Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
“Your Life Style Is Your Medicine” is a podcast that focuses on how a person's lifestyle can be the key to health and happiness. Routed in the principles of lifestyle medicine, Ed Paget, osteopath, and exercise scientist, interviews area-specific experts on how lifestyle impacts well-being, focusing on purpose, physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and stress, which could lead to a longer, happier life. Edward now runs immersive lifestyle medicine retreats, with the purpose of helping others take back control of their lives to live longer and healthier.
Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
Your Body Holds the Key to Healing Emotional Trauma with Dr. I-Chia Sun
Dr. I-Chia Sun's journey from stressed Western doctor to integrated healer reveals profound truths about our bodies, medicine, and healing. Raised by Chinese immigrant parents who steered her away from her original interest in Chinese medicine, Dr. Sun followed the expected path through Western medical training only to emerge feeling disconnected and limited in her ability to truly help patients.
The revelation came after a mountain biking accident left her with an injury that conventional physiotherapy couldn't fix. One acupuncture session that incorporated emotional release immediately improved her hand function—illuminating what was missing from her medical practice. This moment rekindled her forgotten childhood desire to study Chinese medicine and set her on a path of integration that would transform her understanding of healing.
Through her study of acupuncture with Dr. Steven Ong, Dr. Sun began experiencing the energetic dimensions of healing that Western medicine overlooks. She describes how conventional medicine often masks symptoms without addressing root causes, particularly when those causes involve emotional components. The limited time doctors have with patients (often just 10 minutes) forces them to compartmentalize complex issues that are actually interconnected.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dr. Sun shares her discovery of fascial maneuvers—a practice that works with the body's connective tissues to release not just physical restrictions but stored emotions and trauma. She explains how our fascia holds the physical manifestation of repressed experiences, and how working through these layers can trigger profound emotional releases, memories, and healing.
What makes this approach revolutionary is its emphasis on self-healing. Rather than patients being passive recipients of treatment, they learn techniques to initiate their own healing process. This empowerment represents a fundamental shift in how we approach health—one that honors the body's intelligence and our innate capacity for healing when given the right support.
Ready to explore your own body's wisdom? Email ed@edpadget.com to learn how lifestyle medicine can address your specific health concerns and unlock your healing potential.
It's because you're relieving so much stress and tension, all this, the holding and the compensating of the things that we have stored and repressed and packed away for a later date to try to process and resolve. It's all in there. It's not doing self-care, doing all the right things, doing the appointments, doing the right diet, doing the right exercise. No, it's actually the caring heart, the compassion, the self-love that's needed.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the your Lifestyle is your Medicine podcast with me, your host, ed Padgett, and today we have a treat for you we are live and in person on set, so to speak, in Nicaragua, with Dr Icha Song. We are going to be talking about her fascinating journey from her childhood to becoming a Western MD, to now practicing acupuncture and fascial release therapy, or fascial maneuvers, and we're going to talk about her experience with injury, illness and emotions and the way that all can be held within the body and can be released in these different and more alternative ways. Okay, where do we start, gosh? Well, I'm interested in how you, as a Western-trained MD, came to be practicing acupuncture and fascial maneuvers.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a long journey and where you begin is at the beginning. So my parents were Chinese immigrants, from Taiwan, I think. When I was a teenager I actually wanted to learn Chinese medicine and I was very sternly told no, you can't do that. We came to Canada and they wanted to make sure they got their doctor, dentist and lawyer from their family. So I was told I had to do Western medicine. Growing up there was a bit of control and a lot of conditioning expectations, and so that was the path that was chosen for me. So I did it and, interestingly, it never felt quite right. When I went through my first med school interview, I went through the University of Saskatchewan and the first panel of interviewers were all old Caucasian surgeons, male, old white men. Okay, I wasn't going to say it like that. And so I sat in there and I felt like I had been dissected, torn apart and then booted out of the room and I obviously didn't get in there. And I felt like I had been dissected, torn apart and then booted out of the room and I obviously didn't get in and I thought I really don't think this is for me. But I wasn't allowed to give up after that first year. So I had to go back the next year and try again. So I tried again the following year and then it was a completely different panel of interviewers. They were very compassionate and caring. They were curious. I was just myself and I got in Fast forward, though through the years of med school very quickly.
Speaker 1:I mean I tried my best. It was very stressful. I always felt like I didn't quite fit in, which is a theme in my life and it was very challenging and stressful. But it got to a point where I realized I couldn't actually leave. Many times I wanted to quit but I realized I wouldn't be able to pay back my student debts right, my loans. So by my fourth year of medical school I was very disheartened, really wanting to quit.
Speaker 1:And I had this encounter in the hallway of the college. This doctor who had interviewed me in my interview he was a pediatric oncologist he stopped me in the hallway you know I was probably had my head down, just like slumped down and just miserable. And he stops me in the hallway and he says you, you're so-and-so Now. He would have called me Wendy at that time that's my English name and he said I interviewed you four years ago and I said yes, and I thought why is he talking to me? And he said, and he mentioned a few things from my interview that he remembered, yeah, from four years ago. And I thought thought, okay, this is very strange, why is he even remembering what I said during that time? And he looked at me with these eyes and he said you, you're gonna do something great one day. And and he said you know what I wrote on my, my evaluation form? I said no, said this person must be led into medical school, and then that was it. He walked away and I was just kind of, you know, standing there, going what just happened. Why did he say this to me? And I never forgot, you know the look and the finger in my face.
Speaker 1:The funny thing about him was he taught the only three hours of complementary medicine, a little section in our curriculum. Yeah, he was East Indian. A lot of the the students thought he was very weird, right, sometimes he looked like he was sleeping in the class, but I think he was meditating and he also did acupuncture. It was interesting. So I never forgot that. I didn't know what he meant when he said one day you're going to do something great and that kind of stuck with me for a long time. And so I continued because I realized I couldn't pay back my student debt without finishing Such a strange situation to be in right. And so I finished.
