#518 Unlock your inner wisdom by listening to your body's intelligence and cultivating awareness, with Banya Lim.

What if your body has been guiding you all along and you just didn’t know how to listen?

So many of us push through emotional stress, unaware that it leaves energetic imprints on our bodies, influencing everything from our moods to physical health. This episode dives into the wisdom of the body and how our unconscious choices, like the colors we wear or the foods we crave, are rooted in energetic signals we’ve forgotten how to read.

• Discover how everyday choices like clothing color and food preferences are connected to your body’s energy systems and emotional needs.
• Learn how to clear emotional and energetic blockages through movement, meditation, and somatic awareness.
• Gain empowering insights from Banya's healing journey from trauma and illness to vibrant health using the principles of Qi and oriental medicine.

Tune in now to uncover how reconnecting with your body’s innate intelligence can transform your emotional well-being and guide you to your true purpose.

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

02:00 - Introduction and Banya Lim’s Background

04:06 - Understanding Qi and Body Awareness

08:58 - Personal Healing Journey and Energetic Roots

14:18 - Emotions, Organs, and Energy Blockages

17:26 - Choosing Emotions and the Power of Awareness

22:14 - The 90-Second Rule and Emotional Energy

23:24 - Practical Tools: Movement and Meditation

28:25 - Reconnecting with Inner Knowing

31:05 - Free Clarity Session and Final Reflections

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MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Do not waste your time caring about what other people say. They don't think about it as much as you think they do."

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Banya's website: https://banyalim.com/

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Join our growing community at MasterySeekersTribe.com, where self-mastery seekers come together for connection and growth.

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🎙️ Want to be a guest?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Actionable insights on personal development, self improvement, self mastery and personal growth for a life of purpose and fulfilment.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas: 0:00

What if your body has been guiding you all along and you just didn't know how to listen? Welcome to personal development mastery, the podcast that helps intelligent, busy professionals develop self mastery and gain clarity so you can thrive in a fulfilling, purposeful life. I'm your host, agiramidas, and this is episode 518 if you are looking to reconnect with your body and clear emotional blockages, this conversation explores how energy, movement and awareness can guide your healing from within. By listening today, you're going to discover how everyday choices, like the colour of our clothes and our food preferences, are connected to your body's energy systems and emotional needs, and you will learn how to clear emotional and energetic blockages through movement, meditation and somatic awareness. If you are feeling stuck emotionally or physically, and since there is more beneath the surface, then this episode is for you before we dive in. If you are resonating with these themes and find yourself at a crossroads, unsure which direction to take, I offer one to one coaching focused on personal growth mindset and reconnecting with your inner compass. My aim is to help you make aligned, confident decisions for whatever your next chapter holds. If that speaks to you, use the link in the show notes and get in touch. Now. Let's get started Today. It is my real pleasure to speak with Banya Lim. Banya, you are a multi generational healer, energy coach and the creator of the QI mastery system. You have over 30 years of experience as a spiritual acupuncturist and practitioner of oriental medicine. And in your work, you blend energy work somatic awareness and meditation. You are passionate about helping people reconnect with the innate wisdom of their bodies so that they can heal clear energetic blockages and align with their true purpose. Banya, it's a real pleasure to have you to the show. Welcome.

Banya Lim: 2:49

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for your invitation.

Agi Keramidas: 2:54

It's as I was telling you just before we started recording. It is a topic that I believe, apart from my own personal interest, it is a topic that I think it is very useful, extremely useful for. I would, I would dare to say everyone, but let's prefer not to use that word, if I can avoid it. But anyway, I'm looking forward to exploring with you today the wisdom of the body, the energy, the Chi that within the body. And I will start very briefly, you know, just so we can have a very solid foundation for anyone listening, regardless of their background or, you know, experience with these things. You describe tea as something we already know within ourselves. So how can someone begin to feel or recognise the their tea in everyday life?

