Going Inside: Healing Trauma from the Inside Out

Hypnosis and IFS with Elena Kundro

• John Clarke, LPCC

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In this episode of Going Inside, host John Clarke sits down with integrative therapy guide Elena Kundro to explore the powerful intersection of hypnosis and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Together, they unpack how trance states and somatic work can deepen self-awareness and accelerate healing, especially when traditional therapeutic approaches fall short. Elena shares insights from her own personal healing journey, lessons from guiding clients through inner work, and how blending spiritual practices with IFS has transformed the way she helps others reconnect to their true selves.

Whether you're a therapist, healer, or someone deep on your own inner path, this episode offers grounded wisdom, practical insight, and soul-deep inspiration.

🔑 3 Key Takeaways

  1. How blending hypnosis with IFS can help clients drop into self-energy faster
  2. Why therapists must do their own deep inner work to truly guide others
  3. How healing becomes transformational when we stop trying to control it and what to do instead

👤 Guest: Elena Kundro

Elena Kundro is an integrative therapy practitioner blending hypnotherapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic work, and spirituality to guide clients back to their inner truth. With more than a decade of personal healing and over six years of client experience, Elena brings humility, embodiment, and deep wisdom to every session.

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🔗 Follow John Clark

I really thought that if we get your body, your physical body in check, your sleep, your nutrition . Some like mindfulness stuff, then you'll be set. Going Inside is a podcast on a mission to help people heal from trauma and reconnect with their authentic self. Join me trauma therapist John Clark for guest interviews, real life therapy sessions, and soothing guided meditations. Whether you're navigating your own trauma, helping others heal from trauma, or simply yearning for a deeper understanding of yourself, going inside is your companion on the path to healing and self-discovery. Download free guided meditations and apply to work with me one-on-one at John Clark therapy.com. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Elena Kundro is an integrative therapy practitioner, blending hypnotherapy, internal family systems, somatic work and spirituality. With over a decade of personal healing and six plus years of client work, she guides others to reconnect with their inner world, embrace all parts of themselves, and live from a place of inner truth and divine connection. Elena, thank you so much for being here. Good to see you again. And yeah, what else should people know in terms of who you are and how you got here? It is my pleasure. We had a podcast on my podcast with John, and it was a true joy. So I'm glad to connect again, and I love your show. I listen to your show, so it feels so amazing to be here, really. I do appreciate the knowledge that you're sharing and the guests that you bring on, and IFS is. Huge part of my life. It's my lifestyle. So I do really enjoy that. And when it comes to me and what people should know is that I'm on my path. I'm not somewhere there that I'm at the end and I've reached the destination and now I can share what I learned with others. But really coming, I really want to come. From the place of, I am still on my path and I'm still finding new things about me and about my inner parts every single day. And I guess that's very important for me to be embodied in the process that I'm together on this journey and that it's so worth taking. Yeah. That's great. I was just talking about this other day that a lot of times clients, they. They hope or want or expect practitioners to be, to have already made it, to be an enlightened being that can impart some epic wisdom on them or show them a shortcut or point out something they're missing, that I would impart some knowledge or wisdom onto you and. There's a lot of reasons as to why that exists. Some of it is just, misconceptions about what therapy is and what you know, healing is from the media, movies and whatnot. And there's also practitioners who do operate that way and play play guru in their clients' lives and our. Power hungry and give lots of advice, and if they're right, then the client's wow this person is like my guru, or like a god in my life. And if they're wrong, it's like, why the hell did you tell me to break up with my partner? Now I regret it, or whatever it is. Yeah, one of many reasons why. I love IFS 'cause it implicitly and explicitly puts the client in the driver's seat from day one and says, you are enough and you have everything you need within, I'm just here to help you access what's already inside. Yeah. And that's why I fell in love with IFS so much. And now I don't call myself a. Therapist practitioner. I just call myself a guide to people's own inner wisdom because I started my journey as a yoga teacher and then I went into physical nutrition coaching. And that's where I get got to be in my power position of, okay, now I will give you a plan to follow and then you will, be okay. And I really thought that if we get your body, your physical body in check, your sleep, your nutrition some like mindfulness stuff, then you'll be set. And yeah, for some clients it would work and I would be like, oh yeah, I did such a good job. And the more I went into this and then I. Started doing more hypnotherapy, but that was also me guiding someone on the hypnosis and me helping them and they're just like coming to me and, okay, now