MMLM EP 9: The Power of Somatic Coaching

Yeah.

So...

To distinguish therapist and coach, it's, you know, I don't have an LCSW or an LMFT.

So it's a slightly different program.

Coaches tend to be a little bit more future oriented.

And also I am really accountable to outcomes.

which, you know, some therapists certainly are as well.

But part of what actually got me into this was feeling some analysis paralysis.

Both my parents are talk therapists.

I was in talk therapy for about 10 years myself.

And I think it's wonderful and certainly has a place.

But for me, about two years of somatic therapy really moved the needle on some chronic patterns that I had.

more than all those years of talk therapy.

And for me, it was particularly chronic overextension, burnout, which is something that a lot of people experience these days.

So, you know, I could analyze and tell you why I felt like I needed to save the world and was such a martyr about it.

But I couldn't say no, when the moment came to work with someone in need, or I extend myself further.

So what is somatic therapy or somatic coaching? So somatics comes from Thomas Hanna in 1970, wrote a book where he describes the soma as the body experience from within.

And it comes from the Greek soma, which, yeah, is this word that sort of is energetic, physiological, spiritual body all rolled into one.

We don't have a perfect translation for it.

And so somatics is really about that mind-body connection.

And the word interoception is a really key one, that sort of internal perception.

That's a word I learned from Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, whose book about 10 years ago really popularized this a lot in the U.S., although it still, for example, is much more, I think, well-known in the Bay Area and in California than it is on the East Coast.

So it's still culturally making its way around.

Mm-hmm.

And so we use interoception, we use that mind-body connection to heal.