Let’s just pump the brakes because we do get this question a lot. To reframe this, it’s like a med student who is practicing to be a surgeon ask, "Listen, what surgical techniques can I do with people right now before I’m a full surgeon? How can I cut through somebody’s skin?" We would never ask that. But yet we get this question all the time. It’s really quite similar so that’s how we approach the question.

We just pause for a second and say, "Just so you know, asking that question, it’s like you’re probing into somebody’s space, into their being, into their soma. A lot of stuff can happen when you do that. We have a plan. Our plan is we specifically parse out our sensation-based motivation coaching, core centering, cross-mapping tools in a way, level one, level two, level three, through our program so that you are really supported in making sure that you are safe, and more importantly, especially that your clients are safe. We parsed it out that way so that it’s in a very thoughtful manner that you can begin working with people without doing harm for folks." Because in each one of those programs, we’re talking about trauma and different levels of trauma, working with trauma. You’ve got to be a part of that conversation before you start just taking tools and throwing them around.

In a really just brief way, what are some entry-level tools? Well, the very first step, our level one training are really focused on what we call somatic practice essentials. You’re working with things that you may already be doing a little bit of. A little bit of self-massage practices, some mindful movement practices, some breathwork practices, some meditation practices. That all falls under the category of what we call our core centering certification because we do it in a certain way that unlocks the nervous system in a very specific sequence, if you will, in order to get a more profound result. Those are really the first tools. And we also do in a trauma-sensitive framework to make sure as you’re doing those things with people, you’re decreasing the likelihood of retraumatizing someone’s nervous system. Those are the entry-level tools.

Level two, we go into our somatic transformation fundamentals program, where you are learning more trauma-sensitive body-focused, interoceptive learning, where we’re getting more into the sensory system itself, where we’re starting to work with what we call our cross-mapping process, both for emotional and for physical issues. So now we’re really working deeper into a person’s energy system in a more specific way in level two.

And then level three, we’re really starting to bring in, again, more work in the energy system for sure through inquiry and somatic processing and those sorts of things as we go farther along.

So you can see that if you just jump to level three, there’s a high likelihood you can actually cause retraumetization for somebody. That’s why we start in that level one stuff so that as you’re working with people, you’re helping prepare their nervous system for the deeper work.

We have to sometimes qualify what we’re talking about with traditional. So we’re making some assumptions here. The assumption that we make with traditional wellness is that it tries to use rationalization in order to help someone change their behavior.

Say we’re doing weight loss coaching. Oftentimes, we’re trying to convince somebody, "Okay, so calories in, calories out. You need to do that to help your weight. Does that make sense?" You’re like, "Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense." Then you go out and we don’t do what makes sense, apparently. You try to figure out, 'why can’t I get myself to actually make that change?'

Because our conscious mind, our rational mind, is actually not making our decisions for us. Our subconscious mind is making the decisions. Lots of times people on wellness programs and wellness coaches, both, can get very frustrated with themselves, which we want to guard against because that actually can create more self-defeatism, shame, and guilt, which just gets in the way and creates more of a problem for people when we’re using traditional or rational approaches that aren’t getting the effect that we want. A lot of people just think that they’re helpless and hopeless, and that’s not true.

In somatic coaching, we get under the hood and work directly with the subconscious mind, which goes deeper than the traditional methods. When we use the word traditional, usually we’re talking about more of a top-down approach anyway. It’s been my experience through working with wellness professionals and also having our student body, that people are using a lot of top down approaches. Even when we think we’re using bottom up approaches, we’re usually using top down approaches. At the Somatic Coaching Academy (because it’s different wherever you are, right?), we do teach bottom up approaches, and we also teach quite a bit of integration, depending on what program you’re taking, in top down, bottom up, so that people are really taking a fully integrated approach.

We see the somatic coaching as a master’s degree. So not everybody wants to get their master’s degree, but some people really want to get their master’s degree to be able to help people more deeply. That’s what we’re doing here.

Yes, we’ve seen this happen. One of the things that can happen through the course of the certification programs here at the Somatic Coaching Academy, especially with wellness professionals, is it actually helps them to feel and look and be and present themselves even more like a professional. One of the biggest things that we see with students who are already wellness professionals, wellness coaches in particular, is they don’t always have a thriving established business. They don’t always see themselves as a professional.

