In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m joined by the amazing Claire Thorpe, a somatic practitioner, yoga teacher, and embodiment coach. We explore the powerful connection between body awareness and business success. We talk about how somatic coaching can help you strengthen your nervous system, make clearer decisions, and grow your business from the inside out. If you’ve ever felt like mindset work and strategy aren’t quite enough, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on why tuning into your body can be the missing link. Clair shares her own journey, and we dive into practical ways to bring somatic practices into your daily routine. Whether you're new to this or already curious about embodiment work, this episode is full of insights you won’t want to miss.

 

 

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Transcript

Teresa: What if I told you that the key to your next business breakthrough isn't another mindset, technique or marketing strategy, but lies within your own body. In today's episode, the guest and I explore the transformative power of somatic coaching and how developing your nervous systems capacity could be the missing piece to your business.

Growth puzzle. Whether you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or simply curious about the difference approach to business growth. This conversation reveals how somatic awareness might be the most powerful business tool that you're not yet using. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing.

An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in.

In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, [00:01:00] and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place.

Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, and as always, thank you so much for spending time with me, for listening to this episode for hanging out. I greatly, greatly appreciate it, which. Can I start by asking a favor?

There is a huge percentage of you who listen to the podcast, who don't actually subscribe to the podcast, and I would love it if you could do me a favor and hit that subscribe button wherever you are listening, because what happens when you subscribe is more people see it, especially if you review more people see it.

I get to help more people, and by doing that I get to [00:02:00] have more amazing guests. On the podcast because sometimes when I pitch to someone to be on the podcast, I get asked how many downloads I have, and the more downloads I have, the more amazing people I can bring and get their brilliant ideas for you.

So we'll make a deal. You subscribe. Do me a review and I will make sure that I bring on the best people who can help you accelerate your business. Okay, on with today's episode. Today I am interviewing Claire Thorpe, who is a somatic practitioner yoga teacher and embodiment coach, and she supports female founders who are yearning for deeper nervous system stability.

That's easy for me to say. And. Resilience as they grow and scale their business. And she offers a body led nature inspired approach to inner healing and growth. Now, I just wanna say something before I continue with this episode. If you've been listening a long time, you will know that I. [00:03:00] Certified as a coach a few years back.

You'll also probably know if you've been listening a long time, that I went through a real journey of getting sober, which once I had gone through the worst of the journey, I shared a teeny tiny bit on this podcast, and then I actually went and did another podcast all about that. But what happened was I needed the mindset stuff in my world, and therefore I bought it into my business, and I'm not sorry.

I bought it in. But it was a distraction that I didn't need, and now I'm really glad to being back and doing strategy and marketing and stuff that I really do excel in and the stuff that I am brilliant at. And I say that with all intention. I think we should be getting more comfortable with saying we're brilliant at things if we are anyway.

I've kind of come away from all the mindset stuff. Not personally, I still do a lot of mindset stuff, but I didn't want it on the podcast. And the other reason I've kind of come away from it is 'cause I actually interviewed a couple of people who were a bit more [00:04:00] on the Woo side and. The episodes weren't great, like, and I didn't put the episodes out because when I came to do the hook, which is the bit at the very beginning of every episode before we start the intro, I couldn't think of what to say.

I couldn't give you a good reason why to listen to that episode. And if I can't give you a good reason in a one minute hook, then it really isn't a good episode. And it kind of put me off having mindset slightly woo steff on, even though it's still very much in my world. Anyway. Someone mentioned Claire to me and said, you should have her on.

I didn't say you should have her on, 'cause I'm never really a big fan when people say that, but they said she's awesome. Yeah, I think you'll like her. And she could possibly be a guest of the podcast. I listened to her staff. I really enjoyed what she said and thought, actually no, this could be really good.

And then as weirdness, woo. Universe, whatever you wanna call it, would have it. So I interviewed Claire ages ago, when am I looking? Actually, back in April and beginning of April. And because as you know, I batch [00:05:00] ahead and, and we're always a good number of episodes ahead in terms of the interviews. More than a good number's, probably a good few months ahead.

