In this podcast episode, host Adam Markel interviews Dr. Michiyo Ambrosius, a Japanese‑born psychologist who earned her PhD later in life and created a trauma‑healing method called Neurobilateral Processing (NBP). The conversation begins with Dr. Ambrosius’s personal story of escaping restrictive cultural norms, overcoming language barriers, and persisting through a decade‑long doctoral program. She explains how early‑life trauma—whether a seemingly minor event like a pet’s loss or a loud parental argument—can manifest decades later as anxiety, depression, physical illness, or limiting beliefs such as feeling unlovable. Dr. Ambrosius describes NBP as a simple, multimodal practice that blends specific breathing patterns, tapping (a variation on Emotional Freedom Techniques), and guided visualizations to re‑process bilateral brain pathways and release stored trauma. Real‑world examples illustrate how unresolved trauma can sabotage relationships, career advancement, and workplace wellbeing, often leading to substance use, addiction, or repeated unhealthy relationship patterns. Adam ties these insights to his own work on resilience, promoting his free Resilience Leader Assessment (resiliencerank.com) and emphasizing that trauma is not confined to personal life—it follows people into their professional environments, making trauma‑informed workplaces essential for organizational health. The episode closes with reflections on legacy, the importance of awareness, and a call to listeners to explore Dr. Ambrosius’s programs and resources linked in the show notes.
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TranscriptAuto-generated · 20 min
Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.
All right, everybody, you're gonna love this episode. I have With me today, Dr. Michio. As a young woman, she escaped restrictive Japanese culture, parental control, and gender inequality and came to the US. And after gaining some ease with her language difficulties, she obtained a doctorate in psychology past the age of 50. Her resilient personality has helped her to overcome numerous challenges. Finally, she is enjoying her life to the fullest as a psychologist, a transformational leader, a coach, mentor to a variety of people, including Asian, Middle Eastern women, and a trainer of their pioneering trauma healing technique to other healers. Enjoy this episode and my wonderful discussion with Dr. Michio Ambrosius. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, We have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools Will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Okay. So in just a moment, Michio, I'm going to ask you to just share a little bit about your process and maybe just a little bit about your background first before you describe this very important process, because I would say that it is Universally true that all of us, every one of us, without any exception, have experienced some trauma in our lives, usually early in childhood.
Yeah.
And for many, many people, this trauma that they experience in their lives, often in early childhood, has many effects on their physical health, on their mental health, their emotional health, etcetera. Throughout their lives, and they don't— many people understand why it is and what it is. And most importantly, I think, what you can do to resolve those things later on in life. Mhmm. Oftentimes, these traumas can lead to anxiety, depression later in life, and even dementia and other physical challenges. So to figure out a little bit more and to understand a bit more about why that is and what as I said, most importantly, you can do about it at this point in your life, no matter what age you are, I think is vitally important. And so I want to get from you, an expert in this field, Michio, your sense of that. So if you'd start with a little bit of your background and then explain to us what your process for healing those kind of traumas is, that would be wonderful.
Okay. Well, my name is Michio Ambrosius, and I'm originally from Japan. I left Japan because I wanted to live my life to the fullest. And in Japanese culture, especially women that wish to live the fullest life and professional accomplishment and all were blocked at the time I was growing up. And so I decided to leave and saved money. And one day when I was 20 years old, I left for Japan, I mean, US from Japan. And ever since, I had been trying to grow as a person and as a professional person. And I finally became a psychologist at age 63 and entered a PhD program, doctorate program at age 53. And it took 10 years to get to that point of doing the coursework and dissertation and practicum and licensing. But I was determined and I love my work. So during those practicing years, I developed a trauma healing technique because through my clients, I found everyone experiences trauma and trauma experiences and Those symptoms appear 10 years, 20 years, and 30, 40 years later. And most people don't equate the symptom that they are experiencing now and the starting point of having had some trauma experiences. That can include like loss of a pet or hearing parental arguments upstairs. And a girl who was listening to that from downstairs at age 3 or 4 showed up as a social anxiety at age 14. So people don't equate and don't understand why they are experiencing this by the difficult experiences that they experienced in the way, way, way, way past. And the name of the yantra trauma healing technique is called, it's tongue twisting, Neurobilateral processing. So I shortened it by saying NBP, and I have started to train people to practice this technique so that I can spread this technique throughout the globe so that people can be healed and they can live their lives to the fullest and with happiness and A lot of intention and purposes. And technique itself is very easy. I incorporated breathing, tapping technique that some people know, but tapped in different ways, and visualization, including visualizing daytime or nighttime sleeping, really contribute to your healing. of your trauma or whatever else that you have experienced. So this is my mission and my legacy because after having trauma, I experienced infertility and we don't have any children. And I have thought about what can I leave as my legacy? And I decided this to be my legacy to leave. After I depart this earth.
That's so beautiful.
And I'm intending to live my full life. Of course, that's why I'm having this interview shows.
Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. So, NBP is your process, this Something that you've created to help people to resolve trauma from the past that is affecting them in some way in the present, whether that be physical.
Yeah. Physically. Yeah. Mentally and spiritually, trauma experiences block people to advance because after the trauma, people usually develop limiting beliefs such as, I'm not good enough, I'm not adequate enough. I'm not lovable. I'm not lovable is very, very traumatic because they keep marrying someone who do not love them.
Interesting.
I treated someone who married 3 times to someone who did not love her. Finally, after the treatment, she kicked out the latest husband and she started to live a much happier life.
And it is— that's one of those things that I don't know what the right word is. Maybe it's ironic. Maybe it's some other way to describe that a person who doesn't feel lovable doesn't mean that they don't have relationships or they don't get married or they don't have children. They just don't believe they deserve love. So often what they attract into their lives are people that don't actually love them. I don't know what the word—
Being selfish.