Speaker 1:I did my family medicine training but I have to say, when I finished I kind of felt half human. I kind of felt like I needed a recovery program. I didn't know who I was or what was going on in the world, you know, I just kind of focused on trying to get through. And so then when I finished, I thought now how am I supposed to be a doctor? I didn't actually feel well myself. You know all the stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, my health wasn't that great. And I also had the awareness that a lot of my friends in med school and colleagues, I could see them pushing themselves and, like you know, be on call, study hard, work hard, and they could do it. And for some reason for me I got sick a lot or I'd burn out easily and I thought, gosh, I'm weaker than these people, right.
Speaker 1:But what I realized was I was actually listening to myself. And I was actually listening to myself and I tried to practice medicine the way I was taught. I tried to do the best I could, but it was a very frustrating experience, because people are coming to you for answers and help. You apply what you're trained to do, but what I realized quickly was I couldn't solve anything, I couldn't make anything, I couldn't make sense of it. And the more I just kept investigating, throwing medicines, um, sending to specialists, I mean, they keep coming back, either with side effects, you know, more complications, or the specialist could just say, oh, it's not this problem, because this is their scope of practice, and it end up back to you, punt it back and be like you know we don't get to the bottom of this and, and repeatedly over time, it was, um, quite challenging I remember you saying when we had a treatment the other day you, you worked on me and thank you very much for that.
Speaker 2:You said the only thing that you could do as a doctor to actually help someone was um syringe ears To clear out their earwax. That was it. Only four years of medical school plus residency, and that's what you can do.
Speaker 1:Every time I did that, you know, because that was the only time someone could come in and go. Oh, thanks, doc, I can hear I feel so much better and I would go. I would kind of slump because I thought, gosh, that's a lot of training and studying I did, and that's, you know, the happiest that I can see someone leave, because most people it was very chronic and multifactorial, complex, multiple system symptoms. But in a system where you have 10 minutes you just can't get to the bottom of it and what would happen is the more people would tell you all these different symptoms and in our model we can't make sense of it. So that's why a lot of clinics will have signs on the front desk to say one problem per visit, you're allowed to complain of one symptom, and it doesn't make sense, right? And so for me it was hard to feel reward, because you want to help, you want to figure things out, but to spend that time you don't get paid and it's still not a fully complete model. Yes, you can test, yes, you can try your best to fit all these things into some kind of box, but you quickly realize people don't fit into boxes and so I always wondered how, how can these colleagues of mine do this? You know I was suffering, I was really frustrated and stressed out and I could only do it part time. So there was always a part of me always trying to figure out how can I do medicine that feels that I can be in alignment with that, I can feel integrity in what I'm doing and enjoy and feel some satisfaction, and so I tried various ways. The interesting thing actually I'll back up is that after the first year of practice so there's something called you know, when you go through medicine, they want you to become a full service family practitioner, a doctor, and so I think there was five of us, five women when we finished and my friends and we all worked in various locations.
Speaker 1:What I was aware was, after that first year of practice Now me, I was the weak one. I was already coming out stressed and not feeling like I could do this very well. So I did it part time while I was trying to take care of myself. But when I look at my other friends after your practice, what I noticed was one developed acute pain in her back that she would actually be laid out on a floor for months. She wasn't functional. Another one developed severe ulcerative colitis and had to have her colon removed. Another one had pregnancy related complications with hypertension and was told she should never get pregnant again. And another one got cancer of the thyroid. And so what I perceived to be why how can these people do this, you know, and they work so hard and they're so much smarter and they're doing such a better job was my perception. But then when I saw that, I said this isn't okay, like we're supposed to be young and healthy at this what's going on.
Speaker 2:They just put it inside them and it came out in this other way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so my perception of being the weaker one because I couldn't handle the stress I started to realize was a strength, because I was actually checking in with myself and wondering why I wasn't feeling okay and what was at the root of that, and trying to make changes or figure that out. But it's been a long journey. So in my search to try to do medicine in a way that felt in alignment and felt good, I thought, oh well, I'll do humanitarian volunteer work. So I went to nepal for almost six months. The funny thing about that is I remember when I was going through customs and the guy was checking my passport he's like where are you going? And I said to Nepal. And he goes, you're trying to find yourself. I just laugh at that because he just saw right through that and I was like, actually, that was true, that's what I was trying to do.
Speaker 1:I went there, had the experience, thinking, oh, it'll feel good to go and travel and help people who are unfortunate, you know, lower income, status, less available. But what I realized quickly was you're not really doing anything here. This is just band-aids and these problems are so much deeper than you just thinking coming over here is going to make any difference at all. So that naive part of me, I got schooled pretty quick. It's like go home, you know, because we have our own issues in Canada and our own health care system. Why am I in someone else's country that I don't really understand the political, economic, cultural, political?
Speaker 1:economic cultural actors. So I came back to British Columbia. So then the next phase was I got involved in grassroots kind of political organizing to help improve the state of family medicine in BC primary care. Because you know the family doctor is kind of a dying breed it really has to do with they're not very well paid. You know, I think any healthcare system that has good primary care, like solid primary care, where you have relationships and you know your patients and you're paid for your time, you can do a pretty good job even with the model that we have. But it's just been eroded, our system. So not people aren't choosing to do family medicine. Doctors were retiring, there's no one to take over their practices, so we have a lot of orphan patients. It's a system that isn't really working very well. Um, so I got involved in that, thinking okay, we're going to save primary care, this is your next thing.
Speaker 1:So you know, it was literally going door to door just seeing disillusioned, depressed, worn out family doctors that have given their life to this and, just like, over time, it's just been eroded and the pay has not kept up with inflation. Yet they have this sense of duty and obligation. And what I realized is, you know, as as a female, if you were a female family doctor but you had a specialist husband, you were okay right because the husband's salary takes care of things, or yeah, and then you could have the space and time to care for your patients.
