214. When the Body Holds What the Mind Can't with Inna Segal

Dr. McFillin (00:04.086)
Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. Have you ever paused to consider why so many people experience chronic health issues despite modern medicine's advances? What if the answers lie in ancient practices and principles that have been embraced by cultures around the world for centuries? Today, we're diving into the notion that we're more than just physical beings. We are electric. We are energetic.

pulsating with energy and potential. This concept urges us to recognize that health is influenced not just by physical ailments, but also the energetic imbalances and emotional traumas that we experience throughout this life. While traditional Western medicine seems to treat symptoms in isolation, so almost if you're like a mechanic trying to trade a car, many indigenous cultures

and holistic traditions have long understood the intimate connection between mind, body, and spirit. These time-honored practices have been handed down through generations, offering profound insights into the art of self-healing and the power of energy medicine. As we're gonna try to peel back the layers today of conventional thought, I invite you to kind of have a wider perspective that encompasses

diverse healing traditions. And to navigate this journey, I'm thrilled to welcome Ina Segal, a true pioneer in energy medicine and human consciousness. She's a bestselling author of The Secret Language of Your Body, a transformative work that's transcended borders being translated into 27 languages, selling over 1 million copies worldwide.

And with over 25 years experience, she has empowered countless individuals to tap into their inner healing potential by recognizing their energetic nature of their body. Her own journey from chronic pain and emotional struggle to vibrant wellbeing exemplifies the power of embracing alternative healing methods. There's a lot for us to learn. I was not able to read her book, so I'll ask the questions that I think many people will be.

Dr. McFillin (02:27.712)
wondering as you listen to this. Enis Agal, welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast.

Inna Segal (02:33.82)
Thank you so much for inviting me and having me with you.

Dr. McFillin (02:38.21)
Let's go back to the beginning and just tell us the story of how this process started and unfolded for you to the point where you're helping so many people outside of what would be conventional medical approaches.

Inna Segal (02:54.77)
And I think I've heard you talk about, you know, sharing from your perspective of helping people, which has just been, you know, inspiring to me to listen to as well and beautiful. And I feel like deep down inside, we all know that healing as opposed to curing is an internal experience. And it's whilst curing is something that somebody

does to us in terms of the medical system. Healing is something that comes from within and needs to be held. And my story and my journey was all about this healing versus curing where I started with the curing, you know, exploration. Like most people, my mom grew up with an understanding of medicine is, you know, the highest thing and everybody knows.

that you go to the doctor for literally everything and the doctor knows and you don't know and you just do whatever the doctor says. And for me, I was struggling with digestive issues from when I was, you know, a very, very young girl. I remember being six and not being able to go to the toilet and being in pain. When I was about 10, I came to Australia, so I live in Australia.

from Eastern Europe and I immediately got bullied because I didn't know one word of English. And within a very, very short period of time, I started getting psoriasis all over my skin, which also ran in my family, I'm gonna say. And so it was normal, okay, now we go back to the doctor and we get something for psoriasis, we get something for digestive issues.

When I was about, I think between 14 and 15, I started getting really bad lower back pain. So again, we went to the doctor, I got painkillers, I went to a physiotherapist and I, was starting to feel this sense of anxiety, sense of like something just doesn't feel right.

Inna Segal (05:21.604)
in my body and that went on for many many years. When I was, so the back pain continued to deteriorate and when I was about 18 I met my husband at the time, who became my husband and he was very very open to alternative medicine and he said look let me take you to all these people who did everything from

you know, chiropractic, so chiropractic was alternative in Australia at the time to Chinese medicine, acupuncture to kinesiology, rolfing, all sorts of different modalities. And although I'm going to say I had improvements and way better improvements from those modalities,

nothing held, nothing stuck. And I felt like I was going round and round in circles. And then I had this one of the worst things that I felt had happened in my life. I got pregnant, made a decision to keep the child, which was not an easy one. I was 19 at the time because I, you know, I just couldn't bring myself to, to not and

It took me months and months to really kind of align myself with an I'm going to be a mother. Cause I always, out of all my friends, everybody thought that I would be the, you know, the last one to have children, not the first. And it was a hard adjustment, but I did. And then I remember having this feeling and I heard you talk about it, how you would have feelings and senses and just

think it was normal. And I always had them and felt like it was normal that everybody had them. And I remember I had this sense at about, it was eight and a half months pregnant and I went to see this midwife and I was trying to do everything naturally. So I was at a birthing center and I said to this midwife, I feel like something's really wrong. And she said,

Inna Segal (07:46.52)
you know, she touched my belly and she kind of checked everything and she said, no, everything's fine. You're just anxious. You're just kind of making this up because you're, you know, it's the first time and so on. And I was like, no, I feel like there's something wrong with the heart with this child. I just really, really feel it. And she was like, no, you just need to chill and relax and, you know, let it go. Anyway, within

a very short period of time, I went into labor and I remember getting to this birthing center and them saying, when was the last time that you felt the baby move? And I was like, I don't know, why would you be asking me this in the middle of so much pain? And then the baby was born and there was no sound and there was, I don't know, a nurse I didn't know and she just said to me, I'm sorry.

And I remember going into like absolute shock and my first thoughts were, right, I always knew there's something wrong with me. Like there's something, this doesn't happen in Australia. There's something really, really, really wrong with me as a woman, as a person. And it was actually during this time,

where I was in complete shock and I remember just staring at the wall and it was just complete numbness. There was no thoughts except besides the one that I said, but again, we're talking maybe like half an hour later, just frozenness, just complete frozenness. And as I was just looking up at the ceiling, trying to process how this can even happen,

I saw a spiritual being who to me looked like an angelic being. It was a feminine being, because I felt like a feminine energy may not have been, but that's how I experienced this being. And she had two children that she was holding. And she said to me,

Inna Segal (10:07.602)
you will have two children very soon and everything is going to be okay. And I remember within moments of that particular experience, I just felt this peace that poured inside of me. And for the next three hours, I'm going to say it was about three hours. I was walking around the room, like going to the bathroom, I was standing there and I was saying to my

husband at the time, said to him, I don't know why, but I had to this experience and I'm gonna use this experience. I will, you know, I'm gonna, I don't know how I'm just gonna use it. At that time I was starting to be a writer, so I thought I was gonna be a journalist and I was gonna write and I was also gonna do acting. And...

