[DR. CRISTINA CASTAGNINI] Behind The Bite podcast is part of a network of podcasts that are good for the world. Check out podcasts like the Full of Shift podcast, After the First Marriage podcast and Eating Recovery Academy over at practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to Behind The Bite podcast. This podcast is about the real life struggles women face with food, body image and weight. We're here to help you inspire and create better healthier lives. Welcome. Hello everyone. Welcome, welcome to the show. So I don't ever want to assume anything about my listeners, but I don't think it's a stretch to assume that anyone listening today has never heard of energy work or alternative forms of healing that others have turned to when traditional forms of treatment for whatever reason, just simply did not work for them. I think part of the reason I chose to this podcast to hear from real life people who overcame their own struggles and come on here to discuss just how they did that. That is just what the show is all about today. I happened to come across paths recently with someone who, like most of you listening, spent many years numbing out and escaping from painful, personal struggles and inner turmoil. In his own words, he said that he spent the first four decades of his life, punishing, mutilating, demeaning, and destroying himself. Somewhere along the line, he realized those daily practices only made things worse. It's when he stopped trying to bury himself that his life shifted. Now, he realizes that most people wouldn't have survived what he put himself through. So his path included the years of self-education reading and trying more well-known alternative healing practices, such as meditation. [DR. CRISTINA] In all of this, he learned how to heal his own pains. So what started out as something he was thinking solely for his own self-healing has now become a practice that others actually come to him for. They want to learn from him so they too can heal and move on with their lives. So our guest today Bo Bissett is here to introduce and discuss with you today this practice. It's called Amo Ni and it's probably not one any of you have heard of. If you have, I do apologize for assuming that. I'd never heard of it and it was intriguing. So I thought, why not give him the opportunity to come on here and also give you listening an opportunity to hear all about it? I am certainly interested to hear more, so with that's get started. Bo, welcome to the show. [BO BISSETT] Thank you, Cristina. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. [DR. CRISTINA] Thanks for being here. I'm excited because I've had other people on here talking about energy work and healing, and as we've discussed before the show people aren't going to know much about your type of energy work and healing. So I'd love if you could just discuss with us how you I guess, found this healing for yourself and maybe just discuss a little bit more about it so people aren't going, what is this? This is what this whole podcast is about. [BO BISSETT] Yes, no, I understand. My journey was started by my own self-disruption. So from a very early age, I latched onto drugs and alcohol as a way to cope and shut down the voices. Then also put me in situations that were uncomfortable and make me, or have me be in situations that were uncomfortable but then be comfortable. So if I had a drink in my hand, I could be anywhere and do anything but if there wasn't a drink in my hand then yes, I generally did not like or feel comfortable being around other people. That's a big deal. I mean, we're social animals, social beings. So yes, I mean alcohol and drugs really ruled my life for probably a good 25, almost 30 years and in the course of all that I was in several car accidents. I've broken more bones and had more staples and stitches than I can count. It's through all of that I had to figure out, all right, well, I've just crushed and destroyed my body and I'm not going to go out like I had thought I was going to. It's going to be a lot more painful and last a lot longer than I thought. So I got to put the pieces back together because I'm tired of hurting and yes, so that's when I started looking. I think the first book that really got me into, that really got me to think that or realize that emotions were the deceit of all of our issues or at least all of my issues was called Molecules of Emotion by Dr. Candance Pert. That book was more of a female's journey through science but the point that I got me was just like emotions affect us on a molecular level, and I was like, wow, man, that's pretty crazy. So I tried, I could try everything I could get my hands on. I read hundreds of books and its courses, I can travel internationally to, I live in Taiwan now but I was just looking and looking and trying to heal, trying to figure out what was wrong. Once I stumbled onto muscle testing, which is one of the foundational practices I use in the modality I called Amo Ni, knee Amo in Spanish means I love and Ni in Chinese means you, so together, Amo Ni means I love you. The goal is to get the individual, to have the individual that we're working