Candice Wu 0:02
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.

Candice Wu 0:37
Lately, I've been interested in this idea about exploitation. I look around and see how, as a collective, there's a lot of exploitation of the earth, of animals, of our resources, using animals, using the land in certain ways. And in a lot of ways, depleting it.

Candice Wu 1:03
There are absolutely many people nourishing it and recycling and replenishing earth. And yet, there's this part of exploitation. And that led me to the idea of where do I exploit myself? That is the root of it. That's the core of where our actions come from, is ourselves.

Candice Wu 1:33
Where do I push beyond my limits? And, use myself and pushing me on limits and not a good way in a way that's not growth full or expansive, but in a way that drains and overrides what my body needs and wants. Where do I ask too much of myself or put pressure upon myself in ways that my easeful and natural being don't want to move or do or be?

Candice Wu 2:06
And for me, it's often reflected in the beliefs of not feeling enough or not having enough which then resides in not feeling and being enough. So it might look like going above and beyond for worthiness for value, or feeling greedy, like I want more. Like, I don't have enough where I constantly need more, or to do something, do more.

Candice Wu 2:41
And then, it can also show up in FOMO. For some people like missing out on something, wanting to do it all. And what that can often speak to is that feeling of in this moment, I am not enough. In this moment, this is not enough. This moment is not enough as it is.

Candice Wu 3:10
And how would our life be different if it were, if this moment, this breath, were enough? If one could find pleasure and contentment in this breath somewhere or in this experience of now, that can open up possibilities, that can open up the quality of our experience that can bring us to a truer sense of what we need to do, want to do, feel is right for us.

Candice Wu 3:50
A space where we're receptive and can listen to ourselves and be in harmony, true harmony with ourselves, rather than exploiting ourselves for the different ways that we can create or we can do. Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should. And when we just do everything, we can find ourselves burning at both ends, or all the ends and find ourselves not quite, feeling fulfilled, joyful, light, natural, pleasant, truly in joy, but we can find ourselves exhausted or pushing for something.

Candice Wu 4:49
So we're just going to jump into a little meditation here in the form of an energetic download and clearing of energy, clearing of beliefs, and some forgiveness for any ways that you may have exploited yourself.

Candice Wu 5:07
And before we jump in today, while we're all, most of us are still in quarantine mode, feel free to check out if you're interested in dream work. There are ways that we can support our bodies in deeper sleep, more sound sleep, and more embodiment, so that our dream life thrives and we can glean some wisdom from our dream world.

Candice Wu 5:35
About last year, I recorded some classes on preparing your body for deeper sleep and dream work, that inner life, and they're all on Skillshare. If you haven't tuned into them yet, you can get two months free on Skillshare with the link that I'll provide in the show notes or you can go to [CandiceWu.com/dreamclasses](https://CandiceWu.com/dreamclasses).

Candice Wu 5:58
So now let's tune into the experience.

Candice Wu 6:07
And before we tune in, let your body move in any way or find stillness, whatever feels good for your body now. Give your body that permission to feel into pleasure, feel into enjoyment, and look for it. Especially if we're not attuned to pleasure and align to it in our lives, we might miss the places that are already feeling it.

Candice Wu 6:40
And if you can't find something inside that feels pleasant, even if it's a baby toe, or your tongue or an ear, then look outside and around you. Look for something pleasant in your space and let your body experience the connection with something that's pleasant.

Candice Wu 7:12
Turn on your curiosity, turn on your playfulness. And as you land in a space of restfulness, let your breath just release, the body. Release your attention on anything in the outer worlds, any pressures any stresses.

Candice Wu 7:42
We just let this be a space and time just for you to come into connection with the pleasure in your body, listening to your body and self-forgiveness. Just inviting the energy of love to surround your whole body, above and below it, side to side, in every dimension and every cell of your body.

Candice Wu 8:23
And as you sink deeper into your body, into your energy, let your own energy open up. The deepest parts of you know exactly who you are. Exactly what you love. The deepest parts of you know exactly how to be in the truth of who you are.

Candice Wu 8:56
Feel and experience anything that's happening in your body. Anything that's happening in your energy.

Candice Wu 9:16
Begin to notice your heartbeat and if any part of your heart starts to come in sync rhythmically with your body, resonating with your own energy.

Candice Wu 9:38
And for this moment, look into your life, into all the parts of your life with a broad brushstroke and sense any places that you exploit yourself or use yourself, use your energy in places that you're heart or your spirit truly don't want to.

Candice Wu 10:08
And you don't need to pinpoint exactly where but just sensing if there's any part of you that does feel that sort of exhaustion or drain, pushing outside of yourself or beyond certain limits.

Candice Wu 10:30
And just notice all these parts as perhaps a survival mode or protection. Ways that your body has learned to be in this world to gain love or worthiness. Just for a couple more breaths, respect that this is a way that your body has adapted.

Candice Wu 11:02
Just speak or hear these words inside of your mind and let them ripple through your body and your energy.

Candice Wu 11:15
I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times and places that I exploited myself or my energy.

Candice Wu 11:33
And as you breathe that through your body, notice any little shift, any movement of the body, any sensation, and emotion.

Candice Wu 11:48
And if these words aren't true for you, feel free to just discard them peacefully and continue to feel into your own energy.

Candice Wu 12:04
I forgive myself for judging myself for any time and place that I pushed beyond my body, heart, or soul's limits. And where it didn't serve me. And any time or place that I overrode my body's needs and desires.

Candice Wu 12:39
A couple of breaths, just noticing them pass through and again, discarding the words if they're not for you.

Candice Wu 12:54
And I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times and places that I pressured myself to do what was not for me to do. Or, I pressured myself to do too much.

Candice Wu 13:25
And I forgive myself for judging myself for any times and places that I did not feel enough in myself.

Candice Wu 13:41
Imagine giving your body a whole big hug, or even wrap your arms around your body just to support anything that's moving through.

Candice Wu 13:57
Track your body and notice anything that's happening.

Candice Wu 13:59
And we'll close with a couple more words here. And again discard them if they don't fit for you.

Candice Wu 14:15
I forgive myself for judging myself for forgetting that I am deeply enough and I am deeply free, and I respect my body's needs and desires.

Candice Wu 14:48
And just letting the energy of forgiveness for any judgments around this.

Candice Wu 14:58
Letting the energy of your body digest itself. Digest anything that's happening. Letting your body metabolize any emotions.

Candice Wu 15:13
This is going beyond affirmation. This is forgiveness. This is forgiveness for judgment. And then the rest takes care of itself.

Candice Wu 15:30
And if certain emotions are stuck here or you're not feeling anything, then I invite you to just touch your body. Look outside of you, ground yourself and practice maybe some more tools for releasing overwhelm or coming back into safety in your body.

Candice Wu 16:01
And if you want to stay with whatever else you're feeling, feel free to do that for as long as you need.

Candice Wu 16:12
And at some point, be sure to thank yourself for being in your own energy, taking the time and attention to love yourself to go deeper into the roots of some of these belief sets and where they're held in your body and your energy.

Candice Wu 16:36
And whenever you're ready to stretch or move, if your eyes are closed, open them, do that at your pace. Let your body ease into the flow with whatever new energy you're carrying in your body and whatever's transmuting inside of you, letting that continue if necessary.

Candice Wu 16:59
And I'll leave you with the little bit of music here as we close today.

Candice Wu 17:02
Thank you so much for practicing. And I wish for all of you that you can feel the sweetness of life, that you can feel pleasure and let that guide you. Let pleasure be your compass. Let contentment lead the way. And trust that, that gives life to creativity, that gives fertile ground for what naturally and easily wants to come through where you don't have to push. There's ease in creation, there's ease in doing, because you're deeply in harmony and respect with your own body, with your own heart and your spirit.

Candice Wu 17:50
It's lovely to have you here today. If you want to stay connected with me through my newsletter, feel free to sign up at [CandiceWu.com/embody](https://CandiceWu.com/embody) and feel free to check out other podcasts and meditations, guided meditations and healing experientials at [CandiceWu.com/meditations](https://CandiceWu.com/meditations).

Candice Wu 18:13
Thanks so much for being here. See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00
This episode is brought to you from the Pacific Ocean in Mexico, and we're touching in on self-betrayal and protection today, as well as forgiving yourself, acceptance, and more than acceptance, loving yourself in every moment that you're experiencing. So a little meditation to support you in that.

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 over the world.

