331-SYNCPodcast_Inna-Segal

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Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this [00:01:00] episode of The Sync Your Life podcast. Today I’m joined by my new friend, Anna Segal. Super excited. I’m super, super excited for this interview because Anna and I had the chance to get together last week and kind of chat beforehand, and I felt like we could go on and on and on for hours.

So I’m glad that we’re finally, uh, recording things for you all to hear. I think this is gonna be a very valuable topic for my audience. She’s an internationally renowned intuitive healer and bestselling author of The Secret Language of Your Body, which has sold over 1 million copies. It’s been translated into 26 languages.

We’re gonna be talking about how, you know, emotional trauma, emotional experiences, things like our childhood, these types of things impact our health. Um, it’s actually funny how the universe works. I, I’ve done a few different podcast interviews today. Uh, obviously they’ll be launching all at different times, but all around this topic of how trauma sort of manifests in the body.

Um, you guys know I talk often about the book, the Body Keeps the Score, and that was a, an eye-opener for me to really learn how this impacts our physical wellness. [00:02:00] But we’re gonna talk about that specifically today within us. So without further ado, welcome to the show, my friend. If you could please tell my audience, you know, who you are, how you got into this, uh, sort of just give us your story.

Inna Segal: Thank you, Jenny. So good to be here with you. I think for me it’s, it’s like most people get into a field like this. I had never thought that that’s what I would be doing, but I was in pain from early on in my life. I had, um, psoriasis on my skin from, I think it was generational because many people in the family have this.

And then I had. Back pain, digestive issues, anxiety. And by the time I was about 19, I was really, really struggling with all of these issues. I was studying at university and I just, I couldn’t sit properly. I was always in pain. I was always moving my body. And I had gone through the whole [00:03:00] kind of, um, seeing all the practitioners that were, you know, physios, chiropractors, doctors, all sorts of things.

And I was ready for something more and something deeper and, um. I still felt like I, you know, in, in the year between 19 and 20, I went to see so many wellness practitioners. I, I, at times it was five days a week and I’d have this experience of getting better, but then going backwards better, but backwards.

Nothing was holding because it was always someone else who was doing the work. And my attitude was essentially, I get here and you are the expert, and you do it for me, you fix me. And then I had this experience when I wake up one day I was in agony. I called this chiropractor, got to his office. He knew how bad I was.

He actually came out of his office [00:04:00] into the waiting room. And he looked at me and he said, so your body stuck. And I said to, I know this part. What are you gonna do to help me? And he just, he was silent. And then he said nothing. Your body wants to be stuck going home. And on the way home, I was enraged, how dare he say this to me and how did dare he send me home?

But it also occurred to me that there was this language that I just had no understanding. It was like it was Japanese for me and I didn’t understand the letters. I didn’t understand what he was saying. And I made a conscious decision to figure it out. And when I got home, I decided, this is it. I’ve gone to everyone and everything and nothing has held in terms of self, in terms of healing, and I’m doing this myself.

And so I did something I’d never done. I started to feel the pain, I stopped resisting it ’cause I was [00:05:00] always tense and tight and tried to breathe as shallowly as I possibly could so I wouldn’t feel the pain. And this time I just. Breathed with the pain. I really did feel it. Um, I was counting backwards from 30.

It did occur to me that maybe, maybe even though I was very, very skeptical at the time, there’s something higher divine. Um, and I asked for help. I felt warmth and I had my eyes closer. I, I kind of sensed this golden light and I remember thinking something’s happening. And then for whatever reason, that I have no idea, it occurred to me to ask to see into my body.

It was just the most random thought. I’d never thought about this in my life before. It felt like the light switch went on and I could literally, like I had extra vision, I could see my back, and from there I went, why? But not as a victim, not as, you know, why is this happening to me? You know, poor me. It was like, I literally just wanted to know, [00:06:00] and this is where all the things you spoke about just now came into the surface for me.

I saw an image, which was a memory obviously of, or many, many memories of me being young, like 10, 11, and coming to Australia, which is where I am at the moment, and not knowing one word of English and being really, really bullied at school for that and. Feeling like I couldn’t be me, I couldn’t be myself.

Uh, it’s like I had to be almost standing outside of myself. And it wasn’t just not safe, it was just like I couldn’t, I didn’t know who I was. I had to be someone else to survive that. And to, and very self-protective. And then I, um, as I acknowledge this, which is so interesting to me with how the body works, is in that acknowledgement, the next image came up and it was this feeling of coming home and how my parents also [00:07:00] didn’t know how to be in a new country.

They had a lot of internal conflict and also with each other. Um, and so when I’d come into the house, it felt a little bit like a war zone for, and again, I didn’t know where to find my place and how to be okay, how to be safe with myself. And as I acknowledged that, the next thing that came up was really.

Different. And I realized that my grandmother, both my grandparents from both sides of my, um, family had been through a lot of trauma. But my grandmother in particular went through incredible loss. She was one of our children and her mother was actually quite psychic. And her mother told her when she was maybe 12, that, uh, 12 or 13 that the wars here and out of the eight children, she was the only one who was gonna survive.

And then her mother ended up, um, [00:08:00] essentially giving her own life to save my grandmother. She was shot at. She told my grandmother to run. My grandmother was 13 at the time, and there was just, and, and, and she did. She, she lost all her family and. My grandmother never fully processed this pain. I felt like she carried it so much and it was in her blood.

And it was really affecting not just me, but all the grandchildren. ’cause all of us would say things and we didn’t know where it came from. Like, oh, we’re gonna end up on the street. Oh, we don’t know how we’re gonna survive. Just things that that didn’t fully make sense. And then the last image I got was that I was a sponge and I would just take on other people’s energy and pain because I wanted to help.

And I fell asleep. The next day, wake up, 70% of the pain was gone. And I remember just thinking to myself, wow, [00:09:00] my body speaking. This is the language I need to learn, and I’m not getting up from my bed unless going to the bathroom or doing the things that I really have to do until. I get it until all of this is released and within it was two or three weeks.