Speaker 1:Take your time, be thorough. But in a system where, like 10 minute appointments and you're paid, it's about 30 dollars, it's gone up, you know a few bucks, yeah, um, and then on top of that you have to pay your overhead for your office and staff and your taxes. So, yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 2:You're paying your whether we want to talk about business too much, but as a primary care doctor, you're running a business. Yeah, okay, I didn't know, yeah, you're paid by the government, but you're also running a business okay, so the government doesn't pay for your clinic or anything like that you do or benefits out of the number of people you see yeah therefore, you're sort of incentivized to see more people it's called fee for service and so the more people you can see in an hour, the more money you'll make.
Speaker 1:So what's happened to medicine? And you think about all these young people like I thought my debt was bad when I came out in, like 2001. But you know it's even higher now for younger people, so they're not going to choose family medicine. That model doesn't work unless they do walk-in medicine. And then walk-in medicine. If you can do quick, snappy, eight to ten people an hour, then maybe, yes, you can earn.
Speaker 2:But then the quality of medicine is.
Speaker 1:What can you do? And so what has tended to happen to the practice of medicine now is a few things to kind of move people through, because there's so many people you got to move through quickly. One problem per visit. If you can't figure it out, it's okay, you'll just write some tests, send them out the door because they know, okay, I'm going to get tests. Then they'll have to come back, follow it up. Maybe the next person has to figure it out, okay, well, maybe we'll try this. Go out the door again, come back you. You know, like it's just always kicking the can.
Speaker 1:They'll get better in the meantime yeah, but it might take several visits and you might not figure it out. Or you know, a lot of times people get a label or diagnosis and they think they now understand it, but then you know what, like it takes time to figure things out. So that's what's happened to medicine and there's less actually touching people. Now it's all computer. We'll talk. Here's a test. Go, try this. Go. You know, I'm not trying to belittle it, but it's just the practicalities of the system. Time.
Speaker 2:It's not what you went into medicine to do time it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not what you went into medicine to do, no. And then, um, so I mean we were successful and we were able to kind of improve the, the fee structure for doctors. Again, everything is like a stop gap measure. So it actually what it did, was it? Instead of everyone, you see, you get paid the same amount, whether you were like a quick birth control refill to an 80 year old with multiple complex disease conditions that are more complex. So now they had to create more complex codes to kind of remunerate your time and complexity. So that that's helpful, but still, you know, it still doesn't quite. You know.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess it depends on how you practice medicine. Right, for someone like me, not so great. I like to listen and hear and talk and try to figure out and think things kind of get a picture. So. So there was a success, so-called in the the medical politics type thing. It was more the grassroots rah-rah. It felt really good. But then in the end I realized medical politics was not my thing. Okay, and that still was an answer. So I was like I went really big, then I went a little smaller and then I thought you know, maybe I should just go a little smaller and just focus over here. So I did locum work, which was relieving doctors so they could have holidays, because, you know, maybe I should just go a little smaller and just focus over here. So I did locum work, which was relieving doctors so they could have holidays, because you know they need someone to look after their patients so they can have a break. So I did that most of the time in my first few years, which was helpful.
Speaker 1:And then what happened was my very first accident, mountain biking. And so that was about five years into my practice. I was aware that I'm still dissatisfied, really stressed, couldn't figure out how do I do medicine. So I got my first concussion broke. My hand didn't get better with regular physiotherapy. After about a month I asked a friend who was a physio, who did acupuncture, to treat me. She had been away so she did a treatment on me and with that I had a big emotional release, cried and I could use my hand for the first time after a month of physio three times a week, right Before going to work. This is after one treatment. This happened After one treatment some manual therapy, some needling, emotional release, functional improvement of my hand.
Speaker 1:And then in that moment I said, ah, that is what's missing. You know what I want, like someone who spends time with me, puts their hands on me and I feel better. That's what's missing in my practice of medicine, you know, apart from flushing someone's ear out. Or you know, yes, you can have relationships with people and listen to them and talk and they feel heard and they you know that relational quality of service is great. But, yeah, apart from that, there wasn't a lot giving me satisfaction, just a lot of stress and tension of never being able to figure stuff out. And so in that experience, that friend who's a bit of a lamppost she's been a lamppost in my life three times now. So it's interesting, sometimes you have people in your life who serve a purpose. And so in that moment she said Ija, you know there's an acupuncture program in Edmonton, it's for healthcare workers. You should do that.
Speaker 1:If I could retrain, because she had studied in China for a year she said I would go and train with this guy, dr Steven Ong, in Edmonton, would go and train with this guy, dr Steven Ong, in Edmonton. And then the light bulb went on and I had the memory of oh my God, I wanted to learn Chinese medicine way back in the beginning and guess what? I forgot all about it because I got put through the machinery of Western medicine and kind of churned through and all the stress and all the trying to learn it all and you get kind of I felt like you get spit out of the meat grinder and you're kind of all the same. Now didn't matter what you came in with, you know. Now you're there, you go. Yeah, so when, when, that, when she the light bulb went on of, oh my god, that's what I wanted to learn originally, and then it all kind of slipped from my memory until you know. You realize, sometimes accidents and injuries there's something in them, sometimes there's a blessing or a lesson, you know, and so that accident actually reset my course. And so when she mentioned that, I was like, yes, that's what I'm going to do, like, yes, that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:And this is the interesting thing about that is when I looked into the program and I saw what was needed and I said, geez, I don't know anyone in Edmonton. I'm going to have to fly out there once a month for a three-day weekend. I'll have to book hotels and get taxis. It's going to be expensive. I was working part-time, I had student debt, right, I wasn't a successful family doctor. I said, but I'm going to do it, okay. And so then the summer before it started, I was speaking to med school friends who are now in Philadelphia. So we're just catching up. Every year we catch up. And I was telling them I'm going to take this course in Edmonton acupuncture. And you know what they told me? They're like oh, that's funny, anthony, her husband, who's a physio Well, we're moving to Edmonton in three weeks and he's going to take that same course.
Speaker 2:No way yeah.
