Brian
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Ani, how are you?
Ani
I’m good, thanks. How are you today, Brian?
Brian
Super excited for today’s topic. It’s part four in our series of the Top 10 Questions. All right. Here we are. We’ve got our top 10 questions that we’re doing in this week, on the top 10 questions are…
Ani
The top 10 questions that bodyworkers have about somatic coaching.
Brian
Bodyworkers. This is great. We are both… Well, both have a bodyworking history.
Ani
We have that in our background. When we say body workers, I think another way to say that would be manual therapists.
Brian
Yeah, and underneath that umbrella could be massage therapists. It could be people that do Swedish massage, deep tissue massage, trigger point therapy, Reiki, energy medicine.
Ani
Yeah, you might even be an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, things like that.
Brian
Yeah, you’re working with people’s bodies. Typically, you think about it with your hands.
Ani
Yeah, exactly. Brian has his background and degree in physical therapy. I have mine in occupational therapy. Both of us went on to get our massage therapy licenses and a lot of other certifications. Both of us left the Western Medical System to start holistic private pay practices. In those, we were doing, I would say, quite a bit.
Brian
A core part of what we were doing was bodyworking.
Ani
Hands-on stuff.
Brian
I really like… I think in my private practice, it was 100%. I was doing 100% of the time I was working with people’s bodies as a manual therapist, which is part of what I wanted to do. Manual therapy? Yeah, manual therapy, which is why I went out on my own, too.
Ani
Right. I was doing more energy work, which is why I went out on my own. That’s actually why I got my massage therapy degree is because I was doing energy work and wanted to be able to do that without any doctor’s orders or anything like that. I was doing primarily energy work before I went into a more manual therapeutic.
Brian
Right. So you actually do craniosacral. Let’s put craniosacral work in here, too, right? Yes. As an important part of it.
Ani
Yeah. That hands-on, gosh, I think, like you said, almost all of my sessions were hands-on sessions until I started adding… Well, we did some home exercise programming with some somatic practices and things like that. Then I started to include some coaching into my practice before I then decided like, Hey, I really dig this. My hands feel better at the end of the day. You know what a big thing for me, too, was I had so much more energy at the end of the day. I got to this place in my body working practice where it wasn’t just my hands, I was feeling really depleted. I would have people ask me, How are you in other people’s energy space all day long? I didn’t see 10 people a day. I think I saw five. But still, I was energy depleted at the end of the day. And once I started coaching, I would get out of a coaching session and have more energy than when I started. And I thought, I like that.
Brian
I was still seeing probably between seven and 10 people a day, even in my own practice. Sometimes working like- You’re pretty hardy. Really long days. I can’t say that was always what I wanted to do, but had a lot of people that were in need, and I hated having people wait to see me, right? And you’re making your living that way. Exactly. So same trajectory, though, when you start to realize that, wow, bodyworking, there’s an evolution for it. It’s an evolution for it. And that’s what we’re here to talk about with these top 10 questions for bodyworkers. So let’s jump right in. So how does somatic coaching differ from the bodywork I’m already doing? I think we started to answer that question just from a definition standpoint. It’s hands-on is the bodywork. You can do hands-on bodywork and never converse with a person at all. By the way, that’s actually an okay thing to do because sometimes that’s exactly what the client needs. The client needs just to detach from their cognitive processes and just have a really great body working session to go into a deep, deep, deep state of relaxation and inner changing internally.
Ani
Yeah. One of the things we like to talk about is the difference between having something done to you and something done with you. The hands-on techniques are something we do to our clients, whereas the somatic coaching we do with our clients, and it’s different. So it’s interesting. We can actually affect the tissue in very similar or the same ways through somatic coaching. Trust us, we know, and we can make profound shifts in people’s physiology. And there’s a great benefit, just like you were saying, to having the done-to-you approach and also the done-with-you approach. It’s actually part of what we started to do in our own practice to have both. It really helps to differentiate you, to differentiate your services, to be able to offer clients different things, take some of the pressure off ourselves to constantly be doing in the done-to-you, done-to-you, done-to you. It can be really fun. It can be a way to, even if somebody doesn’t want to transition from done-to-you services to done-with-you services completely, to open the creative solutions that you’re offering your clients by doing both. Yeah.
