Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is about how to love your body, heal your body, and support your connection and relationship with your body so that it is an ally to you.

Candice Wu 0:11

In this episode, we’ll talk to the body, connect with why this is important and how this can work, and support all of the ways that the body is trying to connect with you so that we can decipher and translate. So we understand what our body needs.

Candice Wu 0:30

The body is this brilliant expression of our innermost layers of being, our soul, our heart, what we desire, have desired, and what we are experiencing at the deepest levels of who we are. So, it is an absolute, beautiful tool to support us in deepening in who we are, understanding who we are, and loving ourselves.

Candice Wu 0:59

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.

Candice Wu 1:12

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.

Candice Wu 1:34

This episode is sponsored by my Dream Work classes on Skillshare.

Candice Wu 1:38

One of the things that helps me heal and to know myself, and to claim the parts of myself that want to arise and express itself in this life, are to work with my dreams. I never really knew how to do that, or how to cultivate my dreams, until the last couple of years where I dove into dreamwork, and the deeper I go, the more my dreams bring me insight and the more I feel whole in myself.

Candice Wu 2:09

Sometimes my dreams, they’ve been telling me the next step of something or predict what’s going to happen. Sometimes they give me the key to a thing that’s been missing or struggle in my life. And I love that I can translate my dreams into an understanding that’s embodied. So not just thinking about my dreams and analyzing them and looking at dream meanings, but feeling into the dream and what the energy of the dream’s offering into my body and letting my body take up that energy, allows me to be even more in my life.

Candice Wu 2:48

So I have some Dream Work classes on Skillshare, which is a platform that’s like, the Netflix for learning and tutorials. And you can find all those Dream Work classes at CandiceWu.com/dreamclasses.

Candice Wu 3:04

At that link, you can also sign up to get a couple of months free of a Skillshare membership so that you can access the classes. And also, you can access classes from a variety of other teachers that are teaching on almost every single topic you can imagine.

Candice Wu 3:23

Welcome back, everyone, it’s great to have you here. Thanks so much for joining in.

Candice Wu 3:27

Today, I had a bit of a challenge getting started with this episode, I think there’s so much to say. And also, I get a little bit scared, sometimes, just starting off a podcast. I know that once I get the ball rolling, I start to feel better, and get in the groove. But getting started is sometimes the hardest part.

Candice Wu 3:50

Do you have that experience with things where it just feels overwhelming and scary? And yet the reality, once you get there, can be that it’s not as scary as you felt.

Candice Wu 4:04

In those cases, I just typically do one little thing. So, the first thing I did was set up my microphone and get all the cords out, which is something that I have to like take out and put away. But if it were out, it might be a little bit easier as well. But just setting that microphone up is the first step for me. And starting off with whatever it is that is the tiniest baby step that you can with what you’re moving towards, whether that is just getting a cup of tea, to set the stage and atmosphere and self-care for what you’re doing, or to clear your desk. Or, if it’s something else that’s not work-related, or that is in some other aspect of your life.

Candice Wu 4:56

What is the tiniest stuff that you could do that could even get to to the next one? That’s what always helps me.

Candice Wu 5:04

And that’s how I got myself to get to sit here today with you. I have a cup of tea with me and a green smoothie, which I like to make in the morning.

Candice Wu 5:17

And, I just got back from a writing session with a new horse that I’ve been working with, Sunny, this horse is at a stable closer by to me and in Michigan. And I just love this farm because the owner is wonderful at communicating with horses.

Candice Wu 5:38

The way that she’s been working with this Mustang that she fostered for some time is amazing. If you know horses, then you know Mustangs are wild horses.

Candice Wu 5:51

All horses are wild in their own ways, right. But what I mean is that they live in the wild, and they were taken in by humans.

Candice Wu 6:01

So, the way that the owner has been working with this horse is that when the horse wants her to stop or back off, she bops her on some part of her body with her nose. So the horse will take her nose and just like boop, her nose on top of her hand, or her arm, or somewhere usually her hand it seems that tells the owner, stop. That’s enough for the moment. And she can try again in another couple of breaths or a minute or so. But she might be saying, “No, don’t touch me there, I don’t want you to go that far.” Or, “No, I’m not sure I feel comfortable with that.” And so she’ll boop her with her nose.

Candice Wu 6:46

I love this as the entry to this conversation about loving your body, communicating with your body, and being in relationship with the body so that it supports you in your life. Supports you in your fullness, in your fullest expression of yourself, and all that you desire. Because the way that this owner is communicating with the horse is one little step at a time, and respecting each communication that the horse is giving her.

Candice Wu 7:19

So that’s not the only way the horse is communicating. She’s also communicating by moving her body slightly, like, leaning away or towards, or sometimes turning her head or drawing an ear down or back. She’s communicating with her movements, like with her movements in her legs, with her tail, with the swish of her tail, with her eyes, with the energy of the feeling that’s being communicated. So there are so many ways that we can listen for what the horse is telling us. Just like, there are so many ways that our body is communicating with us and giving us information constantly.

Candice Wu 8:04

For probably 25 years, I did not pay attention to my body, of course, I ate food and I slept. And I understood the importance of sleep. I understood that it was important to eat healthy. I didn’t really know what that meant, I was doing the best I could.

Candice Wu 8:24

And then I would have aches and pains. And would wonder, “Oh, what’s wrong with my body?”

Candice Wu 8:33

So the first thought would be: “What’s wrong with my body?” or: “What am I doing wrong?” or: “What’s going on?” or: “What ailment do I have?”

Candice Wu 8:43

And I think that’s pretty common in our consciousness right now, we think, what do we need to do or give our body so that it feels better?

Candice Wu 8:54

The challenge with this is that the body is communicating on all these different levels through the pain in the body, through tension, or disease, or through illness, through coughing, through sound effects, that want to come through the sensations inside, the movement of the organs and fluids inside. As well as the feeling of what’s going on in our body, the state of being, the energy, the emotion, as well as movements that want to happen with the whole body. Images and thoughts. So all of this and more, the body is wanting to tell us something.

Candice Wu 9:52

Another way to look at it is that the body is saying something and moving through a process of something. But if we dismiss it as only trying to tell us, “Oh, I need medicine, to fix me.”

