Transcript

Brian
Hi, welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Here we are for episode 132. Ani, how are you?

Ani
I’m good. Brian, how are you today?

Brian
I’m doing well, thanks so much.

Ani
That’s great. That’s great.

Brian
I’m excited for our episode today.

Ani
I am excited to find out what all of those notes are for. You took a tremendous amount of notes.

Brian
There’s a story in there we’re going to tell today. It’s going to be story time.

Ani
I thought it was probably research.

Brian
Well, it is. I’ve researched the story.

Ani
Okay, okay, okay.

Brian
So today we’re talking about when saying woo is untrue.

Ani
Woo? Yeah, like woo woo.

Brian
Like woo Woo. Yeah. Like, where does that come from? What does it mean? We’re going to break that down because

Ani
that’s a good story.

Brian
Hear that a lot, that word a lot, don’t we?

Ani
People ask us that about the Somatic Coaching Academy. How woo is it? Is it a lot of woo? Are you woo? Is there a lot of woo Woo? How much woo is there? Yeah, people want to know. And I think it’s a word that gets thrown around, like, without an awareness of where that word actually comes from. Because I think that a lot of people, once they know where woo woo comes from, they wouldn’t say it all the time.

Brian
Yeah. So, yeah, there’s definitely truth in that for sure. I also think when it comes to the idea of woo is when someone uses it, the way someone’s using it says more about them than about what they’re talking about.

Ani
Ooh. We just had this happen the other day. I was on Instagram and somebody was tossing around woo in a very dismissive way, like, well, I mean, come buy my thing because it’s not woo. Dismiss. Dismiss.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. So let’s break it down because everything we’re just leaning into right here leads into all this other research and all these notes.

Ani
Yeah, great. So let’s. You’ve got a lot of notes.

Brian
You had to get a definition to start off with, by the way.

Ani
Well, yes, we had to go to the.

Brian
We had to go to the dictionary and get it.

Ani
I’m actually interested.

Brian
What is, what’s the definition of woo or woo?

Ani
Woo, yeah.

Brian
Well, it’s an unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine.

Ani
Ooh, that is so interesting. Boom. Mic drop right at the end. First of all, my skin is crawling. So I just have to say that it’s pretty well documented now in terms of how many people use complementary and alternative health, that it’s basically like a lot of people, most people, the majority of people actually go speak to some kind of alternative health professional before they go see their doctor. A very large percentage. And so I just think it’s funny we’re even calling it alternative health anymore. And then there’s alternative health right there

Brian
in the definition, potentially the definition of woo.

Ani
Right, right. Which again has this connotation of being weird and not talking about not scientifically relevant. Like, well, here’s unexplainable, here’s the synonyms.

Brian
So I’ll kind of help you out with the synonyms, which is what you’re kind of going after here. So the synonyms are supernatural, paranormal, occult, esotericism. Esoteric, yeah.

Ani
I was gonna ask you if you couldn’t read your own handwriting there.

Brian
Wackery, blackery. Those are, those are the synonyms for woo, which is kind of interesting because when we hear people say something is woo, there’s actually plenty of scientific evidence for it, which tells me that they just don’t understand the scientific evidence for it. It’s not that it’s actually by definition woo, they just don’t understand it. And because they don’t understand it, they’re dismissing it as woo.

Ani
Right. So I’m not going to take the time and energy to understand these things, but rather I’m just going to say, well, believe me, because this isn’t woo. Yeah.

Brian
So the definition, the definition continues to go on to say that it’s often used as cultural dismissal as a ways as used to marginalize spiritual, indigenous alternative health practices, including yoga, reiki, energy work, those sorts of things.

Ani
Preach.

Brian
Yeah, so. So it’s often used that way as a way to culturally dismiss ancient indigenous, religious, sometimes alternative mouth, alternative health practices. So that’s why I was saying, I often think when people use the word or term woo, it says more about them than it does about the thing that they’re ascribing it to.

Ani
Absolutely when we’re talking about an expert, you know, talking about that stuff, when we’re talking about people who are ask us, I think what they’re trying to say is like, is this based in anything? Or can you explain what you’re doing? Or if I get involved with you all Somatic Coaching Academy, are you just going to tell me to do stuff that you can’t explain or tell me how it works? Because our people want to know how

Brian
things work and I want to know how it works.

Ani
Absolutely. But there’s a lot of stuff that. There’s so much stuff out there, people out there talking about stuff and they don’t understand how it works.

