Overcoming Fear: Trusting Your Body with Anna Sun Choi EYV84

Hello and welcome to the Empower Your Voice podcast. My name is Nancy Bos and I am your host, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. We have a super exciting, exciting episode with Anna Sun Choi. Anna has been my mentor in a variety of different ways for the last few years. You're going to hear about that in the podcast, but what she's bringing us today is a really really special perspective that we have not covered before in the Empower Your Voice podcast, and that is the body, the mind, and the spirit, and how they work together and how they have to coordinate with power given to all three of those elements. I'm not going to make any more effort to sum up what you're about to hear because it is over the top. It's so cool and ideas will open up for you as you're listening that I would hate to even try to put words to. In the Empower Your Voice podcast and YouTube— by the way, if you're listening to this on audio, this is one where you might want to pop over and watch it on YouTube because there's a lot of visuals involved with this one where Anna's showing us how to do some of these empowerment exercises. So that would be at youtube.com/@NancyBos. N-A-N-C-Y-E-B-O-S. If you just— after the slash, put in the at sign and then Nancy Nancy Bos. It'll take you to my YouTube channel. Look for the Empower Your Voice playlist, and that's where you'll see this episode in particular. I would love it if you follow me though on YouTube because it's great to have the visuals of the people that I'm talking with on this podcast. Now I'm, I'm talking fast. I'm sorry, I'm talking so fast because I'm so excited to get into this conversation with Anna. But I also want to share first some insights that I had just in the last 24 hours around fear. My fear was around stating what I'm actually doing. If somebody says, Nancy Bos, tell me about yourself, what do you do? I would have a hard time answering that question. I would answer it with, well, if I really was feeling lazy and wanted the easy way out, I would say I own a small publishing company. Because that's something concrete that people can grab onto, right? Or I used to be a voice teacher because I did that for 25 years. That's what I most strongly identify with. Or looking over my shoulder, I've written 4 bestselling books on voice. Great, but what do you do? So what I do, and here it is, I am saying this to the public for the first time, thanks to some conversations that I had around my fear. I am building a movement to help empower people's voices. I am not the be-all end-all person, the coach, the therapist who can help you. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who will help you personally, one-to-one, and in small groups get to the bottom of what it is that is stopping you from sharing your voice without fear, sharing your voice freely and openly so that your spirit can shine through and make the difference in this world that you were born to do. There are people that work in neuro-linguistic programming, there are people who work in cognitive behavioral therapy, there are people who work in areas like Anna's that can really get down to this one-to-one with you and change your life. My job is to build the awareness, to build the movement, much like Brené Brown built a movement around vulnerability. This is a movement around helping you and everyone that you know overcome the fear of using their voice and to empower them to use their voice. Now, this doesn't always take place from the stage. This isn't always about performing or singing. Sometimes this is just about having a difficult conversation with somebody that you're a little bit freaked out to tell truth to. That can be part of empowering your voice. I've been through that myself when I went through my divorce. I needed to have an empowered voice to stand my ground, to speak my truth, and to be authentic in order for that situation to resolve in the best possible way. And that took a heck of a lot of courage. I could have continued to keep myself small and quiet, keep the status quo, be afraid of change. I could have done that. But instead, I was given the gift of empowering my voice and making a huge change in my life. And that happens again almost every day when I face the fact that I'm doing something different that has never been done before. I am building a movement. On empowering your voice. What? How do I do that? Why me? You know, all those ego-based humility fear responses that could keep me small. No, I'm going big. And Anna, who you're about to hear from, is part of this. I want to give you one last thought before I introduce Anna, and it is a quote that I heard just yesterday from Eli Shoja. Eli has built this beautiful tarot deck, and one of the cards states that it's not the net that appears when you leap. It's not the safety net that appears when you leap. You will leap. You need to leap. It is not the safety net that appears when you leap. It's your wings. Your wings will appear when you leap. I hope the Empower Your Voice podcast helps you trust that the wings will appear. Now, it's helpful to have people in your corner who done it before, who know the path, who learned through the wisdom— in the case of Anna, the wisdom of eons and of deep spirituality. Anna Choi is an energy mastery coach, and she's a trainer, Taekwondo black belt. She's a Forbes author, TEDx speaker. She serves high-achieving entrepreneurs and business leaders through coaching, training, and facilitating executive experiences for the last two decades, which sounds very businessy, right? But her vision is that world peace starts with inner peace. She helps clients feel easily 10 times more energy to shift from burnout to brilliance, causes a tipping point for clients in elevating themselves, which elevates humanity's consciousness. This is a big concept. Anna was trained by two living enlightened energy masters, which she will mention in the, uh, in the podcast. Her work blends ancient wisdom, energy mastery, and brain education. She is the ultimate presence and mindfulness coach. Absolutely. Now, Anna is a second-generation Korean-American social entrepreneur and philanthropist. And she founded the Conscious Leadership Foundation to train educators in helping their students cultivate mindfulness and emotional resilience through brain power wellness. And I can tell you now that she actually trains people in her Alive program for a certification in this work that she does. So here we are, Anna Choi. Hello, Anna. It is so awesome to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