I'm gonna say three hours later that dissipated including the memory of it and I went into absolute trauma and shock and I don't wanna be here.

my back pain, my digestive issues, my anxiety went through the roof like to point where I couldn't function. I couldn't sleep. couldn't, the back pain was atrocious. I couldn't like do anything in my life. I ended up going to this chiropractor, like I was seeing him three times a week anyway.

He actually, after the whole thing happened, had to come and see me. I couldn't move. Like that's how bad it was. And finally I, you know, I would go up and down. did some, went to a psychologist. I did go to a very profound course for trauma. But I'd still go up and down, up and down and stay in this victim place.

Inna Segal (12:11.078)
And I went to see this chiropractor finally, where I literally thought I was gonna end up in a wheelchair and that there's just, you know, there's no way forward for me. And he did something that was very profound and I think very difficult for a practitioner to do. When I came in, hobbled into his office, he looked at me and he just said, Ina, your body's stuck.

and I said to him, I know that part. What are you gonna do to help me? And he was silent for a moment and he said nothing. And I said, what do mean nothing? And he just said, your body actually wants to be stuck at this point, go home. I was enraged. How dare he say this to me? How could he say this to me? But it changed my life.

So I went home and as I was in the car on the way home, it occurred to me that my body was holding experience, I'm gonna say.

those experiences were kind of like the language of the body where it was showing me that I was stuck, that I wasn't moving forward. And if I could understand it a bit more, and if I was willing to connect and transform, maybe I could heal. Maybe I could get better. So I went home and

I made a decision and I want to say to people who are listening or watching, it was a full-bodied decision. I'd never done that before. It was like, there was no other choice. My mind, my heart, my will, everything was aligned in this decision. Vibrationally, I was there. I didn't know how was going to do it, how I was going to heal myself. I just knew this is it. This is my moment.

Inna Segal (14:16.636)
from every part of my being. so as I got home, it was like, okay, just start with placing your hands on your back. Breathe instead of holding your breath. Breathe with the pain instead of trying to run away. That was my whole thing, running away from the pain. As I was doing this, it occurred to me,

Well, I was counting backwards from 30 as well, because I know how negative my mind can get, but in between the spaces it occurred to me that I should ask for divine help, because I had seen the angel, and at the same time, I was a huge skeptic, because in my mind, it was like, well, how could God let me have a baby that died? I don't understand it, so I don't know if I can believe it.

You know, but I asked for help because I was desperate at the time. And also I just felt guided in a way. And I, as I asked, I had zero expectations, but I felt this warmth pouring inside my body. And I knew something was happening. My eyes were closed. I could see a gold light and

within a moment, another thought came to my mind and I think he'll relate to this one. And I don't know where it came from, but it was like, I want to see inside my body. I want to see what's happening inside. I want to see my back. I had zero expectation again. And all of a sudden it was like a light switch was switched on in my mind. And I could see my back like as if I was taking an x-ray of my back.

And I could see exactly where the inflammation was, where it was twisted and so on. And so I immediately went from not a victim perspective, because I'd lived the victim, you know, for years and years of my pain. I'd been, you know, in so much pain in my life and I was young, so not very good at holding pain as well. And from at this point, it was like, I want to know why, what were the

Inna Segal (16:33.744)
the things that caused this, what were their experiences? And kind of like in the story that you've shared with your client, where you tuned into her and you could see where the trauma came from, it was the same experience for me where I saw different experiences and essentially the spine of the trauma exactly.

What were the things that happened that led me to have all the different anxieties, health conditions, stucknesses from the bullying to my parents' conflict to leaving my country and feeling like I don't belong. Where do I belong? I don't know, I don't belong anywhere. To having the loss that

of this child that also connected to the loss that my grandmother went through. And, you know, she was one of eight children and her mother actually told her when my grandmother was 12, you're the only one who's gonna survive the war out of all of us, you and your father for, your father will come back for a few years, but everyone else is gonna die. And her mother stood in front of her.

whilst she was being shot at to save her life. So my grandmother had this, she was carrying so much trauma of loss. When I had my child that died, the first thing that happened was my grandmother called me and she said, I wish it was me and not your child. And I just remember kind of going, my God, how can she say this? And so I could see all the pieces kind of in that moment coming together.

and the release and the relief was profound. And then from exhaustion, I fell asleep and had the best sleep of my life where I could feel even during the sleep, this unwinding. The next day when I wake up, there was probably 70 % of the pain had gone and my back wasn't twisted. And I had this deepest knowing so that something had changed.

Inna Segal (18:54.288)
Being a writer, I grabbed my journal and for the next three weeks or so, would just, every moment that I had, I would just connect and ask questions. Cause I felt like a portal had opened up for me and try and put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And by the end,

All the psoriasis was gone and has never come back. And again, you know, I want to say to people, this is not an easy one to get rid of. Usually my dad has it, my grandfather had it, my dad's sister is covered with it. So it was definitely what people call genetic. So all of that was gone. Like I said, never came back. My back pain improved to like, you know, where it's never come back.

my digestive system has been the longest issue because that was connected to loss coming from my grandmother and trauma for, you know, generational trauma in that way. And I still have to be very aware of how I eat, which I think is, it was a great blessing as well. And my anxiety disappeared pretty much.

and I knew that something profound had happened. And within weeks of that experience, I realized that I could now see into people's bodies and feel things and just know what was going on and why.

