#29: Finding Yourself When You Have It All But Missing Something (With Sebastian Wendeus)
Episode Shownotes
Are you feeling lost in life, even though people think you have it all?
Do you feel like something key is missing, but you can’t put your finger on it?
These next 90 minutes could change everything for you. Sebastian Wendus is a spiritual teacher, transformational coach, business consultant, and our guest on this weeks episode.
Sebastian helps high-performing, highly sensitive entrepreneurs, leaders, and creators reclaim deep self-ownership. Together, we deep dive into the journey of inner work, embodiment and methodologies of transformation. He also guides you through a beautiful meditation and discusses the importance of mindfulness in uncovering the true self.
"Our inner world is constantly reflected in our outer world. If we want to change our circumstances, we must first change ourselves."
Are you ready to uncover what you’re really here to achieve?
Doing the Inner Work
One of the key takeaways from this conversation is the importance of doing the inner work. Sebastian shares his personal journey of overcoming the challenges of being on this path and discusses what it means to do the inner work. He explains that doing the inner work means uncovering and embracing who you truly are. This involves understanding your beliefs, patterns, and emotions, and learning how to work with them in a way that is authentic and true to yourself.
Embodiment
Another concept that we dive into is embodiment. Sebastian helps us understand what it actually means to feel fully embodied. He explains that embodiment involves being fully present in your body and connecting with your emotions, sensations, and experiences. Through embodiment practices, you can learn to be more grounded, centered, and connected with yourself.
The Realization Process
Sebastian also shares some of the methodologies he uses for accelerating transformation, including the realization process. This process can help individuals heal from childhood traumas and reclaim parts of themselves that may have been lost or suppressed. By working with the realization process, you can learn to access deeper parts of yourself and integrate them into your life in a way that is empowering and transformative.
Mindfulness
Throughout the episode, Sebastian emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in uncovering the true self. Through guided meditations and practices, you can learn to cultivate mindfulness and awareness of your thoughts, emotions, and experiences. This can help you to live a more authentic and fulfilling life, and to connect more deeply with yourself and with others.
Overall, this episode is a powerful exploration of the journey of self-discovery and inner work. Sebastian Wendeus offers insights and practices that can help you to uncover the true self, and to live a more authentic and fulfilling life. Whether you are a high-performing entrepreneur, leader, or creator, or simply someone who is looking to deepen your connection with yourself, this episode offers valuable guidance and inspiration.
Sebastian Wendeus
✨ Follow Sebastian at https://www.instagram.com/sebastianwendeus/
💜 Learn more about him at www.sebastianwendeus.com
🌞 Let’s continue the conversation https://www.instagram.com/emilypeilan/
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Episode Transcript
Emily Peilan: Hello. Hello my beautiful friend and welcome back to another episode of the Free Wild Souls Podcast. Today we are joined by a very special guest, Sebastian, who is a spiritual teacher, transformational coach, and business consultant. So I personally had the pleasure of meeting Sebastian through a mastermind called Untapped Mastery, and through a series of coaching calls and group calls, I really got to know his story better and was deeply inspired by his transformation and just the work that he does.
He works with high performing, highly sensitive entrepreneurs, leaders and creators, helping them reclaim deep self ownership so that they can start playing full out in both life and business. Sebastian has such an interesting story, and his grounded presence and unique energy just really captivates your attention when he speaks.
And so in this episode, we dive into the journey of self discovery and inner work, exploring what it means to do the inner work and how to get there. In the first part of this episode, we dive into Sebastian's personal journey, how he got to where he is today, the challenges that he faced in overcoming a lot of the uncomfort abilities of being on this journey.
We also take a break halfway through to do an embodiment practice where Sebastian guides us through a beautiful meditation that you'll love. We discuss the concept of embodiment as well, because it's a term that's so used, so wildly and thrown around in a fluffy way, so we dive into what it actually means to feel fully embodied.
We also touch on the methodologies that Sebastian uses for accelerating transformation. The one that he uses a lot is the realization process and how it can help individuals heal from childhood traumas and reclaim parts of themselves. I'm so excited for you to tune into this episode and explore the world of self-discovery and inner work.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation. I'll see you on the other side.
When I heard your story and just had a conversation with you, what really struck me was just how grounded you are in yourself and how self assured you are. And your energy is just so calming and when he speaks, like everyone's like just listening and Yeah. So I'm just really excited to dive into your story and share more of that as well.
So, Celestin, tell us a little bit about your journey to healing and self-discovery. I know it's been almost two decades of this, right? When did you start and what led you to that curiosity of that, of discovering yourself more?
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. Yeah. It's been a long, it's been a long road with many twists and turns.
It started 19 years ago when I was 16 years old. And I had no idea. I had no, I couldn't understand then what was happening to me. But what happened, what I was experiencing was that my thinking mind was spiraling out of control in a way that was m. I would say main mania, like manic. It was just like I couldn't, it worked when I was focusing on something.
If I was participating in sports in school. It just worked great. As soon as I closed my eyes, it was just a wild world in there and I just, I couldn't explain why it was happening and it was painful and I was like, I can't live like this. I have to find a way out. Do
Emily Peilan: you think that most people experience that or some people experience that?
Because I also know people who like spiral out of control and when they go to sleep at night, they just can't sleep. They need to something themselves to sleep. Was that kind of what it was like for
Sebastian Wendeus: you? Yeah, for me it was like, I knew I, my, so my first strategy was to outrun myself. Oh. So I just doubled down on school.
I was pretty good in school. I doubled down on ice hockey and my purpose was, What I tried to do was exhaust myself to the level that when I went to sleep, when I went to bed . I would be so tired that I fell asleep right away. I know. Because I knew that if I didn't, my brain was gonna take me for a two hour ride and I, again, I had no idea what was going on.
I was like, I don't know why it's happening, and I had no escape out of it. Wow. So that was the frustration. That was the desperation that started my journey. .
Emily Peilan: And so where, what were some of the things that you first started like exploring
Sebastian Wendeus: so first of all, I looked around, I looked at my parents.
I looked at every adult I knew and I was like, they don't get it. Like they, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I know that they haven't found it either. Something in me just knew that, and most people haven't found what I was looking for. So, No real critique about them, but something in me knew that.
Emily Peilan: Did you know what you were looking for back then, or was it just like you just knew you didn't wanna be here, but you didn't know exactly that you would be where you are now?
Sebastian Wendeus: So I didn't know what it would feel or look like. Okay. I just had this intuition that somehow there would be a way to, for me to be comfortable in my own skin, to know who I am and to be joyful in my own being.
Some part of me knew that would be possible. . And but I didn't know what that would feel like because I had not, I didn't have access to that experience at that point.
Emily Peilan: Of course. And so you went through kind of school, university. And throughout, you know, even your career, were you actively just seeking and working on yourself alongside that?
Yeah. What was that journey like for you moving through life and at the same time moving through that
Sebastian Wendeus: journey? So it's a pretty extreme journey. So what happened to me was that I was 16, I went to the internet. I was like, how do you change yourself? How do you change your mind? How do you, and I found this in one forum.
I found this person saying, you can change anything about yourself. Just use N L P, no linguistic programming, use Tony Robbins, just, big life coach. Yeah. Programs, personal power too. I was like, great. So I downloaded that and I started to use all the techniques in it, like to change. And N L P is a very, do you know, About that.