I'm so happy to be here.

I've had the great pleasure of working with you and being your friend for many, many years, and I've gotten to see the transformational power that you have with your clients. First, when I worked with you, it was about clarity around what's your purpose and how can you get that job, job done on this planet, which I can definitely see the impact, and you can too, of that message in my life. But, but you've moved into a much different, deeper, bigger arena now. Can you tell us a little bit about your background that led you to what you're doing today? Yes.

So I think you, you saw me after I had become a student, but about 8 years ago is when I hit rock bottom. And you know, when the student's ready, the teacher appears. So I started working with my 2 energy masters. They're enlightened living beings, and Her Holiness Saimaa and Ilchi Lee. So I was a student in the background working through my stuff while on the outside, when we met, I was a business coach. And then the pandemic really shifted into, wow, overnight businesses were gone. So I did not want to become a cash flow coach, which is what people needed then. I was— and emotional resilience is what people are stressed out. So I decided to bring out the energy work I'd already been doing with coaching clients incognito and bring it full frontal, like, yep, I'm doing that now. Like, you see so many people shifting that I think is a testament to the conscious collective consciousness being way more open, way more awake, so to speak, um, that we— I mean, the way people can talk about it freely is unheard of back, you know, from like 5, 10 years ago. So nobody admitted it. Yeah.

What a big shift. And it must have taken a certain level of courage or pushing fears and ego aside just to jump into that, like, not really carved out path.

Totally. Absolutely. I still— I mean, it feels like this unknown that unfolds. And one of the promises I made to myself in the pandemic was to ensure that I Didn't go back to bro marketing and, you know, strategic, like kind of, it's not slimy cuz I, I wouldn't do that, but like, you know, manipulative, all of that stuff to something more authentic. And at that time, 3, 4 now, gosh, it's like been 3, 4 years. That's insane.

Yeah. 2023. So yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Um, at that time it wasn't clear cuz what was working wasn't, and I would hear from behind the scenes that 7-figure business owners going, it's a bloodbath out there. Ads are like way much more, like you couldn't do what you were doing. It wasn't landing. And now I feel like we're coming out on the other side where there's this hybrid in every respect of the word of, of how one presents and shares their message in marketing and so forth that, you know, people sniff it out. You have to, you have to be authentic. And so part of that process is this unknown that I have come to now settle in is never going to be clear like it felt like it had been, but that was just an illusion of control. And now we all— I mean, you never know when you're gonna die. So in that unknown space, how do we navigate that? And that's how the programs first began, that we've still been doing the same, like, Alive, you know, acronym approach for 3 years now. It's been interesting, and you've seen it because you were in all the iterations, but But it stays true to like the course. It doesn't— it's evergreen. So that was part of it.

It was finding the bridge that I got to be involved with was the Yin Within, where you were actually giving business people— well, can you explain what yin is versus yang?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So allowing yin to your yang. So we live in a very yang hustle grind culture. 10 times this, more productivity at the expense often to health, family, lots of things, purpose. And so yin is just falling back in nature's cycle, the ebb and flow. Our heartbeat has a flow, the ocean shores. And so likewise your life. And if we can add more yin, which is essentially unstructured time— like I recommend a week off per quarter at a minimum— plus monthly days off plus weekly days off plus daily times each morning to really ground yourself, that actually allows for even greater performance. Not that it's about performance, but it's essential. And this is a little snippet of my TEDx talk, my second TEDx talk, where I give this— this is a true story. One of my mentors was a collegiate rower athlete, and they had this one team that above and beyond beat everybody. And they're like, dude, what's your secret? Are you going to the gym? I'm doing a special workout supplement. He's like, no, no, it's what I'm not doing. It's between every push, how much can I relax and recharge, and then push again. And so the name of the game is actually what you're not doing, how to master relaxation and how to, uh, max, like, get really good at recharging between work sprints. Yeah.

