Triggers and Transformation | ep. 91 The Art Of Tuning In Podcast

Transcript Ep. #91 Triggers | Maria Furlano, DMQ (China), MTOM, L.Ac. 

0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to the Art of tuning in Podcast. I'm Maria Furlano, it's great to have you here. Thank you for joining me, this is episode 91. We're going to be talking about triggers today and how they can actually be transformative for you emotionally, mentally, but we're really going to also focus in on the physical body today, and how you feel in your body, I have a little story to share with you. And I'm hoping to give you some nice insights and tools to go away wit

0:34

If you're new here. Welcome. Thank you for joining me, thank you for finding me. Again, my name is Maria Furlano. I'm a Doctor of Medical Qigong and a physician of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture and I'm a spiritual medium, and I have been teaching the energetic arts for over 25 years, I absolutely love it.

And if you'd like to learn more about my programs, my offerings, meditations, private sessions, work as a vibrational coach with people all around the world, please visit theartoftuningin.com. And you can find out all information there. And of course, the links are in the description box below. And if you've been with me for a while, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you so much!

1:20

I want to share with you about triggers today and how we can use triggers to actually expand our energetic frequency to heal our bodies and to be more in tune with our spiritual consciousness, our conscious awareness.

So what is a trigger?

First of all trigger is anything that you encounter, it could be with your partner, it could be with friends, it could be with neighbors, it could be with your community, it could be on a broader spectrum with world events, anything that triggers something in you, that either brings joy, or tension, or any kind of emotion along the spectrums of emotion. So it can be a positive trigger, it can be something that inspires you, you know, you can hear something from someone and it can be Oh, and it just kind of lights up in your body. So when I look at a trigger, it's how it lights up something in my body. Now that lighting up can be something that is extremely inspiring, could be a remembering of Oh, wow, that that is so good. I'm gonna remember that that just lit me up that made me feel inspired. That made me motivated that reminded me of something good.

Inspired...

So triggers don't have to be bad. When we talk about triggers that do light us up in ways where other emotions are called forth, such as fear or anger or resentment or worry. Those are the triggers, that will set off a sequence in the body where we can have pain, where we can have tension, where we can have anxiety where we can have stomach aches, or we can have anything in our body, that starts to become a little bit off, the body begins to activate, the body begins to respond. And I think in general, when people think about triggers, they think about the more in a negative way.

Uninspired...

And we absolutely can have negative triggers, meaning that we hear something or we see something, and it triggers something in us, right? It lights up something in us, that causes an emotional response. And that emotional response, again, can be something joyful. It can be something inspirational, or it can be something filled with fear with anger, resentment, worry, anything and all big spectrum of emotions that we have. The problem with triggers that are on more of the emotional anger, frustration worry fear side of things, is that we can ignore them. We can be pushing them down, and moving through in our life and all of these little things that we're constantly reacting and responding to in our daily world, they tend to build up. So when we talk about the art of tuning in, we're really talking about conscious awareness, we're talking about being tuned in on a moment to moment basis in our life. Like being that specific, being that aware.

 If you need gentle support right now, please explore the Soulful 6 Series™ a beautiful musically guided audio visualization series. 💜

So that as things come up in our life, we recognize them, we acknowledge them. And then we make a choice of how we wish to deal with that energy to deal with the energy of what's coming up and to deal with the energy that is brought up inside of us. Because a trigger only triggers us when there's something for us to know No, otherwise, we don't feel anything. So when you are triggered inspirationally, or in a less inspiring way, it is something to pay attention to, it is valuable information for you to explore. And on this spiritual journey that we're on where we are expanding our conscious awareness, it means being present in the moment, what happens often is that we're going from one thing to another person to person event to event, we're dealing with maybe our own tiredness or stuff that's happening in our life. And things are coming at us, that we're putting into place. And we tend to just kind of ignore them.

But we have small triggers all throughout our day, when we don't acknowledge them. And we just choose to ignore it, let it go push it down, those build up over time. And what they do in the body is every single time you experience something that makes you feel a certain way, if it's not joyful, if it's not inspiring, if it is on the other spectrum of emotions, of fear, anger, resentment, whatever it is, worry, whatever it is, it registers a frequency in your body, and your muscles, your organs, your heart rate, your nervous system, they all respond to it.

You're responding internally, as much as you are in your brain, right? When you're thinking about something, or when it's coming out of your mouth. And all of these internal reactions are coming from what's happening in your brain. What is your brain thinking about? What are you taking in is feeling and then it is cascading through your body. When we learn to be in the moment and address what's happening in the moment with ourselves, we can feel so much better.