Brian
In a previous podcast, I think it was the one we did two ago with wellness professionals, one of the things we talked about is the importance of having gateways into working more deeply with people in terms of their core patterns. Now, some bodyworkers don’t want to do that, and that’s fine. Just keep doing the bodywork. But there are two really great gateways to getting into deeper core, reconstructing work with people. One are somatic practices. We’ve talked about those at length in other podcasts. But the other one is bodywork. Bodyworking is an amazing gateway to be able to get into someone’s subconscious experience quickly and pretty easily and efficiently in order to help create deeper change. That’s why this conversation is so, so, so, so important to have.
Ani
Hey, bodyworkers, you might not realize this, but your clients might already be working with coaches.
Brian
Yes. Yeah, and they’re already working with coaches outside of your sessions. But when they’re outside of your sessions working with coaches, because of what happens with brain waves in a massage session or a manual session, brain waves typically slow down when you’re in a body working session. And when brain waves slow down, it’s easier to access those core patterns underneath. So when your clients are out working with coaches and they’re doing intellectual approaches, brain waves are operating pretty high. And when brain waves are operating high, much less capacity to get through that gateway down into those deeper things for change. Just another reason why the somatic processes and methods are so much more effective in creating deeper change for people. But I think maybe we’re already jumping ahead in some of these questions. So next question was, how can somatic coaching enhance the physical healing work I already do, like massage or acupuncture?
Ani
Oh my gosh. I think one of the most powerful ways is you bring the consciousness, the conscious mind, into the conversation. So like you were saying, with the body working, a lot of times we’re having this direct conversation with the client’s subconscious mind. And by the way, the subconscious mind includes the body. It is the body. So we’re having this direct conversation through our hands with a portion of the person’s overall being, the subconscious mind. And then when we do coaching skills, we can bring in even more wisdom because we’re also bringing the conscious mind in, the intellectual mind in, the mental emotional mind in to be able to have a conversation. We have other facilities coming online, and it really helps the person to create sustainable change in their lives. It can be just a really, we use the word holistic was actually super powerfully holistic when you really think about it. Yeah.
Brian
I also just like the way this question is raised for a moment. I always like, I know if you’ve been listening along with the recent podcast on the questions, I always done it. I have to I like context is important to me in terms of understanding a question, but there’s a part of this question I think that’s really important to get to. When someone asks, how can somatic coaching enhance the physical healing work I already do? I want to step back for a second and just get on the same page and realize physical healing is never solely physical. If you cut your finger and your finger’s healing, that’s not solely physical. Because right now in this place, you have a body, probably. Right now, if you’re listening to this, you probably have some body, which means you’re living on a physical plane. If you’re listening to this, you have an emotional experience, maybe not going on overtly right now, but I’m sure you’re feeling something about some way right now. You have an emotional experience, and you most likely also have some connection with a force outside of yourself, which you might call a spiritual experience or a sense of meaning or purpose of what you do in the world.
Brian
So we’re always living on three planes of existence simultaneously. And so physical healing is never, ever done just physically because we’re never just physical beings. We’re never just a body. We’re never just a body.
Ani
Bodyworkers, you know this, of course, because your clients come in, they tell you how stressed they are, and we know they hold that stuff in their body. There’s that emotional body component. It works both ways.
Brian
Yeah, you’re never just a body. So physical healing, when you understand that, must always include other pathways. So when we do somatic coaching, and we understand that our thoughts, our emotions, and our bodies are all intertwined. They’re always intertwined with one another, that we can actually foster more effective physical healing by also working with the emotions and our thoughts and the whole physiological patterns that we’re dealing with. Every physiological pattern has four parts: sensations, thoughts, words, and actions. When you work with all four of those parts and you do that masterfully, that will definitely enhance physical healing.
Ani
Well said. What’s the next question?
Brian
Okay, next question. How does trauma-sensitive coaching work, and why is it important for my clients?