Um, the back pain completely released. I’ve never had it since. Um, all the skin condition just went away, never had it since. Um, my digestion improved, my anxiety levels went right down and um, and I realized that I could kind of tune into other people. So it was a pretty incredible start.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah, yeah. Well, I love that you’re doing this and I loved our conversation last week.

I felt like I could have talked to you forever. I like that you’re sort of this intermediary between, you know, what we know in science and also like how to help people really understand how this looks in their body and in the illnesses they might be facing or in the stress that [00:10:00] they’re facing. Um, you know, I’ll share this with my listeners.

My listeners, if you’ve been listening for a while, you know this right? Where 350 episodes into the podcast. But for me. You know, when I first got into women’s wellness in particular, um, I came from a very like fitness and nutrition background, right? I promise I’m gonna make this full circle, but for me it was like, how can I help women like train and exercise and eat healthy?

And that, that was where my mind was, right? It was like all about that and evolved. It evolved, uh, very quickly just because of my own journey with, with hormone imbalance issues and migraine headaches and helping women understand that there’s another option out there versus modern medicine. That there is alternative medicine, there’s functional approach, root cause.

Uh, health led me to like creating the course that I have. And, and even this podcast, like helping women understand that first what we call the four fundamentals of hormone balance, which was bio-individual supplementation, right? Navigating this, this functional wellness journey through fitness, nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, et cetera.

And [00:11:00] then we decided to launch the podcast. And so I start, you know, opening up the doors to like, okay, who do I wanna have on this show? Right. Besides myself talking like, who, who, what experts do I want on here? What doctors do I want on here? And very quickly, the universe kind of, um, landed people for me that, that started speaking the, the conversation of trauma and how it manifests in the body and that role in our physical health.

And as a naive, um, you know, personal trainer with all, you know, only fitness on the mind. It was a new concept for me. It wasn’t like it was completely foreign, but it was like, really, is this really add up? Like, is this really a big piece to our health? Right. And so I was sort of a skeptic, um, and it’s just like the universe has continued to land these, these people in my life to learn more and more from.

So, um, I think, I think back to, yeah, I, I just made notes as you were talking. I was, I was thinking through some of the guests that I’ve had on who have sort of. Clued into some of the things that you’re saying, but what I love about you is that you have this ability to [00:12:00] translate into a way that we all understand, like through your own story, and then also just through understanding how unresolved emotions, um, can truly manifest in the body.

So I guess I have lots of questions that I wanna ask and lots of things I’ve already written notes about, but I wanna start with just, you know, how the body speaks to us, um, because I think a lot of times. Um, I like to say that women come to this podcast or they come to me because their check engine lights are flashing, their energy is off.

They feel, maybe they feel unhappy midlife in their relationship, or they feel like they’re broken because hormonally things are changing. Right? And those are certainly valid things, and those are things that are potentially happening, but there’s also so much more, right? We’re starting to see sort of this rise in autoimmune disease popping up, um, in, you know, over the age of 40 for women.

And that’s now being tied back to a lot of childhood trauma. Um, we’re seeing, you know, you, you and I had specific conversation about my migraines, right? Or chronic pain or inflammation that is arising for people, [00:13:00] oftentimes even as, you know, as we get into our forties and beyond. So, I would love for you to just sort of speak to.

This idea of how the body speaks through discomfort, um, and what that looks like. How do unresolved emotions appear in the body? And if, if you wanna, if we wanna dive into like my personal issues we to, we totally can. But I would love to just kind of hear your perspective on what you’ve seen there. Well,

Inna Segal: I think what happens is that we go through developmental stages, and this starts very, very early on.

It can actually start in the womb. So if the mother, for instance, rejected herself, didn’t feel supported, rejected the child, had um, felt uncomfortable in her own body, was carrying some kind of, um, unresolved issues about being a mother or her own childhood. Her own experiences with, with her partner, with her mother, the child, even from the [00:14:00] womb, already absorbs all this.

And then what happens is that the developmental, when the child is born, they actually, we have this thing where in western society, in western world, we are just not nurturing women. We are not explaining things to women. We’re not supporting them. And so several things happen. One, um, when the child is born, if you know, if the child’s born with, for example, cesarean, you are likely to have a child with asthma.

Later in life because they didn’t go through the, the birth cannel properly. And then you also have the fact that the separation, this oneness that women feel when they’re pregnant, it’s like they’re separating, but there’s no conversation about it. There’s no understanding. And it feels, and being a mom myself, uh, I know it feels shocking.

And so [00:15:00] it’s very easy for a woman to actually go into depression, mainly that postnatal depression, mainly because there’s no conversation, no support, no understanding. Now the child, um, in the developmental stages is going through the development of the physical body in the first seven years of life, which means that the child is in that emotional, or even, let’s call it, more of to do with ancestral energy of the mother or whoever’s looking after them.

It doesn’t have to be the mother. But the child is that sponge that I was talking about with myself that is constantly absorbing everything, every thought the mother has in that first seven years or whoever’s looking after them. Belief, experience, feeling. And on top of that, when we actually look at childhood development, looking at stages, so zero to nine months is a [00:16:00] stage and then we have nine months to 18 months and 18 months to three years and so on up till when you’re almost 25.

But really kind of like 21 is that stage of, okay, this is now I’m independent. And through all of these stages, if there has, there haven’t been proper support looking after the child nourishment connection, the child starts to feel uncomfortable and potentially rejected. This is not necessarily conscious, which leads to this empty feeling inside the body.

Like, and, and a sense of something is wrong with me, so I’m not right. I am not. Why am I not supported or loved or cared for in this particular way? Which, which in childhood can show up as, like I said, asthma, it, I can’t breathe. It can show up as skin issues, which we [00:17:00] see in that, you know, teenage time, which is like, I’m really uncomfortable in my skin scenario and maybe there’s bad food and other things, but it’s that I don’t feel comfortable in myself.

And so you start to have these. Feelings from early on, like I was saying, almost outside yourself, numbing, pushing down. And of course a child has no idea, no clue of how to work on things or even to recognize them. It’s only later when we potentially are interested or have pain in the body or diseases, we start to go back.

And the other thing I really wanna say that I feel like most people misinterpret and don’t explain correctly is that most people go, well, I need to go to that, um, to the root cause. This whole thing of root cause I need to go to the beginning of where it started. And potentially, yes, but what people think is that.