Speaker 1:I knew Anthony. I'm like, really, that's so wild. It's like, yeah, we're going to buy a house and we're going to yeah, said cool. And so before the course started, anthony was picking me up from the airport. Their house was near the campus, I had a bed to sleep in and we'd walk. It was like the easiest thing I'd ever done. Oh, and the funny thing is, the whole course was paid for for me. Because of that work that I did to improve the lot of primary care we all got these bonuses and because I was a long-term locum covering for someone with cancer, I qualified for this bonus because I was covering her practice for two years and so it paid for my whole course. So this thing of this is going to be a bit expensive for me. All of a sudden it was like when you know you're on the right path and like the red carpet just rolls out for you now acupuncture comes from china.
Speaker 2:You are originally chinese. Do you think there's a connection there, or is it just it was like a sort of a philosophical connection, or is there some sort of deep DNA residence?
Speaker 1:I don't know you know how many hours do you have? Because, like, I'm glad we're not just talking about the fascial stuff, because there's a lot you know in the background. Um, so yeah, my background is Chinese. There are things I didn't know about my family, like I've never met my grandfather in China. My father's father and I only found out as an adult later in life, after I'd been practicing acupuncture for some time. My parents told me you know, your grandfather taught himself Chinese medicine and he used to treat the family Like did you not ever think to tell me this? I just had no idea, right. So there was something there, but I've never met him. He actually gave me my Chinese name, which is what I prefer to go by. I don't like to go by my English name. The only people who call me Wendy is my family.
Speaker 2:Oh no, that's saying strange. They're your family.
Speaker 1:And when I met Dr Ong and I started having this year of learning under him, you know, every weekend I went oh God, I actually wrote a book about that year. A friend of mine gave me a journal and she said, because I'd come back and I just had so much to talk about my experience she said here's a journal. Write it all down. You're going to want to record this, you know, because this is going to be life changing for you. So I did, I wrote about it.
Speaker 1:I called it the adventures with chi, because I didn't have any experience with energy spirituality, apart from, you know, going to church when I was young. But it was when I met Dr Ong and the way he teaches acupuncture. Well, he has an interesting background, you know, and so he infuses a lot of spirituality, you know Qigong aspects and it was a real opening, I guess, a spiritual awakening in a way, because I started to feel things I'd never felt before, become aware of things I'd never experienced. So it was almost like not only was I learning another form of medicine that uses different language, in a completely different concept, I was experiencing things that I'd never experienced before, that would blow apart this Western science mind, you know so with dr Steven on when you're the acupuncture practice, you went through like a spiritual awakening, an introduction to things outside the Western medical model, the paradigm.
Speaker 2:So what happened next?
Speaker 1:Well, I will say when, that time, when I first met him at that private lecture, he did read my palm and you know, when he looked at my hand and he said, oh, you are interesting, you have a split brain.
Speaker 1:He said one half is artistic and one half is scientific. But in that moment I felt this kind of like, oh my god, someone who actually, uh, understand, has explained me and understands me, and I think that's what my struggle was all through my medical training was yes, I got that and I was doing the best I could. And but then, you know, there was a another part of me, like, why are we doing it like this? No, or there's something really missing. And so when I got to meet him and listen to him, it was, and learn, you know, the Chinese medicine aspect and approach. It just filled in this huge gap in medicine. And actually, every weekend that I was there, I often felt like I was at a faith healing event, which is very unusual as a doctor, right, because, honestly, when I was going to take this program, I had this Western thought of well, it'll be great to have more tools in the toolbox and I'll get to treat tennis elbow, right.
Speaker 2:I'll stick some needles in and see what happens, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it was so much more than that, so much more than that, the spiritual like. Even back then I wouldn't say I was at a place where I would say I was going through a spiritual awakening. I didn't actually understand it, I was just experiencing things. I was really open and curious and I had an exposure to what I would say is a spiritual teacher. Who he? Everything was very simple, how he taught, very consistent, simple but full of profound truths. You know, when I, you know, every year I would see him for a Qigong retreat and he, he, was always saying the same thing, but somehow something would land even deeper. And that's how you know something is really true and wise. Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean the things I learned and continued to learn, because essentially through that year it was, it was really opening things up to understand the body in an energetic way chakras, the energy channels, alignment of mind, body, spirit, what that means, um, you know, when we finished, there's there's almost too much to talk about what I will say is when we finished and there's there's almost too much to talk about what I will say is, when we finished, what he said was okay, now I've taught you, you know. Now, I mean, did we really learn enough in that year? But what he would say is I taught you everything now. Now you go and your patients are going to be your teacher, and so now you go forth forth and you practice and you learn, which is interesting because, you know, for a doctor, science-minded, it's not right around, is it? Yeah, no, you always feel like you've got to go deeper and you've got to keep going and you want to know more here. But there's something about learning something deeply, learning something deeply and and you know, it does use like I would still use the scientific method, I would understand the hypothesis, the theory, I would apply it and then I would observe the outcome and every time I go, wow, this works. Oh, these concepts are like different language wind, heat, cold, damp, phlegm, you know, invasions, like it's crazy.
Speaker 1:You know you cannot reconcile these two medicines together. My brain can, I do both and I integrate. But you can't easily tell doctors for them to understand. You know, and there's actually a very low number of doctors who do this course and then, even from that small percentage of doctors who do it, even less of them actually even practice it. They're very challenged to do it. You can still do the western stuff.
Speaker 1:But you know the big gap really, what we do in western medicine is we use our tests and our diagnoses when there's something that you can measure, that means the disease state or disharmony has had to be in effect for years and years and years to create structural change, organ damage, and then it becomes something we can identify.
Speaker 1:But that's so much down the road, whereas people spend 10, 15 years in functional states of disharmony and symptomatology that don't all need drugs or tests or procedures. It just needs another way to make sense of it and then bring it into a more functional state. And the other difference in Western and more holistic styles of medicine is, you know, we is the impact of the mind and the emotions, right, the root cause of probably the majority of you know physical problems are emotional. And in Western medicine we might take that to be either we think people, you know it's in your head, which is a terrible thing, right? But actually I did that in my first five years. I got to that point where the more people told me I'd be like, try to leave the room because you just I can't hear anymore, you just can't make sense of it, right, and you almost start to blame the patient.
