Using the ELI Assessment to Measure Levels of Consciousness

Brian
Hi, and welcome to episode 65, the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Ani, how are you today?

Ani
I am good, Brian. How are you today?

Brian
I'm doing fantastic.

Ani
Great.

Brian
What's so fantastic? I feel energized. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Ani
Okay. Why?

Brian
Can you assess my energy?

Ani
What do you want me to read your aura or something?

Brian
No. Well, today we're talking about the...

Ani
The Energy Leadership Index. Yeah, exactly. The ELI assessment. Got you. What energy level are you functioning at?

Brian
The highest one possible.

Ani
No. I'm excited to talk about the ELI or the Energy Leadership Index because I love to talk about assessments. I like to say that I've never met an assessment that I didn't like- You're one of those people. I love assessments. Well, it's funny because before I was in the coaching profession, we would do assessments, but they weren't this kind of assessments, like personality assessments and things. But when I found out that coaches did a lot of personality assessments, I just thought that was the bomb because I love those things. I want to know everything about myself possible. I've never met an assessment I didn't like, that's true, but I don't love them all. But I do love the Energy Leadership Index.

Brian
Tell us a little bit about, just maybe just talk about assessments for a moment in general. Why as coaches, why do assessments? Why do certain assessments? What do you think?

Ani
What do you think?

Brian
Well, I think about it in terms of assessments is there's three parts of how the brain functions. There's the conative brain, the affective brain, and then the cognitive brain. It's interesting to me.

Ani
We come from such totally different ways of thinking about things. It's not where I was at all.

Brian
Okay, go ahead. When it comes to assessments, you have to decide, well, what part of the brain function are we looking to measure? So conative brain is about how we tackle tasks and objectives. The cognitive brain is more like our IQ and that stuff. Then the affective brain, which is where most assessments in the coaching space are geared towards, is really more of our felt quality of our likes and our dislikes. What do we gravitate towards? What do we gravitate away and why and all those sorts of things. That's more of the affective measurement. The starting point for me is, well, what are we measuring and why are we measuring it? That would help us decide, well, what assessment then would we even use? Then we to go down from there.

Ani
Yeah, you would say that.

Brian
What assessment have you given me to make me think that that's how I would do that?

Ani
Well, we'll talk about strength finders another day, but I can hear your strengths coming out in the way that you approach talking about the importance of assessments. I think from a standpoint of coaching, coaching is about helping people to tap into the wisdom that's in themselves. And the more that we know about ourselves, the more we can tap into our own wisdom. I also think we have to be careful because coaching really is about partnering with someone to tap into the wisdom that's in themselves. And it can be tempting to, and a lot of assessments do do this, by the way, the way that we report and debrief assessments can be more consultative, actually, where we look at an assessment as the practitioner and tell people about themselves. But one of the things I'm actually personally working on for myself when I do assessment debriefs is helping to deliver information about the assessment and then really ask the person what they think and how that applies and really bring it back to, which the Energy Leadership Index does during their debrief. That's one of the reasons I like it, but it really helps people to take in what information there is to be gained potentially about how they can improve themselves in their lives and then see how it's applicable to them.

Ani
Because coaching is really about partnering with somebody to help them do what they want to do. As the practitioner of the assessment, who the hell am I to say what you should or shouldn't do or what wisdom you should gain from the assessment?

Brian
Okay. Can you give us an overview of the Energy Leadership Index?

Ani
Let me say this, actually, from what you said about assessments. The Energy Leadership Index, the ELI, is an attitudinal assessment. Yeah. I just want to say, too, I'm not an ELI expert. I am a practitioner of the ELI, and it was developed by IPEC, which is the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. It's their proprietary research supported assessment. I'm a practitioner. I'm not a master of it. One of the reasons why I love doing it, and I love talking about it, is what I am masterful in is somatic coaching. I've been teaching somatic coaching. And when I went through the IPEC curriculum and I got certified as an IPEC coach, and I got certified as an ELI practitioner who could do the Energy Leadership Index with people, what I noticed was, it almost feels like a secret. I can't believe we're going to tell everybody, Brian. What we teach here at the Somatic Coaching Academy, specifically our sensation-based curriculum and sensation-based motivation coaching, I believe, actually helps people to change their energy levels more efficiently, effectively, sustainably, and faster than any other methodology that I've seen, even the curriculum that I learned. So knowing how to assess people's energy levels based on the Energy Leadership Index, and then do our sensation-based methodology, I've noticed, helps people to change even more effective.