Ani
Well, jeez. I love this question, and I’m just remembering back to when I was doing bodyworking years and years ago, there wasn’t even a conversation being had about trauma-sensitive, trauma-informed anything, Brian. We actually talked to both healthcare professionals, wellness professionals, on the professional end side, but also the end user side, the customers, the clients, the patient side, to hear about practitioners and businesses and centers that are not trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive. All of that to say, I just think it’s really incumbent upon us as professionals if we work with people’s bodies in any way to be having the conversation about trauma sensitivity.
Brian
Yeah, totally. Because post-traumatic patterns live in our physiology, aka Our bodies. Post-traumatic patterns live in our bodies. If you’re a body worker, then you are working with people’s bodies. And so any time that you work with a person’s body directly, what you are doing, either inadvertently or intentionally, is working in a person’s trauma history. Because the body is the subconscious mind. We have trauma patterns in our bodies. 90% of people on the planet have experienced some significant trauma in their lives. So the people coming to you are definitely likely have experienced trauma. By the way, if you look at the connections between adverse childhood experiences and chronic disease, you’re more likely a person who has more than what we call four aces on the advanced or the adverse child experiences rating measure is 300% more likely to experience chronic pain in their life. 300% more likely. As a body worker, how many of your clients experience chronic pain? Probably a large percentage of them, which means a large percentage of them likely have a trauma history that you’re maybe not even aware of. That trauma history lives in their physiology, and it’s being expressed as chronic pain.
Brian
When you’re working in people’s bodies, you could be inadvertently actually bringing that information to the surface of someone’s consciousness.
Ani
Okay, we got to talk about this for a second here because this totally happens in bodyworking sessions. It used to happen to me all the time. I’m sure it happened to you, too, where you’re like the neighborhood bartender. You’re the person who, not just because you’re in somebody’s tissue, but you’re in a safe space, you’re a safe person. All of a sudden, people are telling you about stuff that you are not trained to handle. A lot of body workers will come to us and say, I’m trying to decide whether or not I should go get a degree in psychology. And a lot of the reason for that is because people bring them stuff. People bring them stuff all the time that they’re not equipped to handle. So I just really applaud you if you’re asking that question about trauma sensitivity, good for you because we have, I would like to think, a responsibility to bring this high quality… What happens when you don’t know the somatic coaching skills to be able to handle what people bring to you, by the way, is that bodyworkers in general tend to default to giving advice. And that may or may not be helpful to your clients.
Ani
If you get some training in the coaching skills, you’ll be able to ask really powerful, awesome transformational questions and not risk giving somebody advice that’s not helpful or worse, harmful. When we don’t even know what we’re talking about. And by the way, I totally did this, too. It’s really common. So when you know the somatic coaching skills, you can ask powerful questions, you can help somebody to transform their lives in a powerful way. You can really make a difference when people are bringing you big stuff.
Brian
Yeah. I spoke last year at the American Massage Therapy Association and National Conference, and it was standing room only for this lecture. It was specifically around trauma sensitive practices in massage therapy and how it can keep people safe. And it was a great conversation. A lot of people are interested. And one of the stories that I tell at that conference, at the conference, was an early experience I had before I was trauma sensitive and trauma informed or working with a client. And the person has a very profound reactivation of their trauma on the table, in the room, and how difficult it was for both of us to find our way through that experience and I swore I would never let that happen again to a client of mine or to myself, which is why I invest so much time and energy in this topic. I think that bodyworkers are uniquely positioned to make a really profound difference in people’s lives if they have this education and if they have this knowledge to be able to do it, to protect people from being retraumatized unintentionally. But even better than that, if you’re using somatic coaching as a part of your practice as a body worker, you can be trained intentionally to help tap into areas of information in a person’s body to help them transform deeply on that physical level.
Brian
To help them actually, the phrase I use is help them heal faster and more completely. So the more completely part is to actually help them reorganize the patterns that are driving their pain experience or tension experience to begin with. All right, ready for the next question? These are great questions. Great questions. Okay, I think you’ve actually already answered this one, Ani, but let’s just ask it anyway. How can somatic coaching save my hands and allow me to continue to work while I age?
