Ian Salvage, beloved Hoffman teacher and coach, is our 100th guest on the Hoffman Podcast. What better way could we celebrate reaching our 100-episode milestone than with this vulnerable, wise, and insightful conversation with Ian and Drew?

Ian completed the Process three different times, the first time when he was twenty-four years old. Listen in to discover why he did the Process two more times.

Ian shares about his journey to healing the ‘shame message that he was bad.” As a child, he felt bad. As he explains, children internalize their experiences. Since he felt bad, he came to believe he must be bad.

One of Ian’s main survival strategies as a young child was to disassociate from his body because the emotions he was feeling were just too big for him to feel. As an adult, he found it hard to be present and connected to others. Ian shares that childhood strategies are very helpful, but as adults, they really get in our way. He discovered had to come back into his body and to know he is safe there. In other words, Ian says he needed to come back into “an adult nervous system.”

In doing the physical work of expression at the Process, Ian heard his body come to understand that he is, “to his bones,” innately good. Through this, he allowed his body to “align and connect to what his intellect thought and knew, to what his emotional self felt, and to what his Spiritual Self is.” Through his work at the Process, Ian’s Quadrinity became aligned in the goodness that he now knows he is. We can all learn a great deal about our own journey from Ian’s very human experience of healing.

Ian Salvage holds a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from the Wright Institute and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in trauma-informed Somatic Therapy.

Before being certified as a Hoffman Teacher in 2019, Ian began working in the Hoffman Institute’s Enrollment Department in 2011. Ian holds a small private practice where he works with clients remotely from Maui.

You can learn more about Ian here.

Two of Ian’s sisters have been guests on the podcast:

Dōjō:

William Lewis:

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Quote shared by Ian: