Body-First Healing Podcast

Q&A: Building a Healing Business, Somatic Work vs Therapy & Avoiding Burnout

• Britt Piper • Episode 37

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Building a healing business, choosing the somatic path, and learning how to actually support your nervous system in daily life are all deeply connected. In this Q&A episode, Britt shares how she built her business, what she has learned along the way, why she chose somatic work instead of becoming a therapist, and how to grow a business on social media. She also shares the movement and nutrition practices that support her nervous system day to day. She talks about how this work helps you navigate life’s ups and downs with more flexibility, move through emotions instead of getting stuck in them, and stay more connected to yourself through the uncertainty. Tune in to chat with Britt and get a more personal look at the path, practices, and perspective that shape both her life and her work.

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LISTEN, FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE:

 What did your coaching business look like at the very beginning?

 Why didn't you become a therapist or a psychologist?

 What would you change about your business if you had to start over?

 How do you build a social media presence as a therapist or a practitioner?

Can you share your supplements/workout routine?

Any updates on your Montana property?

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing, you have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here. All right, guys, we are doing a QA episode this week. You guys had fantastic questions, and I'm so excited to be diving in. I love these episodes. I really, really do. We do these monthly, and I feel like they're more so conversations that feel like such an intimate way for me to stay connected to you because I'm not just teaching here. I am responding, I am listening, I am feeling into what's actually coming up in your lives, your work, your curiosity. And so I'm really excited for today's conversation. But before we start, you guys know that I love to share every now and then just some of the wonderful, and honestly, you guys, just such sweet reviews that you leave on the podcast. So today I wanted to share one for you. So this is from Mary Beth LaRue. Hi, MB. I know who MB is. And MB says this podcast is the real deal. And I say that as someone who's currently in Brit's somatic practitioner training. So I've been listening to every episode throughout my training, and honestly, I cannot get enough. What sets this podcast apart is the way that Brit doesn't just talk about somatic work. She helps you actually feel it. Her ability to present this material in a way that lands in the body, not just the mind, is rare and genuinely powerful. As a slow-flow yoga teacher and embodiment guide, I know how hard it is to translate this kind of deep and nuanced work into something accessible without watering it down. Brit does it beautifully. Episode after episode, I find myself integrating what she shares into my everyday life. I love hearing that. Not just my practice, but the way that I move through the world. If you're on a healing journey, curious about somatics or a practitioner wanting to go deeper in your own embodiment, this podcast is for you. Britt is so authentic, and this work will change you. Oh, MB, that is honestly the sweetest review. Thank you so much. And that means a lot coming from someone who's so deeply entrenched in this work, in this space, and someone who I get the pleasure of spending real time with in the practitioner training. So thank you so much. All right. So let's get into our episode today. So, especially based off of your guys' question, something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is how much of this work isn't just about nervous system regulation in theory, but how it actually lives inside of your life, which is also what MV just mentioned here. And how it lives in your business, in your relationships, your decisions, your capacity to show up in the world and to face challenges. So today's questions, I feel like, are really beautiful because they bridge both of these things. We're talking about business, about healing, about social media, and about my own journey. And I think that what you'll feel, or at least what I hope you'll feel as you listen, is that none of these things are actually separate. And the reason for that is because your life organizes around your nervous system. Your work organizes around your nervous system, your capacity to show up, to lead, to create, it all comes back to the body. So let's start moving through these together. So the first question is what did your coaching business look like at the very beginning? Okay, love this question. And it always makes me smile a little because what you see now is so far what my business looked like in the beginning. So I started my coaching business in 2017. It's hard to believe. It's gonna be, goodness, 10 years here soon. And at that time, my program, which is now the body first healing program, was called the functional breakthrough method. And it was more of a one-on-one coaching program. It was very intimate, it was very hands-on. And honestly, it was kind of um a little scrappy, I guess we could say. And the reason for that is because I was building the program out