(#35) Diving into 5 Misconceptions in Somatic Healing, Breathwork, and Coaching
Mar 27, 2024Episode 35
Rae The Somatic Coach
In this episode of The Raediant Life Podcast, your host Rae dives into the misconceptions surrounding somatic healing, breathwork, and coaching. Tune in to discover:
Debunking 5 common myths about somatic healing so that you can feel empowered in making conscious, aligned, and aware choices for your well-being
Why breathing at your pace is so important and breathing harder doesn't mean you'll have a stronger transformation
Explore how breathwork and somatic healing helps to metabolize painful emotions
Why being grounded isn't always the goal and how to learn your own nervous system response
Learn if somatic healing and breathwork could be a good fit for you, and why
All the areas that somatic healing and breathwork can impact you outside of just focusing on the body
Participate in Curious Convos. Share your questions and topic requests!
Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing any emotional distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.
In this episode of The Raediant Life Podcast, your host Rae dives into the misconceptions surrounding somatic healing, breathwork, and coaching. Tune in to discover:
Debunking 5 common myths about somatic healing so that you can feel empowered in making conscious, aligned, and aware choices for your well-being
Why breathing at your pace is so important and breathing harder doesn't mean you'll have a stronger transformation
Explore how breathwork and somatic healing helps to metabolize painful emotions
Why being grounded isn't always the goal and how to learn your own nervous system response
Learn if somatic healing and breathwork could be a good fit for you, and why
All the areas that somatic healing and breathwork can impact you outside of just focusing on the body
Participate in Curious Convos. Share your questions and topic requests!
Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing any emotional distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Radiant Life Podcast. I'm your host, rae, the Somatic Coach, and I'm here to support you in healing your past, living in the present and creating your future so that you can become the most centered, embodied and happiest version of yourself. Each week, I'll be bringing you episodes to help you navigate life's challenges, ease stress and tension and learn more about holistic healing, spirituality and wellness. If you're interested in becoming the best version of yourself so that you can live the life of your dreams, then you're in the right place. Subscribe to the podcast and the monthly newsletter and follow me on Instagram and TikTok to know when new episodes are released each week. I am so happy that you've landed here. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Rae. I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator, and if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here and that you're tuning in for today's episode and that we get to spend some time together.
Speaker 1:
Some things behind the scenes that I've just been up to in life. I'm currently reading Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima, and it's all about feeling enough, and she also shares her story throughout the book, which is really cool. So she has this example of when she was younger. She grew up watching Oprah and then, throughout her adult life, she ends up selling her cosmetic company, it Cosmetics, to L'Oreal and it's like the biggest acquisition and she is also the first female ceo that they acquire acquired a company from. So it's really interesting and she ends up, obviously. She ends up being very successful and she ends up running in in the same circle as oprah and she realizes in her adult life that she doesn't feel worthy of being Oprah's friend and she creates this. She goes on this journey over the over four years and she creates this book, kind of in a reflection of her life and how, throughout her whole life, there were these moments where she was seeking worthiness and enoughness outside of herself instead of inside, and I just think it's really great. So I'm about halfway through and I'm really enjoying it. So I figured I'd share it with you if you want to check it out.
Speaker 1:
I've also been watching Suits on Netflix, so I'm on season eight. I can't believe that I'm already on season eight. That's like a lot of catching up on Netflix. So me and my husband have been enjoying that and we're curious to see how it ends. And if you've watched it. It's so good. And then another thing that I've just been excited about is I am planning to create a little porch garden, so a little container garden on my porch this year, and I'm going to make some tomatoes and cucumbers and just have fun with it. I've never created a garden myself, and so I'm excited to just, yeah, create an amazing thing. It's going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:
So today I thought it would be nice to chat with you about debunking some myths that come up in the somatic world, breathwork world, coaching spaces, and some of these I believe to be true at one point too, and over time I learned that they were simply not true. So the first myth that we have is in the breathwork space, and it's that the harder or deeper you breathe when you're doing breathwork, the greater the transformation. And this is not true. This is not true. So I use a trauma-informed approach when I'm teaching facilitating breathwork, and what that means is really working at the pace of your body, so finding that rhythm that feels good for you, that depth that feels good for you, and manipulating your breath in a way that feels supportive for your body. So there's, of course, times where you're going to want to push through some discomfort, but it should never be like painful or anything like that I can share. One time I went to a breathwork class where the instructor had like so much fire, energy and was just like really pushing us to breathe like really deep and really hard and I actually pulled a muscle in my chest. So I was so like mad at myself because I'm a facilitator. I was like how could I let this happen? I need to listen to my body. It was just, oh, it was so funny. So what you can do is breathe at your pace, listen to your body, and what not to do is breathe so deep and so hard that you pull a muscle in your chest. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 1:
And our second myth is more in the coaching space and it's if you experience anxiety, then there's something wrong, you're broken and you need to be fixed. So this could not be further from the truth. I used to believe this one for myself. Actually, from the truth. I used to believe this one for myself. Actually, I had this belief that if I was experiencing anxiety, that I was just an anxious person and that I wouldn't be able to change something like that and what I learned over time through doing breathwork and through doing somatic healing, is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me experiencing anxiety. It was simply an emotion that I was feeling and a sensation that I was feeling in my body that I actually had no connection to.