I know I said I was taking a hiatus from the podcast, but I don't know, when it feels good, it feels good. So I'm just going to go with that.

And that's really the topic of today. How we can truly listen to what our body, hearts, what our deeper selves need and want, and how to be in full loving acceptance of who we are, and more than acceptance, loving yourself, being attracted to yourself, desiring whatever it is you're experiencing to be held in its full. And for me that required self-forgiveness.

Forgiving myself for judging my experience. Noticing the self-criticism or the self-blame, or the self-betrayal. There are places that we betray ourselves.

Self-betrayal is, in a way, splitting yourself off in two parts.

One part of you wants something and the other part says, “No, we're doing something else.”

And how do you reconcile that, and it's not in agreement, it's taking one over the other? It's not a mutual agreement of, “Okay, well, this is better because”, it's where we ignore or dismiss or avoid one part of ourselves or hide. And, we let another part override to protect us, to give us something we need, perhaps, or we think we need, what we have needed in lieu of the other.

So places where we dismiss what we feel. We don't hold our own experience. Places where we please others and accommodate others and put ourselves last or sacrifice what we might need or want in that moment.

Places where we don't even ask ourselves what we want and we just go on automatic. Where we think what we want or need is stupid, cheesy or ridiculous, childish. Where we judge ourselves or where we have an intuition about something and we ignore it.

And so when we say self-betrayal, it comes with some blame.

So I like to draw towards the sense of protection, how is this behavior protecting you or giving you something you need? And when you sense these things for you, what does it feel like in your body?

So let's take a little time here today, together, to touch into some self-loving and bring forgiveness in, to soften.

So I invite you to be in a comfortable place, and before you get even more comfortable, let your body move a little bit in any way or give yourself some touch with the approach that you're supporting your body here and also with discovering what might be unknown in your experience, unknown in the corners of your joints.

Just allow yourself to notice whatever it is you notice inside or outside of you, including the waves crashing in our surroundings here.

Let the ocean bring mystery, the sense of mystery into discovering what's here for you today. The mystery of this moment. The mystery of life and what's revealing and evolving. The mystery that may be living within your emotions or your body's sensations.

And as you come to a comfortable place to sit or lie down or be, let your body be in whatever position it wants to be in.

And as you hear the waves crashing and moving, let that wash away the day so far, let it softly release your attention on all of the outer worlds, especially all that's going on in the periphery, in the collective.

And whatever part of you that has your attention on the collective experience or the trip to the grocery store, or anything that's more on the periphery, draw that energy and awareness back to yourself to your body right now, and let the ocean waves just wash away what belongs to other people.

Let the ocean waves wash away anything that's closer in proximity to you, in your relationships around you, in your surroundings, just letting it release your tension on, all of those things, letting the stress just wash away, drawing your energy towards you here.

Start to feel the energy and space right around your body. Imagine the ocean breeze sweeping across your body, releasing you of any expectations on yourself from the outer worlds. Any pressures or expectations from inside of yourself to yourself. Letting this be a time where you expect nothing from yourself and your body.

Notice any subtle sensations inside your body, in your energy fields. Imagine the energy of loving surrounding you, that may be a color of light, any color that suits you right now. That may be a sense of loving, compassionate presence with yourself. Just turn on that vibration or switch. The sense of being with whatever is here, being present with yourself, no matter what's happening and allowing all of it to continue to happen.

Begin to feel deeper into your body. Notice your heart. Notice the edges of your heart where they touch. The tissues of the body and other organs.

Notice lower into your body into the hips, into the belly, and all the way into the legs and the feet.

Anchor yourself to any pleasant or neutral sensation in the body.

And if you'd like to, I invite you to notice any places in your life, in your experience, where you betray yourself.

Notice any place you don't listen to yourself or you ignore what you know.

Then begin to feel what happens in your body as you're aware of that.

Notice any effect it has when you choose something other than what you know is right for you and witness all this with love, with a sense of neutrality and presence without any judgment.

And I invite you to forgive yourself for any judgment you have. For any self-betrayal, any ignoring or dismissing what you need, desire, or know.

The energy of forgiveness rushes through your body and hold every single cell of your body.

Let yourself acknowledge that whatever it is that you have chosen, you're able to make changes moving forward. And you may have needed to explore whatever that situation was in order to learn something or see something.

Just be with whatever you feel inside. Whatever you're aware of inside with your presence. Being with it 100% without changing it at all.

And whatever you feel inside, go deeper and deeper into the sensation, into your energy, and go even deeper. And when you feel like you've gone deep enough, go even deeper. Just letting your body digest whatever it is you're feeling and any energy that's moving in your body, any sensation is letting it move on its own.

I forgive myself for judging myself.

I forgive myself for judging myself for…

You can fill in the blank with anything that you've been hard on yourself about.

Take your own time, just being with yourself as long as you want to. And whenever you're ready to let your awareness come to the outer level of your body, the skin, begin to notice your surroundings even if your eyes are closed, and that's your own body's pace.

Let yourself move or stretch or be in any way that your body would like to be, following your own instinct, your own impulse. Being with yourself as you are.

And as we close this experience today, I'm watching about eight pelicans fly by in sync with each other across the water. They look very peaceful.

And just wishing you for your week, all the loving presence with yourself, and to be a little less hard on yourself if you are hard on yourself for anything you're experiencing. That's one way we can take a step towards self-loving and shift from self-betrayal is to just be with whatever's here. Love yourself by being present with your experience.

Wishing you all well, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

In this episode, Mary Oliver and a poem by Mary Oliver, loving what it is that you love and being free to do so and using self-forgiveness to release some judgments and belief sets around being yourself versus pleasing others and other ways of being around niceness, and ways that we can embody being ourself fully. Also, a little bit about how immigration and my ancestry and past life experiences have conditioned me to please others.

Candice Wu 0:49

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.

Candice Wu 1:24

This episode is sponsored by something that I love which is the Embodied Healing group that happens once a month. And if you want a little bit more soul support, body support, energetic support, if you want or need a compassionate space to do some healing work within a group that allows relating to one another and connection as well as working with me and in the many different ways that I do work with people, check the group out, it’s at CandiceWu.com/support.

Candice Wu 2:00

So I’m going to start off today with a poem by Mary Oliver and this poem is called Wild Geese. Many of you probably know this poem and I want to send a shout out to Kristen Donigan, who is a physician at the Raby Institute for sending me this link. It’s a SoundCloud link of David White, who’s another poet, reading Mary Oliver’s poetry and talking about it so passionately. And in her words, it’s devastatingly beautiful. So thank you, Kristen, for reminding me of Mary Oliver’s poetry and for bringing me such an important message right now that just really touches me and has also touched several of my clients, since I’ve received it and listen to it, which is only like, yesterday, well, yesterday at the time of this recording.

Candice Wu 2:56

So I’m sending my gratitude to you Kristen, thank you so much for listening to the podcast, for connecting with me and also sharing this awesome reading by David White and commentary by him of Mary Oliver’s poetry, which I’ll link in the show notes.

Candice Wu 3:13

So here is Mary’s poem, Wild Geese: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Candice Wu 4:27

This is coming to me at a time where I’m noticing the next level of the subtle way in which I try to please people and I may make things sound prettier or try to make what I want to say, come out in a pretty way or in a way that is accessible to everybody, like I want everybody to like me, and it’s really not possible and by admitting that, it’s also admitting that there there are people that I don’t like or want to be around, not that I don’t respect them or maybe I don’t respect them, but it’s a reality that there are people we are attracted to and people we are not wanting to be near.

Candice Wu 5:14

And sometimes those are lessons to us that if we stay, we will learn something more or will discover something different. And other times it’s important to trust, what our body wisdom and what our intuition tells us about where we need to be and who we need to be around. And it gives us the freedom to not like everybody when we accept that not everyone likes us, and that’s okay.

Candice Wu 5:43

Well, of course, I logically know all that and there’s still parts of me that just have been conditioned over years and years and years, maybe even lifetimes and I see it in some people in my family system, in my ancestry, that act in certain ways so that others can like them.

Candice Wu 6:03

Particularly, I noticed that in my father that he can feel anxious and begin to make himself seem happy and charming to the world and make things sound nice and good. And yet, there’s a whole other part of him that he may be blocking off or denying or not acknowledging and feeling. And it seems hard for him at times to just settle into his body and be present without making everything feel good, and maybe a false good. And I want to just respect that right now because I think that’s part of what has made our family survive, and perhaps shows in ways how he survived his own experience and maybe people in my ancestry on his side of the family have survived life in general for different reasons.

