[00:00:19.690] - Kate
Hello and welcome to The Gale Hill Radio Hour. I'm your host Kate Jones, here with Sandra Tjoa, whose life completely turned around after one of the darkest and most challenging times of her life. She achieved this dramatic turnaround with the ancient wellness practices of Qi Gong and Tai Chi. Welcome to the show, Sandra!
[00:00:46.510] - Sandra
Hi, Kate.
[00:00:48.430] - Kate
It is so good to have you here.
[00:00:51.010] - Sandra
Thank you for having me.
[00:00:52.950] - Kate
Absolutely. If you don't mind, let's start out with something you said when we spoke previously. You mentioned that the body keeps score and that it's important to heal all of our bodies. What do you mean by that?
[00:01:11.750] - Sandra
So, when I mentioned that the body keeps score, as we live through our life and experience different experiences, different situations, from the time, even from before we're born, actually, everything that we come across, the body actually holds those memories. So every feeling, thought, emotion, experience is stored in our body intracellularly. The cells of our body hold the energy of all those experiences. And as human beings living on this earth, we actually live and exist in five bodies. We have our physical body, our mental body, our emotional body, and our spiritual and energetic bodies. And often when we come down with something, we'll go to a doctor — for the physical body, when we get an ache or a pain somewhere or an injury, and maybe for the mental, emotional bodies, we look to different mindful or meditative practices, or we try different modalities, perhaps search out therapy or counseling of some type. But what often doesn't come into mind is the health of the energy body. So aside from the energy body, all of the other bodies, the physical body, the mental body, the emotional body, also have an energetic aspect to them. So when we start paying attention to the health of the energy body, we're also supporting the physical, the mental, the emotional.
[00:02:57.440] - Kate
That's really interesting.
[00:03:00.890] - Sandra
It is. And it's something that not a lot of us would know to even consider. And what happens is, if we bring some attention to the health of the energy body and the energetic aspects of the other bodies, we can actually increase the efficacy and the efficiency of everything else that we do. So, for example, say you're on a set of medications, or you're going through a different therapy or counseling to try to heal from trauma or mental and emotional stress. And if the energy body is blocked and the energetic aspects of those bodies are blocked, then whatever you're doing to support your health and recovery to get back to health may not be as effective. If the energy body is clear and open up to flow so that all the other aspects of your health can come into balance and harmony, the medications that you're taking can have better efficacy, have more effect for you. The therapy sessions that you're involved with can also have greater effects. You can have bigger shifts. You can have, actually, this forwardness in whatever area you're trying to improve in your life.
[00:04:29.990] - Kate
That is incredible. So how do you do that? How do you clear those blocks?
[00:04:36.890] - Sandra
How do we clear the blocks? Well, I use the practices of Tai Chi and Qi Gong. Those are my go-to, and that's what I know. Well, there are, of course, different ways of doing that. But if you look to practices like Tai Chi and Qi Gong to move through these blocks, the practices encourage it through grounding, through aligning, through the physical body, breath work, movements that bring us into almost a state of meditation while we're moving so that we can allow the body to open up to flow. Because we have energy pathways that run all through our body. They're referred to as meridians or channels in traditional Chinese medicine. And when we experience different situations and we don't resolve the emotion that is attached to those situations, we get what I refer to as emotional energy blocks in those energy pathways that travel through the body. And so with different breaths, different movement, even simple things like grounding that can all help jiggle up these pockets of stuck, stagnant chi, life force energy that are in those meridians so that they lift and then open us up to more flow.
[00:06:11.190] - Kate
What's the grounding part of it?
[00:06:15.050] - Sandra
The grounding part of it? Really easy. I suggest to people to just really put their feet flat on the ground and just feel the ground beneath you. A great practice is — it’s cold here now so I don't do it — but if you're somewhere warmer or whenever you have a chance to just feel the ground beneath your feet barefoot. So whatever you can stand on — grass, gravel, dirt roads, wherever there's a patch of earth that you can just connect to through the bottoms of your feet, that is an excellent way of grounding. And we don't have to do it for a long period of time. It can be a minute or two. One master that I studied with would say five minutes a day, just five minutes a day, barefoot, wherever you are.
[00:07:11.770] - Kate
Can you do it indoors in the wintertime?