Candice Wu 10:09

And this one to one equation of disease or illness means, take medication, then we’re missing out on a whole depth of what the body is experiencing and why.

Candice Wu 10:26

On some level, I believe we all want to feel good and feel better, when we’re not feeling well. Or when we’re struggling, whether that’s physically or emotionally or spiritually. But I do believe that there’s more to our experience as a human being than to just feel better all the time.

Candice Wu 10:47

So if we feel bad, let’s just do something to feel better. I believe that we are here to learn, and to deepen in the experience of who we are in this body. And also to understand who we are not. So that we can shed those layers of what we’ve built up in ourselves to think we are, and to come to the easefulness and fullness of who we are on the deepest levels of our being.

Candice Wu 11:19

And that includes this awareness of our conscious self, the part of us that’s really aware of all the things and experiences that we feel, that we notice. The awareness in us that can feel through emotions, notice our thoughts, notice our presence, and be in noticing, be in that compassionate witness of ourselves.

Candice Wu 11:51

And I believe that part of our experience is to deepen in presence, to deepen in witnessing exactly what’s happening right here and now, without changing it just so that we feel better.

Candice Wu 12:07

So how can we expand in our experience of being so that our capacity grows and grows and we can experience all of it? How can we deepen in the experience of ourselves in this human body even more?

Candice Wu 12:26

And with that, the body is one part of what is trying to communicate to us, what is trying to bring us to our deeper selves, and what wants to work with us so that we feel good in the process, that we feel present and at peace in ourselves and at ease in our body, in this vessel that moves us through life.

Candice Wu 12:59

So I want to start with a couple of stories about my life, working with my body. So as I mentioned, I didn’t really pay attention to any level deeper of my body’s experience for 25 years, at least. I was mostly just thinking that the body was just its own physical being as separate from my emotions, my spirit or any awareness in me, that is just a separate thing that needed to be treated, and was either healthy or not. And that there wasn’t much more of a reason for it to be healthy or unhealthy or out of balance than the fact of the physical experiences related to it, like what food I was taking in.

Candice Wu 13:52

If I was going to the doctor, if I was having an illness, then it was just, that’s what it was. And I would just do what it took to solve it or fix it. So this sort of flat experience of the body.

Candice Wu 14:08

I believe I shared this experience in a previous podcast, definitely in a blog post. But when I was teaching middle school art, I was about 26 or seven years old, I had all this numbness in my right side. And it freaks me out. There were weird tingling sensations. It lasted for several days. And by the fourth day, I just, I was like, beside myself, I went to the office, like the school office, talk to the school nurse, And I was like, “I think I need to go to the ER, I don’t know what’s going on with me.” And she encouraged me to do that. And after going to the ER, I spent four hours there in fear, and then walked away with a piece of paper that said, you have pain in the tissues of the limb.

Candice Wu 15:05

So this story is not to bash the medical field or to say anything of the sort that ER is not helpful, or the medical field isn’t helpful. I think that it can be incredibly helpful at the right time.

Candice Wu 15:23

And at that time, it was helpful to know that there wasn’t something severely wrong with me in that moment. And yet, it was unhelpful in the way that it didn’t give me any direction, or any opening to a possibility of feeling healthy or understanding what was going on in my body.

Candice Wu 15:45

I decided to go to a chiropractor who also was an energy worker, but I didn’t know that at the time. And so you can see where I just entered into this experience of chiropractic work that I thought was just a physical experience.

Candice Wu 16:00

This doctor was totally interested in Applied Kinesiology and testing the body to see whether it was flowing or not flowing. Or, in some cases people talk about this as muscle testing, like, where the muscles on or off, or strong or not. But it’s more about the energy flowing or not, which signals the muscles to have full strength or be weakened.

Candice Wu 16:33

And it floored me when he was working with me and just randomly would say something like, “Candice, say this out loud, I accept and love myself exactly as I am.”

Candice Wu 16:46

And then he would test my muscles, and my body would shut down. And it essentially was saying that my body didn’t feel like I loved and accepted myself exactly as I was. And I couldn’t understand like, how does my body know that? Or, isn’t that just a thought in my mind, a belief in my head?

Candice Wu 17:12

And what I came to learn was, no, the whole body was resonating with that experience that I did not love and accept myself for who I was.

Candice Wu 17:22

I, in some ways, hated myself, and some ways, didn’t feel worthy, didn’t feel accepting of who I was, it was rejecting a lot of who I was. And later, came to learn that every single cell of our body is reflecting the experience of what we believe in ourselves and about ourselves and what we believe of the world.

Candice Wu 17:48

About that same time I was doing EMDR therapy, which is a type of processing of trauma and experiences that help you integrate all the parts of your experience, your body, emotions, thoughts, and the images and memories of what was upsetting for you, or what can live underneath the surface of your experience. And my therapist was noticing how it just gets stuck with this gut feeling that was so painful.

Candice Wu 18:22

I was holding my gut and feeling awful, but I didn’t really have the words for it. And she would say, “If your stomach could talk, what would it say?”

Candice Wu 18:39

And this was such a hard question for me, because all I would do was think: “What would my stomach say?” And I would just try to deduce and rationalize what my stomach would say. And it took a while before I would feel embodied enough in my body, enough that I could just feel and trust, some sense, or some sort of flash of insight to come through. And that the words could just arrive to me of what it would say.

Candice Wu 19:16

It was more of an asking and listening process at that point, where previously, anytime I asked something to myself, to my body, which was a foreign concept, I would just think about the answer and analyze, to get to the answer.

Candice Wu 19:37

Do know what I’m talking about this difference of using your mind to analyze and think about the answer to something versus sensing what is coming from within and what’s arising in you as information? I think that takes a lot of practice. And we all — many people want to get in touch with their intuition. I think that that is what I’m talking about, at least part of it.

Candice Wu 20:06

So fast forward. Two years maybe. And I’ve been doing EMDR. I’ve been working with my chiropractor, even sensing how foods affect my body very directly with muscle testing. And then matching that with my inner sense of, does my body say yes to this? Or does it say no?