If I clear, you know, [00:18:00] change it or clear it there, that’s it. But what I’m saying to people is that what causes hormonal issues when you’re in, you know, your late thirties, forties and and so on, is that you actually didn’t realize that even though something might have started, it could have started when you were five.

You could have put on masks where you had to be a little helper in the family or a savior because your parents weren’t getting along. For instance. When you are older, what actually happens is that, you know, from, from that 5-year-old, you, you know, as a 10-year-old, you’re putting on other masks or other protective mechanisms or ways of, of suppressing things that are showing up.

And then when you’re 15 and then when you’re 20 and, and. They’re not, it’s not just one age. It’s like what links it to another really, I think we spoke about this with you, Jenny, another age where, when [00:19:00] did the pain come up again for you, for instance, or when did you have a repeat of that experience?

Because we’re constantly, from the age of 21, we’re repeating and when we start to realize that we, we kind of, we either get overwhelmed and go, oh my God, this is too much. I’m not gonna do the work. Or we get really excited like I did, and we go, I wanna know myself ’cause I’m never gonna be bored or depressed.

Um, ’cause I’m, I’m gonna explore, I’m gonna explore. What is the feeling that shows up? What is the symptom that is showing up? If I’m tired and I’m just pushing through what’s it about? If I’m having pain in my neck, in my head, in any part of my body, what is the wisdom? Where may it come from? What is it about?

And we have many ways now to actually identify times. I think I was mentioning that to you, that, [00:20:00] um, like for example, migraines, really bad migraines. We can, we can go, well, it’s, it’s in the head area, so of course let’s look at the head. But actually when you trace it back, it’s, and you look at more of that, you know, the subtle energy systems like this, the Chacos to me, that.

Migraines are connected to the root chakra, they’re connected to the first seven years of life and what happened and what you experienced during that time. And if there was a lot of kind of unprocessed stuff that maybe our mind as an adult understands, but not necessarily not that part of us, not that part of us, and that that part is operating and kind of constantly looking for attention and for a way for us to notice this.

And I wanna just say [00:21:00] this can occur not just through like the fact that we have discomfort in the body of pain, but through the fact that we have conflict with people and rigors that are constantly coming up with certain people are telling us that we need to look at. What’s going on, where it came from, but also how did it progress?

Not just one area, but you know, foundational healing is looking at all the different parts of it. It’s the same as foundational medicine.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, one of the things that you and I talked about were these like seven year cycles, I think you mentioned right, in that, that zero to seven age timeframe.

And I was telling you that for me personally, and actually, um, I’ll come back to this in a second, but I, I interviewed someone else today that’ll be launching on the podcast as well. She more specifically spoke to Ayahuasca and some different ways of, um, using psychedelics for, for healing trauma and that sort of thing.

But [00:22:00] this idea of the first seven years of life, right? And I mean, how much do we truly remember of those first seven years, but also how impactful they are. Right? So I was sharing with you, I was adopted at birth, um, and. You know, I, I also think that there are elements of you talked about, you know, I think I, I mean, I was raised in a happy home, healthy home, like healthy marriage between my, my two adoptive parents.

But I also think there’s a lot of unresolved emotion, most likely behind my adoption because for me it was, um, like I kind of always felt like I was a wise soul for my age. And I’ve always been told that, um, throughout life. And one of the things for me was always, you know, I, I was raised knowing that I was adopted at birth.

Like it was always, it was, there was no a moment where my parents like sat me down and said, you’re adopted. Like, I always knew it from the time I was itty bitty. And it always made, like, the story of it all made sense to me. It to me it [00:23:00] was like, okay, well yeah, like birth mom was, was, was a teenager, wasn’t in a place to care for me.

Like, and so for me it was just like, okay, this makes, this makes logistical sense. Right? And so. I never really went through the processing of like, what that meant for me emotionally. And so I would love for you to just touch on like, one of the things that we talked about, uh, you and I, about this idea of like, there is an element with adoption of abandonment, right?

I mean, that’s just, that is what it is. And I know when we went through our adoption education, you have to go through so much adoption education to also adopt children domestically here in the us We went through that as well for both of our girls. Um, I would love for you to speak to that idea because I think for me, um, when, when you and I spoke, I remember when we hung up the phone, I was telling my husband about our conversation and I thought, how interesting is it that I can point back to these seven year cycles for me of, of migraines?

Like I, I literally, they started at age 14. They got worse at age [00:24:00] 21. Um, in college, I found a resolution, at least that short term. I, I thought it was the resolution, but it was a short term resolution at 28, lived my best years without migraine, 28 to 35, and then around 35, uh, to 37, things started to kind of creep back.

So for me, it’s like seeing this manifest for me as migraine, right? I I, I’ve told multiple doctors, like, I’m healthy in every other way. Why do migraines plague me? Right? And so to hear you talk about like the root chakra for, to hear you talk about this idea of maybe abandonment or whatever, right? Like this all is very, for me, like makes sense.

So I would love for you to just sort of maybe touch on that, like this whole idea of like the seven year cycles and, and, and also weaving into that. How do we know, like how does maybe someone listening to this, maybe they don’t deal with something chronic as far as a health condition, so to speak, but like, how do people know.

How to, how to listen for this in their own body or, or, you know, what types of things could be, [00:25:00] um, going on for them?

Inna Segal: I think that most people don’t know that’s, that’s the issue. They have to be educated. They have to understand one of the easiest ways to start is to actually start from where your life is at now. And to go back each year to the beginning of your life and to write down a few lines, especially if, if there is an issue, what happened that year that you are aware of.

And I also wanna say that, um, one of the, the things that I was listening to as you were asking the question, that people would go, well. Okay. So like you said, so much happens in that zero to seven year cycle, but we don’t necessarily have conscious memory of it. We are actually quite desensitized in lots of ways from remembering lots of things.

’cause whenever we have [00:26:00] trauma, we push it away, we numb it, it goes into kind of a nervous system and it, it, it’s held there. And so what we need, or, or our immune system, which is where the autoimmune diseases come from, because it’s the immune system’s going like, you are not listening, you’re not listening from my perspective, I’m gonna attack you.