[00:07:15.610] - Sandra
Absolutely. Because when you are feeling that ground beneath your feet, everything that you touch becomes an extension of you. So as you breathe to relax into the surface that you're sitting on or standing on… I was going to bring in, yes, you can absolutely do this from sitting because you feel into your bum bones that relax into whatever you're sitting on and whatever you're making contact with, as I mentioned, becomes an extension of you. And so you ground through that. If you're lying down and you want to ground from lying down, you're feeling into all the parts of your body that make contact with whatever it is you're lying on. Now, if you want to resource deeper energy from the ground, then the best is actually barefoot and on something natural.
[00:08:13.390] - Kate
When you're lying down and you're feeling all the different parts of you on the bed, on the sheets, on the blankets, whatever, does that help with sleep?
[00:08:26.370] - Sandra
It does because it gets us out of that mind. A lot of the time, sleep doesn't come because the mind is so busy, the thoughts are churning and causing this chaotic energy up in the head. If we switch our breathing and our attention into all the parts of the body that are making contact with the mattress, the bed, whatever you're lying on, and just really feel into all the points that are making contact, right down to the heels, the back of the legs, through the hips, just slowly feel into all those parts.
[00:09:11.170] - Kate
Very good. I want to know, since Qi Gong and Tai Chi are ancient practices, how do they apply to contemporary life? How does this ancient way of doing things actually work now?
[00:09:33.030] - Sandra
So practices of Tai Chi and Qi Gong, even though they're ancient practices, like you mentioned, they're actually a metaphor for life. So when we move through Tai Chi and Qi Gong, the fundamental principles are grounding, moving in a relaxed manner, moving the breath and aligning through the body. And these are all important, fundamental things that we can bring into our day for better health. And what happens with the movements and the breath of Tai Chi and Qi Gong is we come into this state of a moving meditation so that whatever you move through through your day, you're moving through in a manner of less stress, less tension. And so I'd like to bring in one of what I think is actually the most essential principle in the practice, and it's called song. And song is the concept of moving through what you need or want to move through, but with as little energy required to do so, no more and no less. So if we bring that into everyday life, I'm just going to say, how tightly do you hold on to your toothbrush when you brush your teeth? Do you have to hold on so tightly when you're in the kitchen cutting vegetables, preparing dinner, do you have to hold on to the knives, the forks, the spoons as tightly as you do?
[00:11:08.090] - Sandra
When you're driving, how tightly are you holding on to the steering wheel? So many times in our life, we move through our day using more energy than we need to, and that's just wasting. We just expunge energy and waste, and then many people will find that they're exhausted at the end of the day because what they do move through in their day, they actually use more energy than they need to, than is necessary.
[00:11:41.430] - Kate
That's so interesting. Loosen your grip, but not so much that you lose the knife when you're chopping vegetables.
[00:11:54.690] - Sandra
Exactly. So in my classes, I'll have students hold a water bottle so it's got a little bit of weight in it. You can use a can of vegetables, you can use whatever you'd like to put in your hand, and you can take a tight grip on that object. And then as you breathe, when you exhale, let the muscles in the hand relax a little bit more while you're holding onto it, but still maintaining what you need to. And you'll notice that you can actually hold the knife, you can actually hold the steering wheel with less energy and still do what you need to do. It's kind of like that concept of making a mountain out of a molehill, right? Using more energy than we need to, making things bigger than they really are, and just wasting so much energy.
[00:12:49.270] - Kate
So if we don't hold on to things so tightly that we don't need to hold on to that tightly, what's the upshot of it? How does that lessen our stress as we go through our days?
[00:13:09.870] - Sandra
That is a great question, because whatever we experience with the physical body translates into how we deal with different situations, mentally and emotionally. So you use the words perfectly right there, Kate, in saying, if we hold on so tightly. So if we have a tendency to hold on to things really tightly in our physical body, wasting energy in that manner, then it's probably very likely that we hold on to things that have happened in our lifetime that have caused us strife or different situations that have caused us grief, sorrow, maybe even anger. And we hold on to these things, and the energy of that remains in the body and festers. So training the physical body to be able to use as little energy as possible, just what's needed, also helps us open up to flow and not hold on so tightly to stuff that we don't need anymore, like that aggravation or that person that cut you off in the lane while you were driving, or the traffic light that turned red when you've only got so much time to get where you're going. When we hold on to these things, and we don't just open up and let that flow through, we create
[00:14:52.030] - Sandra
those pockets of stuck energy in the body that we talked about earlier, which then create emotional energy blocks in our body.