Dr. McFillin (20:26.084)
What an amazing story. I'm so honored to actually hear it. I've got so many questions. I first want to just kind of reflect on, I think the core of what you're speaking about. If I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is that our body, what is experienced in our body physically could potentially be a manifestation of emotional issues, trauma, and even generational trauma.

Inna Segal (20:51.602)
100%.

Dr. McFillin (20:53.388)
And it's when that you started to really be able to understand the messages that your body was communicating to you and developing this acute sense of awareness and connection to a divine loving, whether we call it God or energy that extended beyond you, that you are open now to self-healing in alignment and connection with that divine energy.

Inna Segal (21:21.042)
Absolutely.

Dr. McFillin (21:22.992)
Okay. Um, now to go back to the beginning of your story, what you were telling us was that you had this intuitive knowing to begin with that your child's heart, there was something wrong with your child's heart. Is that what it ended up being after, uh, I'm imagining it was a still birth was, was it a cardiac issue?

Inna Segal (21:45.746)
Absolutely. They said that he had a small heart.

Dr. McFillin (21:51.704)
And he wasn't going to be able to survive even if you would have at that point, like alerted medical professionals and they discovered it.

Inna Segal (22:01.234)
That was never told to me. I never knew if that was an option.

Dr. McFillin (22:09.201)
All right, let's go on to the next question because this isn't the first time I've heard stories that are similar to this. So it's this idea is that when we begin to understand that we have an intuitive nature, a divine spirit within us, and we understand that our emotions are signals for the lack of a better word, or we have an inner compass, and that's information for us.

To be able to address or heal or get back on I think what is our our souls path the body becomes Aligned and no longer at this ease when we are off of our souls path if we are dealing with stressors or traumas or Suppressed emotions or emotional states. We weren't able to work through they are affecting the body the chiropractor used the word your body stuck How did you understand?

what that means now when somebody would say it's stuck.

Inna Segal (23:09.648)
really feel that you know, stuckness is our inner self alerting us to the fact that we're in this so much that's happened in our lives. And we're often in overwhelming great suffering during a state of stuckness. But we, we cannot see a way out at that

point that is a linear way, right? Cause usually we've tried the medical way, we've tried maybe like me, a lot of alternative ways as well, but something inside of us is not shifting and it's not shifting from the perspective of I am not changing that I, the part of you that is so unique and that is so, there is that individuality that says,

The only person that can transform things is me, but I don't know how, and I don't even know if I want to, or I don't know if it's even possible. So I am in a state of stagnation, holding on for life to everything I know, because this is what is safe. And I think...

Again, in the story that I was listening to where you were sharing about the healing that you help somebody experience, it was almost like the stuckness serves us, right? In some way, because when we've had massive trauma, it becomes, know, if I don't move forward, if I don't breathe too, like I remember thinking if I don't breathe too deeply, won't feel.

this pain and I want to have to, you know, feel anything that shows up, including anxiety. And we go into some place of self-protect. And we also often become insanely vigilant where we cannot let go and cannot move forward because we're, we're just looking for, you know, what can go wrong so that I can be safe.

Inna Segal (25:32.188)
And so there's so many layers and reasons for that stuck state. And the biggest one is fear. I'm afraid.

Dr. McFillin (25:43.803)
In that session that you were referring to that I wrote an article about and did a podcast episode on, was like kind of downloaded into me that perfect love casts out fear. And I almost intuitively knew that we had a shift in internal vibrational state from that of fear into love, that I was seeing things energetically. In our Western cultures, we're not really taught

to be embodied, to see us as energetic, to see us within an environment, an energetic environment, to see emotions as energy and motion or thoughts as energetic itself. We're kind of disconnected. And when you look at modern culture, for example, technology, smartphones, so forth, we're getting more and more distracted. So we're less and less embodied and mindfully connected to everything we're experiencing.

So we're more likely than to like externalize the solution, see pain as something a doctor can diagnose and get rid of. That model, symptom management without understanding root cause, how critical do you think that is in our chronic disease epidemic?

Inna Segal (27:03.962)
I think that just huge, there's such, you know, I'm gonna say my dream from, you know, from the minute that I discovered, you know, that I could see and help people through understanding their life story was how do I help people in the medical field to do the same because everything, everything would change.

and we would be seen as individuals as opposed to as, you know, we're all the same and so we just take medication to suppress and to push down. I wanna say, you know, that I think there is a role for medication. Like I definitely see that there's a role for medication when somebody's in agony, in pain, in, you know, and.

their internal system does not have the flexibility and the ability to really look at the pain and to transform it, right? Because to me, is always like the actual pain itself is never physical. And I can explain this in so many different ways, but for instance, when is the time, if we had to ask the question, when is the time

during the 24 hours of the day that we have no pain, even if we're in agony and pain most of the time. And the time where we don't have it is when we're in deep sleep. And the reason we don't have it when we're in deep sleep is because there is an aspect of what I would call our astral or emotional body, which is part of the soul structure that has actually left

the physical body and has gone into the spiritual realm where we go into this deep sleep and we have regeneration. And that's when we feel no pain and because we have no consciousness. When we, so many of us, when we have consciousness, we can feel it and we go, my God, I've just woken up. Like, right, how many times have we woken up and we're going, okay.

Inna Segal (29:22.162)
It's like something has come back into consciousness, which is this part of our body called the astral body. And this body is connected to pain and pleasure, all pain and pleasure. Now we also have something called the etheric body, which is the copy of the physical body, which is called chi and that Chinese medicine and all sorts of alternative medicines work with.

in order to move energy through the organs and the body, including with the acupuncture needles. So that particular body is the body of memory. It holds memory. And it's also a body of ancestry, which makes sense because ancestry is memory in a way. Now,

let's take an experience that many people have, or many people have had where they lose an organ or part of their body. Let's say they lose their leg. How come, how can, you know, how can they say that they feel the leg and they feel the pain even though they don't have the leg? So clearly, sorry.