Brian
So I will also say this though too. I have experiences in my life on a daily basis that I have no idea how they work. But I’m also not going to dismiss that I had that experience.

Ani
Sure.

Brian
Right. So. So that comes into this too. So the other idea is, is do we always. Do we. In order to validate an experience that you have, do you have to have it be explained some way scientifically?

Ani
Well, I’m so glad you’re bringing this up. And I don’t know if this is. I don’t think this is exactly where you want to go on the podcast for the whole podcast, but I just have a big bugaboo with the fact that we have this culture that if you can’t explain it, it’s not real.

Brian
Yep. Yeah. So we’re invalidating experience because, I mean,

Ani
if the science doesn’t say it, then it didn’t happen. Science is always changing.

Brian
Science is always behind too. It is the science.

Ani
If you look at it’s retrospect.

Brian
Exactly. If you look at the history of scientific discovery, the reason why scientists try to prove something is because there is an experience that they or the or society is having that has not yet been explained. So there’s. There’s an experience being had and so then studies are set up to try to explain it. So it’s interesting that woo actually always leads to scientific discoveries. But let’s get to that in a minute. What we want to talk about is the origin of that word. For a moment, I found as I scrubbed the Internet as I could, as far as I could without using AI by the way, I scrubbed it myself because I didn’t want to trust AI to do the scrubbing.

Ani
It’s really good because it’s just mixed up.

Brian
I didn’t know what AI was going to come back with, so I looked at it myself. And so here’s here’s what I came up with. Two basic ideas for where the word or term woo generator from. So one is from the sounds from sci fi, horror movies or ghosts. Oh, that’s maybe that’s where it generated from. Because it’s kind of like that stuff can’t be explained. So it’s like.

Ani
Okay, that was one.

Brian
That’s.

Ani
That’s funny.

Brian
That was a definition, was pretty broadly referenced through multiple sites that I looked at. Okay, so that’s one.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
I’m actually just giving this as examples. I’m not saying any of these are accurate or true. I don’t know. I’m just giving examples of what I scrubbed and found. Now the other one refers back to in before common era. So earlier than 2,000 years ago in Chinese medicine, there was a position that a person could hold called a wu W U. And this person was typically a shaman or a priestess. So they’re typically a female. A wu practitioner. I don’t think practitioners on the second part of this word, but as a wu, either shaman or Wu priestess, that’s what that word stood for. And this typically female person would be someone who prayed, performed rituals and was a. Was a cornerstone of society at the time around healing practices.

Ani
Yeah. So using woo. Woo is actually a subtle unconscious way to put down women.

Brian
Right. So when the patriarchal system started to be, you know, come to power, this is a way to marginalize, discredit, and even worse to women in those positions that were powerful and important, important parts of societies.

Ani
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian
So, yep. That’s another thing that I found as I scrubbed the Internet. So I found those two kind of ideas. I’m just presenting them out there that this is another potential way that. Yeah, patriarchal systems have marginalized the importance of women in healing practices or important

Ani
societal roles, powerful positions.

Brian
So anyway, so that’s. So that’s kind of there as well.

Ani
Yep.

Brian
Okay, so is it woo? So when someone says it’s woo, is it really woo? In other words, is there really no scientific evidence for it? Is it really paranormal? Is it really supernatural? Is it really pseudoscience? Or is it just that someone doesn’t understand it and doesn’t care to understand it? That’s my question. That’s the whole idea of when saying woo actually is untrue. Because just because you say it’s woo doesn’t mean it’s not true. It just means that you may not understand the mechanisms behind why something is the way that it is.

Ani
So preach, Brian.

Brian
I find me when I can’t. If I find myself saying, not that I ever really use that term at all, but if I find myself, in a way thinking that something is. Isn’t valid, I will do whatever I can to extinguish all the possibilities of me understanding why it is or isn’t valid before I will actually call it something like supernatural or pseudoscience or something like that.

Ani
Yeah, but most people don’t do that.

Brian
Well, I’m just presenting that. That, That’s.

Ani
I appreciate that you do, but most people don’t do that.

Brian
But when we come to the idea of woo, I think this is important because using that term inappropriately or even unconsciously is. Either presents a sense that a person doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to understand, but it also is a way to culturally dismiss certain things that are valid. And it’s another way to marginalize the role of potentially powerful women in history

Ani
and indigenous cultures and the natural laws in the universe. Yeah.

Brian
So let’s. Let’s. Let’s just kind of bring this to this for a second. At one time, I have a list of things here that, at one time, by definition, these things were. Woo. You ready?