Ani
But backing up to what you were asking me, this is an attitudinal assessment. It's really measuring your attitude. It's based on energy, which another reason why I like the ELI is I'm a person who... I just want to keep things really simple. You like all the research and digging into the details. I don't want the details. I want the bottom line. And the ELI for me is just very bottom line. It's not just easy to understand. It's not just that. It's just like, why bog ourselves down in the details when we can really do something else. So it helps to really bottom line this idea of where is my energy? Do you have private clients ask you that at all during your sessions? Where is my energy? How do I understand my energy level? Like, my level of consciousness, my energetic level of resonance. I have clients who will ask me about that, and the ELI can actually tell them. I don't know if that comes up for you.

Brian
Not in those exact words, but that sentiment, yes.

Ani
What would people be saying where they're trying to discern where their level of- 

Brian
I think sometimes you talk about it more in terms of their thought frequency, their emotional frequency, or their emotional level. Sometimes their level of consciousness is sometimes a phrase that people would use.

Ani
Yeah, that makes sense, too. With the ELI, it helps you to determine on a basis of seven energy levels where you most frequently resonate, your average resonance on those seven energy levels, and then where you resonate when you're stressed. So typically for people, they resonate differently when they're stressed and when it's any given day. And the idea is that there's both catabolic energy and anabolic energy. So the catabolic energy is more like destructive energy. And usually we find that when we're in our stress state. So it's either, which is more of level, so one to seven, level one is more like, "somebody help me. I'm a victim to these circumstances" catabolic energy. Also catabolic energy would be the level two - "I've got to fight this out". Both of those are more destructive kinds of energy levels. Then from there, three and up are more anabolic energy, which is more life-giving, and it builds upon... Each level builds upon itself. The thing is, though, as we know, there's no energy level that's the right energy level to be at. There's no good, bad, right, or wrong. Because people hear 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six, seven, and they want to be a seven.

Ani
That's what happens. Sure. I don't want to be a one. I want to be a seven. It's not about that. It's about understanding where your resonance is and is it working for you to get the results that you want in your life? If it's not, how can I change it so that I can get the results that I want in my life? It's not about a good, bad, right, or wrong scale.

Brian
Interesting. I have a question for you. It'll measure where you are, typically, and it'll measure when you're stressed. For that stress measurement, is it when someone's... I'm just curious when they do the assessment or how you look at this, is it measured from their internal state of stress, or is it measured from when stressful things are going on outside of them?

Ani
Well, remember, it's an attitudinal assessment. It's really measuring my attitude towards these things. Whether it's internal or external, it's really about what's my attitude around it. For example, you and I could be in the same circumstance that I think is super stressful, and you don't. I mean, that could happen. It's definitely happened a lot. Got you.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
What is it that I perceive the... Or not even what is it, but what level of frequency am I resonating at when I perceive that it's stressful and you perceive that it's an opportunity. You're resonating at a different frequency level than I am. When I heard about the Energy Leadership Index, the first time, and they started mapping out these different energy levels for me and showing us how it goes basically from... Honestly, it goes basically from a victim consciousness to unconditional love. At the bottom line, the bottom level one is like energy, I'm sorry, victim consciousness, and the level seven is basically unconditional love. I said to myself, this looks like the- Map of consciousness.

Brian
Map of consciousness. Yeah, from power versus force. Yeah.

Ani
To me, I put them side by side. It looks like the same thing. I actually asked my teacher if the person who developed the ELI got it from the levels of consciousness, because that would make perfect sense to me that they did. She said, No, but she said, I don't think so. Let me go ask somebody because I've never been asked that question before. She went and did some investigation and came back and told me that they were developed at the same time.

Brian
It's interesting, right? That common idea and consciousness, collective consciousness, oftentimes, precipitates out in different places simultaneously.

Ani
Absolutely. I don't know about you, but I've seen the map of consciousness in different places I always thought that everybody who was talking about it got it from the map of consciousness. But maybe that's not true. Maybe there were just different- They just had better marketing. Exactly. The same idea, but it's delivered in different ways. We teach on the map of consciousness. That's something that we use, and we can help people to... When you use it, how do you... We've talked about it in the past podcast, too, but when you're using the map of consciousness, why would you even bring that up in a session?

Brian
Well, I think what's occurring to me as you're asking that question, I'll answer that question in a moment, is that the map of consciousness itself doesn't really have an assessment that I'm aware of, but the ELI does, right? You actually have a validated assessment tool where people are answering questions that's determining where they land on that map. I would be really interested to see, because we've never talked about this before, for clients that we've had who have done the Energy Leadership Index, and then what if we looked at the results and mapped them onto the map of consciousness? I'm just curious. Not to create a Frankenstein map of consciousness where we're putting everything together, but I'm just curious where there's... Because there's obvious parallels between the two. No doubt. No doubt.

Ani
No doubt. I had heard about catabolic and anabolic energy before, but they have this idea with the ELI that there's basically this line where level one and level two is catabolic, and then level three is the first anabolic state. When we have talked on and taught the levels of consciousness, there's also this line.

Brian
Yeah, 200.

