Written by Anna Choi, Energy Master
Anna Choi is an Energy Master, Qigong Tai Chi Instructor, and Taekwondo Black Belt. After burning out from her wealth management and event consulting business, she hit rock bottom. She met her two enlightened energy masters transforming her life into a singer-songwriter performance artist, 2x TEDx speaker, & Amazon No.1 International Best Selling Author as Founder of SolJoy with Anna Choi SPC.
What is your relationship to your body? Do you enjoy your body? Do you take it for granted or not even conscious of it unless it’s not working or breaks down?
Perhaps when you look in the mirror (if you look at all), you tend to notice gray hairs, flab, and wrinkles. You may notice your body not recovering the way it used to or that it’s slowly becoming weaker as you age if you don’t keep up exercising. Subconsciously you may feel “I’m too fat,” “too small,” “too tall,” or some other version of not enough.
You may have heard, treat the body like your home. Take care of it, clean and detox it, maintain and respect it. Yet how many do that?
Let’s be real
Many of us treat our bodies like a garbage disposal in the name of not wasting food (cause there are starving kids in Africa!) or forget to eat at all while running around being too busy. Others find it difficult to have time to prepare healthy meals and end up eating junk food or eating out too much.
Perhaps like diets, you set a goal to look great before attending a wedding or to prepare for a 5K run, but those exercise habits fade after the goal is met.
I find it rare in my work with clients to find someone who genuinely enjoys caring for their bodies. Rather, caring for the body (let alone loving it) occurs as a chore to constantly manage, especially through aging.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
Imagine what it would feel like to consistently treat your body as a sacred vessel for your soul’s growth. As a wise friend that you honor and respect for its wisdom within.
Regardless of what you believe or not spiritually, what if you treated the body as a beloved companion rather than as an unpaid slave you beat up for not working perfectly despite laboring 24/7 to keep you literally alive from your heart beating to cellular regeneration.
Beyond what the body does for you, have you ever ventured inward to explore the vast galaxy within your body? My enlightened masters have taught me how the body is a map of your soul’s enlightenment. I’ve found this to be true.
Consider how you treat your body now is how you treat your soul.
What?! But Anna, where do I start? I have no time.
Let’s start with the basics by assessing yourself.
What is your body’s current state?
Many humans are numb to their bodies. Anywhere from eating out of boredom to escaping the body as a coping mechanism to escape childhood trauma. Others use substances to drown out their worries and anxiety or have an addiction: overworking, being busy, nonstop screen time, social media scrolling, sugar cravings, binging on Netflix, or a host of other distractions that don’t have you face reality.
Others might feel resigned. They’ve had body dysmorphia or decided to just “let themselves go” after having babies.
Then there are my high-achieving clients in denial of how out of shape they are, stuck in the past of their former healthier selves. They try to become weekend warriors to suddenly injure themselves and then be out for weeks, slow to recover.
They often end up resorting to yet another surgery to heal a chronic back pain or hip injury they cannot fix themselves naturally. I’m all for western emergency fixes when you need it. However, while diet and exercise are respectable healthy habits, it only addresses the physical—what regular habits are they doing to “exercise” their hearts, mind, and spirit?
This is where the inner somatic work of the heart, mind, body, and spirit creates a foundation for well-being to weather any unexpected storm.
The key to unleashing boundless energy for my clients and myself is consistent, daily somatic practices. It’s a powerful tool to help tap into your body’s inner wisdom, optimize flow state or peak performance, and achieve greater focused success.
What are somatic exercises?
Somatic exercises focus on the mind-body connection, recognizing that our physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts are deeply intertwined.
Unlike traditional life or health coaching, which may primarily focus on mental strategies or behavior change, somatic practices delves into the body’s sensations and movements as access points to unconscious programming to accelerate holistic growth and transformation.
Through somatic exercises, you learn how to feel energy and listen to your body’s cues physically and intuitively. By consciously releasing tension and stress you integrate mind, body, heart, and spirit.
This heightened awareness enables you to make more conscious choices, respond effectively to challenges, and optimize your performance in all aspects of life, and most importantly–communicate and express your soul’s desires from the ego’s incessant grip.
