I’m joined by Winnie Chan Wang to discuss kidney energy and the role they play in our vitality, health, and energy.
I’m joined by Winnie Chan Wang to discuss kidney energy from the traditional Chinese medicine perspective, and her additional energy shadow work. She’s a trauma-informed licensed acupuncturist, Reiki practitioner, shadow worker, and shamanic Tao healer with a wealth of knowledge on the mind-body-spirit connection. You might remember Winne from episode 30 when we covered healing trauma and stress. I invited her back on to dive deeper on what she mentioned about the physical and energetic life force of the kidneys.
Winne unpacks the five core functions and the yin and yang components on the kidneys. She paints the picture of the kidney essence as a ball of light, glowing brighter when we nourish them and dimming when we don’t engage in self-care. We discuss the signs and symptoms that the kidney lifeforce is fading and different tools for increasing the vitality of the organ, including kidney tapping.
We also talk about the power of sound healing across cultures. We do a short chanting practice together and reflect on the beautiful practice. Listen in to learn more about the vital life force of the kidneys, particularly through the lens of Chinese medicine.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality.
And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
Welcome to this week's episode of the vitally you podcast. I am Dana. I am your host. And this week I am coming to you from Chicago. I am delighted to welcome Winnie Wang for a second episode. When Winnie was with us the first time she touched on a topic that piqued my interest, but we didn't have time to explore.
So we're here this week to take a deep dive into the reservoir. That is our kidneys. Now, wait a second, you might be tempted to give this episode a pass. Kidneys sounds kind of boring, but I urge you to perk up your ears for a whole new perspective on the kidneys. Let's just say there's a reason we have two.
They are literally your vital life force, physically and energetically. I learned so much from Winnie in this episode, she is a deep well of healing wisdom. Her mission is to deliver love as medicine. Yes. Hello. I'm all into that. She's a traditional Chinese medicine healer international speaker bestselling author professor in acupuncture, doctoral candidate in integrative medicine and a soulful medical intuitive.
Her business is called mindful healing. as I've gotten to know Winnie, I really believe her business speaks to her genius of bridging the gap between the rigor of the mind and science and the wisdom of the heart. I highly recommend her book honoring darkness, embrace shadow, work to nourish and grow your power.
It's a practical guide to setting yourself free from beliefs, patterns, traumas. And most importantly, the places you hide, that's your shadow and the places you hold yourself back. Join me this week in welcoming, Winnie, Winnie. It is such a pleasure to have you so soon after your first episode, I'm really thankful to have you as a guest.
[00:02:47] Winnie Chan Wang: This. Thank you so much, Dana. It's my pleasure. So
[00:02:51] Dana Frost: I had such great feedback from Winnie's episode on shadow work. We had such a great conversation and, um, I invited her back because one of the things she alluded to was this idea of kidney energy and the importance of kidney energy in the mind body system.
And I thought I actually wanted to learn more. So Winnie is here. To the, this week to talk to us about kidney energy from the traditional Chinese medicine perspective and all of her other energy shadow work that she offers the world.
[00:03:23] Winnie Chan Wang: Yeah. So a lot of the times when we do yoga, at least when I was starting to do yoga, I get really caught up in the poses.
You know, I get really impressed if people can do handstands, but it's not until I do yoga teacher training. That I understood what the word yoga meant and what the practice of yoga is supposed to do. The word yoga actually means union. And what is the union? The union is spirit, mind, and body. So when we do the postures.
Through the body, the body is the vehicle for enlightenment or it's the way that we experience the mind and also the spirit. So for example, if my teacher asked me to do warrior one and my legs are spread apart and I'm in a lunge and my mind might be like, oh my God, oh my God, I can't hold this pose.
It's killing me. So. Then it is an observer. It's like, I have a part of me, the higher self of me it's observing that I might be frustrated or triggered or scared, whatever it is, my mind I'm watching my thoughts. I'm watching the sensations in my body. And so it's very powerful in that posture because I have my.
