The Impact of Early Life Experiences on Mental and Physical Health

Christine Samuel is the founder, coach, and facilitator of Inner Work Matters. In this interview, she shares her journey from Indonesia to Canada and the awakenings she experienced. After discovering the effects of stress on her health and exploring the causes, she began a healing journey of new and healthy routines, journaling, and dialoguing with her inner child. As her realizations expanded, Christine began living from the heart space instead of the mind space. She left her corporate career of 20+ years to follow her heart path. Even the uncertainty of COVID led her to look to a new strategy for living, trusting the unknown of creation, and “move purposefully one step at a time”.

Christine is working on a book, hosting workshops, writing, facilitating training and meetup groups, and “co-creating” new services to assist others through Inner Work Matters. She finds delight in sharing her ever-growing understanding of living from the heart space. She defines the Heart Space as follows - “gently holding space where all feelings, thoughts, and sensations are welcome. It is a space where we can have a loving relationship with our complexity and our contradictions.” 

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(Carol Chapman) Thank you for tuning your hearts in for another episode of the Hearts Rise up podcast. I'm Carol Chapman, your host along with my co-host Ann Serri and Concetta Antonelli. We share our own personal experiences, tips, and strategies along with powerful stories and compelling insights from guest interviews. We're here to inspire and empower your conscious evolution. Help you tap into your inner wisdom and rise to your heart-centered higher self. Together we can rise to a higher level of consciousness, an elevated state of being, and experience more love joy, and freedom. Welcome back to all of you. Heart center listeners. Thank you for joining us again for another episode of the Hearts Rise Up podcast where you will always find heart-centered wisdom to inspire your conscious evolution.

(Carol Chapman) I have an absolutely delightful guest today. Her name is Christine Samuel. Christine is the founder, coach, and facilitator of inner work matters. She left her corporate career of 20 plus years to follow her heart path, permission is to be a living example and help others to become the fullest expression of who they are while navigating their path to transition with unwavering peace and clarity. She finds delight in sharing her ever-growing understanding of living from the heart space. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two young kids. Christine. Welcome to the show. 

(Christine Samuel) Hi Carol. Thank you for having me here. I'm really happy to be able to speak with you today. Oh I just am excited and I love your energy and your heart-based approach to life and work and I wanted to say I enjoyed your deep listening practice a few weeks ago.

(Carol Chapman) That is, was quite an experience. And I think more and more people could really benefit from that practice and I hope that we get an opportunity to share a little bit about that practice today. It's one of many tools that you have right now. You have quite a personal story that I would love for you to share. You know, our life experiences always contribute to who we are and who we are becoming, and sometimes that can be helpful and sometimes not so helpful, especially as we develop patterns and habits and behaviors and sometimes limiting beliefs that no longer serve us. And it's important for us to recognize that I know based on our previous conversation that you had the courage to step into the unknown with such curiosity at a turning point in your career and I to follow your heart's desires. So I would love for you to share your story because oftentimes we don't follow our heart's desires because we follow what others or the world perhaps has in store for us or wants for us.

(Carol Chapman) So I would love for you to just share your story from an early age. 

(Christine Samuel) Yeah, I'm quite a bit because I'm thinking where should I start from? How long do I have time or you know, time to speak about it? I grew up in Jakarta Indonesia and one of my favorite times I spent was exploring, you know the laneways. I don't know if you've been into traveling to Southeast Asia. Yes, quite a bit because I lived and worked in Southeast Asia. I don't think we ever covered that. Maybe we did. We did. Yeah, I remember you worked in Singapore. So the road is not as organized here where it's like north, south, southeast, or east-west, it just meanders around and what I love to do was just to walk through all the laneways and then find out where I can go back home. So basically connecting the ones that I had never been to before to what's familiar to me and I never knew that that become kind of ways I'm seeing things or I'm exploring thing is just to find out what is unexplored.