Candice Wu 7:04

And what I mean is that, particularly with my father and mother, they both immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States when they were 17 and they met when they were 21. My mom’s English was not that great and my father’s was better. My father, in large part, became the interface between our family and America. So between his parents, and siblings, and the United States, because my grandparents didn’t speak English, and for my primary family, where he was the person that was out in the world, making more money and being an engineer, he did really well in terms of using his social skills, his language skills and making people feel good in a way like a salesperson, but someone that gives others confidence about his work and about what their projects are. He has succeeded so much at that.

Candice Wu 8:16

And like him and many other immigrant families, the generation that comes over to a new place, at least in those times where racism and being prejudiced and possibly hurt or imprisoned could be a reality and it still is possible now. It’s still happening in many places, including here, painfully so. But, when it was even more of a risk, that those people that made their journey into a new land had to learn to be like other people and to smile and to be what others wanted them to be to fit in and belong so that the family could survive.

Candice Wu 9:10

We may know that as a simulation and that experience can be passed down in the ancestry and I feel I’ve inherited some of that experience, where some part of me believes that I need to be a certain way and pleasing to others in order to fit in and belong and be accepted, be successful, be liked and of course, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, there are many ways that I’ve talked about my young life, my childhood experiences that also contribute to that. And tack on some past life experiences where I’ve been a witch and whipped and burned and my leg cut off, because of my gifts and the fears of other people about my gifts and having to do things to survive.

Candice Wu 10:07

So just looking at the ways in which I can still try to please people and how deeply that’s ingrained, and stepping into a next level of moving into a different paradigm, another paradigm where I’m just me, and there’s a deeper, fuller acceptance from within myself that asks less of other people around me to accept me in order to feel okay and I can hear it in my voice. You might hear it too, over time on the podcast that slowly happened. In the beginning, I was a little nervous and not sure how this was going to be received by myself and by other people. And over time, I’ve built more confidence and loving in myself that I accept myself more deeply.

Candice Wu 10:59

Luckily, I have a friend that went to grad school with me and she and I, we just meditate together, we tune in and sense what deeper beliefs are living in our experiences where we parallel each other, the themes that are coming up and what might be needed. And she said to me that there’s a way in which I share my work or do my work, especially like, in the way I present myself in the podcast or other things that are public that feel a bit heavy because I’m still trying to please everyone and be accessible to every single person, and the truth is that I’m just not.

Candice Wu 11:48

I am who I am, and what I share is not going to reach every person and that is okay, because if it touches who it needs to touch, then great and if I’m enjoying it that is truly what I want to drive my experience. If I’m deeply connected with what I’m doing, what I want, and as Mary Oliver says, just letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Candice Wu 12:24

What would your life be like if you did not have to be good or, you did not have to do something more, do something different, or hide something of yourself in order to be good enough, worthy, deserving, belonging?

Candice Wu 12:48

There’s a way that we can truly be at harmony in ourselves if we’re congruent from the inside out. And that lends itself to true harmony with each other, when there’s acceptance inside of who we are and what we are and all the things that are trying to come through us, then there’s a deeper acceptance of other people being in that freedom as well or there can be.

Candice Wu 13:24

How much of us are still in the way of being nice and polite or making peace and where the reality of that is actually deception, disingenuousness and not peace but keeping things underneath the surface, so that they just don’t show up, so that we protect ourselves?

Candice Wu 14:03

So yeah, I’m calling myself to the table on one hand, but calling myself to the table with more loving.

Candice Wu 14:13

How am I pleasing others still? Where am I doing that? What does it feel like in my body when I do that? What does it feel like when I’m just true to myself and say things just as they are, just as they want to come through? And what am I so afraid of if I actually just do that?

Candice Wu 14:39

Sometimes I afraid that my words will be too sharp, that I’ll come on too strong or I’ll be too much.

Candice Wu 14:49

There’s a dream worker I was working with and she offered the words: “You’re so much.” Instead of being too much or not enough you are so much, and I really liked that. And I think that’s true, and it’s a way to reframe it so that I can find this space that I can be more genuine and authentic to myself and to the world.

Candice Wu 15:20

So if I’m sharp, what’s going to happen? Someone’s not going to like me or like what I said, or someone will misunderstand me, these touch into all of my younger viewers, and it’s calling myself to the table to honor those and respect that way of being as a way that I’ve survived and as a way that has helped me in life and in past lives, and that is the way that has helped my ancestry and the people especially that came here to start a new life. And it’s safe now. It’s safe now to be myself and not do the pleasing as I did once before. It’s safe now that not everyone likes me, no one’s going to kill me, at least I hope. I mean that is still possible in the world, but not as likely.

Candice Wu 16:27

And if you look at yourself, are there ways that you are giving your energy away? Are there ways that you find that your power is outside of you in terms of needing someone else to validate you or give you something that you think is outside of you, some belonging and some worthiness or some love or achievement, rather than feeling deeper and cultivating your own power even more. And how do we do that? How do we embody that? It’s not just words, as this whole podcast is about. It’s about cultivating any sense of yourself that has felt like yourself.

Candice Wu 17:17

There are two experientials that I focus on that and one’s in the alignment podcast at Candicewu.com/ alignment. It’s resourcing a feeling and a way of being that you desire to be.

Candice Wu 17:34

And in the podcast at CandiceWu.com/overwhelm, where we tune into times that you felt like yourself, the more we can touch into those times and let our body feel aligned with them, resonate with them, and in that safety, the more that builds up, the more that our nervous system and body says, “Oh, I know how to do that and it’s safe to do that, and I can be in that space.”

Candice Wu 18:10

And also looking at the fears and releasing the fears. Releasing the beliefs that aren’t true.

Candice Wu 18:24

So here’s my self-forgiveness for today, and I’m just tuning into this now and seeing what words want to come through, it’s not prewritten this at all. So let’s tune in here together and you can also, if you want, tune into any beliefs or ways of being that you want self-forgiveness around and to release judgments around and let’s do that together.

Candice Wu 18:59

I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that I’m not good enough. I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that I need to be a certain way in order to be liked, loved, and accepted.

Candice Wu 19:24

I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that I need to say things in a nice way or else I’m selfish, rude or a bitch.

Candice Wu 19:47

I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that what I share needs to reach everybody and be accessible to everybody.

Candice Wu 20:11

So I’m just letting those move through my body. They’re not very intense right now and sometimes it means for me that I’m not hitting the right spot and sometimes it’s just, I’ve worked on it and it’s cleared through my body energetically and emotionally.

Candice Wu 20:28

So I just did that with you so that you could feel into my process a little bit. Sometimes the words are not, “I forgive myself for judging myself for believing”, but there, I forgive myself, for judging myself for forgetting and have a few there. I forgive myself for judging myself for forgetting that it’s safe to be me and that it’s safe to say things just as they are. That it’s safe to love just as I love.

Candice Wu 21:03

Thank you, Mary Oliver, and also thank you to Charmayne Kilcup who initially taught me the phrases around forgiveness of the judgments and she was taught by her teacher, Robert Waterman.

Candice Wu 21:22

You can also phrase things in terms of, I forgive myself, for judging myself, for all the times and places that I and fill in the blank, that I was not myself or that I pretended to be somebody else or that I sugar-coated and glossed what I wanted to say or changed what I had to say for someone else.

Candice Wu 21:48

Whatever those ways of being or that you would like to shine some light on, so it’s not that we’re changing our habits, even though that’s part of what I am doing, it’s not the pressure to change, it’s the forgiveness, that you have judgment around the way you’ve been, around the belief sets that you have, and have had. That’s what gives the safety for something different to arise, that’s what brings that belief set into the light and out of the unconscious place in us, that just lives it out, unknowingly. Or, lives that out because it hasn’t been looked at fully and embraced and taken into our hearts. Candice Wu 22:37

So when I do this forgiveness work, I stay with the feelings and allow them to move all the way through or work with the feelings and parts of me that show up. That’s for another podcast, but you can also tune into the Parts Work podcast if you want a little bit of support with working with parts. That’s @ CandiceWu.com/partswork.

Candice Wu 23:03

And let those emotions and energies move all the way through the system and that’s what creates a lasting change. That’s one way that I work with the body and the beliefs.