Emily Peilan: I do, I know people who are coaches and use that method, but just for the people who dunno what NLP is, maybe just dive into a little bit, like, why does it work? Does it really work for everybody? Yeah. What is it?
Sebastian Wendeus: So it's basically a toolbox of a lot of different practices. So NLP is like an umbrella term for a lot of different practices that are very like, direct.
They're meant to be like, you change this, you don't necessarily know why it's working, but it's working. . So you can, it's, there are modalities for changing your mindsets and your beliefs. There's mo modalities for changing your kind of like your habitual responses to situations and people. . And it's pretty cool.
Emily Peilan: Is it a meditation, is it like guided or is it a series of questions or what is that
Sebastian Wendeus: like? It's a big umbrella. It's a lot of things in it. A lot of
Emily Peilan: things. Okay. So
Sebastian Wendeus: what I did, I started to work a lot on like that self-image things. . My thought patterns, my emotional patterns, and I change, I started to years like, oh, I don't like this way.
My mind works. I'm going to change that to something else. The problem was that I didn't have any connection with myself. I was fragmented for myself. . And I was thinking, okay, what Turner Robbins says sounds better to my, better than my current thinking. So I'm just gonna borrow that for now. But I went all in on this.
I spent one or two hours per day doing this work on myself, and I felt better and better because I was let, I was shipping away on the negative self-talk and moving. To wear something else. The problem, however, was that two or three years later, I woke up one day and I felt totally different. I was a different person in a way, but I didn't feel like myself.
I felt like a clone of Tony Robbins because I had implemented all of his stuff. Yep. From like a head level instead of uncovering what's actually true in me. Ooh,
Emily Peilan: that's deep. Wow. And then so what was your thought process after that? And you are like, okay, so now the next step is I need to uncover what's in me.
Right.
Sebastian Wendeus: So it was horrible because I thought I was on the highway to everything that was meant to everything you needed in life. I was rocking, I was. I'm gonna be successful in this. I feel successful. I feel, I just thought I was running, I had found the highway. And then waking up and be like, fuck, I'm lost.
Like this road didn't lead home and I don't know. Now I don't know the road, so now I'm lost again. So that was a tough moment. I was like 21. Wow. And but I think the most important thing that these practices told me, because it was my first glimpse into spirituality. One day when I was doing these practices where I was changing my thinking, this thought arise.
Wait a minute, if I can change my thinking, mind who is the, who is doing the changing? Because if I can change my thoughts, I'm not my thoughts cuz something is changing the thoughts. And I was like, oh yeah, there's gotta be a way out of this person of my thoughts. It's gotta be more to me than just the thinking mind that I was trapped in at the moment.
.
Emily Peilan: . Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. I think the first book I read, the Untethered Soul was like that first time I like really dove into that concept of who are you really? And and so expand on that a little bit. So where did that take you? Who was the one changing your thoughts then?
Sebastian Wendeus: So when I was 21, I was in a way still in suffering. I took my first coaching training, I tried to find more tools in that world. I was studying psychology at the university. And I didn't really, it didn't really speak to me. I felt like most of what they were teaching us was about, fragmentation.
Like, this is a diagnosis, this is for this. If a person is like this, that means that they're like this. Yeah. And it didn't really speak to me. . But in one of all the books I read, there was this one sentence and it had, I don't remember exactly, but it had three words. There was happiness, flow, and mindfulness.
And I read it and I was like, happiness and flow. That sounds about what I'm looking for. Like, what the fuck is mindfulness? This is 14 years ago. And people did, it was a totally different world. Nobody was speaking about mindfulness and meditations the way we do now. Yeah. Yeah. So I went online again, found this American teacher, John Kain, and listened to one of his talks and his guided practices.
And I just signed up for an eight week course with guided practices. And for whatever reason, just three weeks in, I was laying on my floor in my apartment and something just dissolved. I just had this experience of being home in myself with outside of time and space. That's what it felt like.
And it was a glimpse and it was like somebody lifting lifted me up from having been lost in the forest and yes, but there is something that feels like home and here's a road. So I was like,
Emily Peilan: you experienced something like that. Right?
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. That was the first glimpse. . And I knew when I experienced it that it was just a glimpse.
I knew that my life was not set up for me to stay in that at that time. . So I got really interested in mindfulness, in meditations, in Sana meditation, this 10 day silent retreats. Yeah. So I went for four of those. Four of those. Yeah. Then I thought, okay, meditation.
This is the best tool I have. . This seems to be the most important thing for me. I'm just gonna meditate as much as I can. Nice.
Emily Peilan: Can we expand on the meditation? So this is interesting with the person, a lot of people, myself included, would be like, what, 10 days without speaking, 10 days in your head.
And there are so many people who are afraid to be in their head with their thoughts and meditation to them. It's either A, boring or b scary. And was that the same for you? Like how did you come to find meditation? Because for me it was a journey of 10 years actually, from the time I was introduced to meditation, falling asleep in every single meditation.
And it took me only until about last year that I felt it. I was like, I get it now and now, like I have to meditate every day. I just, I love it. It's like an oasis for me. But for the people who are not there yet or just don't really understand how to meditate properly what was that journey for you to like, discover meditation in the sense that brought you peace?
Sebastian Wendeus: . Well, the interesting thing is that I actually might not even recommend the tools of what I was doing. If people want to go to the 10 day Vipasana, they can do it. . I think there are way more effective methods than wipa that doesn't take as much time or effort, and that actually brings us to what we are looking for.
. And I know people who have done Wipa for 20 years and they haven't beat the benefits they thought they would get from it. Interesting. Okay. So I'm I'm almost walk, always walking, going f all in on the best tools I have until I found a better tool. That's been my journey. Of course.
So at this stage, these are the best tools I had. Yeah. As I, I'm just gonna work with these tools. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, that meant I started to meditate 10 hours per day every day for two and a half years. You are joking. No, between the age of 21 and 23 and a half. Something like that. I was going to university to get my study loan.
I took easy courses that I can like study for the exam, like one or two days so I can get my money. . And the rest of the time I meditated. What
Emily Peilan: did you what comes up for you when you are meditating for so long at a certain point? Do you not get bored or fall asleep or something?
Sebastian Wendeus: Those things too?
I think the hunger for me, I had no intention of meditating for that long. Oh, okay. So I had, I've had this experience for the first time in my life that felt like home. I was like, I can, I can't believe it. There is such a thing. I was right. And then the meditation seemed to be like the way that brought me there.
So then I'm like, okay, I guess I just gonna ship along and on that path and. And get back there in three, three weeks or a month. . I always thought I was only three weeks away from stabilizing in that I had no intention of going as long. I was just keep on going because it, it did help me.
It helped still me, still my active mind. It helped me to come more into my body. It helped me bring the energy from out of my head and into my body and make me more balanced. So that for sure helped. I think there are better way, much more efficient way to do it than I did it. Yeah. But I did not know about them, so that's what I went with.
Emily Peilan: So then, at some point you must have decided, okay, maybe there's a better way. What was the next experiment or discovery for you?
Sebastian Wendeus: . So what happened when I was around 25 was that I was I'm feeling, I felt good. So it helped me still in my mind, but it also changed the content of my thinking spontaneously and some kind of upgrade of my thinking happened just by me doing this meditations and being in my body.
