Candice Wu 0:00
One thing that I've really enjoyed during the Coronavirus COVID–19 times is that on some of the late-night shows that are now being broadcasts from home, recorded at home, they're interviewing guests, and those people are now at home too, whereas, before they'd come into, you know, this professional production of a show, and they're like, yeah, you know, I'm really liking this at home thing. I'm not even wearing pants right now. And, or, like Stephen Colbert will be in a suit and then he shows his feet and he's not wearing any socks or shoes, cracks me up.

And I've been working online for some time now, podcasting, also seeing my clients one on one, and I don't do it with my clients, but with podcasting, sometimes I am, like, in my underwear and that feels the best for me. I've never really been naked. So that hasn't happened yet, but neither has anyone on the shows that I've seen. But seeing that has given me a whole new permission to just laugh about it and speak to it.

Great to have you here today. I just wanted to jump on to this a{Live} now episode that is also an experiential.

If you wish to experience only the experiential without this whole conversation, feel free to skip forward on your podcast app or in the show notes to the right timing, which is going to be roughly around 19 minutes in.

But first I want to talk a little bit about this program called Living Ayurveda During Crisis and Quarantine. And it's by my friends Zach Zube and Elizabeth Sullivan. It's a six-week online immersion centered around Ayurveda and Yoga. And it's rich, beautiful, community connection, and self-care practices that are seasonal and connected with your specific optimal health and wellness. That includes recipes, daily routines, prompts for your own self-study, and invitations for different types of movement and meditation. And there's a forum that's members-only, recordings of live videos, bonus materials.

While I haven't taken this program myself, I have really enjoyed Zach's programs, classes, as well as his products at Element Self-Care. I've often ordered those products for my guests at the retreats, the live retreats that I've offered, and people have really enjoyed them.

You can save $30 off your registration with this specific discount code that's for Embody Your Nature, The Embody Podcast, the code is LIVINGAYURVEDAEYN. And that code is also in the show notes LIVINGAYURVEDAEYN, you can find the full program at www.elementselfcare.com/living-ayurveda.

So, when you use that code to register, you'll get $30 off and the podcast gets money. And all that money goes straight to support this podcast, the production, and the back end of everything. If you don't have the funds for the full program, you can talk with Zach and Elizabeth and they'll negotiate a cost for you that works for you. And I love that they're offering that, so it sounds like a lovely program. Check it out. And these are tools that you can take with you the rest of your life and transform yourself and align more deeply with yourself and be in your body feeling good and in your optimal health.

This is Episode 117 of the podcast so you can find all those details also at CandiceWu.com/ep117

Hello and welcome. You're listening to the Embody Podcast a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, Embodied Healing, and self-love. My name is Candice Wu and I'm a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

While I was swimming today, I was reminded of this space of moving without seeing and moving without thinking, just being in the water, using my body to guide me and feel the senses, feel into my experience. And it just so happened that I was belaboring a decision. I was thinking, what should I do with this? Should I say yes or no?

And while I was swimming, I remembered that, oh, I have the tool of my intuition. I have the tool of my senses, my body, and that's actually the way I've been making a lot of my decisions lately. And sometimes we have these tools, but we forget to use them in certain instances in our lives or certain arenas or pockets of our life.

So, I remembered that I could just feel into this without needing to look at the pros and cons or really think about it too much. And it led me to this conversation that I want to bring today, which is how do we really develop our inner sense and knowing, especially if you have trauma.

Sometimes, when there are pieces of trauma living in your energy system, in your body, you don't always feel like you can trust the inner messages that you're getting. So if you even sense, is this right for me? Is this aligned? Your body might feel like oh, gosh, no. But maybe it's the thing that is your growth area. For example, sometimes when people receive good things or good things happen, “good things”, right, things that are desirable, there can be this clenching around it like, oh, no, because the body protects and says, something about that has been dangerous before. Whether I know what it is or not, something about that has been dangerous so I'm not sure if I can receive it fully. And so you get this mixed message. In a sense, some part of you knows that, well, that's a good thing, or I want that. And another part of you says, — and shuts down.

I have found that through healing trauma, through healing these little bits and pieces and the big bits and pieces, there has been a clearer and clearer response system and connection between me and my body, me and my intuition, me and my knowing from all directions. There's less static, there's less clutter or garbage, so to say, and I don't say garbage in a bad way, it's just that some things need to go or some things are just kind of sitting there rotting.

So you might just take a moment and assess where you're at with it. It's not to say that you have to be totally clear of all your trauma to be in connection with yourself. It really feels like it's about knowing where you are right now. Knowing how your body's responding to certain kinds of experiences, and trusting where you are right now, and then allowing it to evolve and change.

