate about what’s going on for them internally. And it’s not about what Ani and I personally feel and believe in. It’s about what our collective community really represents and believes in.
Ani
And us helping to articulate our values and our mission will help you to understand whether or not we are in a value alignment with you, because that’s really what’s important to us, is that you know what we stand for, and that’s what you stand for, too, because we should be in value alignment if we’re working together.
Brian
Yeah. And as we, hopefully, will make it clear today on the podcast, too, why we are not overtly political also when we talk about things Because of what we stand for and what we are standing for in 2026, just to be really clear about it. So maybe we’ll just start off with our vision, Ani. From the Somatic Coaching Academy, we envision a world where everyone is free to express their core purpose.
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
Right? So let’s just break that down for a second. What’s a core purpose? That’s your acorn. That’s your soul’s agenda. That’s your inner compass. I mean, you have a lot of ways to talk about that.
Ani
It’s your core expression. It’s who you really are. It’s your authenticity.
Brian
Yeah. So it’s who you really are when you’re aligned in the deepest sense of yourself and when you’re aligned with nature and your natural way of being here.
Ani
Some people could say higher purpose, higher potential.
Brian
Yeah. So fill in in the blank there, whatever you want to fill in. Of course, we use the Soul’s Agenda to help people articulate what their purpose is. So we envision a world where everyone is free to express that aspect of themselves. And there’s an interesting thing when you talk about freedom, because most people think, well, there’s people outside of me that are not allowing me to express my core purpose. For the vast majority of people, whether they realize it or not, they’re holding themselves back. We’re putting ourselves in a cage. We’re not allowing ourselves to be free in expressing our core purpose. And what we want to do is help people do just that. That’s our vision here at the Somatic Coaching Academy in 2026. Our mission, do you want to see a little bit about our mission?
Ani
Our mission is to raise the vibrational frequency of the planet and to love or above, we say. So it was a while ago that we did a podcast on Power versus Force, Brian, and talking about vibrational Frequencies. The Map of Consciousness. The Map of consciousness, yeah. But we’ve done a few episodes about that. We believe that when we can help people to raise their level of consciousness, not only will they enjoy their own lives better, you will enjoy your life better, but also will be in reciprocity with helping the world become a better place. And that’s something that really matters to Brian and I. We have a very hard time thinking about personal potential without thinking about collective potential. It’s just how our brains are wired to always put in relationship ourselves and the greater community and the world. So for us, anytime a person raises their vibrational frequency, and this is what the literature talks about as well, we actually raise the vibrational frequency of the planet, and that’s really important to us.
Brian
Yeah, exactly. So through that lens, as we talk about what we’re standing for this year, just hold that in your mind. Our vision is we envision a world where everyone is free to express their core purpose, and our mission is to raise the vibrational frequency on the planet to love or above.
Ani
And that raising the vibrational frequency has a lot to do with, like it just said, tending to ourselves in our own frequency and our own energy management. Yeah.
Brian
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, as you look around the world, things seem to be in a bit of a transition, let’s say. So there’s upheaval in government, there’s upheaval in Health care.
Ani
School systems, in food and agricultural systems, you name it. If it says systems, it is in a bit of a transition right now.
Brian
It’s not just here in the US where we’re based, but it’s globally. It’s globally. May feel more acute for people who are here in the US. Maybe. Because this is something that people in the US haven’t experienced as much as in other countries up until now.
Ani
Well, yeah, and we would know because we live in the US. Exactly.
Brian
That’s our But things are in transition, and there’s a lot of upheaval going on. There’s something afoot. It seems like there’s something afoot globally, universally, energetically. It seems like there’s a big shift in consciousness happening right now.
Ani
And humans are meaning makers. We make meaning. And so anytime there’s anything going on, we’re making meaning of it. During a time of transition, it’s a time that we can really be conscious about how we’re making meaning of things so that through the transition, we can create something new and not recreate the old dysfunction that we had before. So part of what we hope to do today is if you’d like to adopt a perspective like ours to help you to make meaning out of what’s going on in a way that’s really beneficial to you, your communities, and the world as a collective.
Brian
Yeah. So the way we’re really looking at what’s happening right now in this shift of consciousness is there’s a disintegration, primarily of organizational hierarchy. Now, what does that mean? Well, for the last few hundreds of years, we’ve been told as individuals how to behave by larger institutions. There’s been laws written in government, there’s been laws in religion, there’s rules in school. Really, so our behavior has been dictated, really, based on how institutions and organizations have told us what is right and wrong.