while I was still a student. And when I say student, I mean that I was deeply immersed in learning. I was a sponge. I was studying at the Polyvagel Institute, which is the newest science and research around the nervous system. And it's where a lot of practitioners and therapists go to add a nervous system lens to what they already offer. I was also studying to become a trauma-informed coach. I was beginning my somatic experiencing training. I was also a student at the Embody Lab where I completed their somatic attachment certification, their somatic parts work certification. I was enrolled in Dr. Janina Fisher's complex trauma therapy certifications, one and two. I mean, I was constantly, constantly learning while at the same time, I was trying to figure out how to run a business. And at the same time, I was still very much in my own healing. So I often say that when you're building a practice or a program like this, you're really kind of holding three roles at once. You are a student, you are a business owner or CEO, and you're a human in your own healing. And what I didn't understand at the beginning is that those three things, those three roles, have to stay in relationship with each other. Because if you lean too far into one, like for instance, if you're only ever a student but not building your business, then nothing will sustain. If you're only ever focusing on the business, but not continuing your professional education, then your work becomes shallow and even sometimes unethical. If you neglect your own healing, then everything really starts to crack underneath you. And I have lived all three of those imbalances at different points over the past nearly decade. There were definitely seasons where I was so focused on learning that I wasn't actually building anything. And there were also seasons where I was so focused on building that I wasn't tending to myself and I burned out. Now, kind of talking about the program. So over time, the program evolved. It moved from more of a one-on-one program into live group coaching rounds. And at the time, it was a four-month program where we'd have roughly 10 to 15 clients in this live program together. Then they would graduate and then we go to the next live round. And then eventually it really transformed into what it is now, which is what we would consider to be an evergreen group program that people can join at any time. So there's not this live launching of programs that's constantly happening round after round. And I will say I experimented with scaling in my business. There was a time where I brought on a team of practitioners and apprentices that I was training. And I did that because there was so much demand for my program or for my services, and there wasn't enough of me to go around. And so I thought this is the next step. And to be honest with you, looking back now, I was kind of looking at others in the space, those who were growing their practice, bringing on practitioners to their team and thinking this is how you grow. But what I realized is that I actually didn't want to manage people. And I kind of ended up with a fuller plate where I was holding more logistics, more responsibility, more oversight, more salaries. And it pulled me further away from the depth of the work that I love. So I really had to redefine for me what growing actually meant in my business. It didn't mean having a bigger team. It meant being able to go deeper into the work. And the tagline I always use when I talk about the season of my business is that I wanted to go deeper and no longer wider. But I mean, I think hindsight is always 2020. I don't, I don't know that I ever would have gotten to that place of recognition had I not tried it. Right. So with that knowing and with that kind of new alignment, I decided to scale back down. And that was a really important moment for me because I chose that alignment over this kind of like outward expansion. And especially in the seasons of motherhood, I needed that spaciousness. I needed to be more present with my family. I needed more time for myself. I needed to be able to hold my life and not just my business. And so the way that I run my work now is very intentional. It is much deeper. It's focused and it's supported, but it's not overwhelming. Okay, let's move into your next question. And by the way, I'm going to come back to a little bit more of the conversation about my business and how it's evolved. But this next question is why didn't you become a therapist or a psychologist? So this is such a good question. And I just want to say I want to answer it just really intentionally and really carefully because I have so much respect for therapists. I mean, half of my colleagues are licensed therapists. Therapy is incredibly important and it has its place. It has changed lives, including mine. But what I experienced in my own journey was that there was something missing. I always talk about healing as this big pie that's cut into multiple slices. And for each of us, we can think of those slices as different modalities or tools that have supported us and helped us. Those slices can represent things like traditional talk therapy, somatic experiencing, inner child work, EMDR, hypnosis, breath work, right? And so on and so on. And so for me, I felt like there was a really large slice of pie that was missing for me in my healing. And I had spent years in