So if you know you can't trust yourself, like, trust the feeling of tension that says, no, when a certain kind of experience happens for you, that may be an area for you if you want to heal or to slowly take a dose at a time and move through. It's not necessary to override it all and just blast your system and your nervous system so you don't even feel anything or you feel overwhelmed or anxious. But to work with it a little bit at a time, can you receive a little more? Or, can you face that experience a little more?

And, you know, when it's a very reactive response, that there's something that's activating your nervous system, whether that active response is one that's pleasant or unpleasant. Like, if you get really excited, and it's so exciting and it's intense, there may be something in there that's related to something that is unintegrated from the past or from your ancestry or past life, that draws you into the situation.

And not to say that it's a bad thing, but when I found that it's a very intense feeling, it's almost like addictive, a high, that there tends to be some opposing experience to that, that connects with that situation, for example, like being in a relationship, and suddenly it feels intensely amazing. It usually shows its shadow side somewhere, some time. Or, it has a cost or price to pay somewhere.

So, when it's a little less intense, when it feels like it's almost neutral in your body, it's not as charged. But there is a clear yes or clear no or yum or yuck as some people say. And just to be clear that usually when my body says, maybe, or when my sense says, maybe, it tends to be really actually, no, it's not a Yes. It's not an obvious Yes.

So if your Yes and No system in your body is not fully clear, or it has pockets of like, uncertainty or it doesn't quite make sense, then those are the areas that you work with. But just wherever you're at with your level of clarity and capacity for all experience, that's how you can tell whether you might be able to trust that feeling or not and where that feeling is coming from.

I did an episode early on about intuition, as well as working with the parts of you that come up and you can find that at CandiceWu.com/intuition. Knowing what to trust and developing and cultivating that inner trust.

So we want to support our communication system inside with more clarity and receive the knowing and information that we deeply already have with clarity. And I like to call that, vibrational clarity, like being in alignment with your specific vibration, your vibration that is your coding, not the vibration of trauma, not the vibration of the layers of karma, soul history, but the source of you that's clear of all those things.

And we just allow that to be to the degree that that's possible without pressure for more, with a total agreement, and being loving and gentle to yourself that this is where you are and that is exactly right, and it gives you the pathway to the next step to what wants to be healed or seen eventually or when you're ready to have even more vibrational clarity, more space between you and the present moment. But at the same time, being so, in the present moment, that there isn't static between you and it.

When I talk about inner trust, trusting yourself, trusting your intuition, or just surrendering to the knowing that is there, I've often played with it for myself and invite people to do that. Just see, you know, using decisions that aren't giant. Just see what your inner intuition says. What your body says about that choice or the thing that you're looking at, and then just follow it. Let that be an active creative process and experimentation that if you follow it, see what happens. And what if you were to follow all of those senses? What would life be like and what happens?

When I'm swimming in a pool, and even when I did today, I definitely hit the wall like, I was not looking. I was not using goggles. I was swimming with just my sense of where I am spatially, proprioceptively, and then my arm hits the wall and then I just adjust a little bit.

So if you trust yourself and go with your instincts, you might hit a wall, but there's also in me that the trust that I can adjust and learn from it or I can be okay with what just happened. It's okay. It's not devastating. There are some things that are devastating but this one isn't.

So inner trust is also, can we trust ourselves with the outpouring of what happens? Can we know that we can handle it? And if we can't, then, how do we build that? How do we build our strength? How do we build safety in our bodies?

There are a bunch of ways that I'm not going to get into today. But you can find them all sprinkled throughout the podcast.

So, can we trust ourselves?

When I talk about this with others, I get sometimes fears coming up for people. Well, if I trust myself, what happens if I just gratify all my desires? Because my body says, Yes and that's not okay or what happens if it doesn't go well.

And so, whatever your resistances are, or responses to what happens if you just trust yourself, those may be your fears. And when we move through those fears, forgive ourselves for those beliefs that come with it, or feel into those fears and witness the experience, allow that to integrate, allow our capacity to be greater, and those fears absolve, then you have yourself a little more trust in your being.

And from where you stand now, if you do have some of those fears, it may be hard to believe that those things would not be a problem once you actually do trust yourself and those fears themselves, those fears don't exist within a deeper sense of trust. They just actually become irrelevant. They're not within that paradigm.

And of course, we dip into trust and out of it, even if you develop a strong sense of trust, you can be dipping in and out of it. This is the stuff of our process. This is the stuff of our lives, that we move through and find those places.

