Ep 43 with jambo.

Ailey Jolie (00:06)

Welcome to In This Body, podcast where we dive deep into the potent power of embodiment. I'm your host, Ailee Jolie, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life fully from the wisdom within your very own body. The podcast In This Body is a love letter to embodiment.

podcast dedicated to asking important questions like how does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And how can collective embodiment alter the course of our shared world? Join me for consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own

This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailee Jolie.

Welcome back to In This Body. Today I'm joined by Jambo, a body worker, yogi, clinician, and mystic whose work fuses over two decades of experience in both complementary and clinical health systems. Jambo is known for his real talk teaching style, spiritual depth, and innovative integration of somatic awareness, classical East Asian medicine, and ritual practice. I met Jambo over a decade ago when I did my forest yoga teacher training.

And I will never forget the way he assisted my body and the integration of wisdom that I had through my body through him just offering these really subtle adjustments to me while I was in my yoga practice. Jumbo is a forest yoga guardian, which is why he was there. He's also a practitioner of psycho magic and tantric Buddhist ceremony and someone whose approach challenges binary thinking, merging science and spirituality, anatomy and energy and play.

In this conversation, we begin by exploring what is forest yoga and why it can offer someone who's experienced trauma so much healing. We explore embodiment through the lens of yoga, trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, but we also spend time exploring spiritual ritual. Together we dive into how Djambo blends his training into practices that honor the body as both sacred and sovereign.

Jambo, it's an absolute honor to reconnect with you and spend time with you today on the podcast. Welcome to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailee Jolie.

start by asking you the question that I've asked all of my guests historically right at the start of our time together and I would love to hear from you what does being in your body mean.

Jambo Truong (02:41)

I have been thinking about this and it's how do I even say this in a sentence?

Ailey Jolie (02:47)

No!

Jambo Truong (02:48)

And I guess the easiest way for me to explain this is that I was brought up as a Buddhist Taoist. So it was always very important for us to be present. So I feel about when I, when you ask the question, what does it mean for me to be embodied? I feel as though it's about being present and being present has so many layers to it, like being present to my senses, being present to how my senses are responding to the external environment, how much in me can I feel myself and how much

of that am I aware of? So there are so many different layers of what does it mean to be embodied and I feel the most simplest way that I can understand it in my tiny human mind is by being present.

Ailey Jolie (03:29)

You

mentioned a few pieces there that I would love to get into with you, but I know that you have such a unique training from Buddhist ritual to Western healthcare. And I would love to see, or would love to know how those traditions kind of carry across your offerings today.

Jambo Truong (03:45)

this question because it's something that I've been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks. So thank you very much for allowing me an opportunity to share about this. So I'm ethnically Asian, East Asian, half Chinese, half Vietnamese that I know of anyway. I was born in the UK. So I'm, I feel as though I have a limb in the Western world and the Eastern world. And also the honor privilege.

to have had a life where I get to experience, for example, yoga at home and then yoga outside of home, or Buddhism at home and then Buddhism outside of home. And what I've learned is that they're both just different. And the reason why I've been thinking about this a lot lately is because there's a lot of discussions in the world right now, like who's doing this correctly and should we follow these traditions and what does science have to say about this? And I feel as though when yoga or Buddhism spreads out,

beyond the places where they, in inverted commas, originated from. They manifest based on the location that they go to. So now there's no one yoga, there's no one Buddhism. It depends where you are. And if we look at history, we can see very clearly that Buddhism and yoga make room for whatever is already there. It's very inclusive. It's like, you know, okay, so you believe in that, great, let's do that as well as our mindfulness, our compassion.

Et cetera, et cetera. So what I feel that is deeply rooted within the East, which is extremely powerful, is the connection to tradition and lineage. And also there are some things that don't really need to be questioned. There's like this, there's this undeniable belief that we are all interconnected. What we do for ourselves, we do for another, what we do for another, we do for ourselves. And then when we come over to the West, it's like, well, unless we can evidence base this, we're not really sure. Now,

Is the West disrespecting the East? No, they just need that method to wrap their heads around something. so both systems can learn from each other basically. The West can learn that being deeply connected into tradition and lineage brings a sense of empowerment of the practice that isn't really available from just research.