Ani
Oh, I’m so ready.

Brian
Okay. The world is round.

Ani
Crazy.

Brian
Who here on the podcast thinks that the world is flat? Anybody?

Ani
Well, some people do. I think there’s a whole society.

Brian
Well, folks.

Ani
But okay, they don’t. Probably are not listening.

Brian
Most people. Most people know the world is round. Yeah, but at one time, if you believe the world was round, that was crazy. That could cost you your life.

Ani
Yeah, right.

Brian
Because it was not scientifically valid. And then. So you could lose your life and then be like, oops, they were right. I got another one for you. The Earth orbits the sun. That was one time a Woo. And very dangerous idea to believe that the Earth orbited the sun rather than the sun orbiting the Earth. Copernicus. Right. He paid the ultimate price for that crazy when you think about it. Right. Yeah, but by definition, at one time that was woohoo.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
So I’m just helping you to consider, like, what you’re calling woo today may actually be true, not woo tomorrow. You just don’t have the. Yeah, work a little thing there. Okay, I got another one for you.

Ani
Made sense.

Brian
How about this one? This is one of my favorites. And this is where the story comes in. Washing your hands stops the spread of disease. That was at one time. That was Woo. And here’s the story.

Ani
Very dangerous.

Brian
I got a whole story about it. Okay, so.

Ani
Well, I just. I mean, like, we now know that is the main way to stop this credit system.

Brian
Yeah, but listen to the story around it. Listen to what it cost. Cost. Ignaz Seimo Weis. He was. He was credited with the most significant breakthrough in medical history in 1847. Okay. That. When he was working in Vienna General Hospital, Semmelweis realized that physicians were transmitting deadly. He called them cadaverous particles from autopsies to mothers in a maternity ward, causing high mortality rate from what they called childbed fever. Okay, so here’s the story.

Ani
Oh, my gosh.

Brian
In the mid-19th century, hospitals were often considered dangerous and women frequently died from childbed fever after giving birth. At Vienna General Hospital there were two maternity clinics. Get this. There are two maternity clinics in the hospital. The first clinic was staffed by medical students and doctors where mortality rates were extremely high, sometimes exceeding 18%. The second clinic staffed by midwives, where mortality rates were significantly lower. Semmelweis was tasked with finding out why. He ruled out overcrowding and climate, but noted that the first clinic doctors frequently went straight from the morgue to the labor ward performing internal exams without washing their hands. The key insight came after a colleague of his, Jacob Calisteca, died from an infection after being accidentally pricked by a student’s knife during an autopsy. Semmelweis noted that his colleague’s symptoms mirrored those of the dying mothers.

Ani
Oh my God.

Brian
So some ways hypothesized that cadaverous particles transferred from corpses to mothers bloodstreams caused the fever. He ordered all medical staff to wash their hands in chlorinated lime solution to remove the smell of decay and the particles themselves before examining patients. The effect was immediate and dramatic. Mortality rates in the first clinic plunged from over 18% to below 2% within months, matching the safety level of the midwives clinic. Get this. Despite his success, Semmelweis faced intense backlash from the medical establishment. Doctors felt insulted as they were gentlemen, and did not believe their hands could be dirty or deadly.

Ani
Oh my gosh. Are you kidding? Oh my goodness.

Brian
Because germ theory, that microscopic germs cause disease had not yet been proven. Semmelweis could not explain how his method worked, only that it did. His ideas were ignored and mocked and he was eventually forced out of his position in Vienna. Tragically, Semmelweis suffered a mental breakdown due to the relentless rejection of his findings. In 1865, he was committed to an asylum where he was beaten by guards and died from an infection in his hands. The very disease he had sought to prevent.

Ani
Oh my gosh.

Brian
And of course, now we know Today he was absolutely right. Germs on the hands of doctors doing autopsies without washing their hands and then delivering babies was causing sepsis in the mothers. Wow.

Ani
Wow. That story is incredible.

Brian
Powerful story, right?

Ani
Incredible.

Brian
Talk about the dangers of woo. The dangers of seeing that something’s working, but just because we can’t explain it, we’re going to ridicule it, marginalize it, and refuse to wash our hands because we can’t be dirty, which will continue to cause more death.

Ani
It reminds the backlash part of that reminds me of the stories that current day researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about when she has brought her new science of how emotions work to her colleagues. And the immense backlash that she has had to tolerate and be a part of because people are so ingrained in their long held beliefs about how things work. Right. And I think to your point, whether people realize it or not, they feel like it’s tied to their identity.