Ani
Frequencies. It's 200 frequency. Where you bring yourself from those lower level frequencies into a higher level frequency. And so that made perfect sense to me that there was also this line.

Brian
There's a line there.

Ani
 And part of the interesting thing, I think about the ELI and also with the map of consciousness is that line is right or it's not like... It's a sticky place to be. I've noticed. It's a sticky place to be where people are just keeping their heads above water is what it feels like to me. I'm not living where I want to be, and I maybe even can't figure out how to get where I want to be, but I know that I'm not sliding into constant stress or constant anxiety. And so I've got my head above water. And that level three in the ELI is really about toleration. It's so interesting as I've been- That's the highest catabolic level, was it what you're saying?

Brian
Level three is catabolic anabolic.

Ani
It's the lowest anabolic.

Brian
The lowest anabolic, okay. Yes. Toleration is the lowest anabolic level.

Ani
Yeah, but it's categorized more by rationalization. It's like something's happening, but it's fine. It's like making lemons out of lemonade, making lemonade out of a lemons. I said it backwards. But it's that rationalization. It's okay. I mean, yeah, it's bad, but it'll be fine. I'm sure there's a silver lining or whatever. That energy. I got to tell you, I see people in level three energy right having their head above water in that level of consciousness all the time. I would say the vast majority, if not all, of my private clients, and certainly a lot of our certification students, what they're trying to do is actually get higher than that. But people in general have a really hard time moving past that rationalization place. Interesting. I think one of the reasons is because of how we teach... How limiting belief structures are held into place through intellectual constructs and then deeper than that into the muscular layers and all that. But most people people who talk about consciousness aren't talking about how it interplays with the body. And so I think it's really a sticking place that people don't know how to move through because we're talking about a concept that if we talked about how the subconscious mind is the body and we use the body, we'd actually be able to reach those higher levels of consciousness better, more efficiently, with more intentionality to be able to help ourselves get where we want to go.

Ani
The level four energy moving up from level three is more like a giving energy. I'm going to help you. It's that altruistic energy. And then moving up to a level five, which I see most people who, again, our private clients or in our certification programs, want to be at a five, six level as much as possible. That five level is characterized by win-win. That's natural law principles. How many people out there listen to learn about natural law principles and this win-win mentality, but they can't get themselves to do it. They're really stuck in rationalization, and they can't get themselves to a place where I see opportunity all around me. They can't get to that level of consciousness. I think it's because of, again, the way that we conceptualize how limiting beliefs are held into place. Sure. Yeah.

Brian
Not only conceptualize, but the way that we were programmed in our body-mind construct as children, how things happen in the world. Yeah. That oftentimes win-win isn't typically a message that people get growing up. No. They get a win-lose. Especially when we're in a behavioral adjustment period when we're less than seven years old and our parents are trying to get us to behave certain ways, obviously, punishment can come into that. And punishment is obviously a win-lose situation.

Ani
Absolutely. So we're actually programmed on these lower levels of consciousness.

Brian
On a cellular level.

Ani
On a cellular level, on a cellular in our bodies, in our subconscious mind level, we are programmed with lower levels of consciousness. And we're feeling the lower levels of consciousness. And of course, the people who are programming us are also feeling those lower levels of consciousness. And then we strive and we want to so badly to get to these higher levels of consciousness.

Brian
Yeah. And I think the point you're making is that the pathway that we've in recent years have been told to do that is to use our thought energy to change our cellular programming. Exactly. And there may be a little bit of validity to that or some movement on that. But obviously, I've never met anybody who's gotten consistently living in levels five and six that have solely done that through intellectual or changing their thinking, how they think about things.

Ani
Right. Exactly. So that level six energy is like we're all connected, and level seven is like that highest level of consciousness, like universal love place. Exactly. So one of the reasons... I've never met an assessment that I didn't like, but I love certain assessments. And I love this attitudinal assessment because it really helps me to assess my perceptual nature and where are my perceptions resonating in the levels of consciousness in a way that can be measured.

Brian
Right. Yeah. Which is so cool.

Ani
Which is so cool and important, of course, because perceptually, I could be kidding myself. Right? Right. Yeah. I could be kidding myself. To have it reflected on a piece of paper with a tool that I took to be able to say, okay, you might think you're resonating, for example, at a level five or a level six, but you're actually resonating at a level three. And by the way, when you're stressed, this is what it looks like.

Brian
Which is why I would love to have that and then compare it to the map of consciousness, because oftentimes, look at the map of consciousness and you read the descriptions of each of the levels and you wonder, Am I really at that spot? Am I not at that spot? I'd like to be there. That's aspirational for you, but am I there or not there? So I have a question for you. The ELI, will it change for people?