And then the East can learn from the West where actually we have all these additional pieces of information. Now, how can we merge that with tradition and lineage? So, for example, just because something is traditional doesn't mean it's perfect. And so how can we use the nuances that we discover from research to enhance our understanding of tradition?

Ailey Jolie (06:21)

would love to hear a little bit more from you about some traditions that maybe have really supported you in creating or staying present in your body. ⁓

Jambo Truong (06:30)

There's so many of them. I feel almost as though when I go into a particular traditional practice, I like to take a big bite of this cake, right? And I use the analogy of cake here because of your and my enjoyment of that stuff. So I like to take the whole thing in and I want to get as clear as I can about that particular path. And if I can't make it embodied, I'm not interested. So I was brought up with meditation at the age of 14 and I was told.

As you inhale, tell yourself your body's breathing in. As you exhale, tell your body's breathing out. You do that for one hour every day. By the time you're an adult jumble, you will be fine. Those were my only instructions. So I would sit there and repeat this body's breathing in, this body's breathing out over and over and over and over and over. And that kind of helped me to develop the auditory part of my learning experiences. But I'm naturally kinesthetic.

So after a little while, I had to just drop the telling in and out and feel the in and out. And then eventually it's, can I tell myself I'm breathing in and out, feel myself breathing in and out and see, visualize myself breathing in and out all at the same time. And then it was like everything came together and I understood the experience of embodiment through that. Now you and I met within the realm of forest yoga. And so when we are taught to teach people forest yoga, we are in

We are inclusive around whether the individual is auditory kinesthetic or visual in the way that we use that language in the way that we teach. And also we're doing it because we want to enhance the individual's ability to have an embodied experience within the practice. So, Forest Yoga, when it came up in my life, it was like, well, this is perfect because it makes sense to me.

Ailey Jolie (08:17)

I am going to circle back to what is forest yoga for the listener who doesn't know. But as you were speaking, some of my neuroscience brain was just going into interception, proprioception, and extraception, which is essentially what you named. And when we know that we all have a predisposition in our brain towards one of those, but when we have all three of those kind of areas of the brain lit up, because they're all a little bit different, we do have more of that central nervous system regulation. So I was just like, huh.

I didn't know that that was so kind of woven in to forest yoga. Could you explain what forest yoga is to those who don't know?

Jambo Truong (08:53)

All right. So Forest Yoga was created by Anna Forest, a US citizen, US person, and she created a system of yoga that is based on the pillars of breath, strength, integrity, and connecting to spirit. And her approach into yoga fascinated me particularly because it questioned dogma. So Forest Yoga now is very mature. It's probably at the,

current time of press is very known as a very vegan background yoga approach. For example, now when I came into forest yoga, I come from a background of eating disorders. So when Ana's cue was, we'll eat what your body is calling for. I remember she took me out for dinner once and I was looking at the menu and she just touched my arm and she said, stop looking at the price. Just look at the list and

tune into your body, what feels right. And because she trained me in this way to pay attention to the wisdom in my body, it felt as though, well, I had to let go of dogmatic approaches. And that gave me spiritual sovereignty. Now there's something to be very careful about here because the practice of forest yoga is extremely embodied, as you know, you hold poses for a while, right? You know?

And then so when you're holding it for a while, we feel deeper, like, you know, what you feel within five breaths in Warrior II compared to what you feel in 10 breaths are two very different experiences, whether that's your shoulders aching or whether you're tapping into deeper layers of whatever's locked up inside of your tissue. So she teaches us to stay in the body long enough to know what is there.

So when it's time to tap into the body to intuit, actually, I'm just going to order that off the menu. It becomes much more, I would say, precision in intuition. As opposed to somebody who's, you know, like somebody who's going, I'm just going to feel what's in my body, but doesn't really know how to get out of the head. Like in forest yoga, we're in horse stance for long enough to get right out of that. We're not in there anymore.

in our legs, our feet, our glutes, our core, know, our breath and whatever. And so that method of training me to go inside and stay inside whilst my eyes were open and moving around is the thing that got me into the forest yoga world. And then as a result of that, actually, my background is in substance misuse and mental health. So then I took that into that world. And previous to forest yoga,

I took traditional systems of yoga in, which was extremely difficult for somebody in a rehab to wrap the heads around. know, doing five serum and mascara A, five serum and mascara B was just way more difficult than going out the back and having a cigarette. And so when it came to forest yoga, let's do some side bends, let's do some abdominals. These had like a different, I would say like a more of an updated or modernized way or a trending way that these people could then do.

to stay, get into their body and stay in their body. And I noticed that forest yoga had the highest results, positive results in getting somebody through a rehabilitation program. And I've even seen people come out the other side and trained to be forest yoga teachers.