Ani
Kings and Queens told people what to do, and we moved then into this institutional industrial revolution place where the organization told us what to do. And even in terms of, you said behave, how to behave, what to believe, what we should think. And we’re really moving to a place now of tapping into our own decision making, our own autonomy. And it’s funny because it seems a little interesting to me to think that we’re moving into a place of increased individuality, which we are. But also people grapple with that. Me and selfishness, and how should I be thinking about other people? I think the whole concept of we’ve been told for basically a lot of our human history, what to do as individuals by governing bodies. Of course, we’re having all of these internal struggles with ourselves to figure those things out.
Brian
Yeah. I think one of the distressing things for people right now is if we’re going to be told what is right and wrong by institutional organizational bodies, that would mean that the organizational bodies would know the difference between right and wrong because they’re us how to behave. But if you look around you, that’s all upside down right now. That’s completely upside down. Like, does government, the people who are running the government, they have an idea about what’s right and wrong? Is it really right and wrong? So a lot of… It’s really just falling apart. It’s very confusing. It’s like, what is right and wrong? So as soon as you start to actually not believe in what the government or organizational bodies tell you is right or wrong anymore, it’s basically things start to collapse. And we’re seeing that happen very clearly, very rapidly. The hypocrisy is rampant, which, again, tells you that this is not going to work anymore. Organizations have been led by, well, leaders, by people who don’t follow their own rules of conduct. Obviously, that’s going to create a disorganization of the hierarchy of decision making. And so that’s why it’s happening all over the place.
Brian
And so we’re in this natural shift in consciousness, again, as Ani is pointing out, moving from being told what to do by organizations functional bodies to have them to really decide what to do and how to be as individuals.
Ani
And that can be challenging, especially since we weren’t raised and taught how to do that. We didn’t learn these things in school, and so we have to learn them on our our own and find our own way. And there’s so many people who are in this movement of figuring these things out. What is my purpose? What is my higher potential? What are my values? What do I want? And how do I navigate that? And how do I make decisions that are in alignment? What’s my internal compass? These are questions that people have been asking themselves for some time. It’s a growing movement. Of course, it must be because this is where we’re going to a place where people can do that better. And it’s one of the things that we hope to, and we know we’re good at helping you do, is to find your internal compass so that you can follow it and make decisions based on you.
Brian
Because we’ve always been taught that someone else knows what’s right right and wrong. At very early ages, we’re always asking our teachers or asking our religious leaders or asking our parents or asking our grandparents, what is right and wrong?
Ani
And am I okay right now?
Brian
So that’s baked into our system. To Ani’s point, we’ve never been taught how to connect with our own moral compass without someone else telling us whether or not that moral compass was right or wrong. Really what we’re seeing at a deeper level as organizational hierarchies just fall apart and deconstruct is actually a deconstruction of victim consciousness. Because if we allow… We’ve been living in victim consciousness for a very, very long time as humans because we’ve allowed ourselves to have our behavior dictated by external authorities.
Ani
So of course, we would feel victimized by that. And we’re talking about victim consciousness here. We make the distinction that there’s real victimhood and there’s victim consciousness. That’s what we’re talking about right now. So of course, it would make sense that we grapple with victim consciousness when we have, as humans, been in a place where we were told what to do. And if we didn’t like it, tough. And we felt like victims. Yeah.
Brian
And so the way victim consciousness is showing up right now is when we find ourselves blaming, blaming our problems on the systems. That’s evidence of victim consciousness. So have the systems created, have the hierarchies institutions created systemic challenges for us and for certain groups of individuals? Absolutely. That’s absolutely true. So that’s true. And if we then continue to blame the system on our current, where we are currently in life, we are still locked into that victim consciousness.
Ani
Or expect the systems to save us.
Brian
Right, exactly. Because expect the systems to change in order to benefit us.
Ani
That also keeps us locked in victim consciousness. And we see that Brian is talking more from a larger your macro perspective, from a micro perspective, we see this in our homes. Where you feel victim to the things that other people are doing. And for so many people, it’s this middle, wonky place where we know as parents, if you’re raising children, especially, we know as parents that we want to do it different, but we don’t know how to do it different, and we don’t have a role model for different. We know we want it different, but we don’t know what to do. We want our kids to have their own values and feel autonomous and to be able to align with their own authenticity. But we don’t know how to do that. And Lord knows how anything is going to happen around the home if that happens. We’re experiencing it, too. You may be experiencing this in your home. It’s very common that there’s this confusing middle ground right now as we all figure out how to step into this new way of being. You were probably raised where Where your parents told you what was wrong and what to do, like Brian was saying.
Ani
Now, we know that doesn’t completely work, but we don’t know what to do next.