Spirit watching my mind and my mind is generating the experience of my body. Right? So the more I think, oh my God. Oh my God. When is the teacher gonna tell me to come out of the posture? The more conversations I have in my mind, the more my legs might start shaking. And so when we talk about the body in this world, there are things that we can see touch.
Such as our body. Right. But energy, mind, and spirit is something we cannot see something we cannot touch. So then the question is, where does the body come from? Right? Where did the bones come from? Where does the, the physical cells of the brain, our hair, our teeth, our ears, you know, the water in our body.
Like maybe there is a reservoir. That can give birth to the bone marrow and nourish the brain and make our hair shine and make our teeth strong. So it turns out that that essence is related to the kidney. So there's five core functions of the kidney as we talk about in traditional Chinese medicine. And the first function is that kidney stores, the essence.
So this very essence, there is a yin component and there's a young component. The young component is what we call the life force. So the young component is you can say our immunity, our vitality, our longevity, this life force is what allows us to go for a run, get projects done, you know, no matter what we do, if it requires.
Energy. If it requires something that is invisible, then we call that the kidney young and then kidney yin is that, which you can see such as blood, such as the essence, you know, um, it could include the Synovia fluid, you know, the good stuff, the nourishment, you know, the things that we want. And so when we commonly talk about kidney essence, it's the summation of kidney young, which is the life force.
Not something we can touch invisible and the combination of kidney yin, which is that, which it's like the vitamins, the blood, that, which nourishes all things. So that is the first thing about kidney is that it has this beautiful essence. And the second thing about kidney is that it's related to the bones, the marrow and the brain.
It's also for the reproductive system and the growth and development. So for example, in our Chinese medicine textbook, it says that women, for example, go by a multiple of seven. So, you know, zero to seven is like stage one, seven to 14 is stage two. And so when you hit this stage two, that's when you get your period.
So then there's 14 to 21 and then, you know, you become fertile and 28 is the peak of when you can make a lot of babies. And then 35, how very interesting, you know, in the Western medicine, we start to consider people high risk for pregnancy and, you know, in our Chinese medicine textbook, that's when it starts to be harder to make babies.
You know, 42. Okay. Maybe we starts to have wrinkles or gray hair and then, you know, 49. Well, back then people didn't live forever. But as a goddess myself, I'd like to think that by the time I'm 49, that's when I am fully cultivated in my other training from Ishka the, the moon woman who has half a million followers, she has this teaching that.
Every chakra is seven years. So for example, 35 to 42 is like the third eye chakra. And right now I'm 42. So 42 to 49 is like my crown chakra. So that's when I am opening to the mystical realm. And when you're 49, you become very powerful because now you've worked through everything.
[00:09:45] Dana Frost: Definitely resonates with me and I will be 56 in a month.
[00:09:48] Winnie Chan Wang: okay. So hats off to you and lots of respect. So what that really also means is we want to have a lot of rest and also exercise and diet because if the reservoir is like an essence, For example, if we work 14 hour days, seven days a week, it's like we are robbing depleting the reservoir. Whereas when we eat well, exercise, well, meditate, sleep.
Then we are keeping the reservoir ideally at a pretty full capacity. You know, we like to, we don't want the, the, the rest. Oh, that's the other thing reservoir does not. Not possible to overflow. So the way it works, it's more like, think about a light ball. It's either very shine, very bright. As in, you know, the more practices I do.
It's a brighter ball versus. It's less bright actually kind of dim. So that's how that storage works. It's like, okay, either it's kind of dim or it's fully bright, but there's infinite layers of bright and you can never be too bright. That's beautiful. In fact that there is this a kind of premortal essence that we're born with as babies.
When we're born as babies, we're very flexible and soft. We're open to everything. And when we die, we die hard and brittle, there's an evolution when the essence is being used up, you stop you stop. You know, but ideally I love your podcast because it's all about rejuvenating. Anti-aging ideally we keep charging so that when it comes of old age, We transition to the other realm.