Through the course of working with us here in any of the levels, but specifically in level one and level three, you’re going to come out of there really feeling like a pro and getting better results.

Will a certification help me be more credible? Yes, that’s what certifications are for. They show that we learn something, that we test it out on something, that we have competencies in something, and that inherently makes us more credible. They don’t necessarily translate. What translates is how effective we are. Because when we’re more effective, then word of mouth happens, we get better referrals, case study testimonials. Trust and confidence starts to happen. Then we put ourselves out there in different ways. We’re more excited to reach more people.

Will a certification help you be more credible? Probably. Will it help you build your client base? Not necessarily. I really think that that comes from high effectiveness and great competency and mastery with the skills.

Yes because somatics is a body-focused thing. So of course, they would. I think one of the main ways that we see that happen, and rather quickly here, is through our Level 1 program with core-centering practices. It happens in any of the programs but core centering practices really laser in on helping people to get more connected with their bodies.

If you’re working with clients who are disconnected from their bodies, the feature of being disconnected from your body or dissociation is a core indicator of trauma. If you’re working with people who are disconnected from their bodies and you’re not trauma-informed, and more importantly, trauma-sensitive trained, then be careful because you can stir up things for people, then you’re not able to actually help people navigate and work through. If you’re working with people with disconnection, make sure you have that trauma-sensitive training.

It’s really interesting to see how this comes up, too, because sometimes clients will self-identify, "I’m disconnected from my body". Sometimes the coach or the therapist will have observation that they feel like the client is. For example, a client saying that she didn’t realize she could stop eating because she didn’t recognize body cues that she was full. And that requires body awareness. That’s just a good example of how it could be showing up in the body.

You might not obviously click in on it, but when clients say stuff like that, you can, "oh, wow, they are probably pretty disconnected from their bodies. It was a good thing, actually, that I had the trauma sensitivity, and I knew that I did because I delved into…"

Mindfulness is really a core part of what we do here because if you’re doing any somatic practices, somatic skills, somatic tools, none of those work without mindfulness. Mindfulness is a core component of all of those things.

You might be wondering, if I already do some mindfulness, will any of this help me? I would say 100 %, because the ways that we approach working with the sensations and the body and emotion, specifically the sensation-based approach that we use, helps people to become more witnessed and more conscious to what’s going on with themselves in a way that’s profound. They can watch and witness their patterns and their behavior and their thoughts and their words and their bodies and all of that, mindfully in a profound way when we use the sensation-based skills.

Mindfulness really falls under that somatic practices umbrella. You want to think about it like that. Somatic practices and mindfulness are amazing things to do to help us regulate our nervous system, to feel more grounded, to feel more present, to detach from unhelpful thoughts and emotions, to be less reactive. All those things are really critical. When we do those things, we often will get a general improvement in our lives, a general improvement in our lives. You don’t necessarily get a specific improvement in your lives when you’re doing somatic practices. You get a general improvement, which is really important, but you don’t necessarily get a specific improvement.

If you’re a mindfulness professional, if you love using mindfulness and you’re doing it with people and your folks are feeling more grounded, more stable, yes, awesome. Now, if you want to be able to use mindfulness as a more focused or intentional, precise way to help someone change a behavior or a belief about themselves, that’s where you go into the somatic coaching or sensation-based motivation coaching practice.

Not all mindfulness practitioners are trauma-informed, and we here are. That is very important. There’s retraumatization that can happen when you’re doing mindfulness work with people that some practitioners don’t know how to deal with when they’re not trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive practitioners. There’s some easy things that you can do upfront, ahead of time, to ensure that you keep people safe.

We’re putting together some standalone programming to help you get trauma-informed in your practice this year. So keep your eyes out for that for sure.

One of the things people don’t understand in terms of the trauma levels is a lot of people are looking for becoming trauma-informed. That might be what they Google, but what they’re really asking for is how do I become trauma-sensitive. You want to make sure that you know what terms you’re using so that you can get the proper support that you’re looking for. You can look back on the podcast about the four levels of trauma practice. Going through all of our levels, level one, two, and three, that’s how you become trauma-informed. It’s all baked into the program that we do.