Like, it’s almost like inverted. I’ve inverted, you know, rather than helping you and, and working for you, I’m gonna work against you type of an experience ’cause you’re working against yourself ’cause you’re not actually taking the time to connect and understand. And for me, in that, I, I, I. Thought about this for over 20 years.

How do we, how do I help people? One sensitize and it is a journey. It’s not like an instant thing, you know, we have to. To sensitize, we have to start from a place of strengthening our sense of self. It means that I, I feel stronger in [00:27:00] myself and who I am, which is kind of at the level of your soul plexus, your digestive system.

And I then from this strength and self, can start and sensitize self where I am more not sensitive in terms of getting, um, you know, allergies, types of sensitive, but sensitive from perspective of to myself, to my inner self, to my, what’s going on within me. And that can start with asking lots of questions and just journaling, touching your body, breathing, connecting to different parts of your body and exploring like, what is this about?

What am I. Really feeling what’s this body part do, which is kind of the basics of what I teach and share. And then when we wanna go to the places that you are talking about, where, how do we understand the seven these cycles and they’re [00:28:00] actually intertwined to, to the organs and they’re intertwined to body, um, wisdom and parts of, of the body that are giving us information.

So the way I see it from studying this in every way that I have been able to find, including with people that come from a very scientific background, ’cause I do like science, I do like logic. And what I found is that if we start looking at things from the kind of how the root chakra works from the, from.

This seven years, which is the physical body. It’s all about that. The physical body gets developed in that time period. And if we do feel rejected or abandoned, um, and I’m gonna say even when, let’s go back to the womb for a minute. The head is actually the part that gets developed the first we, we have bigger heads than [00:29:00] bodies during that stage of pregnancy and de development, which actually means that if things were going on, let’s say for your mother specifically, Jenny, you know, like not knowing if I’m gonna keep the baby or like not feeling safe, supported your head would actually be pulling all of her thoughts and feelings into itself and creating the headaches from that perspective.

And so we, we know that that’s like, that root chakra is like foundation, total foundation of who you are. And then from that seven to 14 we get get to the hip area, the sacral. And this is also, this is family. And this is also where we start to develop a little bit of sense of self that I’m talking about around that age of nine.

And we go, who? Who am I? Like, am I like my mom, my dad? Where am I? And if [00:30:00] it’s not clear, especially in this case of um. Well, they’re not my biological parents, so I don’t know. Um, there’s gonna be confusion, which is the head area as well, activating the pain that has been suppressed potentially from the womb.

And now it’s actually being, now it’s coming up because you also have, you know, from 14, you know, people talk about hormones. But actually what happens is that our emotional center, a solar plexus such so, so seven to 14 is all about our etheric, our family, our vitality, our, you know, who am I? Am I like my family?

Do I reject them? Where am I like them? Where am I not? But from the age of 14, it’s like, who am I as myself? Starts to come in. And this is the digestive system. This is the soul plexus. This is who do I believe myself to [00:31:00] be based on how other people view me? And do I feel empowered in that? Am I being encouraged to be my full self?

Am I being suppressed or pushed down, or am I in competition with my friends? What’s going on? And so again, people talk about hormones and yes, on the physical level, the hormones are happening, but it’s, it’s that part of us, like we have much more access to our emotional self than we ever had, and we don’t know how to work with that.

And especially if the earlier developmental stages. Have not been kind of supported in a healthy way. Then at this stage of 14, we, we are out of control emotionally because we haven’t had boundaries. Often we haven’t been shown what’s healthy, and this is where potential health issues show up as well.

And then show up later when you’re 40 in your forties. And then we have this, you know, from, from the age [00:32:00] of like 14 to, to, um, 21. From 21, we start to connect to the heart. Um, and 21 to 28, which is again, intimacy in relationships and, and also direction. What’s my purpose in life? And so this area starts to kind of like, this is where we also start to go, well, am I loved?

Am I lovable? Am I attractive? Am I this, am I, you know, do people want me? How do I belong in the world? And this then gets repeated over and over again in our lives. And so we kind of have this, this going on. Um, and then it’s interesting, I think you said that, is it from you, you had from 28 to like 35 or something where you didn’t have headaches?

Jenny Swisher: Correct? Yep.

Inna Segal: Yeah. And it’s again, quite interesting because this is when we move into the throat, [00:33:00] into our. Area of more power. How, how do I, how does my voice get heard? And we can actually have that time. This is almost a destiny time, um, where we can suppress other parts of us and, and things because it’s a completely new area.

Even astrologically in your timeline, so many people can actually feel like things are either flowing more or more, challenges are coming in. Time feels different, but they can actually go, because I mean, my throat area, I’m more in like, this is who I am, this is my voice, this is how I’m speaking. And other areas can be pushed down and you can feel better.

And then, you know, and then we go into that, you know, area of the third eye as we enter like that, you know, from. [00:34:00] Essentially for 28 to that 34, 35 time where, what’s my vision now? So again, we’re coming back. If it’s headaches, we’re coming back into the area of headache. Mm-hmm. Which anything we haven’t worked on against starts activating.

Mm-hmm. You know, we, we are not, we don’t have the sense of the physical capacity as we get past 35 to hold things down the way we have before potentially. And so anything that hasn’t been looked at starts to come out. And I say this to people like. You know, with the whole hormonal imbalance, like yes, that’s a physical way of saying it.

But what did, what came to that? Like how did that occur? And it occurred because as we were going through all of this, especially up to the age of 42, is where we have this chakra system. Um, if during, again, that stage of each chakra [00:35:00] kind of developing, which is your sense of self developing, who you are up to that age of 42, if.

You kept pushing things away and not dealing with them. Um, your, again, your capacity to hold it is weakened.

Jenny Swisher: Mm-hmm.

Inna Segal: And everything, essentially, everything that hasn’t been dealt with, the similar way that it shows up around that age of 14, you know, where our hormones are really kind of going a bit crazy, our emotions are going crazy.