Banya Lim: 4:06

Yeah, wonderful, wonderful question. I think we operate from bodies, voices and languages all the time. It's just unconscious. We are not aware of it most of the time. You know, when you wake up in the morning, what do you want to eat? What do you want to wear? What kind of colour do you get drawn to? It's all coming from the the voices and the direction that's your body is telling you, telling you that we but we are not aware that's happening based on five element theories, while oriental medicine is, you know, directed by two main theories, one is in and young theories, I'm sure you. Heard of that. And so it's the second one is five element theories. Based on five element theories, there are five elements in each element connected to different organs in the body. And it's organs are connected different emotion in the body. And five elements can be just, can be translated to to everything that we know, direction, colour, taste, touch, sensory, everything, for example, I was thinking about this, this, this this morning, that how our body is telling us why would be the best, even what colour to wear each day. You know, when you wake up in the morning, you get drawn to certain colour of shirt or pants. And I'm sure you have experience when you wake up in the morning some days, like you want to wear this particular shirt that you don't normally wear, but you just feel like this is a day to wear. I don't know what it is. Colour also has connection to element and its emotion. For example, wood is one of the five elements Wood's emotion the organs are liver and gallbladder, and its emotion is anger. And when you spend a lot of energy on that emotion, your your organs start to out and outside suffer, and then the next day, your body was trying to tell you, okay, it is actually best to wear this kind of clothes. So green is connected to wood. Wood, green is connected to us. So when you wake up in the morning, when you get drawn to certain colour, that's your body's way of telling you, okay, this is the most harmonising thing for you to wear. And also, the taste that's connected to wood is sour, and when you get drawn to tasting or eating sour tasting food, it's also your body's way of telling this is also most of harmonising thing to eat today. So that's just one of the example. But we are everything's unconscious. We're not aware of these things are happening. But when we start to bring more awareness into this through just being quiet with ourselves, I think one of the best way to do that is meditation, that you actually going to do this more in a more conscious way.

Agi Keramidas: 7:41

Thank you. The key word that you said there towards the end was awareness, because all of that requires the awareness. So that's great. Bania will will come back to that. And, you know, explore some you know, more specific elements of it, I would like in terms of some context from your background and your story that you know created or required. It wasn't that anyway, I'm trying to phrase it in a very complicated way now, but so I will give it simple from your story, your journey into this, into healing, began with your own crisis. So I would like to for you to share with us the turning point and what revealed to you about the connection between energy, the body, and changed you.

Banya Lim: 8:56

Yeah, yes, you know, my parents, I always describing coming of together of yin and yang, like literally, like opposite of the energy. My dad was originally from North Korea. My mom was from South Korea, and they went through a war. And over the years I realised there was so much pain. There were holding, like literally holding in their body, pain of the words, pain of the destruction, pain of the separation, because my dad never got to reunite with his family in North Korea. The reason that I tell you about my parents is that I feel like I inherit so much. Aside from that, I'm aware of, I think there's so much more, and because of that, and. Because also I myself went through a lot of traumas as a child. I started to have depression in high school and college, and it got really, really bad in graduate school. Not only that, I start to have had a gastrointestinal issue. Specifically, IBE IBS, sorry. And at some point that my body couldn't absorb any nutrients, like, literally, when I eat, I just nothing can be observed, like I was, I was like, pale as you know, paper and I I didn't know how to function at some point, and I decided to do two things at the time, movement and meditation. Although many people and doctors recommend that I should be on medication and taking different chemicals and so on, I decided to do those, those two things I just gave myself, I'm gonna just give myself to do this. And I remember there's epiphany I was looking at, you know, like when you go to a restaurant, there's menu sometimes on the cashier register, and you can pick and choose and tell them, This is what I want. And I had this moment like, wow, I'm choosing this emotion and thoughts that's destructive to me over and over, because I'm used to it. I'm comfortable with it, although it was not good for me, but that's what I've been doing all my life, but I saw this also other rays of different emotion that I can choose from. And this is something I'm sure we all know this, but for me, was such a revelation and another deep understanding, wow, I can be able to choose different emotion, and these are available, but I've been just keep doing this over and over and causing pain within my body, and also at the same time, I felt the connection between that emotion and energy blockage within my body. And when I made a conscious decision to choose different emotions that choose positive emotion, my body respond right away. And it took me about two and a half a month, and took reverse every symptoms within my body and and that I have another moment of my body is just dissolving all these blockages. When I think somewhere, when I choose this positive thoughts, I felt the dissolve. Doesn't dissolve, the energy dissolving within my body, and I didn't have those symptoms anymore. It's funny that at the time, that doctor told me that this is something that you may make it through. You're gonna have to deal with it for the rest of your life. But I don't have any of those. I probably am more healthy now than when I was in my 30s. So making the connection, understanding the connection through the I'm using the word awareness, again, through the awareness within the body. I realised that is the key, and that was when I was in my 30s. I'm in my 50s now, and I share this with my clients about the connection. So in oriental medicine, there are specific connection to organs to emotion. Earlier I told you about words, liver and gallbladder. Their emotion is anger, right? And there's connection between urinary bladders and kidneys. Their emotion is fear. Urinary bladder meridians runs back of the body, that backside, and it's bilateral, so next to the spine, it goes down like this. When you're under a lot of fear, this emotion meridians start to get blocked. Not it not only that, you start feeling it in your body. This is why we often said, when we are under a lot of fear, we say, I have a chew going down my spine. These words, these phrases, do not come by accident. It's based on we are feeling the body. We are feeling the energy. We are feeling the blockages within the body. Agi. So over the years, I will ask my clients like this, is a connection between the sometimes back pain to the fear? It doesn't mean that you're fearful person. It could be there's a certain memories, certain events that happen in your life start might have created this I'm just sharing with you. So think about you can think about the connection perhaps one might have happened in the past, and always, always, there is a story that my clients share. So, and I realised that each person have to go into a very deep level, an unconscious level to really dealt with and work through it. And this is where somatic work and meditation come in. And