Dr. McFillin (30:33.309)
Phantom limb syndrome. Yeah, there's a medical term phantom limb syndrome. Yeah.

Inna Segal (30:39.526)
They say phantom. But what does that even mean? Right? It's like, when we say those things, I'm, I'm like, well, tell me exactly what that means. And most medical doctors cannot because they don't know, you know, so the phantom is essentially the astral body pushing into their third body because there is no physical and people are having these pains and these experiences.

So if we were to really investigate it properly, not just with the blinkers on of materialistic world where we can only look at the physical and nothing else, then we would really, really start to understand what medicine should be, what healing should be like. And instead of constantly using chemical medicine, you know, which bypasses essentially what it does,

is that it goes straight into the physical body and does bypass the subtle bodies and it rips them apart often. that's what I've seen over and over again, or it freezes them so they don't work anymore. And then, you you have all these side effects and you learn nothing, you know, and the fact that we can, you know, in our materialistic world can go, well, the body is just something separate to our consciousness and

It's not here to teach us something. It's just, you know, we just have it and everything is just random. It's so ridiculous. You know, it's like complete dishonouring of the human experience as opposed to going, how else would I know what's right and wrong for me? Like you talked about the soul, right? The soul's purpose and journey. How would I know that I'm...

leaving my purpose? How do I know that I love somebody? How do I know that I care about somebody unless I feel that inside my body? So how is it even possible to think that it doesn't have wisdom?

Dr. McFillin (32:49.233)
Yeah, well said. So I want to go back a little bit to the stillbirth. You were able to see an angel who predicted that you would have two children. Did you have two children?

Inna Segal (33:03.608)
did and she actually showed me a boy and a girl and I did have I do I should say I have two children. I have a son who's just turned 25 and a daughter who's 22.

Dr. McFillin (33:21.395)
Was that moment crucial? Were you able to see yourself as a soul in a body? How spiritual were you prior to that event? And how connected were you to a loving God before you went through that tragedy?

Inna Segal (33:40.626)
I think that, you know, my idea of God mostly was a religious one, you know, before that. But I had gone to a religious school and I really, really deeply rebelled against all the religious subjects, mainly because I felt that they were, you know, whenever I would ask a question, I would be

shut down or told to leave the room. And so he became this kind of a rebel here, know, spent a lot of time in the library because no one could answer my questions. And that's how they dealt with questions is like, leave, you go to the library. And, you know, that kind of had a really negative effect in terms of my

in anything spiritual because I I felt like everything that I heard was about control and all the stories, you know, all the biblical stories just sounded like fantasy to me at the time and that I could not comprehend because they were not explained in a way that was relatable, I'm gonna say, to, you know, a teenage girl. And...

I felt like they were, you know, talking again, it was like I had friendships that were, you know, with, let's say, gay people. And some of my closest friends have been gay. And when I was at school, that was just, you know, in the religious subjects, it was such a sinful thing. And I could not accept these types of explanations. And you know, that that was the God that we had.

So I, you know, I found it very difficult to kind of to get my head around it. Now I also, because my partner at the time was into exploring a lot of different spiritual kind of practices. One of the ones that he had taken me to, I'm going to say it was an experience of somebody channeling. And it was probably one of the most horrible experiences that I also had where

Inna Segal (36:04.252)
There was a very scary spiritual, it seemed like a spiritual being kind of channeling through a lady who was calling herself love and light, but was nothing love like love and light. And I had a very scary experiences, experience of her confronting me in a room of people and saying things, this entity that she was, you know, kind of channeling.

and saying that I had somehow, was 18 at the time, that I had somehow been trying to seduce men in this particular group who were 40 years old and point, you know, like just, and these men coming out and saying, yes, she did. And I was like, I said hello to you and looked at you. If that is seduction, then I'm sorry. And it was very,

you know, I just remember as she was saying this through this entity and my partner at the time, he did not come into this session. He was outside and I've never actually shared this, know, publicly, but he was outside in a tent because he was like, I don't feel right about going in there, but I was like, oh, you know, I'm, you know, this is new. I'd like to know what this is. And

I remember the room just felt so heavy and dark. And as she was talking and these men, you know, who were part of this group were saying this, I literally remember thinking and feeling like I just wish the earth would open up and swallow me. And I had the most horrible panic attacks. I was already anxious in my life. I had constant anxiety and it was like the...

a full blown panic attack. And then this woman started running around because my partner hadn't come in and saying, he's evil, he's the devil, he's so evil, which put me into absolute anxiety, shock, fear. I was scared of him, I was scared of her, I was having a complete meltdown. So that was my actual.

Inna Segal (38:27.186)
You know, and then eventually when he came in and found a way to calm me down, I felt like she was, you know, it was 3 a.m. in the morning by this time. And I said, I couldn't move. couldn't speak. And he finally kind of got me out of that experience. And he was like, what do you want? Should we go home? Like, what do you want to do? We were three hours away from home. So it was three in the morning. And eventually.

I remember lying there with my eyes closed and going, oh my God, she's gonna burn us. Like she's that crazy. Like these people are crazy. I was like, okay, let's just leave everything, get into the car and go home because I am terrified. And from that moment, I was just like, I don't, you know, I didn't want anything that's spiritual. Like, cause if spiritual is this.

then get me away from this. Like I was scared of it. You know, I was like, I didn't believe in the religious stuff, but I also at that time don't believe in what's called new age spiritual because that was horrifying I felt.

Dr. McFillin (39:41.522)
Yeah, let me ask a question about that. Now that you look back on it, how do you see that event in your life?