Candice Wu 20:30

And fast forward, past the book, The Celestine Prophecy that really changed my life on sensing energy, following my inner guide, and then reading, I think it’s The Thirteenth Insight, no, The Tenth Insight, which gives information about how do we look at and feel into our bodies, injuries and illnesses, to rewind to the original hurt, wound or belief that led you to get injured. And led to a weakness in a certain aspect of the body.

Candice Wu 21:15

So I love that book. It was so important and it is Yoga. It goes back to the levels of our physiology, where the innermost level of who we are is this subtle energy of awareness, of consciousness that we are pure being. We are pure consciousness and everything is the same. Every being is that. Every object is consciousness. And then, that energy is moved through us as an individual soul. And at the individual soul level, we have all these beliefs of who we are, and who we are not in the world. And, those have been created by some experience that we had taken meaning from, but that meaning is distorted from the reality of presence and truth. And then we accumulate that and that’s karma. And from that level, we have our emotions, thoughts, and our body experience, with the body being the outermost expression of the energy, and dynamic of who we believe we are.

Candice Wu 22:29

I talked about this more in-depth in a podcast at CandiceWu.com/koshas. And the Koshas are the levels of our physiology. And this book showed me exactly how that works and how you can work with the outermost level of the physiology of the body to get towards the soul.

Candice Wu 22:58

And around this time, I was walking across the street in Chicago, towards my friend’s place, arriving at some get-together, and I get a text message, and as I’m walking across the street, I pull out my phone from my purse, look at the text message. And as I’m reading it, I almost literally fall into a hole. I didn’t fall all the way down. My ankle kind of broke the fall, which was the painful part because I twisted my ankle.

Candice Wu 23:31

So I think about this book, and I’m thinking, “Oh, yeah, there’s a way that I can heal this.” This is beautiful. Because, what if my injury wasn’t just an accident? What if I could have prevented it by who I believed I was in my state of being, which is not to blame myself or criticize myself, but to give an opening towards something different.

Candice Wu 23:57

So I thought about this book, The Tenth Insight. And now as I’m talking, I’m hoping it’s the Tenth, maybe it’s the Eleventh or Twelfth. But I’ll link that in the show notes and hopefully link the right one.

Candice Wu 24:11

So thinking about this book, I stayed with my ankle, this is you know, a couple of days later, after this whole get together. As I was moving my ankle gently to feel the pain, I started crying. I allowed myself to cry and follow the feeling. And slowly, I let my mind wander. And I allowed any words or thoughts to be noticed, any feelings.

Candice Wu 24:47

I traced myself back to the moment in time where I checked my phone and what I was feeling at that moment, just as a starting point. And what revealed itself was that I was feeling like, “Oh, yeah, I want to respond to my friend.”

Candice Wu 25:06

But underneath that was, if I don’t respond to her now, maybe she won’t want to be friends with me anymore. Like if I’m not accessible when she wants me to be. Maybe she won’t care about me as much either.

Candice Wu 25:25

All of those thoughts are quite distorted. Yes. And we can dismiss them and say, “Oh, that’s not real.”

Candice Wu 25:31

But I followed the feeling of that and allowed myself to feel how painful that was. The feeling that if I didn’t respond to my friend right away, that I wouldn’t be a good friend. That just really wasn’t reasonable.

Candice Wu 25:49

So at this point, I’m crying a little bit more and allowing myself to go deeper with it, and feeling the pain in my ankle and just feeling like, “Ouch, ouch!”

Candice Wu 25:59

And so as I heard that in my mind, “Ouch”, I could have just dismissed it as, “Oh, don’t be a baby, like, you can feel this pain.”

Candice Wu 26:10

But instead, flowing with the feeling of, “Ouch, this hurts”, allowed me to open into a younger experience of how much it hurt to be in my family.

Candice Wu 26:25

When there were times that my parents were having reactions to me. I had a lot of trauma growing up, and so experienced, neglects, and I experienced emotional abuse at different times. And it felt like my young life was really unstable. It didn’t have a stable person that was continually paying attention to me and aware of me, and supporting me with my emotions and helping me to move through life, moment to moment.

Candice Wu 27:02

And as I felt that, I realized how unstable my ankle was, that I twisted this ankle several times when I was doing sports growing up, like gymnastics and cheerleading. And that, my ankle just cracked, and that was living itself out continually in my day to day, and here it was manifested in this moment, where I felt if I didn’t respond to my friend, I wouldn’t be worthy, reflecting that feeling of unworthiness that had threaded into my entire life.

Candice Wu 27:40

And perhaps I had come in with, to feel those feelings and letting myself move through with awareness, the feeling of unworthiness, not believing it, but allowing myself to believe it enough in the moment to feel the feelings that came with that.

Candice Wu 28:00

And then, the pain started to subside in my ankle. And after a couple of days, it had decreased. And after a week or two, I didn’t feel much pain at all. And my ankle was able to strengthen very quickly without doing much with it, other than just moving through those feelings, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do. But it wasn’t like I was doing PT on it or anything or doing exercise with it, which I think is a really good thing, which can help also elicit the emotions and strengthen the muscles to release some of the same emotions. So either way, you go about it, if you’re going in with awareness, then the healing can take place.

Candice Wu 28:56

And now, I’ve been working on my elbow, and I’m not going to go into the whole story. But this elbow is in a lot of pain, like right at the joint and only in this, like, crevice between two bones at the joint. And slowly, I’ve been peeling off layer by layer of what’s going on here. And some of it related to some ancestral stuff, where my grandfather had lost his mother. And I felt like he really was holding on to her and didn’t get the chance to grieve because she died. And then he got given away by his father. So not only did her death become a painful experience that wasn’t supported, for him to integrate the feelings. But then he had to lose his father and sort of go into survival mode.

Candice Wu 29:54

So it felt like what was coming up was this feeling that my grandpa was holding on for dear life. And as I felt that, those words and pictured him, I could feel the pain of him and his family, his primary family that wasn’t felt. And that did release some of the pain in my own arm yet right now, there’s more.

Candice Wu 30:21

So where I left at the moment is, “Wow, what is going on in here?”