traditional therapy. I was on medication. I was doing everything that I was told would help me heal. And intellectually, like I understood my story. I could map out my trauma. I knew my patterns. I knew what the roadblocks were. But after years and years of therapy and kind of the traditional route, my body didn't feel different. I still felt very dysregulated. I still felt unsafe in my body, in the world, in relationships. I still felt like I was living inside of survival patterns that I couldn't think my way out of. And it wasn't until I found somatic work that everything really shifted for me because for the first time, I wasn't trying to analyze my pain. I was actually feeling it in a way that really allowed it to like move and be processed and like metabolized. And that changed the trajectory of my life. It really, really did. So my decision wasn't about rejecting therapy. It was about recognizing a gap for not just me, but for so many people and a gap in an industry that was really, really needed, right? Healing. So many of us need healing. We need that support. But as you guys know, we have a lot of therapists in the world. I mean, we talk about therapy in the same way that we talk about dating because there's so many options, right? Date your therapist. If it doesn't work, go find the next one. So we have enough therapists, but we do not have enough practitioners who are trained to work with the body, with the nervous system, with the physiology of trauma. And so what I felt called to do was to step into that gap and into that space to really help people reconnect with their bodies and to regulate their nervous systems and not just understand their stories. Okay. Next question that you guys had. Okay, so this one is easy for me. I would have asked for help sooner. I would have asked for help sooner. I'm just saying that again. It's so important. Oh man, I think in the beginning, I not I think, I know. In the beginning, I wore kind of this identity of being the one woman show like a badge of honor. Like, look at me, I can do everything. And what I didn't realize is that it was actually costing me. It was costing me my energy, my capacity, my clarity. And so now I have a team and they support me really in the areas that are not my zone of genius. So things like marketing and operations and finances and design and, you know, all of those things. And so by having that support, it really allows me to go deeper into the work that only I can do. Now, I also want to add that the other thing I probably would have done differently at the beginning, I do this really well now, but I would have prioritized my own healing more. Even though I only work, I'm using air quotes, work a few days a week with clients and in the Body First Healing program, my job truly is full-time. And it's not because I'm constantly working, but because the way I live my life is what allows me to do this work. That includes my routines, my resourcing, my regulation, my capacity. That is my job. Because the truth is, people don't just come to me for information. They come into relationship with my nervous system. And I take that very, very seriously. Okay, I love this next question. How do you build a social media presence as a therapist or a practitioner? So I of course just want to state that this is not something that you have to do. I would say most of my colleagues or, you know, the SCPs or therapists that I know, most of them don't have a social media presence. But if it is something that you want to explore, then these are some of the tips and guidance that I would give. And it's probably not going to be the answer that you would expect, but it is the most honest one that I can give you. Okay. And the answer is to be yourself. And I don't mean that in, of course, like the cliche way. I mean let your actual nervous system be felt through your content because people are not just reading your words. Okay. They are feeling you. And I think this is where a lot of practitioners kind of get stuck. Like they feel like they need to sound a certain way on social media or be more clinical or more polished or more professional. But I think what can end up happening sometimes is that they create a distance between the potential communities or clients or people that they want to bring into their space. Healing does not happen in distance. Okay. It happens in relationship. So, yes, you can educate, you can teach, you can share what you know. That's one of my favorite things to do on social media. But my recommendation would be to try not to hide behind that. Because the truth is, there are thousands of people teaching the exact same concepts. Nervous system regulation, trauma, attachment, like it's all out there. But I think what makes someone stay in your corner, what makes someone trust you, is not just what you know, it's how you hold what you know. It's how you live your life and how your words land in their body. And so when you're creating content, I want you to think less about what I should post and more about what feels true for me to say right now. What have you lived? Like what have you been walking through lately? What are you still navigating? Because people are looking for someone who feels human. Okay, not someone who feels finished and healed, because healed is not a real thing. We will always be healing. And I also think it's important to say that you don't