So I've talked a lot and I said that this was an experiential, it's going to be a brief one, and one that just gives you an initiation into a process and it comes from Family Constellations, Systemic Constellations, as well as combined with Somatic Experiencing and just being in the body.

For this experience, you'll need three pieces of paper and something to write with, and a little bit of space in front of you that you can walk and move around.

If you need to pause the podcast and get those materials, feel free to do that now. And when you're back and ready, we'll begin.

So I invite you to move your body, shake or wiggle, stretch. Or, if you just need stillness, go ahead and be still.

Notice how your body is today and now.

Allow yourself to be curious about the unknown spaces of your body.

And, to the degree that it's possible, invite your mind to rest.

You can even imagine placing the mental activity over to a counter or shelf next to you, or just over to the side and let your heart and your body come forward and take the lead.

And that is tuning into sensations, images, emotions, movements, energies.

So when you're ready, take one of the pieces of paper and write on that one piece of paper, something that you know is aligned with you or pleasurable, brings you a good feeling, and doesn't have a conflict with it. So, something that is very obvious and clear that it's just good for you, aligned, that you choose and you say Yes to. Just write what that is on the paper.

And on the second piece of paper, let something come forward that is undecided. And let one of the choices of that decision be on this piece of paper.

And so, if you're deciding between Yes or No, Yes to X, Y, and Z, or No, write the Yes or the No here, or if it's a specific thing, write what it is that is up in the air for you.

And on the third piece of paper, write a different response to the same situation. It could be the opposite, it could be just something different or a slight adjustment.

So this is a Mini Blind Constellation, blind meaning you're not going to be able to tell what's on those pieces of paper.

So I invite you to either flip them upside down, make sure you can't read it from the backside or fold them and scramble them so you don't know which is which. Then, when you're ready, place them each on the floor in a space out in front of you in different places. It doesn't matter where, just follow what feels right.

And when you're ready, just feel your body where you are now with these three pieces of paper out in front of you. Notice how you're standing, the temperature of your body, your emotions.

And I invite you to stand on top of one of these pieces of paper without needing to know what it is. Just stand there and let yourself land here in the energy of whatever this piece of paper says. Perceive everything there is to perceive about what's going on inside your body, what you sense, where you're looking, how you feel inside.

You might notice your thoughts as well and any intuitions or hits of information you're getting.

Notice if your body feels open or contracted, easeful and balanced or leaning, crouching down, follow your body. Allow the expression of whatever's here, just be known and felt. Even if it's a little whisper, just follow it.

Feel free to explore this for as long as you need to just being in it, sensing, witnessing, and you can pause the podcast if you need to.

But whenever you're ready, take a couple of breaths, step out of this place and then step into the next one, onto the second piece of paper wherever that is, and do the same thing.

Allow the feeling to arise from inside of you, whatever is here. And notice even if you feel nothing.

Notice how you're breathing as well and any information you receive, just gathering that information and data.

And then when you're ready, go to the third piece of paper, taking a couple of breaths or moving your body in between, and opening to any information that the body is telling you as you stand on that third piece of paper. And just trusting whatever is here, by listening, sensing, allowing.

And as you're ready to step out of this third piece, feel free to step back into any of the other two if you want more information or you needed more time, or you want to explore in a different way.

And when it's time, when you feel complete for now, go ahead and let what's on those pieces of paper reveal, the big reveal.

So open up those pieces of paper and see what it feels like to know now what was on those pieces of paper, compared to or letting it align with what you felt.

Let your own discernment be part of this process here of just seeing the information, being curious about how it fits together with the reality of what's on that paper.

Check to see if the pleasure piece, the thing that you don't feel conflicted about that feels good, or that you know is aligned with you, felt that way or what came up? What happens now?

Do that with each of the scenarios, the choices, without any judgment, just be with whatever observations you have of the process and your experience. Feel what you feel. Notice your reactions.

And I hope that this has given you something in terms of either confirmation or disconfirmation of what you can trust inside yourself, what you may not be able to trust at the moment or support with a decision you're making, information for you that's beyond what your mind was giving you. See if it matches or not.

This is something you can try with other things, other situations or relationships, you can do a Blind Constellation and just set up these pieces and see how your body is feeling and what it's showing you, what information you get when you let the mind be out of the picture.

And I hope this supports you in navigating what's unknown about your life, what life is moving forward in the aliveness of who you are.

Thanks so much for joining me today and I hope that the children screaming and laughing in the background didn't distract you too much and the waves of the ocean. I hope that you felt supported by these waves as I do.

And may this be another tool for you to develop and practice and see how it works for you on your journey. Thanks for joining me today and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.