[00:15:02.930] - Kate
That is really interesting. So are you ready, Sandra, to talk about what led you to become a teacher of Qi Gong and Tai Chi?
[00:15:17.250] - Sandra
Well, Kate, I actually had no plans to do so. I'd always had an interest early in life in Tai Chi, so that was always underlying for me. But when I actually came into a life situation where I could put the time and found a master to study with, I was actually in really poor shape physically. I was depressed, sleep deprived. I had really low energy, no appetite. I wasn't eating, so I'd lost weight. And I know people who are listening can't see me, but I'm quite a slight person, so weight loss on me doesn't wear well at all. So I was looking pretty haggard. And when I started studying Qi Gong and Tai Chi — Qi Gong was actually first because the master I studied with said that I was quite energetically depleted at the time. I was actually a reiki practitioner. I was doing treatments for people, and he encouraged me to step back from that to first get my own energy stores up, to get my energy healthier and more nourished first. And when we came into our practices, I felt a difference in two or three weeks. I was pretty adamant about my practice, though. I knew I wanted a turnaround in my health.
[00:16:51.030] - Sandra
I was ready. I was tired of how I was feeling and was definitely ready to move forward. And so I was really good about keeping regular practice. And in two or three weeks, everyone around me noticed a difference. You know, I had light in my face again, I had energy again. I was smiling more. People just instantly, you know they were asking me, what are you doing? And you know, Kate, it was such a significant turnaround in my health. The master I was training with said have you ever thought about teaching? And I said, oh, no, right away because I didn't feel like I was at the level of this master I was training with. I mean, he's teaching me. There's no way that I'm that qualified to be able to do the same. And he told me that if I didn't teach, that my practice would fade away. And in the back of my head, I thought, there's no way. I love this stuff so much, there is no way that it's going to fade. And he kept urging me and he said, it will fade away. And with the shift that I got in my health, there was no way I was going to let that go.
[00:18:21.650] - Sandra
It was just such a major turnaround. Yeah. I can't even explain how profound it was, and there was just no way that I could go back. And so with that urging, I just, deep in my heart said, okay, we got to do this because I want to keep this as part of my life. It needs to be part of my life.
[00:18:49.530] - Kate
Have to share it. It must be part of doing it, is sharing it and helping other people, perhaps?
[00:18:58.430] - Sandra
Yeah. My practices have truly revealed these amazing secrets of keeping healthy. And when you have a major event like that in your life and you know how much it can help other people, naturally you want to share that.
[00:19:23.190] - Kate
Sure. So you have been teaching in person, though now you teach online and you are based in Nelson, British Columbia, but anybody around the world can access your teachings. So how do people find you?
[00:19:48.090] - Sandra
Well, thanks for asking, Kate. Yeah, we've had people online join us sprinkled all over the world. So that has been really fun. It's been a real surreal experience for me as well because we've had people in Japan, Australia, in Europe, and even though I'm in Canada, we have students sprinkled all across the United States and different parts of Canada as well. And people can find me on YouTube. I have great videos with simple health tips. They're only two or three minutes long, and you'll learn something easy that you can bring into your day. I do have a website up and I do dabble with Facebook and Instagram. So you can find the health tips and how to reach me on those platforms as well.
[00:20:43.790] - Kate
Do you have any of those simple tips that you want to share right now for leading a healthy, energetic life?
[00:20:53.010] - Sandra
Yeah, I was trying to remember the tip that actually brought you to get in touch with me. It was the chewing and the drinking. Was that it?
[00:21:03.640] - Kate
Yes. That was really cool. Yeah, talk about that. That's pretty neat.
[00:21:08.710] - Sandra
So we'll start with that one. So the Chinese have a saying, and it's drink your food, eat your water. And most of us have come across the concept and have heard at different times in different places how important it is to chew your food properly. And that is so true because the mouth is the first place where digestion actually begins. We actually think that the food gets to the stomach and that's where it starts. But the chewing in the mouth, the breakdown of the food with the teeth, and the combination of mixing that with saliva is actually the very first stage of digestion. So that's a common one, just making sure that you chew your food properly. You'll hear people say, chew 25 times, 35 times, whichever. But as much as you can before you swallow.
[00:21:59.350] - Kate
So that it actually feels like it's getting to be liquid in your mouth, even though it didn't start out that way.