Okay, so I know we've got so much more to cover, but while you're on this topic, at the time that we're talking, you are preparing for giving your second TEDx Talk, but By the time this comes out, you'll have given your second TEDx Talk. So this is a beautiful little window into how do you pace yourself for preparing for a huge talk, a really big deal, that, that sprint and then relax. How does that look instead of the constant anxiety, the stress that builds up until you're finally on the stage and, ah, and then you have regrets afterwards, right? That is a tried and true formula of, of totally But this is it.

Like, oh, this is so juicy. The first talk I gave, which ended up getting banned, was the typical method. But my go-to was to work really hard, right? And luckily it was right in the pandemic, so everybody was home. So I didn't have a lot of distraction in that way. I was homeschooling, but—

We had the distraction of trying to figure out how to make a virtual set. That was extremely stressful.

For sure. And be at the audio AV on the day of. So that was stressful. To go through all the— oops, lawnmower, kids crying, retake, retake, take 2, take 10, take 20. But, um, I would do it like at 8 PM at night, and then the lighting would be different a little bit from the morning. I was like, shit, it was horrible. But, um, so yes, it was a whole different level of stress. And let's remove all of like pandemic-related things. It was, it was, uh, it's just like music, you know, when I play violin like 3 times every day just so your muscle memory gets it so you don't freak out.

Right. And the musician that you were trained to be, the more is better musician. Yes. Rules, rules, rules.

Yeah. Yes. And literally, I would freak out so much on stage when I was young because I didn't want to perform when I was young. Um, I would space out and leave the body, and then my fingers would just keep going, and then I'd be like, God, I don't know where I'm at. That's where my mind is. I was like, I was like, I have no idea where I am. And I'm like, I'm just praying. And then I'll pop back and be like, all right, this is the spot. So that was like so frequent. Um, it sucked. But anyway, that's how I would do talks. And so I only did one talk because I had it so memorized, rehearsed to relax more. But this time, okay, this is so good, this is so good. There's a dude that I know that hit a million views in less than a year organically, not a lick to advertisement, which is unheard of. Rare, I should say. And he said it was not his strategy. He's like, I don't have one. He said, I just made sure when I created the talk, it was pure intentioned. There wasn't, I'm going to use this for my business, how am I going to market this, how am I going to leverage it? Which everybody does. They think about how they're going to leverage it a little bit. None of that. He was like, nope, what's my message for the world? And that purity showed, that authenticity showed. And he believes that's the energy the talk had that attracted the viral views. I have the same philosophy with media, when you imbue it with pure energy, some of them just go really viral. You can't really say why. So same here. When I heard that, I scrapped this talk. Wow. It was kind of like a second baby where I was like, I've been there, done that, I'm just gonna use this for marketing. I mean, that was my thought. And when he said that, I was like, oh, I've been using this for marketing. So I literally was like, shit. I was like, because this is like a week and a half ago. This is not very long ago. It was 3 weeks prior to the talk. And last time, I think I had everything ready and was memorized by this time already. So I'm like way behind schedule, right?

Um, I was there. You were second-guessing yourself for those 3 weeks right up until the talk. Yeah, like, what can I do better? What can I do more? What can I— what's next? What's more? How can I add more? Which would come from that childhood musician's training that you Absolutely.

I was in such a different energetic state then, so different. But anyway, so this time I downloaded it from Source in one go.

Wow, wow, so cool. Wow.

I just— and I, I did it audially. I did 100% differently. So what I did was, because he was saying, you know, he sat down with tea, meditation, and went through the hero's journey, and I was clear, I'm not gonna do any template. I need to start from scratch. So I just started to talk. I had like my old version and I verbalized it. People gave me feedback. I knew it wasn't quite the right talk. And then this one woman, bless her heart, she's, she's very spiritual. And she, she's like, let's just— I was like, all I want to do is dance, really. So I started dancing. And then that's— she's like, yeah, that's it, that's it. And I was like, maybe I could dance at the beginning. 'Which is what I'm going to do.' And so I dance. And then I just— it started coming. And she's like, quick, let's record. And so I just like— I was like, this is what brilliance looks like. My talk is Burnout to Brilliance. I was like, what does brilliance look like for you? And I just went off, OK, for about 10, 14 minutes. We recorded it. I transcribed it. And that became the bones.