Brian
Because oftentimes, what you were told were right and wrong when you were younger, and then you get older, and then you realize those same rules don’t apply anymore to a life that is more complex than it was when you were younger. We have to find ways to rely on our inner compass. Sometimes we have to even discover what our inner compass actually is. That’s why we lean A lot of the work that we lean to is with the natural laws because we look at how does nature operate? How do trees and squirrels, and birds, and flowers? How does the cycle life actually operate? Because that operates in truth. It operates consistently all the time. It can’t judge. It just happens. It keeps happening.
Ani
It seems to be doing pretty good.
Brian
It seems to be doing as long as humans don’t poison it.
Ani
Well, and look at the weather sometimes. Mother nature That’s another thing, Brian, is recognizing that Mother Nature is also not a victim, and we don’t have to be a hero. Right? Nature’s got it figured out. And one of the reasons I know that to be true is I’ve never met a person who has told me that they get out in nature and they don’t feel great. Everybody says, I get in Out in Nature, I feel great. There’s really something magical about nature.
Brian
Just sitting outside on a park bench.
Ani
The research is telling us, even looking at a picture. Yeah. Of a forest, right? There’s truth in that. And I think that’s one of the capacities that we can really tap into and accentuate as human beings is we know truth in our bones, and nature resonates truth for us. Yeah.
Brian
So what are we standing for and what are we committing to in 2026 here at this Mattacochy Academy? Well, the primary thing is that we’re really committing to making this shift in this transition into creator consciousness, from victim consciousness to creator consciousness.
Ani
And we need to have some other construct. If we’re going to step out of victim consciousness, we can’t just have nothing to step into. So the creator consciousness is what to step into next. And that isn’t waiting for a hero, right? And it recognizes that there’s creative solutions everywhere, and it taps into the natural laws. So that’s For us, that’s what we are going to be doing. Now, to Brian’s point about we have made a commitment not to be politically aligned at Somatic Coaching Academy. When you notice us online and doing things out there in the world, and you see our primarily visual representations of us through media, you’ll notice that we are not accentuating some things that are going on in the world or weighing in our opinions, but we are rather committed to creating our own reality and accentuating that reality and welcoming people into it. And that reality that we’re creating is the reality that we are all creators, all of us have a purpose, and all of us are free to express that purpose.
Brian
Yeah. And so you might be listening to this and going, But wait, Ani and Brian, there seems to be a competing version of reality going on around us, thing. And so who’s creating what and what’s being created? Well, again, if you come back to the natural laws for a moment and you really think about what does that mean to be creative or a co-creative partner with the universe, is this. There are some clear tenets. There’s some things we learn by this. If you look around the world at fairly, let’s say, powerful or influential leaders in the world, there’s something that they do really well. One thing is that they are absolutely committed to their own version of reality. They’re committed to their own reality, and it’s unwavering. No one can knock them off their boat around what they believe and how they feel about what they believe, number one. Number two, they believe in it so clearly that they enroll other people in believing it, too. In order to really create a tipping point for change, it takes a collective. It’s interesting. We’re talking about shifting to more of this idea about individual sovereignty with our moral compass, but it takes a collection of people doing that that are actually pointed in the same direction in order to really create a tipping point.
Brian
So no one can do it by themselves. So even the most influential leaders that may not be doing really wonderful, let’s say, things in the world that serve everyone in the world, if they enroll enough people on their mission, they can rise to a level of influential power where they have power. Let’s just put it that way.
Ani
And there’s been leaders who have been, let’s say, more evil leaders and leaders who have definitely been more good leaders, those judgment calls, as I say them. But I’m thinking about like, Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. These are leaders with powerful missions.
Brian
Right. The point is, here is the delineating factor. The three-part recipe is this, clarity number one. You have to have clarity of what it is that you want to create in the world. And so anybody who ends up being a successful, influential, powerful leader needs to have clarity. When Gandhi got thrown off the train, he had a vision of independence from England. So he had clarity around that, and he built his whole movement and mission around it. That’s the point. You have to have clarity. The next thing you have to have is connection to your purpose. You have to have connection to your aligned purpose, your way of being, and how that way of being translates into what you do in the world. Those are two really powerful factors. Now, the difference between leaders and movements and communities that end up persisting over time versus failing is this next feature of positive reciprocity. This is the key feature. This is what’s going to save the world. This is what’s going to save the world. If you don’t have… What’s positive reciprocity? Positive reciprocity is that it’s It’s basically holding an intention that everyone benefits. Everyone benefits.