Speaker 1:That's not doing medicine, right. Or you know, if they're having sleep problems, some anxiety, depression, take something and cover it up. That's not dealing with the root, that's still covering something.
Speaker 2:It's like people don't want to change anything in their lifestyle or look into their history of what's brought them to your office office, what's brought them to the problem that they're experiencing, and if you can help them without changing anything in their lives and that how without them having to confront anything in their past then they're happy. But that's not the way that.
Speaker 1:That's not the path to long-term healing no, and so you know, I've been a doctor now since 2001 and the more, the longer I've been it in it, the more I can't do it the way I've been trained. I've never really done it fully as a strain. I'm pretty good as a Western doctor and I do most of the things, but my viewpoint and purview is always on a wider scale. But then you have to see where people are at. Yeah, right, and in our model actually, yeah, most people, they do want something quick and they want the convenient label and they want to understand it, as this is what I have and there isn't anything except to do this, yeah, and that satisfies probably both doctors and patients, and so that's one way to interact and that's okay.
Speaker 1:But you know, for me, I've even, my perspective has even gone farther, where I'd realize in western medicine, a lot of what we give people pharmacology yeah, it's effective, but essentially it's it's just masking symptoms. So if we can't feel the pain, we won't understand it fully. If we don't feel the insomnia or the stress or the you know the emotions behind what's going on, or even check in with what's going in our life, and are we in alignment? Are we, you know? Are we are, we, uh, forsaking ourselves in our lives and creating our own misery. Right, all of that takes time and people. I think now, like there's just so much stress, so much pressure, there's no time or space to even go to those depths, right?
Speaker 2:Too busy watching Netflix.
Speaker 1:Or scrolling or distracting, you know. But you know, I came to realize, I even think so in Western medicine, yes, drugs are very effective at taking away symptoms, but what that's doing is, if you can't feel something, we've kind of kicked the can down the road. So what needs to happen then is, over time, something bigger needs to happen to get our attention, because essentially, it is our bodies trying to get our attention. Something's not right, something doesn't feel good, you know, and it needs to be understood somehow. And so, in some, some sense, if we don't meet the things at the time and that could go with going to see any practitioner actually, if it gets you out of pain, great.
Speaker 1:Did I have to learn anything? Change anything? Maybe not, maybe down the road. Something bigger has to happen, bigger to get our attention right. I have experience with that too. I mean yeah, I mean when, when I talk about healing journeys, um, it's because I've gone on one for a long time, because I've always wanted to understand why I didn't feel okay, or I was always aware of things, but I didn't necessarily know how to change things, but I would always try and explore, and I've done many different modalities and I've always learned and uploaded something from them.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about your journey with the Passual Maneuvers as well, because, from my understanding and what we talked about when I had my treatment is that you did something with your own yourself, which then led you to thinking that this can actually be really effective and learning more about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I realized, you know what, I've got to do things differently because the way that I've been doing it all this time actually isn't working. Because you know, I can feel I'm breaking, I'm not happy. You know, my family wasn't happy, and so that's when I knew I had to do it differently. And I had this conviction. And as soon as I did, within two weeks actually, the same friend who pointed me towards acupuncture she mentioned Human Garage and Fascial Maneuvers, and she had been doing a YouTube video for a few months and she's getting her patients to do it, so I'll send it to you and I said, oh well, I have lots of fascial injuries. Um, sure, I'll try it. And so I started doing it. Um, just this one video. It's a 15-minute stress reset.
Speaker 1:And as soon as I started practicing it, stress emotions were releasing and it was very impactful. I thought, oh my gosh. And then some old memories would start to surface and I thought, oh my gosh, this replicates what I do in my treatment sessions, but I'm actually just moving and breathing and twisting. How the heck is this working? Who are these people? How'd they figure it out? And so I Wasn't on social media at the time, so I'd never hear of human garage on my own. It was kind of the old-fashioned way of being told about it. And so within that space of time where I was doing this and feeling all of these big insights and release releases actually the the first insight was a voice that came up and said this is how you free yourself from the inside out, and it was powerful, um, and so I kept asking who the heck are these guys?
Speaker 1:And within the space of about a week, maybe eight days, I randomly met Gary Lynham of, who is the founder of Human Garage, in a restaurant, inouver, only because I had a gift card that was over a year old that a patient gave me and I wanted to use it in case the place closed down. And so I was eating there with a girlfriend and I just happened to look over into the corner at another table where gary was sitting, and if he was eating and drinking I would not have even given him a second look. But because at the moment I happened to look over there, he was doing this seated twist position and his eyes were looking up and my eyes kind of locked with his in that exact moment, and then I had the facial recognition of oh my god, it's you. And so then we got up and we started to speak and you know I could ask questions and you know it was just. It's pretty serendipitous and crazy, right, but lots of times life is like this, you know, if you, if you look out for it, so um and so in that moment it was like I received my message of this is what I'm gonna do, and so I did.
Speaker 1:I went deep into this program, doing it at home, and you know what I came through with. It was not only did it unwind all the old injuries which I had a lot and I had a great osteopath who moved away and so I didn't really have anyone to see but essentially through the practice I unwind probably 90 to 95 percent. I had a lot, a lot of concussions, compression injuries, mountain biking, being hit by cars, like so much history in here. So that is powerful when you realize, wow, like people can do this for themselves. And, to be honest, my acupuncture teacher, he also taught Qigong and he would teach his patients Qigong as a way of self-cultivation Aligning your body, mind, spirit, learning how to, you know, increase your Qi, move the Qi, work the organs, your chakras. It was. It was a self Healing practice, and so he was very consistent in teaching it. It's very hard for me to pass that on to my patients Right, teach Qigong, tai Chi or meditation Like people you know.