hypnotize me and change my life. And I kept realizing, but this is not how it works. Only you can change your life. And that's why when I found IFS and the first time I tried on myself, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. This allows me to tap into this. And after years of being in science world. Coming back to IFS really brought me back to my own. Own self and own relationship within myself and with without as well, because it's the same source. Yeah. That's why I love YFS. I don't know if we talked about this when I was on your show, but this piece around hypnosis, I was trained in clinical hypnosis at the beginning of my career almost. Yeah, 15 some years ago. And I just had , a clinician that works for me. Asked me about it actually, and we were talking about trance states and what is hypnosis and what is IFS and is IFS a trance state, and going inside a trance state, I think it is. But yeah. What are your thoughts on that? I want to introduce you to our sponsor for today's episode, Jane, a clinic management software and EMR that helps you handle your clinic's daily admin tasks so that you can free up your evenings and weekends. The Jane team understands how precious your time is and recognizes that charting can often be the most time consuming part of your practice. That's why they're here to help. To save you from having to start your chart notes from scratch, you can check out Jane's template library, which gives you access to templates that have been generously created and shared by health and wellness practitioners in the community. Once you have a template you like, you can choose to customize it further with charting tools such as range scales, text fields. Check boxes and more to see how Jane can help you spend more time doing what you love. Head to the link in the show notes to book a personalized demo. Or if you're ready to get started, you can use the code, John, at the time of signup for a one month grace period applied to your account. And do you use hypnosis in IFS? In like in parallel or do you blend them? Curious about that? Yeah, I do blend them all the time almost until like mostly at the beginning to help my clients to connect to their. Inner self to their higher self.'cause I do work with higher self as well.'cause I find a lot of times in sessions when we faced with a really difficult part, a really hurtful experience, calling in that higher self or guides or whatever the person resonates with some. So source of support really helps. So at the beginning of what my journey with clients always guide them through hypnosis to find that connection so they could anchor in that, and I create them a safe space, like the safe inner world where they can always come back, you know that anchor. And so that's mostly what I use from hypnosis right now. And if it's specifically stubborn like d specifically for some clients, they have very, like a lot of difficulty connecting to their inner parts from the conscious 'cause their mind is too active. So for those kind of clients, I do use hypnosis 'cause that really helps them calm down. But I do think that naturally by just going into IFS process focusing inward, you naturally go into this trans state. And when my clients open their eyes wow, it feels like I've traveled somewhere. And that's how I feel all the time when I do my own inner process. I think you feel similar. I do, yeah. There, there's a really I call it a texture to IFS or to trans work. And y there's a, I guess calling it a liminal state would be another way to, to think of it. With hypnosis. I remember when I first learned it, the best description I got was, you are in this, relaxed, but also wakeful state, and it's somewhere in between. Your brainwaves are somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness. Also, if you've ever had the, that in between where you're. Fast asleep and you're having a dream and then your alarm is going off and your alarm is in your dream all of a sudden. Little things like that where you're aware of it. But in that, in between. State. Yeah. And really you just have to experience it to, to feel what that's like. But it, and yeah, if when you're there, it feels more effortless than what you and I are doing right now, which is effortful, cognition and talking about, and, thinking about what we're about to say. Yeah. Ah, totally. And I always find with my own process specifically at the beginning, there's less visuals, but at the end, the visuals just come naturally, the symbols. And the same for my clients. When they just first enter. That's why the entering is the hardest. And that's why so many, so little people, when they find out about IFS or even my clients, that I give them assignments to do some check-in work. It's very hard to get through that wall initially because it requires effort. It requires effort to think about the part, and it's very hard to visualize because our conscious is so active, but the more we go deeper. Like I find that in the beginning of the session I have to guide more and talk through them to help them to get through that resistance and unblend from parts and they have other parts, step back. But at the end, I'm almost silent. I just give self energy because their inner system is guiding them and. Those moments. I love so much that's when I know, okay, my client is fully connected and they have access to the wisdom, and no other therapist can guide you better than your own inner self. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I actually find the more I do this work with clients, also with therapists, as I'm helping them learn the model the less I need to speak, right? And if I have a sense, even early on in a session that they've got this and they know they have a critical mass of self energy and they're going inside and doing good work and it feels safe. In my system, it feels loving. Then I tend to let them work, right? I'm to your point, I'm here. If you get stuck like a guide, if you get lost or if you reach a fork in the road and go, I'm not sure where to go. There's this young part that's clinging to my leg. There's another part that's saying, this whole thing is ridiculous. Don't do this. What should I do? And that's when, as a practitioner, we have to learn and to lean into those moments and be a little more active and help because the work can also go off the rails, right? It can be really safe and self-guided. It can also go off the rails and we can also have some sneakier self-like parts that come in and wanna make big things happen and want the healing to happen, or really want to, save that little one that's clinging to your leg. And yeah it's a dance. The whole thing is a dance with me and the client, with the client self and their parts and among their many parts. Yeah. And you had a recent episode on the therapist parts and I really love that. I really recommend listening to it and I resonate with it so much because it is really so much about our, in our inner work and somatic IFS reading. That book also talks a lot about. The therapist parts, how it's all the, we are so interconnected. That's why for me, I love my work, what I do, because it requires me to be in myself. It's a requirement of my work, so at least a few hours a day, I get to fully practice that embodied self, and it's amazing, right? It's where most of the work is, right? When. I do a lot of training and supervision of clinicians and if they are finding that a client is overwhelming or underwhelming, if they get bored if they're getting frustrated with their client, if they feel, have parts that want to rescue or save or reassure whatever it is the invitation there is, the client is just being a mirror and showing you where your own work to be done is. And in my experience it's the same thing with parenting. Every moment where I'm having frustration dysregulation as a parent trying to help my almost 5-year-old I. And on one hand it's like I am trying to do something about her behavior, or her big feelings, or her anger, or her fear, whatever it is. And it's really just showing me my own work that's left to be done. And so if you see it all as an invitation and as mirrors, then it's, it doesn't feel like oh gosh, why is this happening to me? Why is this person making me feel this way? Why isn't this client getting better? Or why does this client keep looking at me as if I have the answers? And what's so difficult about that for me and what's hard to be in my self energy with that and honoring that, of course the client has a part that's looking at me for answers and a shortcut, right? We're wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. So if it, and then paradoxically, part of the healing process is often going toward the pain, going toward the activation, being with it. And so as a clinician going I know there are parts of you that are afraid to go there. And go toward the wound. And yet that's where the healing is. And usually it's not as bad as you fear it's gonna be, but also, sometimes it gets worse before it gets better, especially in the case of trauma work, and people have had often years, if not decades of psychological avoidance and white knuckling in parts that are just getting by. And really exhausted managers and firefighters that have been, just keeping the system intact as much as possible so the client can do their job and show up and be put together enough to not completely lose it, yeah, totally. You, when you mentioned it gets worse before it gets better, I chuckle because. I recently made the whole video series on YouTube about the 12 lessons that I've learned in my own inner, our healing journey. And one of them was that it gets worse before it gets better. And with so many of my clients that what happens, they come in, they're full of their managers, managing all their lives somehow, like it hurts somewhere deep inside and sometimes the exiles get out and all these kind of situations, but they're somehow managing it. But once you start digging and you start getting to know the protectors and easing them off of their roles, it's like, how do I live this life? And I, for me, it was as if I had to learn how to walk again. And that's why. A lot of my clients, their protectors are not allowing them to go into this change because they're like saying. You'll have to learn how to walk again. And that is scary. Yeah. So that's why I feel like telling them beforehand that look, it gets worse before it gets better and taking small steps. And when I see from my clients' eyes when they go through. When they try to bypass a protector or go to somewhere and make their way, and when I keep coming back to the part that's resisting and they finally turn to it and attend to it. They're amazed at how much more simple it can be and how much more there is to learn from that part that they thought it's their enemy, but it's not. And I, when you asked me what I want to talk about in this podcast, I thought okay. I think it would be amazing to talk about the 12 lessons that I shared. Hey, if you're a therapist, I want to help you deepen your client work, help them get better results without burning yourself out. You can do all this by learning to harness the power of IFS. So I want to tell you, we've got a free IFS resource library that you can download. Now, this is full of resources like my Quickstart Guide to IFS, the full IFS protocol, a bunch of demos of