Candice Wu 23:19

So as I come back to Mary Oliver, you do not have to be good and you do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. This is my favorite line: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Candice Wu 23:39

It’s so easy. It’s so simple. Love what you love, and that’s in terms of people, that’s in terms of your experience.

Candice Wu 23:53

So much of the time I can be clouded by what I feel I should do, what I feel or think I should do, what think I should do that usually comes from what I should do or what I have been doing, or what something in my ancestry tells me that I need to do or some way of protecting. But if we let these words sink into our bodies, in our hearts, you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. It’s like giving the deepest permission to be yourself and that’s exactly what I believe is needed in the world.

Candice Wu 24:33

There are all sorts of ways that things can be helpful. But when they’re really resonant with the energy of loving what one loves, we feel it, like, I can feel that in Mary Oliver’s poetry. There’s a deep resonance that vibrates through my resonance, which is like the universal energy that’s in all of us. It’s in you and me. It’s that remembering, coming back to the wholeness, and that wholeness can save lives, that wholeness can show someone else that there’s a way to just love what you love and be you, and that is incredible harmony. We won’t need war if we can just be ourselves.

Candice Wu 25:42

Sometimes they think about this in terms of horses and I think what would a horse do?

Candice Wu 25:49

If a horse doesn’t like being around this other horse, are they going to try to are they just going to find a distance that feels right for them? Are they going to find another horse to be around?

Candice Wu 26:02

Sure, there are ways that horses have trauma and could be resourced, could be led by other horses or people or other experiences to learn and heal and renegotiate that trauma. But by and large, what they do is they will be congruent with what they feel. What they feel they need, they will instinctually do without a thought. They don’t think about, oh, should I walk away or should I stay? They are just doing it.

Candice Wu 26:38

And while that’s not applicable in every situation, that’s something that we can feel into and use in our own energy.

Candice Wu 26:50

How can we make our lives simple and just love what we love?

Candice Wu 26:54

Do what we love to do and cut through the fears whatever ways that we think we should be and just shatter them to the ground.

Candice Wu 27:11

So I want to leave today’s podcast with the idea that we are not limited. We are just one possibility of the infinite amount of possibilities that we could be, the ways that we could be. And yet, there is a way that is so deeply aligned with who we are and so specifically eccentric to ourselves.

Candice Wu 27:40

In the podcast with Nick Werber recently, at CandiceWu.com/nickpart2, a friend of mine and fellow healer and integrative coach and constellations facilitator. He and I talked about being black sheep or not, and wherein our being is the black sheep. And those are the places where we feel like we don’t belong. And those are the parts that we can bring forward and that are really essential to who we are usually, and essential to us feeling whole.

Candice Wu 28:20

So while we are infinite possibility, I do believe that there’s a unique signature of who we are that wants to reveal itself and that can be a great relief because all we need to do is witness ourselves and as Mary Oliver says, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Candice Wu 28:52

Thanks for joining me today and may you love what you love.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is with special guest Kerry Maiorca of the beloved Bloom Yoga Studio in Chicago, and in this episode, we explore how to give yourself permission that you can’t do this wrong, that how we do self-care is more important than what we do, why first graders are better at meditation than you are, and being brave to do what’s enough and not more.

Candice Wu 0:25

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 0:38

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 0:56

This episode is sponsored by My Workshops. The next one coming up is July 21, 2019, in Chicago, Illinois, and it’s called Restore the Flow of Love, whether it related to abundance, money, love, relationships, your health, or disease, tension in your body, your career, your purpose, our struggles related to these connect with early unconscious and unspoken ways of belonging and the flow of love through the ancestry. So, the connection with our lineage is carried through our bodies, in the cells, the viscera, the heart, energy, in our disease, in our fluidity, in our freedom, and where those before us didn’t get to integrate a loss or trauma, where there was an imbalance or relationships, that flow of love is disrupted and is a placeholder for where there’s energy, strength, and resource waiting for us to open and for it to flow towards us.

Candice Wu 2:00

So, in family and systemic constellations, we constantly acknowledge these dynamics that are in the undercurrent of the system were a part of, whether they’re known or unknown. So, in this workshop will set up several constellations for people who are interested in seeing what those underlying dynamics are for, the struggles they’re having, or some area of life that they want something different, and in that, we restore the flow of love, allowing you to move from a more natural space from ease and freedom, and embodiment, authenticity, and truth. So, if you’re interested, check out the workshop at CandiceWu.com/flowoflove. If this day has already passed for you, you can check out all the other workshops coming up at CandiceWu.com/events.

Candice Wu 2:52

Hello, everyone, it’s great to have you, and I’m so excited to share this conversation with Kerry Maiorca today. Kerry’s mission is to inspire you to slow down, to breathe more deeply, and to do a little less. She specializes in teaching gentle and restorative yoga, and that’s how we met. I loved teaching restorative yoga at Bloom Yoga Studio in Chicago and the community, all the people, the space, everything that Kerry touches is infused with this spaciousness, this love, and the simplicity of everyone can do this practice, we all can take a deep breath. So, I invite you to do this now, to take this deep breath, and to slow down, and I invite you into this conversation with Kerry to be nourished.

Candice Wu 3:47

Kerry is passionate about sharing the depth of her practice in an accessible, individualized and down-to-earth way, and she is also the chair of the board for the Yoga Alliance and has been teaching yoga for over 20 years. She loves mentoring, both new and experienced yoga teachers, to help them authentically shine in their practice and who they are, and as teachers, and in September 2019, she’ll be co-leading the Nourish Life Retreat in Aspen, and that is complete with gentle yoga, culinary-nutrition classes, and a creativity reboot, and she’ll share about that in this podcast as well as you can check out all that information at KerryMaiorca.com and in the show notes attached to this episode.

Candice Wu 4:35

So, with this inspiration of Kerry’s presence here, I invite you to slow down right now, to feel a breath, to just take in whatever’s here for you to a little less as you listen in today. Maybe don’t multitask or maybe just slow down a little bit, and I invite you into this conversation with Kerry.

Candice Wu 5:12

Hello Kerry, it’s great to have you on the show today.

Kerry Maiorca 5:15

Thank you so much for having me. I always love getting a chance to connect with you and really dive into interesting topics.

Candice Wu 5:23

I know, we talked about such interesting things. I’m so excited to talk to you, and where I met you was Bloom Yoga Studio, Kerry, and it’s, this is a studio that has been just growing, the word bloom is just so perfect. It is continually blooming and so lovely, and also, you’ve grown even more into different parts of you, I just would like to open the space for you to share where you are on your journey and what you’re doing now.

Kerry Maiorca 5:58

Thanks, Candice. I love the word bloom, too, and I love it for so many reasons because I think that, to me, it calls to mind the cycle of plant life and flowers, growth, and that it is something that you know, can change over periods of time and develop in different ways, and that’s really what is most exciting to me in my own life, and you know, I founded bloom 15 years ago, and, you know, it’s amazing to say that it’s hard, it’s been so much fun, it’s sort of flown by, but I really started it for very particular reasons, which are still true today, but have kind of also evolved, and I really founded Bloom because I felt like yoga could be very intimidating for people, and I had experienced the transformational benefits of it for myself.

Candice Wu 6:52

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 6:53

The practice of the postures, the deep and conscious breathwork, meditation, and then for me also, a huge, huge part was the restorative poses and relaxation. I know we have that same love of restorative work.

Candice Wu 7:10

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 7:11

And I just found that it seems complicated to the outside world, and sometimes the imagery of what means yoga, and what is that all about? Who are you? Who do you have to be able to practice it? I found that so many people never saw themselves in that image, and never felt it could fit in their lives. And so, that was really what started the whole place, and that’s what we’ve drawn, you know, we’ve drawn people.

Candice Wu 7:41

Oh, yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 7:42

I just was talking with a trainee yesterday on our mentorship call, and he was saying to me, when I told people, I became a yoga teacher who’ve known me for my whole life, they could not believe it, and there’s just still, there’s like this barrier that people think yoga is other, and to me, like, you don’t need to be able to do anything fancy to be taking a deep breath, and slowing down, and that’s what I love most about yoga and what I love most about Bloom, and as you said, I really believe in a simple approach, because I think that that’s what works for me, you know, if I make it complicated, if I make it other or too esoteric, I don’t even ever get a chance to go into the depth, you know, because it just doesn’t feel like me, I’m silly, I’m goofy, I, you know, get frustrated. I yell at my kids sometimes, and then apologize later, you know, I make bad decisions. I’m a regular person. So, I think that’s really…

Candice Wu 8:47

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 8:47

….like, that is the thing I started it for, and I learned more about that as we’ve been open and it’s still so true for me today, and you know, now I’m shifting in different ways but that’s what, that’s what I love. That’s why I’m still doing this work. It’s not because of being able to do any fancy pose, it’s not about the splits or balancing on one hand, like that is not what I’m about. I’m about slowing down, breathing deeply, and just getting quiet.