7:06

I'm going to tell you a quick story, help you try to like tie all this up for yourself. Some of you know from working with me or from past podcasts that there was a time period that I had in my life for about two and a half years when I was 26 years old, where I had extreme pain in my back. And what had happened is I had an injury, someone tried to crack my back. And I didn't want them to they didn't understand that. They did it. And it was not great. But I didn't hurt a disc. I didn't have a broken anything. What I had was severe hyper nerve irritation. And so with that, I had this cascading pain that went up and down my back and it was there every single day, I could still move. But I couldn't do martial arts anymore. And I had been doing martial arts since I was 12 years old. I couldn't kick anymore. I couldn't do things without aggravating the pain. And so my lifestyle greatly changed. And there was a lot of emotions that came up. And it just never went away.

Now this was about the same time when I really got into Medical Qigong and Medical Qigong is actually what transformed the pain for me, which is why I'm so passionate about Medical Qigong. But before that, I had gone to doctors and all of these things, and, you know, had X rays and MRIs and all this stuff. And they said, we don't really see anything, there's nothing really going on. We think you know, you've you've injured some nerves, but you know, I didn't have any numbness or anything, but they said, we can't really help you, except to give you pain medication. And of course, I didn't want to do that. And so I left that.

Two and a half years later, I went to an osteopath, who was so transitional in my whole career In, in everything I was feeling, because it was the first person who worked with me on understanding that this pain was being amplified by how I was holding my body. Right which of course goes very well with with Medical Qigong. It's all about posture, breath and intention, and the emotions that I was reacting and responding to, and how that was triggering my body and how it was holding emotions in my body and how it was tensing my body and how it was setting off this electrical circuit. He said, I want you to understand this because this may be something that you have throughout your life, this might be something that gets true figured if you do not relax if you don't learn how to relax if you don't know how to check in with your body and do this. And so of course, as he worked with me physically, it would make me feel really, really good. But the problem was is things weren't holding.

10:14

And that was the emotional part that he was talking about. My physical body would feel great after sessions, and it would hold for a little while, but then it would still come back. And I really took what he said to heart because what it meant to me, especially being someone who had studied martial arts for years and years, and who had been very physical with my body, it meant I could learn something to help myself, even though I had no real understanding of what to do at that time, I knew that it was better than someone giving me a pain medication, that I could actually help myself, which is a big passion of mine, right, helping other people learn how to really help themselves because I think that's how we grow. And I was at work one day, there was a co worker who was very angry with me. And I remember standing there, listening to her and feeling all of these feelings in my body, fear, worry, embarrassment, confusion, anger, all of these things in my body, and just listening. And all of a sudden, I started to feel my back, hurt. And I thought about the conversation that me and the Osteopath had had.

And all of a sudden, my mind came in, and it zeroed in on a place in my body, which happened to be my right but my right butt cheek that was so tight, and was only the right side, it wasn't the left side, just the right side, I was holding it and holding it and holding it. And as I was holding it, I could feel the firing up and down my back, the firing of discomfort and pain and throbbing. And I'm listening to her yelling at me, I'm feeling my own emotions, I'm trying to pay attention to her to be respectful of what's going on. But there's a part of me is moving into my body, and being tuned into what's happening. And I'm having a tremendous amount of realizations of how I'm holding my body, how the emotions are coming in how it's firing off in my body. And it was a fantastic experience. In that I got it, I understood that our body truly does react and respond to the situations that were in our physical body actually reacts and respond, our breathing changes our muscles, tighten our heart rate, you know, speeds up, I get that we all know that. But our physical musculature, also can contract can tighten, we can hold things. And what that does, of course, is it blocks chi flow, chi means energy, it blocks energy flow in the body. When you have blocked energy flow in the body, you have pain, you have discomfort, you have tension, oftentimes you have digestive issues, and I had a lot of digestive issues at that time, too.

13:19

And so when I was done with this conversation, I went away, and I got myself alone. And I went in to myself again. And I re-memorized what I had experienced, what I mean by Re-memorized is and we have experiences is very important that we take time to go back into those experiences, especially a physical experience like that, and not blow it off. To say what exactly happened there, I started to talk to my right butt cheek. And if you've worked with me, either in class or as a private client, you know that I will talk to the body mine. And my students and my clients and I will teach people to talk to their body out loud is great. You can do it internally as well, because we are fully connected. And so I began talking to my bottom and saying, what's going on? What were you feeling what was happening? And I realized that for me, and it's of course different for everybody. My body was basically holding me it was anchoring me it was helping me from really letting out all the anger I was feeling it was it was holding that but even though it was trying to protect me, even though it was trying to keep me in place, calm whatever it was trying to do. It was causing a tremendous amount of tension in my body and it was causing pain.

