Won Body Won Life, Ep 1: You Have Won Body, Won Life

In this first episode of Won Body Won Life, you'll get to know me, the highs and lows of emotions that sprung me into pursuing physical therapy, and some concluding messages to start taking action on your health today.

Scroll down for the show transcript.

Ep 1 Transcript

Welcome, everyone to the Won Body Won Life podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jason won doctor, physical therapy, and orthopedic specialist.

I wanted to share with you guys today exactly why I started this podcast and give you a little background on who I am as a person and what made me who I am today. So if you're here listening to this very first episode, you probably noticed there's no intro, there's no outro I haven't really got gotten into a lot of the music and how I want my viewers and my subscribers to, you know, come into this podcast and end this podcast with.

But what I'm here to share with you guys, today is a little bit about who I am. I want to gain your trust, I want to help you live a more pain-free life and help you to live life more fully. And that's what the Won Body Won Life podcast is all about.

If you're here right now, and you're you're either a family friend, one of my clients, someone that's maybe known me for a while, or maybe you're here new to this podcast. I'd love it if you can help support this channel and help me grow this channel by clicking the subscribe button.

So if you're on Spotify, I'd love it if you can share your comments and q&a and anything in between in the comment section that will help support this channel. Also, if you're on Apple, Google, any other podcasts anything else in between, I'd love it if you can click that subscribe button. And also tag me at flex with Dr. Jay on Instagram Tik Tok. And also that will allow me to reach more viewers.

So first I'll start off with who I am, what my background is how I got into physical therapy and what makes me tick and what makes me I feel unique as what I call myself a lifestyle physical therapist, someone that goes beyond the exercise is and wants to share the more holistic scope of how to take care of your body long term.

And then I'll go also into you know why I came up with the, with the phrase Won Body Won Life as you can see, you know, Won is my last name, I have a lot of pride in it. And I want to help everyone that is viewing this and for future episodes to start winning in life.

So back in the day back in 1988. I gotta go back to when I was born in SF General Hospital. I don't have any memories of that. But I do want to share a little bit about how I grew up. So when I was four years old, I got enrolled into a Chinese Baptist School called Cornerstone Academy.

And Cornerstone Academy was pretty much 99% Asian, I didn't know a lot about life, it actually felt quite sheltered. And I'm sure that a lot of people that went to Cornerstone, you guys can kind of vouch for the same thing it was it was a very rigid structure.

Every single day, we learned our ABCs we learned a lot of things, but also we were driven to learn Chinese and things about Christianity. And so when I was growing up, I was I will admit, I think I was quite the bully. And I was quite spoiled.

You know, my dad actually did the insurance for the school. My dad was also very involved in the basketball ministry. So for me, it just felt like man, like, you know, my dad knows the principles, my dad knows everyone. So, you know, I felt a sense of privilege.

And that actually created a sense of cockiness that I didn't even know about. And I didn't even learn that till later on.

When some of my friends that were closer to me, were telling me like, “Hey, Jay, this is how you act”. But I'll tell you a little bit, you know, on why this matters.

I was bullied. I actually bullied a lot of people, I wasn't the most friendly person. And I felt like I felt very privileged. And so growing up, I was bigger kid, I was massive. I was actually very overweight, you know, and I talked to people, I did a lot of things that I'm probably not proud of.

And over time, as middle school went on when I didn't go through puberty, and when all these other kids were going through puberty. That's when things kind of turned changed. And I was being made fun of I was bullied because I was short, I was overweight. And I felt like I was losing friends.

And it got it it really got to a point where even though you know my dad was a part of the basketball ministry, I was part of the basketball team. I felt I felt isolated. I felt like I didn't know who I was, I didn't know my identity. And over time, I think a lot of the ridicule and a lot of the things that was thrown at me you know, fat jokes or you know, you'll you made the team because your dad, you know, knows the coach, all these different things, eventually threw me into a cycle where I started to look up things about health and fitness and extremely early age.

I even remember when I was 11 years of age. I was made fun of at school. I ate my lunch in a bathroom. It was a very dark time and I was like you know what, you know, I'm gonna prove it. One wrong, I'm going to start making something out of myself.

And I opened up these things called the encyclopedia I'm sure for some of the earlier generations, you have no idea what that is. By opened up an encyclopedia started looking at the words exercise fitness, I started looking up how to eat right.

And I got so enthralled in like, internet and going on to like Ask Jeeves and how to get into shape. And I started learning that at the age of 11, that eventually I actually got into extremely good shape.

I was still short, but I actually turned myself into one of the fastest kids in the school, I felt like I felt a lot more athletic, I felt like I made the team because of my own athletic abilities instead of relying on my dad.

And that's how I actually got started just learning more about fitness. That was my like my first dip in the pool, in terms of learning more about fitness, anatomy, and health. And so fast forward into I guess, high school.

High school, played for varsity sports, felt very good about my athletic abilities. And going into college at UC Davis, a big turn in my life, that really, that really struck an anvil, not just in my own life, but in a lot of my family's life.