. So when I was 24, 25, I felt, oh, I only, I don't need to do this as much. I can do four hours, two hours, one hour a day, sometimes not meditate at all. Then it's still was sta pretty stable with me. So I was like, all right, what's next? I've now been so much inward, I want to play in the world. Like I want to take this into the business world.
I could take myself into the business world. Yeah.
Emily Peilan: And was that started your, the with, with the company in Sweden now and
Sebastian Wendeus: yeah. Yeah. So that was the next kind of like journey. I started working with this, then unknown Swedish IT and management consulting company. And I didn't work as a consultant, but I work on the business side.
So I was hiring and building the Goldenberg office and doing sales for the goldenberg office, building the organization, and growing the organization. Amazing. So I, I started with that and then I made a, ended up making a rocket carrier within this company. And this company itself was on a rock, a rocket ship, which is now like one of the most successful companies in Sweden.
Emily Peilan: And what were you, and so what was your, you were a consultant, right? But you were working mostly with people and with the leaders of the company. .
Sebastian Wendeus: So I started as a salesperson, just a second salesperson in like the local office in Goldenburg. So good. And I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know anything about selling consulting services.
I just thought, okay, I'll love to create improvements. It seems to be where everything is happening, there's gonna be opportunities. And I found this company that seemed to have aligned values with me, and I was thinking, that's important. Cause that means that I can show up as I am . And act out who I am.
And that will be in alignment with the company I'm working for. So I signed with the company, I went to the headquarter, which was not in Goldenberg, and then at the headquarter I was having the marketing manager and the CEO e of the company sign me. And I signed with them and everything made sense. It's like, oh I see where you're going.
It all makes sense. And then I started working and I hadn't yet even sat my foot in the Gothenberg office. And when I came in I was like, oh, this is different. People here are different. Okay, what do I know? I didn't know anything. But it took me about six months to speak to ev all the customers in the region.
And I realized wha, what's going on? We have not hired the kind of consultants that the local customers want and what they want. We don't have like how am I gonna sell anything? So being like 25, I just escalated. I was like, I called the marketing manager and I was like, I get the overall thing with this company, but what the fuck are we doing in Goldenberg?
Don't get it. And he was like, ah, I don't know. Nobody's really focusing on Goldenberg. We have 14 offices running, you know? And I was like, but it's that doesn't sound good. Do you mind if we call up the CEO and have him in on this? I was like, yeah, please do. Cause I wanted to make money, I wanted to grow and I couldn't do it.
Yeah, yeah. And and the kind of like the CEO was like, oh, that doesn't sound good. Can you please put this like in a paper, like your thoughts? And it took a week to write like this nine pages document of this is what I see. Here are the five key areas. This is where we are, this is where we're going and here what we can, here's what we can do.
And they're like, okay, you're in let's, you're gonna co-run, you're gonna co-run the goldenberg office from here on. So we changed the leadership in the go in the go in Goldberg office. And it was really out of, to out of tune. It was like the black sheep of the family. It was not working. So me and my partner spent like one and a half year transforming everything, transforming the culture, transforming the sales process, transforming recruiting.
And we were from forming like the energy frequency and the vision, like getting people on board that things could be better than they were. Yeah. And I, for some reason, I just had this intuition that, and we were totally unknown at that point. Nobody knew about us. And I just had this feeling that I think we are gonna be the most successful company of this type in gothenberg in five years time.
For some reason, I just believed it. And leaders at the time sat me down and told me like, Sebastian, we're nothing special. You shouldn't be too excited. And I was like, what are you guys talking about? I see what we are right now, but I also see what we could be and where this company's going.
. And it took 18 months to transform. There were only 13 people in Koberg. Yeah. Took 18 months to transform it. And then when everything came together at the same time, We went from like 13 to 40 people in nine months, and from there on that office has gone to 200 people and become like the most successful IT consultant company in Goldenburg.
Emily Peilan: Crazy. And like for me, it's like I hear that story and I'm like, it's not about the strategies. It's not about, how much money or capital you have behind it. It's about the people, right? The people make the business. It's about also just having that vision and enrolling everyone in that.
And I think you definitely have that leadership style where you just are able to onboard people with your vision. And and so from there did you keep working for them and then you started traveling a little bit more, right? And you started working remotely as
Sebastian Wendeus: well? Yeah. Yeah. So what happened was basically I love creating transformations.
Yes. And then when the transformation is done, I get bored. So then I, we need to get in managers to, to keep going in the direction. Yeah. So what happened when we had reached 40 or 50 people and the Koberg office was like, I could see that it will, if we don't, some, if we don't, didn't fuck it up, it would just keep on going in the same direction.
. So I was like, okay, like what do I do? What do I do now? So I spoke with the ceo, I was like, Hey, I would love to have some more responsibility. Is there something else I can do on the side? And he was like, well, we have bought one company before. And that was went pretty good. And I see the transformation you have created.
I'm very impressed by the transformation you have done with the Gothenberg office. . And if you're interested, we would be open to buying a few more companies and integrate them into our, to our company. So that's what I moved into. So I went into merger and acquisitions, but very. Not for not a, in an Excel spreadsheet way, but very much like working with people, working with mindset, working with leaders.
Yeah. So we, I, yeah, I ended up buying three companies and transforming them and integrating them into this company. I'm
Emily Peilan: curious to just expand a little bit on like how does one work on the mindset of the leaders and, if you've just acquired a company, is there not a little bit of like resistance to that and yeah, just like how does one work with leaders to transform the mindset?
Sebastian Wendeus: So it's interesting. So we kept the leaders in the company that we bought. So this, the one, the people who were CEO and was running the company, we kept them in the company. . And so the one openness is that they had allowed themselves to buy They knew that they could not do it on their own.
If they tried doing it, if they would've been really successful on their own, they would not have sold their company. So there was an openness for them to be like, okay, we choose to, we want more of what this company was working for is having. Yeah. So that was already a kind of opener.
So they, and they knew that things are gonna change and that's like they wanted Yeah. That said, they're still human beings and they have their patterns and they have their way of doing things. Yeah. And so the first thing I always did was set a new vision. . And I had the benefit of saying look, we already have now 17 other offices.
This is the direct direction we are going in. You're coming along for the ride, so now let's update everything. This is the kind of customers we want. This is the kind of values we are standing for. This is what we are no longer doing. This is the kind of offices we should have where people feel like they can really feel proud of their workspace and all of that.
So I of course had the ability to implement a lot of things that we already knew was working. . And that gave a momentum where these leaders felt confident that what we created and implemented would work for them.
Emily Peilan: Amazing. And then, so do you feel like your career path and the work that you did with these companies and leaders, did that help you on your own in a journey as well?
And does that also contribute to what you are doing now and working one-on-one with people?
Sebastian Wendeus: It does. I think I've always, I think everything has been my inner journey. I just, I always love business because I love to create improvements and I also love freedom. Yeah. So for me it was like, okay, if I'm, if I can figure out a way to be valuable for other people, In a way where I'm still true to myself, then there is no, you know, the sky is the limit for how much money I can make or what impact I can have.
And I wanted those things to be able to have the lifestyle I wanted to live of freedom. And as you mentioned, I did create this lifestyle where as I was responsible for working with these companies, I was also allowed to travel for 75% of my time. That was like half a year after we had bought two companies.