me doing IFS. With real people and, um, extra self-care practices for therapists. You can get all this for free in the link in the description, and I hope you enjoy. But then I realized right before this podcast that. Doesn't make sense for me to talk about it 'cause I already made four videos about them and maybe let's better talk about something that is something else that we both resonate. But I'd actually love to hear some more of them. Yeah. May, maybe just some that stick out to you. And it's funny 'cause I don't really identify as a quote content creator. Whatever that means. I don't know. There's just, it's not the reason I'm here is oh, I want to be a YouTuber or something. It's I want to help people and I'm on a mission to heal trauma and make trauma, trauma healing, accessible and a no brainer to all the same way we can treat asthma with an inhaler. I'd want. I think trauma healing should have a clear path forward. So anyway, but the point is, I know you make content too, so it's also a very catchy thing to be like, here's 12 things I've learned. So I am curious what else is on that list and what it was like to make that list and reflect on your own journey. Yeah it's funny you mention that'cause I don't identify as a content creator either, but somehow I just get those impulses to share something. Yeah. And when I do my own podcast, I always come from the place of, I don't care how many people will see this. I just think that I just feel that I need to share something and I think I do it for myself mostly., it is nice to reflect and to put things into, I dunno, videos and sharing pieces, though not always. I feel that I really want to share something, but it feels really good that. Sometimes I get messages at my. What I'm sharing really helped people, though it is quite challenging to navigate and to, especially the, the algorithm. I can make an amazing video, but if I don't put a catchy title a thumbnail, then nobody will watch it. So yeah, the 12 lessons of what I learned was Okay. That sounds people want to watch lists and stuff. Yeah. So that's why I made four, four videos with, yeah. Three lessons in each. And it was, I think people are also, on that note, people are also more compelled by negative content than positive content. So it's 12 things I've learned, or 12 things I wish I'd known, or 12 things I regret. 12, mistakes. People are like, oh gosh, I don't wanna make those mistakes. I better watch this freaking video. It's here my epic fails. So there's a lot of that too around, fear is such a powerful motivator, right? Things I wish I'd known and people go, oh my gosh, I better learn these, so that I don't have more pain in my life versus three ways to access more self energy, or whatever it is. There is some of that too that is just naturally appeals to people when it is that people are so inclined to avoid pain, avoid mistakes, that's a good marketing tip, and I have a part that's really resisting all these marketing tips. No, I just wanna do authentic, what I feel like, yeah. But then I see that, oh, actually nobody cares. Nobody cares. I think it's a blend of both, right? For me, I'm like I might make the 12 mistakes video and also make the. Video that is just from me and almost for me and just a creative expression and something I want to talk about, even if it doesn't do super well. So I remember back in the day when I first started making content for therapists in my other business private practice workshop, which a lot of people don't know on this show. I, I've had that business and brand for many years, almost. 10 years, and that podcast is way more popular than this one. But that was, I didn't that in 22. Yeah. That was, that's I've been making that content for years, and that YouTube channel is way bigger and all that. But I would make, about 50 50 in terms of content that was for the algorithm so that I could get out in front of more people and help more people, and 50% being content that I actually really care about, even if it gets 72 views or whatever. That was my way of, finding some, splitting the difference. Yeah, because at the moment I only make videos that I feel like, okay, I really would've benefited from this video, but then I guess it doesn't grow that much, so I have to reconsider some of my strategy. But yeah, in the video, basically I just thought about my own journey and what got me to where I am now. And like I said in the beginning, I'm still very much on my path, on my journey and finding out new ways and learning the same lessons over and over again. But really just piling down all the lessons that I see. All of my clients getting stuck. And some of them was bypassing, like cognitively bypassing, spiritually bypassing. Not acknowledging the stages of healing. I was very much into the hero. Okay, I will leave my past behind. And I remember even as a 10-year-old. As I was living in a very abusive family and I was reading a magazine where a model was writing about her difficult childhood and where she is now. And I remember thinking then, like I will be, that I will be that person who rose up from the worst of the worst and became this person healed and whole and successful and all these kind of things. And that's when the fire started burning and I started reading all kinds of. Psychological spiritual books to get out and not really acknowledging of the hurt that I've experienced. So for me, it really, the getting worse before it got better was to acknowledge all the pain that I had to go through. And it was holding myself back from relationships because I thought I need to be fully healed to enter a relationship. Later I found out that some wounds can only be healed in a relationship