with look in the mirror and say those three words. From personal experience, I don't believe that you can love someone until you've loved yourself first. I know going through the troubles that I went through and the relationships that I went through, where I am now I was infatuated with and I was interested in other people at times, but I was so tormented on the inside that I couldn't even give someone else my heart. I couldn't, yes, really pay them attention, give them love because I didn't love myself. [DR. CRISTINA] Well, it sounds like you were really escaping from everything with the drugs and alcohol. I'm wondering that whole process of just how, you talk a lot about self-awareness and I'm just wondering, was that a painful process to even start to connect with yourself and have the awareness of what you were thinking or feeling or what your emotions were? [BO BISSETT] Yes, it was pretty brutal. It was really, just, the biggest bulb that went off for me was like, it was so painful when I realized, when I started doing the clearing work and I realized like, oh my God, I've been doing this to myself. I mean, there was, I knew that drinking was not leading me forward, but drinking's socially acceptable. All my friends do it. So I'm like it is what it is. I'm just one of those things, like maybe it's a physical thing and I just can't drink, but I was like, I can't drink. It was always a fight. But when I realized not just the drinking, but the way that I talked to myself, the way that I treated myself, the decisions that I made, the fact that I like bankrupted myself physically, emotionally, spiritually, just relationship wise, like everything, I just, I pushed people away. When I realized that the decisions I was making just on a very micro level were pushing me, were keeping me going down that path, I was like the Hoover Dam exploding. And I cried for, oh my God months after that, just releasing and releasing and releasing. Yes, that's when I really started healing. [DR. CRISTINA] I know people listening to this podcast may or may not have turned to drugs or alcohol as well but if anyone listening can relate I can certainly with my own eating disorder turn to my eating disorder behaviors, to numb out and escape from all the negative stuff going on in my own life or my own head and clearing that out, not numbing out or coping and escaping, distracting, whatever you want to call it. With all of that, the ed talk or the behaviors once that all stops and the awareness comes and realizing what's all there and what's presence is the same thing as, wow, now there's all of that. That's there and yes, the negative thoughts, all the things you were avoiding and now have to deal with, the aftermath, the relationships maybe you have to deal with that were broken or the consequences from all the things you didn't attend to. So it sounds like you were at that place and it's a lot. It's painful and hard. [BO BISSETT] No, the thing is talking about the food or drugs or sex, or whatever we use to hide and to seek pleasure outside of ourselves, since we're all in it together, it's no like you're this or I'm bad, we're on it together. One thing I like about what you said, talking about awareness, I was looking at your website, one of the things you said was once you gain the knowledge and awareness, things can start to change. You were talking, you mentioned the awareness earlier and yes, it's just so true. The awareness, once that happens, once you achieve that awareness is like, wow, I've got, it's time to make some changes. And I can make some changes now because I have that awareness and know what I've been doing. So once that spotlight shines on what you're doing, then you have that choice. Then you have that conscious choice, like now I know what I've been doing specifically on a micro level and I can now choose to keep doing that because I know what that, I'll start to choose something different. [DR. CRISTINA] It's so hard because, like eating disorders through an illness. Even with the awareness, it's a hard thing to get help. It's really, I guess that's where the, when you say the choice, it's can you choose to seek help? Whether or not somebody chooses to seek help a whole different thing, the illness is the hard part because certainly it’s like we were talking earlier, you have to eat every single day, several times a day. So it's a very difficult illness to overcome, but I think it's, like you said, it's just understanding that it is an illness and it's not as this choice you're making to continually have this. But when you were, I read your website as well, it's like, is that part of what you help people through is like how to gain that awareness? Is that the first step, is helping them gain that? Then what's the, like, if somebody was to work with you, what is the whole process that you help them work through, what does that look like? How is this different than say any other kind healing or work that somebody might take on? [BO BISSETT] I've done countless healing modalities and I've done, looked at Tony Robbins and I've done Dr. Joe Spin's work and I've done sound healing and meditation, and