And now I had already done like the bulk of the first batch of integration work. Yeah. And then I was like, ah, I only need to be here like once a month and then just be on the phone and on the email with these, cuz we already had the local leaders. I was like, instead of sitting in Colinburg I should be able to sit in Cape Town on a rooftop and do the same work.
Like, why not? Yeah. And somehow I was able to, long before Covid d. Negotiate that deal where I was able to travel for four to eight weeks, spend work from wherever I wanted in the world, come back for two weeks, have my meetings, and then head out somewhere else.
Emily Peilan: Beautiful, beautiful. But you were still working when you were away, right?
So, but like light kind of work, what was that balance like for you?
Sebastian Wendeus: Ready? I'm pretty engaged in what I do. So I was still in it. I was working my my, my hours and it was still living in me, but it was so much easier to have balance because let's say I was in Australia, that, which I'd never been in and every day I wanted to get work done.
Yeah. And then go and do something totally new and then I felt refreshed the day after. So it did support. But all of this has always been part of me wanting to be as much as I can be in my search in a way for like self realization.
Emily Peilan: Yeah. Beautiful. And so now obviously you no longer work for the company.
When did you quit the company? Why and what for?
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah, so this ended up being probably one of the best jobs in Sweden. They tailored this role for me. It gave me this lifestyle. I was making a lot of money, top 1% in Sweden, easy. And I loved it. It was not even it was not any conflict.
I loved it. And then after five and a half years, this feeling came well, the company grew from 130 employees to 850 by the time I left with no external money. So it, it became a different company. Yeah. And became more structured and I'm more entrepreneurial and it just felt a little bit more stiff and I could see that the person I was becoming, I was not really aligned with the person I would have to be to keep on doing the work and operating in that company.
. So I was like, okay, interest. I sat with the decision for five months, but I was like, I think I'm leaving. I think I'm leaving one of the best jobs in Sweden. And for no, like for one reason, like nothing happened. I just felt like it's time for something else and I don't know what it is.
Emily Peilan: Wow. That decision takes so much trust. No, because you are leaving something that you know is amazing and that you've had basically everything that you could have ever wanted. It's just perfect. And you're gonna let that go for the promise of nothing but uncertainty. I mean, not nothing, but you don't know what's going to come.
And I think that is often the hardest decisions to make. Is to let something go that feels unaligned, but not know where you're jumping to. Yeah.
Sebastian Wendeus: I think yes and no. Ooh. Because the thing is, I could always go back to a similar work and know I already knew what I could do. . And I knew the kind of money I could make.
So in my experience, the risk wasn't really that high. It was like, yeah, I have a, I have a year of runway of savings. If nothing else has come up, I'm, I guess I just go back from work for a similar company and do the same thing or whatever if I need to.
Emily Peilan: That's very true. Actually. There's, yes, you can always go back to where you were.
That's true. I suppose for me, in my head and some of the when I've made certain decisions like this, for me, I was like, there is no plan B. I'm not going back. That is not available for me. And so for me that was kind of like, that's not available, but true. You can always go back. And fine.
Sebastian Wendeus: I knew that I wouldn't, but I also gave myself that as plan B of like, yeah, I can always do something similar.
Emily Peilan: It's like a safety net, if you want to go back. And but then you didn't go back. What, so what happened then, between you deciding to leave this amazing job and where are you now?
Sebastian Wendeus: So I left four years ago. . And I kind of knew that I would be, I always had the intuition that I would be doing what I'm doing now, but I also was like, there is something that wasn't ripe yet and I didn't know what it was.
So I was like, huh. And I had found this work. So before I left, and I think it was part of the decision for me leaving, I had found this work, which is the most. It's called the realization process. . We have spoken about it a little bit. Yeah. And it's the most profound, real brilliant and simple refined inner work.
I have found it's a series of guided practices, and I found that five and a half years ago. And I found it in the most random way. I was at this conference, personal development in another area. I was trying to learn some things. And this guy told me like, you don't need anything of what they're teaching here.
I think you just need to go and meet my teacher, Judi Blackstone. . I was like, I don't know who that is. I looked at her homepage, I was like, I don't know. I'm not sure. But there was some, but something in him, he, there was something in his presence that I, something in me. Wanted, I just knew that he had found something that I had not yet found that I was looking for.
. So for that reason, I was like, okay, I'm still meditating a bit every day and she has guided practices. That's the work. So I was like, I might as well just start doing those practices. Yeah. So that was like five years ago, or five and a half years ago. And then one day I just was like, I think it's time for me to go and meet this woman in her seventies, Judith Blackstone, and see what this work is really about.
And that was, I met her the almost five years ago, the first time I went for five day workshop with her. . And after those five days, my highest knew that I had finally found a teacher in a method who could guide me all the way home to myself and explain why I wasn't already, because I al always wondered If this potential, if this is possible for human beings to be joyful and comfortable in our own skin and feel whole and connected, why does almost nobody experience it?
. And she explained it to me.
Emily Peilan: What did she say? Well,
Sebastian Wendeus: yeah. Well, yeah, that's,
Emily Peilan: Shall we go there long? It could be a long-winded answer, but to summarize what do you think is the reason why most people aren't there and why it's so hard? . Does it have to be hard even, is the question?
Sebastian Wendeus: ?
Does it have to be hard? So, in order, so this just to give up, put this, see what this work, to explain what this work is, this This method is a series of guided actresses that has been developed and refined over 45, 40, 45 years. But the founder Judith
Emily Peilan: Blackstone, so she created this process and
Sebastian Wendeus: she created it and it came through her.
She's been drawing from different other spiritual traditions, and she's read all of them, but it's something different. And it's, she used to be a dance teacher, beco before she came, became a psychotherapist, and then became a doctor in that. But she used to live, be a dance teacher in East Village in on Manhattan, in New York City.
Great. So it, and it came through her injuring. She was a professional, very professional dancer. And then she injured her back and badly, like her spine badly. And her dance career was over. She was trying to find healing. She was trying to find a different, a lot of different ways of heal herself.
And she settled for an operation of surgery where they fused a spine to straighten it up, but that surgery went bad. So they took a piece of, her hip bone to fuse her spine, but they fused her in the off center position. So they fused her in the position of her injury instead of the, in the position of alignment.
So that was her start, 40 years ago to like needing to heal herself and come back to her balance and find her own alignment again. Yeah. Yeah. So that's when she started to develop these practices for herself. . And she realized when she was, cause she went to India, she went to a lot of places to try to find somebody who can help her.
And then she was laying on her loft in Manhattan. In a way praying for help. And she's so sensitive that she noticed that, for example, if she focused like on either side of her body or outside of her ears, that her body very gently start to move towards alignments on its own if we do certain things like that.
Interesting. So she started to play with that and developed these practices for herself. And then she was a dance teacher, so she had people come to her and she started to do develop practices to help them be more balanced in their being in their body. And then she, of course, she started to became a psychotherapist and then she just refined this work over 40 years, but it really came through her.
And I like to think about it as it's like a modern work for the modern world. You don't have to do three hours per day, you can do 20 hours 20 minutes per week. Yeah. And because of it, it's so refined and so precise. . You don't need effort because the preciseness of the work creates this transformation.