[00:22:08.330] - Sandra
Actually, that would be encouraged to be the best. Yeah, just breaking it all down with the teeth, because the stomach doesn't have teeth. And so if we're taking a couple of chomps into steak or a portobello mushroom burger, we chomp, chomp two or three times and swallow. Those chunks of food make it harder for the stomach. The stomach's job is not to break up the food in little bits. That's for the teeth to do.
[00:22:39.970] - Kate
You do hear a lot about chewing your food, but chewing your water was a new one to me.
[00:22:46.500] - Sandra
So what the Chinese do is whatever liquids you consume, swish it around in your mouth and mix it with saliva and then swallow. So that's what they refer to when they say eat your water.
[00:23:04.250] - Kate
So what does that do for you?
[00:23:07.390] - Sandra
It just helps draw in more saliva. So, in traditional Chinese medicine, which Qi Gong and Tai Chi are actually pillars of health in that medical system, and the saliva has a lot of chi. Chi is our life force energy. And so as we combine the saliva with water or with whatever it is that we're drinking, then that helps draw more energy to the stomach so that the stomach can do its thing.
[00:23:44.310] - Kate
Okay, that sounds good. Well, I would like to know if there's anything else you'd like to talk about, for instance, the deep healing that you do. Do you want to talk about that now?
[00:23:56.890] - Sandra
Oh, sure. That'd be great. Yes. So, for the last 20 years, I've been teaching Tai Chi and Qi Gong more in the regular weekly group setting. And that has been both in the last few years in person and online. And now in the past year, I've been conducting a deeper healing program, which is a month-long intensive. And we use the principles of Qi Gong to reach the deeper recesses in the body for releasing limitations of prolonged stress from trauma. So different experiences from different times in our life, when they have that unresolution, causing energy blocks in the body from these trapped emotions, we use the principles of Qi Gong to loosen those up, stir them up, and give them a lift so that we can move on to the next chapter in our life, take those next steps. And it is an approach that I previously only used in private sessions. So I was only using them for private students who in the last ten years had come for that deeper healing. And now it's facilitated as a small group program.
[00:25:23.430] - Kate
Wow. How does it work to do it online like that?
[00:25:28.330] - Sandra
Yeah, that's really interesting, because I actually find that it works for this type of healing. It's actually worked better online because a person is tuning in to the sessions from their own space, where they're familiar and they're comfortable. And so this month-long program has several different components. One is a weekly get-together with the small groups, and then there's also a private component where each participant has a private session with me, where we formulate together a very individual and personal Qi Gong prescription that they can then take. And that prescription has to do with what's going on in their bodies at that time for whatever situation, whatever energetic blocks the body is presenting. And then along with that, each person also has daily support, either privately from myself or together with the group. And so being online has been really handy because we've been able to have participants from different areas in the world. And, yeah, the effect is I've found that sessions in person, for the private sessions that I used to do, have done for the last ten years, when a person is coming to a different space and then actually has me directly in front of them, it's just another layer of comfort that they need to come into.
[00:27:16.810] - Sandra
And I have found that online, when people are tuning in from their own space, we don't have that layer that we need to get through before we can get to the meat of our session.
[00:27:33.900] - Kate
Really interesting. So do your participants have to have experience in Qi Gong?
[00:27:42.550] - Sandra
No, they don't need to have experience in Qi Gong. But what does help is if they are open to either the beginnings or the awakenings of their spiritual journey, or when I say that emotions are energy, that that is something that they connect with, and it's not for everyone, because if I say that emotions are energy, someone might say, well, that's ridiculous, I have no idea what you're talking about. Then certainly this type of work, there's another stage that I would recommend first, as in come into a beginning Tai Chi practice, or come into a beginning Qi Gong practice, where you start really feeling the benefits of breath and physical movement, moving energy through your body for the deeper healing.
[00:28:51.050] - Kate
It must be very gratifying for you to see how people get better. What are some, just a couple of examples of that?
[00:29:04.570] - Sandra
Yeah, not sure gratifying is the right term or a term that I would use. It's more excitement that someone is coming into this awareness of the pure potential that they have, tapping into their own healing energies, because we all have this. We all have it. And when someone has that realization that they can be strengthened and self-empowered with a practice like this, and the light bulb goes off or on. The light bulb goes on. That is just so exciting. And that is the inspiration that keeps me going with what I do. And some examples are from the deeper healing program. The shifts that people have experienced have been more lifestyle shifts. And so, for example, we had a woman who was in her early 70s who had always lived with fantastic anxiety, but the anxiety would actually come in when she was feeling good, she was feeling excited, and we were actually able to tap into a kindergarten occurrence where she was really excited and then caused a Dixie cup to leak during snack time and got reprimanded for that. And so throughout the next decades in her life, whenever she got excited and inspired to do something, she'd paralyzed because she wouldn't want to make the wrong choice, or she'd come into this anxiety because when she was excited, she thought, well, what if I do something wrong?