Ailey Jolie (12:24)

would love to hear a little bit more because you sprinkled maybe a little bit in there around the link between eating disorders and forest yoga. But also a little bit of your past to forest yoga. So I know for myself, I was so like Ashtanga obsessed and Bikram obsessed. And one day they canceled the class and a forest yoga teacher subbed to the class and I was so angry. But her embodiment was so fascinating to me that I was like,

I'm to go read the book that she was trained in. And in that moment, definitely in reading Ana's book, something in my life changed. And I just kind of followed her around as someone who was also recovering from an eating disorder. Kind of my story to her, but I would love to hear yours and also just a little bit of that piece around eating disorder recovery, because it is one that it is a story that I've heard often that forest yoga really does support people in that recovery, which is hard when it's a movement practice. We usually don't hear that narrative.

Jambo Truong (13:03)

Yeah

No, and I'm going to start by saying that I think it probably is easier to learn because Anna herself has gone through that process, owned eating disorder journey. And when somebody embodies the journey, it's so much easier for people who like us, who are empathic, to see the integrity of what they're doing, the authenticity, and to willingly take that on board. Now, my background in eating disorders comes from growing up Asian household. It was important for me to be porcelain.

white and round. And if I was those two things, then my family were deemed as successful, you know, individuals or this kind of stuff. And also we come from a time, my grandfather, came from the south of China, north of Vietnam. So, and they came from a time where you didn't cuddle and tell your family members that you love each other and all that kind of stuff. You gave each other food and it was symbolic of, if I give you food, I'm allowing you to live. I'm allowing you to be part of my tribe.

But I grew up in the West, so this circles back to what we were talking about earlier, where I'm leaving school and watching these parents with their arms open wide, you know, waiting for their kids to race and, you know, and get a cuddle after school, where I was just told, I had to walk to the car, wherever it was parked, and as soon as I got in, I was handed a box of food, and I was told, eat that, go home, do your homework, hurry up and grow up, right? And I noticed that as a way of lack of love, although to them, it was the highest level of love that they could.

portray and it's taken me, you know, 40 years to realize that food is their language of love. But I grew up in the West. So the cocktail of that actually turned me into somebody with an eating disorder, body dysmorphia, huge self loathing. And then I look different. I sound different. I believe in different things. So I just felt rejected from school life, home life. I just felt like an outsider. And another piece of forest yoga is that it has a big focus on working with trauma.

So when it comes to my relationship with that, it's like, well, where, where is the spot of self loathing my belly? All right. When every pose now I'm going to breathe into my belly instead of in every moment of my life in my head wishing that I could cut my belly off, which is how I'm living my life subconsciously, right? Day to day. But in that yoga practice where I have one to two hours of, I'm only breathing into here. And on a, on a beginner's day.

I'm only breathing into here. On an advanced day, I'm going to breathe love and acceptance into this space. You you do that over and over and over and then we have new neurosynapses. I have a different relationship with my belly as a result of practicing in that way. And then eating no longer now is now a joy. It's like, want to eat and I want to, I want to, and I want to eat.

and taste the flavors of my food in the same way as I luxuriate in indulging the gorgeousness of how it feels within the yoga pose. And it was the yoga pose that taught me that. Warrior One can feel exceptionally like the best thing in the whole world. Any pose can if we approach it in a particular way and then that translated into

how I eat, my relationship with food, my relationship with how I dress, how I move in the world. Forest Yoga taught me to enjoy being in my body. And so now when I eat and I make all these delicious sounds, some people didn't even believe me. Is it really that tasty? Well, yes, it is.