I've done counseling and therapy and everything. For me there was, I just didn't, nothing connected. I didn't really have the light bulb moment that this worked for me. For me what, the muscle testing was self muscle testing, was the most important thing that I discover muscle testing I was a direct connection with my body. Like I always thought I was fairly self-aware but once I started muscle testing and I realized like I had really, there was a huge divide between what I thought I knew and what I actually knew or what I was hiding. The self-muscle testing was just a huge revelation that like, wow, I can really open up and I can ask myself questions. I've always been someone who relies heavily on or is very, takes a lot of pride in doing things on my own. For me, the muscle testing was like, it gave me that power to stop looking again, stop looking outside of myself for the answers. I combine the muscle testing with the like Meridian and emotion chart from kinesiology. Then we go through and we look at the heaviest emotions attached to each chakra and we find the emotions anchored to those emotions, other emotions anchored to those emotions. It's just like, I guess a good analogy here is like I'm in Taiwan so on certain public holidays, they'll go out or when a new business opens, they'll take fireworks and they'll take these long strings of firecrackers and you just light, they light those things just go prrrr, going off like a machine gun. That's the process that we use, the emotions that we work on through the chakras, and it just pops the emotions and the anchored emotions that we have to the childhood instances that were anchored in the first place. It's just with each station, with each move up to chakras and each emotion that we find the release is so powerful. Then it could be that day or a day later, a week later, where the awareness happens, the self-awareness happens and we see what was tied to that emotion and the event that we uncovered because once we connect with that emotion and then move it through breath, the Amo breath, Amo in Spanish is I love, so the Amo is actually a love breath. We use the actual breath and then also the sound and the vibration of the breath and the chest to help move the emotions. And the yes, the release and the connection and self-awareness that appear is just life changing, changed my life. Go ahead. [DR. CRISTINA] So does it start with, when you say muscle testing, is that something that anybody can learn to do? Or is that something you help people learn how to do through this process because it sounds like that's, that sounds like that's like a mind, body connection that people need to start with first before they do anything else. Is that what's happening? [BO BISSETT] To do it on your own, yes. I work with, when I work with individuals then I'll self-muscle, I'll muscle-test for them and as I'm walking them through the process, then I'm also teaching them how it's done. Because I really believe like this work not only changed my life, but saved my life. Yes, I mean, I would like to see more people doing it in the hands of people that can take charge of their lives and yes have it literally, the choice in their own hands to be able to change their life. [DR. CRISTINA] Now the muscle, is there, I mean, is that the way the mind and body start to connect at first to really kind get into that? Then it sounds like there's another transitioning to connecting with chakras. What is the transition from like the muscle testing into more of the work with chakras? [BO BISSETT] Okay, I'll like, for example, with the first chakra we start off with, one of the first emotions we start off with is shame. So we go in and I'll look for the different emotions anchored to shame. It could be shame itself. It could be spite, it could be anger. It could be frustration, the emotion. Once we do that, then we have the, once I find the emotions attached to them then we go through and we connect with each one of those emotions. With muscle testing, we can also find out when and where that anchored emotion came from. So what age it was, what was the situation? And we had an individual connect with that actual emotion in that situation. Then we also go deeper than that. We'll go through, after having connect with, if they're able to, there's some instances where these emotions get attached when they're, even in the womb. I mean, and in that instance, you cannot connect with what was happening, what was going on. So I have the individual also connect with the body part where they feel it. Where is that emotion anchored in your body? I like to think of the body is like a high school hallway, just littered with lockers. In each of those lockers could be your heart, could your arm, your fingers, knee, wherever, stomach. That's where those, we keep emotions in those body parts. We store emotions in those body parts. That resonance of that emotion in that body part is causing the disturbance and causing us to yes, they couldn't lead to actual physical problems in the body as well later on down the line. Once we connect with that, then we use body, we use release points on the body