Candice Wu 30:27

And slowly over the last six months to a year, I’ve been very gentle with my elbow and not forcing or pushing it to be different. But just being tender with it and soft with it. So that it can slowly feel safe enough to reveal more to me.

Candice Wu 30:48

And I’m so for going to other health care practitioners and other healers and therapists, coaches that can be supportive around that. And so in about a week, I’m going to be seeing my Acupuncturist, who goes really in-depth with understanding the soul and how it’s related to the physical body as well. So I’m hoping that that gives way to the next level of what wants to be known here in my elbow, or through my elbow, what’s been living in the elbow that wants healing.

Candice Wu 31:24

So all these experiences that I’m sharing, I wanted to just illustrate how I’ve been working with my body. These are just a couple of experiences of thousands. I’m working with my body every day, whenever I feel something going on just staying with it and seeing what’s here or just allowing it to move without knowing sometimes exactly what it is.

Candice Wu 31:47

But, all of this to say that the body is constantly communicating and moving through something and if we can be the compassionate witness to that. And also, if we can communicate with that and translate the information that’s coming to us, we can advance our healing and we can deepen into our presence very quickly.

Candice Wu 32:12

Our body is like a friend giving us insight and information, experiencing moment to moment, right next to us, except we’re inside of it.

Candice Wu 32:22

The body holds implicit information, meaning it’s holding information that is not in our consciousness. It’s in our unconscious world. And that’s coming through us, through the sensation, emotion, imagery, the flavor or color of something, like literal taste, or the sense of flavor, smell, or sensing into a gut feeling, movement, tension, ease, an intuitive flash of insight or information, as well as sound and sound effect. Sound that the body wants to make, sound that our voice wants to make, a noise coming from inside the body. And the biggest tip I have for you about it is: trust it. Always trust it or begin to trust your body. And if you have a sense of something that’s happening in the body, and feel it, that sense that, “Oh, this is about x, y & z.” Trust it, at least enough to follow that through to the next step, to the next feeling, so that you can deepen and see into that pathway of your sense of what’s going on and what you’re feeling.

Candice Wu 33:49

When we have experiences, there’s an association that can come with it, especially if the experience wasn’t felt all the way through, whether it was a positive or negative one. If it was more than our capacity could handle in the moment, it was overwhelming in some way. This is where our body is so intelligent, our body will hang on and in connection with parts of that experience until we have fully integrated that with our awareness and allowed it to digest through our body.

Candice Wu 34:27

So that is, as I said, both positive and negative experiences. So if we have something that’s overwhelming, and I would likely call that trauma, if it’s overwhelming to the body, and our body didn’t integrate it all or complete something around it, if it got disrupted because it was a little too much, then our cells, our muscles, are viscera, our bones, will be filled with the experience, the adrenaline, the energy, and where it gets disrupted, it will stay there until you go back. To feel it and to process it and processing meaning, being with it and allowing the next feeling to be felt or allowing the body to show us what’s next, and letting the body move through the sequence of what it instinctually needs to.

Candice Wu 35:24

The body wants us to feel safe, to feel whole, harmonious, and at peace, as well as integrated. So that we feel present, like an animal in the wild. When they’re feeling safe, they’re available to find food. They’re able to find a mate, they’re able to enjoy peacefulness, rest, run around and play. And that’s what our body is wanting for us. That’s what our body is here for.

Candice Wu 35:58

And when it experiences something traumatic or overwhelming, it stops that process until we can go back and digest it later. And the thing about that is if we don’t do that digestion, it accumulates over time. And a lot of times we don’t realize that something was overwhelming or could impact our nervous system like that, like a trip and fall, or a car accident, or a bike accident, or an emotional experience where someone said something that hurt our feelings. It doesn’t matter what it is, it matters how your body and your heart, and your nervous system responded and whether it was overwhelmed.

Candice Wu 36:48

So the gentleness and compassion comes in, not using our mind to filter what was appropriate for us to be overwhelmed by or what we should or shouldn’t have done, or how we should or shouldn’t have reacted. But it is what happened. And what do we feel now?

Candice Wu 37:09

Our mental body tries to rationalize all that and thinks, and sees a lot faster than our physical body. And our nervous system can integrate. Our awareness connects with that, our awareness of our mental body or mind, as well as what our animal instinctual body is feeling is holding both of those together, and able to support us in healing.

Candice Wu 37:41

Our body is so sacred. It’s the vessel to carry us through life and to allow us to experience pleasure and to experience joy and love. And to be who we are, it is such a gift to our entire being to just be who we are, and to be with all that we feel in congruence with inside and outside.

Candice Wu 38:08

Our creativity wants to manifest through this life, through our sexual energy, through what we desire to express and create in the world, to experience connection, to feel touch, and enjoy that sense of pleasure, to experience nature, to experience pain, sadness, anger, all of those emotions that we can feel, our soul, our body, connected with our soul wants us to have all of that and to enjoy all of that.

Candice Wu 38:48

So I’d like to offer a couple of experientials in the next coming days around how to be in the body, to stop and just simply feel your body. To be in it and deepen in the experience of it, with an awareness that has softness, compassion, and witness to help bring safety to the body.

Candice Wu 39:18

Something you can start with that already was previously on the podcast is the Five Senses Body Scan. And that’s Episode 59b be so you can go to CandiceWu.com/ep59 and scroll down and find that experiential.

Candice Wu 39:38

Also, you can tune into Letting The Body Lead, which is allowing an organic movement from inside to come outward, and to feel in the body with a different connection and relationship to the body. That’s Episode 32a. And that’s at CandiceWu.com/ep32.

Candice Wu 40:01

But what I’ll offer later this week is, Orienting In The Body, that’s from Somatic Experiencing from Peter Levine, of just being in the presence of your space and surroundings, as well as the presence of your body, allowing yourself to get here and arrive here even more deeply.

Candice Wu 40:25

It’s like cats and dogs do when they enter a space, they sniff it out. They look around, they hear, and they feel into their bodies, whether it’s safe or not. And we often skip that step.

Candice Wu 40:40

So, orienting the body can truly help us to feel good, and then to go deeper in the presence of who we are, and go deeper into healing if we need to heal. Bringing attention inward into the body is one of the most powerful, probably the most powerful thing you can do for healing and for presence. Just our awareness alone, and being with what is, is what allows healing to happen.