Ailey Jolie (16:58)

I love what you said because it reminded me of going through that 200 hour training and how much of that training I really did spend breathing with a mindfulness and awareness of my stomach and trying to soften that area and create connection to it because I genuinely actually kind of forgotten how much of that training was just focused on that.

But I would love to also hear a little bit of the link between forced yoga and trauma, because when I look back at my, I don't love the language of healing journey, but I'm going to use the language. When I look back at it and I see that the tools and the things that I gained that allowed me to say, perhaps go through psychedelic assisted psychotherapy and not lose my mind or, you know, go into intensive psychoanalysis or.

Process my experiences of sexualized violence of which there were a lot a lot of it I just go back to him like I learned that stuff on the map I learned that I learned how to co-regulate there. I learned what sort of sleep people were there I remember Anna coming up to me on the first day and said stop being perfect and I was like who the are you and then I was like I'm do that Everywhere. I still catch myself in that and go. god here it is again, know, but there were so many

that I learned there that then later studying trauma, even when I went to Harvard, I was like, I actually got this from Anna in a really unconventional way, in a really off, maybe sometimes offhand kind of comment towards me that she was actually giving me a really real tool and a really real trick and a real way of being with the body and moving through trauma that sometimes didn't have all the fluff of psychoeducational language around it, but nonetheless, it was totally correct.

So I would love to hear from you because you are Forest Yoga Guardian. You've spent so much more time with her, done so much more training, taught so many people to have you speak about the link between those two things.

Jambo Truong (18:52)

And I completely agree with you. also have my reservations around the terminology of like healing journey and all that stuff, because, you know, some people may describe trauma as something to heal. But my perspective, my personal perspective is that trauma and karma are interwoven. Like you're, you're born into this life with certain stories, narrative things that

you have to deal with. And if you deal with them, basically behind every doorway of trauma is a gift. so forest yoga is, you know, remember that you're good enough as you are basically, right? Remember that you're good enough as you are, but there are some things that we need to work on. so one of the classic forest yoga cues is pick up spot that you want to work with today. And that spot can have a physical component to it, like physical pain or tightness or something like that. Or

an emotional component, dislike, or another type of memory associated there or something like that. And so what Anna is saying here when we pick a spot is allow your whole being to illuminate by working out which spot isn't lighting up in so many words. And then if you work on that, then you show up because more of you show more of we show up, right? So, you know, like Anna doesn't really talk like, you know, when does she really use the word trauma? She doesn't even

Ailey Jolie (20:14)

She doesn't use it. That's why it's so amazing.

Jambo Truong (20:17)

Right. All she's doing is going, look, you know, this is what you think, this is what you believe. So let's work on that then, you know, and then after you've done that for a couple of hours, let's see if you show up and live your life fully. So I feel the thing with her way of doing things, I believe that she probably came in going, all right, I'm rejecting all of this dogma. You know, I'm going to do things my way. But I also feel as though she, well, forest yoga is fierce, isn't it?

You know, the book is called Fierce Medicine and it's precisely fierce because it's saying whatever is in your way, deal with that now. so, and most of the stuff that is in our way is a projection of our trust.

Ailey Jolie (21:02)

I'm letting that sink in because my mind is just going into just like the reverberation of our unconscious into the present moment. And just like that, we know from a Jungian lens, like our fascia holds all of our unconscious and it creates our procedural movements, which then influence our thoughts and such forward. for me, where I am now is being a therapist. Yes, cognitive interventions are great.

But unless we kind of interrupt that procedural movement or the way that the unconscious has created the fashion, the systems and all those things, it is really hard to integrate the wisdom of trauma or find the gift.

Jambo Truong (21:37)

Right, do you mind, I just want to add that I think the piece of forest yoga is that because we're holding poses for such long periods, or we're doing abdominals over and over and over, which is enabling us to go deeper into the feelings within that area of the body. First of all, okay, we're gonna feel a biomechanical change. There's gonna be an anatomical, you the muscle is warming up, the joint is warming up, and maybe you hold it a little bit longer, and then, you know, your muscles get a little bit, you know, what they would call in the gym,

burn, you know, you feel the burn kind of thing, right? So that's the initial superficial layer thing. And then you stay there longer, breathing into that area longer, and then the stuff that has been imposed upon you from society, the stuff that you are predisposed of as a result of the way that we were brought up by our parents, our guardians.

and then what we've inherited from our ancestors, and then what has been subconsciously locked into us due to subliminal messages and all that kind of stuff, all start getting accessed. And so, know, when you were saying earlier that you went to this class and there was a cover and you weren't interested in the cover teacher, but you noticed their presence, it's how I think most, especially how I felt when I first came to forest yoga. I was like, damn it, that's five breaths already. Can we move? You know, can we move on, right?