that corresponds, the chakra and the emotion that we find and then the Amo breath, which again, is the love breath that we use to move the actual emotion. As I was doing this work with the muscle testing and the release points and connecting with the emotions, once you release these emotions, these steward emotions, there's quite often, do you feel that emotion again, as it comes out, the anger, the shame, the guilt, the sadness, the depression. And for me the love breath, the Amo breath really takes some of the sting out of that that emotion moving again. The Amo, the way to do the Amo breath is with, it's a three-part breath. So it's A-m-o. So you basically like sounding out Amo, basically sounding out each one of those letters. So the A you're bringing in light from above, with the M or the 'mmm' really we're spinning that light in our chest and our heart center. As we're doing it, we're also connecting with the part of the body where we found the emotion and imagining the emotion, like gray or dark wisp of energy coming up into the heart center being sucked away, that negative, or that heavy energy being sucked into the heart center. Then with the O, I'm not sure if you remember when, I think it was in the eighties, I guess it was, there was a cartoon called the Care Bears. They were like, they killed the enemy by shooting love or luck or whatever was there chosen in a symbol out of their chest. So it's the same thing. It says Aaa-mmm, spinning around and, O. Just doing the Amo breath itself with meditation, I do it before meditation, it's some beautiful cleansing breath. I think I send you the link for it, so if someone wants to check that out, I definitely recommend it. Even if this is not something that you're interested in the AMA breath, I would definitely check it out. [DR. CRISTINA] Thank you. It will be in the show notes [BO BISSETT] Yes, [DR. CRISTINA] It sounds very much like at the end of when I do yoga, something the own breath, like the first part. That thing. [BO BISSETT] Yes, exactly. That's where I came up with it. It was just, you know how it is when you've done something for so long and then if you've been on a path for so long and all the experience, like, you kind think like am I going to use this one day and all of sudden it's like, everything just kind falls right into place, like, whoa. That's how I came up with the whole name for Amo Ni and everything like that. You just like, it all fell into place at once and that breath basically fell into my lap and I was like, wow, that's, I started using it. It's really amazing. [DR. CRISTINA] So obviously you read many books and have this experience for yourself. So when did you start working with other people and having experiences with other people and seeing what effect it had on them? [BO BISSETT] About a year and a half ago. So my own journey, it took me about, to get to the point, it took me about eight years, eight years before. So I guess, like you went to university and graduate school. I took the longer way of being stubborn and trying to figure out everything on my own. I may be less painful, I guess. I've pulled myself through the mud and kind put myself through all precarious and difficult situations where if I had opened up more to learning from others or more importantly learning from others experiences yes, the journey would've been less painful, but then I wouldn't be where I am now and happy where I am. [DR. CRISTINA] So how did you come to people and say this is my experience and this is what's happened to me? How did people take to that and start to work with you? [BO BISSETT] That's a good question. The first thing is I started doing it and then my wife was like this is, you're a completely different person. That's what kind was one of the tipping points for me. Finding this stuff too, was we almost lost each other through a really big argument. It was just that almost lost that just everything triggered. She was actually the one that started introducing people to me. She was like I want you to help this person. I want you help this person. We've got this friend. I'm like, sure, I mean, I'd love to actually. Anyway, just helping people just feeling, just being able to help people and realize like, wow, I've just made a difference in somebody's life. One of the first people I worked with, they were on the brink of a divorce and he's now happily married. Him and his wife sleeping in separate beds and they were arguing about how to deal with children and now it's all completely changed. So it's amazing. [DR. CRISTINA] So in the last year and a half, would you say now people are more seeking you out for help versus the other way around? [BO BISSETT] Yes, it's getting that way. It's getting that way now. I'm still pushing those wheels but the tracks are greased, are starting to get greased, I guess you'd say. [DR. CRISTINA] I mean, I'm curious now, do you feel like people are giving you positive feedback, like, okay, this is really helpful, this has changed my life, the transformations? [BO BISSETT] Of course, yes. That has been, I mean, that's been most, the most rewarding part was that for me, like, yes, I made