#81 How To Achieve Mental and Emotional Mastery – Sonia Samtani

Discover the fascinating journey of Sonia Samtani, a renowned mental health expert based in Hong Kong, as she unveils the transformation of mental health awareness in the bustling city. In this gripping episode of Timeless Teachings, Sonia discusses the rise of mental mastery and emotional resilience in a post-pandemic society, shedding light on coping mechanisms and their intricate impact on our lives. Join Yana Fry as she delves into the realm of self-discovery and the quest for true emotional well-being in the vibrant city of Hong Kong.

Discussion Topics: How To Achieve Mental and Emotional Mastery

• Intro
• Mental mastery is about understanding your own voice
• Coping mechanisms can hurt as much as help
• It might not be possible to eliminate our pain or triggers entirely but it is possible to be at peace with it
• Companies are embracing new ways to support employees’ mental wellness
• Your mind is like software that can be trained to align the conscious and subconscious
• Handling emotions as energy in motion
• You can regulate your emotions by being present to them rather than judging them
• Sleep on a note of affirmation, wake up with a priming

Transcript: How To Achieve Mental and Emotional Mastery

Yana Fry: Welcome to Timeless Teachings, and today our guest is Sonia Samtani from Hong Kong.

Sonia Samtani: So nice to meet you Yana. Great to be here.

Yana Fry: Yes, Hong Kong. And you, so tell me, is it where you were born? Is it where you were moved, if you moved from where? Just a bit of the background.

Sonia Samtani: So it is where I was born. Born, brought up. So I’m a Hong Konger, that’s what we call it.

Yana Fry: Wow.

Sonia Samtani: And it was a very cosmopolitan place. So when I was here, it was a British colony, so we were brought up as if it was a British colony. Then I went to the UK to study for a while, came back with my family, and then I started my business here and I’ve been in the mental health industry for 18 years.

All the while in Hong Kong, based in Hong Kong, and then of course, taking the work overseas. But I have been here.

Yana Fry: 18 years. For those who haven’t guessed yet, the topic today would be about mental mastery and emotional resilience and toxic behaviour and coping mechanisms. And Sonia is one of those people who have been in this field, as you said, for a very long time, and I’m just very curious, you know what you have to share with us.

So let’s begin.

Sonia Samtani: Absolutely. Yes.

Mental health awareness has come of age in Hong Kong

Yana Fry: Let’s start with just overall mental and emotional wellbeing and what you are seeing right now is happening at least in Hong Kong when you work with people.

Sonia Samtani: Hong Kong at this moment is very interesting. During the pandemic, people were actually facing themselves a lot more and getting interested in mental health. Because for a long time, the Hong Kong market was not so open to mental health, and we were driven by making money, the rules of the family, what we needed to do to be good enough.

And then something happened during the pandemic and Hong Kong was cut off from the rest of the world, a good two and a half years. And a lot of coping mechanisms were cut off. Instead of going to the bar for a drink, you can’t do that because it shuts at 6:00 PM. Instead of going and meeting a big group of friends, you can’t do that because it’s two people per table.

And instead of flying away and going to another country, you can’t do that because it’s quarantined. So then you are at home, and then you can face yourselves. So with so many coping mechanisms cut off, Hong Kongers were actually facing themselves during the pandemic. And I actually found that to be great for them, great for my business of course.

And they were looking at what is working and what is not working in their lives. Which was very nice to see. A lot of people were using annual leave to do workshops with me, do private sessions with other people in my centre and to understand why I feel this way. So if I’m feeling trapped because of the pandemic and other people are not, let me understand what it is about me.

If I’m anxious, let me understand why. What is causing that anxiety? And now this year, 2023. February, things opened up and Hong Kongers were out. The playground is open, so things are a little bit different. But I do think that the concept of mental health has been introduced. To Hong Kong and to the world. Like a lot of places didn’t even know what mental health was or that it’s important to care for.

Mental health and mental mastery is something just like with physical health. It takes maintenance. It’s not just oh, I went to the gym once. They’re now beginning to understand that. It is important to focus on the mind. What exercises can we do for the mind? What can we do to maintain and sustain that endurance?