Ani
Yeah. And you can use it as an assessment that you do it at the beginning of a coaching engagement, and then they have a goal to to change things about their lives and themselves. Then you take it again and see how it's changed. The Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, which created the ELI, really believes that coaching is about not that superficial coaching, like I'm going to tell you what to do, but when we change who we are, our circumstances change and what we do and have and our behavior changes and all that stuff. It really starts with who we are. The ELI is trying to help somebody get to who they are being. Yes, it can change because when we change who we're being, our ELI can change. Okay.

Brian
In a coaching program, how often might you do the ELI? Why?

Ani
Well, for me, I like to do it at the beginning of a coaching engagement so that people can see where they're at. Then for me, we have certain things that we believe about how long it takes people to change and change sustainably. I use our philosophies around that more often than not. I'm not going to do, for me, an ELI every month or so. I would do an ELI at the closer to the end of an engagement after a number of months of working with somebody because that's how long it takes to transform behavior and really to create transformational change from within. Yeah.

Brian
It sounds like, I don't want to put this on you, but it sounds like one of the the potential goals, if we're using the ELI as a reflective tool, is to help people more often spend time in anabolic than catabolic energy? Is that a state?

Ani
Well, it's called the Energy Leadership Index. The idea is, how can I be a better leader? Now, that might be a leader of my team, it might be the leader of my company, and it certainly is used in organizations. It also could mean, how can I be a better leader of my family, my community, and certainly of myself. It really comes down to our ability to lead. That's how it's talked about, that's how the debrief is set up. I think from a standpoint of leadership, I think it's a valuable conversation for each of us to have, regardless of who else we're leading, how am I able to lead myself? I think that's the most powerful use of the ELI, personally. Oh, cool.

Brian
What other pro tips do we have around the ally, the importance of it? Who should be taking it?

Ani
When? I think it's more of a pro tip about assessments. I think assessments are super cool. I think that It actually amazes me how many people we meet who haven't done any assessment. I think if you're listening, that one of the things you can think about for yourself is, what information would I like to gain about myself and what assessment would be a good match for that? If you're listening and you want to know more about how your attitude reflects your level of consciousness, if there's a possibility of living more from universal principles and you'd really like that and you'd like to know, am I thinking like that? Am I doing that? Then the ELI is a fantastic assessment tool from a leading other people perspective. I got to be honest with you I think that our capacity to live in the 5, 6 energy level is the secret sauce for our team. We have an exceptional team here at Somatic Coaching Academy, and to a large degree, it's about the culture that we have here. If you're a leader, you lead a small team, you lead a large team, and there's any dysfunction on your team, taking the ELI will help you determine who you are being so that you can become the leader you want to so that you can have the team that you really want to have.

Ani
It's so fulfilling to work with a team that is just, again, universal principles and humming along, finding win-win opportunities and learning and growing together. Maybe that's not everybody who wants that, but for me, that is where it's at for teams. That's great. It's really fun. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. So glad we got to have this conversation because it's been really interesting to think and watch people learning about the map of consciousness and also doing the ELI. I think it's just such a valuable conversation to be in within ourselves around what level of consciousness am I coming from? And now more than ever, because out there in the world, we can look out there and we can get angry and upset about the things that we see in the world. And that really is coming from that catabolic energy. How do I keep myself in a higher level of consciousness in an anabolic state, even when the world seems to be going crazy. And it's assessments like the ELI that can help to tell us where we're at with that and help us to grow and develop to be the person who really is holding a higher level of consciousness, even when things are going nuts around us.

Brian
Yeah, totally. I love what you're speaking to there. And the importance of the ELI is that reflection tool for where we are on that journey. Because as you've pointed out, as we talked about last week on podcast or maybe the week before, that there's changes afoot globally, in our countries, in our societies, and our structures, in our systems. There's changes afoot, and it's becoming more and more obvious that those changes are probably going to become faster and more rapid and potentially more catabolic in nature, to use the terminology, and that those people who have the capacity to remain an anabolic energy, even amidst all that catabolic transformation, will be the people who carry whatever we get next. Whatever we create, whatever we create beyond the transformation of what we're experiencing right now, the people who can carry the highest levels of anabolic energy will be the people who get to create that. That's part of the work that we love doing here with our community, the people that we surround ourselves with, and the people who want to be a part of the communities that really want to resonate at higher levels of consciousness.

Ani
Yeah. The more people who are doing it, we said this, I think, two weeks ago, it takes actually a smaller... It's not a 50/50. It actually takes a small percentage of people resonating at higher frequencies to make global change and to create that tipping point. It is possible and it is important, I think, for all of us who care to do that and who know how to cultivate within ourselves the higher level frequencies so that we can create the change that we want to see.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Cool. Thanks so much for joining us again this week for this Somatic Coaching Academy podcast talking about the ELI assessment, and look forward to seeing you again next week.

Ani
See you soon.