[00:31:19.260] - Sandra
So it was such a shame that in these times, all throughout her life, when she was most inspired, she really held back because she was too afraid of causing a situation where she'd be reprimanded for whatever she decided.
[00:31:36.830] - Kate
That's so sad. All those decades and decades, and that is what we do to ourselves a lot of times.
[00:31:45.810] - Sandra
We do. Another doctor that was with my program was working on such a packed, tight schedule. And when we worked through some of the blocks of the emotions that were causing this sort of pattern in life, when those lifted, this doctor realized that, hey, I don't have to see clients back to back with no breaks in between. I can arrange my schedule how I want to have that breathing time between seeing clients, patients. And then this doctor also just started coming into a place of really taking care of herself and signed up for dance classes, is doing swimming lessons now, and is just making that space to do more things for joy, to bring that into her life.
[00:32:49.030] - Kate
That's wonderful. So how about what Qi Gong and Tai Chi have done for you besides the healing part? Because as I read on your site or somewhere, it has become your lifestyle. It isn't just your work. It's not just something that you do. It's how you live. So why is that?
[00:33:23.870] - Sandra
Why is that? When people used to ask me what I do, I used to say that I teach Tai Chi and Qi Gong. And as you said, Kate, it really is more than what I do, it's how I live. And what's brought me to that is bringing these practices in as a lifestyle brings me to a place where I know and can live in the power of the body to heal. And that in my work, is pretty well. The most important thing that I would love for people to realize is that we all have this inner potential in our bodies, to heal the body, the brain, tapping into our chi, our life force energy is just so remarkable, so fantastic. And most of us don't realize that we have that at our fingertips. And that, to me, is key. And as we move through life, we seem to be drawn, and it's human nature, we seem to be drawn to different practices, treatments, medications, all these external things that can help support our health. And they all absolutely are part of supporting you if you need that. But the other point is, with practices like these, all those things that you turn to can have more efficacy.
[00:35:17.150] - Sandra
That's the key. We have a lady who, she was taking four medications. She came to Qi Gong because she wanted to get off of them, and she's not there, but she's been able to decrease the amount of pharmaceutical prescriptions she's on from four to two. So it's not that we're trying to clear everything, and it's not to say, oh, don't take pharmaceutical and don't take medications. It's that lots of people also have come on really high doses of high blood pressure medication and have been able to at least decrease the dosage. So even something like that can help the body in a stronger fashion, in a fashion where you are empowering the healing energy in your own body to be helpful to you, to be part of your lifestyle, so that you don't have to go so external.
[00:36:23.530] - Kate
That's terrific. Is there anything else before we sign off?
[00:36:29.550] - Sandra
I would like to share with the tips, just quick tips for people to start their day, because that was a really good one, too. And they're easy. Anyone can bring these into their day. Two of them you don't even have to get out of bed for. And I start my day with these three things every single morning. So the first is what we call abdominal breathing or belly breathing. So when I wake up, I just remain lying in bed and I bring in this belly breathing. So you push the wall of your belly out as you inhale, and then you draw the wall of your belly back towards the spine as you exhale. That draws your chi, your life force energy, into the base of the body, which in traditional Chinese medicine is actually considered the battery of the body. So we want to recharge that first thing in the morning to get started. The second thing I do before I even get out of bed is I drink a glass of warm water. So I actually put a thermos of warm water at my bedside the night before so I don't have to get to the bathroom, wait for the tap to run and warm up so it's ready to go.
[00:37:44.330] - Sandra
And then the third thing is when you sit up in your bed, placing your feet on the floor and just take a few nice relaxing breaths, focusing on the feeling of the ground underneath your feet. And there, what we're doing is just remembering that the ground is there.
[00:38:07.930] - Kate
Yes. That's that grounding we talked about early in the show. Well, Sandra, such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you.
[00:38:21.570] - Sandra
Thank you for having me, Kate. It's been fun.
[00:38:24.790] - Kate
Absolutely. This is Kate Jones with The Gale Hill Radio Hour. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Please share this episode with anyone who's interested in opening up to flow, balance and harmony.