And so by me going back again and talking to my body, and finding out what was going on and seeing the pattern of it and understanding the emotions that I was feeling during this conversation, which was very difficult. One of the biggest things about this conversation because it was in public, it was actually in a lobby, it was very embarrassing, I was very embarrassed. And all of these emotions....

Whereas in the past, I would have shoved them down, I would have left in an angry Huff, I would have whatever I did to ignore them, or to move through them or to blame. I stopped, I went by myself, and I felt everything. And it sounds really tough. It's, it sounds scary. I know. Because when I teach people, how to really feel their emotions, and how to move through their emotions, it can be scary. But when you're actually doing it, when you decide to feel what you feel, to acknowledge what you acknowledge, to be in the moment, and to be in the experience, it's actually incredibly empowering. And you don't really know that until you do it. So it can be scary until you do it. And a lot of times, yes, it does help if you have a guide. And it does help if you have support. But I knew from my experience with the Osteopath that I needed to go into myself, and to see how I was reacting and responding to situations in my life, and how that was not only triggering my emotions, but triggering the pain that I had in my back. This was a piece of unwinding for me. So when I say on winding when we have tension, or we have energy in our body that has developed over time, or that is being triggered, it's like an onion layer, it needs to slowly begin to unwind, and to open up so that it can fully expand and then dissolve.

And so this took time, every day, I would take a little bit of time. And I would tune in to my butt and I would tune into my back, I would tune in specially to my solar plexus, which is you know, in the center of your body here. And I would just pay attention to what I was feeling. And I would pay attention to how my body physically was responding. Especially when I ignored how I was feeling. That was the biggest clue for me. 17:40 And this is what I find and working with people for so many years, they know things are triggering them, but they just move through their life to get to the next situation, because they feel that they don't have time to move through the emotions or to solve the situation. So they just go from one thing to another another. And that, of course can build up a lot of resentment. So we learn how to take time to do this. And of course, one of the things with Medical Qigong exercises is we clear our energy on a regular basis. And so as you're learning to tune into yourself and to notice, you just want to notice first, the triggers, if you are not willing to notice them, then it's very hard to make a change.

But as soon as you become aware of them, and if you can be like an energetic detective with yourself and say, Oh, what was what was that? That's interesting, my shoulder, just completely seized up there, like what am I holding, I don't know if you've ever experienced this. But there have been times to where I've noticed other parts of my body, when I'm hearing something that's very difficult or painful, I'll just tense another part of my body and just that part of my body will be holding. And this is something that you really might want to see if this is something that you do too.

Because when we hold our body like that, we're creating a tremendous amount of tension in that area. And if we're doing that over and over and over again, we often don't realize why we have so much pain in our body, why we have so much neck tension, why we have so much shoulder tension, why our back hurts all of these aches and pains and our bodies stem from energetic movement that is not flowing. stagnation, whether that's caused by food that causes inflammation in your body and you have pain, whether it's caused by an injury, whether it's caused by lack of flexibility, whether it's caused by holding tension in your body, from all of these different triggers or just a postural alignment, whatever it is is not breathing fully all of these things, they all constrict flow of energy. And when we constrict flow of energy, we have discomfort.

20:12

When we constrict flow of energy in our physical body with physical discomfort, when we constrict flow of energy emotionally, we have emotional discomfort when we constrict our flow of energy and connection to divine source, we often have spiritual discomfort.

So if we can remember that a trigger when we are triggered, it causes a flow of energy within us.

And that flow of energy can be inspirational, it can be joy, we're inspired, we're motivated, we're supported, it can be that kind of a happy trigger in our energy feels expanded, and you can feel that and oftentimes, when we're triggered positively, being inspired, being loved being held joy, laughter, we feel an expansion in ourselves, our breath changes, it becomes more full, and there is a relaxation. Even if you only feel a very slight relaxation, our body relaxes, because it lets go because it feels safe. And our nervous system is able to be in a rest and repair mode, where we are calm.

But when we're triggered in a state where we feel fear, or anxiety, or anger or resentment, or worry, or any of those things, that causes us to be activated in those emotions. Generally, our nervous system kicks in into a more fight and flight mode, where we have the tension where we're ready to act, we're ready to move forward in a more aggressive way, if we're being triggered like that often in our life.

