Ep. 27: The Art of Resolving Trauma, Pain, and Releasing Through the Art of Listening to Your Body

Career Design Podcast

Episode 27: The Art of Resolving Trauma, Pain, and Releasing...

Lindsay 00:00

I'm Lindsay Mustain and this is the career design podcast made for driven ambitious square pegs and round holes type professionals who see things differently and challenge the status quo. We obliterate obstacles and unlock hidden pathways to overcome and succeed where others have not stagnation feels like death. And we are unwilling to compromise our integrity and settle for being average in any way. We are the backbone of any successful business and those who overlook our potential are doomed to a slow demise. We do work that truly matters aligns with our purpose, and in turn, we make our lasting mark on the world. We are the dreamers, doers, legends, and visionaries who are called to make our most meaningful contribution and love what we do.

Lindsay 00:42

I am so thrilled to introduce you to my guest today, and her name is Jin and she is my friend actually from a mastermind that I'm in and I want to tell you a little bit about her before she officially introduces herself. So some of you may have known that I lost my brother to a tragic homicide in 2019. And it was pretty horrific. And one of the things I got really interested in Jin's work was that she works with people who've dealt with severe trauma, and the pain that actually physically manifests in their body, which I had no idea the two were even correlated. So one of the things during my recovery, even though emotionally I was unburdening myself through this, I still had a lot of physical pain. And in fact, I had multiple surgeries last year in 2020, to really try to recover and deal with some of the pain that I was having in my body. And I swear I spent 90 minutes with Jin and she totally changed my life in the course of that time, and relieved pain that I was taking medication and going to physical therapy for in just that period of time. So I am so excited to get to introduce you to her because you know, you've heard me talk a lot about energy work. And she doesn't necessarily describe it as energy work but I will say there's a big energetic aspect of this, of what she does to help people resolve trauma that's in their body and that manifests as pain and disease. So go ahead and introduce I hope I did a good job introducing you there because the change that you made in my life, I'm just so grateful to you. First up, but why don't you go ahead and fully introduce yourself to our listeners?

Jin 02:11

Yes, awesome, Lindsay, I can't wait. And thank you for having me on here. And there was a perfect introduction because you're talking about what you had been through is pretty severe in most people's minds. But I am just so happy to hear the shifts that you have just in a conversation that actually wasn't directly to you, you were facilitating a group chat on the clubhouse.

Lindsay 02:34

It's true, I can't tell you just that's why the power of what she teaches is will change lives. So that's why she is here on the career design podcast to talk about this because you actually developed this modality, going through a process I would say, of really owning your own zone of genius and not being something you've been taught but something that you developed and discovered through your own work.

