MMS_GutPunch_AUDIO
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[00:00:00] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Pain isn't punishment, it's a portal.
[00:00:09] Take one deep breath and let this episode meet you where you are. If you've ever had life knock the air out of you, the kind of blow that makes you question everything you thought you knew about love, purpose, and control, then this episode is for you and I call it the gut punch. The moment when life doesn't just challenge you, it changes the entire rule book that you have been playing by your whole life.
[00:00:34] So over the past few years, I've lived in that ring for sure. My husband and I have spent three and a half years walking through chemo radiation and truthfully, total uncertainty, the kind that turns every day into a question mark. Somewhere in there, I also left my 30 plus year medical practice. I built a new path, one that wove medicine mindset and meaning into something more whole for me.
[00:00:59] [00:01:00] But if I'm honest, I didn't find that wholeness because things got easier. I found it because I got cracked wide open. There's the strange kind of gift that hides inside that gut punch. It doesn't look pretty. It's not wrapped in anything you'd want to open. When you do it, when you stop fighting what's happening and start witnessing it, something sacred starts to unfold.
[00:01:25] You see, transcendence isn't about escaping pain. It's about rising above a story that we've been telling ourselves, and the story pain told me was that I had to fix it. Fix my husband's suffering, fix the unfairness, fix the fear, fix myself for not being able to make it all go away. But that's not transcendence, that's control in a disguise because faith cracked the door open.
[00:01:52] Trust walked me through it and transcendence well, that's where I learned to finally breathe again. This episode is [00:02:00] about that breath. It's about turning hurt into healing, not by changing what happened, but by seeing it differently. Because sometimes the only way out of pain is through the meaning that we make from it.
[00:02:13] So if you're ready, let's start unraveling that meaning together. Let's talk about what it really means to become the sacred witness to your own suffering and how light, yes, light can move through even the deepest wounds. When we finally stop trying to patch it and start letting it shine,
[00:02:37] there's this strange moment that happens after a gut punch. After the shock, after the scramble to try to fix it. It's a silence that follows the stillness when there's nothing left to do but feel. And that's where meaning begins. Meaning isn't built in the chaos. It's born in the quiet. And if we let it, that quiet [00:03:00] becomes a classroom, a place where pain starts teaching us instead of tormenting us.
[00:03:04] Neuroscience causes meaning making. It's the process of reassigning the emotional story that's attached to our memories. When we shift from, why did this happen to me? How could this have happened to me? To, what is this showing me? The amygdala, the primary fear center, begins to calm the prefrontal cortex of our brain.
[00:03:28] That part of reasoning, compassion, and perspective literally lights up. We start wiring the brain for peace instead of panic. That's emotional alchemy. It's turning the lead of hurt into the gold of awareness. And folks, this is magic. This is where we shift, and somewhere in that place we meet forgiveness.
[00:03:54] And this is not the Hollywood version of everyone hugs it out. This is the raw soul level forgiveness [00:04:00] that says, I release myself from carrying this weight. Forgiveness doesn't excuse what happened. It releases the need to keep reliving it. I'm gonna say that again. I know many of us have done forgiveness work, that it's so important to understand that forgiveness doesn't excuse what happens to us.
[00:04:20] It just releases the need to keep reliving it over and over again. It's the act of saying, I don't need to drag the story through every new chapter of my life, the rest of my life. For me that looked like watching my husband walk through this cancer journey. Sometimes he chooses path that I never would've picked for him.
[00:04:39] The physician in me wants to intervene. The caregiver in me wants to control it, and the wife in me just wanted him to live, but I had to learn that love. Real transcendent love asked me to sit down and be the witness instead to let the path be his. [00:05:00] Let mine be learning how to love without condition or correction, and that was its own kind of surgery for me, cutting away the part of me that confused love with fixing, because transcendence doesn't numb us.
[00:05:15] It refines us. It teaches us to release the illusion that peace only comes when the pain stops. And that's a truth that I see every day in hospice care. Some people never find peace. Even when every ounce of their pain is managed, their bodies relax, but their spirits are still wrestling. And then there are the others people in which I can only describe as crazy, in crazy unbearable pain, who somehow radiate a piece so profound the entire room softens around them them.