Candice Wu 9:22

I feel that, you know, when I was a teacher there, which I just so adore of my time there and being just in that energy, and with people there, and also, being a student there at times, and just walking in the space is like I’m able to bring my whole self like, yes, the normal self. It’s not like I have to cut part of myself off and only be a certain part of myself to fit into this yoga class, and it’s so refreshing.

Kerry Maiorca 9:54

Yeah, I’m really glad that you felt that, and of course, oh my gosh, we were so delighted and honored to have you teaching at Bloom, and ah, you’re amazing, because I think you really embody that authenticity, and also, that sort of spacious, slow, deep work that I just, you know, whether I was in your class, or just being with you, talking with you, I always come away with that feeling, and it’s really inspiring. I love that about you.

Candice Wu 10:25

Thank you, I think restorative yoga gives me even more permission to do that because it’s this is the yoga. It gives me the format, to even go slower. So, it helps me.

Kerry Maiorca 10:42

But as a teacher, you have to be brave doing that. I think that the thing I’ve found, I talked about this a lot with teachers, and just think about this for myself. I’ve been teaching over 20 years, and still, I sometimes can go into class and think they’re going to want more.

Candice Wu 11:03

Oh, yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 11:04

And this is this pull that we feel like as practitioners, sometimes we should be doing more, you know, the terrible should.

Kerry Maiorca 11:13

And as teachers, we worry that all they want their butts kicked, so I better you know, throw in a few more Chaturangas and hold all these strong poses longer, and there is nothing wrong with that, I’m you know, I love exercise, and I love straight strengthening my muscles and working, and I also feel the yoga space gives us one place in our life where it isn’t about that, and so, as teachers, and as practitioners, we should just seize that and enjoy it, because it might be the only time we get to do it. You know, slow, soft, and still be yourself. You don’t have to be so serious, and it doesn’t have to be so sacred. It is simple. It’s, but, profound.

Candice Wu 11:13

Yeah.

Candice Wu 12:00

Well, what you’re saying, like, it is a brave thing to do that, to like cut through, the expectations that we have on ourselves that the outer world may have on us or what we’ve, I don’t know, somehow, it just feels like so distorted. Like, somehow we have distorted this image of yoga that is this doing more, kicking our butts in place, and yeah, there is a level of bravery just to do it simply and to say, “No, I’m going to be brave and not do more.” And be brave and do the simple thing.

Kerry Maiorca 12:34

And what’s so amazing about that, when you do that, whether you’re a teacher or as a practitioner, yourself, when you give yourself permission to do less, is that as you practice it over time, it translates into your real life. You know, for me, this morning, for example, I woke up and I had had a plan to do a more active asana practice, and I woke up and I just, I was tired. Like my body felt a little bit drained. But I still really wanted to practice, and so I thought, well, what can I do that honors how I’m actually feeling, you know, but and gets me that sense of connection, and so, I decided I was going to practice my meditation, and just do restorative only that day.

Candice Wu 13:25

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 13:26

And then the funny part was, that my youngest child who’s just almost four, she had another idea, which was she wanted to play with me in the morning, and so, I, my yoga practice became, “Oh, this is my time to connect with my daughter.” I went in, we played babies, we had a lovely time, I get to take a nap because that was part of the game. I was very happy.

Candice Wu 13:49

Oh, yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 13:50

And then I said to her, okay, now, you know, now I need to go do my practice. And so I went in, and I sat down and I practice my meditation for a few minutes, and then in she comes, you know, “Can I sit with you?” How sweet is that! So, I opened up my blanket and she sits on my lap, I cuddle her in, and she sat with me in meditation for maybe like two minutes, which for almost-four-year-old is a long time.

Candice Wu 14:16

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 14:17

And then she scurried off on her way, and you know, she got to see me advocating for myself, to take time to do quiet and stillness, and then she got to, you know, tap into it for a second, and for me, you know, the me of five years ago, would have felt frustrated, resentful, and also just sort of like, sorry for myself, you know, I woke up early, and then my daughter took this time for me that I wanted for my practice, but the real-life is always happening, and that’s where, if yoga is only about achieving the poses, and doing something, it doesn’t really help you in your real life. You’re sitting you’ll be bent out of shape, when you know, someone at work does something that bothers you or your partner had, you know, you have a fight with your partner, and you’re not going to be able to even see that as the yoga but that is the yoga.

Kerry Maiorca 15:13

And so, you have to have the actual practice, and you have to carve out the space and time to you know, get slow, get still, get quiet and do those practices, and I love my asana practice, it’s just become way less important to me, then the mindset, which carries off of my meditation and into my life, where I can see, “Hey, she needs to connect with me right now.” That’s beautiful, and I want to do that.

Candice Wu 15:36

That’s beautiful. And when you say that is the yoga, I love that, and what can you say more, that is the yoga and the mindset.

Kerry Maiorca 15:48

If you think back to what any of the, you know, ancient texts of yoga that whatever your tradition and approach, you know, those are there, you know, whether you really resonate with some of these texts or not, they are the foundation of what you are practicing when you are practicing yoga, and I always like to think about and when I’m teaching, you know, tell my students that the asana is the vehicle for what’s actually happening, you know, the asana, the poses themselves, those are not doing yoga, you know, we call that that it’s, that’s the easiest way to call it when we’re in a class, those are the things we practice to get us in our bodies and to connect with the breath, and you know, to also take care, its maintenance, I see asana as maintenance, it’s a way to stay a little stronger, a little bit gently mobile and balanced, and then to use the breath to regulate the nervous system, those are the maintenance tasks.

Kerry Maiorca 16:51

If it only ends there to me, that’s really, that’s short, changing what I could be experiencing with yoga. I like to think about what is the pose for, you know, why am I practicing oppose whether it’s restorative or active? What am I doing it for? Partly, I’m doing it to maintain the body but I could do that at a gym. So, what’s the difference? And so to me, I think the difference is the mindset, and the idea of, you know, non-harming, of being truthful with ourselves, like for me this morning, truth was, I need a slow, soft practice, and you know, some days it’s, I need to not go to the gym, today, I need to do something gentler with myself, or I need to go to bed really early, even though I was planning on doing a little work before bed, it’s those kinds of things, where you’re attentive to what’s actually happening, rather than putting should, over everything you do, and operating in a robotic way.

Kerry Maiorca 17:51

To me, the yoga of everyday life is learning to be more intuitive, and more connected, we use what we do in the yoga classroom, to develop those skills, to develop greater sensitivity to the body and the breath, and to actually be quiet enough to hear the thoughts, because most of our daily life doesn’t give us the space for that, or we don’t take it, we could, anytime. But it’s hard to take it with, you know, what we read and what we do on a device and our work, and our family, and listening to music, and you know, listening to wonderful podcasts, like yours.

Kerry Maiorca 18:29

You know, we’re always about input, and when you get on a yoga mat, you know, I practice and teach with silence. Some people use music, even with you know, very quiet music, you can still access this, but personally, I love to practice in silence because it’s not input, and then I can hear my thoughts and I can get to know, what am I saying to myself? Am I kind? Am I telling myself I’m not good enough? You know, it’s that to me is where yoga on a mat, whether it’s in a class or in my home practice, it’s the way to maintain the body to regulate the breath and the nervous system, and then to really just physically provide a rest. But it’s so much about the mind, and I get some of my, I don’t know if this happens to you, Candice, but I get some of my best ideas for writing, when I’m practicing, you know, and just…

Candice Wu 19:22

Oh, yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 19:23

…like the creativity, it’s just incredible.

Candice Wu 19:25

This start flowing.

Kerry Maiorca 19:27

Yeah.

Candice Wu 19:28

Yeah. I mean, I get it all. I get the creativity, some days, and some days, I get the grief for the sadness, or the anger or whatever. But it’s that place to really listen, as you’re saying, and I love how you’re speaking to not taking it as a robotic and rigid practice, but as that tool to learn the flexibility and mobility in your daily life, to be present to what’s happening and respond, and listen to how you’re talking yourself in those moments, when you made a plan for something else.