Emily Peilan: Interesting. Okay. And so for you, when you met her and you did this five, or was it five days right when you walked away from that? What had shifted for you? .
Sebastian Wendeus: The first thing that she taught was like what embodiment really means, like what true embodiment is. And we spoke a bit about that before and why it's important to really not just be aware of the body, but to be in the whole body.
. So it turns out that most of us tend to live in our head and we are pretty disconnected from our bodies to more or less. And we often imbalance. So we often, for example, mirror our parents. So if our parents, let's say my parents would be very close in their chest. . Then I tend to grow up being pretty constricted in my emotions.
If we've been praised for intellect growing up, like that's where we tend to live as adults. Yeah. Yeah. So we need, in order for us to feel whole and to feel with wholeness within ourselves . And to feel connected with life and with everybody else. Yeah. We need to be living in present with throughout our whole body.
And it doesn't have to be perfect. We don't need to be a hundred percent. We need to reach a certain level of contact and openness with ourselves throughout the whole body. And these practices are designed to cultivate that contact and
Emily Peilan: I was gonna say like, how does one know. If you are in embodiment versus just, you can feel, you know, everyone's gonna be, oh, I'm feeling my hands, or I'm feeling my body.
Or at the end of a yoga class, I'd be like, breathe in and feel everything. People are like, yes, I'm feeling everything. Is that the same as embodiment?
Sebastian Wendeus: It's not the same as what I'm describing here. Okay. And what this work is
Emily Peilan: teaching. Okay. So what's the
Sebastian Wendeus: difference? Yeah. Shall we do a little practice?
Yeah.
Emily Peilan: Okay. Yeah. That, I think this is probably the best way actually to actually help understand yeah, let's take it away. So that's good. Let's do
Sebastian Wendeus: practice. So this practice is Yes. To show everybody that what we are speaking about here and what the difference is between awareness, body awareness, and embodiment.
Because a lot of practices that a lot of people do including body scans and we pass on our meditations, it's often that we are in the head being aware of the body. And in this work and the work I'm teaching as one of my things I'm offering, it's a different way. We work with embodiment and it's a really important distinction.
So just to show everybody what that means if you're listening and looking to at, to watching this, you can just sit up with your back straight and your eyes closed. If you're comfortable with your eyes closed and just put your hands in your lab
and now become aware of your hat.
And you might notice any tingling, any sensation, any I pulsation. You might notice how hot or cold your hands are. You might notice air movement over your hands,
and you might notice that you are in your head, and it's like from your head, you are in a way looking down at your hands, being aware of your hands from your head. So now let go of that and instead enter into your hands
so you are alive and present within your hands. And it feels like you are having a. Pair of gloves that perfectly fit your hands, and you are putting your hands into these gloves and you are filling out the whole internal space of these gloves with yourself. So you are alive and present within your hands.
And we can totally let go of the head and the thinking mind will still be there, but that's not what we're doing. We're just being inside the hand conscious within the head.
And you might notice that just by inhabiting your hands, it gives you a deeper contact throughout your whole body.
So how is that for you, Emily?
Emily Peilan: It feels so. It feels like I just took a break from my head and I'm coming back now and it's like the energy is shifting slowly back into my head. And it's, it felt like I just shifted into my hands and my mind was able to just take a holiday for a minute.
And as I come back I'm like, whoa, I just feel quite refreshed actually in my mind. And when you said, we're often thinking, I realize that even sometimes when I do my meditations, I'm thinking, thinking. And then at a certain point, usually about 15 minutes point, I start feeling into my body more.
And then that is when my mind just goes on holiday for a little bit. And I feel like that is like entering that embodiment state. But I've never actually focused on that, that reverse from the head to the body and body to the head. I've never actually thought of it that way.
So that's really interesting realization. I'm curious to hear what other people got from that as well. Incredible. Shall we
Sebastian Wendeus: do a short minute, like a short, actual 10 minute guided practice or something like that now? Or should we save it for later? Ooh,
Emily Peilan: I think now would be a nice time to do it actually.
And it could be. And then post meditation, we can get into some juicy topics around the realization process and spirituality. How does that sound? I think it's
Sebastian Wendeus: perfect and it actually helps because all this work the realization process. And I also wanna say this is one modality I'm teaching. I also teach a lot of, I, there are so many beautiful modalities out there, so I'm not an absolutist about anything.
It's just the, it's one of the modalities that I love to offer people because almost nobody knows it exists. And it's also the most powerful work I've found. But it's really about guiding people to an experience. . So e everything we try to put words on and we try to think or feel as a concept.
That's not it. It's about guiding people to the experience. That's what we are going for in this work. So I think it's perfect to do a little practice.
Emily Peilan: I love that. Okay. Beautiful. All right.
Sebastian Wendeus: All right. So, all right, everybody, you can sit. It's actually the most, the easiest way to do this, you can do it standing or sitting or lying, but the easiest way to access in the beginning this work by sitting on a chair with your feet on the floor.
So if you have the chance to do that, do that. And now is sit with your back straight and your eyes closed.
And yes, to get here, focus on your breathing. So silently counting three K, three counts to inhale. Three counts to exhale,
but whatever count is comfortable to you. The important thing here is that the exhale is as long as the inhale and that the breath is smooth and.
And feel that you're breathing the air right where you are. So we can use the breath to be present in our own room where we are
now. Come down into your feet. So the same way we enter into our hands now, enter into your feet.
You can let go of the breathing. The breathing can do whatever it's doing, and you're just being in your feet.
And we can imagine that a person that we lie is putting a piece of paper under each foot and is drawing the outline of our feet on that piece of paper. And we are filling out that whole outline with ourselves.
So we are not just aware of our feet,
we're present within the feet. We are the internal space of the feet. That's the feeling. And this is a practice and it takes practice to, to really feel it. So yes, go along. And now staying inside your feet, you can attune to a quality that feels like yourself inside your feet. So it's not an idea, but a feeling quality of yourself inside your whole feet.
And that helps us deeper the.
And let your breath adjust to you being this far down in your body so that your inhale doesn't lift you up away from your feet. And that might be a small adjustment of the breathing
and feel that the feet is a foundation or are a foundation. Because we have this foundation, our thinking mind can rest, our emotions can rest. Any anxiety or excitement can rest.
Staying inside your feet also inhabit your whole legs, so your feet, your ankles, lower legs, your knees, and your thighs, all the way. To your hip sockets, feel that you're inside your whole legs in inhabiting your whole legs
and attuned to this quality of yourself inside your whole legs.
Now feel that you're inside your whole pelvis.
In inside your pelvis. Attuned to the quality of your gender, whatever that feels like to you, doesn't have to feel particularly male or female. Whatever quality of your gender feels like to you in your pelvis,
now come down to the very bottom of your torso, inhabit your pelvic floor so that it feels like there is no separation between you and the chair.
Let your breath adjust. To you being this far down in your body
so that your inhale doesn't lift you up away from here.
And for every, anybody listening and watching, if there is anything you want to skip, you don't wanna do it, don't do it. This is all about developing your own self ownership and self contact. So please listen to yourself now, inhabit your whole midsection, so the belly area, all the way to the back between your ribs and your pelvis, including the solar plexus area under your ribs,
and attuned to the quality of your power. Your personal strength inside your mid-section.