(Christine Samuel) So when I was 16 I had a dream to live abroad. It just has to be abroad. I don't know why. So I've been working towards it my dream. And finally, During 1998 where There was a big riot economic collapse 1998 my parents were able to say, you know, you want to go, let's go. So with this luggage, I flew to Toronto but I had already prepared all the immigration work and I apply for my permits and everything like that and I start my life from zero again because I never, ever left my family before. You know, just for a trip, but like never lived by myself through that shocking drastic change. Where suddenly I didn't have anyone any family here where I was the first six months in Toronto, and I moved seven times where before that I moved two times in my life, I was like 20, and at that time I have two questions about who I am.

(Christine Samuel) I have to really find out my real value. What is my value? What is me, Who am I? Because before I always knew it from my parents, my siblings, my friend and now I came to this place where the culture is different, the way people react is different and I have to find out what is the culture, what is the real human connection? I experienced so much uncertainty at the time there moment where I only had $3.23 in my bank account and a foot in my fridge. And you know, a friend of mine gave me a bicycle, the racing bike, and I never by right a bike with a place that has a streetcar track. So, a friend of mine told me to be careful on the streetcar tracks, I didn't know what that means. So one day I was late going to work and then my wheel stuck into the track and I fell and I didn't have health insurance at that time.

(Christine Samuel) So it was shocking, but to make it short, I made it so I got a full-time job, I start saving some money and I built up my career from scratch then I didn't realize that I had actually high functioning anxiety And when I found it it was in my early 30 I always feel nervous about things. I always felt that if I do something I might message that. So one day I was on a business trip in the States to lead a very important workshop and I was so nervous because this is the first, it was the first time I did it and for some reason, I developed a lot of like rash on my body. It was so painful then because of nervousness, I thought I just can't afford to go for a job. So I went for a job and when I came back I started writing a journal and then I realized the connection between why I was nervous all the time to my childhood trauma and I didn't know it was trauma.

(Christine Samuel) I grew up left-handed. I was born left-handed, but during that time, not anymore. Now, you know, it's only different worlds, but it was impolite to speak or interact with other people, you know, shake other people's hands with your left hand, you have to do it with your right hand. So what happened was I was about 345 years old and I have many cousins, and relatives older than me. So they told me don't use your left hand, don't use your left hand, I got confused as four or five years old and like and I broke down plates, glasses because I just have to use the other hand and you know as a child, of course, my cognition is limited. So I thought you know something wrong with me, there's something I hold gonna break. So I developed attention that I really have to be careful and make sure everything is right and I went through my career challenges, but then I get so tense in my muscles, stress, you know, stressing job and I developed an autoimmune disease and that was my basically a wake-up call, like something I gotta fix.

(Christine Samuel) Like there's something wrong here. It's amazing what those experiences that we haven't, particularly in early life, and if they continue to perpetuate how can have a significant impact on us health-wise, you know, mentally, emotionally, and physically. So I can just imagine what you were experiencing but go ahead and share, share some more. So the idea is basically, I, instead of looking out, I start looking at what is this inner world means, what is my feelings, what is my body trying to do, what is my mind trying to do and through that kind of healing journey, I met my inner child, you know, the one who is always scared and afraid that she's going to mess things up and have a dialogue with her because I noticed as you know, there's nothing wrong with me. Actually, I am going through a lot of challenges. But I made it. So I have a talk with her and said, you know what I love you, let me handle everything now, you can relax.

(Christine Samuel) So that was the first time were kind of into my healing journey where I kind of less anxious, less worried, and be able to have a journey of accepting myself more, and through also the autoimmunities I learned about food balance, emotional balance, and apply a lot of self-care in my daily routines. So things are going well, then I met my husband and you know, kids went through my career then coffee, yep. Yeah, right. And so what happened with coffee it is, I always felt I need a certain thing, you know, I need a certain amount of money, I need a certain amount of freedom. I need a certain amount of a lot of things basically. And through the coffee, we cannot as you know, we can't really do much and we don't really need to go to restaurants every time. We don't really need to buy clothes.