have to share everything. Okay. Of course, there's balance with this, there's a difference between authenticity and overexposure. And what matters most is that you get to choose what parts of your life feel safe to bring forward. But within that, just let yourself be real. Because again, the right people will find you through that resonance, not through your perfection, not through performance, but through that attunement. Okay, next question. What supplements do you take? Can you share your workout or your training programs with us? Oh, I love this one because I feel like I get to talk about something that feels like one of my favorite like hobbies, you know, one of the things I love to do for myself. So this question, of course, feels kind of simple on the surface, but it actually really touches something deeper for me because there was a time in my life where I kind of approached my body from a place of control. I was very structured, I was very disciplined, very like almost rigid. Um, I've shared before that I did have an eating disorder for a number of years. And what actually prompted me starting my social media account that you guys see now on Instagram, Heal with Brit, was my recovery from an eating disorder and rebuilding the relationship to myself and my body after my sexual assault. And so my Instagram page actually used to be called Brit's Beating Heart, but it was B-E-E-T, like beats, you know? I used to love beats. I still love beats. And so if you guys scroll all the way back in the archives of my Instagram, you got to scroll way, way back. Um, I think I started the account in like 2016, 2017, something like that. But you'll see that a lot of it is like food posts, and I was really, really like excited about the wellness space. But again, I think I was doing it from a place of a little bit too much control. And so at the time, I kind of swung from one direction of recovering from this eating disorder to now really overdoing it and trying to perfect my nutrition, my wellness, my routines. Like there was no flexibility. And we know that a healthy, regulated nervous system is a flexible system. Right. So what that looked like for me was supplements at the same time every day, very specific workout plans, tracking everything. And I would say, of course, like I don't think that that's inherently bad, but for me personally, it was coming from a place of trying to manage my body and my healing rather than being in relationship with it. And so that has shifted a lot over the years and kind. Coming back to your question now, now I focus much more on nourishment and supplementation. And what I mean by that is that food has become a primary way that I support my nervous system. And if you haven't listened to my episode with Luis Mohica that came out last month, I highly recommend it because we talk all about how food isn't just fuel, it's information, it is regulation and communication with the body. Now, in terms of movement, I don't follow a strict plan anymore, but I do have a very deep foundation. So for me, I grew up as an athlete. I feel really fortunate that my parents and my family just valued sports growing up. So I played soccer for 11 years. I played varsity lacrosse in high school and then went on to play Division I lacrosse in college. I was in strength and conditioning programs by the time I was in middle school, working with trainers, lifting regularly. And so what I do now in my home gym, when you guys see my workouts and stuff that I love to share in the mornings, it's more intuitive and it's informed by kind of this history and this muscle memory that I've always had with working out. And I think that that is the difference. Like I'm not forcing myself through workouts. I'm more so responding to what my body needs each day. So some days that looks like heavy lifting, some days it's running, some days it's slower, it's more stretching and like restorative movement. But underneath all of it, the intention really stays the same. Um, and that is that movement for me is a way to complete energy because what doesn't get moved through the body will find another place to go. And oftentimes, at least for me, that places the mind. And so that can show up as overthinking, as rumination, or this anxiety or kind of stuckness. And so movement for me is not about aesthetics at all. It is not about discipline. Rather, it's giving my body somewhere to go, somewhere to discharge all this stress and energy and to really kind of reorganize to the life that I am living. And that is a very different relationship than the one that I used to have. And it's a relationship that I can say I'm really, really proud of now and really grateful for. And of course, I just want to mention that I had a previous episode come out called the Mental Health Toolkit. And in that episode, I talk all about my routines, I talk about movement, nutrition, and how I support myself and my nervous system. So if you haven't listened to that episode, definitely go back and catch up on that. All right, guys, let's move into our last question here. These have been so good. Last one, if I remember right, you were looking at land in Montana for a healing place. Any details? Oh, I love when you guys talk Montana because I just get so excited. This one feels so close to my heart. So, yeah, to catch you guys up, if you don't know already, we purchased about eight