and, yeah, some of it. Then another lesson was about IFS and somatic work that I'm doing that really was transformative. Funnily enough, that video did the worst I mean from you's side. Yeah, it did the lowest, even though it was, for me, the most important video, this was game changers, but people don't want game changers. I. Ending with that, it's never going to end, and it is not that I have to heal. It's not my full-time job. My full-time job is to live and healing happens with it because I got so into healing and trying all these methodologies and that's why now I integrate so many I. Therapeutic modalities because I needed them for myself. I thought, okay, maybe this one didn't solve. Okay, let's learn another one. Let's learn another one. Let's do another one. Maybe this will fix me. And I got a pretty nice puzzle that really helped me, but eventually it was the living that felt most freeing. That's an interesting one in itself, which is we have parts that go to great links to find another solution, or there must be another technique or trick or book or I don't know, ayahuasca retreat or whatever it's gonna be. It's gonna be this silver bullet and fix me the first I thing to know is the good news is you're not broken, right? So you don't need fixing. The second piece is hurt happens fast, healing happens really slow, and we have to know that. And people have a hard time with that, especially in the culture that I live in the us we want everything fast. Not to mention I live in Silicon Valley, so there's this hyper. Fixation on efficiency and results and progress and productivity. And it's quite disgusting if you ask me. And it really creeps into the therapy room and people wanting results and they want it now, and they wanna be able to track that and they want metrics and all that. And I think there's a time and place for that can be really good and healthy. But it can also be, these scared parts coming in and micromanaging the therapy process or trying to, shortcut the healing. And I have to honor those parts and invite them into the room and validate that, of course, they want help and they want healing. They wanna re, they want to guarantee, and they want me, John, the therapist, to say, I can guarantee you're not gonna have panic attacks ever again after this. But to your point, it's like suffering is part of life. Anxiety is part of life right now. You're dealing with a lot of it and you're really wanting out, and I totally get that and. For how long are you gonna keep running and is the seeking of new solutions, ideas, podcasts, whatever, a way of running, a way of bypassing, right? For my clients too, again, they're, these are very career successful Silicon Valley people, these are like the brightest minds in the world. Come here to make it and to be someone and, start the next apple or whatever. And I level with them right off the bat and I let them know, if thinking your way out of this was the way you would've done it by now. Because you're incredibly gifted at that, right? And you've got the MBA from Stanford and Harvard and all these pieces. So let's, can we agree right now that you're not gonna just think your way out of this, you're not gonna logic your way out of this, right? You've already read all the books and yet the healing hasn't really happened yet. So what is that? We have to make therapy relational. It's more about going toward him being with the party that's terrified rather than trying to get rid of him and kick him out and just, shut down your inner child and tell him to go away, or whatever it is, telling this other part that says, don't be ridiculous, be strong, be brave, be whatever. It's not okay to feel scared or to be anxious, or to have a drinking problem or to cut myself sometimes, whatever it might be. So I just see it all as shame. And if I were to oversimplify therapy and healing, it's really all about shame, right? A part that feels afraid, a part that's don't be ridiculous, don't be afraid, right? And the shame is always. In the room and always a big a thick layer of the work in my experience. And do you find something beyond the shame? I find the shame is the core I find it's the trunk of the tree and the branches are everything else that we end up dealing with. The anxiety, the depression, the relationship stuff, being defensive, right? Is what does it mean to defend. It's a Freudian term having an ego defense. But in, in IFS it's who or what are you defending? When you're defensive? Your partner comes in and goes, why don't you do the dishes? You said you were gonna do the dishes. And I fly off the handle. It's I'm. I'm protecting my shame. I'm protecting my exiles. The parts that hold shame and hold the fear that what if I'm actually not enough? What if I'm actually unlovable and someone's about to find out? The shame is, yeah, I'm bad, and my badness is being witnessed or about to be witnessed. So I do something about it, right? Or I make myself so shiny and so successful and so perfect in my appearance that nobody would even question. People can't see my badness. They wouldn't even question it, right? That was people. I find those people a. Are the most, they have the most polarizations in their systems. They're the most outwardly successful and they're also the most wounded. And if that's you can call 1 1 800 John Clark, right now'cause you're my ideal client. Yeah. I find that I've got a lot of them. My caseload, I find that very true. What I meant by beyond shame is that I find a lot of times when we meet with shame, when I keep asking. What is beyond that? We find death actually. Yeah, we find the fear of death because when you're Yeah, shamed, you are annihilated from the group and