Yeah.

And then I didn't like rehearse or memorize or tweak. I went straight to just continuing to present and present to person after person. And then they would— they didn't— it got honed in like 2 more meetings, like done, baked, cooked. I mean, so this is like recent. So now I am in the memorizing phase, but it's not going to be word for word like last time. I would be like, oh, what was that word? I forgot. This time it's like there's the bullet of the essence. It'll come out how it comes out.

Yes.

And I sing at the end too.

Awesome. Okay, let's talk about that. I've gotten to watch your singing journey too. Um, Yeah, and so, so thank you for sharing that about the TED Talk. I'm super excited about that. I think you're absolutely going to be in flow up there, and you're, you're— the things that you teach of overcoming your fears and how that's done, um, it's going to be everything that you need to be completely in flow when you're on the stage. So how perfect! It's going to be awesome. Yeah.

It's all about relaxing, which is one of my key points in the talk. And so I'm laughing because I had to relax in the making of it.

Yes.

To open up, to channel it, right? And then I'm really putting myself in a tiffer by like singing, which is the thing that— to move into that, like my throat would seize from, you know, your work when I went to your workshop of like, uh, those early memories of what were the Shakespeare lines and like staring at everyone going I was like, I just blanked out. And from that moment, I was like 18, like just couldn't trust myself on stage to anything. So when I tried out for the musical, like it just, it just stuck. And I would like try to force it out. So I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do choruses. And I could relax because I wasn't in the spotlight, but never again was I gonna sing solo in public. I could speak in public, I had no problem with that, but singing? And I was an average voice.

This is—

you're getting the talk like in little bits. I was like, I'm just an average voice. I can't do vibrato. I can't hit high notes. I can't have a full Beyoncé voice. And then I took A Songwriter's Journey, and they taught us to relax, which is the whole thing. And I realized in one session, everything clicked. It relaxed in here, and I was hitting higher octaves I've never hit before. I was singing full volume. Without practicing. I was like, what is this? This was like so life-changing. So yes, I was in the program to release my first original song, record with the Brothers Coran. It was their songwriting journey. And what I came away with was this whole new, um, release instrument, release and freedom of, of my voice, such that unleashed my writing as well, the voice in my writing. So I recently just— this is kind of new news— I'm one of the top 3 papers for this conference for Global Transformation where I wrote about my experience as a token Korean American. Very scary topic for me because I don't know how people are gonna take it. They're mostly gonna be white. I don't diss on whites, but I'm talking about living in all-white communities. And I believe that— I know that— I don't know, whatever unleashed here is what helped me Unleash everywhere, everywhere.

Oh, so cool. Okay, now for you though to say, I don't know, that doesn't make sense to me. So because you know so much about energy and fear, and so let's go there. Um, the, the— what I'm wondering is, what is it that stops people from having free empowered voices? What stopped you? But also, you've worked with so many clients. What is it that blocks us?

Yes. Okay, you're right, I, I do know the source. In the moment it felt like I didn't know. I Dared to Suck. That was the first— that was the unleashing. So in that course, we actually had to face our fears in a different way, um, and one of them was for me serenading to a cashier in public, something I wanted to do, wish I had the guts to do, hell no, I was not going to do. And we had to videotape So it was pandemic, we had masks on, there was nobody in the store really, so it's pretty safe. But still, I was just like, hey, can I serenade you? And I'm singing, you are so beautiful, right? And she loved it. And that was the moment I just like broke open. Everything seemed possible. So that was the source in that journey. And then with my work with clients, um, it really depends. So yes, uh, I'm thinking of a particular client right now, was so in the good girl kind of complex, uh, authority, not gonna speak up, uh, that kind of thing. So with me, she was able to kind of vomit out all of her stuff, and I was like, okay, great. Well, and you know me, all about action. So I was like, when are you gonna make that request to be this higher level member? When are you gonna do this for that? When are you going to, you know, ask your partner what you really want, what works for you? So they took all those like do-or-die kind of fear actions. And in that, just saw her break open of what then became possible. I mean, it was hilarious to see. It's so fast when it happens from to not only in a different state, energetic state, but like, oh yeah, yeah, I just broke it off with a couple billionaires, like this deal I was doing because they weren't like living up to my standards. And I'm like, oh my God.