Ani
Okay, I think we did actually answer this question, but I want to reframe it just a little bit. Rather than trying to think about how you can save your hands so that you can maintain, how about how can you claim your total brilliance and grow into a place where you’re really developing even more mastery, can serve clients more deeply and completely, and actually create an even better business model for yourself. Because people ask that question, and they’re really talking about, How do I maintain so I don’t lose? But listen, there’s a glass ceiling you’re under that you don’t even understand you’re under. Coaches, by the way, who are probably less… Coaching is unregulated. So there’s coaches who have no educational experience. There’s coaches who have tons of educational experience. Absolutely on the spectrum. There are coaches who have no educational experience, who are out there charging more than you for doing things, and they may not even be very good at it. So this glass ceiling of income, which I understand may not be your driving force motivator, so just hold on with me for a second. That glass ceiling income, other people are charging probably even more or the same as you do to do not so such amazing stuff.
Ani
You could do such amazing work with people and make even more money. I know it seems counterintuitive, but actually, bodyworking can have some cap on it in the market that coaching doesn’t. You have the capacity to take the cap off of your income. Now, let me go back to the thing that I said, you probably aren’t as interested in the money as a motivational quality for you. We see that with most of the bodyworkers. Most of our bodyworking friends are motivated by things like making a big impact in people’s lives, really making a difference, and they’re interested in freedom, personal freedom. It’s one of the reasons they are bodyworkers. They work for themselves a lot of times. They want freedom in their lives. You can create more freedom and impact in your own life, in the lives of your family. And by the way, I know it seems a little counterintuitive, but also with your clients, the less you’re going to do for them. So as you mature as a body worker, a trajectory that you’re going to have to put yourself on because nobody will put you on this trajectory. But you can choose to put yourself on a trajectory of maturity and growth as a body worker and become a somatic coach who actually starts to transition out of doing things to clients, and you can empower them even more as you start to do that, especially because of your experience.
Ani
And because you have that background in doing for people, you’ll be able to take all of that experience and help people make profound transformations situations in different ways. If you think about it, you never have to stop working if you don’t want to. And you can have that freedom to be able to still make really powerful impact with the work that you do, and maybe not even have to work quite as much, but still be able to bring an income and all of that stuff gives you a lot more flexibility and creativity. Like I said, you don’t have to leave what you’ve been doing. You get to take everything and all your experience with you to continue your growth trajectory as a professional.
Brian
Hear, hear. I love it. Excellent. Next question. Will adding somatic coaching make a difference for clients dealing with chronic pain or tension? I think we- Can we answer that. Yeah, I would say 100%, because again, if we believe that we’re purely physical beings, then you would think that coaching wouldn’t help. Because if you thought, I’m a purely physical being, then won’t only physical modalities help. But the research shows, again and again, that coaching and therapeutic methodologies actually help people decrease their levels of chronic pain, certainly, and tension, certainly. We have to understand, again, that pain itself is never purely physical. Never purely physical. Pain is a construct that our brain creates based on certain parameters within our autonomic and somatic nervous system. Pain is multimodal, in other words. Pain is actually never purely physical. Pain always includes emotions. Pain always includes our mental thoughts. Pain always includes how we relate to our meaning and purpose in life. So all those domains are affected through somatic coaching. So can somatic coaching help your clients with tension and chronic pain? Absolutely, 100%.
Ani
I just want to make sure we address, because I don’t think this is coming up in subsequent questions, this idea about, should I go back to school for a PhD in psychology? Because it reminds me of what you’re talking about right now. Just so you know, most of the people who go back and get things like their psychology degree or their clinical social workers degrees and things like that, they’re working with people with diagnosis or they’re working with people in a therapeutic realm that actually, usually when we talk to our prospective students, isn’t what they actually want. They’re actually looking for coaching. They just don’t know that’s what coaching does. Well, I can’t speak for anybody else, but the Somatic Coaching Academy, we’re diving deep into the psychology, basically through the physiology and the spiritual, energetic, energy medicine, psychology, to be able to help talk about things like the personal growth kinds of topics that are really interesting to you. And by the way, yes, you get to personally grow as a person while you’re helping other people to grow and doing the coaching. And that incredible relationship of mutual growth is really quite profoundly unique, I think, to the coaching industry.