So there’s still a long way to go. I feel like we have birthed the concept of mental health, and now slowly there’s scope for it to become an infant scope for it to become a teenager. We’ve not even started there yet.

Yana Fry: I understand, and I think it’s very similar in many other parts of the world, and especially given that both of us are in Asia, I’m in Singapore, you’re in Hong Kong, and as you mentioned, you grew up there and you would work with people, primarily from Hong Kong at the moment. So there’s also a particular mentality in this part of the world, and there were historically a lot of taboos or cliches about mental health.

If you don’t speak about it, it’s not important to address.

Mental mastery is about understanding your own voice

Yana Fry: And so I’m just curious now, when you talk about mental mastery, let’s define again. So what? What is mental mastery?

Sonia Samtani: Yeah. You know this word mastery, sometimes it throws people off because mastery means like you are like the doctorate in something. You’re doing something very well. For me, it’s about being your own master. So mental mastery is being in charge of your life, and mostly people don’t function in a way where they are in charge.

So who’s in charge of their life? It’s the influence of the environment, it’s the conditioning. It’s what we grew up with. We call it the S E E R, Social, Economy. Education, religion, right? All of this is the environment and the conduit to that is the family. So our family exposes us to all of these things.

And there are rules. There are rules about what’s a good job, what’s not a good job, how to behave, how not to behave, what to do, what not to do, what habits are okay, what habits are not okay. And when we’re doing that, we’re not masters of our lives because we’re so influenced by other things and other people.

So mental mastery is about understanding your own voice, understanding the voice of others. Understanding the value in everything. So it’s not about judging this voice is better, this voice is not. It’s about having the power of discernment and selectiveness. Which one will help me, which one can I listen to?

And I operate from wisdom more than get hijacked by my coping mechanisms, my emotions, and my influences. And so I would say it is really about being your own master, if that makes sense.

Yana Fry: To me it does. Hopefully for our audience too, if you have any questions when you listen or watch that, then please ask the comments and either Sonia or myself will be in touch with you and clarify that.

Coping mechanisms can hurt as much as help

Yana Fry: Okay. So this is mental mastery, and you also mentioned the coping mechanism. So let’s dive a bit more into this. Just once again saying what our coping mechanisms are, why and how we form them and perhaps for people.

Especially in this part of the world, who would like to start asking questions and unlearning certain things? What would be the right first questions to ask?

Sonia Samtani: Yeah, so coping mechanisms are really what we do to manage our pain. So they show up as behaviours. So an addiction is a coping mechanism. Drinking is a coping mechanism. Laughing a lot is a coping mechanism. There’s people who don’t know what to do and how to respond in painful situations, so they start laughing.

Pleasing is a coping mechanism. Being unable to say no, being busy all the time, exercising too much. All of these are examples of coping mechanisms, and it’s what we do to manage ourselves. And when people come to a therapist like myself or a coach, they come to change their coping mechanisms because essentially they want to change their behaviour.

They’re saying that I feel shaky when I speak in public. I don’t want to shake. I wanna change what my body is doing, or I binge eat every night. I don’t want to eat, I drink. I don’t want to drink. I bite my nails. I don’t want to do that. And what they’re actually doing is wanting to take away a coping mechanism.

And that’s what makes it so hard because the coping mechanism is a solution that their mind has come up with to cover something deeper inside. And so people don’t realise that when they come to change behaviour, they’re taking away a solution and they’re going to then lift that lid off. And then what you’re gonna get underneath is pain and are you ready to face that pain?

And so they’re both protective and they’re harmful at the same time. A coping mechanism. You know the word cope. Sometimes people think it’s very positive, like I coped with it, I dealt with it. And in the moment, yes, it’s helpful because you didn’t break down, but later on it’s harmful because it keeps the pain inside.

If I give you an example of binge eating, so someone binge eats and every midnight goes to the cupboard, picks up cheese and crackers, and has to have it every night, and then New Year’s resolution, I’m not going to binge eat anymore. That’s it done. And this is why New Year’s resolutions fail, right in the first few weeks because you take away that behaviour.