acres of land in the Madison River Valley in Montana last year. And gosh, even saying that still feels really surreal. Like sometimes I'm like, we have land in Montana? That's wild. Um, because you know, this wasn't just a business decision. This was something that I really, really felt in my body. It was this vision that really came into my life and into my mind back around 2020. And they were kind of just like these random daydreams that I would have around being in the mountains, being somewhere remote, and being able to go there with my family, but also host retreats there. And so I just kept listening to that whisper and I followed it. And yeah, eventually that vision turned into reality. And so where we're at now, of course, I have visited our property many times, and there's just something about the land, the quiet, the vastness, the lack of stimulation, the no-cell service that just really immediately shifts your nervous system. Like you don't have to try so hard to regulate there. It's like your body just remembers. It's like, oh, we can exhale. And I truly think that that's something that we've lost in a lot of ways in our modern life because we are constantly stimulated, we're constantly connected, constantly consuming, and our systems don't get a break from that. So, this space for me is about creating an environment where people can come back into their natural rhythms. And we don't do that by force or through technique, but through being. So, right now we are in the early stages of building. And if you know anything about building in a remote, rugged area on top of a mountain, you know that it takes time. Um, but the vision is really, really clear. It will be a place for my family to go and to reset, to unplug, um, and to just be together in a way that feels grounded and simple. Like that's something that I want to pass on to my kids. And it's also going to become the home for body first healing restoration retreats, and then eventually in-person practitioner trainings for the Body First Healing Institute. Because while this work can absolutely happen online, there is something incredibly powerful about being in person. We actually hosted a retreat in northern Montana, just right outside of Glacier National Park, back in I think 2022. And so just being in person, being in nature, being in this shared field where your nervous system is not just learning safety, but it's immersed in it. I think that's where a different level of healing really becomes possible. And so as a team, we're just so excited to begin to start creating experiences for all of you to do that alongside of us. All right, guys. So let's close this out for today. Yeah, just kind of reflecting on the questions today. I think like as I sit with all of this, what I keep coming back to is how nonlinear this journey has been. Like nothing about this was perfectly mapped out. It's still not mapped out, by the way. There were moments where I thought I was moving in the right direction, and then I had to pivot completely. That's kind of life, right? Like there were moments where it felt really, really clear, and then moments where I felt lost and things felt so overwhelming. But through all of it, the only thing that really anchored me was learning how to stay connected to myself. And not just in the clarity and the knowing, but in the uncertainty. Not just when things were working, but when they were absolutely not working. And that's what this work, I feel like, you know, somatic and nervous system work really gives you. It gives you a relationship with your body that doesn't disappear when life gets hard. It actually becomes more available. So if you're listening to this and you feel that pull, like whether it's for your own healing or because you feel called to support others in this work, I would invite you to listen to that whisper and like try to take it seriously, because that's exactly where all of this started for me. It didn't start with a perfect plan. I did not have a roadmap, but it started with this felt sense that there was something more. So, all that to say, our somatic practitioner training for the Body First Healing Institute is still open for enrollment for the July cohort. And this is where I bring all of this together: the science, the somatic work, the relational dynamics, the real life application, the business teachings. And so I'm not just teaching you what the nervous system is, but how to actually work with it and work from it, how to hold it, how to support transformation for others in a way that is ethical, that's embodied, and is deeply effective. So if that's something that you've been considering, I would invite you to start to move toward that. Remember that you can apply through the link in the show notes or over on my website at bodyfirsthealing.com. And then, of course, if this is personal work that you want to start doing, if there's personal healing that you feel called to right now, remember you can always, always join me in the Body First Healing program. I hope you guys love this episode. Be sure to share, be sure to tag me on social media, leave a comment, leave a review. As always, I'm just so grateful that you're here, and I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for tuning into the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week, and until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.