So this is pure power, like the power of a waterfall has nothing to do, comparing or fighting with anybody else's power. It's our inherent personal strength.
Now, feel that you're inside your whole chest from front to back and all the way out to the sides, your whole chest
and attuned to the quality of your love inside your chest.
Doesn't have to be a big feeling. A little bit of tenderness or warmth will do
feel that you're inside your shoulders, your arms and your wrists, and your hands all the way to your fingertips,
and attuned to the quality of self, of the quality of yourself inside your shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands so that they feel like your arms, your hands, your should.
Feel that you're inside your whole neck, the whole cylinder of your neck, including your larynx, your throat,
and let yourself settle within your neck. This is an area where a lot of offs, a lot of us tend to lift up and we get a little anxious.
Inhabiting your whole neck and your larynx attuned to the quality of your voice, your potential to speak. So again, not a not a thought, but a feeling,
and all these qualities will come in and be clearer with practice. This is the first time for most of us, so please be patient with yourself
now. Feel that you're inside your whole head and your whole forehead.
That your forehead goes soft. Let it relax
and common inhabit your whole face, bones, skin, the soft tissues, the eyes, the nose, cheeks, the jaw, the lips and the tongue. And come inhabit your ears.
Feel that you're inside your whole brain.
Make sure you're inhabiting the whole brain. So the top, the front, the sides,
and attuned to the quality of understanding of what in your intelligence feels like inside your brain.
So it's not a concept, but a feeling an experie.
Now feel that you're inside your whole body all at once. So your feet, your legs, your pelvis, your whole torso, your midsection, your chest, your shoulders, your arms, your hands, your neck, your whole head, including your whole face and your whole brain,
and attuned to the quality of yourself inside your whole body. Feel that you are made of this quality of yourself.
Sit for a few moments in this deep contact yourself, or actually, let's do this. Staying connected to yourself in this way, slowly and gently open your eyes
in which your eyes open. Feel that you're inside your whole body.
Welcome coming. Come in with practice
and attuned to the quality of yourself inside your whole.
So that even though the world appears, you can still have this deep connection with yourself
and sit for a few moments and then whenever you feel ready, you can let go of this practice.
Emily Peilan: I feel like I don't wanna leave being in my body right now. The good thing is that
Sebastian Wendeus: you don't have to.
Emily Peilan: Wow. I'm wondering if it's possible if it's possible to be in both your head and your body, or is it either or?
Sebastian Wendeus: It's not either or, it's all included. So when we are in our body, we are also including the head.
So the thoughts and everything will work better. So, cause everything's gonna be integrated. So our thoughts and our emotions, all the qualities are actually integrating and it makes our thinking better when we are actually inhabiting our brain. Makes our emotions work better when we are inhabiting our chest, makes our sexuality work be much more richer when we inhabit our, this area and so on, when we inhabiting all of them .
We can think and feel at the same time. For example, we become integrated. That's
Emily Peilan: magical. That was Oh, so beautiful. So I felt like as we were moving up, Through the body. It was as if I was pouring energy and filling that cup, like just, to the legs, to the pelvis, the chest, to the head.
And I just felt like I was pouring that energy into me and I felt so planted, so rooted. And what was really interesting, and this happens to me a lot when I'm meditating, is when I start off meditating, I'm in a, like a really casual posture. And as I progress, I find my, my, my shoulders relax and my alignment.
I just, I sit straight up and then what I always notice, and I dunno if this is something weird about me, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. I hear a click in my neck and it just aligns itself. And every time I take a breath in, not every time, but occasionally, As I'm focusing on that and sitting up straighter, it will click and then it will click again.
And by the end of it I just feel oh, that was amazing. Do you get that too? Is that normal?
Sebastian Wendeus: I, yeah, I think so. I think we're all unique and like we have, I noticed too that my body moves into more of an alignment the more when I do these practices.
Emily Peilan: Yeah. Wow. Ah, that was,
Sebastian Wendeus: so, that was a little taste.
That was just a short, like one of the practices. There are many of these, but it was a little bit of a taste of one of the main practices and there's more to it but just to giving a kind of like a sense, an experience of what this work is about.
Emily Peilan: Yeah. And so when though, cuz I know you do one-on-one.
Coaching with people as well. Do you take them through and you guide them through this process? But then, when it's, when you are not on the sessions and they're integrating this how does one integrate on their own or kind of Yeah. Work on
Sebastian Wendeus: that. Yeah. So when I work with in one-on-one with people I cannot like, offer three different things and some people work with me on all three things.
Some people work with me on one thing, right? So I cannot use this framework. The realization process and this guided practices and this embodiment work can also somatic trauma release work and relational work that is baked into this as a way for helping people gain deep contact with themself throughout, get to know themself, open up all the parts of ourselves that we have closed off often as children.
That might be our power, our love, our vitality. We are all squeezing ourselves to pro, to protect ourself. It was a brilliant response when we was a ch when we were a child. And now as adults we, we might be a situation where we don't need to protect ourselves, but we are still holding on. So opening, I'm using the realization process framework to create that really deep self contact and for people to have this experience of feeling authentic, knowing who they are, not as a concept, but as a real experience.
And there is a joy that comes with that is just inherent in our being. And then I use my coaching skills. Do you wanna jump in on that?
Emily Peilan: No, you keep going. I'll ask a follow up question after that.
Sebastian Wendeus: Okay. So I use my coaching skills more like the NLP stuff I work like on mindsets and belief systems and stuff.
We might say oh, these believes I'm holding, not really mine, and they're not supporting my true being. And it's can be very helpful to work on that level to do changes. And then I also help people find out what do they really want? Like how do they want to live their life? . And the more and the more in the contact we have, the issue it comes to actually know what we want.
Yeah. So we are not like making those decisions from the surface level or we start to say things that we think that society, the role we should play, but we are actually uncovering what do I want? Like how do I wanna live? And to make plans
Emily Peilan: out.
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. Yes. And make plans for that and make strategies for that.
And also some change facilitation because the more we become who we really are, the more we uncover our authentic being and we bring all of ourselves online. Our power, our love, our voice. We speak our intelligence. Everybody might have dimmed down for whatever reason in our family or in school to not be seen a particular way.
Our sexuality, our sense of gender, all of that. When we reclaim that, people around us might be like, Hey, what's going on? They're different. I don't know if I like this. And some people might be triggered. So there is a process of as we stabilize, also update our relationships and our surroundings and how we live.
So it's aligned so that we can live in harmony as we becoming who we are and have a life that is aligned with that. I also feel
Emily Peilan: like do And do you find as you give this to yourself and as your clients, you know, give that to themselves? That they actually give permission to the people around them to also look into that or to give that to themselves as well.
Sebastian Wendeus: It is an invitation. Yeah. Not everybody's open to the invitation and that's fine. You, when people go on this journey the reality in my life has been that some people come closer or attract a new kind of people. Some people fall away cause they, they love or they like the person I used to be, but that person was actually not who I am because I didn't know who I was at that point.
Emily Peilan: .
Going back to at the beginning you said you had so many thoughts going through your head, it was like a what, like a tornado of thoughts all the time. What is that contrast now? And did that just over time become less and less? Or is it still there? Does it still come to you sometimes that, those tornadoes of thoughts, but you just have better modalities or better methods of managing that?
Sebastian Wendeus: . So let's see. So let me finish up with the third Yes. Part of my offering. Yes. So that's the, so that's the business part. So I tend to work with high performing, highly sensitive entrepreneurs, leaders, change makers, and people who often have this, they've made their sensitivity work for them to some degree, but they're also suffering their sensitivity.
They're suffering. They go to a meeting and they're the light of the party and they, everybody loves them. And then they come home and they'll be like, oh fuck, I need to meditate for four hours. I don't know who I am anymore because I got so swept away by the energy flow.
Emily Peilan: Something like that. I know so many people
Sebastian Wendeus: are.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I, so that word starts of course, with yourself and what I described at the beginning, but then we can also align that and bring that your true being into your company. And I use my my skills from building companies to help people, like how do you really wanna set up your company?
How can you build a company that is supporting you and aligned with who you are? How can you kinda build in those values in the company so that you are, it's in a way an extension of who you are and what you're building. Even if it's its own entity. It's also like, it doesn't become a job, it's actually giving
Emily Peilan: you energy.
Yeah, yeah.
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. Beautiful. And I've been on a deep healing journey for the last four years up until a year ago or so. So that's what happened in my own journey. When I left, I was traveling, I was doing this work, I had a great therapist, I was doing some work on myself. Then I was in San Francisco, COVID hit, I, you know, San Francisco went into lockdown, which was unheard of at that time of, you know, nobody believed they would actually lock down a city, right.
But I took, I, so I had to leave and I took one of the last flight out of San Francisco, like six hours before the lockdown flew back to Sweden. And that's in a way where my real journey began, because that's when I came home to Sweden. I got covid on the flight back. So I was knocked out for seven or 10 days and the world stopped and I was closed to where I grew up.
So my childhood memory started to come up and that's where my traumas that I had no idea I was carrying was done to surface. And I, it was, in a way, it was perfect because I had the therapist, I had downed the foundational work. Now the time and space was there because no, nothing was moving in the world.
And so it was ripe for things to come up. So yeah, I had, from a very young age, I had a pretty unsafe childhood and things that happened in my neighborhood and happened to me that formed me at a very early age. And that's what got triggered when I was like 15, 16 years old. Going into puberty and becoming more of a man myself is that's why things I understand now start to spin the way they were spinning.
So I was able to work through that with these tools and also with a really skilled therapist.
Emily Peilan: Was it, when you say things came up like a survival mode, Sebastian, that kind of felt like unsafe and you were really on edge? Or is that kind of what you mean? Or what did it just.
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. Cute. Well, I realized that I had been in survival mode my whole life.
Oh, wow. But I just didn't know because I was, I'm such an, like an enjoyer. That was my, one of my protective patterns to just endure things. I used to have this feeling that people could drop me off behind enemy lines and I would always find my way out because those were the protections I had built up as a child to stay safe in my neighborhood.
. And so, but that was still a survival. I was, my nervous system was always in survival mode and I had just learned to, to direct that energy into business and be really successful at that and into lifestyle. But it was coming from this place of always like pushing. Yeah.
Emily Peilan: Wow. I know people who I think would really resonate with that.
And so being back there, all of this, you know, like past life trauma, all the things coming back up for you how did you move through that? And then now, what does it feel like to not be in that survival
Sebastian Wendeus: mode? .
What does it feel like in Word? It feels fantastic. I'm still like getting triggered. Sometimes, some situations trigger me and that's, you know, and then I can work through it and I can still have my therapist that I can call up. But what I'm experiencing on a daily basis in myself is ease. There's a joy, there's an inherent joy of actually being alive.
I feel whole and that deepens all the time. I feel whole within myself and I feel connected. It's like there is. Intimacy to life with myself, with the ocean, with my partner, but just in general it's just life is more crisp and more with ease. And
Emily Peilan: did you not feel joy before?
Sebastian Wendeus: No. I think I felt happiness.
Okay. Occasionally I knew I had programmed myself in a way where I knew how to create happiness. . And what made me happy, but always by pushing. So it was like closing a big business deal or creating a party where everybody was having a good time and it's like, yeah, it's, life is so fucking good and it was on one level.
But to me, happiness is different than joy. The joy is just inherent. It's just by me sitting here being present in my body. There is a subtle experience of joy in that, and I never had access to that. And I knew that. I somehow, I knew it would be possible to find it and, but I didn't know what it would feel like.
Emily Peilan: . That's so interesting. Difference between happiness and joy. . And another curious question, I'm just wondering why some people choose to embark on the self journey to to heal, right? And why others don't. And I don't know, maybe you could expand on that or just from your experience and the people that you know, but something I've seen is sometimes people who feel like they have the space and, their survival needs having been mapped.
Then they feel kind of like, okay, I can be safe enough to give myself a little bit of that and to do that inner work and to perhaps find themselves, whereas people perhaps, who are constantly still in that survival mode mindset, there's nothing else that they can think about. Right. Other than just getting through.
So yeah, I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on why some people embark on that journey and while others don't. And if you think it is a luxury to be able to have this and to do this in a work.
Sebastian Wendeus: Well, I don't know. It's a mystery, right? Why are some people so hungry for this? Knowing themself in a deep way. And why are some people happy? Just strolling around with the ways the society is set up and they go from birth to the grave by just following what can of us expected for them. And they seem very content with that.
Yeah. And why are some people hungry for knowing some form of deeper truth in themselves than in the world and organize their lives around it? I don't know why. Hello? That is happening into some people and not to others, right? And to some degree it is a luxury. I mean, if you are a mother with three small kids and your single mother, it is hard to find the time to do this work for.
And at the same time, I think if for anybody who's drawn to this kind of work, like even doing, if it's 10 minutes a week to just plant and water seeds, that helps you make yourself more resourced . Is the most important thing. So it's not just, I don't, on one hand it's a luxury, but on the other hand it's a necessity.
Yeah. And you don't really need that much to start doing it. But it's also, I think most people don't know that this kind of pathway exists. I didn't know what this kind of work, and it seems so complicated. And one thing about this work, the realization process is that it's a direct pathway. It's like jut Blackstone has developed this method that has, it brings pretty much everything you need in it.
. But nothing else. There's no dogma, there's no morality. It's just what's needed to guide you to your own, to your home, to yourself, and through your own healing. . And yeah,
Emily Peilan: I was just thinking like for the people, like I feel like a lot of people, like myself included, I was like, I didn't know before I started my business, before I started this journey.
I was like, I didn't know that actually had old wounds or childhood trauma. I was like, I'm pretty fine. I'm pretty happy go lucky person. You know? And I think a lot of people operate from that space as well, which is so we're like so used to living with it on a daily basis. We don't know where we could be or how we could be feeling.
And so I'm curious like are there ways or what are some of the ways perhaps where people could actually identify if maybe they do have. Unhealed traumas that need healing, recovery or reclaiming, and how does that manifest in their lives if left unhealed right.
Sebastian Wendeus: So we all, I mean, depending what, how we, what we mean with trauma, it's easy for all of us to understand that if somebody has been violently abused or something tragic happened or a car accident, we, it's easy to understand that leaves a lasting impact on us and actually affects how we organize ourselves and our, even our body in response to that fear and the fear of that happening again.
But I think what is brilliant in Judith's understanding around trauma is that even small things leave a lasting impact. So it can be that we.