Kerry Maiorca 20:03

Yeah.

Candice Wu 20:04

When your daughter comes in and says, “Can I sit with you?” And what happens right in that moment, and what’s needed and honoring that, and it’s so interesting how we have segmented that from daily life, like yoga as a separate thing.

Kerry Maiorca 20:23

Yeah.

Candice Wu 20:24

And it’s not.

Kerry Maiorca 20:24

I love that, I love what you said about, it’s about flexibility and mobility in daily life. I think that’s so true, and you can see the class or the practice at home as the workshopping, you know, you’re developing strength, flexibility in your body, and hopefully, it comes with you. After you roll up the mat…

Candice Wu 20:46

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 20:47

…because life is not perfect, and there’s this feeling, I think that there has been this thought kind of running through my head, especially with kids, but you know, whether or not you have kids, everyone has busyness, or has can have busyness in their life, and there can be these times where you sort of tell yourself these stories, like when I’m not so busy, I’ll be more present, or I’ll be more patient or when I’m, you know, when this big project ends, that’s when I’m going to really recharge and take time for myself. And I, my mission is to empower other people and myself, continually remind myself that we don’t need to wait until things get perfect to find greater peace and well being and that we must prioritize that even in the busiest, most demanding stressful times because otherwise, what’s the point? You know, otherwise, it is just like you said, it’s such a separate thing.

Kerry Maiorca 21:43

And what I like about yoga is it’s not, it doesn’t feel separate to me. It feels so integrated because, you know, it’s a reminder, just, why not just take a deep breath now? And why not just when you’re tired in the afternoon, you lie down for 10 minutes and see, you know I think it’s just it’s so awesome. It’s such a great practical tool but like you said, it’s seen as this other thing that we do, and we’re wearing yoga clothes, you know, it’s like when we have a bunch of props and yoga clothes, and we’re like in a certain mindset, but it can be so much more than that.

Candice Wu 22:20

Absolutely. Well, and yoga in itself means union…

Kerry Maiorca 22:26

Yes.

Candice Wu 22:26

…and it is that integration of everything, not a separate practice, and I love how you’re saying this, we don’t need to wait until things get perfect to find greater peace and well being, and I definitely hear myself say at times, like when this week’s over, because it’s so busy,

Kerry Maiorca 22:48

Yeah.

Candice Wu 22:48

I’ll do the X, Y&Z or when this ends or when I’m not so busy, and now I’m just hearing that as you say it, just giving myself the cue that that is my signal, that I need to look at, “How did I get here to begin with, and let’s take that breath.”

Kerry Maiorca 23:06

Because it happens. That’s one part of the practice first. Yeah.

Candice Wu 23:09

Right. It already like I got here, I likely created that.

Candice Wu 23:16

Not to blame, you know, not to shame or blame or criticize ourselves. But yeah, I was just reading one of your articles about fear being your CEO, really not letting fear be your CEO, and it’s probably the times I let fear be my CEO that I got there to begin with, where I may be overloaded again, but to take the breath and just come out of it, the moment.

Kerry Maiorca 23:44

Yeah, and you’re so right, it’s totally not about blaming in any way. It’s, that’s not the point, because actually, the only way you can ever make a change is if you are aware of it, and that was sort of an interesting thing for me in my when I first came to yoga, you know, when we first practiced meditation, even in very small doses, I found it to be torturous, because the way my mind was working at that time was, as if was a scary place to be, because I just was like, I was just yelling at myself, I was just berating myself mentally, and you know, from the outside, you wouldn’t have known that and I’ve always been a very positive, upbeat, you know, kind of can-do person, but once I got quiet enough, then I was realizing, “Oh, my gosh, I am not nice to myself, mentally.”

Kerry Maiorca 24:35

And so, I think that when you do realize something like that, like, “Oh, man, how did I let busyness take over?” And I’ve really tried to remove the phrase, when someone asks me how I am, I really try hard not to ask, not to answer it by saying I’m busy, crazy busy, so busy, because it does something to me, it activates me in a way that is I don’t want to buy into.

Candice Wu 24:59

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 24:59

However, there are times when I look at my schedule and my life, and I think, “If I could go back and do this again, I would do it differently.” I’d structure you know, take this piece out or space out these big events, but, being able to say that even when you’re in the moment, you’re feeling the stress, you’re really feeling like, “Wow, that was not a decision I would make again,” that is powerful, and that is progress because at a certain point in your life, you had that same scenario and didn’t even see it, and so that’s what I like to think about whenever I’m having a moment where I’m feeling frustrated with myself and thinking, “I wish I would have done that differently,” made a different choice. I think to myself, “Oh, good. I just noticed that.” And even if I can’t do anything to change it right now, I’ve just noticed, maybe next time, I’ll notice and then maybe I’ll take action, but maybe not. You know, it takes a lot of time of just noticing before you can ever take action. That’s been my experience.

Candice Wu 25:57

Absolutely.

Kerry Maiorca 25:59

And I think that the other thing about that, what is the action, by tendency, I’ll speak for myself only. My tendency is one of extremes, and so I am great at being 100% on and just going pushing, you know, I can just go, I can do it, and then off, like off sleeping, you know, that’s really good and easy for, you know, that’s like great on and off is great. It’s the in-between. That’s hard, and so, I think when we think about us getting to this place where we’re super stressed, we’re feeling more like that hundred percent, and it’s not sustainable, it doesn’t feel positive. When we think about well, “What could I do to counteract that or help myself get back to a feeling of normalcy or feeling, you know, rested and nurtured?” The tendency is I need, you know, an hour and a half yoga class or I need an hour-long massage, I need a weekend away, or I need, you know, it can see me like the fix to that is something big, but what I have found, and what I’m trying to practice and teach is that the fixed can be small.

Kerry Maiorca 27:08

So, if I only have five minutes to breathe deeply, and to just calm myself down, that is really powerful, and if I do that on a more regular basis, I still need the longer thing, you know, I need the long restorative practice, I need time away from everyone to recharge, but, on a sort of day to day basis, you’re not going to have those opportunities, most of us, and so, what can you find? You can find small moments to breathe, or you can do a 15-minute restorative pose. That is magic. That’s like the thing I wish everyone would do. I tell my teachers so much like just set your timer, lie down, take a pose 15 minutes and see what happens. You’re a different person. It’s magic.

Candice Wu 27:56

Yeah, well, every time I do that, even for like two minutes, I’m a different person.

Kerry Maiorca 28:00

Oh, yeah.

Candice Wu 28:01

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 28:01

That’s right.

Candice Wu 28:03

Maybe even one or 30 seconds.

Kerry Maiorca 28:06

Or even a few, even three deep breaths. I mean, so, if I’m with my kids, and I’m feeling like I’m just up to my eyeballs in it, and I’m so struggling, I’m struggling to be kind and compassionate and patient, I will take even one breath, I’ll take a breath, exhale through my mouth and feel the tension releasing from my shoulders and my neck, soften my jaw, and then I sometimes not all the time have the presence of mine to say to them, “I’m sorry, I’ve been a little frustrated. I’m feeling tired. I didn’t get enough sleep, or I’m feeling a little bit stressed because I have this thing do later, and I was thinking about that.” And that’s amazing when I can do that, and some days I just plain can’t, but at least I took the breath.

Candice Wu 28:50

Absolutely. I love how encouraging you are to yourself now, and in even just noticing the thing that you’d like to change and encouraging yourself that you noticed it and that that’s a good thing. We don’t do that as a whole society. Like, “Oh, well, that should have changed years ago.”

Kerry Maiorca 29:11

Yes.

Candice Wu 29:12

So why didn’t, right?

Kerry Maiorca 29:14

Well, I do have some of that, too.

Candice Wu 29:16

Yeah. Don’t we all?

Kerry Maiorca 29:18

Yeah.

Candice Wu 29:19

Yeah. Well, I was curious, Kerry. What are you struggling with today? What do you tussling with, or what feels up in the air for you, of your learning?