Candice Wu 41:13

Because the body is so intelligent, it feels this boost of our awareness and begins the healing process immediately. There’s not much more you have to do. But there are tools that can support an opening of some sort or accessing in different ways. But that primary, basic tool of presence and seeing and witnessing in the body, and allowing is really the key to everything.

Candice Wu 41:45

When you fuel the body with your conscious awareness, it amplifies the healing. So there’s a grounding touch experiential that you can tune into at CandiceWu.com/ep47.

Candice Wu 42:01

But in this series of this podcast, I want to offer touch to the body, to claim the body as yours, and to bring your body even to another level of presence and awareness in the now.

Candice Wu 42:20

And a third experiential that’ll offer is “Talking To The Body: Body Language”, connecting with the body and how do we support ourselves and open to what the body, or what the organs inside, or what a part of our body that feels hurt, pain, tension, sadness, any emotional sensation, what it wants to say to us, what it might be saying to us, what sound effects it might want to make, to allow a healing movement. And how that can bring a new level of awareness in your presence and more healing.

Candice Wu 43:01

There are two experientials that relate to this that are already out there as well. One is the Body Love Ritual, 55c. It’s giving attention to a specific part of the body. And that’s just to give loving attention inward. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/ep55.

Candice Wu 43:22

And also, Conversations With Your Gut, 26c, that’s at CandiceWu.com/ep26. That one is where we talk with our bellies and allow the belly to speak to us what it wants to say, what it needs, what emotions arise from that.

Candice Wu 43:43

And so, those are two that you can tune into now. And as you tune in later this week, we’ll go deeper into talking with the body, or a specific part of the body to allow healing.

Candice Wu 43:56

There are so many messages that the body is saying, and we may not understand all of them. But to build all the tools that we can to decipher what the body’s saying and to allow it to heal in its fullest capacity, that’s what I’m interested in. And that’s what these experientials will offer you. And so we build the capacity to feel a bite-size at a time, what’s going on inside. And there are so many layers that accumulate over time of our experience. Everything we take in through, our senses, our experience is something that our body needs to digest, and we need to give it time, we need to give it presence. So we just work with that one thing at a time, one piece at a time.

Candice Wu 44:51

So as we conclude today, I’m thinking about Game of Thrones. If you watch that or have watched it, I love how they say: “Blood of my blood.” This is when they’re speaking to their children or their kin, someone who is of their blood.

Candice Wu 45:10

And we have often used blood to signify the importance of connection in the lineage or our bond to those that we love, like you are my blood, or I bleed green, if you’re from Michigan State, go Spartans!

Candice Wu 45:30

The blood, the body, the physical body is so sacred. And we know it at a very deep and instinctual level. When we say “blood of my blood”, we use that to signify the deepest bonds.

Candice Wu 45:45

And so as we leave today, I want to offer this experience of gratitude and love for your body for this sacred expression of who you are, that lives as who you are. And that’s holding all these experiences for you to get to know yourself deeper, and holding all these pains, and visceral tension, as well as positive experiences, all to support you in the deepest knowing you could have in this lifetime.

Candice Wu 46:28

So we can take a moment together to just appreciate this body. And if you have a place that your body wants you to touch, if you just try out, touching your legs or your belly, or your heart, feeling where the body would be soothed if you touch it, or allowing your body to move in any way that feels comfortable, soothing.

Candice Wu 47:02

And to just give this moment to your body, to all the organs inside. We’re not asking anything of your body. We’re just being in presence with these legs, these things that you call legs, with this belly, and spine. These bones, these muscles, these cells in the body and just notice how your breath is as you acknowledge your body.

Candice Wu 47:54

And if there’s anything you can thank your body for, for this breath, for being alive, for being able to move, for being able to see or smell, or hear if you can do any of those things, for being present here.

Candice Wu 48:24

Just notice how that feels for you. To be in your body at this moment. And inviting that appreciation for your body.

Candice Wu 48:49

And as we conclude today, feel free to give your body anything it needs to feel even more comfortable through your day or to feel more supported. Whatever that might be for you, just imagine giving that to yourself and how it feels, how it will feel.

Candice Wu 49:24

Make any commitment to yourself or to your body that feels right in this moment, of what you might do for yourself today, or in this week.

Candice Wu 49:43

Thanks so much for joining me today. And stay tuned for all the experientials that will connect with this episode and bring you deeper into the experience of loving your body and being able to communicate and heal your body, and that your body becomes your ally.

Candice Wu 50:06

Before you go, I’d love for you to join me in my bi-monthly newsletter, where you’ll receive updates, all the experientials that go out each week, retreats, events, as well as news about my travels or what’s going on in my emotional world or my heart, what themes have been coming up.

Candice Wu 50:31

You can sign up for that at CandiceWu.com/embody. And be sure to check out all the other experientials that I’ve offered on this podcast, as well as my guests on the podcast, that are various wellness practitioners or healers from all around the world also offering their own experientials.

Candice Wu 50:50

We have several podcasts coming up from authors of books that are beautiful. They’re about healing around money, around self-love, as well as lessons from a volcano in Hawaii.

Candice Wu 51:07

So all those podcasts are coming out in the next couple of weeks and months. And be sure to check all that out at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 51:20

It’s great to have you here and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

You are listening to the first experiential of three, related to the episode around conversations with your body.

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.

This Experience: Feeling at Home and Ease, Safety

This experiential is to support you in feeling at home and at ease in your body, supporting your nervous system and feeling safe in your surroundings, and being in the present moment.

It allows you to deepen into your present experience and to support further healing and building of capacity to feel through any experience that you’re going through.

Let’s Begin

So, I recommend finding a comfortable place to sit and would rather that you are not in transit or driving or doing anything that requires your full attention.

As you find a comfortable place to sit, begin to notice your surroundings as if you are experiencing them for the first time.

Turn on the part of you that witnesses color, shapes or lines, textures, and patterns.

Imagine that you’re like a cat or a dog that is coming into this space for the first time, and is checking out whether this is a safe place to be and where there are nice smells, where it’s a nice place to sit or be.