Emily Peilan: Public speaking, for example for me, like back in when I was 10 years old and you had to go up and do a presentation and I don't know, maybe you just couldn't do it.
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. There's so many small things that can happen. Like we are having, like maybe say we, our parents are working a lot and we are having a lot of vitality kids and our parents that are suffering with that and they be like, just be quiet to just be still. Cuz they need their peace of mind of their own.
And we, we learn that, okay, you're having vitality and is not a good thing. So we squeeze a little bit often in our pelvis to, to dampen. Now we're vitality do not have so much. It can even be if we, let's say we grew up in a household where our parents are fighting a lot, we might actually be dampening our hearing the way we are doing this is by, it seems to be by the fascia, like this tissue that goes through our whole body like a 3D spider net. . And it's a very responsive organ that can constrict and open. So I don't think we understand it. Describe
Emily Peilan: fascia, what do
Sebastian Wendeus: you mean by that? So this fascia, I think we, in the west at least, we didn't speak about it or understand it up until very recently.
And I still don't think we understand it, but we know now cause we can see it that in every, throughout our whole body, there's like a 3D spider net going through the whole body and it's touching on all the organs and it might even be touching on every cell. And it's very, it's it's very responsive.
So if we, if it pulls on one sided, it affects the whole system. And we are often using that to pro, to create this pattern of protection. For example, let's say, and the, well actually these qualities that I guided you through before, like gender power love, voice intelligence. These are not just experiences, they're actual functions.
And if those, if it's not safe to have full ownership and expression of those functions as we grow up. So let's say I, this is not true, but I'll give it as an example. Let's say I would grow up in a family where they're being part powerful, like having autonomous power is being punished. The way to not have so much power is to constrict in the fascia and the tissue, often around my midsection in my belly.
And that limits my experience and access to my own power.
So for example, one thing that is easier to maybe get is the only way to not cry if somebody tell a stop crying. The only way to not cry is to constrict the anatomy that has to do with crying so that the tears cannot come out. Yeah. But we can do that with everything and we do it. And especially if we are very sensitive, we tend to be very creative with how we do this.
We can close off part of our emotions to certain emotions and stay open to other things.
Emily Peilan: Wow. My mind is like just processing this.
Sebastian Wendeus: Yeah. So from that perspective, we all have trauma. All of us. It's not a single human being. So we protect ourself. From dangers of perceived dangers. It's one thing we mirror our parents.
So where our parents are open and closed, we tend to mirror. . So if our parents are mostly living in their heads, that's where we tend to live because that's how we do it in our family. . . We tend to mirror our culture. So for me, who's from Sweden, it's very much living in the head, a little bit of emotion and under the belt, like sexuality or expressing gender, we don't do that.
And you know that, so you kind of like, okay, if you do that, you stand out and people might shoot a few arrows. So you don't do that. You, you fit the line.
Emily Peilan: Yeah. And then you go to central America, Costa Rica, all the Latinos, they're just like, so in their body. I just am envious.
Of people, Spanish people, Latinos who are just like so in their body. And so yeah, in themselves, I look at that and I just wish I could have that. And obviously that is a reflection then on my own self, like where I've restricted that as definitely my throat and then my body just not letting myself be too much.
I just shouldn't be too much. It's what comes up for me. But yeah, it's like having to have that awareness first and then unlearning it and then slowly letting yourself feel safe in that experience. So the,
Sebastian Wendeus: the order of that healing is actually, but first of all, just knowing that everybody has trauma and this protective pattern, it's a part of being a human being.
What happens when we do this embodiment work? So we just do the guided practices and after a while we will start to feel like. Ah, for some reason it's very hard to inhabit my left hip. I'm like, why is that? Like why have I withdrawn my consciousness from this place? And we can actually, with our own focus, with our own mind, go there and we can work with that.
Like often constriction and it's so fascinating. But it seems like this in this work that things only come up when they are ready to be released and healed. Ooh. So we might find that, oh, I'm fing a little bit tight in my chest and there are work, there are. So we are laying the foundation. We are. There's more to this work.
I don't think we have time to go into all of it today, but as we are uncovering more and more of this safety, of this exper experience of being in our body, that becomes a foundation cause. In us lives, all these child's minds that have constricted our body to be safe. And if we just tell that part of ourselves just let go for that part of our mind, it doesn't make any sense.
Because we knew that when we, if we would do that, it would be dangerous. So we are first laying this foundation of developing this inner contact so that when we find a place, when we want to let go, we can let go and drop into something even deeper and more safe, which is very important to be able to do the release work.
Ooh. And then it becomes like a cycle. Yeah. So when we open up one part of our being or our body that deepens our embodiment so we can, then we gain even stronger and deeper connection with ourselves. . And the stronger that foundation becomes, the more healing work if we need to do healing work.
We can hold without collapsing or going back into it. We can hold space for our own healing journey that
Emily Peilan: resonates so deeply. Wow. I'm so glad we went like deep when we had the extra time to really go there. That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And I know well, we don't have time to we could talk for hours, days about think so.
Yeah. But for people who are interested in maybe like connecting with you or working with you or knowing more about this are you offering, are you currently open to 1 0 1, 1 coaching and is there anything you'd like to share? Yeah,
Sebastian Wendeus: sure. So I have some spots open for one-on-ones and that's on either like if you wanna do business coaching, the consulting, transformational coaching, or the embodiment work.
We just know anything more about any of those. I so you can, the easiest way is probably to either go to my Instagram and d dm e or go to my homepage sebastians.com and you can send out send me book a call basically from there. And also, if you want some resources added practices, just send me a DM on Instagram.
Be like, Hey, I let me know what you're curious about and I can send you some things to just take the next step. Or if you wanna work with me, we can do that. And then you will also know about future programs that I'm gonna create and new things that
Emily Peilan: I'm doing. I'm so excited to see the things that you create.
I think it's gonna help so many people. Like this conversation has moved me a lot and I just wanna take a moment and say thank you. And Sebastian's links, we will definitely put in the show notes below so you can follow him. And one last question, which I just love to ask all of my guests. What does it feel like or look like for you to live a free wild and
Sebastian Wendeus: soulful life?
I don't know. I guess you have to look at my face. It's it's a feeling, huh? It's hard to describe it, but it is possible. I think one thing I wanna, cuz I battle with that for 17 years, is it even possible? The feeling of being free, the feeling of being wild? Is it even possible? And it is, and there is some like methods and frameworks to get to it.
And it's juicy. Everything is crisp.
Emily Peilan: Beautiful way to end the episode. Thank you so much, Sebastian. Thank you. The company, you, your time and for sharing your story. It's been
Sebastian Wendeus: beautiful, so any questions anybody might have, please reach out. I'm curious to hear what people take away or just take aways.
Amazing.
Emily Peilan: So good.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Free Wild Souls. I hoped you enjoyed our conversation with Sebastian as much as I did. If you want to connect with Sebastian, you can find him on Instagram at Sebastian Wendeus or his website, www.sebastianwendeus.com. I've linked them both down in the show notes below.
So Sebastian has some exciting things coming up. Like we mentioned, he's got some free workshops in the making. So if you're interested in learning more or working with Sebastian one-on-one, be sure to check out the links in the show notes below. Lastly, we would love to hear from you what resonated with you the most from this episode, or what was your biggest take?
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So thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.