If we’re talking about a more beginner course for us, we’re talking about our level one program, and the answer is, heck, yeah. So if you’re like, do I do this or don’t I do this? Is a beginner course worth it? Well, a beginner course is better than not taking any course at all. And then we just have to have an expectation of, What do you mean by getting better results quickly? How better are you looking for? We were talking about that trajectory of the sustainable results.

A beginner course will help you get better results quickly, but just be mindful of how grand those results might be. A beginner course probably isn’t going to help you create a whole new transformation in your client’s lives. That’s probably not going to happen. But a beginner course, like our somatic practice essentials course, will certainly help you get better results with someone having a better regulated nervous system, better sleep, less stress, less anxiety. Better performance, better motivation. You’ll definitely get results in those frameworks for sure.

Even our on-demand programs are quick, and boy, they’re going to give you such great ideas for how to get started. Just get going, you’ll have a little bit of results at a time as you go through.

Somatic work is really is like dipping your toes into the mysteries of the universe. There’s so much to learn and explore and to be interested about ourselves and the work that we’re doing with others. Just keep in mind how the results match your investment level of your time and your practice and those kinds of things.

Keep that in consideration, whether you’re going to study with us or you’re going to study somewhere else, because the amount of time that you’re taking, the monetary investment that you’re taking, the energetic investment that you’re taking, all of those considerations help to understand what kind of practitioner you’re going to be on the other side.

If you’re expecting to put in a little energy, a little money, a little time, you’re not going to be able to create the profound depth of transformation than if you were to put in more energy, more time, more money, and those kinds of resources into your training, because of course, you would create more sustainable, more profound transformations. You put a certain amount of energy in, certain amount of energy comes out.

When you dip your toes into the beginning as of the somatic work, anything you put in there, you’re going to be helpful to people.

We have students do it a number of different ways. We have students who come in who already have established coaching structures that they really love. Then by the end of the certification programs, they’ve wiped them out and they’re using the structure that we’ve put in place here. We also have people who have established practices, and then they just put in tools and practices within the context of what they’re already doing. We see people do all number of things. We have processes that we teach here. It’s not that we’re just tossing tools at you. We have processes, and we help you to put one Lego to the next Lego to the next Lego, but you can also use the Legos. So even the short tools have a process that’s associated with them. So you can take the tool or you can take the whole process.

There are two places where somatic techniques can be quickly introduced into current coaching structures for wellness coaches. The first place is in of emotional regulation. Imagine you’re a wellness coach, and you’re working with people who want to probably feel more joy in their life, more gratitude, feel healthier, feel lighter, feel more vibrant, feel more vital, more energy. And oftentimes, what can get in the way of that is life. Life can just feel like you’re on a rocking boat some days, which knocks people off of their regulation, and then they find themselves spinning and depressed or anxious or spun out or burned out. Now they’re not going the direction they want to go. Somatic techniques can very quickly and readily be used to help someone rebalance their emotional regulation. Look back on our podcast for moving from emotional dysregulation to emotional regulation. That’s one place where wellness professionals can very quickly use somatic techniques.

The next place is when resistance to change comes up. Someone’s hired you to help them work out. Say you’re a fitness professional, and the plan is three days a week, you get them to the gym, and then on their off days, they’re to do something on their own. When you talk to them on their off days, they’re like, "No, I didn’t do it again. This came up, that came up. I couldn’t do it here. I couldn’t do there. I was just too tired, I was just too hot, I was just too cold, I was just too sweaty. I was just too tired...". You start to realize, "Wow, this person is actually avoiding doing the thing that they said, so that’s resistance to change". If you had some somatic techniques, you can actually help people navigate quickly through that resistance to change, which will reduce your frustration and reduce their frustration to help them move through. That’s the two places somatic techniques can be most quickly integrated into current coaching structures.

Catch yourself if you think you have an ideal client issue because you just seem to attract these people who can’t get it done. That’s a key thing that we see when people add the somatic practices and tools. It’s not an ideal client issue. You just don’t have all the tools that you could have in your toolbox to be able to help them move forward. Another key sign to watch out for is accountability. We’re taught how to, as coaches, put in accountability measures. When clients have difficulty with that, one of the things that we notice here is that it’s hard for a human to be accountable to themselves when they really don’t embody full choice. One of the things that we work on is to help a person become a person who actually can become accountable to themselves and to others in really safe and powerful ways.