changes, but I read a quote the other day and it was like somebody, and this is money, but it applies to what we're doing as well. It says something about people don't know about money buying happiness until they've given enough of it away. I feel the same way about what we're doing with helping people. So you don't, it's like once you, helping yourself is great. I wouldn't be able to help people without having helped myself first. But the feeling I get from helping others is much more, its much deeper than, like I'm giving that gift right away and that's pretty powerful. [DR. CRISTINA] Do you think people have to be in a certain space or mindset in order to start working with you and have it be successful for them? [BO BISSETT] I think that's true in any instance. I think if I had been in the right state, like you know Tony Robbins would've worked for me. If I'd been in the right state of mind Joe would've worked for me. Or yes, but I also think that being in the right space, but also like there's certain things that resonate with people more than other things. I think once you find the thing that does resonate with you, like, what I do won't resonate with some people, that's fine. I think the biggest thing that I have learned is that what we talked about earlier is about awareness and like you can have that awareness. You can achieve that awareness through meditation. I don't like meditation because I think it takes too long. What I do is like just really search and destroy it. But having said that meditation is good for grounding and I do it almost and maybe three or four times a week. But you can, just to ground myself and start my day off right but yes, you can have self-awareness with sitting down and getting lost in a drawing or playing basketball or going to see or talking to someone. But to me, that self-awareness, that is the key, like the key in ignition, once that clicks, you can start moving, [DR. CRISTINA] Obviously, you are in Taiwan, so if people do want to find out more about this type of energy healing and work and maybe do want to explore working with you, can they do that without having to be there? Or how does this work? [BO BISSETT] Yes, exactly. The funny thing is that with COVID is like I started out with working with people face to face and then COVID came and I had a person up in, I'm in the south of Taiwan and a friend introduced me to her friend and said I want you to, can you work with her? I said, yes. She's up in Taipei. I was like, well, I don't know, let's see if we can do some, let's see if we can do a Zoom call. We did and it worked fabulously. Then towards the end of our Zoom calls, there was an issue with the connection. So I said, "Let me just call you back." So I did, there was no video and we were on speaker phone and I was working with them same thing. I think the separation that we experience in life is really, self-imposed. We are connected with everything. I think the deeper you go with this work, the deeper you go in healing your own, your healing, the more you understand that you are connected with each and every person and thing and on this planet. When that happens, you just have so much deeper respect for the people around you, the things around you and the journeys that people are going through. The judgment falls to the wayside and you just appreciate everybody's journey and what they're, like I said, what they're going through. [DR. CRISTINA] Well, I know you also have some material online if people do want to learn more or find out more about you and your work. So how can people find you and learn more about this because I think that's the biggest thing, is people don't know much about energy work or especially something new like this, they probably would want to explore it more or understand it more. So how could they find you and your website and more information? [BO BISSETT] Yes, the website is probably the main place. I've tried a bunch of stuff on social media and yes, I prefer my own website. The website is amoniclear.com. It's A-M-O N-I, and then clear. I've got some stuff on, I've got maybe a hundred videos on YouTube and all the other social channels, but really my big one is yes, the website. [DR. CRISTINA] Great. Well, thank you for sharing all this. It's always great to have ways, like you said, people connect with different things and find different ways themselves of finding their journey to getting to a better life. So I do appreciate you introducing us to this, especially me. I had no idea what this was and to connect from like literally worlds apart is fantastic. So I appreciate this. [BO BISSETT] I really appreciate you having me on your podcast and giving me this platform to share what I do and talk with me and share your experiences as well, Cristina. It's really, I really feel blessed. I appreciate it. [DR. CRISTINA] Well, thank you so much. Sure people will be going on your website to find out more. So again, thank you so much for sharing your story and giving us all this great information. [BO BISSETT] That's no doubt. Take care. [DR. CRISTINA] You too. [DR. CRISTINA] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.