Kerry Maiorca 29:33

I think that the thing I’m always struggling with is my relationship with time. I think that I am a person that fills up the space I’m in and fully, you know, fully loves and embodies what I’m in and doing, and I tend to want to put more into everything, you know, I’m a more person, I think it’s this, this struggle with more. I’m really trying to find enough, and to see, like, what would be enough to do today, in this time, I have? You know, like, in my own work life, I can set a list of, you know, five things I want to accomplish in a two-hour period and think that’s realistic. So, you know…

Candice Wu 30:26

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 30:27

….this evolution of what if I just did a little less, you know, so I think the reason I teach this stuff, is because I’m still working with it myself. It’s not I don’t teach it from a place of mastery, I teach it from a place of process and of this really strong conviction that there are lots of people who have the same struggle of more, and for those of us who are more people, the practice is, how can I do a little less and find enough. So, I think that that’s really where I am, and I see it in a lot of different aspects of my life. Just sort of my professional goals for myself, you know, with my writing or with, you know, projects, I’m taking on, that piece of it, I see it with what I want to try to do with my kids, I see it with my own, you know, personal practice and sort of self-care time, and it’s just always this balance. It’s like, what would be enough right now?

Candice Wu 31:32

I just take a really nice, deep breaths of that, how do I do a little lesson find enough? I struggle with that too, with time, and the most recent thing that happened for me, in my healing process about time, is that I found that it connected with my young self. Well, again, right, like layers and layers of working with. But here’s another piece, like my younger self, it came back to the same thing in a deeper way, that there was a feeling of wanting more time with my mother when I was younger, and there were certain circumstances of not, of perhaps me wanting more, than the time could give, but also certain circumstances where she had to be away and doing, and working. Certain occasions that when I was an infant, and then into young life, and I could just connect with that part of me that it was kind of life or death feeling that if I didn’t have enough time, it would just feel so terrible, and I needed more, I needed more, I needed more, and that just applied to the rest of my life blindly, you know, where I would just fill it with more, but it never really satisfied that.

Candice Wu 32:53

So, if filling my time with more was satisfying to the part of me that needed it, then it would have been complete…

Kerry Maiorca 33:01

Right.

Kerry Maiorca 33:09

Wow, that is so beautiful. I love that perspective, and I think, you know, thanks for sharing that. That’s, really profound, and I think that regardless of kind of that, whether that feeling is there as a child, or as you know, as an infant, there’s something that’s so universal in the part about kind of more love for yourself, too, you know, like, regardless of whether where that came from that’s, you know, I really love what you shared, I’m going to ponder that, and I know that what you said about giving yourself more just never does it, it just fills you with more stuff.

Candice Wu 34:21

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 34:21

Like it’s just more stuff, and sometimes, it just becomes even more distractions and more challenges, and more ways to take you away from your true self, and I love your choice of the word nourished, and that has become a really powerful word for me. Just in the last few months, I started working with my dear friend, Laura, and she’s, and now we’re business partners, and we kind of came together around this concept of what it means to be nourished because I was thinking about it, you know, sort of like the word bloom to me meant something really powerful. This word nourished, you know, it’s obviously it calls to mind food, and, you know, I tried to be conscious about what I feed and put in my body and my children, and my, you know, my husband, like, I love to cook, that’s one of my great passions, and I love to think about food as this really not just like kind of another should, and I should eat the healthy foods that this magazine told me to eat, you know, but rather to, again, tap into intuition, and to say like, “What would really nourish me, not just my physical self, but just sort of would feel like comfort and love?”

Kerry Maiorca 35:46

And so, there was that piece of that, and then to me that the what we were talking about with yoga, that is the other place that I felt like the self-care practices that have become so important to me. You know, I was doing a lot of the same stuff for many years, like yoga, massage, you know, running or hiking or biking or being in nature or taking a nap or like, you know, all these different, reading a book, all these different self-care type practices were in my life, but I realized it was with a very different mindset, and you can do, you can go do yoga or you know, go get a pedicure, or go for a hike, and you could do it in a way that’s kind of checked out, like there’s a way to do those self-care things, but to be a little bit mentally checked out, and they don’t have the same impact.

Kerry Maiorca 36:41

You know, it’s about how we do them, and so, this idea to me is how can we create a feeling of nourishing our whole self, so of course, with good healthy food, and then with whatever our movement practices for me, it’s gentle and restorative yoga, that’s in my end meditation, but then also, like, “Where are the other pieces of our life that helped to nourish us?” You know, it’s, to me, a connection with nature, and being, you know, being active, moving, you know, being strong, and then also bringing in this sense of creativity, like, do we have things that are just for pure joy, not work, I’m a person who can get all wrapped up in my work, and then my, you know, families like responsibilities, and then I find I just feel depleted.

Kerry Maiorca 37:29

So, when I go and take time, at night, after everyone’s in bed, I’m done with everything, and I sit down at the piano, and I just play piano for a little bit or I write a poem, or I sit just in front of the fireplace with tea, and I just not for long, it doesn’t have to be an hour. It can be 20 minutes, you know, it can be five minutes if that’s all I have, but when I bring these nourishing practices in, and I think about them from a different perspective, where it’s not about, well, I should really get my hike in, or I should really get my yoga in. It feels really different, and you give yourself permission to trust that what you choose to do is going to be enough.

Kerry Maiorca 38:11

You know, I think a lot of times, there’s a lot wrapped up in why we do these things, like why we practice yoga or do exercise or eat healthfully. A lot of times it comes from this kind of self-bullying, self-shaming place of like, well, if I don’t, maybe my body will change in a way I don’t like, and you know, I have been there, I’ve been through a lot of struggles with that, body image and unhealthy disordered eating, and like plenty of things, you know, in my early 20s was a major struggle, and this mindset shift is what enables you to love yourself and to trust that loving and nourishing yourself, your whole self. That is always a good move. You’ll never gonna regret that decision.

Candice Wu 39:04

I love that. Loving your whole self is always a good move.

Kerry Maiorca 39:34

Hmmm.

Kerry Maiorca 39:39

Exactly. It’s like a punishment reward mentality, and it’s this threat or worry or yes, and it’s so you don’t you can’t even recognize it as that until you really dive in and see it. You know, because of course, we know, we only get one body, so, you want to make sure you keep it healthy. But I think that it’s really about trust. You know, it’s about trusting that you know better than whatever the latest thing has come out in any diet or exercise magazine. Like, there’s just those things change all the time, because they’re selling magazines. Experts are selling books, like, you know, I think it’s a great idea to not put your sort of spiritual development or sort of the whole self-development in the hands of someone who’s trying to sell you something, because…

Candice Wu 40:28

Oh, yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 40:29

…..you know better.

Candice Wu 40:32

Absolutely. I tried to ignore a lot of things and a lot of input now because, oh, it’s just so much.

Kerry Maiorca 40:40

Yeah.

Candice Wu 40:42

And it clouds my ability to hear myself.

Kerry Maiorca 40:46

Yes.

Candice Wu 40:46

I think that protection from what’s just being told to us and fed to us is really important, so we can hear ourselves.

Kerry Maiorca 40:56

Mm-hmm.

Candice Wu 40:57

Yeah, thank you for that reminder. We can trust what we know inside, and we know better than what someone else might say to us, or encourage us even sometimes, it’s not always the right thing, but we need to listen to ourselves.

Kerry Maiorca 41:16

Yeah, and it’s also like what you see, when you look around, and you know, those around you, you might feel you’re trying to keep up and kind of match what someone else is doing, and you know, as a person who’s the competitive athlete, I have a strong competitive drive, and so for me, just like what you’re saying, I really have been. It’s a practice of, you know, withdrawal of the senses. It’s this take coming away from all the input, advice, you know, the sort of keeping up with the, you know, this and this or that friend, or this or that person to say, what’s really happening right now, and to know that, when you tune into that, you are taking care of yourself in the best possible way, and yeah, that’s all. That’s really that’s what you need.

Candice Wu 42:04

Yeah. So, tell me more about your nourish life retreat that you spoke of with Laura.

Kerry Maiorca 42:12

yes, well, I am so excited about this. So, Laura is a culinary nutritionist. She’s the founder of golden root nutrition and she does, I’ve been so honored and privileged to be able to eat her amazing food. So, she really creates and brings this beautiful balance of food that is whole and healthy, and it’s simple but it’s delicious, and she teaches other people how to do that, and I have learned so much from her myself, you know, just even like how to approach this topic that can seem very overwhelming, you know, if you’re trying to eat healthfully for yourself, or if you are responsible for cooking for others, there’s so much input and advice, and it’s overwhelming.