Inna Segal (39:51.44)
I think that event was...

you know, it shocked me, but it also, from that moment, it was kind of like, you have to do due diligence around what you believe in, know, and especially because it was very kind of a new age type of industry. And I knew nothing about spirituality that when I was growing up, like my parent, my family wasn't religious or spiritual. Like they put me into religious school because I wanted to get higher marks. And I thought,

that that's the way I was gonna do it to go to university. But, you know, there was nothing spiritual or religious in me growing up. And so I felt like, yeah, maybe, you know, I don't like religion because of the control and, you know, I don't understand it, but I'm open to spirituality because it sounds fun and it sounds good. I really feel that it's...

put me into such shock and trauma in a sense that I was like, if I do anything, I'm going to be so diligent in my kind of figuring it out and really looking at things logically as well. you know, making sure that I don't keep putting myself into these situations that, you know, are traumatizing and fear-based. I also felt like it really made me

because of the shock and what was said about that I was somehow seducing this man, I had actually then started to really suppress that part of myself and go, you know, I couldn't, how could I do that? How could they say this to me? And that's been a big journey of like recovering that.

Dr. McFillin (41:47.52)
Well, one of the things I'm curious about, because I know you're a spiritual person and you used the language that she, that, individual was channeling an entity, maybe a dark entity. Do you believe that that's what was happening? That there was the channeling of a darker or evil entity and you were under spiritual attack.

Inna Segal (42:07.314)
Absolutely, 100%. Yeah.

Dr. McFillin (42:08.413)
Okay. Yeah, that's, I've heard these situations before. I generally think someone is attacked, can be attacked spiritually when there's something that's ahead of them that maybe they're trying to prevent. And given what your life has become, I just was curious if maybe that was the purpose of it.

Inna Segal (42:29.798)
I would say a hundred percent. I never connected it quite like that. But I would say that that was the deepest moment of me going just because someone uses the word spiritual doesn't mean that it's good. Doesn't mean that it's healthy. Doesn't mean that it actually is, you know, coming from the light, even if they call themselves that. And that there are forces

that are very dark in, you know, in this world, including the fact that for many, many years, I thought to myself that, you know, some, when somebody behaves in a very dark way, it's because of trauma until I had, you know, married somebody, not the one, the person that I'm talking about, but my second husband was a narcissist and

I don't use that word like throwing it out. This is, mean, this person was, wrote a book about himself being a psychopath and actually went and spent $1,000 to get diagnosed as a psychopath. So, you know, we're not talking about someone that I'm just throwing a name at it. And even when he was telling me this,

I was so naive in that like, no, people are good. They become bad or have bad behaviors because of trauma. That changed once I really started to delve into what is that personality disorder. And there's obviously so many layers to it. And I realized, you know what?

There's so much more to things than we actually understand. And one of the things that makes husband would say is he'd say he was born evil in a sense that even as a child, he would take animals and cut them up and enjoy it. Like actually have get pleasure out of them screaming and hurting and then force his brother to watch.

Inna Segal (44:48.08)
you know, his brother who was a lot younger than him. And this is something he would do when he was eight years old and that he gained pleasure from hurting people. And, you know, and, and you just kind of go, no, I don't think, I don't think you develop this from trauma because, you know, you and I, Roger have worked with, you know, a lot of people with trauma and they don't do those types of things, right? Like,

Dr. McFillin (44:57.813)
Yeah, that's sociotropic.

Inna Segal (45:19.461)
It's more.

Dr. McFillin (45:21.139)
Yeah, let's I am interested in the spiritual realm and energy and you know how that affects human behavior and emotion. So that's like an important piece to this conversation today. But you want to get to your current work and the things that you have learned. It's almost like you had this ability for like remote viewing like as as an as a medical intuitive this ability to feel what might be wrong, but also to take your consciousness.

and enter it into the body to see what is going on. Is that an accurate way to reflect what you are doing and how were you able to develop that skill?

Inna Segal (46:00.466)
Absolutely. It was really interesting for me because when I first kind of connected to it in terms of the world that I was in, the only person who described it in actually the same way as I fully experienced it was Caroline Mace.

and she talked about her, know, she was kind of like the known medical intuitive and she'd worked with doctors. And I remember actually interviewed her and reached out to her at the time because I had not really been in that world in a way where I knew others or of others who could do that type of work or who could see things in the same way.

And what I found was that for me, was originally, because I didn't know how to refine the ability, it was just essentially through practice and vigilance and thinking to myself constantly, if I can scan and tune into somebody and tell myself, because I'm skeptic, I'm a real skeptic, and I've had like,

as I shared some pretty awful experiences, the last thing I wanted was to make things up for anybody, anything. And so I would, for the first several years, it was like a constant self testing where I'd go, you know, I would meet a person originally it was friends, or friends, you know, people that like friends of my husband at the time or people.

that I would meet like in an acting class or in a class for writing and who I knew nothing about in terms of their physical health or emotional health. weren't people I knew much about. And I would ask them if that would be an option and I would scan them and start telling them their story and they would go, my God, that, yeah.

Inna Segal (48:23.09)
like, wow, yes, I have pain in my foot or I have pain in my, in this area or that area. And sometimes I was in a yoga class and I could see things that were going on for the person. And because I was very young, I would tell them and I would get slapped by certain people who were like, hey, how dare you? And I learned how to, you know,

ask for permission to share things, but I could, you know, I had experiences where I could look at a pamphlet and see a person's picture and know what health conditions they had or, and how they got there. And so, you know, it was this experience. Sometimes I'd cross the road and I know things. I had to definitely learn how to

tune in only when I want to because it was driving me to insanity and how to hold that. So it was almost like I have this literally an eye in my, you know, where people say you have your third eye and it's like, I would have to work on it closing when I wasn't needing it and then opening it and.

and really allowing it to expand and do this scanning when it was appropriate to do so. And again, that took some time. I'm gonna say eventually, eventually when I was in my early thirties, had, you know, by that stage, most of the stuff that I'd learned that was spiritually was either from the Eastern perspective.

or still had some kind of part of the new age world because I didn't know where to look outside of it. And then I was having this very, very strong sense that there is much more to it than what I'm experiencing and seeing and that there's knowledge beyond anything that is easy to find and easily accessible. And so as I...

