NL: Hi everyone! My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is the Inspiration Show. Today on the show, my very good friend and special guest is going to be talking about flow, our energy flow, and how when we are in flow, we can really make everything in our life so much easier for ourselves. But before I introduce my special guest today, I just want to remind you that once the show is finished, if you click the link below this video and you can download the ebook version of my bestselling book “Never In Your Wildest Dreams.” But wait until after the show to do that. So please help me introduce my very good friend Tristan Truscott. How are you Tristan?

TT: Good morning, sweet, beautiful Natalie.

NL: It’s always great chatting to you and I’m really glad that we get to share our conversation today about flow. Now you are somewhat of an expert because you are a, what we call, a Qigong Master. So why don’t we start a little bit with your story and your background and how and why you got in to doing this type of work?

TT: (Audio issue / inaudible) …not being in the flow.

NL: You’ve experienced the contrast. Is that what you are saying?

TT: I know contrast like my own best-est friend. We’re best-ies. And you know contrast, as you and I teach so often, is such a beautiful thing to level us up but sometimes the contrast gets so freaking gnarly that you’re like “Wait a minute I didn’t sign up for that level of contrast” but as they say, suffering is grace in disguise but it certainly doesn’t feel like when you are in the middle of it. You know in the past I’ve shared on the Inspiration service, it’s been awhile about my back injury and it’s really what set me deeply on this path, studying Qigong, flow and in being in alignment. And I thought that I was, you know, I’ve always been a martial artist since I was a young boy, I’ve been a surfer, I’ve been all about natural living, but I had this back injury in my martial arts school back in the year 2000 that literally was the greatest opponent I’ve ever had. It knocked me down for the count, I couldn’t get back up. They carried me out of my martial arts school that night and for the next 5 years, my wife Sabrina and I went on this incredible crazy healing journey. It was scary because I wasn’t able to walk properly for most of that time. Eventually, after all the natural healing, remedies, and therapies that I tried working because there was a component missing which we can talk about as we go. But I had this surgery in Beverly Hills, a $90,000 surgery and after the surgery I was worse. And so, you probably heard people talk about the ‘dark night of the soul’, I hit that. I hit it to the point that I remember I was on the floor in my bedroom in my home and I was crawling to try to go to the toilet. And I couldn’t get on the toilet and it was one of those moments where you’re like “Really? This is it? This is how my life’s going to be? Always in pain and struggle?” and I thought that I should have been able to fix this. I would think that so many people that are listening to something like this, we’ve been around personal development, meditation, healing, affirmations, and whatever way in life we’re trying to level up. We’ve tried so many things and it gets so frustrating when you hit those ‘crawling on the ground moments’ that you’re like “Why it isn’t working for me? You know I read the books about these great transformations, these incredible healings, where’s mine?” And so that was this moment where I was like “I think I’m done.” I’ve tried everything I freaking know. We went down the rabbit-hole of healing. And fortunately, I had a martial art teacher when I was a young boy and he was a black belt of Chuck Norris, and these were tough guys but they had tough love and I had his voice in my ear and he said “You show me”, he called me triscuit, “Triscuit,” I heard him, “You show me a quitter, I’ll show you a loser.” And it’s a tough pill to swallow, maybe for some, but it was kind of what I needed in that moment that I was thinking, maybe I need to end this life and I heard something else he used to say to us and this is where the story changes out of being stuck, he would work us out to the point of exhaustion. I mean punching and kicking and push ups and fighting and he’d dim the lights and we’d lay on our backs in the Dojo, the martial arts school, and he’d walk around the room and say “There’s a beautiful and powerful energy inside each one of you.” To a bunch of young teenage surfer kids in Malibu. There’s a beautiful and powerful energy inside of you, you just have to learn how to tap in to it. But he didn’t know Qi Gong and he didn’t know how to teach me how to tap in to that. He taught me focus and discipline and don’t be a quitter. So that got planted in there like a seedling and in that moment of my greatest despair, I heard that. And so something inside said, I’ve got this energy thing. It’s kind of funny being an energy teacher now because I used to poo-poo it and put it down and I thought it was very wooo and silly and I made fun of people that were doing Tai-chi in the park. Now who has the great joke, I teach it. But I opened myself up in that moment to that thing he said- there’s a powerful energy inside you, you have to learn how to tap in to it. And I just asked, like I call it my deal with the divine, if I could find this energy, this way to tap in to it, I’ll do everything I can to help others tap in to it as well, if I could have that healing. And that led me, 2 weeks later, to this thing called Qi Gong, and I went to a workshop with a man visiting from China and it changed my life and it did heal my back.