Speaker 2:They're averse to that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:They are. Yeah, I was averse to meditation too. Yeah, it's slow, it's like takes patience. You know, focus time. For me, when I came into fascial maneuvers and I saw how potent and powerful it was that people could do this for themselves and literally just like cross, turn, move, breathe, you know it looked like physical exercise, yet people can feel something from it pretty quickly. They can release their fascia, they feel lighter, they they feel less stress, they feel this flow, and so to me, I was like this is like a Western, accessible form of Qigong, way easier to teach and get buy-in, as opposed to, you know, trying to focus on balls of qi and move, it circulated and all that kind of thing. So that's, you know, I've been teaching this since over a year and a half because as soon as I got through my like 28 day reset and then I was having these amazing experiences, like I got to teach my patients right, and so I just started teaching and over time I just realized, like God, I love teaching. I had no idea time. I just realized, like god, I love teaching. I had no idea.
Speaker 1:And I started to realize over time, like this is actually like my teacher. You know it's the same intention and idea is to teach your patients how to do something for themselves so they can maintain and improve right, and then when they come and see you, it works even better than what you do. But the key piece being, instead of being passive and letting someone treat you, and they're fixing you, they're healing. You actually know you are doing this work, which is more powerful, and then you know we can be alongside each other and help facilitate. Ultimately, in the end, there's always a two-way exchange that's happening between a practitioner and a patient as well. And so Dr Ong, he would always say these beautiful things when he's teaching us, and at the time, as a doctor, I'd be like God, I don't know. He'd say you have to love your patient. And my doctor back then was then like we're not allowed to do that. We can't love our patients. What do you mean by loving your patients? I'd like that was my Western mind going right. They would say a healing journey is like walking hand-in-hand with your patient. You're walking side-by-side together. You know, and again, I wouldn't understand it until years later, as I was practicing the acupuncture and doing it, and then I started to realize, oh my god, I do love my patients. Oh, my god it is. We're going together because guess what same same. The journey is the same for all of us. The themes are the same, just different stories slightly, but you know the power of all of this.
Speaker 1:What I realized is um, by doing my own healing through this practice and coming into the insights, awareness, to see the journey unfold, to go through the dark nights, to meet the emotions and the traumas that come up and release. You know how to hold that space for someone. You know how to guide and inspire. You want that for someone else and you're willing to hold space and walk them together. And that's why I teach this the way I do, because I always share from my own personal stories and stories of people that I work with, or my patients too, because I want to inspire what's possible. I've always been someone. When people come to see me, I, you have to have hope and be inspired that something is possible.
Speaker 1:And so many times patients are just given this label, diagnosis, there's nothing you can do. This is what I got and and I just think, no, there's so much more in fact, through this journey of working with the fashion, understanding it in a deep level from the inside out. You know, it's actually just opened my and made my belief strong in what's possible in the body and how intelligently designed it is If we understand how to work with it. To work with it, to give it what it needs, to take care of it. And what does that really mean? To care for oneself? It's not doing self-care, doing all the right things, doing the appointments, doing the right diet, doing the right exercise. No, it's actually the caring part, the compassion, the self-love that's needed and those are those core emotional wounds that are there, stored in the body, which, when we work with the fascia, such a wonderful way to start to open it. And when people do it for themselves, it's not someone doing it to you and forcing something open that you're not ready for.
Speaker 2:Actually, you're doing it for yourself and your body will open up at the right time for you, right can you share something with us from your own journey or from a patient's journey that will intrigue us and fascinate us at the same time?
Speaker 1:sure, okay, well, I'll start with myself. Let's see, um well, uh, I mean I have shared how just releasing the, the restrictions and tension in the fascia, creates, you know, more mobility, more strength, more ease, more flow, that it improves all aspects of your life. Any sport that you do, you're going to be better at it because you're more flowy. So my skiing improved. I'm here in Nicaragua because I want to surf more, because my body I realized oh, I can pop up, I can do this, whereas before I couldn't. Right, and that's through the result of releasing stress, tension and restrictions in the body.
Speaker 2:So hang on. You've surfed before and you couldn't pop up, yeah, and now you're surfing, you can pop up, but you haven't done any training to do the pop-up.
Speaker 1:No, I did no training and in fact there was like six years between me going surfing and it was my 51st birthday. So I'm not a young chicken. But the funny thing is my body feels younger than it ever has. And when I started doing this practice, my patients, my family, everybody around me was like what is going on? You look younger, you know, you're beautiful. Like what are you doing? And I said, well, it's just this special practice and it's because you're relieving so much stress and tension, the holding and the compensating of the things that we have stored and repressed and packed away for a later date to try to process and resolve. It's all in there.
Speaker 1:And then you know, all our conditioning, um, not expressing our truths, the body is having to do a lot and we have to get up and go and work and do life. And you know, at some point there's no, you know, not a coincidence by middle age, a lot of times the bodies aren't healing or people feel older, they don't feel good and they think it's because they're getting old. But it's not. It's just the accumulation of all the stress and unprocessed emotions and trauma and things that we keep in that we've never sat with to understand, and so healing of the body is really about coming home into the body. My teacher, dr on, would always say there's many ways into the house. You can go through the front door, the back door, the window, the chimney right, and what that means is, you know, there's many things you can choose from to practice that can bring you home. Home is into presence, into awareness of understanding oneself and, um, you know, we can be spiritual and be out in the spirit realms and not in our physical body, yeah
Speaker 1:we are energetic, you know beings, but we have to be embodied in the body. And this body, you know it's a physical vessel. It's actually really important and how we take care of it is really important because if we allow it to age and degenerate and be injured and you know it's we can't fully express ourselves in this lifetime. And so by taking care of the physical vessel, and every time we do, in this loving practice, I call it a yin practice. It's a loving practice because you're tending to so many areas of the body and you're releasing slowly, slowly, so it can expand and flow the chi and the blood and the lymph. Um, now you're tending to this physical vessel and I believe that as the fascia gets healthier through the hydration, and I believe that as the fascia gets healthier through the hydration, it can respond, it can perceive and we can actually actualize our life better, we can feel better, like the mind, body. Spirit is what I love and this practice kind of ticks off all those boxes.