Ani
So if you’re a person who loves professional development, I think you’re really going to love coaching. If this is you, if this is speaking to you right now, one of the things I would suggest is go have a demo session with us and try it. Try a coaching session. A lot of our students who sign up to get even with the complete program certified with us have never had coaching. We find that there’s a number of people who haven’t even had coaching. Go have a demo session, check it out. If you don’t love it, you’ll know. But I suspect you’re going to be like, This is what I’ve been looking for. Because we have people tell us all the time once they get into the work, this is the missing piece. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know what to call it, but this is it. You can go check that out for yourself.
Brian
For sure. Okay, next question. You’re ready? Here we go. What kinds of results should I expect for clients when combining bodywork with somatic coaching?
Ani
Holy cow. We could do multiple podcasts.
Brian
Multiple podcasts. Let me share a story with you about a result. Okay, great. A few years ago, I was working with a client. He’s a farmer and had debilitating back pain. It incapacitated him. Couldn’t get out of bed. Could not get out of bed for a couple of months, actually. He was like, really just could not get up out of bed. But he did get out of bed enough to be able to get to my office. Barely. Barely, walking with a walker into the office. A young guy, not an old character, in his 40s. 30s, 40s, thing. Incapacitating back pain. That came on for, no reason. But here’s the thing. I knew this character beforehand. He had been in my clinic before with a tight back. But we had just been doing body working sessions. Just like, let’s loosen the back up, do some trigger point release, some deep tissue, send him back out into the farm. He’s going to work his body again. At some point back, he’s going to come back because he feels stiff or he’s a little in spasm or something. But this episode, he was completely incapacitated.
Brian
So now he’s like, What is going on here? There’s something deeper going on. And so I invited him, asked him, Are you ready to go a little deeper with this? And he’s like, Yeah, of course I am now because I’m sick and tired of this. I can’t get out of bed now.
Ani
Which is usually how people change, by the way. Right.
Brian
They need to have enough pain to change. And so he’s in the clinic and I’m working on him, and we find the spot on his back that seems like it’s the center of all the problems. And this guy also had an MRI and it showed a profound disk bulge in his back, too. But he did not want surgery. Actually, this was during COVID, by the way, too. I think surgery was pushed back several months anyway. He couldn’t get in. So he was on a permanent pause. And so he’s like, But let’s take the time to dig deeper in with this. So remember, he’s in the clinic. I’m working on manual work. I’m working on trigger points in his back. We find the center point that seems like it’s the spot that is the core of everything. And we get to that point, I just start asking him some questions. I start asking him a specific set of questions. And the specific set of questions leads him to an awareness about the core belief system he has that’s linked to that spot in his body that’s creating the chronic tension. We test it out a little bit, and sure enough, it’s like whenever he experiences this belief, this part of his body gets tight.
Brian
It’s right in his low back and it’s right around the area where he has this disk bulge. Okay, so for manual therapists out there, you guys know that disks are meant to bulge. They’re supposed to bulge. They bulge when you lean to the right, disk bulge to the left. When you lean to the left, they bulge to the right. When your facets are working the way they’re supposed to work, they bulge normally. But when you have muscle spasm, it locks up the facet system. Now when you bend to one side, the disk doesn’t bulge where it’s supposed to bulge. It bulges back out of the nerve root. This chronic muscle tension can start to now create what we call kinematic patterns in the vertebral system. Then it creates a problem with the nerve structure. Okay, so here we are. Asking a specific set of questions on this spot, he comes to an awareness about things, and immediately his tension drops, probably 25%. Immediately, the tension in that area, the compression of the nerves, drops. Immediately, it has relief. Now, he’s able to go back. We do some follow-up exercises with him, start to give him some tools to start working based on the coaching that we’re doing, starts to have some transformations around that.