Well, it shows up the same after that, you know, 40 age, because your inner self is saying, pay attention. And so again, I just wanna come back to really, really important point here. How do we, how, how, how do we go back to that wo and seven, you know, zero to seven? We can’t, we consciously mostly can’t. But this is where [00:36:00] I’ve been, you know, thinking, thinking and exploring it.

The way we can is through archetypes. So when we sensitize ourselves enough, we start to go. I can now feel my feelings first, right? I can now recognize them and I might recognize that feelings have a story. And what I want people to recognize is that the feelings you have around your head could be anger as well.

Suppression or rejection is not the exact same feelings you have around the heart, even if we call them the same because they are connected to different chakra, different stage of development, different storyline, different perspective that you took on what the archetypes are. There are, they’re kind of like a combination.

Their, their foundation, a structure of a thinking, a feeling, how we behaved, [00:37:00] how we, our ancestry, how we’re influenced, what a perspective is or was on life at that period of time. And what is the story? Like, what is the trauma, what’s the story? Maybe there was no trauma, but it, it’s a story. It’s a, we watch something, we don’t remember it, we, somebody said something to us and now we have this perspective and a perception.

And so, um, the only way that I found that you can truly come back to this, and anybody can do it once they’re a bit sensitized, is to see it not just as, um, kind of like, oh, this is a timeline, I think, but what does this part of you. Look like, feel, like, what do they believe? And then when we’re actually creating changes, we’re, we’re connecting to, essentially to an aspect of us that is formed and [00:38:00] seeing how it transforms as opposed to just a thought, just an emotion.

But we still don’t know that there’s a part of us, like is it growing? Is it stuck? What’s going on there? And so this is kind of like the way I feel.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah.

Inna Segal: Need to understand things.

Jenny Swisher: Well as you’re, as you’re kind of going through those different, um, seven year cycles, you know, I’m, I, in my mind, I’m just sitting here thinking through like my own life story and, and how what you’re saying aligns with, you know, what I’ve experienced and that sort of thing.

I also can’t help but think when you were talking about the age of 40, you know, sort of this, anything that’s unresolved right, can sort of just build on itself. And I started thinking about. Recently I’ve tuned into a couple of, you know, menopause documentaries. I’ve kind of been in this space of understanding, um, not just, I mean, I know what, what happens during menopause, but I’ve been kind of fascinated lately with these, um, testimonials of women, [00:39:00] um, who are stepping into this idea that like, they really feel like they find themselves in menopause, right?

Like they finally, they feel like they’re finally like, accepting of themselves, whether that’s of their body, of their, of their experience, life experience, right? Like, I, I say it often to my community. Like they no longer, they, they decided what they care about now, what they no longer care about, like what is worth their time and energy and effort and what’s not.

Right? And it’s, so hearing you talk about even as early as 40, like how things compound, right? And kind of you have kind of how you have to, you have to face that sort of experience of like. What now. Right. Which makes sense when we start thinking about why does autoimmune disease start to, you know, pop up again for women over 40, right?

Like, why do these, why these different things start to resurface? Um, so I, I was just kind of thinking through that as you were talking and how it does really totally make sense. Um, I also wanna just say, you know, one thing that we, I, I wanna mention to my listeners too is, uh, you, you kind of [00:40:00] said this at one point.

You, you talked about how really our brain is constantly trying to keep us safe, right? And so when we exper, whether it’s whether experienced trauma or like you said, whatever our story looks like, um, our, our brain has like the ability to literally shut those maybe emotions or, uh, memories or, or thoughts down in order to protect us, right?

I always like to say our body’s gonna prioritize survival above anything else. Um, it’s been a while since I shared this piece of, of my story and our story, but. Both of my girls obviously are adopted. Um, I’ve shared that plenty of times here, but my youngest, uh, we had a very interesting experience where she was, she was born, um, we were not there for her birth like we were for my oldest.

We were there about five hours later. And from the time we brought her home from the hospital, we like to say she was the most unhappy baby on the planet, right? So like, literally just screaming constantly, like, didn’t want to eat [00:41:00] nothing, made her happy. Um, and my husband and I joke around now, we, it required us to be on a stability ball with her and a carrier in the bathroom with the shower running and a noise machine.

Like we, we had like multiple things to get her to calm down. And it wasn’t until probably closer to like five weeks old that I said, okay, like, something’s not right. Like, you know, we, we had already, you know, my, my oldest at that point was four, so we’d raised another child to the age of four. So I’m like this, you know, she, Elle never did this.

So what’s going on here? And so we started investigating. And interestingly, you know, and I’ve shared this like, um, no, no shame against modern medicine, but our pediatrician was absolutely no help. It was actually part of our process of firing our pediatrician. Um, but we had multiple modern medicine doctors say like, everything’s fine.

Everything’s everything’s normal, right? And we’re like, something’s not right. Like my mom in instinct was off and, um, we took her to just a, uh, pediatric chiropractor and within five seconds of, of entering the space, [00:42:00] the chiropractor was like, she’s severely lip and tongue tied. She’s M-T-H-F-R mutation, right?

Like she’s, she’s got all these things going on. Um, and she’s, she’s, and I remember her saying this and me thinking she was crazy. She was like, she has had a traumatic in utero experience. And we were just, I was just like, what do you mean? Like, I, I didn’t understand what she meant. Like, I, I, looking back on that now, it almost seems silly, but like I didn’t understand it.

And so we, we went through the efforts of all the things, right? We did, we had the lip and tongue tie, um, fixed. We had, we went through myofascial release therapy. We went through, uh, all different, you name it, we did it. Like we, we were, we were doing chiropractic twice a week. We were doing all these things that was considered body work.

That’s the way they refer to it, right? Like body work and obviously with an infant, right? There’s not like talk therapy or, or anything like that, like to, to deal with the emotional side of things. But in working on her body, we were able to, I’ll use the word release quite [00:43:00] technically, the fascia and, and quite technically some of the muscle tightness in her body that allowed her to relax.

And by the time she was eight to 10 weeks old, you know, fast forward a month, all of a sudden it was like a new child. It was like a new child was in our arms. Like totally different experience. And so the reason I share this is because, you know, at from an adult perspective at 40, um, you know, you’re like, okay, this is a lot, like, this is a lot of emotional processing, but it’s so powerful to know that even at an infant level, right?