Speaker 1:
So we spend so much time in our minds, especially with anxiety, that we can feel disconnected from our bodies, and so there's nothing wrong if you're experiencing an uncomfortable emotion like anxiety, grief, dread, sadness, jealousy they are all part of the human experience, and what breathwork and somatic healing helps you do is metabolize those emotions. So breathwork can help you shift your state. It can support you in holding space for yourself, so like being in your own energy, and it can also help you with releasing any stored trauma that might be in the body. And then, with the somatics, it can help you to understand an emotion from an entirely different perspective than our minds. So we can try and outthink ourselves out of a feeling like oh, maybe I'm anxious because of this or maybe I'm sad because of this, or whatever the case might be. And what somatics does is that it helps you bring the voice of the body and like how those emotions might be being felt in the body into the conversation and there's so much wisdom to be discovered in when you bring in that new perspective and then from there you can move forward.
Speaker 1:
And our third myth that I'd love to share with you is that being grounded and at ease is the only way to be regulated, or that's the ultimate goal of nervous system regulation, and this is false. This is false, my friends. So sometimes you need to move outside of your window of tolerance, and that means being in a dysregulated state, and sometimes you need to do that to stay safe, to set a boundary, to practice your no or just to have a normal response to something that's happening in your environment. So I know for myself when I, when I started doing breath work, I was really anxious and it totally changed the landscape of my nervous system because my anxiety started to disappear and what my baseline was of where my nervous system normally laid like when I woke up in the morning, was different, and I was. It wasn't that it was necessarily better or more right or wrong or anything like that, it was just different. It was like I had done enough breathwork that my nervous system was staying at a like, its baseline was at a different place, and so it's not necessarily that you always want to be grounded or you always want to be at ease, because it's just unrealistic, right? We're humans. We're always going to be, you know, bumping up against different things in our lives and it's normal to have different responses to things that are happening. So you do not need to be in a grounded state to be regulated. You'll want to find what regulation feels like to you in your nervous system and in your body.
Speaker 1:
So a good example of this that I can share is that when I have caffeine, sometimes I'll be like oh yeah, I'm going to have like a tea with caffeine or like you know, iced coffee or something, and I don't have like a cough caffeine or like a coffee every morning or anything like that, or that's just not something that I've done, but sometimes I'll have some caffeine. And so I went to a little tea shop with my mom for brunch I think it was like two weeks ago and they, they have all. It's a super cute place actually. They have like all like little tea sandwiches and, um, what are those things? Scones. Oh my god. The scones were literally amazing.
Speaker 1:
And so I decided oh yeah, I'm gonna have, uh, like a black tea or it's like a chai tea or something, and it was so good and we shared like a whole pot together and instead of just having one cup, I had like four cups of this caffeinated tea, and I don't usually do that. So I went from being in a super like grounded place to just being really dysregulated. And that was just from caffeine, so it doesn't always need to be you know, this like a big thing or like something doesn't always need to like happen. Sometimes it's just like our body gets in a dysregulated place because of you know, something we ingested. So just a fun way to bring it back together that you don't always have to be grounded or at ease to be considered in like a regulated state, and that's not always the goal.