Speaker 1:I actually presented fascial maneuvers to my acupuncture colleagues and to Dr Ong in the spring. It was like a five-hour Zoom and he's quite old and a bit frail, but he was up till 10. He was just fascinated and excited and I could tell what he was excited about was he was seeing his student integrating and taking knowledge. And you know he always said you're my students, I want you to surpass me. Whenever we would say that, I'd be like, oh my God, that's not possible, like you know, look at what you've done. You know I just I respect him so highly.
Speaker 1:But integrating the fascial piece actually helped me to understand something in Chinese medicine. I didn't understand very well Triple energizer and how, when we are working with the fascia, how that is influencing even these spaces in the body and the functions of this mysterious organ. I didn't understand so much and why it's actually helping our health and in this whole body, mind, state, spirit, state. And it was interesting when I shared what I had uploaded in my practice, I thought I had it pretty good, you know, and I was excited to share with everyone. And then two days later I woke up in the early morning and I had this visual of what was really happening in the body. And then this understanding came through and then I had to wake up and write it all down and send it. I go no, this is a correction to what I said. Now, this is how I understand it to be, and what I took that to be is actually like Dr Ong, I couldn't understand what he was saying through the zoom because he has Parkinson's now and he slurs, so it's not so clear. So it was like he sent like information that I got to download and then reintegrate and send it out. See, yeah, it's pretty wild, like a western doctor it's been, it's been over 20 years, but it's really interesting life and I I see things so differently now. But, yeah, the special practice has been instrumental for me. So, yeah, the sport stuff improved without even trying. You know, I'm way more flexible, I'm way stronger than I ever was.
Speaker 1:I shared the story about my daughter who I couldn't piggyback on my back or on my shoulders when she was little, but I can put her on my shoulders now and she's 120 pounds and it feels like 20 pounds and I don't feel any of the compression in my spine which you know, I've had a lot of history with. I've shared about how, um, trauma releases can happen so old injuries because we heal in layers and the fashions and layers, and so we start with the outermost superficial layers and then, as you progress through deeper layers come through. And so I remember I'd done my 28 day reset and I kept practicing and I was feeling good. And then one day I just had this sudden acute pain in my sacrum, to the point that I couldn't walk and I couldn't lift anything. I said, oh my god, I've got to go home.
Speaker 1:You know, we were grocery shopping and as we were headed home these flashes of memory were starting to come through of being hit by a car when I was riding my bike going to work and I landed on the floor on the road on my butt and in my trauma response I just got up right away and I still went to work. You know, I didn't want to be anywhere near the delivery guy that hit me. I couldn't even process what to do with that and I went to work and but that injury I never had it tended to properly. I didn't break anything, but I could have seen an osteopath, a chiropractor, any number of practitioners, and I didn't Because as the doctor practitioner I was so good at trying to help everybody else, but you're kind of the last on the list.
Speaker 1:So then I ended up when I was having my childbirth. I couldn't have a natural birth, my pelvis was out of alignment, she couldn't come through. And so, you know, in that moment when I was having this pain, the flashes of memory were coming up, at the time of that impact and then also the time where I had to have a c-section and the tears would just come through. And I just put myself in the bath, curl up into a little fetal ball and I just allow the the emotions of those traumas to come through. You release it, you cry it out, and then the next day I even forgot it happened like the pain was gone, I was moving like normal, and then I'd have to remember oh yeah, I had that, you know crazy episode and the trauma memories that came up and released.
Speaker 1:And then, a few days later, then I had the weirdest vaginal discharge, which was orange and gritty and as a doctor I've never seen that before, right, and it just happened and it went. I was like I think that was related to that trauma releasing because, as the fascia is, you know, stuck and compressed, as it opens, whatever has been stuck and stored fluids that become very turbid, stagnant, there's toxins, there's phlegm, whatever. When it opens now it can flush through and release, and so we can, um, release through our orifices, right. So when we do fascial maneuvers, we might release emotionally through our tears. Sweating is another one through our pores, through our out breath, we can detox. That way, you know, we can get funky orders from our armpits when we're releasing yawning is a release and then stool and urine right, it's really fascinating our sinuses we can release as well.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, there, there's been interesting, um, a lot of crying in my journey and whatever I've ever done whatever, whether it was hypnosis or um, I've ever done whatever, whether it was hypnosis or breath work. I've done many different things. Crying was is always a big release for me and I think it has a lot to do with my childhood, because my mother always proudly told me I'm the youngest of four kids. You were such a good baby. You never cried.
Speaker 1:I never never cried, not from baby all the way through. And the hell. I became a mother. I had a baby that didn't cry very much because I was always tending to her needs. And then, as she got older and I became schooled as a mother, like, oh my god, that's so unhealthy.
Speaker 1:Actually, crying is the healthiest thing that we can do and yet so many of us, you know, we've ever we've stopped the ability to, we don't have space to, maybe we don't even know how to become vulnerable, to cry so, but it is a an important way to release, to feel, and the one thing I like about fascial maneuvers as well, as it gets us into our body, out of this, because so much of our life is made the mind so important and we do all our processing and we are thinking and we're controlling, we're always trying to come up with the right thing to do, the best way, solving problems, and we try to heal our emotions with our mind, which we can't. Our mind is the 10 percent, you know, and so sure it's good to have the awareness, the cognitive awareness, that maybe we've suffered trauma and we have things from our past that influence us. But if we don't feel it in the body, which is where the subconscious is housed, if we don't actually allow ourselves to feel through the body, through sensation, not through story and telling us what it is. Labeling the emotion? No, it's about feeling it in the body. So fascial maneuvers is a great way to get people back into their body, breathing, moving, feeling, and then you know, the important thing is how to connect to sensation. So even if we're up here, if we're stressed about something, overwhelmed emotionally, if we just can feel where that is in the body and connect with that, bring presence, awareness, breath or organ releases for emotions you know that's a powerful way to then process it through the body. So fascial maneuvers I believe why it's so important is we do a lot of processing, working things through the body and then eventually people can learn that it's safe to feel in the body and in fact it's the most direct way to release something. It's a bypass of this. We have to bypass this and go straight to the source. Where it's housed right, it's powerful. Where it's housed right, it's powerful. And if I was to say, out of all the fascial maneuvers, the most powerful ones are when we do organ releases, because it's the organs in Chinese medicine, organs hold different emotions. So when we have a way to release the tension, fascial restriction around an organ, we can do an affirmation, we can release emotions in real time. When you're triggered, you can release it, even if you're not aware that you're storing chronic sadness and grief. You release the large intestine. Something can release sometimes it's just physical, sometimes emotions, the tears will come out, a memory might come to your awareness. It's powerful and I have shared.