Anyway, I'd done this episode, really enjoyed it, and then I found a guy called Joe Hudson and I found Joe Hudson through Ali Abdul's YouTube channel. I watched the YouTube channel and I watch a lot of YouTube at night. It's all gardening stuff in the day. It's all works up. Joe is a coach for Silicon Valley CEOs, like I'm talking Apple OpenAI, who has chat GPT, and you would think so.

He's obviously coaching some hugely successful, very serious business people. I'm assuming the most of the men. And I was kind of watching him thinking he'd be more of like a masculine energy of coaching and he talks all about body emotions and the importance of us understanding our body and emotions in business and as business owners.[00:06:00]

And it's just so interesting that I've been watching that and really engaging in that and actually. At the same time have this episode coming out, and it kind of just proved to me that it's the right thing to have on the podcast because actually, as much as I love doing the strategy and I love people talking strategy, I also can't forget that we are human and,

Some of these things, even more of the mindset stuff is really, really powerful in terms of growing us and our business. So like I said, it was kind of really interesting that I found Joe and was like really love his stuff. And actually he talks a lot about what we're gonna be talking about today.

Today we're gonna be talking all about how your body can really keep hold of stuff, how it can hold us back, how it can make us not in alignment. And obviously there's the book, the Body Keeps the score. Sometimes things cannot be like slotting into place or things cannot be feeling right and we don't know why.

'cause on paper or in our brains, it feels right, but something just isn't right in our [00:07:00] body. So we talk about what somatic means and we talk about how we can get in our bodies. Now this sounds wild that we're even, and I say this on the the podcast like that we are even having this conversation. But honestly, when was the last time were that you were in your body?

And what do I even mean by that? This conversation talks about how getting on our bodies can help us make better decisions, gain greater clarity, and ultimately grow more comfortably in our business. It's fairly honest and sometimes a little bit vulnerable because I talk about things, I always like it when I can connect it to me and what's happening in my world.

Maybe that's because half of it is I get free coaching and maybe the other half of it is I genuinely think that it helps you when I'm asking questions or when I'm relating it to me. We also talk about how you bring some of it in, how you do some of the work yourself and how do you know if you need it.

And the other thing that we talk about, which you know, I love is nature and growing plants, right? But don't be [00:08:00] put off by that. It literally is just a little bit at the end. Anyway, I know you're gonna get a lot from this episode. Claire was absolutely lovely. So without further ado, here is the lovely Claire.

Claire, welcome to the podcast.

Claire: Thank you So much, Teresa lovely to be here.

Teresa: I am very much looking forward to this conversation I had before we got on. I was telling you that I actually, I'll go into it briefly, that my own personal journey went from marketing strategy into mindset and I've come back out the other side because I really needed the mindset stuff in my world at the time.

And since then. I've not really, since I've kind of come back out into strategy, I've not really had many people on talking about things that are not business strategy. And today we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about the word somatic. So let's just start by even explaining, not that I can, you can explain what we even mean by the word somatic.

Claire: Yeah, sure. So [00:09:00] Soma is the Greek word for the body. Somatics simply means relating to the body. And I think a lot of people, I think we sort of mistake that as well for just meaning the physical body. So you'll see things on social media, like people jumping around, shaking movement like generally if I ask people like, what do you think somatics is like, they'll say movement, they'll say breath work, and, and this is all, this absolutely is all somatics, like somatic practices, I would say.

I am a yoga teacher as well as a somatic coach, and I can dig into a little bit more about that as well. But yeah, there's a difference between what I would call somatic practices, IE the breath work and, and like the, I call them, like the, the layers on top, if you will. What I do as a somatic coach is it's very much rooted in the work of Dr. Peter Levine and around somatic experiencing. We're going, we're going straight in there Teresa

Teresa: no, that's fine. Let's like my work, there's no warmup we're in.

Claire: Yeah, like, so I'm gonna just say [00:10:00] like, the easiest way, this is my like elevator pitch. I'm like, I am like a hypnotist for your body. So, you know, like if you go to a hypnotist and they're like rewiring your neural system and your neural pathways, I am basically helping predominantly women do that.