then what happens? You die. So yeah, it's nice to get all the way to the end to see. Oh, okay. So the death and what is beyond the death? The, yeah, the dying and it's such a. Program biologically feeling to avoid that. It's very natural and everyone, anybody who's listening and experiencing that, it's such a natural process. And really studying the nervous system and how we formed and polyvagal theory brought my awareness to the normalcy of these experiences of our nervous states and how animals. We humans are animals as well form the same way of surviving basically. And all of our mechanisms as how we grow up and our attachment styles and everything is to survive. And I find that when I talk about this with my clients, it takes off a bit of that shame that, okay? So it is normal. I like how Ga Mata says It is not an un. Like you're not something not, nothing is wrong with you. It just a normal response to abnormal situations. Yeah, I. I totally relate to that and it was so true in my own personal discovery, and that's why I love about IFS so much is that we, as therapists, we continuously get to practice it on ourselves. And the deeper that I go within myself, I find that, for example, one day I do a process within myself or with a therapist. And the next day a client comes with the same thing that I was, that now I'm able to support them of, yeah, because I went deeper within myself and I can understand them better. Yeah. I strongly believe we can't take clients further than we've gone ourselves. That, I don't know whose idea this was, but I first read it in a Yalom book. I grew up on Yalom, so to speak, and I really believe that. I really do. And so therapists need to be doing their own work deeply and all the time and ongoing to be able to take clients deeper. I. And that takes a lot of courage to go. That's part of my job is doing the work. I actually, I wouldn't do any technique with my clients unless I have received it myself. Whether, the same thing for EMDR. I didn't try EMDR and I. With a client until I had received it and I actually had a horrible experience and got super flooded and I had, a student who was just learning and she really messed me up with it 'cause she got me into a trauma and then didn't know what to do and just panicked and I got flooded and dissociated. That was actually a great teacher because I knew then how potent this stuff is and how messed up you can get because of it. And so it's just to know that and have humility in that. The shame piece. Going back to that, it's parts fear that we can't handle shame and the experience of shame and the, even the physiological experience of shame until they are even just a little bit more connected to self and can see that we can feel shame and move through it and be with it and not experience full collapse. So it's like in the times where I have messed up or missed the mark or. I was supposed to do the dishes and I didn't, and my partner's what the hell? Or whatever the example is, right? Or maybe I've fallen short with a client, and I've missed the mark with them. Or I've had a client say, John, I, in that last session, I just didn't feel like you were really getting me. I. And I have parts that are like, oh, dear God. This is the worst thing I could hear as someone who prides myself on being able to tune into people, and be very attentive and very attuned. And someone's going, yeah, you just didn't seem like you're with me at all. And I have parts going, I was completely with you. What the hell are you talking about? But it's tell me more about that. And if I really did miss the mark or was tired or distracted or whatever, or impatient can I. Acknowledge that. See that, hear that feedback. Go. Thanks for letting me know. Let's talk through that. Can I be relational with the person as they're telling me this difficult thing, and not completely go into shame and shut down. To me that's the work, right? And in the moments where I have missed the mark of going, yeah, I missed the mark, and I'm, I can learn from that. There's always a lesson. Underneath that, if we can sift through and be with the shame and the pain and the regret and the guilt, there's often a lesson there of what did I learn here? But we don't learn when we're in shame. We don't learn when we're overwhelmed. It's the same thing with children. I. If they're stressed and overwhelmed and shut down and shamed, they re they don't learn. Not only do they not learn, they actually regress. This was like on the wall of my daughter's swim class, and I was like, oh, that's actually pretty profound. Oh, so many things I, many that I've, that came up to me while listening and I feel like one thing that what one of the things that came up was the self-like parts that it's. At the beginning I really note would notice constantly myself like parts showing up. Yeah. Of like a therapist. So that's something to really notice and I see a lot of my clients who learned to function in this, way of. What it's like to be, therapeutic. It's the hardest to notice. But once you, in my own experience, once I learn how my parts react when myself is present then I have no doubt if myself is there or not.'cause I immediately know, okay, something is not right. And when you mentioned about the connection with. The self that is the core. And I think in IFS, that's why I firstly use hypnotherapy to strengthen the self and the connection with self, because if that is not present, it's gonna take twice even. 10 times longer the process than it has to, and that's why I always give also some like assignments for clients to practice on their own, like meditating. And that's where my yoga background comes in. Some pranayama or some, I record