But then I realized, no, I'm hitting on these experiences of discomfort. And actually, if I stay there long enough, my nervous system slash ego is going to be okay with having this experience inside of me. And then when that okayness happens and I'm breathing deeply and being present with whatever is showing up that I'm being present with, then we're evolving.

then we're no longer reacting with, we're being with. Then the ego and the conscious mind are together. Then we're in union, then we're doing yoga, then we're awake. Then we're more aware, right? So it like...

Ailey Jolie (23:37)

I would love to hear from you because you didn't name it kind of at the start, like when these practices leave, where they, in quotes, as you said, like originated from and move, they kind of adapt to the modern world. And I would love to hear from you if you've, what you just named there, like forest yoga kind of going deeper into those layers of culture and the messages around us in society. that's one of the ways you feel like her, she hasn't actually adapted her practice to the modern world.

And if you do, if you could speak a little bit more to that, because even though I'm in London and there are forest yoga teachers here, I still find it quite hard to find people to want to come with me. They're like, I want to go to the Jim Mabukti studio where ⁓ I probably won't be confronted with those pieces. I'm going to experience other things which are uncomfortable, but not necessarily have that depth on them.

Jambo Truong (24:28)

Yeah, okay, that's such a cool question. And I think I might try and work backwards here because I know what you mean. You know, I have to, feel as though I have to bring an extra zest to my presence when I'm teaching to engage people. And one of the ways I like to do that is to be as informative as possible. for example, we start the class, pick a spot that you'd like to work with. And today I would invite you to pick a spot where there's been a bit of self-loathing lately or something like

right? And we're gonna go to that spot. Okay, so now you've got a room full of people breathing in a spot where there is hate, essentially, right? And that's coming up, right? And then we get on, we do these abdominal exercises. And I know, you know, it's the eighth round of abs or whatever, and they're like sweating and you know, and then I have to remind them, when you build abdominal strength, helps us to feel strong. Now also, you bring warmth and blood to the digestive system.

And that mimics when the system is safe and able to digest. And then when you combine that type of educational cue with the very act of what we're doing, with the intent of holding an area that they particularly don't really want to think about, right? Then this pendulum of discomfort, comfort, discomfort, comfort, discomfort, over and over over over, eventually makes the whole thing become neither discomfort nor comfort.

just what it is. And you know, you're a therapist, right? Also, and we know that at the very long end of a journey, we realized we were fine, right? But we just need to work through our stuff. And the same goes in therapeutic interventions to the practice of enlightenment. You you get that, you realize, I was already enlightened the whole time. So that's my take off, know, forest yoga is coming in my hands now. And I'm working with the types of people that I'm working with.

They like information, they like to be convinced, convinced on their healing journey, I say into inverted commas, or what Anna would say, seduce them into their healing journey, entice them into it, yeah? So I use that method of enticing, and that's me. You'll obviously have your versions of that. So, you know, like there's a lot of talk about the history of yoga coming from India, and actually that in itself is, we're not 100 % sure of that either.

completely honest with you. And I would say that the origins of yoga are Himalayan in my opinion, because that stretches wider and there's differences on depending on which side of the Himalayas you're focusing on going down. then so yoga in India was influenced by Hindu practices. And then the next country along the next closest space that was interested in these practices was Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, all those areas. So when

Yoga got to these areas. It merged with their shamanic traditions. So their system, their chakra system, they only have five major chakras, not seven. Their meridian system is slightly different to the nadis. And then also they have more invocations to local spirits because Bon tradition, which is their shamanic tradition, was all about that. So when, you know, when yoga and Buddhism went over to Tibet, it was like, all right, this is what you're working with. So, okay, we'll include all of that. We welcome all of it.

all of your stuff, right? And just, you know, do it whilst you're breathing or whatever. Do it with loving kindness, do it with awareness, do it with presence. Merges together. So then yoga in these parts of the Himalayas that I just mentioned have become a very specific form of yoga. Then it gets to China, East Asia, and then it merges with Taoism that is already there.