And my dad, who I looked up to who started a, a big organization, a big nonprofit basketball organization in San Francisco called the Bay Area Dragons. I looked up to him with, with everything, you know, he was he was the person that I idolized. A person that I looked up to, I wanted to be more like him, I wanted to be an insurance agent, a basketball coach.

And when I was 18 years of age, when I first got into college, my dad was diagnosed with stage four, colon cancer. And so it was a very dark time in my life, I really couldn't really, I guess I realized that and really come to realization that I was going to lose my dad within, you know, six months, granted, he actually lived beyond what they what would they actually said he would, I think he was given six to nine months.

And he lived maybe 14 to 16 months before he passed in 2008. So during that time, I was still just figuring out college, it was very tough to, you know, see my mom have to take care of them. I came back on the weekends.

So UC Davis was not very far I was in San Francisco. So I would still come back for basketball practice, I still came back to watch, you know, watch the Warrior Games with my dad. And I can definitely see that it was tearing a lot of people apart, not just in my family. But so many people that knew him.

I think my dad, I consider him like a legend in the Bay Area because he was so pivotal in popularizing Asian American basketball sports in the Bay Area. And he really cared about a lot of people. And he definitely cared about me, I was his only son. And I think he took me under his wing to teach me a lot of things about basketball and just staying active.

So honestly, you know, one thing that I think even though my dad knew a lot about basketball, he didn't know a lot about his health. He actually prided himself on not seeing the doctor, he said, You know, I'm healthy as an ox. But you know, I, you know, I don't even go to the doctor.

And he avoided the doctor until he started feeling these pains. And he started to lose this weight. And then he'd finally I think my mom convinced him to go to the hospital. And so why I'm telling you these things is because it was a very dark time in my life, where when I was coming back to get back to home, I can see that my dad was just lack of energy, he didn't look to the same person at all, a lot skinnier than who he was, he was very healthy, you know, like, you know, very thick, almost like me thick, 5’7, 5’8 Asian individual.

And just to see him, I guess lose his ability, his strength, his mobility, he had to nap every single day, very often, I had to, you know, I remember moments where I had to help him get off the couch. Because he just couldn't do it himself.

So I think that the dark time in my life where I noticed these things, really sprung me into going from like a math major into an exercise biology major, I really wanted to start dedicating my life to helping other people to prevent these things from happening.

So that's how I actually got sprung a little bit into physical therapy. You know, these two moments in life where, you know, one moment was just due to strictly just being bullied and then opening up an encyclopedia, losing like 25 pounds of weight on my own and then getting myself into shape and just that stubborn attitude that my dad instilled into me, allowed me to be a person that I think relatively I'm in good shape and I inspire other people to live more active lives and to strength training to keep themselves healthy.

But yeah, one of the biggest I think the biggest most pivotal moments in my life was losing my dad in 2008. The fact that I knew nothing about health, I knew nothing about, you know, all I knew was like get my dad off the couch, I didn't know anything about exercise anything about rehab, I could have gotten him to the doctor faster.

I, you know, you can't have these regrets, honestly. But, you know, had I known more about physical therapy and for not just injury prevention, but also like disease prevention, you know, he may still be here, but I think ultimately hit the death of my dad actually sprung me into the man I am today, I care deeply about my family and my friends, I think I have a better sense of caring about my friends and their health.

And, you know, I, you know, I guess fast forward, let's say, four years later, I got into physical therapy school. I graduated in 2015, as a doctor of physical therapy from Toro University, Las Vegas, in 2013, I actually met my wife. That's another story to be told, I'm not going to tell much people about how I met her in Vegas. But that's for another story to be told.

And, you know, that's how life started. You know, I got married to her, I started a life in San Francisco, we now have a child who is now walking, he's 17 months old. Love Trey to death, I love being a father love being a business owner. And, you know, the Won Body Won Life, you know, I guess springing into, like, what made me who I am today is those moments.

But also, the fact is, like I think where God has put me in this world is teaching people how to take care of their body, you know, the podcast is called Won Body Won Life. And I think that people really do take care of their body, and learn every aspect of how to strength train appropriately, how to build, build better habits, how to get better sleep, how to manage your stress, how to become more productive, so that you can gain more time back, to do the things you love to create more time to, to exercise and to keep your body healthy.

That is one of what I'm about. I actually have a program called the Pain Free Academy, and it is to teach students around the world, specifically parents, former athletes, entrepreneurs, and business owners, how to eliminate pain from their life, how to optimize their strength and mobility, and how to get back to the activities they love with the people that matter, most of them.

The Won Body Won Life, I started off as the brand @FlexwithDoctorJay, you know, and I thought about creating this podcast and be like, ‘Hey, let me just call it this because people know me as Dr. Jay’ or reflected Dr. Jay. But I wanted something that could really resonate with people something that could really stick and that you can identify with, you know, we only have one body, and one life, and we're not sure if there is reincarnation, we're not sure what's after this, I know for a fact that, you know, as a believer in God that this body is not mine, this body is part of God. And my mission in life is to inspire millions of people to optimize their health to prevent disease.