some meditations to them. And those who do them, I find our sessions are so much more. I want to use the word efficient, but it's not the right word, but efficient in a way that parts soften much sooner, much much more. And that's when I realized, wow, it's so important and. How big of a part meditation and connection to our true selves is'cause if our ourself is not present, nothing can be and how often? Then I start noticing how often people interact with all kinds of masks, and that's why there's not that connection. And for me, what was the sad part is that when I tasted the connection of what it's like to connect. Self to self, then anything else that's not, that just, ugh. It's not that. It's not that. So yeah, it became difficult to find those kind of people, but when I find them, I treasure them so much. Yeah. That self-energy begets self-energy parts. We get parts. And also parts are drawn to self-energy drawn to the light. And so it's a, has a magnetic effect for sure. I wonder if you could say more about how, this question might just be for me the nerdy technician how you use hypnosis to. Help people can get access to self and guides. Yeah. I am trained in data healing as well. That is more like of a spiritual side. I don't use it per se. What say data healing? It's. Connecting to a brainwave state and going, oh, theta yeah, theta it's more, yeah it, some people call it super woo. I find it connecting to, to the source. I don't use it precisely how it's maybe meant to be used for, healing.'cause I like my clients to be healing themselves and not me healing through some other channel. But I find it's. Useful when it comes to connecting to their higher selves and to their true selves. And I just basically use a classical hypnosis of going down visualization, something comes up, the and with each client, I never prepare. I just channel whatever comes, whatever I feel at that time needs to come through for that, for them to connect. Yeah, and it never failed anyone. When they actually go through the process, they can connect to their guides. And actually, I have recorded a free meditation that we can put in the show notes for. Like a hypnotherapy to connect with your guides. I'm just thinking, is that the free one or not? But I'll put something for the guides that's a chemotherapy to connect with your true self, with your guide, and you can always. Then call them in. I always, before we start on the se on a session, we do a minute kind of prayer, not prayer, like intention setting and in lighting our guides and our self-energy more and coming back anchoring into the center of the earth connecting to the Coastals.'cause that when that virtual like line comes up, it's. It brings up naturally the self energy, and that's why I love somatic IFF so much because it works with that already and with the body and not just the mind. Because some of my clients who have read, no bad parts or other books, they come to me and they're I've done, I've tried doing the meditations, but all I get is sensations or all I get is visuals, but how do I work with that? So that's why I love somatic IFS 'cause it. You can work with so many directions. That's great. Yeah. I love the creativity, which is one of. The eight Cs of self. I, I find creativity is one of the most valuable characteristics of a practitioner is being able to let go of the wheel and just see where this goes. Even doing hypnosis I'm in the same boat where I don't plan things or write down exactly what I'm gonna do for the hypnosis, the induction, whatever. It's not to say I don't have ideas and tools and things I've used before, whatever, but, to me, it's all improv, and even it's like I've been a musician a lot longer than I've been a therapist, played drums since I was nine. And so my trust and my ability to improv there is pretty high because I. I have those tools and that language on the drums and that ability to listen to what's happening in the room and what the other musicians are doing or about to do or where they're leading, and I think it's the same for being a good therapist, is you have to have that those improv chops 'cause it's all improv and that dance and the ability to go with and flow with clients and know when to lean in and when to lean out and when to. Yeah. Change the dynamics of how you're playing your instrument, so to speak. And yeah, hypnosis is a great tool for I. Softening the system a bit so we can do the work, which in my opinion, this is just one dude's opinion. What do I know really is people like, ketamine is really big right now and getting bigger. And so I think in my opinion, this is what Ketamine helps do. It helps soften the system, soften protectors intentionally so that people can get a little more access to their own system. And the therapist can help them get access to the system. People have similar experiences with psychedelics where their system opens up and some things just happen spontaneously then, like parts unburden and legacy burden to get thrown into the fire and all this, amazing stuff. But it's really just trying to help people get into a more natural state.'cause again, this way of anxiety and I'm wired and overly performative and put together for my therapist, like it's not. That's not a natural state to be in. Self is the natural state or whatever your idea of self is. And so I think ketamine, hypnosis, trans work, all that stuff just helps people tap into that that texture, and then when I see that people can do it and just did it I let clients know that is what we're going for. That texture, that thing, that heart energy, that's what I'm looking for. I'm trying to help you access that, that heart energy and bring it to the parts of