Like there’s, there are things that we can do within the body that can change the score, right? That can, can, can really reverse things. So I like to share as we were going through that, uh, interestingly to kind of weave this back in, I mentioned earlier that the universe has a way of landing people on the podcast that I need to be.

And I met a woman by the name of Lily Carell, who’s been on the podcast twice, um, trauma informed therapist, and she specializes in epigenetic uh, trauma. And she came on the show, [00:44:00] was, was sharing some things just about her own experience, similar to what you were saying at the beginning about what your grandmothers and that they, the traumas that they had gone through.

And, you know, we don’t obviously know like the specific details of, of either of our girls’ biological epigenetic histories or traumas, but, um, we do know that Sutton was, uh, my youngest was in a car accident while she was in utero. So while she was in utero with her birth mother, she was in a car accident.

And it’s when, when I was meeting with Lily on the podcast and we were talking through this. All these things started clicking for me as to like this, my child to this moment, like she’s four and a half years old, she’s down the hall, she hates restraint. Don’t put her in a, she doesn’t wanna be in a car seat, she doesn’t wanna be in a stroller.

She doesn’t wanna be like, she doesn’t like, I mean, until the last year, she didn’t like the car at all. Now she’s, we’ve kind of like retrained the brain a little bit, but she doesn’t like to be held down. Like there’s no, there’s, there’s like this thing that she just does not like restraint. And so, um, [00:45:00] we have learned so much about this.

Like, I mean, from the time, you know, someone said to me, oh, you know, she had a, an, a traumatic and utero experience. And I looked at them like, like they were crazy. I feel like I’ve come so far in, in learning really what this, what this is, right. And really understanding even just through a, a mother’s eyes of like, what are my children going through?

And as you’re talking, I can’t help but think how does an adopted child like me? At the age of 41 or an adopted child at the age of four, how do we navigate some of the things that we don’t even know, right? Like, so I don’t know my birth mother or birth grandmother or any of the traumas that they experienced.

Like how, how, how do I learn how those things are showing up for me? Um, so there’s so many questions. Like I have so many things that we’re not gonna have enough time for all of it, but those, those are just some of my thoughts I wanted to share out loud.

Inna Segal: And I think that, and, and it’s really important, and this is where this archetype of work comes in.

Yeah. Yeah. Because what we don’t realize or know is that we [00:46:00] have this etheric body, which is the body to do with ancestry, which is why we look like a mother or a grandmother or whoever, and in this etheric body, and it’s also a life body. It’s what gives us energy and vitality in there. There is this. The subconscious kind of understanding and memory.

And I noticed, ’cause I’m, I’ve taught so many people when we, we, when we go and look at Ancestry and I, um, a few years ago I was doing, I recorded this online course that people can work with where essentially I go from understanding the feminine, the masculine lines, you know, firstly ourselves, who we are, and then also through guiding people through these archetypal type processes, even if they’ve never met in, you know, the parents or grandparents or whoever.

Consciously in that sense, [00:47:00] pretty much everybody who went through this work, again, you need to be little sensitized first and obviously open to it. Um, told me that they met in, in these processes, relatives of family members that. They never knew. And through this kind of connecting the fact that we are a kind of archetype of beings, and that was what Yung discovered.

Um, and that’s our connection. And this is memory in a sense. When we, through those processes, when we connect, we end up having, you know, insight into what different people in a kind of, in an ancestral line thought and felt and believed, and then passed on to us. And we start to go, what is the difference?

[00:48:00] And this is actually very important at the age of 21. And it becomes also very important at the age of 42. I don’t know why, but it is like, this is, it’s a seven year cycle again and astrologically where all of a sudden, you know, at 42 you kind of go. Who am I again and am I different to what I thought I was?

And let me, let me review who I really am. And this is where a lot of people actually between that, like starting at 40 start to separate and divorce as well because they go, I am not, like, this relationship is no longer for me as well. And so when we don’t know, it’s very difficult ’cause we kind of, I know who I am, I don’t know who I am.

But through this, these particular processes, I’ve um, um, I’ve been really fortunate ’cause I kind of entered into this whole sphere from acting, from actually being, from wanting to be an actress, you know. And I found certain teachers [00:49:00] and in particular there was a, um, I come from the Eastern European background.

There was a teacher called, um. Michael Cherub, who technique is very famous and who cited his, well, he was teaching in 1930s and 1940s and so on, and taught Marilyn Monroe and all sorts of like very, very well known actors at the time. And he had this very particular, he understood about all the subtle bodies and he’d done a lot of kind of training.

Um. In, in, in, in understanding how we work as beings. And when I was studying his techniques, I kind of went, he talks about energy bodies and stepping into them. And as an actor, obviously he, he, you know, he, he comes at it from the perspective. And for me I was like, well, I wonder what it would be like if I stepped into the energy body of my [00:50:00] mother.

Um, and went through the process of being, you know, in, in her womb, um, as through all these different stages. And so I started taking people through it. And then even if they’d never, like, you know, they were adopted, they would experience and then we could separate and move that stuck energy or what the mother was feeling from what they are and who they are.

And I would have people who were, had been depressed their whole life, didn’t know why or angry their whole life. All of a sudden just change within like, literally hours and then continue because they were like, oh, that’s not me. And this is me. And the same with this ex explorations of, um, you know, of what happened, what happened by connecting and going.

Um, partly there is the, you, you know, I think I said to you [00:51:00] in, and the reason I also started really connecting the archetypes is because if I’m born into female body, I am going to, every time I have my cycle, I’m gonna connect into all the struggle and suffering potentially that women have gone through.

And we also connect to it at different times. And I teach this to my students. And also I, I have this conversation with my daughter that. My daughter’s 21, and the time that she’s going through right now is totally different to this. The, the challenges that I had when I was a young woman, like she said to me at one point, mom, why do I feel like you, you know, with the men of your, you know, who are in their forties?

Why do you have conflicts with them? And I’m like, because they grew up with mothers often who taught them still like that old way of being that the woman’s in the kitchen, the [00:52:00] woman’s doing this and that. And I said, my generation was probably, we already had gone through a mother’s, you know, could work, a mother’s could vote.