Jin 02:53

Yeah, I love it. Okay, so over the years, my work has definitely evolved. I've been a physical therapist for about 14 years now. And I now would say, what best describes me as a cathartic release therapist. So I started off being professionally trained as an osteopath. And then, about four years in, I was getting disgruntled with the results or the lack of results that I was getting from my clients. And I had been told all these skills and techniques and they just weren't working for people. I was like, What is wrong, and I was just in this box, and I could tell that there was deeper emotional stuff going on in their life. So the external stressors, their relationships, their job, it just everything, but I didn't know how to bring it, to their attention. And then over the years, I started seeing people who had been around the block, I had seen every therapist that had skins that had tested saying the top specialists out there that even had surgery, and they still weren't responding much like you with your hip and taking all these medications. And, you know, that hopped around many therapists and obviously last resort, and it's like, oh, my gosh, the pressures on I really want to do something. So then it was actually through my own journey of going through a little mini health crisis that I really started to discover the mind-body connection through psychosomatic therapy. It was just a very short course. But my story is my weak point is my skin and I thought it was very irrelevant because I was a physical therapist dealing with musculoskeletal pain. But I've always struggled with acne and eczema. And at this point in time, which must have been about 10 years ago, or so now, my skin just exploded in cystic acne, it was all over my face. It was all over my body, and it was worse than I had ever experienced as a teen. And so this was in my late 20s. And I kept on thinking, you know, when I get 25 it's gonna be better when I get into my 30s it'll get better. And it was just, it came on with a vengeance and I got really sick. I felt like I was going to trigger an autoimmune condition because I was at the point where I was getting ulcers on my eye I was getting these random fevers and I couldn't even walk down The stairs in the morning in my apartment without holding onto the handrail because my joints were so stiff, and I became that person who was like hunting around for solutions. I knew the doctors were just going to probably put me on cortisone put me on rocky change from my skin. And I was doing like really harsh chemical peels and seeing a Chinese medicine doctor was taking the most disgusting concoction of Herbes, but I was desperate. And all of these things worked while I was on them. But as soon as I stopped, everything came up. So I'm like, okay, even all the natural stuff isn't working for me. And so then I discovered psychosomatics, which is about how your body or your physical body is a manifestation of your emotional state. And over time, I've integrated this into my work, I went into the study, herbal medicine, and also Western medical acupuncture more from a technique perspective. And so what I noticed was the physical presentation of my clients and how they were showing up could tell you what emotions were going on in their body, and what they were storing. So my little spiel that probably best explains it is that your physical body is a manifestation of your emotional state. So you have all these events in your life experiences, and you have traumas, and they're associated with emotions, both good and bad, but they're all normal emotions. And our body is designed to express these emotions at the time but because often we live in this Western society, it's too busy. We find them inconvenient to express them. And we suppress them. And the other, the other time that we store these emotions is because we don't know how to express them because we're being brought up in an environment where we were told you can't cry, you shouldn't cry, or it's bad to be angry, or we've been exposed to explosive anger so we become scared to express that. So all of these unexpressed emotions get stored in the body. And over time, we can compensate and compensate until we can't anymore, and then that's when it starts to manifest as physical discomfort, chronic pain, recurrent injuries, the illness, the disease states are the autoimmune conditions that people don't even know what to call anymore. But it's also the mental imbalances or anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorders, fears and phobias, all this crazy stuff. And I found that people were going to say all these amazing therapists, psychologists, psychologists, counselors, mind, you know, energetic therapy, but we're given a lot of coping mechanisms. And so I'm really more about processing the emotions like saying the things speaking it out, creating a safe space for people to say the things that I've never been able to. So I see now a lot of people who don't respond to traditional or conventional therapies. So as I said, like, they've done everything, they've even had the surgery, but they still know that there's something deeper going on. And I take them through a process that yeah, it's evolved over time. And then I, I've been asked by a lot of therapists, like, how do you do what you do? And I, it's like, I don't know, I just do it in the moment. But over time, I've realized, okay, there is like a four-step process that I can take people through, and they can learn it, and it becomes this lifelong tool, where they can just improve the emotional metabolism they can, they can process emotion for many, many years and decades ago, and then they start to process emotions very soon after the event because we have these continue to have these interactions and challenges throughout life, even though when we're in the flow and aligned with our sole purpose. But then it really helps to communicate so that you can actually process the emotions at the moment and just speak to the thing. And so that's what I do. You ask me more questions.

Lindsay 08:50

Okay, can I ask what are the four things at the very highest level of what you teach?

Jin 08:55

Yeah, absolutely. And I love to share this, I never hold back the information because I know that some people will just hear this and be able to take it away and make some shifts. And if you do, I would absolutely love to hear about it. Reach out to me,

Lindsay 09:07

Let us know because I would be curious as well.

Jin 09:10

Yeah. So the first and the easiest thing that I get people to do, especially if I have no idea where to start, is just go for a scream and do it in your car. If you feel safe. Just go for a drive on the highway. No ones gonna hear you just scream or scream into your pillow. If you're in a lockdown and you can't get out. Just find a place to go and scream, do it underwater. The scream is just a really good shift. And it's not about getting anger out. It's just about shifting things because when we release, it's not just emotionally, it's physically, it's physiologically and emotionally. And so this is where all the crazy stuff starts to come out of people. But a scream can just be really cathartic. Some people call it a primal scream. So easy. It takes about 5, 10 seconds to do and some people will just rip into it and get a shift is straightaway, quite often what happens is it can trigger a feeling of anger. And so you want to make sure you are in a safe place. And if it's not safe for you to drive, just park the car somewhere where no one's gonna hear you. But the other thing that can happen is it can very quickly switch to tears, and then all these memories can start to come up. And that helps you, I guess, identify what emotions you might have stored. Then the other side of this is that some people find it so awkward it's like, you've told me to do something that takes five seconds, it's so easy to do a scream, but I can't do it. It's like a pipsqueak. It's so pathetic what comes out of me, or I'm looking around, no one's around me, but I'm worried about who's going to hear me who's going to see me. And really, it's just a judgment and criticism of yourself. And then this plays out a little bit further down the track. So the scream which I think is accessible for everyone to do, you might lose your voice, but keep going. It'll settle down and it will sound different.

Lindsay 10:58

This is one for me that I totally do. And when I feel super frustrated because we have been conditioned completely to withhold emotion or to stay completely neutral. Or we say that anger is bad. I'd love for you to tell us that. Like you had almost an intervention with me about anger actually like that. It's repressed anger that actually causes a lot of our issues. But the screaming peace, like you, release the things and you will feel like for me, you will feel lighter, you will feel a little unburdened and unshackled to whatever it is that's holding you down, even if it's invisible, and you don't even know it was there.