Brian
We’re still doing bodywork. He’s doing some coaching. He’s doing some behavioral change stuff. We’re changing everything in that pattern. Long story short, now he has no pain, zero pain, back full-time working on the farm. His chronic pain is in a whole different realm. He wouldn’t even call it chronic pain anymore. Now he has soreness from working on a farm, but it’s not chronic pain. No surgery. Never had surgery. Completely reduced that disk bulge back down into a healthy normal range. He’s aware of things now that happen, and he can tell ahead of time when he’s going to start to have those problems with his back because now he’s aware of the patterns and the belief systems that would create that to occur. Basically, what I want to encapsulate here, gang, is that’s the results you can get when you start weaving somatic coaching in to your body working sessions. That body working, again, is a gateway to deeper change, which you have to just know, are these specific sets of questions ask someone while they’re on the table with you as you’re tapping into their subconscious mind because that’s what their body is. That can start to create new awarenesses up in the conscious mind that create behavior change.
Brian
Different things can start to occur for someone and remediation of chronic tension, remediation of pain.
Ani
I love that story, and it’s not actually that unique in that these are the results we get. Also, don’t try that unless you’re trauma sensitive.
Brian
Exactly. Don’t try that. You have to know what questions to ask. If you don’t know what questions to ask, you can actually create a problem for people.
Ani
Just don’t do that.
Brian
Yeah, don’t do that until you know the question. Okay, next question. Will this training help me explain the emotional or energetic impact of bodywork to clients?
Ani
Yeah. I think one of the things that our students love so much about studying here at the academy actually is how practical it is. And we actually we teach quite a bit of science. The science is being taught in a way that I’ll sit in the class and I hardly even know it’s science, Brian. We have people come in, sometimes they’re a little bit nervous about the amount of science they might be learning. Then they don’t have to be nervous because it’s just so practical and we deliver in such easy to understand ways that they don’t have to be nervous about it. But yeah, that’s actually one of the key things we want you to be able to do is we want you to be able to help your clients understand how this stuff works.
Brian
Yeah, we go very deep into the human energy system and how beliefs are woven into the fabric of someone’s physiology. There’s all that background information that someone can use and then explaining to their clients how are your beliefs, your emotions, your thoughts, all linked together with what’s happening in your body? Energy system. Energy system, yeah. We do a lot of work around that. Okay, we get this question for every one of these four podcasts we’ve done, and it’s half questions. Is it the skeptical question? No, it’s what support is available if I encounter challenges or questions while integrating somatic methods?
Ani
I’m glad people ask this question because they should be, because resistance to change can come up for us as we’re studying these things. Actually, we would expect that all of our students are going to be on some personal transformation journey themselves as they walk through the program in the process of being able to become a person who can help other people do these things. There’s a lot of support here at the Academy. You can listen to the last three episodes where we talk a lot about the different kinds of support here at the academy. One of our values is “we got you”q. And so everything that we create, we’re baking in support. And by the way, I mean, that’s like, how do I find my materials? How do I ask questions? What if I have an issue that arises in me? What if my nervous system gets dysregulated as I’m learning? We have all kinds of manner of support baked into each of the programs. It would take us a while to describe all of them. There’s also a virtual network that is a robust virtual network that all of our students and graduates are a part of and love to be a part of.
Ani
I’m sure they’re right now, they’re talking on the virtual network. And so there’s this personal and professional camaraderie that happens there. You can ask content questions, you can ask business building questions, and you can ask personal questions about your own trajectory. So we’ve got you not just in your classes and not just in your cohorts. We’ve got you in the virtual community. It’s literally open 24/7 whenever it is that you have something going on. Our students and graduates get nurtured in that community with all kinds of things. One of the things we offer is monthly open office hours. They’re usually run by me. We usually talk about business building. We also talk about content and different aspects of somatic coaching. It’s a great opportunity to connect in in-person person on Zoom with the community. I’m rolling my eyes because we’ve never had a student tell us that they feel unsupported here. It’s very much baked into the culture.
Brian
Yeah. And then open coaching for people who are on program, they can come to get coached themselves to experience it for themselves?
Ani
When people are in the level 2 and level 3 programs, we encourage you highly to come to monthly open coaching with our team so you can get coached. Also, There’s the opportunity to work with somebody privately if you’d like to add on to your tuition to be able to get some private coaching, but people do that, too, and they want some extra support. There’s a lot of different options.