Agi Keramidas: 15:51

I will come back to that, you know, you said about the word awareness, and I think we will use that word many times during this conversation, because through that we can you said earlier about choosing different emotions, and I like very much how you were describing it With the screens. Let me ask practically someone, how can they begin the process of choosing another emotion? And the reason why I'm asking that, as you are aware, is that emotions have the tendency to hijack our attention so we go with the emotion before we even realise that this emotion is present. So being able to choose a different emotion, I suppose, requires some kind of I will say the word awareness again, but I would like to hear your thoughts on how practically one can cultivate that ability, shall we say, to choose another emotional state.

Banya Lim: 17:12

Oh, my God. Excellent, excellent question. But before choosing emotion, or before choosing this positive emotion. Well, while we consider positive emotion, we first have to like work through the repetitive this recording going in our head. First trying to choose this emotion is active action on denying what's actually happening. So first thing is, when certain things thoughts come in, the thought create emotion. Okay, that's it. Negative thoughts, usually, if, if, if we do this for a long time, it creates energy, and it creates as energy blockage within our body. But we can talk about a little bit more deeply when we have these thoughts come in, we have to stop doing these three things. First, not identifying with it, try not to suppress it, try not to get rid of it. We when we do these three things, one of these, one of these things, or three, or at the same time, we give energy to that thought. We literally give power to our thoughts. But the thoughts, like in a Buddhist tradition, we said the thoughts are just thoughts. That's not us. But when we give energy to this, we end up identifying with these thoughts, and we think that that's us, but that's not us. Thoughts are thoughts. In a Buddhist monk said, thoughts are just the clouds passing in the sky or the water on the river, it will just pass through. But we give power to it with these three things. So working on not identifying with it, not try to suppress it, not try to get rid of it is the key. We give tremendous power with these three things, the science behaviour, science already been proven that when we have a certain thought that creates emotion and energetical, and energetical emotion within the body. It passed through us. It takes 90 seconds. It takes 90 seconds, if we just give it a time and not doing these three things, it will just pass through us. And it's same thing we. The all the animals and animals know this so well. Have you ever seen like, two animals fighting each other, like almost trying to kill each other? After a few seconds, they just move away and just peacefully walk away. They don't hold on. They don't say, Oh, you did this to me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hurt you. And how can you do this? They don't have any of this emotion, you know, like I remember, think the dogs are the very good example. There's dogs in the pond like pecking each other, almost like bleeding. And then after a few minutes, they just peacefully swim away, and they don't think about what happened. They don't think of what he or she did this to me. By doing this, we hold on energetically and create blockage within the body, literally blockage within the meridian system. I don't know if you ever seen a acupuncture points meridian system with acupuncture points along the meridian, literally, you create blockages based on that emotional energy. So acupuncture is actually simply going to those specific points to open them up. But if people go back to the same lifestyle, same relationship, same dynamic, they'll block again. This is why I keep seeing people okay. We work on it. They feel great, then they come back with the same symptom over and over. And this is why I start talking to them about the connection between the emotion and the body and let them work through it, and me being the guy to work on the root of the issue. Oftentimes, it can based on relationships or based on our belief about ourselves.

Agi Keramidas: 21:58

It's fascinating, and also, in a way, it is very comforting to know that you mentioned 90 seconds that is really not a long time. It's one minute and a half. And you know you can go through a physical sensation for a minute and a half, no matter how uncomfortable it might or you might perceive it to be. I had, you know, you were saying about those three things, not to do, not to identify with with it, not to suppress the emotion, not to try get rid of it.

Unknown: 22:39

What?

Agi Keramidas: 22:40

What is, what can we do instead of that? Because that might be, you know, the default mode. What is the active, or a active process that one can take to move away from that default of identifying with it and trying to get rid of it and so on. I hope my question makes sense.