But on a body level. And how we do that is very simple, which is lovely. Which is like very much slowing down a tune into your whole body, which is sensation, images, memories, thoughts, emotions. So a session with me. Looks a bit meditative, I guess, but it's actually being very present, creating a lot of stability in the nervous system and just letting the body lead and really the body will show when we, when we actually, it's like, oh, okay, you're listening.

You know? And like it's just a process of letting your soma, your being like, reveal what needs to be healed. I mean, I'm not a massive fan of the word healing, like I don't think anyone needs [00:11:00] to be healed or fixed, but it is like. The layers that can be unraveled in your body that are just stuck from things that we hold, experiences that we hold in our body. So it's very much yet a body led process.

Teresa: So, stupid question. Why is that important? Why does it matter? Because I was very good and I have to watch myself sometimes. I live my life on a screen and I'm very good at con focusing on me from the chest out. Almost the point where I don't even realize I've got a body and I know someone's gonna listen to this and go, don't be ridiculous, Teresa

But honestly like it. It really was that bad at points like, so why is it important that I even need to tap in to my body and that type of thing.

Claire: Yeah, absolutely. Well, why is it important? What do we see around us everywhere so much? Anxiety, so much depression, so much. You know, again, I hesitate to talk about trauma.

I don't think like we have to go and meet all our trauma, but [00:12:00] you know, these ways of being these disassociated states that we can find ourselves in. Especially when we're on screens and we're like, you know, we get locked in, don't we? And I think a lot of us are. And sort of operating from this state of what's called like functional freeze, like where we're all just like, oh, like you know, this underlying tension that can sit there.

And that can be from, you know, like actual, you know, capital T trauma that happens in our lives, or just the underlying stresses. We have so many don't we in our lives.

So we're holding all this tension, all these patterns, and I think a lot of the time we approach this from a very neuro centric.

Approach in our society. We, and I'm not to say like it is all needed, you know what I mean? Like the mental health awareness we have these days. I mean, you know, talking a little bit about my story, I was, you know, I, I come from a corporate background like you, Teresa, and you know, in my early twenties I was experiencing anxiety attacks, panic attacks.

I haven't experienced anything particularly [00:13:00] traumatic in my life, but it was just that, you know, I started to climb the corporate ladder, the layers of people pleasing, the layers of masking of like. Not really being true to myself. And this, yeah, this materialized. This manifested as very uncomfortable physical sensations in my body.

And then, you know, that continued for two decades almost. You know, and then, and I think as well when you say when we're working and I shifted during, you know, that time five years ago, I was still in the corporate life then and yeah, like just seemed to get even worse obviously with everything going on in the world.

And that's when I started actually, you know, I was meditating with saying about the mindset, you know, I wasn't in business at the time, but I was. Meditating and I was looking after. I was looking for ways to soothe my body. I got into yoga. Therefore, then I got really passionate about yoga. I realized how much it helped with my anxiety and I did my yoga teacher training, but I was still like experiencing some level of.

[00:14:00] Yeah, like just this tension in my own body. I actually started my business two years ago, over two years ago. Now I'm left the corporate marketing world and started as a freelance marketer. And I thought, yes, this is freedom. Now I'm gonna have, oh, all this tension's gonna go away, and this is the dream life.

This is the dream business that we're talking about now. Like I loved it and I obviously had. I was living the dream, like I was creating this business. I actually started going into more business mentorship and coaching because I loved, like, I was a, I was a head of marketing. I loved the, the development side and the coaching side with people.

So I started doing that, but I was still like, Hmm. I was doing my yoga as well on the, on the side, and I was like. Still, like I am still feeling like shit when I sit at my desk. Like how, you know, like it was very, you know, it didn't, even though I loved what I was doing and I do love what I'm doing, like this pattern held within my body.

Remained, and it wasn't to do with more mindset [00:15:00] work or like affirmations. I was like, something needs to shift. And then it was only about a year ago that I actually stumbled into, as we do sometimes, you know, a training on somatic coaching. And I was like, Hmm, that sounds interesting. 'cause I'd just trained, I'd just qualified as a yoga teacher in Somatics.

And again, somatics is more about how it feels, not about how it looks or alignment or anything. So I was already familiar with this phrase, this term. I did this training with a wonderful woman, Dr. Sarah Coxin, and I just, I blindly found that, that sense of relief that I'd been...