Like we just close our eyes and then we're gone. Right. But we never lose our ability to eat, to sleep, to hike. You know that, to me, it's like, I want to be very, very healthy with abundance in my reservoir, in my old age.
[00:12:07] Dana Frost: That's so beautiful. So Winnie, what I'm understanding is the kidney is our life essence.
It represents the yin and the young life essence, and it is a reservoir. Yes. And as you were talking, it was like, is that why we have two kidneys? Because that divine intelligence created the physical body because it knew that. Maybe we would run into an issue with the life force energy, and we would need a backup.
[00:12:40] Winnie Chan Wang: I cannot believe you're so smart. Dana. So in our traditional Chinese medicine, we said that the left kidney is the kidney yin and the right kidney is the kidney young. Of course we can do tapping to boost it. But, so for example, after menopause, If you are feeling kind of dry, you know, then you can boost your kidney in and you would strike the left side.
And then if you feel tired all the time and you are feeling lacking of this life force, you would tap the right side, but actually just tap both sides because who doesn't want to be. Luxurious and full of life force. Right? So, but we do have two kidneys and one is more the yin and one is more the Y
[00:13:27] Dana Frost: I love that.
So a practice that we could all do is just tapping our
[00:13:30] Winnie Chan Wang: kidneys. Absolutely. So you can make a fist and you can just strike and you can strike pretty hard, you know? Um, don't worry. That's a great,
[00:13:40] Dana Frost: that's a great practice. Yes. We want our life force to be strong. What are some of the signs or symptoms that the kidney life force is dimming?
[00:13:49] Winnie Chan Wang: They say that the kidney can be seen in the hair, the teeth, and also the spine and the ears. So very common would be, I have ringing in the ear or, you know, my hair has. Split ends or as graying, you know, my teeth is less strong than before, or you feel that my knees are weak, you know? So all of these things are, are signs.
Yes. Oh, that's
[00:14:23] Dana Frost: inter I didn't know that I know the connection between the skin and the lungs. So that is really interesting. That's really important to know. And it's making me think about for myself. I have a lot of congestion in my left ear and it's, I would say it's chronic. It, it varies in degree. And so really that's kidney energy, which makes sense because it's, it's, it's the fluid, it's the water.
[00:14:48] Winnie Chan Wang: Yeah. So whenever there is problem in one side, we called, so we distinguish between an organ problem and a channel problem. So if you have decreased hearing in both ears, then that's more like an organ problem. But if you have decreased hearing in one ear, that's just a channel blockage. So in that case, honestly, you might wanna schedule a private session with me and you might just have it open.
I actually had this one client, she said after just one session, suddenly she can hear her phone again in that one ear. And she was so happy. The other thing is, you know, back to my book, honoring darkness and brain shadow, work to nourish and grow your power. So the kidney is impaired when there's fear.
And actually I wanna share just yesterday, I had this one great client testimonial. So a month ago she came and she had liquids coming out of her ear for three months. And she actually went to the ER, they gave her cancer meds, antibiotics, and also vertigo meds. And it was short term, so it stopped leaking, but then it came right back.
And so she went to all kinds of E T did all these exams and. It was really bad. And before seeing me the three days leading up to it, it's like she was to have so much dizziness and vertigo. She can't do anything. And she was like, okay, I don't know what's going on. Let me see Winnie. And so, because kidney, she is impaired when there's fear and the ear has to do with kidney.
And I asked her, how long has it been? And she said, it's been three months. So I said, okay, What are some of the fears you could have be experiencing three months ago? And she said, well, my company was being bought out and I had a lot of fear because if I sold my company right now, I might be leaving a lot of money on the table because maybe I'm selling it prematurely.
And if I hold on, I can make more money. And I'm also afraid if I don't sell the company, I'll never get another offer. In which case, my whole point of making this company is to sell it to another company. So she had so much fear either. She sells, she's afraid of leaving money on the table. If she doesn't sell that, she's afraid that she'll never sell.
And I said, bingo. I said, do you recognize that. You've already sold the company, but your body is still stuck in the, should I sell or not sell in all this fear? And so in one session it was, she was totally healed. There was no more liquid coming out of her ear. And so to me, it's just so miraculous. How it works.