Mothers had some voice, but they were still in the kitchen all the time. And I was like, I don’t have to be like this. I want to create something amazing in my life, which means I’m not gonna be the, you know, the housewife or the, and I’m like. But the, the men grew up with their mothers doing everything and being like that.

So we’re, I’m like, you are in a generation where there’s more balance because of mothers like me, you know? You know where men are like, well, the young men. Yeah, it’s more balance. I’m like, but we had to, my generation had to fight for that and still is to different, in different ways. And so each generation has a different storyline as well in terms of, well, how was I affected?

And so sometimes I say to people [00:53:00] like, who grew up in the sixties or seventies, if they’re, you know, like older women, where I’m saying to them. What were you like, you know, did you choose flower power or did you go against that? You know, how did you, how did that impact you and your life to, so then I know more about your story and potentially how to guide you, because there’s also that, that needs to be seen in that modern way of who are we dealing with and what, what is the time period that they grew up and what was going on?

Who was saying what during that time.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So good. So good. Yeah. I, I can’t help but, you know, also think about, um, and I, this is something that you and I chatted about, but to share it here, you know, I was telling you about how, obviously, you know, I was adopted at birth forty, forty one plus years ago, and.

Um, I think when [00:54:00] I was sharing with you just my like, brief overview of my story, right? I was giving you sort of the high level view of my life story. I said, you know, I always wanted to adopt children. And then when my husband and I were faced with some infertility issues on both sides and then the migraine headaches, which prevented us from wanting to pursue IVF and that sort of thing, um, you know, we moved forward with the adoption and it was, I, I shared some of that story with you and I think your response at that time was something like, it makes sense that having, having been an adoptive child, that you would want to then sort of like reverse that experience as an adoptive mother.

And so I, I’ve kinda been thinking about that ever since we chatted and when you were talking about like, there’s so much, I mean, I literally, we don’t have enough time to go over everything that’s in my brain at this moment, but I just, I, I wanted to just share that for me personally. Um. I shared earlier on this podcast that like from an early age, I was this wide soul of like, I understand the logistics behind this adoption.

Like, I’m okay with it. I don’t, and so for me [00:55:00] it was like there wasn’t any emotions to process because I was at peace with it from, from that angle. Right. Um, and I would say that it literally has, I mean, I, I tell my husband all the time, like, I, it’s an out of sight, out of mind thing for me. Like, it’s not something, it’s not, I don’t wake up every day like wondering where my birth mom is or any, there’s no, like, I don’t have those thoughts at all except for on my birthday, when my birthday comes around every year, I think I have like a brief moment usually where I’m like, wow, I wonder if she’s thinking of me on this day.

Um, but what’s interesting is when we proceeded with adopting our girls, which I shared with you, my listeners know, my oldest was born and sort of fell into our laps. Like we didn’t pursue an adoption process. We didn’t, you know, like it was just sort of a random story. Um, but. Uh, when we were in the room for her birth, it was a very, like the most emotional day of my life because for me, it was not just the adopt, you know, the birth of my, of my daughter, but it was also this, [00:56:00] um, I wrote down here just a shift in my lens, right?

Like it was a difference in perspective to see what her birth mother was going through emotionally. Um. To see like, just sort of that struggle and that experience and to kind of almost, I felt like I could see it and feel it from both sides. And um, and that’s something that, you know, when, even now when we navigate parenting adopted children, you know, I’m like, I, I try as much as I can to also share both sides and share that I’ve, I’ve been on, I’ve been there myself.

So there’s so much there. But I, what I wanted to ask you, as, as I know we’re kind of closing in on our time and I, I wanna, I wanna go ahead and invite you back for a part two ’cause I just think there’s so much to talk about and I wanna dive deeper into archetypes and the feminine and we haven’t even gotten there.

Um, but I think one thing I wanna ask as we wrap up today. This idea of healing. Right? And so for me, it’s like anytime we want to heal from something, right? There’s like a level of awareness, but this feels like it has [00:57:00] to go deeper than that. It feels like we have to go beyond just the awareness in order to heal.

And I wrote down the, I just wrote down one word and that is, is it forgiveness, question mark. And so regardless of what it is that someone is healing from, right? Obviously we’ve been sharing my story, we’ve been sharing more about the angle of perhaps adoption, right? As just an example. But regardless of what that is, if someone’s dealing with autoimmune, and maybe that reflects back to childhood trauma in some way, um, is that, is that correct to say that like there’s not just this awareness, like you were talking about within hours, someone feeling better, right?

What, what, what’s happening? Like it has to be more than just, ah, this is what my mom went through, right? It has to be something like a sense of forgiveness in order to, I would assume.

Inna Segal: It’s, it’s almost like there is a part of that for sure, but there’s also acceptance. I think acceptance comes first and then there’s, in forgiveness, there is a [00:58:00] new perspective and transformation.

And what I feel like with different people, just coming back just for a moment to your story as well, with different people, um, like there’s some people, the way life shows up for them, because in your soul’s journey, essentially, there’s gonna be moments that, that where you do need to have some kind of shift or healing or transformation.

And I’m thinking of from different perspectives, like, um, your perspective, my, uh, you know, my partner’s perspec perspective at the moment where, um, like maybe you weren’t ready to do, let’s, let’s call it a deep dive into. Inner child work, you know, as an archetype or even, you know, going back into the womb and understanding your own story.

And that in itself can, I’m not saying does for everybody ’cause it doesn’t, but [00:59:00] can because somehow that is your kind of purpose, your journey in this life to understand this. It can then lead to, um, the infertility in a sense, because you need, you need a healing experience that doesn’t just come through, like you said, as a change of perspective, which is the thinking area.

Doesn’t just come through the feeling, but comes through the will, meaning your whole being needs to be in that experience and to change through the fact that now you are, like, on the other side, like you were saying, feeling that mother, feeling yourself, you know, the, the one who’s giving birth, the one who’s giving her child away, the pain and the trauma and how you are receiving it.