And then you have the birth of things such as, well, not the birth, but the evolution of things such as Tai Chi, which is relatively new compared to Qigong. And then it's kind of circles all the way over to the West where two things happen. First of all, we like structured exercise sessions, okay, which is something that is we developed over here. And secondly, yoga came to the West during a time when we were more

sedentary than ever. Actually, now in 2025, we're way less sedentary than what we were 40, 50, 60 years ago. So of course, the applause of yoga being something physical that you could do, not only became trendy, but was probably the very healing that the Western world needed at that time. And so as a result of that, it boomed into what comes across like an exercise movement industry. But now we're like, actually,

we're noticing because of neuroscience, we're noticing that I can actually do more things as people like you and I are now evolving that. so yoga will become another thing. Actually, it already is becoming another thing. You you spoke about different forms of therapeutic interventions earlier, ⁓ psychedelics? Yes. And all that kind of stuff. if it wasn't for yoga coming over here and, you know, the neuroscience teaching us what yoga is going on, would that door have even opened for

so that we could explore these different ways of working on our, in inverted commas, healing journey.

Ailey Jolie (29:42)

I'd

love to hear from you because you named it there and it's something that I'm very curious about is how the role of mantra or tantric ritual or shamanism can actually be really important somatic exercises but also embodiment practices because they oftentimes aren't included in that dialogue even though they are deeply somatic and can really connect you to your body if practiced in a particular way.

Jambo Truong (30:08)

Mantra practice and also where they exist within tantric rituals is where sound therapy comes from. Each mantra is another vibration that helps us to access another part of the experience of being human. And so human beings, right, we forget that we have way more potential than what we have. And these mantras, these archetypes, they exist to remind us.

in this temporary and very easily forgetful, distracted human mind, I'm now, there's a reminder, you can be compassionate, you can be loving, you can be wisdom, you can be fierce, you can be grounded, you can be protective, because you have all mantras for all of these different things, right? And so, and here I want to weave neuroscience into it. So there was a piece of research where mantra recitation, if you did it out loud, it had a very soothing effect to the nervous system, very similar to doing Brahmari.

And then if you recited mantras silently, it also had a soothing effect on the nervous system, but it actually stimulated concentration. So, you know, there's two different ways that we can approach this stuff here. And I really wish this was spoken at the beginning of classes so that people who didn't want to sing, for example, have the option of, actually, if I don't sing this out loud, I'm still benefiting from this. Absolutely, you are, you know? And so it's like the specificity of the mantra

helps the individual who's reciting it deepen their meditation experience, which then enables true embodiment of the practice of the mantra. So when I'm saying Ommani Padmiham, which is a Buddhist mantra here, well, I say it's a Buddhist mantra, but also you don't have to be a Buddhist to use it. It's all about compassion. And now if I just know that it's about compassion and I'm reciting this out loud, as I'm singing this, you know, like it's...

every cell of my body is becoming in tune with the vibration of compassion until I am compassion, until I am the ATM of compassion, until I realize that compassion and I were never separate in the first place. And so when it comes to mantra recitation, especially from a tantric perspective, you would learn first to use the mantra recitation to embody the energy of that frequency. And then at the same time, face what shows up to show you

the pieces that need to be worked with in order to fully align with what it means to be compassionate in an embodied way. So, you know, I'm going to practice compassionate mantras and someone's just going to do my head in, right? And I notice I'm going to snap, I'm going to get irritable. The practice is showing me here, which where I need to focus on next, the next time I do this mantra recitation. Now there's different stages of tantra.