One of the things that we do here at Somatic Coaching Academy is we use a sensation-based approach. The reasons that’s important is because out there in the world, traditional approaches usually talk about emotions without acknowledging that emotions are two things - the feelings that we feel in our body and the narratives in the stories and the conditioning that’s associated with the feelings that we feel in our bodies. It can be unbelievably helpful, powerful, and really fulfilling as a coach to use this sensation-based approaches for emotional stuff, because we actually go in the back door rather than headlong into the stories and the narratives that are all wrapped up in the feelings. We really focus in on the sensations that people feel, and it can be incredibly effective. When we help people work with this sensation directly, it results in better emotional regulation, less emotional overwhelm.

Stress is a perception of threat. For some reason, our subconscious mind is perceiving threat. So we have a stress response in our body. Stress is a physiological response to a perceived threat. Somatic practices are great to be able to begin to balance the autonomic nervous system in a way where you are bringing that sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system back into balance again, which reduces the stress and also would reduce emotional overwhelm. So balance your nervous system place rather than trying to manage or reduce stress, which puts us at a defensive with life rather than understanding life is going to continue to show up and how do I dance with it? How do I navigate with the stress that’s inevitable as part of a life experience?

Stress is really interesting because it’s an experience that we’re having internally. It’s also relational to the environment. It’s never just one or the other. A lot of times we can think that my stress is being caused from something outside of me without realizing that the way I am perceiving what’s going on outside of me is what’s actually causing the physiological response internally. Now, that doesn’t excuse what’s going on outside of us. We can still make changes to what’s going on outside of us to help our internally balanced. And often, it’s easier to make the changes outside of us when we’re internally balanced. It’s more challenging to make the changes outside of us in functional ways when we’re not balanced internally.

Now, with that said, somatic practices are also a gateway into deeper work to reframe deeper patterns that are causing the perception of threat to begin with. We really need to go through that doorway to get into the deeper levels. Somatic practices are really a gateway to working into those deeper levels if you have the knowledge to do that thing.

Yeah, and we teach you how to actually have conversations with clients to actually engage in behavior as a business owner that moves your business forward. So we’re going to better you than making sure you have a website or social media following, which, okay, if you want to do that, and we just don’t see that it translates into actually having a business, we want to make sure you actually have a business that actually has clients that you actually, at the end of the day, get to say, I helped people. And that’s what we’re going to help you do, not create a bunch of stuff that you don’t need or that the marketers think that you need. We’re going to help you be really smart about it so that you can spend your time doing the thing that you love to do, which is helping people.

That really comes through having really compassionate conversations with people about what their goals are, what’s important to them, where they want to move through, what their challenges are. We have a whole conversation process that we teach our students to help enroll ourselves and them into a partnership to help them meet their goals.

We also want to let you know that there is a robust amount of information about building your business in the level one and the level three programs, specifically. There’s a lot of real turnkey things in the level one program. You’re going to be able to take it and just go.

Then there’s more advanced business building professional things in the Somatic Coach Professional. That’s why we call it that program to help you really become a professional in these things.

You’ll have a network of community who has ESP. It will be able to guess ahead of time. The kinds of relationships that people develop here at the Somatic Coaching Academy are the you-read-my-mind relationships that happen. We have tremendous amount of support here because we’re not an organization that’s just going to keep tossing content at you. Yeah, we have plenty of content. You’re going to get content. But really, transformation happens through community. It happens through relationships. We think about that anytime we do anything here at the academy. We’re always thinking about how we can put you in just the right match with the support that you need and the people that you need to be able to make the transformations that you want.

There’s such a need right now in the world for people to have the support, to feel like they’re in safe spaces, to feel like they can move into the world in ways that are productive and effective, and loving and compassionate and empathetic and harmonious and they have a sense of inner peace. That’s really a massive driving force that people are looking for right now in the world. In order to do that, there needs to be people like you that are actually helping people do that. That’s really, really important.

For us, this idea of continuing to add value and support to our community of graduates as well as the current students is really is really important to us.

We’ve literally created this company based on the fact that we just can’t stand it. Every day we wake up wondering how we can add value to your life. The more that this grows and the bigger that the network and community get, the more that other people are also in service of that mission of waking up every day and asking how we can support each other and how we can add value into each other’s lives.