Why somatic coaching: 5 Benefits
Somatic coaching offers several unique benefits that set it apart from traditional coaching approaches:
Embodied learning: Embodiment is learning with your body (not just your brain) that helps you access untapped resources and wisdom within. You don’t need to learn why or how to perform better. You have to recognize and feel it in the body.
Integration of mind and body: High achievers often live in their heads, disconnected from their bodies’ signals and needs. Somatic coaching bridges this gap by strengthening the mind body connection. Experience new ways of moving, breathing, and being to integrate learning at the brain stem (versus limbic feeling brain and executive functioning of the brain) creating lasting change from the inside out.
Stress reduction: Somatic exercises promote relaxation releasing tension held in the body. As you learn to regulate your nervous system and manage stress more effectively, you become better equipped to navigate challenges with grace and ease. Less reacting to life and more conscious of creating life as it comes.
Emotional resilience: Beyond the buzzword emotional intelligence, developing your ability to simply name an emotion and feel it fully is one of the biggest benefits of somatic exercises. Feelings can often feel like a threat to the ego who then reacts with judgment, fixing, or avoiding our feelings.
Feelings are distinct from emotions which are reaction-based and come automatically with the biology of our bodies. Feelings are the energetic sensations from an emotion that get stored in the body as trauma or baggage when we don’t learn as humans to feel.
By learning to feel through somatic exercises, you release a lot of baggage in the body and develop stronger emotional resilience.
Optimized performance: By aligning your mind, heart, and soul with the body’s movement patterns and energy flow, somatic coaching enhances your physical performance and mental clarity. Whether you’re leading a team, giving a presentation, or making critical business decisions, you’ll feel more grounded, focused, and confident in your abilities.
When to hire a somatic coach, somatic trainer, somatic guide, or somatic mentor
So, when is the right time to hire a somatic trainer? Here are some signs that somatic coaching could benefit you:
Feeling stuck or stressed: If you’re feeling stuck in your personal or professional life, experiencing chronic stress, or struggling to manage overwhelm, somatic coaching can help you break free from limiting patterns and find greater ease and balance.
Seeking peak performance: If you’re committed to achieving peak performance in your work or creative endeavors, somatic coaching can provide you with the tools and practices to optimize your physical and mental well-being, enhancing your productivity, creativity, and resilience.
Desiring greater mind-body connection: If you’re interested in deepening your mind-body connection, cultivating greater self-awareness, and accessing your body’s innate intelligence, somatic coaching offers a holistic approach to personal growth and transformation.
Ready for holistic growth: If you’re ready to embark on a journey of holistic growth and self-discovery, somatic coaching can support you in integrating all aspects of your being – body, mind, heart, and spirit – to live a more fulfilling, authentic, and purposeful life.
Developing stronger soul power in an ego-driven world: If you’re on a path to living your highest self yet find your ego constantly demanding of you and sabotaging your efforts to meditate, somatic training helps you discern your soul’s voice from the ego’s in that incessant inner committee in your head.
Now what?
In the quest for success and fulfillment, high achievers often overlook the body’s wisdom in favor of the mindset of coaching. While mindset work has its place, solely focusing on that wastes more than half of your innate energetic power available to you as guiding wisdom.
Somatic exercise offers a powerful pathway to unlock your full potential, optimize peak performance, and live a more vibrant, balanced life.
Whether you’re seeking stress reduction, emotional resilience, or greater mind-body connection, somatic exercises are key to shifting from burnout to brilliance so you can scale your growth with grace and ease.
Read more from Anna Choi
Anna Choi, Energy Master
Anna Choi is an Energy Master, Qigong Tai Chi Instructor, and Taekwondo Black Belt. After burning out from her wealth management and event consulting business, she hit rock bottom. She met her two enlightened energy masters transforming her life into a singer songwriter performance artist, 2x TEDx speaker, & Amazon No.1 International Best Selling Author as Founder of SolJoy with Anna Choi SPC.
SolJoy servies high-achieving, impact driven, mindful community leaders, entrepreneurs and executives to shift from burnout to brilliance, unleashing their soul's joy. Serving thousands of students, SolJoy specializes in somatic mindfulness, moving meditations, and healing martial arts to tap into boundless energy for more health, happiness, and peace.