This is why I constantly repeat this, but I tell people, please, please, please stay away from news and YouTube and magazines and papers and emails and all that stuff that is filled with negativity. Because it is just triggering, triggering and triggering your nervous system and triggering this emotional output in your body. And the tension in your body.

If you're continuing to bombard yourself with that, because it is a bombardment because you're being hit with this and hit with that. And it's all information. Your body is reacting and responding to that. And there's only so much it can do. It needs breathers it needs to expand. So when we're triggered like that in a more negative way, our body's energy tends to contract, it tends to get very tense, our breathing changes, everything changes. And you can feel that.... And this is why it's so important that if you want to pay attention to triggers in what you're experiencing in your life, if you want to pay attention and actively begin to change how your body feels, it's extremely important that you become very honest with I'm watching this right now. And this is how I feel in my body.

23:24

I.E.... I'm watching this violent movie, and I'm feeling this in my body, whatever that is for you. How do you fee?

Because we can learn also to be kind of numb to things. And that does not separate us from our body's physical response to things. Mentally, we can learn to be numb, or we can just say, oh, you know, this is happening. This just continues to happen. This is the way it is. But we are still reacting emotionally energetically in our body.

When we want to learn how to tune in more consciously, and be one with our body and feel better in our body, then it's really important that we make the connections between the activities that we're engaging in the people that we're hanging out with the movies, television, YouTube, all the things that we're watching and listening to, and how it makes us feel

When I talked about who you're hanging out with, everybody has a different frequency. Everybody has a different vibration, right? We vibrate differently in each moment. And part of conscious awareness is learning how to raise your frequency and that's something that I specialize in his teaching people how to elevate their frequency and how to keep their frequency elevated. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean ignoring the World and it doesn't mean saying, oh, Everything's peachy keen. But it's understanding the focus of your frequency. And that takes practice, and it takes tools. But when you learn how to do that everything in your physical body operates differently. But also everything in your world operates differently. If you are looking at things that trigger you, if you're looking at the vibrations that you are hanging around and interacting with, then it's very important for you to understand how you're carrying your frequency throughout your daily life. And the other people around you, what are their frequencies? What are the activities around you? How do the people around you react and respond to their life? How do they speak? How do they feel? What is the vibration, the energy density? Or lightness of them? And how does that affect you? How does that trigger your energy and your frequency?

Now, ideally, we want to learn how to hold our frequency in a certain vibration, so that no matter where we are, no matter who we're with, they don't impact our frequency... We have absolute responsibility over our frequency over how we think how we feel, how we direct our thoughts, how we direct the conversation, how we breathe, how we tune in, how do we align and center ourselves, all of that is within our individual control. But it's very important, especially when you're becoming aware, consciously aware of how you're feeling, and how you're reacting and responding, and how you're moving through life, to also be aware of the people, events, places activities that you engage in. Because sometimes those people, places events and activities need to be adjusted. Understanding that can also bring you a lot of relief too.

People in your life can be very challenging and moving away from people in your life can be challenging, and not being in certain situations such as work, or friends or family or neighbors who maybe are not in the greatest vibration, most of the time can be challenging to kind of separate yourself from that, over time you learn, you begin to tune in with yourself.

And I'll tell you, this takes a while I had that experience, I began to tune into my body every day, I would check in with myself every day, something would come up, and I would realize how I was triggered. The other thing that I realized in myself was that I was triggered a lot. And that's not a great thing, that there was a lot of things in the world and through people that triggered me that bothered me. And I had to look at that too. You know, how often Was I being bothered by people or the world? And why? Why was I taking it so personally, why was I so reactive? These are things that come up.

28:11

And one of the reasons and this might be true for you. And if it is, I hope that it's helpful. One of the reasons that I do believe we are so reactive, and when we start to realize kind of how bothered we are, is because we do suppress so much, we suppress so much in our physical body and in our life, that it begins to accumulate. So sometimes the smallest thing can set us off. But it's not even that thing. It's the fact that we've repressed so much of what we're feeling, trying to hold back a reaction trying to hold back our response may be trying to be polite, or maybe trying to ignore something or make peace, whatever it is. And so that's another reason why when we are very conscious, on a moment to moment basis, it's much easier to align your energy in big situations.

When you're conscious on a moment to moment basis, or daily basis, you know, maybe moment to moment is a little scary for you right now. But it does become easy.