So now it’s midnight and this person is feeling very lonely. This person is feeling sad. This person actually felt abandoned by the parents and by the boyfriends and whatever, and now the cheese and crackers are not there. What are you going to do? So either you would face your stuff and have the courage to deal with the real issue, or you’ll go back to the same cheese and crackers eventually, or you’ll discover a new coping mechanism to keep that pain at bay. So if we understand our behaviours as coping mechanisms and as solutions for something more, then when you want to change your behaviour, it’s not just addressing the behaviour itself, it’s going a little bit deeper and it’s addressing the why. Instead of judging our behaviours as right, wrong, good or bad, if we understand why we do it, if we peel a layer back, then we are much more likely to shift behaviours that we perceive to be undesirable.

It might not be possible to eliminate our pain or triggers entirely but it is possible to be at peace with it

Yana Fry: I’m going to ask a tricky question now, which I always love to ask when I talk to people in a human development field, and I myself also reflect often on that. Do you think it is possible for a human being to completely heal all the pain and to never suffer again, like mentally or emotionally?

Sonia Samtani: If we look at the life of Buddha, Okay. We know that it’s possible if we look at Jesus Christ, we know that it’s possible, but it’s not common and it takes a lot. So I would say it’s possible, and I would say it takes a lot of dedication, intention, willpower, action, consistent action. And a lot of people will not do it in this lifetime, and that’s okay.

We’ve got different opportunities to do that. So Possibility, yes. And what it takes a lot.

Yana Fry: I love how you are very gracefully answered. That coaching and mental health therapy is one of the best enlightenments. That was great. But fundamentally, yes, fundamentally. I understand. So basically what you’re saying is that. It is important to keep evolving.

And then I just would like then to look here at the part, how do we understand, or how do we deal with the fact when enough is enough, right? So because of the other one for human beings, that is this constant, we live in a constant self-improvement culture.

Pretty much a bit like also a business culture in a way when it’s never good enough. No matter what I do, it’s never good enough. It’s this therapist, that therapist, 10 years here, five years there. I went to hundreds of workshops, people would say, and so how to keep this balance. Between being mindful at what triggers you and addressing the pain that needs to be addressed, but at the same time feeling that you are complete.

Do you know what?

Sonia Samtani: Yeah. Yeah. I think for many people, whether they’re, they’re going to seek help or they’re doing self-help with their own books and reading and meditation, you’ll come to a point where you’ll realise when you are judging and when you are at peace. If we’re saying, is this good enough? That’s still a judgement.

Do I need to improve? It’s still a judgement. Oh, I’m triggered again. I need to do something about it. It’s still a judgement and in the beginning that’s probably useful because it gives you awareness of, ah, triggered versus not triggered. I can differentiate the stages. I feel inferior versus I feel enough.

I can differentiate the stages, but once we move to the next level, we would be able to just be at peace. So if I’m angry and I’m at peace with being angry, then I just allow myself to be angry fully. And I don’t need to go and seek a therapist or a coach or read a book about it. I will just go through it.

The anger will have a beginning, a middle, and an after, and it will be done. And then if I am triggered, I’m at peace with being triggered. So when we get to a point where it’s more about. Loving myself, being at peace with myself and moving away from wanting to address or fix, then we’ll naturally still be growing.

We’ll be doing it with more self mindfulness without saying that it has to be or I need it to be. It will be automatic, and I think the switch is acceptance over judgement.

Yana Fry: Sonia, this is brilliant. This is it’s not, like I’m saying before, it was not, but this is like really deep. And it also makes total sense with the development so you know where you are. And I guess that at the beginning when there is still judgement, then it requires a bit more hand holding.

From a professional or a book, but probably better professional. And then later when people move into this peaceful state, then it’s what we read also in the ancient text that you just experience what is happening. Like you experience the emotion, you experience the feeling, your experience your reaction to what is happening, and then you’re just witnessing it and.

Sonia Samtani: Yes, that is mindfulness, that is meditation. That’s all of it.

Yana Fry: I love that. This is beautiful.

Companies are embracing new ways to support employees’ mental wellness

Yana Fry: When I look at your profile, also, I saw that you work with companies that you work with leaders and you talk and teach about emotional intelligence. So when you go and talk to a leader in a company in Hong Kong, I’m just thinking right, let’s say, but it’s a traditional Hong Kongese or Hong Kong, and you go and talk to these people, how do you present the idea of the emotional intelligence and what do you teach them?

