Catharsis: An Interview With Kwonyin

I feel, therefore i am. Emotional disturbances are actually messengers from aspects of you that need healing and care. Emotions are the compass to your personal truth - so anything you disallow / censor / repress in what you feel takes you further away from your truth, purpose & power. Emotional healing is choosing to see, feel, understand what hurt you and consciously choose to turn towards that hurt with care and compassion. The most painful thing is to feel like deep down is that there is something innately unlovable about us, but we have to see that this feeling can only exist due to the lack of unconditional love we experienced growing up which we have the power now to create.

It’s okay to not be okay.

Why was this so important to you that you decided to dedicate your life to healing others?

Once i realized i had the key to unlocking a vast portion of my being that was stuck in a nightmare of anxiety ridden constricted fear-consumed emotional disconnection and deprivation, i couldn’t not share!

I see myself more as a guide in aiding others through their own mental and emotional labyrinth to uncover their true essence of self underneath calcified ancestral-cultural-societal programmed beliefs that hold them back. The healing happens as a result of their own awareness that like a light shines into the formerly unseen darkened closed off spaces of their psyche, and once exposed can be set free.

During my darkest period of depression aka dark night of the soul, where it felt like torture to wake up every morning, disappointed that i still exist with another whole day to suffer through, i had a thought: “what is the point of existence to live in this constant total torment? What is the point of scurrying from point A to point B trying to sustain this stupid joyless existence? SURELY there must be something I’m not getting, like there’s a joke happening that I’m somehow just not seeing right now!” This thought led me to beseech the heavens to some kind of idea of a cosmic divine entity. In total desperation and humility surrender i made a promise that if i could solve this joke or riddle i would devote myself to sharing myself to help others. So here i am!

Unraveling ‘the joke’ was the process of looking at my inner chained up beast of self loathing and looking at why i was so afraid of it. I started to recognize the voice of my inner oppressor as outdated malware of patriarchal programming. I saw that the part of me that had been obeying this oppressor was stuck since childhood in believing that her reality didn’t matter, her feelings were insignificant because that was normalized way of being in the Korean culture and family i grew up in.

We are born whole and socialization fractures us into creating masks we put on that becomes an issue when it contradicts the actuality of who you are / what you feel, where we become subordinate to playing the game of what’s gonna get me approval vs disapproval, according to an external standard that actually has nothing to do with each our own innate truths.

The work of allowing the inner felt reality to be validated as important truth of who you are and what makes you uniquely you - as the compass to your purpose and power, and then to take that insight to inform your expression and doing in the external reality is what i see as integral to deprogramming from toxic systems and becoming a sovereign conscious creator.

Tell us how you came to naming your course “Catharsis”. What does the work Catharsis mean to you?

From my own experience of walking around mega emotionally constipated, i wanted to create an experience for others experiencing something similar that could serve as the anecdotal emotional laxative

Here’s a little poem on what Catharsis means to me:

What was kept down shall be let out

volcanic eruption

molten lava of wrath fury sadness abandonment rejection separation unworthiness oppression

shall be released

cuz we are nature

What is the most challenging part of your work?

The most challenging part is also the most interesting, and suspenseful - getting creative with how to guide the client into seeing or discovering some part of themselves that’s been under the rubble, and being ready to hold space for when the truth hits and the awareness of the truth permeates. That could mean acknowledging for the first time a deep sense of grief for what was lost or never had.

What is the most fulfilling part of your work?

Emotional breakdowns & breakthroughs. Ah-ha moments. Witnessing prison walls to parts of the psyche held in solitary confinement crumbling down, freeing the silent unspoken truth to the light. Seeing the brightness of dawn cracking open. Reviving parts that’d been comatose.

How is the type of work you provide so important to artists in 2019?

Artists are the hope and builders of a better planet, who through their sensitivity to the energies of what’s going on around them - absorb, convert and create new ways to understand and exist in the world.

I love supporting artists. It’s important for artists to emerge strengthened and empowered from spiritual rites of passages that in today’s world don’t really have an understanding for - except to call it a mental breakdown or depression - something wrong that should be placated, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. How they emerge, and what is discovered in the process is integral to self-individuation.

Artists broadcast new realities, to subvert and invert existing power structures. The more of us that can unblock & come out of the closet with our authentic expression, the sooner we could live in a state of connection and empathy for all life, allowing space for multiplicity of truths and ways of being to peacefully coexist and thrive.

What are your favorite words?

Portals, synchronicity, fecundity, murmur, imminent, pearl, iridescence, serendipity, flabbergasted, essence

Who are your role models?

Teal Swan, Arnold Mindell, Marie Kondo, Anais Nin, Matilda Coco Chanel, Maria Abramovic, Pearl.

How can people contact you to sign up for Catharsis?

They can book a call with me through kwonyin.as.me to talk!

This is an informal chat for me to learn about their particular emotional blocks and to see if the program is a good fit for them.

When did you begin doing performance art?

I started doing performance art since moving to LA a couple years ago, which emerged as another form of healing. It was a way to invert the relationship i had to healing as something that should be kept private to showing what emotional transmutation sounds like from the inside out.

My friend Saewon Oh and i formed 미친년 (pronounced ‘meechinnyeon’) which is a derogatory Korean word for “crazy girl,” that you could probably hear Korean moms yelling at their daughters. Through performance we consecrate space for inhabiting the liminal, crossing the threshold with sound, invocation, incantation, merging underworld and overworld into sacred profane ecstasy.

What is it like doing sound healing? Describe your experience:

surrendering - terror - desire - becoming - catharsis - hiding - revealing - shadow-self and galactic-self - burning - quelling - undulating - yielding sdfs- allowing - merging