Transcript

Ani
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. We are on episode 127 today. Good morning, Brian.

Brian
Good morning, Ani.

Ani
How are you?

Brian
I’m doing well. I’m doing well.

Ani
Good.

Brian
And I need to. Actually, before we even get started with this podcast, I have to publicly apologize to you.

Ani
Really?

Brian
Yes. I feel like I need to publicly apologize to you for your coffee breath. For my coffee breath every week. So at the very end of last week’s webinar podcast thing, that’s what we’re doing right now. The podcast. Right.

Ani
Yes. Listen, I’m getting an apology. I want to make sure I’ve all.

Brian
You’re totally right about that. You’re totally right about that. So at the end of last week’s podcast cast podcast, you offered an example, an analogy of when like a light bulb circuit, an electrical circuit with a light bulb, and that when resistance is less, that a light bulb burns brighter.

Ani
And did you told me I was wrong?

Brian
Well, I questioned it. I questioned it because I had a recollection. And when you were talking about that I had a recollection of a high school physics experiment that I had done where we had light bulbs, three light bulbs in a circuit in order, and the light bulb with the most resistance in it burned the brightest.

Ani
Oh, well, I think that’s pretty awesome that you remembered that.

Brian
That’s why I’m not sure that it works that way. And immediately after the podcast, I was like, I questioned myself and said there’s. There’s something about your analogy that seems like it should be right. So I went and looked it up immediately. And I don’t know if you remember, but I apologize to you immediately after I looked up the fact that we’re both right. That you are actually right also because in a, in a parallel circuit.

Ani
Hang on. I want to sit back and enjoy. This is so good.

Brian
Well, in a series circuit. First of all, the. What I remembered is a series circuit in physics where you have like, remember like Christmas Lights. And when one Christmas light will. Would burn out, they would all burn out. That’s a series circuit where, like, everyone is. They’re all sharing. They’re all sharing the electricity. So if you have 120 volts of electricity going through that circuit, they’re all sharing it. Now, in that case, if one of the bulbs has more resistance, it will take more of the electricity, so it will burn brighter.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
However, in a parallel circuit, which are like what are in houses, all of the bulbs get the same amount of electricity. They’re not sharing it. They all get that 120 volts. And in that case, you’re right that a bulb with less resistance will burn brighter in that case. So I think it’s kind of funny that in. In some cases the bulb with more resistance burns brighter, other cases with lesser resistance burns brighter. But what I want to say is you were actually, you were right. So I wanted to apologize to you. Thank you for making that correction without all of the information. So you were right about that.

Ani
Thanks. I know being accurate really matters to you. I really didn’t take it all that personally.

Brian
Well, I, you know, it was important to me to, like, you know, like, claim the fact and come right out and so, like, I immediately apologized to you within minutes after the podcast got off, but the listeners have been waiting a week for me to apologize.

Ani
I bet everybody was waiting for it, weren’t you?

Brian
Yeah. Well, and actually, you know, the way we do the recordings, we did that last recording over a month ago, so I’ve been waiting a month. I have been personally waiting a month to publicly apologize to you because it’s been kind of eating at me for the last month. But for the listeners of last week. But anyway, so what? That whole experience kind of activated for me an idea for a podcast.

Ani
Okay. This one.

Brian
Is it gonna be this exact podcast?

Ani
Okay. So we’re talking today about how awesome it is when your husband apologizes to you publicly on this episode of the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Is that our topic?

Brian
That is our topic. Yeah. The topic is actually when growth. When growth. When growth feels wrong. So I felt. I felt wrong all week. All month, actually. Well, week for the listeners. A month long. For me, I felt wrong all month because.

Ani
Yeah. Why?

Brian
Well, because I was taught as a kid that being accurate was really important.

Ani
Oh.

Brian
And so I was not. I was not accurate when I corrected you?

Ani
Sure.