Sonia Samtani: It’s different now. Like I’m a hypnotherapist by training and previously I was told don’t even write that in your bio. It’s scary for corporations, right? And now corporates are seeking me out and saying, can you talk about hypnotherapy? Can you actually talk about what the mind is? So if there’s a corporation that actually will.

Seek somebody like me as a speaker. They already know that I come from a different background, that I’m not just going to talk about the soft skills and you know how to behave. I will be talking about the whys and I will be talking about how to process emotions and I have found that they are much more receptive now than they have ever been.

So I do talk about how emotions are created and what are emotions for anyway. And basically emotions are energy in motion, and they’re supposed to be experienced. And that’s it. And when we don’t know how to process them, then we get hijacked by emotions. And when we get hijacked by emotions, we start to suppress, explode, get disease, get in conflict, and all of those other things.

And so I teach corporates basically. What is the result of that suppression explosion cycle that we’re unconsciously in? I show them how the mind works. I show them how we are currently processing emotions versus how we can, and then we do lots of exercises, and this can be like personal exercises. I’ve taught mindfulness to a lot of corporations and they’re so open to mindfulness.

And in fact they’re like in incorporating, taking mindful moments, like mindful breaks, which is great. They have asked me to teach them again how to meditate, what to do in the office, conflict resolution, because when those emotions are heightened, we miss seeing the other person’s perspective. So how to see the other person’s perspective.

Then it goes into relationship skills. So yes, those are the kinds of things that I’m doing more and more with corporations now.

Your mind is like software that can be trained to align the conscious and subconscious

Yana Fry: I have many questions after you share so much. So let’s start with the mind you said several times that you tell them about the mind and what is the mind. So could you just explain to us briefly what is that?

Sonia Samtani: Yes. So the first thing to get is that the mind is not tangible, right? Like I can’t touch the mind. You can touch the brain. So the brain is like hardware, and the mind is software. And we know that we can’t touch our thoughts. Our thoughts are just there. Yet the software is running our lives. Where is the mind located?

More and more studies are now indicating that it’s in the gut. So that’s why they call it the gut brain, right? And so it’s the software that starts in the gut and it extends throughout the body. And our physical body is actually floating inside our mind. And that’s why we have the word aura or energy field.

And when you’re thinking happy thoughts. You take a picture and you run it through an Aura software, you can see beautiful, bright colours. And then when you think an angry thought, you run it through the software. You can see dark colours because it’s reading the mind. And so the software of the mind has two parts to it, the conscious and the subconscious.

So our conscious mind is that analytical mind, the rational mind that compares, decides judges, deciphers. And actually when you are feeling comfortable, The conscious mind is in charge, and you feel like I’m doing what I want. I’m experiencing what I want, like I want to nod my head. I do it. I want to speak confidently.

I do it. And the mind signals to the brain. The brain sends the energy to the body. You do what you want, but whenever you are not experiencing what you want, the conscious mind loses its grip of control. And the conscious mind is not in charge. Like you don’t want to get a panic attack, but your body is.

You don’t want to cry yet. You cry. So that’s not a signal that you’re saying, I want to have anxiety. That’s not a signal that you’re consciously giving the body, but the body is doing it anyway. And that is coming from the subconscious mind. And the subconscious mind holds all of our life experiences across time and space, and it holds all of our belief systems that we may or may not agree with consciously.

So many times we have a belief system inside that I don’t agree with. So the intelligence of us might say, oh, I’m lovable, but inside you don’t feel that you deserve love. Or your intelligence might say, yeah, of course I’m skilled, I’m capable, but the inside thinks other people are better than me. And so when you have something like a panic attack or you’re scared of authority and your intelligence says, why am I scared of authority?

Who is my boss? To me anyway? If I lose this job, I’ll get another job, yet my body is shaking. It’s because the subconscious mind has collected experiences and collected belief systems, and so when we’re working with someone’s mind, we’re actually working to align. We’re aligning the conscious and the subconscious mind to say the same message.

And anytime your life is not working for you, it’s when they’re saying the opposite messages, the conscious mind is saying, I want to be calm. The subconscious mind is saying, you’re in danger. You’re in danger. And so that alignment is what we work on. I hope that’s given you a little bit of an idea of the mind.