NL: Yeah. So what I understand of Qi Gong is that it’s using like an ancient practice. And through movement, you’re able to channel energy through your body. Can you explain how that works?

TT: It’s a trip. So I think we all get energy right? Like we say “My energy’s off, my vibe is off.” and they got a good vibe. Like we get that we have this energy come flow through us but sometimes it seems a little weird and esoteric. I mean Qi Gong is like 5-6 thousand years old. It was practiced by like a shamans that were doing these natural dances and they were following the movements they saw in nature like a flowing river or beautiful bird flying, and so they try to emulate this dance like moving meditations. And what they found was there’s these channels and centers in the body that can be opened up. And when we’re under stress or we’re tense and tight, we block the flow of this beautiful life force known as Chi or Qi, the yogis called it Prana. Pneuma the Greeks. So life force flows through these channels. They are through the whole body. Acupuncture is used to long needles as you know to stimulate, they are called Meridian Pathways and you can open them up and you get a healthy flow. And energy has 2 qualities to it kind of like this necklace, it has water and fire, it has Yin and Yang and that’s the balance of life and our energy flow. And as it’s flowing through our bodies it also pools up in these centers. Some people know about chakras, we can certainly talk about that. There’s a lot of chakras that are like gateways that energy pools into and gets regulated through our body but it also pools in to these centers and there are 3 main centers. There’s one here up in the brain called the upper, the Chinese call it the Dantian, upper Dantian, there’s one in the heart area, middle Dantian, and there’s one in the belly called the lower Dantian. So that’s sort of how our energy matrix can be looked at.

NL: Right. And so what is the purpose of having free flowing energy through our energy centers?

TT: So you can live a long time and be healthy and you can be happy. When your energy is jacked up, your life is jacked up. That’s my experience. So what disrupts energy? Stress, anxiety, worry right, not sleeping right, poor food, lack of movement, bad people, these stuff just jacks up your mojo and then you kind of get these disruptions inside and then those disruptions overtime lead to blocks. So just like a garden hose where we turn on the faucet and the water flows through it, if you got a rock on top of it or it’s got a kink, water can’t come out, it gets blocked. So on one side you have a depletion, other side it gets backed up and what makes it funky. And that affects our emotions. So the purpose honestly is so that we can be our natural healthy flowing self. And if we open our energy and get it flowing, some pretty cool and kind of unusual things happen I would say. There’s some pretty cool magic when you get your energy going right.

NL: So let’s say that someone’s watching the show and they go “Okay, I’m stressed, I’ve got a stressful day or something just happened that is just throwing me off kilter.” What can they do in that moment to help them get to a place of calmness?

TT: Definitely just as you and I both teach, get here now. Right, take a breath. That’s the beginning of energy work. Your breath is like a pump and I don’t mean just breathing up here in the chest, just really pull that breath down in your lower belly. Sounds so basic but to inspire means to draw in spirit, means to draw in life force. So let me just pause on that for a second. The power of the breath is freaking phenomenal. Like all meditations have breath work in them. Whether they are moving, sitting, lying, or whatever. But most people breath shallow up in their chest and stress is blocking the flow of breath deep in the body. Now Qi is the ability, Qi Gong is that means energy work from your breath. You extract the life force. So you are using your awareness of breathing in and drawing in this incredible life energy and it’s sort of like food. We put food in our body but our body and our digestive system knows how to extract the energy from that food and use it to build our body. Well, when you breath in, you can extract the life force from the breath and pull it in to your tissues and in to the channel. So the very first thing, the most basic thing is just as you breathe, become aware that you are drawing fresh life in and pull it deep in to the belly and one other thing that people can do right away is start to engage the visual process of the brain and almost see it, kind of like it’s a beautiful sunny day, you are in Marina Del Rey, you’re out on the paddle board and the beautiful rays of light are pouring on us and we are getting that vitamin D and it feels so good. When you breathe in feel like your breathing in light. Little tiny molecules of light just flowing through your body down in to that lower belly area and you’ll already be starting your Qi Gong practice.

NL: Right. So obviously your back is healed. So what was that final journey? So you went to the seminar, you went breathing and channeling your energy, like what was that last piece of the recovery process for you?