And there’s this massive healing of like, I am receiving and embracing, you know, this child where I was accepted, but also received. So there’s like, as an adult, you’re actually going through it, but it’s through thinking, feeling and will. And [01:00:00] you know, and I see it, like I mentioned my partner, he, when we have tried to do, you know, child work, he would do a process and then he would just kind of go like, I can’t do it.

I’ve gotta, I, I, I have to stop this. And now he’s, um, in an experience where one of his parents is, um. Very unwell and will potentially be crossing over. And he’s there, he’s in a different country from me now. Um, and he’s really going through that process where he can’t run away from it. He’s there, he’s facing it through again, the thinking, feeling in the will, being back into his childhood home, that he hadn’t been there for 22 years and going through forgiveness, like you said, forgiving his parents for what, whatever they did that had caused him to feel rejected consciously.

Like you, he would say to me, my parents were amazing. I had the best childhood. Like, I don’t know what [01:01:00] you’re talking about, but only now being back there, he knows what I’m talking about, that, you know, all the different experiences. That we don’t understand unless we’re looking at the stages of development and what actually happened and how you felt.

Now he’s going through that. I accept, I forgive, I understand. You know, through all of your body, not just through your mind. ’cause if you only kind of understand and accept through the mind, the body will go, that’s not enough. Sorry. You have the thinking, the feeling in the will center. All of them have to be in alignment.

And the last thing I wanna say about this is. 50 years ago or 60 years ago, people could do more than they can now. They had different types of bodies. They didn’t have the same level of nervous system disorders, you know, which to me is like the mental illnesses. They didn’t have the same stresses, [01:02:00] they didn’t have the everything attacking them at once from, you know, TN video and, and, and, and, you know, radio and newspapers and like, everything from the social media.

Um, and so they had, you know, they were like, they were, they grew up in one place. They didn’t break up. They didn’t, you know, it was completely different. Now we are actually more, much more sensitive to things. We cannot push it down in the same way our grandparents did. My grandmother had leukemia when she was in her late seventies.

I knew a hundred percent that she was gonna get it. Like, there was no, no surprise in me. I was like, she has had these experiences. This leads to blood issues. This is ancestral. She didn’t work through it. She’s gonna end up with leukemia. You know? Um, to me what was shocking was that she got it so late in her life, you know, and she died at 81 and it was like, um, up until [01:03:00] probably 80, she was okay.

She could handle it. She, she had gone through such trauma that, like, she almost went into like, life is everything to me. I’m gonna hold on. Um, because I could have died when I was 13 or 14, and somehow that made her really strong. But now people are not experiencing that. It’s very, very different. And we need to be looking at these aspects and educating.

I think step one is educating people about this first, so that then we can become our own healer, so to speak, and we can go through all the different experiences consciously and deeply, and that we don’t need constant physical pain as a reminder. Mm-hmm.

Jenny Swisher: Yeah. It makes me think, you know, we’re constantly looking outside of ourselves for healing, when in fact everything that we need to heal is within us.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been amazing [01:04:00] and like I said, I mean, there’s not enough time, and I had a feeling we might be up against that, but, um, I’ve enjoyed this conversation. I, you know, I wanna share your book out with everyone, obviously you guys. We will link everything up in the show notes for you as far as, um, Anna as Facebook, Instagram, her social media, uh, the book itself, which is called The Secret Language of Your Body.

Um, but if you could just tell us, you know, obviously we can find that on Amazon, but can you give us any other tips on, I know you have a masterclass. Anything else you wanna point people to? Yeah.

Inna Segal: Um, I’d love for people to go to my website, which is inner segal.com, and then go to a masterclass. The best one to start with is with the most kind of simple, if you’re just beginning is, um, the secret.

So you’ll be inner segal um.com/secret, but there’s many others. If you are already have been on this journey for a while and you wanna go for a deep, deep dive, then go to my Awaken the Healer, um, [01:05:00] within masterclass. Again, all of these are free and they’re all have processes that you can do so that you can instantaneously start to experience what I’m talking about.

And some of them also have audios that you can start to work with daily. And so this is just an invitation to do, you know, this is free. You don’t have to pay anything to start. The journey of connecting. And in some of the masterclasses, I’m only talking and just sharing about how the body and different parts of the body communicate and how we can start to understand this in a very, very simple, basic way.

So if you’re a beginner, just start with that secret one. Um, but if you already are familiar with it and you go, there’s so much I wanna do and explore, then um. Explore, awaken the healer within. And from there I also guide people into ancestral type of work or inner child or wherever they really need [01:06:00] to go.

And so, and we have amazing people that you can speak to that can guide based on getting to know you. And step one is just, you know, is starting, it is just starting to learn and discover and understand. And I do wanna say to people, I am the person who’s never had from the age of 20, I’ve never had another job.

I’ve spent my whole life studying, trying to understand, learning and discovering how to work with this without force push tra like recreating traumas. I’m so, I’m not interested in it, how to do it gently and in a way that is foundational and sustainable and deep. I, you know, I look at every angle, and so if that’s something that you’re interested in, then definitely go to the website and watch the masterclass.

Jenny Swisher: Excellent. Excellent. Well, like I said in the very beginning, I like that you are making this so accessible in a [01:07:00] way that isn’t scary and that gives people the tangible ways to, to work with this. Um, I follow amazing, I’ll say experts, right in the me in the medical space, in the wellness space. And like I said earlier, people who are starting to speak out and say, Hey, childhood traumas and emotional healing, this is all, this all needs to be part of our healthcare plan.

But they’re all saying that it needs to be, but then there’s, it’s like, I feel like, but then I’m like, okay, well who’s gonna lead us through that? Like, you know what I mean? Like, well, what do we do? Right? And so I love that you’re that person. We’ve talked about the work being within us. Um, but I also, you know, I just wanted to say too, you know, as a mother, um, this is generational work too, right?

So when we can do the work on ourselves, we can inspire even our children to, to take that effort as well. So this is amazing. I hope this isn’t the last time you’re on the podcast and we’ll link everything up in the show notes. My listeners, I know I’ve taken a little bit more of your time today, but I hope it has been worthwhile for you as it has been for me.

This has been an excellent conversation. So Anna, thank you so much for your time. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon. And to my listeners, check back next week. Yes. [01:08:00] Bye-bye.