(Christine Samuel) That's right. It turned everything upside down in terms of how we had to reconfigure our lives and the things that we could do, we could no longer do and we had to find a new way of doing and being yeah, through that I've been wanting to make a change in my life. I know I need to follow more of my passion and my purpose, but I had no guts to do that because it's nice to have paychecks. Yes, I know the feeling. Yeah, it's hard not to, so I was not there, but the universe kind of forced me into no, this is your time is up, You need to do something else. So things are happening at the end of, you know, coffee, it also the career that really helps me to focus and not exactly without a doubt what I want to do because you know, I think my life experience taught me how painful it is to worry to doubt ourselves to fit in, to feel powerless to feel disconnected to be in the world of dominance, where we have to fit in to be successful, then there's a point where I said, you know what, I have enough of this.

(Christine Samuel) If it's not now when and through coffee, I know you know, if I can deal with uncertainty a little bit more then I can kind of okay too, take a little bit more of uncertainty. So at that moment, I decided before I thought like you know what, I'm going to try six months, something different if I if not now when And I went through six months and I thought, you know what, I don't want to go back, this is so good, this is so fulfilling, this is so where I can be in my inner genius, this is where I can really serve others, not because of you know I have to be somebody else, I just have to be myself and moved from the expression of my being and all my pain, all challenges that I have all the uncomfortable feeling that I have, it's kind of transmutes into this is maybe like a cliche to really laugh force.

(Christine Samuel) Like you know I have fear so much fear of course of going to uncertainty but that fear is often come by, you know there's something bigger, something better than I have experienced myself because I let it let go of everything in a way that others can experience the same thing. I have no idea this is like a very powerful action, inspired action that I never thought I could do before because before right, always have doubts. Oh maybe it doesn't work, you know who I am, that's the ego. Yes, just protect trying to protect us, you know, is really what it's all about and it's I think the first, the hardest step is the first step, it's always the hardest step. But once you take one step and then you take another step and then you keep going and you found yourself at the end of that six months that you were in a good space, you knew that you could do it and if you know the more steps you take the more courage that we muster up within us.

(Carol Chapman) So at that point, you knew that there was no going back, no turning back. So what happened at that point? How did things shift for you?

(Christine Samuel) So the reason why I know it's possible is because I've been through, you know that $3.25 I've been through, this is like this is what I want, I want to go abroad, that's right. And there is no, like at that moment, you know the first year I was in Canada, it was tough, but I knew there's no turning back, there is no failure. I cannot fail and go home. I have to keep moving forward. So really you have already faced fear faced your, your biggest fears at that point in time and you really were thrust into a situation where you had no choice but to move through it and cycle through it and move to the next level in your life. Yeah. It's interesting though because looking back now, I just felt, oh, this, I was so young and so naive.

(Christine Samuel) Sometimes it's better when we're doing things when we're younger and we're naive because then we don't talk ourselves out of it Tony. I also want to share why I don't talk about it. It was difficult because I have a choice to I have 20 years of career so I can look for jobs that I want, but I kind of tired of feeding in. So what I, what happened was in the beginning at the same time. Again, nothing is a coincidence. I stumble upon a word and then through people in the co-creation space, the word that is, become my philosophy until now is called D C O D D I W O M P L E Cody. I never knew about that before. It's an English slang, which means to move purposefully toward an as yet unknown destination.

(Christine Samuel) So, I thought, wow, that's totally perfect because I had no idea. You know, I have, I have some idea, but it's very fake of what I want to do, but I can move purposefully one step at a time. That's not a big deal for me. I can commit to that. I cannot commit to like, yo I got to be this or that I'm going to make this much, But I can commit to one step at a time. And what happened during that time, also I do an experiment with this work because, you know, I've done things and it works in my professional job, right? And consulting's and my background is too so experienced is you find discovered problems and then find a solution. So you have to start with a problem, and...