Brian
No one is marginalized. No one is excluded. No one is starved. No is perpetuated violence against. No one is fill in the blank after that. So the idea of positive reciprocity is that everyone is valuable. Everyone is valuable, and everything on the planet has value. And so the intention of the clarity and the purpose leans into benefiting everyone and everything, and having that really as a part of the clear vision. Now, movements, organizations, governments that will end up failing are those without that feature. They will always fail. Look back through history at this. The fall of Rome, the French Revolution, Nazi Germany. Just look back at any past culture that did not have positive reciprocity baked into it ultimately failed. Those movements failed. So this is the- It’s a secret ingredient. This is the secret ingredient right here that goes into creator consciousness. If you don’t have that positive reciprocity, you’re actually still in victim consciousness. That’s why it’s not sustainable.
Ani
A lot of people have expressed to me that it is hard right now to keep their, let’s say, positive vibes, to keep their mood and emotions up, to keep their energy up, to not get sucked into things. And this is one of the things that I anchor into that really does help, because there are times when I do get sucked into whatever drama is going on, and I remember it can’t win. It’s not going to win because the only thing that’s going to win is positive reciprocity in the end. Yeah.
Brian
And maybe we can even translate win to survive. Absolutely. Because again, it’s not about win-lose. It’s positive It’s all about win-win-win. It’s all about- What’s it about?
Ani
It’s all about- It’s really about evolution.
Brian
Creation. It would end up being sustainable. So it’s these three parts, right? Clarity, purpose, and positive reciprocity has got to be at the core of the intentions. And so that’s what we are committed to here in 2026 and beyond, the Smatic Coaching Academy. So when you hear us either on a podcast or you see social media posts, or you’re at a program with us or at a training or whatever you’re doing with us, just to let you know, that is at the core of our mission and what we’re standing up for in the world.
Ani
We really wanted you to know because I think sometimes Well, I guess we want to make sure that you know that we’re speaking up and speaking out, because that’s very important to us. People listen to things that we say. Using your voice is a really powerful, important way to help shape the world that we’re in. So we wanted you to understand how we’re thinking about it, because I guess sometimes it could be perceived that we’re not saying things, we’re not aligning with resistance resistance or whatever. Yeah, so now you know. Yeah.
Brian
It reminds me, we’re leaning into that famous quote by Mother Teresa, where someone asked her if she would come to an anti-war rally, and she said, no, But if you have a rally for peace, I’ll be there. Oh, yeah. And that was also Wayne Dier transla-era. She used to share that quote and that story a lot in his teachings. And so that’s really where we’re coming from, folks. So we’re coming from this idea of creator consciousness, like what we want to create. And what we’re really doing is inviting you to also enroll in that idea. You don’t have to do that along with us. We would love for you to, but enroll in that idea in your life in some way that you are a creator. And when you create a clear vision for what it is that you want to create, and you’re in alignment with your core purpose, which you’re free to express in the world, and that you always come from a place of positive reciprocity so that everyone wins with whatever choices, decisions that you’re making, you’re becoming a creator, and you’re adding energy to tipping the… Let’s say, raising the consciousness of the planet to a tipping point where more and more and more people slide into the elevation of consciousness.
Ani
So like Brian said, we want you to do whatever it is that is aligned for you. If you need help with this, we know how to do it, and we’d love to help support you. One of the things that I also just want to bring up, Brian, is in a human’s everyday life, one of the ways that this comes out very insidiously, but all the time, in every moment, is how we experience ourselves as emotional beings. And so at the Somatic Coaching Academy, we deconstruct the construct of emotions so that you understand yourself as a sensate being, as a human that experiences sensations, and you can then choose how you want to be based on those sensations, but actually getting out of the construct of the emotion helps to free you from victim consciousness because so many people believe that they are victims of their emotions. And we were taught by old science that emotions happen because things happen outside of us. And the new way, we believe stepping into the new way is this way of being a human who has energy moving through us in all times. And we get to experience that energy.
Ani
We get to call it what we want to call it. We get to create what we want to create from it. But we don’t have to be locked into emotional constructs of old paradigms. So how you work with your emotions, your energy, your sensation, victimizations is a big part of becoming this creator who can step into the new way.
Brian
So you have to have a way to be able to do that so that you can really embody a greater sense of creator consciousness.
Ani
In true creator consciousness. Because the victimization that we feel from our emotions is a big day-to-day way that we experience victim consciousness. Absolutely.