Brian
So I was like, the whole story wasn’t there. So it’s really important for me to immediately correct my inaccuracies and so when I felt, when I had that, when I was being inaccurate, and I learned that being inaccurate is important and being inaccurate. Being accurate is important, and being inaccurate and holding to it, inaccuracy is actually like a lie for me. And so that. That felt like something in my body.

Ani
Right.

Brian
Because of what I was taught.

Ani
You had a visceral reaction.

Brian
Exactly. Because what I was taught was right and what was wrong. And so it felt like a pressure in my heart. Like, immediately after the podcast, I had this pressure in my heart, like, I need to solve this. I need to figure out what’s actually the truth, what’s accurate around it. And then I felt a little bit better after I apologized to you, but I was like, I still need to make a public statement about this. So for me, that felt like a pressure in my heart when I was holding on to not explaining or voicing or exposing an inaccuracy.

Ani
Does that feel like morally wrong to you? Like, I’m just thinking about how all of us are taught what’s right and what’s wrong by our parents, and there’s some right and wrongs that are, like, really important. So I was just curious. Like, I get.

Brian
I mean, I guess if you’re using the word morally as a gradation for how important it is skin.

Ani
Because people ask us about that sometimes, and I think it’s interesting. Kind of like, well, there’s. There’s this right and wrong, and then there’s like, morally wrong, like, did. Anyway, we don’t have to go down that rabbit hole. I just thought it was like, good people don’t do that kind of thing.

Brian
Sure. Well, I don’t know if it’s good people bad. For me personally, it’s hard for me to speak about that generally.

Ani
Yes.

Brian
Like, other people. Yeah, of course. But. But for me personally, accuracy is really important. And. And even if I’m. I’m voicing that I was the one that was inaccurate, that feels better to me because I am correcting the accuracy. Right. I’m getting the accuracy. I’m not holding on that I need to be right.

Ani
Sure.

Brian
I don’t need to be right.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
I need to be. I need to be accurate. So in this case right here, it feels better for me to say, listen, I was wrong, you were right. Because. Because I’m laying out the accuracy of it right. So I don’t need to hold on of being right about it. But what I do need to lay out is, hey, this is the way. To my best of my knowledge, the research that I’ve done around it that this is the way it works. That’s what’s important to me.

Ani
I know this value.

Brian
Even if. Even if it’s making me, like, look bad, I don’t care about that.

Ani
Where’s your growth here? You said something about growth being wrong. Like, what’s the growth for you?

Brian
Well, it actually kind of leads with. It’s not really personally about me in that way. It’s just leading into the idea that we’re taught things when we’re young. So for me, I was taught that being accurate was right. Right. Being accurate was a good thing to do. And then when I’m not accurate, that feels like something in my body. So what? I’m just trying to make the connection right now for everybody that we’re taught things when we’re young, and some of the things we’re taught are. Are healthy and empowering for us. And some of the things we’re taught when we’re young are disempowering for us and limiting. And limiting. Right. Some of the things we’re taught as young, we’re taught that we’re not good enough. We’re not taught we’re not smart enough. We’re taught that we’re not the right color or the right gender or the right whatever.

Ani
We’re not pretty.

Brian
Right. So those are things we’re taught when. When we’re young. And the linkage I’m making here is that when we go against what we were taught when we were young, it feels like something in the body. So for me, it felt like pressure in my heart, pressure in my chest, and it felt wrong for me to not correct that. And so the idea is that when we’re tossing. That’s young. When we’re young, even if it’s something limiting for us as we get older, when we challenge those limitations, it feels like something in the body.