Connect with Pleasure

As you look around, connect with what feels pleasant to look at.

Let your mind continue on with whatever it’s thinking about if there’s any thinking going on. And if you notice yourself getting lost in your thoughts or distracted, come back slowly to what’s right in front of you.

Notice the ground, the textures of the ground, whether you’re inside or out.

Notice where the ground meets a wall if you’re indoors or the sky if you’re outdoors.

Allow your gaze to soften even more and slow down, and if there is something that looks pleasant to around you, an object or a color, a texture or some shape or line, take a longer time there.

Allow yourself to enjoy it and experience what’s going on inside your body.

Notice where, looking at something pleasant might allow your breath to deepen or slow, feel if there’s any ease or calmness inside or any softening.

Let your eyes trace the lines or shapes of the thing that you’re looking at, and if your eyes are moving quickly, notice that and allow them to move a little slower.

If they’re already slow, feel what that’s like, and as you continue to scan the room, or the space that you’re in or your surroundings, notice what catches your eyes.

Feel the quality of your site, whether your eyes are restricted and tight, sharp and pointedly looking or if your gaze is soft, spacious and broad.

Notice any sounds and feel the experience in your body of the sounds or any smells or tastes that you’re aware of.

Deepen

Let yourself deepen into the experience of what it’s like to be right here in your body right now.

Feel the edges of your body.

You might even look at the edges of your body and become aware of where your body is sitting on something or touching the floor or ground, as well as where your back or any other part of your body is touching something else.

Notice the sensation of where your body is touching its surroundings, whether that’s the air, you’re clothing, the ground, or something that you’re sitting on.

Whatever feels pleasant or enjoyable to you or peaceful, allow yourself to stay there a little longer, just hanging out in the feeling.

As you breathe, notice that you’re alive, you’re here, you’re in this space, and feel what it’s like to be in your body right now.

Closing and Shifting Into the Day

As we conclude today and you shift into the rest of your day, stay connected with your surroundings and what you see around you as you move

As you take any action and notice what that brings you throughout your day.

Other Experientials

I’ll leave you with a little music here to transition, and I invite you to check out the other experientials that will support you in healing the connection with your body, opening our relationship with the body, talking to sensation, organs or parts of the body to bring healing as well as using touch and awareness to different parts of the body, to bring more embodiment and healing.

You can find all of those experiences at CandiceWu.com/conversationswiththebody. You can also check out more healing experientials that CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Thanks so much for joining me today, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Your body is your home.

It is your physical temple that moves you through life and allows you to experience everything.

Sometimes, we don’t feel in our bodies, sometimes we experienced trauma or something that brings us out of our body because it’s overwhelming, and that’s not a conscious choice, our nervous system does that on its own, and what we can do is support it in feeling like it’s a safe place so that you can be in your body and fully experience life.

This healing experiential is to support you in claiming your presence in your body and connecting with all the parts of your body with gratitude for what they offer you and your life.

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.

So, if you’re ready, I recommend a private space and sitting comfortably.

As you arrive into yourself, into this space, invite all of yourself here. Whatever there’s any part of you left behind at work or school, or wherever your mind is, at the moment, invite it back here to the present moment.

Notice your breath and the quality of your breathing, and just simply feel your inhalation and exhalation.

Now, during this process, we’re going to be touching every part of the body, and claiming every part of the body as yours, as well as appreciating it for all that it can offer you. And the body holds a lot of information and a lot of implicit memory, meaning that unconscious material may come up — things that you’re not aware of, feelings or emotions that you’re not aware are there, thoughts that may come up about your body, a variety of feelings. And sometimes traumatic memories can come up or discomfort, and other times you might feel joyful or a connection, peacefulness.

Let yourself be curious about whatever may show up for you here, and if you’re aware that this may be too overwhelming for you or uncomfortable, take it at your own pace, I recommend taking breaks or choosing to do this with a trusted friend, therapist or coach or other type of healing facilitator that can guide you through it.

At any time, if I’m using words for the body that don’t apply to you or don’t fit for you, feel free to change them so that they fit just right to your specific body, what you call your body, and your gender or sex. Whatever it is that fits for you. This is your body, and this is a time to honor your experience in your body.

So, if you’re ready, go ahead and take your hands on the top of your head and just feel your head. If you have hair, feel your hair. Use the kind of touch to your head that would feel the pleasant or soothing, that might be a firm touch or a squeeze. Tune into how your body is feeling with it.

And as you do this, notice your breathing. Notice your emotions, any sensations that are happening as well as the temperature of your body, and feel free to say this out loud or in your mind, “This is my head. This is my hair.” And stay with those words, and notice what that’s like for you.

Give yourself permission to experience whatever is here, whatever it’s like for you without any judgment, filter or changing at. This is your experience, and we’re here to open to whatever the body is telling you or showing you, letting it reveal to you what may be held here or what it feels like to connect.

When you’re ready to move on, take your hands towards your face and then touch the face how it feels right, maybe the cheekbones or right over the eyes, maybe pausing and holding yourself face or touching with soft strokes, whatever feels good. And again, say out loud or in your head, “This is my face.”

Notice how your impulse is in terms of the tone of your voice as you say it. Sometimes, one part of the body feels like the tone is, “this is my face” or “this is my face.” Notice what feels natural to you in the moment or what wants to come through, and whatever feelings or emotions come with it, witness that with compassion and some tenderness, and then move to the neck, touching the neck just as it feels right. “This is my neck.” And feel your attention on your neck as you say the words, “This is my neck.”

Notice any images in your mind, being curious about what’s there, the emotions and sensation. Feel all that the head, face and neck offer you and your life, noticing that the brain is inside the skull, and all of what this part of the body does for you on a daily basis — your eyes, your ears, your nose, your mouth, and with your breath just sending appreciation and attention to this part of your body that does so much involuntarily, all the time for you.

You might also notice if your mind thinks a lot or if you feel you obsess or there’s pain in this part of your body, be aware of that as well, just holding the experience at this part of your body has.

And now, move on to your chest. Feel your chest and upper body. “This is my chest.” And here Feel free to use whatever words feel right. “These are my breasts.”