What?

Right? Like, whoa. So it's, it's so fun to watch clients face their fears, uh, that helps people really empower their own voice. And I'm talking about action in this case because ultimately that is, I would think, like the biggest source. But a lot of times, as you know, um, we have an approach called NOW—Notice, Observe, and Welcome—and in that process people fully can feel the energy where like the bad emotions of anger, jealousy, uh, sadness, whatever arise, and then you can just notice the actual energy where it's at, and then fully breathe and welcome and accept the energy versus, oh, I don't want this, or suppress it or fix it or whatever. Fully feel it. And then in that fully feeling, you can welcome it, like, thank you. You know, not a lot of people can like have a trigger and be like, thank you. And it takes time, right, as you know, to get to that point. But you can get to that point where it gets faster and faster and faster. So something shitty happens and you're like, this is gonna be awesome. Wow. It becomes a mindset shift, but it starts with the body. For me, that's my work, and the embodiment. So when you feel it, and it's a subconscious—

yeah, that's the key thing right there that makes you different from anybody else that I've talked to on this, uh, podcast, is, is that everybody else is going with mind, you know, shadow self, childhood stories, you have to deal with those subconscious saboteurs. And yours— can you go deeper with it starts with body? Because I think that'll be new concept to a lot of people. Oh yes.

So we've reduced our body to some survival mechanism that has no other offering. Oh, couldn't be farther from the truth. Your body is your temple, which you may have heard before, or your home. It is like way smarter than your mind, like way. Like if you look into the research of just the gut alone, it has more mirror neurons than the brain. It develops way more of your dopamine and serotonin, over 90%, uh, and 75% of dopamine is in your gut, way lower percentages in the brain. That's happiness and joy. So you'd think we would honor this area between below our chest to, you know, our hips a lot more than, oh, it's flabby, which is what people do. All they do is give it negativity, negativity, and this thing's called the second brain for a reason. You know, if you actually cut off, you know, your, your CNS, your central nervous system, they call it second brain. It got its nickname because it keeps running without the spine and the brain. Look into the details. I'm not a doctor, okay? This is my disclaimer. But look up why it's called a second brain. And so just think about it for a moment. Like, how often are you thinking about your stomach besides when you have to eat? Most of my clients are like, oh, flubber. Oh, it's out of shape. 'Oh, I don't like it.' 'Oh, I don't want to go in a bikini.' Like, it's so negative. Just, just if there's anything you take away, what if you just honored your stomach and like the whole energetic sphere of it? This is where Tanjan is. So in Korean, that means energy center. 2 inches below your navel, midway to the body, second chakra. It is where we give life, where the uterus is located on women, right? Um, it's where we give life for a reason. It's right behind the belly button. Lots of power behind the belly button. I won't go off about that. That's a whole other topic. So gut health, you've heard of gut health maybe, but it's all in like cleansing colonics, which is all good too. Okay. But there's like simple exercises and you can see them in the first TEDx talk I gave. And we do this with work with clients, but like just tapping and doing intestinals. And there's basic things to keep it, the energy hygiene of that area, like brushing your teeth, cleared out where if you're just even doing basic tapping with the palm of your fist, that, that vibration— because energy travels through light, sound, and vibration— literally is shaking up the organs inside. When it does that, where it's stuck and stagnant from your own subconscious crap is getting released through the bloodstream. You can digest nutrients better, excrete waste better, and have way better circulation. And imagine when you have better circulation, then because we're mostly mis-circulated, which causes insomnia and all these ailments. When we right-size our circulation, so it's that hot energy of always overthinking, mind, mind, mind, mind stuff, even the mindset stuff, no, no, bring it down into the core, the real, the true engine, calm, and then bring the water stagnant energy of like sitting all day up into the brain where it calms and cools. Then we have that cool head, hot core. That is our ideal water fire down circulation. There's a great book By Ilchi Lee, my energy master. But anyway, so when you do that, the body's freaking brilliant. It is the—

it is, it is.