Ani
Sure. So I remember when I was a kid, I was praised for being really smart, you know, gifted and talented programs, whatever. And so I was praised a lot for being smart. I don’t think anybody ever told me it’s, like, wrong to be dumb and it’s right to be smart. But it was definitely accentuated that it was. It was good that I was smart. I was praised for that. And then I remember at a certain time in my business development, I was coming up against a lot of fear around hosting other experts on podcasts and webinars and things like that. I was having a lot of fear about maybe saying the wrong thing or doing the Wrong thing. One of the things I recognized was that it felt wrong not to be the smartest one in the room. And it felt like something like it was really confronting in my body. And I would have a lot of resistance come up to having those kinds of conversations with other people for fear that I wouldn’t know what to say.

Brian
Do you remember what it felt like in your body?

Ani
Yeah, I was really gripped. I was like really, really tense and I would get frog in my throat hot. But it was mostly like a kind of a freeze response, like a shutdown kind of thing. Very, very tense. And like I couldn’t, couldn’t really move. And I had to do some deconditioning with myself around that to recognize that it’s not right or wrong, you know, to be in a room with other experts doesn’t make me less smart or wrong or anything. It was a huge growth point in my life to, to get through that visceral reaction into a place where I actually felt really comfortable being around people who were smarter than me. Well, actually, including you, because I used to get really. I don’t know if you remember this.

Brian
I remember.

Ani
Oh. Oh, you do? Oh. I wasn’t sure if it was punctuated that much that you would remember, but how about that? I used to get like that around you. Like, I used to kind of fight with you because there was no way I could compete with your, you know, all the things that you just said about accuracy and the way that you think and you know, you’re more of a brainiac and I’m more of like the heart centered person. And so there was like no way I could compete with that. And it was very confronting to me. And I felt, I felt like I had to defend myself all the time.

Brian
Yeah. And I, and I was really actually kind of confused about, about that dynamic between us because I never felt like I needed to be right. I was just always compelled to like, get to the, the quote, unquote, like, accuracy of it or the truth about whatever it was.

Ani
Right.

Brian
And so when I would question things, I wasn’t, I wasn’t questioning your intellect or your experience. I was just trying to understand better so I can get more accuracy.

Ani
Right. And you would ask questions and I thought that you were challenging how smart I was. And I, I didn’t feel all that smart. And so that was, you know, I got really defensive about it. Yeah.

Brian
But for me. But isn’t it funny? Like, I was just really going after, like, I need to know more information.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
I remember data finding of Data collecting.

Ani
I remember when we finally realized that that was a part of our dynamic, that you were just asking questions to get more data, which I never really do. So it’s like, why do you do that? It was. It was this really. I mean, it was both freeing and it was. Required more growth to be able to step into conversations over and over and over again where you would ask questions and I wouldn’t get defensive and have to rewire that. Yeah, we’re doing a really good job with it now, though, so that’s.

Brian
Yeah. So if I. We rewind that for a second. Ani, what I heard you say is that you had this belief that you needed to be the smartest one in the room.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And when you were around other people who were also smart, that felt confronting for you and challenging for you. Yeah. And that sounds like that was confronting the. The. Or challenging the belief that then you might be exposed as not being the smartest person in the room.

Ani
Yeah. It’s not. Yes. And it’s not just that. I mean, I grew up in the performing arts. Only one person gets the part.

Brian
Okay.

Ani
So, like. And it’s not always the smartest person who gets the part, by the way, but only one person gets the part. So there’s this kind of inherent competitiveness, I guess, for like, whatever it is, being the. The est. The smartest, the tallest, the, you know, prettiest, the.

Brian
Sure.

Ani
Most talentedest, whatever. So I think there’s just this. And I think that was more what I grew up with. And my parents weren’t they. They didn’t, like, do that. It’s not like they were egging me on in terms of being the bestest, but only one person got the part, so there had to be a top dog.