Yana Fry: Yes. It’s actually very beautifully explained, and it’s also very clear and very simple. I love how you can take, sometimes what people could perceive rather complex. Methods and topics and just explain it very clearly and very simply. And as you said, when you’re aligning the conscious and subconscious mind like I know in a sacred text for example, people also often say that what you think, what you say and what you do must be in alignment, right?

So then it becomes, so there’s no conflict and it’s exactly what you described.

Handling emotions as energy in motion

Yana Fry: Emotions. You were talking about emotional regulation and how emotions are. We said that emotions, the energy in emotions and they need to be experienced and felt and moved. And that there are supportive and maybe not so supportive ways to process emotions.

So can you please share with us a bit more on that? So what people would do that maybe not very helpful and need to be aware. And then what is the best way to process our emotions?

Sonia Samtani: Yes, absolutely. I think this is such an important topic because people are not taught what to do with emotions. Like we feel these things and then what? And let’s understand the primary emotions that we have, and if we just boil down to it, whether you are a human being or an animal, or an older human being or a newborn baby, you’re going to feel happy, sad, angry, and scared.

That’s just primary emotions and because we don’t know what to do with them, we get all the other stuff. If we accept it that we are gonna feel happy, sad, angry, scared, and all of this is to do with our survival and all of this is just to do with human experience, and one is not better than the other.

One is not wrong and the other one is not right. Then we are going to experience emotions as a wave. And a lot of people still subscribe to the thought that, oh, I should be happy all the time. I should be happy all the time. How? How can you have a wave that goes up and then just stays up? Every wave that goes up in the sea will come down again. So happiness is an emotion and every emotion is transient. That’s why they call it energy in motion. It moves and we can’t keep that stuck. And so when we are judging once again, when we’re judging an emotion as I shouldn’t feel it, it’s wrong, it’s bad.

We even judge happiness. Some people think I don’t deserve to be happy. Or I’m scared. If I get too happy, then something bad will happen. So I’m not allowing myself to get too happy and then angry. I can’t get angry because it’s not polite. Sad, oh, I shouldn’t cry. Because when I was young, I was told I couldn’t cry and was scared, oh, that makes me weak.

So when we have all of these judgments with our primary emotions, we don’t allow ourselves to experience it. And so we go, we start the emotion because it’s natural. Then through judgement, it just gets locked in the body. And the judgement is judging something about it. I’m either judging the emotion or myself that I shouldn’t feel it or the world or life, that this shouldn’t have given me this experience.

And because of that judgement, those emotions get locked and that energy stays in the physical body and over time it becomes disease. So in my school of thought, I actually believe that any long-term debilitating disease is a result of locked emotions. And you know what, like I would even go further and say even accidents are mental related.

Because you might think, oh, I fell down. That’s why my elbow hurts. But actually, if you were fully present, would you fall? Maybe not. If you were fully present in your body, would you not be able to look on the floor and say, ah, there’s something there. Maybe I wouldn’t walk there, then maybe you wouldn’t slip.

So there is an argument that even accidents are mentally related. It’s not something that just happens that you can blame on the outside.

You can regulate your emotions by being present to them rather than judging them

Yana Fry: And emotional regulation since we explained now, right? So what the emotions are and how we react. So let’s say when people do feel okay, happy. You said, happy, sad, angry, or scared. I think with happiness no one has a problem. Unless people feel they don’t deserve it, then that’s the story of itself.

But emotions like unhappiness, anger, and fear, usually people try to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and they don’t know what to do. So what can they do?

Sonia Samtani: Yes. Thank you for bringing that question back. So basically, be present to it and a good way to be present to it is acknowledge the feeling. So I am angry, okay? Not that I shouldn’t be, I should be good or bad. I just, I am angry. And studies have shown that if you are not judging. Then the emotion can stay with you for about three minutes, and in those three minutes you can process it by being present to anger.

And if you’re present to anger, you can check even, where is my body storing this? Where am I physically experiencing the anger? And actually lots of times anger itself is in the arms because when you are angry at someone, what do you wanna do? You wanna punch them in the face, right? You wanna slap them.