Jin 11:32

Yeah, exactly. It's like just bring the energy up and bring it out. Okay, so then the next piece is more of verbal dialogue. And so there's sort of three parts to this the scream, you can kind of have it separately, you don't need to do it, a scream, and then the verbal process, the scream, you can set aside. But the verbal process that I take people through is usually done in a consult, but you can take this away, and you can start to do it on your own. And it's so important that you speak it out loud. So the three parts are like a one-way conversation or a two-way conversation and then an inner child or what I call a younger self conversation. And what I love about this processing is that anyone can do it because you don't need to have a conversation with the person. Sometimes the person that we need to have a conversation with is no longer in this life in this physical world, so they have passed away. Their distance like adoption is my common example is like, you know, you don't know where the biological parents are, where your biological parents are, they may not be emotionally there. So, people who are often interested in this, they're interested in personal growth. And so they're shooting your head, but that other person is still stuck in their stuff, and they're not ready to deal with it. So emotionally, they're not ready to actually speak to you. And then mentally, they're actually not there. So especially with parents, I think most people have stuff to process around their parents is that sometimes they're old. And they've got neurological conditions like dementia, Alzheimer's, and other things going on where they are a stroke, they can't actually hear you, they can't comprehend, and they can't Converse back with you. Now, the idea is that you don't wait to this point. Because sometimes you can actually have what I call key conversations with people, once you've done your own processing. So what I start with is the one-way conversation is you're doing this completely on your own, you do not have anyone else around you. So you create a safe environment. And you go into this emotional release work with three rules, you don't hurt yourself, you don't harm yourself, you don't harm others, and you don't go on break or destroy things. So as long as you can stick to those rules, you can do this processing, and you must feel safe doing this because sometimes when we're digging up stuff, don't go for the big stuff straight away, it can release a lot. And if your body can react in amazing, fascinating ways. But it can be a little bit scary. So only do it if you say. So the one-way conversation is so you've got an issue with someone in your life, and you just can't let go of it. You're it's only you that suffering right now because you're holding on to that emotion. But you would bring them into your mind. And you would imagine that you're talking to them. Now if it happened 10 years ago, you would visualize that you were that person 10 years ago, speaking out and finding the voice that you didn't have at that time. So I give permission for a lot of the negative talk a lot of the nasty talk and some people struggle with this. However, I say Okay, first of all, tell them what you think about them be nasty, be negative, don't feel bad about this. And tell them exactly what you think of them as a person. Then after you've done that, and usually just noticing the sensation in your body where you feel all of this, and then you move into tell them how they make you feel and you're always speaking to them. What people get caught up with is if they're doing it with me, they start telling me and like no, it's so different. visualize that person, talk to them as if they're there. Okay, and then you go into To what it is you need to hear from them or what it is that you actually need from them. So the one-way conversation has three parts, you've been asked to tell them exactly what you think about them. Sometimes it is really good things that you never got to share, then how do they make you feel, and then what it is you need to hear from them. Now, sometimes that can be a significant shift, sometimes there's nothing but then you move on to the two-way conversation, which is them speaking back to you, and they're speaking directly to you. Now I give space for them to say whatever it is, they would have said, like in their conditioning in the nasty state how they would have behaved, but you listen with an open heart because most of the time we shut down and it just keeps coming at us. But if we just go space to them to say exactly what they would have said, Not that it's right or wrong, but just heard them out, let them rant, then that's great. So let them speak back to you with all of their excuses and reasons for behaving the way they did. And then have them switch to repeat what it is you need to hear from them the things that they weren't able to give you. And quite often they don't know what to give you because you never actually spoke up, you just expect them to know what to give you. So what is it that you need to hear from them, even if you don't believe they would ever, ever say this, because when people stop here, I say you're missing out on the possibility for the healing that happens, again, speaking out loud, then you might get a shift with this part as well, you might have a lot of tears, you might have a lot of sensations going on, where you know that this is hitting the nail on the head? But you may also still not have anything from the screen from the one-way from the two-way conversation, then you go into the inner child or the younger self conversation. Now it's often called inner child conversations or speaking. But I find this trips a lot of people out because they think that inner child is your one two-year-old or five-year-old self. And then they don't go beyond that. But your younger self can be you yesterday, two weeks ago, a couple of months ago, 10 years ago, in your 20s or 30s. So in that scenario that you've got pictured, you go back and talk to that younger version of yourself. Now maybe you walk into that room, as long as the scenes not too traumatic for you. If it is then you take them out of your safe space, maybe it's a walk on the beach or a drive in the car. And our younger selves, our inner child, only we know exactly how we want to be supported. We can't expect anyone else to know how we want to be supported unless we've actually spoken up about it. And so a big thing is where this comes up with his parents and unconditional love is that our parents often parent us the way that they want to parent because of the way they weren't or were parented. But it's not necessarily the way that we needed or wanted to be supported. And again, it's up to us to learn to speak up about this. So you go back, and what are the things that you wanted to hear at the time if there was the perfect person there to support you? What did you want to hear? And you just go and speak to that younger version of yourself? And if they had questions, because when we're in the midst of trauma experiences, there's often a bit of a victim mindset of like, why May, when is this going to be over. And now many decades on or many years on, you realize that you did get over it that you did survive it. And, and so you can share that with a younger version of yourself. And there's a lot of healing in that. And, you know, I deal with a lot of people who have been through some pretty intense and horrific things. And they did speak up to certain people at that point in time. But they weren't heard, they weren't seen, they didn't feel safe in the way they wanted to be seen and heard. So that's the three parts. And it is very simple. But quite often people will get caught up in their heads of like, well, I, I don't believe that they would ever say this to them, I have trouble visualizing my younger self. There are lots of little additional techniques you can bring into this. But the key is just to give it a go. If you're a journal, I say read out what you've written, it's the power of the words and hearing it. So when you do this, you actually take responsibility for how you feel you hear yourself and realize what you've been holding on to. And then when you get to the to where usually you come from a place of understanding of why that person behaved the way they did you know, what were the reasons not then it makes it right or wrong. And then, yeah, you get the opportunity to go and speak and support your younger self and recognize how it is you want to be supported in this present day. So it really does help with your communication skills. The next step would be okay, can you actually have a conversation with this person? It doesn't always have to lead to a conversation because as I said, They're either not here in this world, they're mentally not there or they're emotionally not there. But it doesn't mean that you have to hold on to all of this. So often what happens is I say this is quite uncomfortable dealing up all of these emotions, that's the first phase of discomfort, and then all sudden, there's nothing left to really complain about. And you start to discover who it is you are and connect with your true nature. And then the next phase of discomfort is like, this is who I want to be. I know what my sole purpose is, I now need to take action to live this out to leave my legacy. And that can be really uncomfortable because of some societal stuff. But previous experiences is that we fear criticism and judgment. But I love to I say help realign people with their sole purpose. Usually, they come with their pain, their discomfort, their mental imbalances. But the key is to get you aligned with who you are and living out exactly who you want to be. And it's uncomfortable because people exit your life. Sometimes you have to consciously let go of people in your life, but it's the trust in the process that you will attract new people. So yeah, in summary, what happens when you get to do this, you are generally less triggered less reactive, you start to see what I call the space between. So you can interact with someone you can see the event that could cause the trigger and the reaction, but you now see the space and you're very present, you can hear them, you can hear yourself thinking and speaking and you can now make a choice whether or not you want to react. And then you connect with who you really are and who you want to be. And then the next steps are like acting out on that and expressing who you really asked to the world.