“This is my chest.” Make your way your shoulders and your arms, perhaps giving yourself a self-hug, touching the arms the way they’d like to be touched. “These are my arms.”

“These are my elbows.” “These are my wrists.”

“These are my hands and these are my fingers.” And as you feel your shoulders, your arms, elbows, wrists, hands, and fingers. Notice them, see them. Feel the touch. Experience what it’s like to say, “These are mine.”

Now, find your hands towards your belly and use whatever words are right. “This is my belly.” Or “This is my gut, my core, my womb.”

Notice the experience of this. As you stay a little longer, feel any emotion, any sensation like tingling, aching, warmth, tightness, gurgling, and when you’re ready, touch your back in any place you can reach. “This is my back and this is my spine.”

Notice any thoughts, feelings, pictures in your mind, and take some time now to appreciate. Watch your shoulders, arms, hands, chest or breasts, belly, and back. What they do for you and your life, what they offer you? How they can reach out? How these parts of your body can be for pleasure or enjoyment of just the senses or experiencing something that you’re doing? How your hands can create? How your heart can express itself all the way through your hands?

And as you’re ready, let your hands move down to your hips and your pelvis. “These are my hips.” And become aware of any experience as you touch your hips, and what it’s like to do this now.

Take note if anything that comes up that you’d like to come back to later. Now, let yourself move to your butt. “This is my butt.” And use you whatever words fit for you.

And as you come to the front of your body, at the hips and pelvis, to your reproductive organs, again, use the words that feel appropriate and right for you. “This is my vagina or my penis or whatever organs you would name.” Connect with this part of your body naming it what feels right for you. This part of the body can be very loaded with our experiences or trauma or pain or pleasure. So, be gentle and compassionate, and witness anything that comes up for you here, today.

Notice temperature, emotion, sensations or images.

And now, shift to your thighs, touching your legs here. “These are my legs. These are my knees, my shins and calves.” And take a moment to pause here, at your legs.

Now, touch your ankles and say to yourself or out loud. “These are my ankles.” Feel them from the inside out. Picture the insides of the ankles, and give yourself the attention here and notice what that’s like. And as you touch your feet and toes, “These are my feet.” “These are my toes.”

And as you notice all the way from your hips to legs, to feet, take a moment to appreciate what the hips, legs, and feet do for you in your daily life. They allow you to move from place to place if you’re able to move with your legs. How these parts of your body support you in your daily functions or in any experience of play or pleasure or sensuality.

And now, take a moment to feel your whole body is one. See, visually, your whole body just from where you’re sitting. Picture all the outlines of your body. Allow your hands to touch any place that wants a little more attention. Feel any sensations, emotions, movement or images that arise from connecting here with this part of the body.

Sense the quality of your breath and the quality of your awareness, and as you take note of any place in the body that’s calling for more attention or offers a more intense experience or emotion, be aware that you can always come back and spend a little more time in those places. Feel free to take a break because that can also help to digest any challenging emotions. Also, take note of where the body, even if it’s a tiny little toe or ear where the body felt some peace or neutral or some pleasure.

And as we begin to transition out of this experience and into the rest of the day, take a moment to make a commitment to yourself of one place in the body that you can pay more attention to throughout the day. Maybe that’s a part of your body that feels pleasurable or maybe it’s a part that feels pain or tension or perhaps it’s a part that you ignore or never even given any attention to on a daily basis.

For a while, I felt it was really profound to even bring my attention now to my ankles, and it was such a shift when I started to do that. And over time, I gradually was able to do that, and I could feel my ankles and my feet throughout the day, almost all the time, and it feels really grounding. So, what part of your body would you like to make a commitment to, to give your awareness and attention to?

As you come out of this experience, let yourself see your surroundings, come back to here and now. Stretch or move your body in any way that feels good, and thank yourself for practicing.

We’ll leave with a little music as you transition. Feel free to connect with the other healing experientials that connect with this episode. You can find all the experientials at CandiceWu.com/conversationswiththebody. The next one is focusing even deeper on one aspect, one part of the body that’s really calling you, and opening up anything that that part of the body wants to tell you or show you so that you can deepen in your experience, feel more grounded, and/or heal that part of the body.

Thanks so much for joining me today, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

You’re tuning into Body Language: Loving the Body’s Multidimensional Communication.

This is a healing experiential that I’ll guide you through to connect with your body. Your body wants you to listen and wants you to understand it so that you know yourself more deeply. And for any incomplete healing movements or anything that the body is moving through, to be supported with love, witness, gentleness and compassion.

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.

The Body’s Communication: Multilingual and Multidimensional

The body communicates to us multilingually and multidimensionally.

It sends us information through a sense in our body, emotion, a sensation of tinglingness, achiness, heat, pain, calmness, ease, as well as movement in the body, impulse, images, thoughts that come to us, a feeling sense, our dreams, all of what the body goes through, all of its aches and pains, all of what illness that we have, connect with who we believe we are, and the experiences that we have experienced over time.

It also connects with our ancestry, what’s given to us, what we have inherited through the lineage that is also connected with the soul and the heart.

When the heart wants something, desires something, and it is wanting it just that much and doesn’t receive it, when the body doesn’t receive what it needs growing up, or in a certain situation that’s overwhelming, then the body holds on to that part, that moment in time, and wants us to go back to it to complete its movement, to allow it to come back to safety, peace, and wholeness.

Our bodies want us to feel good and want us to feel pleasure and take it along for the ride for all of who you are. And it is the expression of who you are in that deep level.

More on the Main Podcast

If you’d like to hear more about that, you can listen to the main podcast about conversations with the body, body love, and body language. That’s the episode connected with this experiential, along with two other experientials around being in the body, how to connect with the body for healing and relating to the body with love. You can find that episode with the experientials at CandiceWu.com/conversationswiththebody.

Let’s Begin

So let’s jump into this experience.

Find yourself a comfortable place to be and allow yourself to lean into your present experience. Turn on the part of you that is able to witness what’s happening inside, the aware part of you. The part that is you.

And as you begin to witness, let’s start by witnessing your breathing, witnessing your surroundings, and when you’re ready, feel free to close your eyes or look down to let your awareness go inward.