Brian
There’s quarterly skillshares, too.
Ani
Yeah, for graduates.
Brian
Yeah, for graduates. There’s all kinds of ongoing support for people as they go through the program. All right. Are there techniques that don’t require intensive client dialog, but still support emotional release?
Ani
You mean like core centering kinds of things? Somatic practices?
Brian
Well, that’s certainly one of the things we could say, right? I don’t know what they mean because they’re asking the question. That’s true. Why am I asking you? Why are you asking me? I don’t know. I didn’t. I’m not asking the question.
Ani
Is that what you mean?
Brian
Are there techniques that don’t require intensive client dialog that still support emotional release?
Ani
Sure. I mean, we have a number of students who come and they take our Level 1 Somatic Practice Essentials program, and that’s what they do. And that’s the part of the somatic coaching that they want to take into their practices. And that’s an opportunity. You’re not opening. It’s not a coaching thing. You’re not actually asking questions. You’re not having a dialog. You’re doing somatic practices with people. And that’s a powerful way to have releases and epiphanies and soften the tissue and all of that stuff.
Brian
Yeah. I would even say in our level 2 program with cross mapping. Cross mapping is certainly not intensive client dialog. That’s guiding someone into a deeper resetting of their own nervous system. It doesn’t include any trauma narrative, no rehashing old stories.
Ani
Not even getting into patterns.
Brian
Not even getting into patterns. It’s just starting to help people just start to rework things in their system.
Ani
Actually, that’s a great example because the cross-mapping method that’s taught in the Level 2 program is one that bodyworkers easily take and integrate into their existing sessions when they are going to do nothing else with us just to take that. Actually, we used it long time ago when we were still doing a lot of bodywork, and we’d use cross mapping with our clients. It’s great. All the time.
Brian
Yeah, that’s a core feature, I think, of everything we’ve built here in the academy is based in cross mapping that we’ve been doing with our own clients for years. All right, cool. Next question. Oh, this is a good one. How can I find ways to pay for the investment in my education? This is the only time we’ve gotten this question. I’ll tell you why. For all of these.
Ani
Because it’s the question bodyworkers ask us. I’m just being honest. Bodyworkers are the people that people who will most likely be concerned about the investment. It’s a great question. So one of the things to consider is, I know you are probably considering this going back to school to get a master’s degree thing because people tell us about it all the time. If you’re going to go to school to get your master’s degree, you’re going to spend tens of thousands of dollars, at least. I mean, we’re talking like a lot of tens of thousands of dollars to go get your master’s degree. So you’re already going to have to figure out that investment. Somehow the connect around figuring out that investment seems easier for people to make believe than if they’re going to come into a program like this. I’m just saying it’s interesting how we’re wired to think about things. There are lots of different ways that people think about their investment with the Somatic Coaching Academy. But the one thing I want to say before I just spout off a few different ways that people do it is it’s not really about you having the money ahead of time or any of It’s about being resourceful, not having resources.
Ani
It’s about being resourceful. Good point. Not about having resources, because there are always more resources available to us than we can see at any given time. It isn’t until we make decisions that we’re going to move forward with things that we can see the resources that have already been available to us that become visible once we make a decision to change. I remember, I think, it was my energy medicine certification training, Brian, that I took, I was so nervous about how to pay for that investment. If I had to remember correctly, I think it was $7,000, although I don’t really remember. I was a body worker primarily at the time when I took that. I thought to myself, I don’t know how I’m going to afford this. But I also knew that something inside of me just said, I don’t know how I’m going to afford not to. How could I possibly not go do this certification? I’ve got to figure it out. I signed up, and then one of the first things that I did was I sold my first package. I had never sold a package before, and I sold, I think, three packaged sessions for people who, by the way, were more than happy to pay in advance and get a few sessions bonus or something like that.
Ani
That’s money. I think I had it in a day. It was about becoming resourceful rather than having the resources. How do people pay for their investment? All kinds of manner. They put on the credit card, they get a loan, they They have gifts or loans from family members. They use their retirement funds. They have nest eggs and other means of savings that they weren’t thinking they were going to use that for that they do.
Brian
Gifts, grants.
