What does it mean to create safety in your business, and what happens when we get it wrong?

In this episode of the Embodied Business series, Rabbi Reiser and I sit down to unpack one of the most misunderstood dynamics in service-based business: the tension between needing to close sales while striving to provide safety for potential clients.

We break down what "safety" means from a nervous system perspective, and the difference between urgency that's honest and urgency that's manufactured. We also get into something that doesn't get talked about enough: how much of the coercive energy in online marketing is actually the business owner's own unprocessed anxiety being pushed onto the potential client.

Toward the end of the episode, we'll bring in the piece that holds it all together: bitachon as a lived, embodied experience essential in our businesses.

To explore what it looks like to step out of the this marketing cycle and run our businesses from a place of genuine safety, listen to the full episode.

A Companion Read

Seth Godin has been saying for years what this episode is about: stop trying to coerce people, find the smallest viable audience, serve them, and trust that the work is enough. His book, This Is Marketing, is the clearest version of this argument I've seen, and demonstrates what it means to show the right people what's possible for them, and letting them decide. Highly recommended.

Amazon link

This week, my husband Rabbi Yonasan Reiser and I talked about something I get asked about fairly often: how to choose a somatic training program.

My answer might surprise you.

We're taking a model of learning that's designed for cognitive content and applying it to body-based work. The model is information-heavy and lecture-based, and I think that's a problem for what we have here.

If you're learning a somatic modality, at least 70% of your time in training should be experiential. Learning this modality doesn't work by watching or listening to lectures. To be effective, we need to actually practice it in all three roles: as a practitioner, as a client, and as an observer.

The reason is simple: if you don't have the lived experience of what you're guiding your client through, you can't guide them.

In this week's episode, I also talk about why the nervous system needs a little context before jumping into practice, and why ongoing practice after training is what separates the practitioners who can actually use this work effectively from those who can't.

And then I tell a story I don't share often. When I was looking for a focusing practitioner for myself, I worked with several people who claimed to do focusing, and I was appalled. What they were doing caused re-traumatization. They were good people trying their best, but they didn't have the depth of lived experience that this work requires.

This kind of training needs to be lived. Join the conversation and let me know what you think.

If this episode resonated with you, I recommend The Power of Focusing by Ann Weiser Cornell. Cornell studied directly with Eugene Gendlin, the originator of Focusing, and this is probably the most practical guide to Focusing that exists. It's not theoretical; instead, it walks you through how to actually do it.

This maps directly onto everything we talked about today: the difference between understanding something conceptually and having the lived experience of it. This book won't give you the lived experience that only comes from doing the work with another person, of course, but it's the closest thing to a hands-on guide you'll find in print. Order a copy here. This is an affiliate link which doesn't cost you anything extra and helps support my work.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Focusing-Practical-Emotional-Self-Healing/dp/157224044X?tag=towardsahealt-20

When someone comes to you with a request or a demand, there are two things you can do: support or acquiesce.

Supporting means both people exist. You're here, they're here, and it's a real relationship.

Acquiescing means you stop existing, like a balloon where all the air goes out of one side to inflate the other.

In this episode, we talk about what it actually looks like in a business context to stay present while serving your clients. We get into the nervous system piece: why fawning is a behavior and not a state, and why it doesn't actually regulate you. We talk about hishtadlus inside Menuchas HaNefesh. And we get practical: filters, recordings, scheduling, and how to use your needs and your clients' needs as the compass for every business decision.

If you've ever bent yourself into a pretzel trying to accommodate a client, and then felt resentful or burned out, like you're serving everyone but yourself, then this one's for you.

If this episode resonated with you, I recommend Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. This is the book where fawning as a concept was developed, originating in Pete Walker's work with complex trauma. The way he describes it maps directly onto everything we talked about today: giving yourself up in order to feel safe, stopping existing for the sake of the other person, and the nervous system cost of living that way over time. It's not a light read, but it's not overly clinical, either. Walker writes from both a professional and a personal place, and that comes through. Order a copy here . This is an affiliate link which doesn't cost you anything extra and helps support my work.