Speaker 1:For me, one of the most powerful examples early on, when I was teaching this was getting a group of moms together to do this. We're at a camp out and so we're doing the organ releases the large intestine. You know, one mom had to go and have a bowel movement. She thought, wow, this is great, it really works. I said, yeah, it does, um, but that night her daughter um, all the kids were sleeping together in a tent and her daughter was crying in her sleep so deeply to the point that it started to wake her up and she was sobbing loudly and it woke all the girls up and then the mom had to come and get her daughter and bring her back and the next morning I heard from my daughter that you know, so-and-so had been crying in the night and I thought, oh, I'll go check in with the mom because I, you know, I remember the large intestine release.
Speaker 1:So I checked in with the mom how is your daughter? I heard she was crying and the mom was distraught because she had never seen her daughter so upset and crying so uncontrollably. And so I said to her well, you know, when you did that large intestine release yesterday, yes, it helped to move the bowels, but, more importantly, it's where we hold chronic sadness and grief. And the interesting thing is, you know, as mothers, our children are connected to us energetically, and so when you did a release on yourself, you know sadness and grief it rippled out. And your daughter, she was releasing from her subconscious in her dreams. She didn't know why, but it was just working its way through and releasing. And so when I explained that to the mom you know this kind of like, oh, you know that seemed to make sense to her, and I knew the backstory her husband died in a tragic accident three years ago and so it would make sense that there's sadness and grief that's still there. What I found out from the other moms was that that daughter had never cried after the death of her dad, and so that was powerful for me to see. Oh, my god, this is confirmation.
Speaker 1:The most powerful thing we can do as mothers now I'm a woman, mother, same for fathers, I'm sure um is to do our own healing work.
Speaker 1:Just take care of this. Moms are always putting themselves last and try to take care of everything household work, whatever and we try to make external factors perfect for our kids and our families. But you know, a lot of times women are just exhausting themselves, trying to be the best of everything and do it right for everyone. But if we just take care of ourselves, wow, it's powerful. Powerful and I had to. I learned that firsthand myself through this journey was oh, if I just focus over here and I do my own healing, take care of my heart, follow my heart, follow my intuition, do what feels right over here and take care of this, everything works out better and you come into this flow state, into peace, where you resolve your past stuff that's stored in here, and then you start to learn what it's like to live in the flow with life. You're not pushing against life, you're not creating conflict, you're actually accepting things as they are and you can flow with it and it's more useful.
Speaker 2:It's a better way to live so hopefully this has piqued some people's interest. Yeah, so where can they go to find out more about you or more about human garage, pastoral maneuvers, that kind of stuff to you?
Speaker 1:well, yeah, this is human garage material, so they have free programs on their website human garage net. They have free programs on their website, humangaragenet. They have reset programs where you can do a 1, 3, 7 and prepare to do a 28-day reset. That's kind of the way that most people start in this 28-day reset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's all free and that's how I started too. They've expanded and changed and grown a lot, but those programs are available and then they've, I think, segued into other things as well. I was never on social media until I met Gary, and then I spent time with Human Garage in my early days. They had started up during the pandemic, so it was all online and it was kind of a smaller community online and now it's gotten really big. So they made my Instagram account actually and they've posted things that we've done together. I will probably, if I can figure it out how to use it. I'll start to try to put things out.
Speaker 2:I'll link to it with this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you and for me.
Speaker 1:I just present it in like from my background and all the things I bring into it and I love doing it and, if anything, yeah, this is kind of the paradigm shift that I believe is really necessary in the world and needed is to teach people how they can understand their bodies, how to work with their bodies and actually initiate healing within themselves on a physical, mental, emotional and spirit level, and I think that's far more powerful, you know, instead of feeling like we have to defer you know, our health to somebody else or for the answers.
Speaker 1:Actually there's a lot we can actually do in here and in fact, instead of us being externally out there all the time, actually the most responsible thing we can do in our lives is to to to actually understand what's going on inside of us, because so much of what's happening in here there's a lot of imbalance, a lot of turmoil, a lot of stress, a lot of repression, which is actually creating our external experiences and realities and situations.
Speaker 1:So we can't necessarily change anything out there, but there is a lot we can do in here and it's by understanding this, shifting, clearing, releasing then we can actually have change happen and in fact, when we work with the fascia, our perceptions can change and that's when real healing and shift and change can happen when how we see things can change, how we think we believe those are powerful. And all of that has been influenced by very early conditioning and experiences, often from childhood right, and it's all stored in here. So I don't think you have to go see a therapist or talk it all out. In fact it's better to work it through the body.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining me in my conversation with Iccha. I found it absolutely fascinating listening to her history and listening to how she came into the work of Fascial Maneuvers and since my visit with her, I've actually started using some of the work of Fashion Maneuvers. And since my visit with her, I've actually started using some of the Fashion Maneuvers and have noticed some great benefits in the way my body moves and I've noticed the way it's changed the tension in my lower back, which is fantastic If you've enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to leave a comment.
Speaker 2:And if you want me to feature any other people on this podcast, leave a comment and suggestion of who you'd like me to interview. And, as always, if you want help working on your own issues, your own back pain, your own scoliosis, then let me know. Send me an email, ed at edpadgettcom, and I'll help you make your lifestyle your medicine.