And that's, again, bringing back to the spirit, mind, and body connection. We can do all the diet, exercise and meditation, but if we don't look at the mind, the conversations that we're having and we don't access the spirit realm, Then we can just get stuck. Okay. Like, I'm just have lower back for pain forever.
Or I just have bad hair forever and we feel stuck like a victim. We can't do anything about it when maybe we just get a little bit of help or coaching or therapy. And then we open the mind. We open the spirit and then boom. It's like the countless miracles that can happen from.
[00:18:37] Dana Frost: Amen. Amen. Amen. To you, to those words, Winnie.
I think when we have whether for ourselves or for clients, and they're doing all the right things, you know, they've got the diets, right. The lifestyles, right. And yet there's still these issues that are weighing them down. It is body, mind, soul. We really have to work on all three levels and. I just remember, and I need to ask my mom in this year when I was a very young child.
I was wrestling around with my brother and I had a Q-tip and he pushed me and the Q-tip punctured my eardrum. Mm. And I've always had trouble with my left ear. So it's really, I will schedule a private session with you. I would like to explore that more, but really we cannot underestimate the importance of addressing all three arenas in our health.
They're all interconnected. We can't separate one out from another. And in our Western mind, at least, you know, we get very focused on the physical and we only work on the physical and I have several examples from my own life that I, I have shared before where I had physical symptoms and I was trying to solve them with.
Western medicine, conventional medicine. And they just weren't solved that way because I needed to look at the spiritual and mental connections as well.
[00:20:16] Winnie Chan Wang: Yeah, and I love Western medicine. I just want to make all the listeners understand to me. It is try everything. Yes. Mm-hmm try everything.
[00:20:27] Dana Frost: Yeah. Well, we have all of the modalities for our reason, and each modality serves the purpose.
Yeah, just as each tradition in the world serves the purpose. If we look at AIC medicine, it has a purpose. Traditional Chinese medicine has a purpose. Shamanism medicine has a purpose. Western medicine has a
[00:20:45] Winnie Chan Wang: purpose. Yeah. So I wanted to get back to talking about the kidney because that's what you asked me to do.
So the kidney represents water, whereas the heart represents fire. So in traditional Chinese medicine in the ideal world is that the water can cool the heart fire and the heart fire can warm the kidney water. And so we call that heart and kidney communicating. And when the heart and kidney are not communicating, then there's heart and kidney, this harmony.
So that would manifest as. Insomnia and some frustration, you know, you could have like palpitations and anxiety. So you feel like really hot and burning in the chest, but you also feel cold with your feet and you also feel tired and sluggish. And so that's where you want to do some of the spiritual practice, you know, yoga and chanting meditation.
Because if you can open up your central channel, Then the heart and the kidney would be communicating. And so there's an appropriate amount of circulation between the fire and the water.
[00:22:11] Dana Frost: That's really beautiful. I was introduced to chanting a couple of years ago was actually during the pandemic and it was one spiritual practice I hadn't ever experimented with.
And I was really. Impressed by how, when you talk about opening up the channel, how chanting it really starts deep, you feel it deep in your root chakra, and it just echoes through the entire chakra all the way up through your, um, through the top of your head. That's really a beautiful reminder.
[00:22:41] Winnie Chan Wang: so there are different spiritual traditions, you know, Dallas, Buddhist, yoga, and it doesn't matter.
You know, each of them have their own syllable and system. The Buddhist might have. Chanting down and then the yoga might have chanting up, but open is open Uhhuh. I love that open is open. Open is open and you can say love in English or French or Chinese. It doesn't matter. Love is love. So, you know, in the beginning days I'd get hung up on, well, why this.
The mantra sound like this in sanscript, but then it sounds like this in Chinese. And actually, it really doesn't matter if, if you just chant anything. I actually want to say that Alijah is a mantra mm-hmm , you know, all vibrate, the hard chakra. Le Lu is, you know, down below the, the belly bun. Ah, so ALU we're already circulating the whole central channel.