And there's so much research, there's so much research now, HeartMath, all of it, um, on, on how much it's picking up in the environment and then processing. So bottom line is trust your freaking body, learn to, and then listen to it. Is talking all the time to you.

Yes, that was one of the first things I ever learned from you, was to listen to my body. But how does that empower the voice? I mean, if I listen to my body and I'm freaked out, then my gut is clenched, or my solar plexus feels fuzzy, or my heart is tight. So I'm listening to my body and saying, go do something different because this is not a good feeling.

Where are you going with— so two things. That's— this is where we embrace the fear. We value it. Okay, so you notice you're clenched. So there's the first thing is like I'm clenched, I'm nervous. Just naming it, right? That's part of the now process, noticing versus reacting to the anxiety. So you just say, merely saying, I am anxious. Here you are, I am anxious. Now you're separate. The energy of anxious is separate from you. Okay, then you can observe it and like, where is it in the body? Let's say it's in the gut. Okay, great. And then before you can welcome into the heart, uh, there's many basic Basic exercise like this. If you just shake, literally up, up and down with your toes forward and shake all your joints. Inhale through the nose, exhale out the mouth. Right there. Just even that right there, you'll feel your body relax. It's like it's being rocked right now like a baby. And you relax again and again into the— we call it Yongquan, which is the acupressure point on the ball of your feet. Imagine releasing energy down that acupressure point, which is basically a hole, gateway where energy goes in and out, into the earth, and allow yourself to feel supported by Mother Earth. And when you start— all your awareness is coming down and down. So out here, yeah, I'm so nervous, I'm scared, to, oh my God, I feel my anxiety. This is good, okay, that you feel it now because you're not numb and out here. Bring it in, and then we settle it and draw it down. Through to the bottom. So then we're empty and calm and then heavy down here. So you can just literally do this anytime, super simple, and then do the tapping and then the Tan Tien breathing. And super important, as you do all those things, inhale through the nose, out the mouth releases the tension faster, and with a smile. So inhale, exhale, and make a sound. For those people watching on YouTube, can you back up so they can see the tapping? Yes. Okay, so you just like go like this. Inhale, exhale, and you can twist like this. And then Tan Tien tapping, take the lip— I like to go a little lower. The more you go lower— I mean, watch your knees if you can't do this well, but you want to tuck your tailbone in and straight spine, so not out. That's an energy leak. Imagine energy line being pulled up and down. And then as you do this, I'm already feel my thighs burning, which is great for someone like me or any of you brilliant minds that think so fast. You have to have more intense movement than the average person that does not have as much of a brilliant mind. That sounds bad, but you know what I'm saying. So like this, I'm just like, oh, thighs burning, thighs burning, which allows me to drop in here. I'm like all in my lower body right now. And then you focus on your Yongquan, so the balls of your feet into the ground, and you press down. So right now my whole leg's activated, my tailbone's tucked, my butt squeezed. So right now this is all very active. And then you bring your, your tapping in, feel the vibration going to the small of your back, and gently tip, you know, your chin just a little forward so that you can feel the energy line go straight down Inhale through the nose, exhale out the mouth. And so relaxing. And smile at the end. So inhale, ah, and if you do like 100 reps of these up to like 1,000, it takes only like 7 minutes to do 1,000. Then this is very grounding and calming, and you've placed your awareness most importantly on where you're tapping, on that Tan Tien area. So just imagine an energy ball growing as you tap, getting stimulated. And then you can move into intestinals with your thumbs, and you suck in. And you're not like pressing, you're just sucking the spine in. So it looks like this. Yeah, pulling in. And then you can do these bad boys like in the car, in the checkout line, anywhere on a Zoom and just, just— you can see my shoulders a little bit, but you want to relax your shoulders and just do it. And then it fires up the, the energy center there. So when we grow that energy center, it then can overflow into clearing up the heart where it's blocked and then flow up into the mind where it gets blocked. But see, we got it backwards in Western society of mind, mind, mind, mind, mind. It can't develop here if this isn't strong enough. And most most people are really weak in that.

You can't develop in the mind if the body isn't strong enough. Is that what you're saying?

Okay, the sixth chakra cannot— the mind's always there, but it can't access like the divinity in it when it's too weak.