Brian
We also just want to take a moment to share just what our social impact mission is for 2026 also. In the past, we’ve given, without really talking too much about it, but we thought we’d share it with you now, we’ve given a percentage of the income that our company earns to support underprivileged kids, to help them build their confidence, get out in nature, develop leadership skills, basically helping kids go from the city into the woods to have emersion experiences in nature, to learn about themselves, to learn about partnership, community, working together with other people in an experience that has both a balance of challenge and support for them so they can grow and have different experiences they wouldn’t be able to have otherwise. We spent a fair amount of percentage of our income helping kids with that. We’ve also shared a fair amount of our revenue with hospice and also with childhood bereavement, kids who’ve lost their parents to death or divorce or deployment or incarceration. That’s been a big part of what we love to do.
Ani
And certainly with organizations in our community in the Adirondacks of Northern New York to support the Adirondack Mountains, because we believe when you support the Adirondack Mountains, you’re supporting life and the people who come to the Adirondacks and all those things. So supporting children in the Adirondacks, the land in the Adirondacks, the people and the pets in the Adirondacks, and the mountains in the Adirondacks, and all kinds of things locally as well.
Brian
Yeah. And along with that, fairly charitable in terms of helping with food and security issues in our local area as well has been a really important part of some things we’ve done.
Ani
Yeah. So we don’t talk about that stuff. It’s just a natural part of the things that we’ve done over the years. But we wanted to share that with you now, especially in relation to what we’re choosing to do going forward. Yeah.
Brian
So what are we doing in 2026 for our social impact, Dani?
Ani
Yeah. So when you think about social impact, there’s a number of different ways to make a social impact. And so we still have very… The two of us have a very active family life. Everybody on our team has families. We’re very busy in terms of our personal lives. So one of the things that we’ve decided to do is give money rather than give time, because we could choose to give our time. And so that’s a choice that we have made as a company, is to continue to give money. We are specifically allocating a percentage of the revenue that is created through our Laws for Life program to social impact. So before we talk about what we’re going to do with that, let’s talk about the Laws for Life program for a minute. Sure. So our group Mastermind program, the Mindset for Manifestation, Living the Laws program, you’ve probably heard us talk about before. We haven’t talked about the Laws for Life program because- Those are two different programs, by the way.
Brian
They sound a little similar, but they’re two different programs.
Ani
You don’t get invited to the Laws for Life program until you’ve gone through the Mindset for Manifestation, Living the Laws program. So folks study with us for a year. They learn about the natural laws. They learn how to manifest. They learn how to embody the natural laws and become powerful creators in their lives through the Mindset for Manifestation program. They do that work with us for a year, and after that, they get invited to continue to be in community with us in the Laws for Life program. So it’s that program that we’re talking about. So we are giving a percentage of the revenue from the Laws for Life program to causes. But there’s a little bit of- We haven’t decided what those causes are yet because the members of the participants in the Laws for Life program are going to help us decide that. Together, let me finish my thought. Together, we are going to collaborate on which causes we would like to support. And then together, we are going to pick them, and together, we are going to support them. And one of the reasons that this is really important is because as creators in our own life, the first thing we need to do is basically learn how to create for ourselves with positive reciprocity.
Ani
And then that’s what we do in the Mindset for Manifestation, Living the Laws program. And then, if you really want this to be a way of life, we understand ourselves ourselves as powerful creators for ourselves and together in community. And so we’re really embodying this philosophy in the Laws for Life program by together figuring this out. And together, the manifestations that we want to have as a collective. Our small collective in the Laws for Life program becomes what we hope for the larger collective, the world.
Brian
Yeah. So the people that have chosen, decided to be a part of the Laws for Life program, our people that are consciously deciding to be a part of the movement to raise the consciousness on the planet, along with us, with all the practices and the teachings and all the alignment and integration of natural lives that we do as a part of that ongoing program. So this is the growing number of people who’ve decided to partner and co-create along with us here at the academy to help make the world a more just, equitable, compassionate, creative, and empowered place.
Ani
Yeah, I’m really excited for it. Yeah, I’m too. It’s fun for us as a company because these are things that we’ve not just dabbled and we’ve done. But to bring it all together in 2026 like this. It feels really good. Yeah.
Brian
And apparently, it’s a one year. So it’s the year of starting something new.
Ani
Oh, yeah. If you’re into numerology, It’s a one year. So, yeah, this is how we’re starting off on the right foot.
Brian
All right, my friends. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast.
Ani
Yeah. And we want to hear your thoughts. So if you can, comment below. If you can’t, join us on social media. Our handle is always Somatic Coaching Academy. And of course, you can send us an email, info@somaticcoachingacademy.com. We want to know how you’re thinking about yourself as a creator. We want to know what you’re creating in 2026. And hey, if there was anything that we said that inspired you, we’d love to hear that, too.
Brian
We look forward to co-creating right alongside you in the new year.
Ani
We’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.