As you feel into your body, notice any part of the body that feels like it needs attention or love. This might be any part of the body that feels like it’s in pain or tension.

If there’s an emotion happening, if you have any disease or illness in any place in the body, select one place of the body that you’d like to focus on for this time.

Awareness of What May Reveal

As we open into the experience of what the body might want to say to you or show you, be aware that challenging emotions might come up, memories might come up, movements, discomfort, all of this is what stored in that tension, illness, pain or emotion in the body.

So as we go into it, be aware that this might reveal itself and take breaks at any time. Just come back to your safety, give a little bit of touch, or distract yourself and just come to what feels good in the moment.

Orienting to Support the Nervous System

You can also tune into the experiential, the first one of the series around orienting and that one will bring you to coming to your surroundings and deepening into safety in the moment, that’s a great way to take a break. And you can always come back and continue on later or another day and just take one bite at a time.

Continue

And for now, if you’re ready to move forward with whatever place in your body is calling you, go then place your hands on this part of the body that you’d like to focus on.

Feel what it’s like to have your hands there, whether there’s any warmth or coolness feel the right amount of pressure or the kind of touch that this place of your body would feel soothed by.

Let’s open to all of the ways that the body can communicate with us. All of the languages that it asserts Itself in or expresses in, can express in color, an emotion, a feeling sense, sound, texture.

But take this moment as you’re with this part of your body, feel into what sensation is here. Notice if this sensation has a shape.

Notice what color or colors it might be. Feel how big it is or what amount of space it takes up, what it looks like.

And if this is hard for you, imagine what it would look like if you could see it.

Sense the texture of the sensation that’s there, if there’s any sensation at all.

Begin to notice if your body would naturally move in a certain way as you’re focusing on this as you’re aware of this part of your body. And that might mean any part of your body. So you might notice your toes crawl up or your shoulders tighten or a reaching movement or stillness curling in.

Be aware of any images that pop into your mind or that reveal itself. Witness all this without changing it, without trying to analyze it. But experiencing this image, the sensation, as well as what emotion comes with it, if any.

If any of this is hard to connect with, just imagine what it would be like to experience it or just leave it out.

So as you witness this part of the body even longer, but the quality of your witnessing be of the gentle and tender kind, with some softness.

I Am Listening

Begin to let your body know, in this place, I am listening. I am here. I’m open to what you have to say or show me.

Notice what this experience is like for you whether that’s easy or hard or there’s something begins to happen.

Break?

This may be as far as you go today. This may be enough. If there are a lot of emotions already here, follow what’s happening. Be with what just showed up and take a break when it’s time, when you start to feel overwhelmed or before you feel overwhelmed, or just, to allow a break.

More

And if you’re ready to go on and take another step, feel into this place in your body.

If this place in the body had a sound effect or a noise that would come with it, what would that be? Would it be a growl or a scream or bellow sound? Would it be sharp?

Let it come from inside rather than thinking about it. There might be no sound at all, or it might be hard to access. If so, just leave it and be with what you feel here what you sense and what you see.

And if there is a sound effect or noise, make that noise if you’d like to, or imagine that sound in your head, you can even take a deep breath and allow a little breath, a little bit of sound to come out as you imagine in your mind the exact sound that would come out if you were uninhibited, or if it could be completely free and satisfying.

Lean into any of the emotions or sensation that begins to happen as you picture or do the sound that wants to emerge.

Again, this might be where you complete for the day or pause for this moment.

Messages From the Body

And if you’re wanting another step, turn towards this part of the body or imagine it outside of you and from a place of asking and listening, ask it, “What would you like me to know right now?” And listen, without any filter or judgment.

Ask: “What would you like me to know right now?”

Notice any images, emotions, words or sounds that come and pay attention to even a little whisper of something. Something that you might typically ignore or pass by. What would you like me to know right now?

And if a memory comes up, or a thought, a feeling, a sound, anything, if any of that comes up, or presents itself, be with it. Witness it and allow it to be here with your aware presence.

Imagine that you’re watching it like it’s a movie playing. Feel free to pause here and take more time with it.

What Your Body Needs Instinctually

And for today, well take one more step. Ask this part of your body. “What do you need?” And ask it with love, “What do you need?” And listen and see anything that it wants to show you, allow you to feel, or sense.

See if it can get to the very basis of what it needs or see if you understand what it’s saying or showing you and you can always ask for more information.

• Tell me more.
• Can you be more specific?
• Or can you clarify?

Just like you’re asking a loved one and if you understand what it’s saying or showing you, what it’s asking for, give it what it needs or imagine that you’re doing so. And if you’re not understanding, stay with it.

Be patient and just invite any more information.

Allow your body to move freely as you feel into what’s here as you stay with any shift in the body, any uncomfortable or comfortable feeling, feel your breath.

Honoring

When you feel ready, with your hands on this place on the body that you’ve been giving your attention to, with whatever happened today, just honor this part of your body.

Honor that this part of your body is trying to show you something and wants you to heal and that some part of you knows exactly what you need. Some part of you knows how to heal, if it hasn’t done so already.

Thank this part of your body. Thank your whole body. Thank yourself. Notice any gurgling inside, any movement of energy, what sensations are continuing.

When your body feels the readiness, go ahead and move a little bit.

Stretch if you need to.

Slowly begin to open the eyes.

Come back to being here in the present moment.

Notice what catches your eyes. Allow your eyes to land on something that feels soothing to look at, whether that’s a color, an object, plant out the window.

Take a little extra time here to let the body slowly ease back into the space around you, your day.

Closing and Moving Through the Day

And I’ll leave you with just a little bit of music to support the transition as you honor what it is that showed up for you today, and how your body continues to speak to you.

And as you move through today, stay aware of this part of the body and what’s continuing to transform.

Revisiting in the Future

And I invite you to come back to this audio experience and revisit each time something new might reveal itself.

And each time just feeling into a little bit more deepening into the understanding of what your body, your soul, your heart wants to tell you.

What pain or what past experience it wants you to get to know. What beliefs might come up? What images might come up?

And I want to thank you for joining me today and taking this experience and invite you to continue to notice yourself throughout the day. Thanks so much for joining me today and looking forward to having you again here on the Embody Podcast.