So, you know, for any listener that's like, oh, I don't. Feel comfortable chanting Sanskrit or, you know, Dallas, Buddhist mantra that I don't know what I'm saying. This Chan hallelujah. You know, that you will feel your central channel open.
[00:24:03] Dana Frost: It's the tone. It's the power of sound healing and these different tones that we get from different traditions have additions, have healing power.
It's the vibration in the tone.
[00:24:17] Winnie Chan Wang: In fact, I think let's do a little bit practice right now. So the syllable ah, opens the heart. And it is not coincidence. I think ma is universal in so many traditions. Ma is mother because, ah, is love, right? That's why we have ALU every time. We're, ah, we're opening the heart mm-hmm and you know, in Buddhist tradition, ah, is also the syllable for opening the.
that's really beautiful. Are you game for that? Yes, I'm game. Okay. So if you're driving, then don't close your eyes. but if you're not driving and listening to this podcast, I invite you to close your eyes and let's take three deep breaths together. Inhale and
exhale.
Again, inhale
and exhale.
One more time. Inhale
and exhale.
So we're gonna Chan the syllable. A, everybody will last different periods of time. When you finish at the end of your breath, you just come back in inhale to begin. Um,
And exhale.
Just noticing the subtle changes in your heart and perhaps in your central channel, enjoying the vibrations,
the space, the openness, and gently float your eyes open.
so part of the beauty of chanting mantras is that in 90 seconds, you can bring yourself back to the heart. And when we chant together, my mantra is blessing your mantra. Your mantra is blessing my mantra. So I'm sending you love and you are sending me love. Whenever we chant we're so also accessing everybody who's ever chanted that mantra.
So what that means is when you listen to this recording, many, many times, perhaps, and each time you listen to the mantra and chant with us, you are receiving the love from us. And when you Chan, we also received a blessing from you. So it's really. A beautiful practice when, whenever we do
[00:28:38] Dana Frost: it, that's really lovely.
Thank you for sharing that Winnie with us and guiding us through that. I could feel just the opening, the heart, opening the space, and it was horizontal and vertical. I felt it horizontal and vertical expanding. That was really beautiful. Thank you, Winnie. I want to thank you for coming on the podcast again, and I know I've already asked you this, but I feel like we, we are organic beings and what is significant is always changing.
So today, today, Winnie, what does feeling younger while growing older mean to you?
[00:29:15] Winnie Chan Wang: So all of us are born original and perfect. God doesn't do mistakes to me. Being younger is to get back with the three year old me. Mm-hmm so if I like to sing, let's go sing. If I like to cook, let's go cook. If I like to make a big mess in the bathtub, let's make a big mess in the bathtub.
It's about really curious. And doing whatever our heart says and just really coming back to the heart.
[00:29:49] Dana Frost: That's beautiful. Winnie well, Winnie, thank you so much for being a guest this week and giving us a framework for thinking about and feeling into and understanding kidney energy.
[00:30:02] Winnie Chan Wang: Thank you for having
[00:30:02] Dana Frost: me.
Thank you for joining me on the vitally U podcast. If you are enjoying these conversations. You know what I need you to do? Hit subscribe and download, spread the love, please with the review and share it with your friends. If you need daily tips for vitality, I've got you covered. Download my free ebook.
That contains everything I learned while healing from my health crisis and everything I've learned through studying the link is in the show notes. And I urge you. Don't forget to check out Winnie's book, honoring darkness, embrace shadow, work to nourish and grow your power. She also has an upcoming virtual workshop, July 28th.
It's called the full body scan. Now this is for you. If you want to know where your energy licks are. Yes. Sign me up. Winnie has deconstructed the energy body with her scientific mind to make energy medicine, super practical for the everyday person. Seriously, this is gonna be a fun workshop. You get Winnie's spirit in this episode, she's just such a generous.
Wonderful love filled soul. So I hope to be with you at her workshop on July 28th. And until next week I am streaming love from my heart to yours.