[00:05:48] That's when I finally understood what transcendence really is. It's not about escaping pain. It's about recognizing that peace and pain can coexist. That healing isn't always physical. [00:06:00] Sometimes healing is the moment as soul exhales, not because the pain vanished, but because resistance did. Peace isn't an achievement, it's an allowance.
[00:06:11] It's the stillness that whispers. Even here, I am safe, even here with Ivy lines, chaos, grief, the unknown. Peace hasn't left. It's just waiting for permission to be felt, and maybe that's what we're really after. Not a pain-free life, but a peaceful life.
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[00:07:42] Dr. Julia Bowlin: So right now, wherever you are, if something in your life feels heavy. I want to invite you into a simple practice I call sacred witnessing. You don't have to fix, you don't have to figure it out. You just have to be with it to witness your pain [00:08:00] without labeling it, judging it, or demanding it disappear.
[00:08:03] And to help you feel what the piece might sound like in your body, we're gonna move into a short guided visualization that I call light through the wound. It's a few minutes of breath and awareness and an invitation to let light move through what's been heavy, and maybe just maybe find some gratitude where the ache once lived.
[00:08:24] So let's begin before we do begin. Remember, you're always in control of your experience. You can pause at any moment. Take sips of water. Even just listen. There's no right way to do this, just your way.
[00:08:38] Now take a slow, gentle breath in. Let it out just a little slower than you took it in,
[00:08:47] and feel the air move through you.
[00:08:50] Steady, calm, real. Let your body settle wherever it is. And if you're sitting, notice the ground beneath you. [00:09:00] If you're lying down, feel the weight of your body being supported. And now bring your attention softly, kindly. To the place in your body or heart that's been holding the most tension, grief, or ache.
[00:09:17] You don't have to fix it. You don't even have to name it. Just notice it like a curious observer watching the tide. Now imagine a gentle light, golden, soft, and warm beginning to form just above that place. It isn't forcing its way in. It's waiting for permission,
[00:09:41] and with each breath, that light listens to you.
[00:09:47] With every inhale, it grows brighter.
[00:09:53] With every exhale, it softens and spreads. [00:10:00] You may feel
[00:10:01] a warmth or you may simply imagine it. Both are equally real. Because the light doesn't erase the wound, it moves through it like sunlight through stained glass, revealing color, not covering pain. And as it passes through, you may sense something shifting, not the memory itself, but the meaning you've attached to it.
[00:10:29] Each breath now becomes a quiet statement of faith.
[00:10:34] Each moment
[00:10:35] of stillness becomes an act of
[00:10:37] trust, and each bit
[00:10:40] of light that moves through that wound becomes
[00:10:44] transcendence, not
[00:10:47] rising above the human experience, but rising through it. Now take another breath in, and as you exhale, imagine that golden light expanding beyond [00:11:00] you gently radiating into the space around you, touching every version of you that's ever felt broken,
[00:11:11] unseen, or exhausted.
[00:11:15] Let it whisper to those parts. You made it through. You're still here. You are becoming light itself
[00:11:33] and in this stillness, notice the wound isn't where you're weak. It's where the light found a way in.
[00:11:49] And when you're ready, let's
[00:11:50] bring your awareness back to your surroundings. The sound of my voice, the air against your skin, the rhythm of your breath. [00:12:00] You might wanna stretch, roll your shoulders, or just simply smile. You've just practiced the art of turning hurt into healing. Not by changing what happened to you, but by letting your light move through it.
[00:12:14] That's transcendence and that's where the real healing begins, in the permission to feel it all, witness it all, and still rise anyway. Now that you've felt the light move through you, I wanna bring you into a different kind of practice. Something simple, sacred. Incredibly powerful, and it's called Sacred Witnessing.
[00:12:38] And here's what that means. Sacred witnessing is instead of running from pain, numbing it or intellectualizing it, you just learn to sit with it, not as the victim, not as the fixer, but as the witness. In medicine, we talk about observation before diagnosing. [00:13:00] In spirituality, it's the same thing, observation before reaction, and in the real messy middle part of life, it looks like this.