And then the next stage would be worshipping, worshipping or idolizing or connecting to an archetype that's outside of you, reciting mantras in that way, like receiving their blessings. And then after that, there's another couple of levels, but ultimately it gets to a point where you and the archetype are the same thing. So Kuan Yin and I, the manifestation of compassion and I are the same being. And so in Tantra, it's how do you live in that enlightened way day to day? In forest yoga language, it's how do you live

as your higher self every day. And so Tantra is saying here, you can become enlightened in the moment, but there's a process to that. Work through your stuff. And the process of mantra recitation will reveal that to you if you are willing to observe it. I just noticed that, I just replied to somebody on my YouTube channel just last night actually, because I was showing, I shared a practice of a form of red Tara who magnetizes lost confidence.

And so this person said, you know, these magnetizing practices are very, very dangerous. You know, you'll never make something bad, inherently bad, good. And I thought, well, this is really interesting because this person came across as a tantric. And so I was, and I said to them, look, out of all of the different practices, magnetizing practices are one of the most dangerous ones because if you're just sitting there magnetizing, magnetizing, you know, come to me, come to me, come to me, come to me as a path towards enlightenment, it'll come to you. But what will come to you

is what you need to work with in order to get through this particular path. And that's not always a pleasant journey. So a lot of people that engage with this path of Tantra often retreat and then go back to mantra practices that are a little bit more love and light because it's just easier. No judgment. You know, it's absolutely okay to do that. So when it comes to magnetizing practices, these magnetizing mantras, you've got to be focused.

You've to be so focused on what you're drawing to you, otherwise you're drawing everything to you. A candle is magnetizing, a light is magnetizing, but it also will attract every single insect in the area that is interested in light. And so when it comes to human beings shining a light, all sorts of beings are then going to be drawn to us, whether they are good for us or not. So...

I just want to just end it by saying that if anyone is interested in using mantra practice as a method of embodiment, do so. Choose a mantra that is easy to work with first. And if you want to go deeper with it, be prepared that your own power, which is invocating that which you need to work on is coming to you.

and recognize that you have that ability within you, that self-empowerment within you. And if you're willing to just work with what comes up in the moment, you will fly through this journey.

Ailey Jolie (35:49)

Because you mentioned it, I would love to dive a little bit deeper into it. But you spoke a bit about tantra in that place there. And I would love to hear from you a bit more about tantra practices and embodiment because so often tantra can be used as a way to disconnect from the body or can be done from a disassociated or disembodied place, like really up here with tantra in the way that

I've studied it and known it as it's like really nitty gritty, sticky, icky in the body, like all of the things. But I know that that's not everyone's experience and often not have Tantra's frame. So I would love to hear from you around just some of the ways that Tantra can maybe be used to be disembodied or bypass the body and how some practices can really anchor you in the body and why that's important.

Jambo Truong (36:34)

Yeah, of course. Okay. So the I'm a Buddhist tantric or Dane and my job is to help benefit the community and also to disseminate some of the basics of this teaching. And there's a lot of information, you know, in this kind of stuff is very, I understand how it's very easy for somebody to get locked up in the cerebral realm about this stuff. And I just want to mention that that's, that's definitely dangerous. Like, you know, if you, there are definitely

monastic individuals and you when you watch them sit or walk around, they've sat in meditation for such a long time that their neck jerks forwards, you know, they've got some tight scalenes here. And it's because they're able to sit there for hours, you know, great, wonderful, right. And in their defense, they're training their mind. What it looks like to me is you might be training your mind, but your body's going to hurt at some point soon if you don't change.

the way that you're being in your body whilst you're engaging in that practice. So, you know, one thing is, you know, one thing that I was taught was you must sit for a certain, you must repeat something basically for a certain number of repetitions. And so whether that's mantra, meditation or prostrations or whatever, and you know, it's just like sun salutations. If you move badly, something is going to hurt, right? And so can you engage in these practices?

in a way that feels good inside of your body. Now, the interesting line that we have here is those practitioners want to transcend the body, some of them want to transcend the body. So I think it really depends on who is guiding these individuals to do these things. Because if their tantric teacher didn't really care about their posture or their body or whether they felt good or whatever, but they still attained enlightenment because they were able to train the mind, it's not that they were wrong.