Inna Segal (50:38.5)
internally was looking for it and asking, show me something that is deeper, that is, that has science to it in a way, but not just materialistic science, because I am so logical and in detail. I don't like things that have, that are generalized. And so I was actually taken to the work of Rudolf Sienaar, which I don't know if you're familiar with him.

Rudolf Siner lived 100 years ago or died 100 years ago. And he, he was a scientist and a clairvoyant at the same time, who was able to change everything from medicine. So he looked at the way medicine was and because he could see into the body, you know, to degrees that I even can't, you know, like

imagine I'm like a child, baby compared to what he could do. And he because he understood the body and understood the medicine of the time. He made so many predictions that are only being discovered now in terms of medicine, in terms of homeopathy. He changed farming to from, you know, we have organic farming he

change it to biodynamic, which is how to have farming with the spiritual forces and all the nutrients from the moon and the sun and all of the elements of nature. he was able to look at religious texts like the Bible, like Bhagavad Gita, like Torah, and you know,

bring wisdom to what was in it and what it was really about. And he, you know, essentially explained why we're here and what based on these really sacred books and what they, you know, what they have in them, what were what life's really about and where it came from, from his incredible capacities, he he's just, yeah.

Dr. McFillin (52:59.543)
Can you state his name again and spell it for us?

Inna Segal (52:59.556)
Absolutely incredible.

Yeah, Rudolf Steiner and he, yeah, Rudolf Steiner and his work just, it's not for the faint hearted I'm gonna say, but his work was what really made me understand also about how I had my ability and what I actually needed to really do to refine. And he,

Dr. McFillin (53:07.627)
Rudolph Steiner?

Inna Segal (53:32.742)
He wrote about ancient exercises that were done in mystery schools by people who awakened their capacities so that those capacities would essentially be refined and not become dark and not make you sick. And it was one of the things that he spoke about that made me pay attention. He said that people who had abilities like my own but did not work on self refinement in terms of

know, spiritual exercises for it would either become very angry, would start to get really bad headaches, would get very sick. And I started, by that stage, I was looking around and I'm still listening a lot to Caroline Mase. And she was talking about this constantly that she had horrendous headaches. You know, sometimes as she spoke, there was aggression that came through and

And many other people that I was looking at at the time and I was starting to feel, starting to get headaches myself. I was starting to feel this anger coming out of myself and I was thinking to myself, my God, this is the time to do something about it. And it's kind of like to me, if somebody is born with an ability to play the piano, right? And they play the piano beautifully because that's...

the capacity they have, but we don't say to them, you don't need a piano teacher. We say, hey, like you are talented at five, more talented maybe than people who've been learning this for 40 years, but you still need a teacher to teach you how to do this. You know, all we're seeing is, but when it comes to spirituality, we're like, I've opened this ability now I have it. We don't have this kind of.

hey, you need to refine. And I can tell you, I did those exercises religiously for daily for five years. And as I was doing them, I could tell an internal transformation was happening to me. It was like my soul didn't have colors before I had done it.

Inna Segal (55:57.478)
And then all of a sudden the most vibrant colors awakened inside of me. And when I would tune into people, was tuning in on levels that had layers as opposed to kind of like, know, very two-dimensional. It went into like dimensions that I couldn't even explain to people because they were difficult to find words.

to explain and accept that I felt an aliveness that awakened inside of me that I didn't know could exist before this.

Dr. McFillin (56:37.74)
I'm a very practical person as well. And I think we want to turn some of your knowings into kind of practical strategies or ways of living for people. I guess I want to know a few things. I want to know what are you seeing most frequently about kind of root causes of suffering and disease and what people are doing to heal and what kind of just advice can you provide if people want it to really live well, have the highest quality of life

possible for the highest potentials of their soul. What would you suggest? Because you've actually you've learned so much over the past 25 years. Share with us the knowledge that you've been able to gain.

Inna Segal (57:28.828)
feel like, you know, if we had to use the word root cause and I'm I just change that word to foundation, where like what what was the foundation that things were built on? Because I feel like sometimes when we use the word root cause people think that that's the only area they need to go to is where it started and then that's it that's enough. And that's not what I'm seeing at all. What I see is that

We need to understand our life story from the perspective of the soul and what is the soul here to learn. And the moment we start to get those insights, that's the moment healing occurs and we start to align to the journey knowing that I think it's really, really vital for people to understand because

in a materialistic society with movies in particular and TV shows, we're always showing things that, you know, once you fall in love, everything's perfect and you just need to fall in love and that's what it is. you know, and it's like, life doesn't work like that. I feel like when people can see their health conditions as wake up calls, as

an opportunity to go really deep within and to start to explore. And that exploration may go to, okay, you know, maybe I was abused as a child and this is where this comes from, or maybe I wasn't even abused, but there were things that happened in my childhood where the developmental stages of a child that are really, really vital for

people to go through to be healthy were not healthy. know, how your parents were, how the environment was not healthy. And so you absorb that energy and became sick. And I think step one is to not blame any, this is not blaming yourself. when, often when people say, well, how can I take responsibility for something I didn't do? And it's like, well, healing is actually about you saying,

Inna Segal (59:56.078)
If I can see the links of my whole life story of how I went from where from the beginning of my life to where I am now and what are the lessons that keep coming up? What are the challenges? What were the difficulties? And am I actually listening and seeing them and overcoming them or am I not? So like for me,

the biggest thing in my life has been about courage. But I could see it from victimhood, from the victimhood of my family and everything that happened to my grandparents, to my parents, to, most people in my generation have been bullied. So like I was bullied, my mom was bullied for a different reason. My grandparents were bullied for a different reason.

you know, and heard, and I could see that as a victim and as, okay, well that led to digestive issues in everybody in the family. Or I can go, okay, that's what happened. What can I do? What is digestive issues about? Right? And so like, what does the digestive system do? It takes food and assimilates. It takes experiences and assimilates them. So.

then it becomes, well, did they learn from their experience or did they suppress it? They suppressed it. My opportunity is to take every experience on a daily basis and to gain wisdom from it and then to act courageously from it as opposed to run away and hide or push it away. And I feel like when people can see firstly, where in the body is this issue?