Brian
Okay. Got you. Got you. So what I’m kind of gleaning from both of our sharings here, and I think kind of an interesting and a cool point to share with everybody is that we’re wired with beliefs at very young ages. Okay. We don’t get to pick what those beliefs are because our parents, our grandparents, our teachers, our community members, our cast member, whatever we’re a part of actually feed and help to build those beliefs within us. And they get wired into our nervous system. And the way a belief protects itself from being changed is it feels like something when it’s confronted. It feels like something in the body. So for me, when I was. When I discovered, you know, last month that I was not accurate and I needed to. I needed to correct the inaccuracy I needed to correct it, and as soon as I corrected it, I felt better. So I had that tension and pressure in my chest because I was going against a belief.

Ani
I just want to highlight what you’re saying here, because I think it’s really important is people want to know what their limiting beliefs are, and they chase coursework and books and podcasts and et cetera, et cetera, to try to figure out their beliefs. Beliefs feel like something.

Brian
Yep, they feel like something.

Ani
They feel like something. And when you have some kind of reaction or, you know, strong, visceral something going on about an issue, there’s a belief there. Like, that’s actually one of the best ways to figure out that there’s a belief system.

Brian
Exactly. And here’s the other thing is whether we’re talking about a belief that a person wants to keep. Like, so for me, I want to keep the idea that being accurate and truthful is important. I want to keep that belief. I don’t want to change that belief. I want to keep that belief. I mean, I’d like to soften any parts around it that may become polarized or something like that. But in general, I think that’s a pretty good belief to have go through life, treat everybody, let go of my own personal needs, to have it be a certain way, and look what actually is showing up in a way that is showing up that’s, I think, compelling to do in life. So I’ve got a belief I want to keep. Now, there’s other beliefs that I might not want to keep. You know, there might be beliefs that I’m not good enough to do a certain thing. I’m not good enough to be in certain places. I’m not smart enough or tall enough or strong enough or whatever. Like, those also might be beliefs that I actually want to transcend or move past. The idea, though, here is to understand that whether it’s a belief that you want to keep or it’s a belief that you want to transcend and let go of, your nervous system protects the belief the same way in either case.

Brian
So, like when, you know, for parents, when their. Their kids lie, we actually kind of want them to feel bad, Right? We want them to feel bad so that they’ll correct it and feel better. Does that make sense?

Ani
Yeah, it’s just funny to say out loud.

Brian
Well, we want to because. Because that. That feeling, that tension in their body, that tightness.

Ani
Right, Good.

Brian
And, you know, you could call it guilt, you could call it shame, but if we. If we step away from the emotional Construct around it, we just say feels like something in the body. And it typically feels like some type of constriction or heaviness or intense buzzing or something in the body that someone wants to stop feeling. And so the belief uses that as a way to get you to change your behavior, change what you’re doing. So in some cases, a belief that we want to keep your body, your nervous system, creates distress in the body. So that will correct it and correct the lie. But it works the other way, too. For someone who wants to create more in their life, have more money or have more visibility or have better relationships or have even better health, if there’s a limiting belief getting in the way of them creating those things in their lives, it’ll feel the same way in their body.

Ani
Right. Which is one of the reasons why the idea that we should just blatantly listen to our body, just listen to your body, is tough. Or if it’s not a hell yes or a hell no, which is one of my bugaboos, you know. But the. The fact is that our body can and will protect our beliefs in ways that if we don’t understand what’s going on in our subconscious, we could just be following our limitations and be chalking it up to this is the right thing to do.

Brian
Yeah. So for people who are trying to, let’s just say, grow their businesses and they’ve got to do some things, they maybe have to do some sales in their business, have to do some, you know, have conversations with potential clients in order to invite them to work with you. That would technically kind of be a sales process. Or maybe they need to do some speaking to be able to market their businesses. And when they go to do the speaking or when they go to apply to the speaking, they feel tense, they feel tight. When they go to have a conversation that has to do with asking someone to enroll in their services, they. They have tension, they have tightness in their body because there’s likely limiting belief operating that tells them they’re not good enough, smart enough, whatever it happens to be. And so the. The opposite side, where. When I was telling that inaccuracy and it felt bad and I corrected it because I wanted to align with the belief. If you meet a limiting belief and you do the same thing, you keep that limiting belief in place. So in other words, if I’m about to have a conversation with somebody about enrolling in some of our services and.