So suppressed anger very often is here. So get in touch with that emotion. Get in touch with where that emotion is in your body. Name that emotion, and then use deep breaths. And I would say start with seven deep breaths. Like I breathe in the anger and I allow myself to feel it fully. I pause, I breathe out the anger, and I allow it to flow through my body.

I breathe in the anger again and I allow myself to feel it, pause, and I breathe it out. And in those seven breaths, something miraculous happens. Like you’re not denying it. You are not avoiding it or judging it. No coping mechanism. You are diving into it like, okay, anger, here I come, and then you experience it fully.

And that is probably the most beautiful way to regulate. And we can do that for anger, sadness, fear, and if we do it for these primary emotions, we’ll experience less of the secondary. Which is like guilt, humiliation, embarrassment, frustration, all of that stuff that comes when we are judging the primary emotions.

Yana Fry: This is such a beautiful, fascinating cloning in a very simple way. So thank you, Sonya.

Sleep on a note of affirmation, wake up with a priming

Yana Fry: And the final question for today. I actually would like to ask a little bit more about you and your own routine, your own. Schedule. How do you deal with emotions? Do you have a ritual as you do? Do you have your own practice?

Like what is Sonia’s arsenal at home, right? To process your emotions?

Sonia Samtani: Yes, so my routine is very simple. As you’ve seen, I like to keep things simple and easy to do. So before sleeping at night. I think it’s the most important part of our day where we can do our daily routine. And since studying the mind, I also know that when you sleep, the last thought that you have just before you sleep is the one that the mind will store deepest. 

So it’s very important to sleep on a great note, a peaceful note. So what I do is I start with a daily review, and I review my entire day from the moment I wake up to the moment I’m sleeping and it’s like closing the files. So that’s my closing. It’s like your phone. I’m closing all the files that were open today, and if I’m seeing that there is an emotion there that’s not processed, I do breath work, like what I just shared to process those emotions.

So if one happened, I had a fight with someone, or I was upset with someone, I’m still feeling angry or I’m still feeling sad. I breathe through the sadness until my own emotional charges are complete. When those charges are complete, I then go into gratitude, mindfulness. I practise saying a few things that I’m loving about myself or that I’m grateful for.

I do some breathing work. Then I say an affirmation. Then I sleep on the note of the affirmation. So the last thing that my subconscious mind is hearing would be whatever I say, whether it’s I’m calm, I’m peaceful every day, and in every way I feel more and more loving. I accept myself today more than I did yesterday.

I’m allowing myself to be, I connect to oneness. I connect to my consciousness. These are examples. So that’s the note that I sleep in. And my sleep is beautiful because I actually close my day and I’m known to be probably one of the deepest sleepers ever. Hard to wake me up. So then waking up in the morning, again, I make it very simple.

I do something called priming, and I’ve actually recorded a meditation on priming, so you can listen to that. On my Spotify, it’s very much just about connecting to earth energy, so grounding myself, connecting to earth. And then connecting from my crown to my intuition, higher self, whatever name you have for it.

Bringing both energies into my heart, mixing it into my heart centre, and spreading love and joy, and then setting an intention for the day. And then after I set my intention for the day, I listened to something empowering for 20 minutes. That’s it. That’s day to day.

Yana Fry: Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sonia. And for everyone who is listening and watching, of course, we’ll include all the links. So please do check out your work and maybe if you can send me the direct link to the prime meditation. We are also gonna include this in the description. And thank you for tuning into Timeless Teachings.

Remember to subscribe, to Follow to Share, and we’ll see you next time with another guest.

Sonia Samtani: Thank you. Absolute pleasure, Yana. So nice to be here.

Our Guest: Sonia Samtani

Sonia Samtani is a clinical hypnotherapist, hypnotherapy and NLP Trainer, qualified life coach and mental health counsellor, best-selling author, two-time TEDx speaker, Senior Mentor for world renowned success coach, Tony Robbins, and Founder and CEO of Hong Kong’s leading mental wellness facility, the All About You Centre.

As a sought-after speaker and trainer, Sonia’s popular talks focus on key themes including the power of thought, visualisation, and mind-body connection. Sonia is committed to helping people find peace with the past and move towards an authentic future.