TT: Practicing consistently. I got coached by this teacher visiting from China and I asked for a private lesson so I think that was a big piece. It’s not just watching a bunch of YouTube clips, you know, I went to the source of somebody who had learned the real process. Then I practiced consistently. Sort of like your cellphone, if you don’t plug it in consistently you’d run out of juice. Same thing with Qi energy, if you keep practicing on a regular basis it’s cumulative and it builds and it builds to the threshold point that whatever means you have, it may not be physical healing, you may need to be getting some clarity in your life. If you practice consistently what happens is the energy flows beautifully, the disruptions get realigned, and you got back to that natural intuition that we all were born with. When we listen to little children as you know, are so freaking wise. They say things as they have this access. So we get access back to what we need and how to use it. So basically, what I would do, is I would practice and then when I was done I would just lay, this was before Sabrina and I got married, we were more than friends though, and at her home she had a little dance studio in her home and I would go and lay on her bed and just try to chill-ax. I remember one day laying on the bed and honestly it was just in my heart, I was grateful that I found a practice, I was grateful that I was practicing, and I had this feeling like everything was going to be okay. Even though there was still pain. And something inside kind of gave me an idea, and I feel like it’s what my karate teacher was trying to tell me was going to happen for me. There’s a beautiful energy inside you, you just need to learn how to tap in to it. I think what happened was I tapped in to my heart. And I feel that at this point in my life, that the heart has an intelligence of it’s own, like a knowing and it can guide us. People always say follow your heart, trust your heart. I was listening to my heart and it said to visualize those little golden neuropeptides, almost like seeing a movie called What the Bleep, and they showed that visually, to allow energy to flow through from my brain through the top of my head all the way through my body. And my back where I had the surgery and the shots and everything on this side down towards my spine, all had been like this tight knot for a close to 5 years and my leg was completely numb, that’s why I couldn’t walk properly. Well it went like this “Shhhhh”, I felt it open. And I felt all that energy flow through my body and tingle, it went all the way to the bottom of my foot and I just started to sob like a baby because I knew, I tapped that beautiful powerful energy my teacher was telling me was available. And when that happened, within 2 months Natalie, I was back in the dojo teaching. And it had been years. And that was the missing link for me, trust the heart and do the work.

NL: Right. And you (audio issue / inaudible) that your health is the prize money area right?

TT: We are made of energy. We’re energetic beings. I think the disruptions show up in our lives in a way that we need the lessons. That again, they don’t feel like lessons in the moment but for other people it’s a block in abundance and feeling and allowing that beautiful energy of abundance. I think of it as abundance consciousness that we have everything we need but we just need to give ourselves permission. Maybe for someone else it’s a relationship whether they are feeling the disconnect. Maybe they need to move on and do their own thing and they need to build that confidence with themselves that they already have everything that they need and they are worthy of love for no reason at all and they don’t need to be in a needy relationship and when that happens, the relationship that they didn’t need drops away or it becomes beautiful, you certainly can speak to that, so yes, whatever we’re needing, I think energy can bring us to the solution for sure.

NL: Wonderful. So if people wanted to reach out to you or work with you Tristan and get more information on this, what’s the best way for them to do that?

TT: Meditate and channel. And they can click a link, can we give them a link?

NL: Yes.

TT: You know what, look, I’ve been talking about Qi Gong and I’ve been talking about energy and that’s great and on a hope that it truly has inspired someone to investigate this but the best thing for me to do is to give you something that you can practice. So there’s this beautiful beautiful technique, it’s called Heaven and Earth Unite and I kind of talked about little bit today where you bring the brain and the body and the breath all in to oneness. Well I put together a little training routine, we call it Flip in to Flow. So if you’re flipping out, just flip in to flow, takes like 10 minutes and I like to give that to everybody to practice.

NL: Wonderful. Well if you are watching the show if you click either on the link below this video or the banner to the side there you’ll go directly through to Tristan’s website where you can grab that beautiful gift. And Tristan thank you for joining me today and sharing your wisdom. You are one of my most zen friends and you know and even in this conversation I’m calming down. I’ve had a little bit of a stressful morning and it’s just, already I’m feeling great.

TT: Talk about zen, you are one of my beautiful abundance consciousness friends. And I saw Natalie recently and we had a sweet hug and little Bella, I’m sure you’ve met Bella, was there. And I always feel so much love from you Natalie, the work that you are doing, and this Inspiration is seriously powerful. I went through and watched some of the Inspiration Shows just to kind of get in to flow. And just the work that’s coming through is incredible, so thank you for having me.

NL: Thank you. So guys, I encourage you if you are watching the show please help us spread the word and you can do that by clicking the Facebook and the Twitter share buttons on this page and don’t forget to click the link below or the banner to the side to take advantage Tristan’s amazing gift. And after all of that’s over, click the link below that so you can download the ebook version of my book, bestselling book, Never In Your Wildest Dreams. So until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously, and love without limits. We’ll see you soon.