Brian
And I have a limiting belief around asking for that, and I get tension in my throat, tension in My gut, wherever it is, and I go, oh, like, this must be wrong. Well, it feels wrong. It must be wrong.

Ani
You’re reminding me from your example with people trying to be more visible in their business. I remember I had a client who was trying to figure out what topic she should speak on at conferences and things like that. And it was really interesting because she would have an idea about a topic and then her body would get tense and she would think, well, that must mean that I shouldn’t talk about that topic. And so she’d pick another topic and her body would get tense and she was waiting for the topic where the angels would come out and sing and she would feel amazing. And, you know, that was going to be the topic because it was quote, unquote aligned. And it felt good because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Right. But what happened was she picked one topic didn’t feel great, two topics didn’t feel great, three topics didn’t feel great. And then she started to get really confused six months later, still trying to find the topic, you know, and when actually it wasn’t finding the topic that was the problem. The problem was the tension in the body that was telling her that she was wrong, that she was wrong, translated as the topic was wrong.

Brian
Correct. Yeah. Right. Because it sounds like every one of those topics actually challenged her limiting beliefs.

Ani
Absolutely. I mean, just being on the stages challenged her limiting belief. You know, the core limiter she was working with was I’m not good enough. And so it didn’t matter what. What it was. They. They were all not good enough.

Brian
Yeah. So this is why we’re talking about the topic of when growth feels wrong. Because so many people that actually everybody we work with is looking to grow something in their life. Right. They’re looking to grow some aspect of their life. And they all run into what we talk about in terms of resistance to. To that growth. And oftentimes for people, that resistance feels like they’re doing or being something wrong because of the way that we were taught those beliefs. And very early in life that get wired in our nervous system. And again, just the way the beliefs protect themselves is to create tension in the body. They also create a whole stream of thoughts, too. Right. Get both sensations and thoughts in the body when the belief is protecting itself.

Ani
Sure. And I think they grab onto stories, especially stories that were pivotal or, you know, poignant in our lives, and those sensations will grab on to stories. I was having a discussion about this with a client the other day, and they were asking Me, like, can I. Should I be looking at my stories to rewire my patterns? And I was actually saying, no, look at the sensations, to rewire your patterns. Because if you just look at the stories, then, I mean, what’s really happening is your sensation base, which we can actually like get to the bottom of the pattern and rewire the pattern from that. But the sensation base will start to just grab onto stories and so you’ll have this connection with certain stories mean certain things that don’t necessarily mean certain things when you disentangle the sensation base from it. And, and I mean, I’ve just found that to be true over and over again.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. And that’s, that’s why obviously, we are so invested in the working at the sensation level, because we know then we can disentangle the parts of a person’s cognitive processes that keep them all glued down. Right?

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Because when you change your sensation base, the stories actually change themselves.

Ani
The stories change themselves and it lowers the resistance to changing the stories because they’re stories that by all means, like, really have life in us and we’re attached to them and they matter and they mean something. They’ve been stories that we’ve oriented our entire perspectives on for a whole lifetime. Like, they’re, they matter, you know, and when we want to change something and we go through the back door and use a sensation based, we can do that. And I think it also doesn’t like, negate the fact that you led a life based on some of these stories that you believed. It doesn’t have to negate a person by doing that. I mean, for me, when I’m working with a client and I can tell that the resistance is high or the stories really matter, there’s like really serious beliefs I will always entertain. I will always go for the sensation based because I know that I can’t go into that and disentangle that mess on my own intellectual. And actually, I think part of the reason I was able to get there, to be able to be a practitioner who could do that and really let that go, is I had to do all this work like we were talking about in the beginning around letting go of being the smartest person in the room and having to be the expert in the situation and stuff.