Yes. Yes.
Selfish.
So I think it's so important. That's why I wanted to ask you to talk about this, Michio, because there are so many people, of course, that are confused about why they have painful experiences, why they attract, continue to attract people that cause them pain or get involved in situations that create pain for themselves. And so to resolve the confusion around that, I think is very important to Awareness is— I learned a long time ago, the first step on the path to resolution is to have some greater awareness. Even if you don't necessarily understand it yet or know what to do about it yet, the awareness is almost transformational by itself.
Oh, yeah. Very much so. In order to treat the pain of trauma experiences, many people treat it with substance use.
Mm-hmm.
And in that substance use problems, addiction, and cause depression and anxiety also. And their will to advance can be blocked because of the trauma experiences. If you believe that you are not good enough, you don't attempt. If you feel you are not adequate enough, you don't advance.
Yeah. And I know personally in the work that I do and that our company does in the world today, it's focused on resilience. I wrote a book called Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience. And the book is divided up into the mental, the emotional, the physical, and of course, the spiritual.
Mm-hmm.
And it focuses around how it is that we develop greater resilience for ourselves as well as for our families. And also in the workplace. I'm a workplace expert and am a resilience speaker and deliver keynote talks on the topic of resilience. And so in the workplace in particular, I think it's very important we understand what you've been sharing because you bring all of your trauma wherever you are. You bring it with you wherever you go. Yeah. So to think somehow that a person might be dealing with this trauma or unaware even of what the effects of the trauma are only in their private lives is quite foolish even because we are holistic beings. Mm-hmm. So your trauma goes to work with you. And in part, what we've been talking lately about in organizations is how that trauma is to be dealt with at work, meaning that it's not like you leave that at the door Whether it's the physical door now or it's the figurative door because so many people are working from home and working virtually or in hybrid work situations. The trauma-informed workplace, I think, is very important today. I think your work, Michio, has such a valuable place not only in people's, quote, personal lives, but also in their business lives.
Right.
Because, again, organizations want to deliver their value in the world. They have a mission and a purpose, and they want to execute that and do it flawlessly and profitably. But when they don't understand that the people who are working within the organizations have these issues that have yet to be resolved, it's no wonder that people are feeling so anxious. It's no wonder that people are resigning. It's no wonder that there's so much workplace illness and time off that's taken because of accidents and things that occur in the workplace. But we don't always look at where the real causes are or the cause of the causes even. And I think you provide answers to that. So thank you.
Yes. Well, even very capable and ambitious individuals, their personal life are suffering. And like you may already know, I have a lawyer friend and he worked for law firm once before, after he made a pivot, but he mentioned, every one of the people who are very successful at work, they have been married and divorced 2 or 3 times, and their personal lives suffer. And of course, if your personal life is not satisfactory, you don't have that happiness, joy in life, no matter how you become successful.
I personally think that it gets in the way of greater success. It may well be that you have successful people who've had pretty, very difficult personal lives and circumstances and many marriages and maybe even bouts with substance abuse and things, but somehow they are still successful or they still are able to achieve. What level of success or achievement could they have If their lives, their personal lives were not such a mess?
Oh, well, I
mean, it's a rhetorical question, right? Because I don't think we can ever answer it or know it. That's my assumption, that if we weren't living chaotically in our personal lives, you didn't have to go through 2 or 3 divorces before you somehow either found the right person or were just living alone or whatever it might be. Just think.
Right. Yeah.
How much more energy you would have and how many more people you could serve and more solutions you could create if you weren't so often distracted by these things. I'm sort of ruminating out loud with you right now. But I think, again, the work that you're doing and in helping people to resolve traumas that have happened so many years ago, maybe even decades ago, is vitally important. So I wanna thank you so much for making time today to discuss this with me and share a little bit about your process. This was just very fortuitous that we could get together. And so in the show notes for this conversation today, there'll be information. This is for our community. I'm saying this if you want to find out more about Michio's work in the world, her psychotherapy, but her process and the work that she's doing, the programs, in fact, that she even delivers and all of that. That information, links to click on, will be in the show notes as well. And again, Michio, I just want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
Thank you very much for having this opportunity.
Well, as promised, that conversation with Dr. Michio Ambrosius was amazing. I mean, amazing in that a woman with so much that she needed to overcome, including language barriers and cultural barriers and just about every barrier you can think of. Nonetheless, through resilience, through perseverance, through intelligence, overcame them and now is helping so many other people, men and women, do the same through her unique trauma healing technique, one that I think is a game changer for anybody that is lucky enough to find her and to work with her. I found this conversation to be Personally gratifying and inspiring. I think the truth really is that we all experience trauma, and many of us early in life and at later points in time. And those adverse traumatic experiences really change us in many ways and can permanently affect our lives negatively if we don't first understand them, recognize them, have an awareness of them, and understand what they are and where they've come from and how they impact us. And then ultimately, with that understanding, be able to change many things in how we relate to those experiences. And I think what's great about Dr. Michio's work is that she helps people to do just that, to recognize, understand, and to make those changes through a tool that she's developed in her life for herself and as a result of her training and ultimately attainment of a PhD in that particular area. So I learned a lot. I love the candor and transparency of this amazing woman. And I know it's an episode that many of you will probably share with others and sink your own teeth into because, again, we're all the same in this respect. We are all traumatized on some small or not so small level that ultimately it is our path not to hide from those things or bury them or repress them, but rather to open up to them, to embrace them, and ultimately to transcend them. So again, love this episode. I know you will as well.
Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof Proof teams. Visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.