I really want you to understand that. That once you become aware and you act like an energetic detective, and you have fun with this, and you start to say,

• "Oh, that's really interesting. Look how I responded to that."
• And "look how my body feels with that."
• And "Ohhh, that's that's kind of cool. That's interesting."

As long as you keep saying "that's interesting!" And" let me explore that" and it becomes fun like a game. Like you're getting to know yourself again for the first time.

If you keep it in that energy. It's much easier, much much much easier to do this as you learn to tune in with your energy to be consciously aware to look at what's triggering you to tune into your body and your emotions. is ugly. And you start to see how you feel.

You know, when you see this person do your shoulders go up to your ears every single time, right? When you hear this story on the news does your stomach just turn in knots? When you read something does it just make you so upset when you talk to your neighbor, when you listen to a certain kind of music, you know, whatever it is, when you start to pay attention to how you're reacting and responding to things, it will become a moment to moment observation. And I realized that when we say moment to moment, it might be very scary.

And you might say what I don't have time for that, I can't do that. That's overwhelming. But it's not I promise you what happens when you start to be very in tune with how you feel, it becomes the most natural thing in the world, for you to pay attention and be very present in the moment.

Because this is all about presence.

The more present you are, the more present you'll be for yourself.

But you're also very present for whatever is going on. So if you're talking to someone else, you are very present in that conversation. If you are hearing about information, you are very present and you are taking in the information in a different way.

Because you're very present, you're very aligned. It's very different. Once you become very conscious moment to moment, it's not overwhelming. I know it sounds like it might be overwhelming. But it's not it's actually the opposite overwhelming, because you are in total awareness of what's going on, instead of ignoring and trying to move to the next thing, which is very different than being in total awareness of what's going on.

And if you can keep it as an energetic detective, as I mentioned earlier, being curious, "

• Oh, that's interesting."
• "What was that reaction?"
• "What is my stomach feel funny, what's happening?"

What happens is, is you understand how intuitive you are, you understand all of this information, energetically, that you are picking up. And it is activating your intuition. It's activating a totally different language than what we speak verbally. It's activating emotional centers, it's activating your internal hearing, it's activating on a very different vibration.

32:31

And that's the vibration that allows us to really choose how we want to feel until we move into a centered vibration. Until we learn how to elevate our vibration, to we learn how to be very conscious with ourselves and hold ourselves in alignment, we're just being led by whatever situation is in front of us, because we're not paying attention or not really present. We're just acting on impulse, or acting on habit, my biggest share with you today is to be an energetic detective, always ask yourself what's going on, and to relax into it, and to enjoy it and to feel your body again, to know that your emotions are valid, and that they have information for you. But to also know that your body has information for you how it's reacting and responding, tension, pain, fatigue, maybe you have a situation in your life, or a person in your life, and every time you're around them, you're really tired. Well, your body is telling you something about the vibration that's being exchanged there.

There's always information. And it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong, or that there's something you have to run away from. But it's information so that you can make conscious decisions. That information that's coming in, allows us to be conscious with ourselves.

And that's the biggest gift that we can give ourselves that we can give each other that we can give the evolution of this planet, conscious awareness, being tuned into who we are being present.

Talking with ourselves, knowing who we are, will just allow us to have such a smoother flow in life.

So we're going to look at communicating with certain parts of our body when we feel tension or when we feel pain or when we have an emotional experience... We're going to check in and be an energetic detective - we're going to say "Oh, that's very interesting." "Ohhh, what do you have to share with me today?" "Why is that happening?"

If you need gentle support right now, please explore the Soulful 6 Series™ a beautiful musically guided audio visualization series. 💜

34:45

And listen, you have to listen and allow your body to speak to you and learn its language. Your body has a language. There's been many a time when I've treated people with pain, and they come in and They will completely separate themselves from their body, pain in my hand and this damn hand. This is what they've done this damn hand, they're separating themselves, this is them. Everything in that hand is you, every cell, every blood cell, every nerve, every joint, bone, fiber, skin, everything is you.

35:33

So when we integrate with ourselves, we understand this heart and mind is us of separation, we are in every cell of us, then we have conscious awareness of who we are. And then we act as a whole in our life. We act energetically, emotionally, spiritually physically is one. That is what moves us into conscious alignment, conscious awareness and that is where our life changes, because we are moving as one unit energetic, physical and emotional being that is completely spiritually connected to who we truly are.

36:20

I thank you so much for being here. And I wish you a beautiful week and I will see you in the next episode.