Ani
Like, I got better as a practitioner when I was able to release that kind of thing and let the intelligence just kind of be in the room rather than having to own it.

Brian
Yeah. Yeah. So the first big, kind of, the first big lesson of, of this podcast particularly is to remember that whether you are confronting a belief that’s valuable and moral to you or you’re confronting a belief that is no longer serving you, they will feel the same way. And because we’ve been taught about this moral side that when we go against a belief, it feels wrong, we generalize that to also when we want to transcend a limiting belief that it feels wrong. Because your subconscious mind does not distinguish between what beliefs are good or bad. It just always looks at what beliefs are actually there kind of thing. Right? Good and bad system. Yeah, good and bad are strictly cognitive constructs, Right. The subconscious does not have good and bad in there. It just has what’s running. That’s all running.

Ani
That’s it.

Brian
And so we have to be able to consciously decide what beliefs we want to keep and keep running and what beliefs we want to rewire and create new beliefs to keep running. And this is why, again, we tap so much into the sensation base and reprogramming the nervous system itself, right? And this is a cross mapping is the proprietary method we use to do this in our Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program. That’s where we. We been doing this with our own clients for over 20 years now. And this is what we train people in the Somatic Transformation Fundamentals program, that cross mapping method. This is the way that you begin reprogramming your nervous system, which technically is reprogramming your belief systems. Because if I wanted to, I could reprogram my nervous system to no longer value being accurate. And then I could have corrected you last. Last week on the podcast, last month in real life, and I wouldn’t have felt anything about that. I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have a need to apologize. I wouldn’t have a need to correct it. I would. And if someone came to me and said, you know, it’s actually that I would be like, oh, well, it would just not affect me.

Brian
I could reprogram my nervous system to do that. I could program my nervous system to become any kind of person that I want to be. So this is all about choice. This is where the choice comes in. So you might think, well, like, well, gosh, like, what is growth can I. What can I create? Because you look out there in the world and you can see some people that seem to be like they are succeeding in the world. And then you can also look at maybe their behavior isn’t what you would want your behavior to kind of be. And that’s a choice, that’s fine sort of thing. So you have to kind of Start looking at, well, what beliefs do you want to have and what beliefs would you like to transcend? And it’s going to feel wrong to transcend those beliefs. And then you’re going to have to confront the idea, is it really wrong to transcend this belief and use your

Ani
conscious mind to really be able to look at that? Which is tough.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. And one of the key. We talk about this, you know, a bunch ani, but one of the key frameworks when we get to that point with people of, gosh, is this wrong to change this belief? One of the key things is, is it. Is it robbing someone else of choice for you to change that belief? And if the answer is no, then really, from a moral construct, it’s not necessarily wrong as long as not robbing someone else’s choice for you to improve or grow yourself and to challenge one of those limiting beliefs. But you have to have a way to reprogram it at the level of the nervous system and the sensory system. And when you can do that, you can basically reprogram any beliefs in your nervous system in order to create what it is that you really want to create in your life. So that then you can just pick any talk topic, for instance.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And feel like, hey, this is the one. I just want to share this one. I just want to do this one. And there’s no internal resistance to it and no, like all kinds of confronting thoughts and confusion and all that kind of stuff.

Ani
Yeah. Yeah. I love this topic. It just comes up for so many people.

Brian
Yeah. So remember, when growth feels wrong, question yourself. Is it really wrong? Or is it because my nervous system is sending me signals that I am confronting a limiting belief that’s in my way of creating what I really want in life. My. My life. That’s the question to ask yourself.

Ani
It’s a great question, Brian. And don’t ever hesitate to send me a link to this podcast so I can re listen to my husband publicly acknowledging me over and over again.

Brian
So maybe I’ll just do more things inaccurate on purpose so that I can apologize.

Ani
Appreciate it.

Brian
Absolutely.

Ani
All right, thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next week.

Brian
Bye. Bye. Bye.

Ani
Bye.