And if you go back to the story of like my dad, who started off as like a very healthy individual, strong basketball player, somebody that I looked up to, and lose 30, 40 pounds, and I lost him, within 14 months, lost him on April 7, 2008. And seeing that, you know, when he died, when I saw my mom and me and my mom, were the only ones in the hospital.

I think the hurt to me, the feelings that I had, in terms of what I saw and seeing his last breath and seeing that, like, you know, my mom was saying like, you know, it's okay to go, you know, I want it to give other people, other parents, other entrepreneurs and people around the world who don't know how to take care of their health is to give them that fighting chance.

You know, we only have one body, like I said, and I think as far as from a disease standpoint, we know that from a disease standpoint, the things that kill people the most is heart disease and cancer. And to be honest, those two things right there, although they are considered disease, you know, 97% of diseases in the world are due to modifiable back factors.

And that means that it's not due to your genetics, that you have heart disease, well, that has a small role, and we might blame our genetics for a bad back or we have heart disease or high cholesterol, you know, 97% of disease can actually be prevented.

Okay, so when you think about that, it's the way that we live our lives in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. That determined the diseases that strike us into our later years and sometimes it strikes. You know, people like my dad, you know, at the age of 58, you know, somebody that thought he had only live til 60-80 years, you know, 30, 40 more years in life, you know, and it was stopped short because somebody that I think, thought he had good health, but then took that for granted.

And so with regards to what the Won Body Won Life is about, you know, I am a doctor of physical therapy. And I help mainly people with chronic pain I want this to be, I want this to be a podcast where it inspires people in so many other aspects of life, you know, when people decide to work with me, it's people that think expect orthopedic, so they expect to get an evaluation, they expect exercises, they expect to get discharged at some point, and hopefully, their pain is less or even gone.

And I think that's kind of the conventional way of how we do things. But you know, that that that in that sense, is also being reactive. So I think that when people go to physical therapy, or they go to a car, or they go to any other practitioners, any good practitioner, it's being very reactive.

And what I mean by that, and not not to, not to shame people in any way that are being reactive, because this is just, this is just the reality of things, human behavior is all about either two things, it's either seeking pleasure or getting themselves as far away from pain as possible.

So when you have pain, if it's like, a very small amount of pain, we continue to go through life. So we continue to have the same behaviors, the same lifestyle. We as many people, 80% of people in the world have a desk job now, where we're sitting on Zoom and emails all day, is that a lot of us sitting in lack of movement creates pain in itself.

And so we don't do anything about it until the pain is actually becoming a nuisance, it's actually starting to affect our day-to-day activities. Right, and we have to admit that we are when our pain is less, we can go and just be like, “Oh, it's an occasional ache in my neck or lower back”.

But when you're thinking about when the pain is a five or six out of 10, or maybe it's a 10, out of 10, and you can barely get out of bed. That's when we react, that's when we're saying, hey, we need to do something about it. And then we seek out treatment, we seek out a massage, or we seek out physical therapy.

And so why I'm here and why this podcast, Won Body Won Life, is more about proactivity and prevention. And I need you guys to maybe write down those words in terms of saying proactivity and prevention are the things that will help you live a more fulfilling life a winning life, okay, because if you're proactive, and you're learning better habits, better strategies, you're exercising consistently, three to four days a week, you're walking, you're doing good stress management techniques, you're eating right, you're sleeping well.

So when you can optimize some of these aspects of health that we know are good for ourselves. But we take for granted, then what we do is that we create our own disease later on in life, if we don't decide to be proactive now and to prevent those diseases from occurring.

So don't get me wrong, I feel like anybody that would want to work with me, has been reactive, they either have poor balance, they struggle with pain, they have certain activities that they no longer can do. And their goal is to get back to those activities that they want to do. And so that is what the Pain Free Academy is all about. And I've been running that program for about three years now. And it is a very established program. Many people around the world have used it.

What we stress are the three things which are Education, Exercise, and Empowerment. So the three E's are something that we really stand for, to empower people to get rid of pain by themselves, and so, quality of life. And the Won Body Won Life podcast is all about giving you the tools necessary to become the best version of yourself.

And so that's it for what I got for you guys today. If you do like this podcast and you're here to support whether you're a family member, a friend or a follower, or somebody that's just discovering this podcast for the first time, and we're going to have plenty of episodes after this.

But if you're here and you'd love to support this channel, definitely click the Follow or subscribe button. If you're on Spotify. Definitely leave a comment or a question. Be happy to answer those as well. And if you're an Apple, Google or anything else between please follow and subscribe and share this to your Instagram or your TikTok and tag me @FlexwithDoctorJay.

And hopefully, the Won Body Won Life podcast can be something that you can listen to time and time again, to live a healthier, more resilient, pain-free life. And that's all I got for you guys today. Take care and I'll talk to you guys on the next one.