Lindsay 21:37

That is just so amazing. And getting to watch firsthand how this has worked for me. I know how powerful this is. And the thing for the people who are listening now they tend to be experiencing a trauma, a traumatic event and your trauma we define that However, there's no right or wrong answer. I feel like when it comes to trauma, it's how we take it something that seems insignificantly incredibly traumatic, and vice versa. But people are dealing with a lot of whenever they come and work with me there tend to be dealing with multiple levels of trauma. And what holds them back is the baggage that they have around judgment around unresolved emotions and things that they're in, you know, true anxiety and fear about taking that next step. So I think that four-part framework is so incredibly powerful for unshackling to you from the past, which is holding you from being able to change your altitude truly in your life.

Jin 22:29

Absolutely. And I think that so many people think that if they go and do this, or they achieve this goal, or they get to the next level that that will fix the thing, but the baggage always follows you. And you can process it. And actually, it can help you achieve those goals and those next levels. Much, much faster.

Lindsay 22:47

Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Dan, you're an amazing guest I so appreciate having you on here today. And if someone wants to learn more about you, what's the best way that they can follow you or get in contact with you?

Jin 22:57

Oh, sure. So my website is probably the best place to find all the information. It's Dr Jin Ong.com. I do also have a podcast called the Art of Listening To Your Body, which you are going to be on very soon to dive into that story. And I do have Instagram and Facebook, the art of listening to your body. And I do have a free Facebook group where I'm now transitioning, I've got a lot of live videos on there. But I'm going to be opening out free zoom rooms for people to interact with me to learn by osmosis or to actually jump on and ask for some tips to help them process their emotions. I do have a few one-to-one coaching spots available. And I do also have practitioner training if you're a coach or a therapist who wants to actually learn how to implement this process with your clients. And I also run a six-week release course which is open to anyone and everyone who wants to learn this class about the chakras and doses and the cool side of energetics and the practical side of energetics. And yeah, have this safe space where you can share and speak up and know that you're not alone with your traumas and your emotions and actually start to make a shift in a pretty short period of time.

Lindsay 24:14

Absolutely incredible. And but watch out for me being in there too because I just absolutely love her and I think she's got an amazing gift to share. So thank you for bringing it here to our world today. And I hope you have a wonderful day.

Jin 24:25

Thanks, Lindsay