Brian
We’re gentlemen. We can’t. We, we will not have dirty hands. We, we can’t have dirty hands because we’re gentlemen tied to their identity. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Candace Pert dealt with very much the same thing too with her research around the molecules of emotion. Right. And she had a massive backlash from the community at that time also.

Ani
Wow.

Brian
That molecules could be. That molecules in the body could be any way related to psychological processes sort of things.

Ani
Yeah, yeah.

Brian
So here’s some other things on our list of what at one time.

Ani
You’ve got more. I do got more in this. Holy cow, Brian. That story was just, that was really powerful.

Brian
Right, but your heart is electrical.

Ani
Well, yeah.

Brian
1906, Dr. Einsteven created the first EKG electrocardiogram. Before that, people didn’t believe that your heart had an electrical current.

Ani
Well, how about the heart field stuff?

Brian
Because, well, that’s next.

Ani
Well, we lived through that one. Like, I don’t know what you’re gonna say about when that happened, but I remember being in, gosh, was I in my master’s degree or was I in massage school when there was this debate with my colleagues around whether or not the heart had a field. And heart math was just starting to come online and people were not happy about that, that research.

Brian
Right. But it’s, you know what, it’s there now. Meditation was once. Was once.

Ani
You.

Brian
Woo. And now there’s an overwhelming amount of research on the value and benefits of meditation. Yoga, tai chi, qigong were once. Woo. Now there’s plenty of evidence for all of those practices around how beneficial they are for health. But one time they were marginalized at one time. They were discredited, all those things. And to your point with this last one, Ani, that the body is an energy field, so there is a heart field, there’s a magnetic field associated with the heart that exerts its influence outside of the actual physical body itself. That’s been proven. Now, it’s not woo. That’s scientifically proven. I don’t know what else to say about it other than that.

Ani
Part of your point here is that at first something’s woo, and then we find out it’s true. But it takes a long time.

Brian
Long time. And it takes. And it takes longer time. We fight it. Okay.

Ani
It takes a long time because we’re fighting it. And then people start to research it while we’re still. Still using the old textbooks and still the new practitioners who are coming in are being taught by the old paradigms. Right?

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
And how long does it take to not only change the way people think about it and change the research that’s being done on it, but start to change the conversations that people are having in colleges and universities to then get to the place where we change the textbooks? It takes forever. Do you know, I was talking to somebody who was in medical school, this was probably like two years ago, and they were talking about how doctors don’t learn anything about helping breastfeeding mothers. Because still the science is not conclusive or whatever. It’s not in the textbook yet that breastfeeding is good for the baby. We know that kind of. I think the science has kind of caught up with that, but it’s not in the textbooks yet. And the doctors aren’t being taught that. Right. How long is it going to take for doctors to be taught the new science of emotions, for example, in colleges and universities? And for that to be in the textbooks, it’s going to take another 100, 200 years, whatever.

Brian
It could. Yeah, yeah. So just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it mystical. I mean, that’s like just a point I want to just get across. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it mystical. And holding too firmly to what you think, you know, limits your evolution.

Ani
Yeah, right.

Brian
There’s. I just want to kind of close with one of my favorite quotes from Price Pritchett.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
Said absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Ani
That’s a great quote.

Brian
Right. So just, like, let that one kind of resonate.

Ani
Yeah. Do it again.

Brian
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. In other words, experience your experiences, learn to come into relationship with what you’re experiencing in your life that maybe not yet can be explained scientifically because science takes time and science evolves.

Ani
And value yourself enough to value your

Brian
experiences and keep seeking your experiences. Keep seeking answers to what it is that you experience in your life with an openness and a valuing to Ani’s point and a trusting that those experiences for you are important. They’re important for you.

Ani
They matter.

Brian
And keep sinking and opening up space for other people’s experiences to be valued and be important as well. And if you don’t understand something, seek the answers for it to the best of your variability before you declare them as being pseudoscience, strange, paranormal, whatever it is.

Ani
Because you’re if you’re writing something off as woo, it’s actually a closed minded way of thinking about it. Wow.

Brian
Wow. Powerful. So go wash your hands people. Go wash your hands and lean into those discoveries that were once marginalized that now have made our lives so much more better.

Ani
Yeah. Wow. Thanks Brian. Super cool episode. We will see you next week and thanks for that today. All right, bye bye.

Brian
See you soon. Bye.