Right? Because where in the body it is tells you a whole story. Right? So if it's in the reproductive system, it's going to be to do with your sexuality and your sense of self around sexuality and something that happened to you. And it could have been sexual or it could have been like, I've been, I've worked with a lot of men with prostate problems, for instance. So, and because of where the prostate is,

Inna Segal (01:02:20.594)
it actually connects to a time period when you break the body down and you start to really understand the wisdom of it. And it's often connected to a time period of around like, let's say 13 to, between 13 and 21. And what happened in that time period. And it could be that this boy has been abused.

Or it could be that he was really deeply put down by his dad, or it could be that his mother left. And so every story is uniquely your own, but these are the stories that are stored in this part of the body from my experience. Again, I'm just choosing three, but these are the three major ones that show up. it's like, you can have...

50 years when nothing shows up for you physically and you just suppress and suppress and think everything's okay. And then when you're in your 60s, there could be this explosion of cancer or disease inside that part of the body. Because the body has been made in a way where we can push and suppress so many things. And people think, well, I'm 50 and my health is fine, or I'm 60 and I'm okay.

And it's like, you don't know when it's going to explode because as you get older, your physical body obviously becomes weakened in different areas, your life force. I'm gonna say it from the perspective of the life force, you don't have the same access to it unless you really, really, really work on yourself. But let's just be honest here, as you get older,

you cannot hold things down, I'm gonna say, as much as you could before. Like women, as they get into perimenopause and monopmenopause, they cannot push down the stuff that they could push down prior to that. And so hormonal issues, anxiety, crazy stuff starts to show up because it's everything that you haven't dealt with.

Inna Segal (01:04:31.726)
Now, it also happens hormonally for men. We see that in mid-40s. Part of this is that we don't understand seven-year cycles and that we've heard that the body changes completely within seven years physically, but we don't understand psychological seven-year cycles, that you're constantly revisiting and reliving things that you haven't dealt with, that the wisdom of your body and soul is that

If you haven't dealt with something when you were, I don't know, five, because you couldn't, and it was really traumatic. And if I can give an example, there was a man who actually I was doing a podcast with, who was interviewing me and we were talking about, he said that when he was three, right, three years old, his father lost him. And for three weeks, he was with someone else who looked after him while his parents couldn't find him. That...

created an experience of total abandonment inside of him. When he was a teenager, he became explosive, angry because he didn't know how to express, hey, I have a fear now. I have an absolute fear of being abandoned and rejected. And the moment he said he would sniff rejection or abandonment,

the only way he could deal with it was to scream and shout and become angry and almost violent because then people would be in shock and they wouldn't leave immediately even though then they would be scared of him. And that went into his relationships, his experience of being a father until he had a recognition, and this is where I wanna link a few things, the recognition that

when he was three, this is what happened. And his three-year-old self, and I call it archetype, and I do a lot of kind of archetype of work with people coming from what Jung opened the door for us with, that the archetype of the inner child of the three-year-old was in trauma, not safe, absolute fear and anxiety of being abandoned. But we cannot just work, and I spoke to him about this,

Inna Segal (01:06:58.182)
with the three-year-old child and go, if I work with this part, everything's fine, because there was also the teenage self. There was also the young male adult self that was created from the child, but still was there that caused harm and damage, that carries guilt and anger in a different way than the child that's been abandoned. And so when we are willing to go, you know what?

This is a journey to learn about, to heal is to know myself. And this is a journey that's not a one minute experience. This is a journey of me knowing myself, reclaiming parts of myself and loving myself. And then I heal. And even when I have healed, I am going to have challenges because that's what life is.

Dr. McFillin (01:07:53.732)
Yeah, so you know, I think people do get confused. They say, well, what does that mean to to acknowledge this or to work through something like what what does that mean? Because there's all these different ways that we've created in modern society to support that notion like there's psychoanalysis and there's different therapies and then there's faith and other healing traditions like what does that actually mean to

If you were abandoned at five, what do you actually have to do?

Inna Segal (01:08:25.882)
If you were sorry, I missed that part. Okay, yeah.

Dr. McFillin (01:08:27.321)
If you were abandoned at age five, right? And it occurs at a time where you couldn't really emotionally process it, what does that actually mean to heal something like?

Inna Segal (01:08:37.97)
So like you said, there's so many different perspectives. From my perspective, when I work with somebody, I want the least amount of re-traumatization as possible. And I wanna know exactly what is being held in that part of themselves and how it shows up as a perspective on life. In other words, how they view life and everything in their life based on this.

So what I do in my work is I will guide a person back, let's say, not to necessarily their three-year-old self, but to the archetype that was created from the three-year-old self. they, cause people will say, I don't remember what happened when I was three. Of course you don't mostly, but if...

you know, if we guide a person and obviously there's preparation before that for different people and that preparation could be working with their nervous system person, making sure their nervous system is in a healthy, calm place. And there also sense of self can handle looking at this. So, you know, there are many steps before this, but essentially, the idea is to become aware that

that whatever happened to you then became a part of you. And it became a part of you, like you were a child of three, there's still a three year old child inside of you. But now that child is dominant, it's dominating and it's seeing, it has a perspective. And what healing and transformation is about is to discover that perspective.

not based on memory, I'm going to say, but based on you actually becoming conscious of, okay, if we were to create an archetype of this child, how would it look to you? How would it appear? Would it be sitting or standing? it be, because internally we know how things feel. So would it be, you know, would there be part of their body that looked damaged?