[00:13:10] I see you pain and I'm not afraid of you anymore. So here's your practice. Something you can do today, tonight, or wherever. That ache, resurfaces. Step one is just notice the moment. Notice when discomfort, grief, or anger, instead of pushing it down, you just can acknowledge it. You might simply say something like, this is pain or this is sadness, but just notice that discomfort, grief, or anger, and don't push it down, just acknowledge it.
[00:13:45] The next step is to name what it's asking for, not what it's saying, but name what it's asking for. Pain often yells through symptoms such as exhaustion, irritability, withdrawal, but underneath [00:14:00] it's asking for something softer. Maybe just rest, maybe disconnection, maybe forgiveness, maybe just for release.
[00:14:11] Next, listen, without editing it, don't analyze it. Don't justify it. Just witness it. If tears come, let them. If silence comes, honor it. Your role is presence and not performance with this exercise. And step four, shift from identification to invitation. Instead of, I am this pain, try, I'm noticing this pain.
[00:14:40] That one linguistic pivot separates suffering from awareness. It tells your nervous system. I'm safe enough to observe this. Finally, step five is ask your higher self the part of you that's rooted in faith, trust, and transcendence. What this moment is meant [00:15:00] to teach you.
[00:15:01] Not why did this happen? Not how could this have happened, but what it's showing you, that's where
[00:15:10] healing lives in meaning, not making logic out of everything, but here's the truth.
[00:15:17] You don't have to solve your pain to transform it. You just have to witness it long enough for compassion to enter the room. Every time you do that, your brain rewires, your energy lifts, your story shifts, and what once felt unbearable, becomes understandable, maybe even sacred. So tonight, if you find yourself replaying something heavy, try this.
[00:15:43] Put your hand over your heart. Breathe once in and out. And whisper, I'm here. I see you. You're safe with me.
[00:15:56] Folks, that's not weakness, that's mastery. That's medicine for [00:16:00] the soul. The kind we forget to prescribe to ourselves all the time because when you learn to witness your own pain, you stop being defined by it.
[00:16:12] And that's how you rise higher. Not by outrunning the storm, but by learning to stand
[00:16:18] still and let the light come through. You know,
[00:16:25] I think we spend so much of our lives trying to avoid the gut punches, the heartbreaks, the diagnoses, the losses, believing that if we just do everything right, maybe we can sidestep the pain.
[00:16:38] Here's what I've learned after decades in medicine and even more years as a human being, just trying to figure it out. Pain isn't punishment. It's a portal. It's what cracks us open to parts of ourselves that love alone or comfort alone could never reach. When we choose to meet that pain with [00:17:00] presence, when we become the sacred witness instead of a silent sufferer, something powerful shifts.
[00:17:08] We stop asking life to be easy and we start asking it to be meaningful. We stop seeing ourselves as broken and start realizing we're becoming. That's transcendence. It's not a mystical escape from reality. It's the holy recognition that peace and pain can coexist and that you can hold both sorrow and gratitude in the same heartbeat.
[00:17:37] I'm telling you, I had to do that the first day I took off after I left my medical practice, I was sitting on the porch with my husband on a Monday morning and I didn't have to go into work. I was joyously celebrating the gift of sitting on the porch having coffee in a warm summer day. At the same time [00:18:00] grieving the recent diagnosis
[00:18:02] of his recurrent cancer.
[00:18:05] Both places, pain presence, and maybe that's what
[00:18:12] awakening really is, is realizing that light doesn't show up after wounds heal. It's showing up through it. So whatever you're facing now, maybe it's uncertainty, maybe it's grief, maybe it's just the quiet ache of exhaustion. Just remember, the wound isn't where you're weak.
[00:18:33] It's where light found a way in. And if you can hold that truth even for one breath, you're already rising higher. Thank you for joining me today. If this message spoke to you, take a moment to reflect on what surfaced. Write it down. Share it with someone who might need a little light in their own dark moment.
[00:18:55] And don't forget to download your Rise Reflection worksheet. [00:19:00] It's the companion download for this episode. It's free, it's complimentary. It's there to help you capture the insights that matter the most before they fade away into the noise of everyday life. Until next time, may you be happy. Be healthy and be fulfilled.
[00:19:16] And thank you for listening to the Mindset Medicine Podcast.
[00:19:26] Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about mindset medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional [00:20:00] life.