Ani
People have written grants. Like I said, selling something that you already have. We’ve had people actually sell stuff, like sell belongings to start to stimulate the money coming in. There’s tax refund. There’s Well, I mean, there’s money everywhere. If we really think about it, there’s lots of opportunity. The question is, are you going to put yourself in a position where you can actually expand even more your abundance and your overall holistic wealth in your own life by making decisions to move your career and yourself forward in these kinds of ways? Because when you do, the universe will always meet you with the opportunity to have the resources you need to be able to move forward. So the question is, what do you really desire What do you really want? Is this what’s calling to you? And if it is, make a decision. Make a decision and then be resourceful. Our team is always willing to problem-solve with you. And by the way, we’re not asking you to pay for it all up front. Your tuition is paid for by a deposit and then payment plans. Almost just about everybody pays in payment plans. So all you have to do is figure out the deposit.
Ani
And then we actually expect throughout the course of your training, you’re going to be able to recoup your ROI pretty darn quickly with a lot of the programs. And we actually tell you how to do that in most of the programs, too.
Brian
Yeah, I wanted to circle back to that just for a second, honey, because you initially made the comparison between going back for a master’s degree in psychology or something. And the point is, how long is that master’s are you going to take? You’re not probably earning anything. You’re not using that what you’re learning until after you graduate. You could be in school for one year, two year, three year, and you’re just pumping money into the education, and you’re not actually earning anything until you’re done.
Ani
When you start earning, how much more are you really earning anyway? I mean, a lot of times it’s not all that much more, just to say. I’m sorry.
Brian
Did you have- Yeah. Well, yeah. What I was going to continue saying is that we’ve, and you noted this, we’ve specifically designed our program so that level one somatic practice essentials, you can start learning money, earning money out of the gate after two days with what you’ve learned immediately. Then through cross mapping, you start learning that information. We start using that right away, integrating that in. We have it set out in a way where we have an expectation that you will start going out immediately and using the information to start recouping on your ROI. We’ve actually planned it that way so that by the time we’ve actually had people, by the time they’re done with their whole certification, they’ve actually paid for it already by the earning, what they’ve earned, but what they’ve been learning inside of the program.
Ani
Learning and earning. We’re really good at helping people, especially people who are bodyworkers, grow their businesses. As the founders, it’s where our background is. We have a lot of knowledge and capacity to be able to do that. There are so many resources. Like Brian said, there’s these turnkey things in each of the programs so that you can get started right away. Yeah.
Brian
All right. Last question for our bodyworkers. This has been just a really great conversation. I love this conversation. Will learning somatic coaching help me attract new clients interested in mind, body healing?
Ani
Yup, sure will.
Brian
Yes. Thanks so much for joining. In short, yes, absolutely. A lot of people who are interested in mind-body healing don’t just want to be a passive participant in the process. Yes, Brian. As a bodyworking professional, we’ve talked about this doing-with and doing-to. The doing-to model is you’re going to come in, I’m going to do something to you, and you’re going to be a passive recipient. It might feel great while someone’s on the table, but then they get up, they leave, they go do whatever they do in life, they come back the next week, and they’re back in the same boat again. And nothing’s really changed. A lot of people are like, I want to be an active participant in this. So somatic coaching is going… If you have those skills and you combine those with body workers, you’re going to start to attract people who actually want to be engaged participants, who want to do what you’re suggesting to them to do rather than being resistant to doing home exercises, I don’t have time to do it. I don’t have time to do it. Yes, you’re going to attract more people in who want that level of of engagement with you.
Ani
It’s just so much fun. Professionally, it’s just so much fun to be able to offer your clients those kinds of things.
Brian
Yeah, 100%, 100%. If you’re a body worker and this podcast has answered some of your questions, Then we would love to know about that. If it has not answered some of your questions and you have more questions for us, send them to us at [email protected]. Email them to us, send a pigeon, call us, whatever it is. We would love to be able to help you sort some of those things out, get your questions answered, help you move on your somatic coaching or somatic practices journey, wherever it is that you want to go with these techniques. I hope this is a really valuable podcast for you.
Ani
Yeah. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.