Inna Segal (01:10:59.27)
You know, I've seen or worked with people who have said, it's almost like my heart is falling out of my chest. So again, it is a metaphoric archetypal aspect that people recognize within themselves. That's again, not based on memory. There might be memories there, but it's not based on memory. It's based on how has this part of me been constructed and what does it still believe?

what did it take on and as an adult self, so then we have the self that is wise. And again, there is me who's living now and there is what have I learned from life experiences, right? And if there was a wise part of me that was learning, because there's parts of me that are stuck and are not learning, but there are parts that have learned and have wisdom. If I could,

also grow that part with through every experience. And now that parental type wise part, and maybe I didn't have a wise parent, but I have to become that. maybe as you know, and again, this takes time and layers, this wise part and maybe it's a divine part. Maybe we're open to, you know, we have studied

know, spirituality and we're open to it being Christ or Jesus or Buddha or Moses or whoever you relate to that you invite into your healing experience because you admire these beings and they have spiritual energy and wisdom or maybe you do it all and you have your own wisdom and you invite the spiritual being and then you

work with the part that got stuck and you help it. You help it to see new perspectives. You bring safety to it. You bring kindness to it. You reclaim it and you say, I know you didn't feel safe and you couldn't have felt safe when you were three and your parents left and you couldn't find them. But I am going to now look after you.

Inna Segal (01:13:22.45)
And I'm so sorry for what happened and I'm going to keep you safe. And you start to create a relationship with that stuck, sauntered part of you. And you start to work with that in terms of what are your needs? How can I show you that, that, that you're safe? What can I do? You know, what can, you know, what do you need to feel this connection with me? So there's, it's, it's a journey of

essentially reclaiming all the stuck, stunted parts of you that have been pushed away that maybe you didn't, you forgot exists, exist. And then as you reclaim through whatever pathway that, you know, works for you through, you know, like either a teacher or a guide or a psychologist or a counselor, whoever you work with.

that has some understanding or deep understanding of what it really means to bring homeless back to yourself.

Dr. McFillin (01:14:27.92)
Gives us a lot to think about. mean, I think the clear take home message is that we're not, we're understanding why people are sick and suffering or in pain. The way that our modern medical system has evolved has really denied all these important aspects. And we have to really be able to understand us as a, as a soul in a body for a human experience. And in that human experience,

We have been exposed to traumas, energetic attacks, and there's a way to facilitate healing in the here and now. And that is to allow that energy to be understood and to be moved, to heal in real time, to allow everything that happens to us to be information to improve our lives, not to harm us. And this is my greatest concern. If you want to simplify my message in the mental health industrial complex,

is that we are numbing the signals. We are taking mind and mood altering drugs that numb the actual symptoms and sedate the individual and repress the energies that have to be experienced, felt and expressed for transformation. It is there for us. It is not happening to us. It is there for us. I really am grateful for.

your work and for explaining this today. I mean, there's so much more I think about what a medical intuitive can provide us and I want to have more conversations like this. But where can people discover you, your work and your book?

Inna Segal (01:16:05.234)
So the best way is to go to innaseagel.com, which is I double N A S E G A L.com. And what I actually decided to do in the last few years is I wanna give people, I wanna take away excuses from people to go within and start to ask those questions. Like you said, taking them out of the medical system and actually saying,

hey, there are things that I can personally do. I can tune into my body and that's probably the first step is to awaken the body, then to tune into it, then to learn to understand the messages through asking particular specific questions. And later on we get to archetypes. I kind of skipped a few steps when I was explaining this mainly because I'm so passionate about it. But,

there is a journey. And so what I've done is I've been doing these master classes that cost a lot of money for me to do, but I want to give people to give them for free for now to people where the master class can go between, you know, three and four hours. It's kind of like a workshop where you were in each one. I talk about, you know, starting from the body and

all the different parts of the body and the wisdom that they have and why they have that to looking at the systems of the body and how they give us wisdom and messages, you know, to actually doing these exercises. So in every masterclass, there's at least two or three exercises that people get to experience. And so it's vital. Step one to healing is to recognize that you need it and to give yourself time to do it. And

you know, then journal it and start to gain wisdom from it. So I have master classes around your health and physical body, ones around archetypes and your emotions and emotional sickness and trauma. I have ones around the soul journey and the soul's purpose in a child and so on. And I really encourage people to, when you go to the website, go to that section, you know,

Inna Segal (01:18:23.16)
If you would like to get my book, it's available, you know, in so many, on so many online platforms as well. I have several books as well, besides the secret language of your body, but that's a great one to start with because essentially it gives you a lot of exercises and places where you can tune into your body and start to start from step one, understanding that this physical body meets your soul has incredible, incredible wisdom inside of it. But I really encourage people.

give yourself time to start the journey and sign up and, you know, do the processes and see how much you have inside and how you transform. I've had people who had so many health conditions and pain who've said to me, my God, I can't believe how deep I went into this masterclass and I can see my pain leaving and feel it leaving. I'm gonna now work on it myself.

Dr. McFillin (01:19:23.79)
Ina Segal, thank you for a radically genuine conversation.

Inna Segal (01:19:28.732)
Thank you so much.

Creators and Guests

Dr. Roger McFillin
Host
Dr. Roger McFillin
Dr. Roger McFillin is a Clinical Psychologist, Board Certified in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology. He is the founder of the Conscious Clinician Collective and Executive Director at the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health.
214. When the Body Holds What the Mind Can't with Inna Segal
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