Speaker 1:
And then our fourth myth is that somatic healing and breathwork is only for someone who has experienced a significant trauma, and that is false. So somatic healing, breathwork, that's for anyone that is looking for a greater sense of self-awareness, maybe to shift your energy or release some stress. If you're looking for more emotional resilience, or really just anyone that's looking for personal growth, then breathwork and somatic healing could be a good fit for you and for me personally. I always incorporate like a trauma-informed approach. So we're so used to being in our heads right, like we are always thinking. We're always with our minds, and in our mind is where all of our fears live, all of our doubts, and then when we start to step into somatic healing or breathwork and we start bringing that voice of the body online, it can be, like you know, pretty alarming and strange to be like, oh, I actually feel connected to my heart, or oh, I feel connected to my root chakra, or just simply like being in our own energy, like really pausing and being in our own space and actually being within emotion. Like for myself, I always use anxiety as the example, but something like even grief or sadness, like being with that feeling, can be pretty alarming and strange.
Speaker 1:
So I know for myself, I always work with someone that has a trauma-informed background and I myself am trained in trauma-informed practices and that's because you'll be moving through these new experiences and sometimes things can come up that maybe you know previously you didn't have awareness around, and that's okay. I also make sure that I don't ever want to put someone that I'm working with on a pedestal and that includes myself as well. Like any practitioner, any healer, any therapist, any coach, all of us. We are not perfect, and that's beautiful, right, like you're with this person, whomever you choose to work with, because of the energy that they bring, because of the space holding they provide and they're not always going to get it right, and nine times out of 10, they may have also been through something similar to you, and so they're going to be able to share from a perspective of someone that may have already forged like, walked on that path, and I don't think it's always necessary to have that in common. I think there are so many healers out there and therapists and coaches that can help people in spaces that they haven't been in. I think that that's absolutely possible. When it comes to the coaching space, it is very common for people to kind of have their niche, so to speak, be in a place where they've specialized, because it's something that they have lived themselves.
Speaker 1:
So, just to wrap that one up, somatic healing and breathwork is not only for someone who has experienced significant trauma. So, just to wrap that one up, somatic healing and breathwork is not only for someone who has experienced significant trauma. It could be for anybody that is looking for personal growth and healing. And then we have number five. So somatic healing only focuses on the body. This is false. So somatic healing includes the body in the conversation.
Speaker 1:
So somatic healing includes the body in the conversation and this can lead to understanding why you move into thought spirals, so having a stronger connection between your body and your minds. It can lead to feeling more grounded, feeling more regulated in our a way that feels good for you. It can lead to having a greater sense of the present moment, so being able to stay present with what's happening in the moment, being able to pause before moving into a thought spiral. It can help with your relationships, because you become more present and maybe a more attentive partner, rather thanfixating on the past or hyperfixating on the future. It can also help you to identify what your needs are and how you communicate those needs, because with somatic healing, you're getting a new perspective and you're getting to know yourself in such a different and deeper way. Those needs and how to communicate them become easier to do and you get to know them better, and it can also help you to build a more compassionate relationship with yourself. So this happens when you start doing parts work, you start understanding having a loving inner parent, a loving inner father, a loving inner mother, and how to work with your inner children. So really being able to meet all parts of yourself with compassion and love and how that translates into other areas of your life is incredible.
Speaker 1:
And that was all five myths for today. So the first myth was the harder or deeper you breathe when you're doing breathwork, the greater the transformation. The second was that if you experience anxiety, then there's something that needs to be fixed. The third was being grounded and at ease is the only way to be regulated. The fourth was that somatic healing and breathwork is something that's only for someone that has experienced significant trauma. And then the fifth was that somatic healing only focuses on the body. So I thought that this was a fun way to you know, share more about what breathwork is, what somatic healing is, trauma-informed approach more and a little bit more about what I do, and I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope you found value in it and thank you so much for tuning into today's episode.
Speaker 1:
If you are not already signed up for the newsletter, I send out a monthly newsletter on the first of every month and then I also send out a mid-month newsletter on the 15th of every month and that includes all of the upcoming events.
Speaker 1:
It includes a mantra of the month, a journaling practice. It comes with a somatic practice and some life updates. So if you're curious about what's coming up for the month of April, definitely sign up for that newsletter. I'll put the link in the show notes and, yeah, I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, an incredible rest of your week, and I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you were moved or inspired, please share with me by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It means the world to me and I am so appreciative for your support in helping my podcast grow. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram and TikTok and follow me at RayTheSemanticCoach. Make sure you check out the show notes of today's episode for links to freebies, opportunities to work with me and ways we can stay connected outside of the podcast. I'm so happy that you're here and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the Radiant Life podcast.