Banya Lim: 23:04

Yes, perfect, perfect sense. Having this information alone opens a lot of things, just someone having this information, oh, those three things, and that's what I do. And having, once again, having awareness of that and having this information, like I said, opens up to new behaviour, new thoughts, and doing a torture for me to come out of my depression, or two things, movement and meditation, so that having the awareness, but you used, if you're still struggling, utilise, to utilise these two things, meditation and movement. When I say movement, it can be any kind of movement. It can be dancing, it can be jumping around. It can be hiking, it can be martial arts, everything that is actually geared towards actually opening the meridians. Oftentimes my clients saying, what? Why do you tell me to do is all this is actually like literally, literally getting acupuncture without getting needles. Many of the martial arts have been developed to try to open up the meridians, because each meridians runs through the arms, legs, head, head, head, back and front. In ancient time when they move their arms in certain way, they realise, wait a minute, it opens up the long meridians. When I do this, it opens up the opens up the large intestine meridians. This is how came about tai chi. Do. Qigong, Kung Fu, karate, hakido, you name it. And I'm sure you might have seen a video of this old Chinese lady doing this in a park. This is a Tai Chi movement to open up the meridians, so when you are stuck in that recording of hearing, the recording of negative thoughts and emotion going to yet you do to do this two things for a while, consistency is more important than how how long you do this? And we need some discipline in the beginning. Discipline is actually required because people often judge themselves, like, Oh, that was a bad meditation. I cannot believe I have so many thoughts in my head. No, still. Still, it was a meditation. It still was a good meditation. It actually builds something. Build something within you. And when you move your body, oh, I didn't do I didn't do enough. I didn't do enough exercise, whatever that might be, but you've done something. You started something. Just be consistent with it, even if it's a five minutes, and until the point and you go to the point that that's all you want to do, when you go into the meditative state. And eventually, when your channel, when your meridian, start opening up, it's it's better than drug. And that's all you want to do all day, every day. So I would say, utilise two things. But as far as the movement goes, you can do whatever you want to do.

Agi Keramidas: 26:54

I'm glad that you mentioned those two and also the practicalities of it, because it is even more important. Bucha, there is one other thing I wanted to hear your thoughts about, and it is the concept of reminders that you you talk about. And by reminder, I mean that we already know inside us what, what we need, that that inner knowing, my question is, how can we reconnect with that inner knowing? I suppose, in many ways, it's similar to what we have already been discussing, but in terms of more of that, you know inner knowing, or path or purpose, or however else one might translate that. So I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Banya Lim: 27:58

Okay, yes, the inner knowing is already there. Inner knowing is already built in within us. We just have to work on letting go of all this external stuff. When we clear the external stuff, you know that you already know this letting go of this external stuff is it can be done through those two things, meditation and movement. I remember one of my clients who is a dancer after like, long hours of practice, and she just lay down on the floor, and she just felt this, like just kind of, you know, you know, knowing, and also awareness, like it's all within me, all within my body, because all the external noise subsided at the time, inner knowing is already there. We already have it. It's a built in that we are born with, that is a God given, right, that it's already there that for us to use. You know, when you walk into a store that you never walked into in your life, and you feel like you have been there when you talk to somebody for the first time, but you feel like you know this person, and plus, we have experience of deja vu, those are not accidents. We already have been there. We already have done this. It's already been within us. It's already the awareness has been already built in, and we are just recognising that. So letting go of this external noises is the key.

Agi Keramidas: 29:59

Thank you. Very useful when you think of it like that, as the inner knowledge and the external noise that prevents us or blocks us from accessing it, it's it's been a really fascinating conversation, and as I will start wrapping things up soon. The first thing I would like to ask you is, where do you want to direct the listener that has enjoyed listening to you and wants to learn more?

Banya Lim: 30:31

Well, you can our offer your audience free clarity sessions. If you want to sign up, you could just go to my website, vanyalim.com

Agi Keramidas: 30:44

thank you. That's great. And Vanya I have two questions that I always ask my guests, even since the very beginning, what does personal development mean to you,

Banya Lim: 30:59

knowing my power, knowing that I'm already free.

Agi Keramidas: 31:05

And hypothetical one, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give her?

Banya Lim: 31:16

I'm sure many people say this already. Don't care about what other people say, do not waste time. Waste your time. They don't. They don't think about it as much as you think they do.

Agi Keramidas: 31:32

Indeed, by I want to thank you so much for this conversation, and I, I appreciated very much the, let's say, the actionable, the practical elements that you shared throughout the conversation, because that's always my intention with the podcast is not to give to the listeners theory about something as interesting this might be. Theory is not changing anyone the transformation, the change happens by taking action on the theory. So thank you very much for sharing the practical elements that you did. I will leave it to you for your parting wisdom. To the listener,

Banya Lim: 32:31

there is a tremendous power within you, literally within the body. It's time to it's time for us to tap into that, and more than ever, everything's lined up in our lives to thrive at this time. I know our external world looks like things are falling apart, but truth The truth is we are spiritually evolving more fast and much faster than ever before. So hold on tight and just go within.

Agi Keramidas: 33:11

Thank you for listening to this conversation with Bunya Lim. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on the power of your body's wisdom and the role awareness plays in true healing. If you have found value in this episode, consider supporting the show by visiting personal development mastery podcast.com/support every bit helps to keep the conversations going and reach more listeners like you. You will also find the link in the episode description. Thank you. Until next time, keep growing and keep showing up as your authentic self stand out. Don't fit in .