It can't hold the energy. Yeah. Wow. Oh my gosh, so many big concepts here. Is there, is there a school or a philosophy that you're referencing with this that people could grab onto?

What is this? So it's my yoga. So it's Korean-based yoga. If you look up Body and Brain, that's where I got trained all my qigong and my tai chi and yoga. So it's just body and then the letter N, brain, I think, dot com. But there should be like local center. And then Ilchi Lee's stuff, I mean, he's been doing this for 40 years, so it's very widespread in Korea. And, um, his— he's got like 40 books. Every year he comes out with a new one. So there's a Water Up Fire Down book that has all these exercises in it, routines and so forth. And then my energy TV channel has a bunch of little 20-minute exercises people can do too.

Well, okay, I— if you have time, I'd like to go a little bit deeper though. And that is that we've talked about the brain and the body, but where does ego and soul come in? You know, I feel I've got this life purpose, but something's blocking me. I can't express myself. You know, we release all this. I don't know, where does that fit in of getting rid of the ego from stopping us? Is that what I'm speaking about?

It's the very sentiment you just said. So say it again. The ego from stopping us. Where do we get rid of the ego? I think you said.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Okay, so stop getting rid of it. Okay. But I was so serious. I actually on Insight Timer have a meditation. It's free. On the ego and the soul and making friends with them. Because people, again, Western society, it's like this dichotomy and duality. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you don't get rid of one and the other. Yes, they can battle at times, but if you think of a car— this is like what the meditation is about, preview— um, and ego is driving the car, your soul is actually in the back seat of the car, and it's kind of like a road rager, right? And there's— it's like, oh, you're trying to follow along. And the idea is that this is so small and weak initially, but as you grow this power, it can start to— hey, chauffeur, stop, calm down. Yes, yes, you're just— eventually it becomes a chauffeur where it's like, let's go. And it helps you because soul has to have ego. That is the nature of being in this body. It comes with the equipment. So it's not bad, it's just like part of this survival thing. And it can be a friend in the sense of, uh, assisting you like a chauffeur would where you need to go, because that's how the identity and personality expresses itself, is through the ego. Yeah, it's just out of balance. So once it's in balance, or this is driving us— because the thing is that the soul in the back seat is blind.

And so many of us learn to be as small as possible, to not take up extra space, to be humble and to. But the Soul is here to do something big, and it's in the back seat going, 'Can I talk now?' It's blind.

It's blind. It's blind. It actually needs the ego.

Wow, I love that.

Oh, that's a good way of putting it. Literally blind. It needs this personality thing to take it around.

Yeah, okay, that's just a huge concept, isn't it? Yeah. Okay, so obviously we could talk for hours, which we've done, and I would highly encourage anybody to check out Anna's website, which I'll list in the show notes, and, um, you know, do her stuff. She gives so much stuff for free. It's, um, souljoy.life, and, um, she shares so much with the world, but also she has amazing small group offerings called Alive, which I've just You've just about completed a year with that, and it is a really incredible thing to watch. Such a privilege. Yeah. Is there any beginning advice that you would give my audience who's maybe thinking of it this way for the first time?

You already have the voice within you, or your empowerment within you. You just have to get out of the way and continue getting out of the way, which looks like a lot of surrendering control. And being okay in the unknown and trusting yourself and universe, higher power, source, your true self, if you don't believe in any of that, that it will unfold before you what needs to happen next. This is very contrary to society. Gotta know now, gotta achieve now, gotta do now. So it takes a lot of patience and counterculture to allow what's already inside to shine.

Fantastic. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Anna. My pleasure. Wow, wasn't Anna awesome? I mean, if you're not familiar with this Eastern philosophy, spirituality, body-mind ideas, there is so much here to know. And I would completely agree with her that 5 years ago these concepts would have been wacky, woo-woo, whatever. But now this type of information is showing up in so many different places. And so yeah, empowering yourself, empowering your voice, empowering your spirit and your soul through this lens has been really transformational to me. So I do highly recommend that you go over to souljoy.life Find Anna's stuff. If you're on Insight Timer, follow her as a leader on Insight Timer. Once her TED Talk comes out, watch that. I know it's going to be phenomenal. It'll be on YouTube eventually. Yeah, great stuff. Thank you for joining me and Anna Sun Choi today on Empower Your Voice. I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.