It's just that they have a different method to it. For me, if I sit for a period and I feel I don't, let's say I'm meditating with my palms up and I can feel my shoulder aching and I know if I don't flip my palm down now, it's gonna really hurt in the next 10 minutes and then tomorrow and the next day is gonna be like really, really painful for longer periods of time or your knee or your back or whatever, right? So I allow myself to.

a little bit when I'm engaging in these practices. Because for me, if I can't feel it in my body, is it even happening? so at first I want to say that there's two classes of practitioners there. Now outside of these two classes, well within these two classes, really, it's very easy to just be distracted by, so you can become disembodied or disengaged from the practice. If you are too focused on the structure of something, if you're too focused on

the order of something. there was a friend of mine was telling me a story recently where she was with a teacher was saying to the people, look, you're all great practitioners, but you've got to let go of the structure. You have followed the structures in perfect order.

you know, because of that, you should be enlightened, but you think it's about the structure. If I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this, do this, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, I've done my practice. When he's saying, no, you go through it, now you need to embody it, you need to experience it so that you are a Buddha, right? So, and then once you can feel that, then you are awake. you know, like, what are, what are Buddhas doing? Well, what are these awakened beings doing? They're probably being nice to people.

Right? Probably. Okay? So that moment when we decide to cultivate loving kindness, and then we exude that, we are in our awakened state. That requires embodiment. I can't just tell you, I do loving kindness practices. And then that means I am that. can't, that doesn't, I've done these steps for years. Here's my certificate. Here's the videos. Here's everything I posted on my special Instagram channel.

all about this particular practice. You can see I've done it for five years, right? It doesn't mean anything. You've got to embody it. Compassion is a great concept, right? Love is wonderful. We've been writing about it, singing about it, making things up about it for like centuries and centuries, but embodying it and claiming it in your head are two very different things.

And like, so, you know, when it comes to something like loving kindness, like I said, usually what I would do is I would cultivate with the mantra, this is the presence of loving kindness. Then I would ask myself, where is it also missing in my life? And allow that to come up and then work on that. Otherwise, I'm only kind to the people that I'm kind to, you know, I'm biased in that and I'm not actually developing. I'm loving kindness, but I'm only kind to women because I feel safe around women. No, no, that's not it either.

Quite long-winded, I hope I answered your question there. You did.

Ailey Jolie (41:31)

But you opened up so many more questions that I wanted or would love to ask you today. But I'm mindful of time and your time. And so I would love to hear just from you, if someone has listened to this episode and pieces have resonated or they're curious about how they could become more connected to their body or how they could use some of these practices that we've named today to connect their body in a more intimate way. If you have any final suggestions for the listener.

Jambo Truong (41:59)

Yes, choose a physical activity that you are familiar with, whether that is sensations, walking, rotating, dancing. I don't care what it is. It just has to be familiar to you. Then choose what you are going to embody and then do that activity, embodying the vibration that you choose to emanate in your life and in the world. That.

is when you can know the visceral difference of when the whether something is embodied.

Ailey Jolie (42:33)

Thank you for your time today and everything that you offer. Yeah, I often think of you, I've thought of you more recently as I've gotten through some health things and some places that you gave me an adjustment on which I'll talk to you about after we're off offline. But is there anything that you have upcoming that you would like the listener to know that we could put in the show notes or that you could leave them with?

Jambo Truong (42:54)

I have a co-pilot, Brian Campbell. He and I do a lot of bodywork trainings together. He's an absolute magician when it comes to the realm of fascia, particularly. And so we collaborate to do these 10 day trainings where we use yoga and bodywork as a way to help people to embody ⁓ teachings. And this particular theme is to be free from the matrix, but through the body, you know.

So we have that coming up. And then my partner, Ricky Saputra in Indonesia, he has developed this thing called the yoga mechanics. And it's a part of a series of things that, that where we teach alchemy within motion. So how do we merge biomechanics with subtle anatomy of meridian theory to empower people to understand what's going on inside their, of their own body by understanding the physical and energetic mechanisms that we are made of.

Ailey Jolie (43:48)

Thank you so much for your time again today.

Jambo Truong (43:52)

It's a pleasure.

Ailey Jolie (43:57)

If you found value in this episode, it would mean so much to me for you to share the podcast with friends, a loved one, or on your social platforms. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so that this podcast reaches a larger audience and can inspire more and more humans to connect to their bodies too. Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your very

Jambo Truong (44:19)

Bye