you that, that need it. The part that drinks and the little boy, who's attached to your leg saying, help me. We're trying to bring that to everyone who needs it. That's my like explanation of IFS, is like you just felt it and did it, and I'm putting some language around what just happened and a cons concept around what just happened so that you can really internalize that and go, okay, that's what John's trying to get me to do. That's what healing actually is, right? Even though maybe we've just been in our heads. For nine months or whatever in our intellectual parts or storytelling parts or figure it out parts. As my mentor once told me, you have to catch your clients being good. And when they're good, you have to go, Hey, that was really good. It's not to say that's a good one. That's a good one. It's, clients don't know how to be good clients, so to speak. And so we have to show them and help them when they do it. We have to really capitalize in those moments and go, yeah, we're trying to do more of that. Yeah, that just happened right there. Yeah. Somehow we're nearing the end of our time. Eleena, what do you think is missing from our conversation today? What do you wanna make sure that you share before we wrap up? I loved what you shared just now how IFS is so similar to those psychedelic experiences. And even yesterday I was talking to a friend and they were asking me, was this whole IFS thing and I said, it's like a psych psychedelic trip. It's, but without any substance. You can get into your subconscious and it naturally, the wisdom starts appearing and naturally after the. The session, you feel so much more whole and accepting all parts of you. I love ending the session if there was a lot of parts in the session to sit down all by the fire and just sit there for a bit and to notice the wholeness. How I can sit with all of those parts that I before was battling and our together and that kind of wholeness and acceptance, especially with someone who had a lot of difficult experiences. It's life changing and yeah. I do love using hypnosis with that because I get clients who come and say, I've tried IFS, but this is the first time I actually experienced what it's like, because before all the time they were in the head and trying to think, and their managers of trying to control the process was there all the time. So it wasn't really, if you are, sensing. That there's someone trying to control and direct inside and it's not true. IFS and what you shared about. Creativity. That's what it is. That real attunement, like a musician, like a dancer of listening. Where does my body take me? What are the signals? What images, what does that mean? Cur, I think curiosity for me is that I always say, okay, let's engage some curiosity. What is that about? What? What an image? Oh, okay. That's interesting. Let's lean in. So it's all about that. And. The shame talk that we dis, that we discussed. I think it's very underrated in our society and we just, talk about all these kind of protectors or like exile and wounded parts, but really the shame aspect it's a really big one. And for therapists wanting to be the perfect therapist and I can only share when I'm perfect and healed. And coming back to Dick Schwartz, how, I love how he always shares his continuous work. And that really just brings that ah, to my system that, oh, so I am on this lifelong journey and IFS is not something that I do and I am over with, but it's something that I'm learning to live and. For me, IFS and this whole therapeutic process is a navigation system for life to build a relationship with myself and to show up as more true of myself. So I think that's, yeah, we could talk for hours and hours because Yeah, we might have to this topic for both of us is very dear to our hearts. But yeah, I think the message of that, it's never going to end and it's perfectly fine, even though we're so imperfect. Yeah. You never fully arrive and that's okay. And the sooner we can be. Okay with that, paradoxically, the sooner we start healing, where can people find out more about you and how do you help? Mostly I am trying to be on YouTube because I find it's the platform where I can give the most value in a longer form, and not just like short, catchy stuff, though I am on Instagram as well and Facebook all at Elena Ndro. Great. And how do I help? Mostly, right now I'm working one-on-one. And some group works are in, in, in the plan, in the making, but I really do enjoy working one-on-one and just being able to sit with someone and just. Be there. I just really love the feeling and being in that self energy and seeing, and it's so interesting for me to be in someone's journey and see how they're navigating and just standing. I'm just, I just find great curiosity for that. So that's mostly how I serve at the moment. Great. Elena, thank you so much for being here and yeah, it's super fun for me to really just riff on some of this stuff with you and find people that are as interested in it all as I am. So that's, that's really fun for me. So yeah, thank you again for being here. You're welcome back anytime. And we'll put links to your stuff in the show notes so people can follow up and learn more and follow along with what you're doing. So thank you again for being here. Oh, thank you John. It was a pleasure. We'll keep in touch. See you soon. See you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Going Inside. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching, and share your favorite episode with a friend. You can follow me on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok at John Clark therapy and apply to work with me one-on-one at John Clark therapy.com. See you next time.