Kerry Maiorca 43:02

So, the retreat is going to consist of me leading some gentle and restorative yoga practices a couple of times, and Laura will be teaching culinary nutrition classes, and then we’ll be eating the delicious food we make. And then, we also will be in Aspen, Colorado, which is a gorgeous place, a really, a place of great wild beauty, and we’re going in September, which is an incredible time to be there because trees are all changing colors, the weather is just delightful, and I think a lot of times two people have an image of what Aspen is, and there is this other side of Aspen that’s kind of there with the sort of glamorous side, but our retreat, we’re staying at a family-owned in right in town, and it’s just so warm and beautiful, and we’re really going to be trying to create this place where it’s, you bring your real self, your very real, imperfect, perfect self, and we come together for sometimes of yoga.

Kerry Maiorca 44:10

There’s going to be some option to explore meditation every day, and then we’ll have these classes where you can just think like, “What could I do with my, the way I nourish myself with food that could just make me feel more energized?” Laura has this class eating for awesome energy, you know, how could I see the way my food could just contribute to my well being, and be delicious and enjoyable, and wonderful, and then we’ll also have time to do some connection with nature. So, we’ll have a, there’s this beautiful riverfront path, and a John Denver sanctuary, which I’m a huge John Denver fan, this is beautiful place where you can go and kind of look at his lyrics and to sort of reflect on in nature, in this beautiful place, his legacy, and then we’ll also be going to the top of Aspen mountain and enjoying a hike there and just a moderate hike, nothing intense, but really more about the practice of being in nature and being quiet in nature.

Kerry Maiorca 45:18

And then the last component of it is, we’re going to have a creativity night. So, I am, I just was writing this piece, it’s going to come out in my next newsletter, it’s called, “Where is the joy?” And it’s about this rut, I started to find myself and where I was kind of going through my everyday life, and just, you know, doing all the things I had to do even doing my self-care practices, you know, I’m vigilant, like I have to get that in, it’s very important to my mental well-being as well as my physical, so, I don’t miss it. But it was like, okay, my self-care practices of yoga, meditation and, you know, exercise or hiking, and you know, doing my family obligation things, you know, getting my kids to where they need to go being preparing, you know, doing all the things around the house.

Kerry Maiorca 46:08

And then you know, doing my work, I actually work for the yoga studio, for my own new writing ventures, for the retreat, and then you know, the end of the date comes and it was just like, “Wow, that’s it. That’s all I got left.” And I started to feel the sense of, you know, you go through the day, do you feel like you’re doing your day? You know, do you feel like you’re just sort of checking everything off the list? And is there any room for joy? Is there any room for things that have no purpose, but to nourish you and help you feel more alive? And so we’ll have this one night, just an hour, where we will gather by the fireplace, and you’ll be invited to bring, a craft, if you have one or journal if you like to doodle or write or that kind of thing, or will have a very special creative activity that will do, will provide it, and it’s just going to be a very small little time to be kind of quiet, and to focus on doing something that, again, doesn’t have a purpose. It’s not about making an amazing work of art. It’s just about tapping into how creativity nourishes you. So, I’m just so excited. I am like over the moon excited about it, and Laura’s amazing. I’m so honored to work with her and yeah, just I can’t wait.

Candice Wu 47:30

I love that. I love this, and I can feel your excitement, and just reading the details, as well, and hearing you speak about it now, especially this creativity night. I love the aspect of doing that together.

Kerry Maiorca 47:50

Mm-hmm.

Candice Wu 47:51

And it sounds like the space is open, that it’s an individual or group, you know, with other people kind of experience, but just being together with that intention of creativity sounds really lovely, and that joy without a purpose. It’s so important in our lives, and for me, it was life-changing to bring in joy without a purpose.

Kerry Maiorca 48:17

Yes.

Candice Wu 48:17

It was like, “Wait, I can actually do that.” Right?

Kerry Maiorca 48:21

I don’t have to be. Yeah like, don’t wait for someone to tell you to do it. You know, when we’re kids, it’s so easy. It’s so easy to just choose things that are just joyful, and you know, like, what are you doing it for know, just for fun, and as adults, like, we don’t need to wait until someone says. Just go have fun or just do this thing because it’s enjoyable. It’s that we need to advocate for ourselves to do that.

Candice Wu 48:48

We do. We do. So, how can people join the retreat or get more information? Where can people find it?

Kerry Maiorca 48:58

We have our website at getnourished.life, and we have all the information about the retreat there, and we’re keeping it very small, we’re only having 12 spots. So, get to it, if there’s interest.

Candice Wu 49:16

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 49:17

Yeah, that’s where you can learn more and then can register, and I also just wanted to share about it, I’ve had the experience with retreats myself, this kind of like, abrupt shift from my perfect retreat self to my imperfect daily life self. You know, for me, going away from my family, being in control of my time not having work to do, and eating healthy, delicious food and like, you know, doing yoga and meditation, all these things that can feel like for those few days, I’m like perfect. You know, my idealized self, and I was going to Laura and I have been talking about this a lot about how we really want you to feel like when you’re on this retreat, you are your regular whole self with all of your pieces. You know, it’s about being real, and it’s about whatever is going on in your life is still there, and that’s okay, and you can still engage in these practices in a way that just feels manageable.

Kerry Maiorca 50:21

So, we’re not doing, you know, six hours of yoga a day, and we’re not doing you know, a three-hour-long, intense hike. It’s like we’re doing little mini doses of everything, and then we’re giving you practical tools so that when you go back to your daily life, our hope is you just will bring in, just a tiny bit, like a little bit of something. And so, when people feel called to kind of escape, you know, we’re really trying to make this retreat, not an escape. You know, it’s about being in your life, but just trying to bring in to invoke some different ways of being with yourself. So, we’re thinking about it as this just a part of your life that is this sort of like recharge, want to recharge the batteries, so you can go back to your real life, and let some of that nourished spirit infuse your day.

Candice Wu 51:15

Oh, I feel that very much. It’s like not this getaway escape from reality. It’s, let’s incorporate and let’s weave in, and also not make this an experience that’s undigestible, but one that’s simple.

Kerry Maiorca 51:30

Right.

Candice Wu 51:31

And reminds you of the simplicity being enough, and that you can just bring one little thing into your life and see what it does.

Kerry Maiorca 51:40

Yes.

Candice Wu 51:41

Beautiful.

Kerry Maiorca 51:43

Thank you.

Candice Wu 51:43

Thank you. I’m so excited for you, and everyone that’s gonna be on the retreat, and I also, I want to hear about your mentorship for yoga teachers.

Kerry Maiorca 51:54

Oh, thank you. Yes, I am so excited about this. I’ve been training teachers since 2011, and I love working with teachers, whether they’re brand new or now I also lead a gentle yoga teacher training, and so that’s for established teachers and helping them really explore this approach I’m talking about, this gentle, softer approach. So, I’ve been doing that for many years, and this winter, I just launched my very first online mentorship program for teachers of any level of experience, and we just wrapped up our first session, and it’s a combination of a monthly over four months, a monthly video conversation around a particular topic, and then I send out a follow up that kind of talks about what we, about the key points. It also includes a 30-minute mentorship call with me directly one-on-one, which I’ve so enjoyed those conversations, they’ve been so rich.

Kerry Maiorca 53:00

I just really like this. It’s, I kind of one of my mentors or mentees who was just in the program said, “This is like grad school for yoga teachers.” And I was like, “I love that!”

Candice Wu 53:10

Oh, cool!

Kerry Maiorca 53:11

I surveyed a bunch of my past trainees before, starting to see that, “What are the topics that you most need?” Like, what do you most need a refresher on and sort of more support, both from me and from the fellow people in the teacher circle mentorship group, and so, I kind of picked those topics and group them in ways that felt logical and reasonable, but so much of it is to me really about being intentional and mindful about what are you doing in your teaching and why, and then even more important, how is your practice, because all of us as teachers, the further along you go, you know, it’s common for people to lose sight of the importance of their practice, and to let their teacher self overtake their practitioner self, and you’ve got to be a practitioner first.

Kerry Maiorca 54:06

And so, the mentorship group is really about all of those things, and we have like a Google group that we sort of I offer, little sort of tips or reminders throughout the month between calls, and then others share and oh my gosh, are the people who are in this group, they are so wise. I mean, I just, I love it. So, it has been a total delight, and I’m going to run another one, starting September through December. So, I’ll be opening that up soon for registration, but I just love it. I love working with teachers to refine.

Candice Wu 54:41

That’s so great. Yeah, and you have so much wisdom to share, especially that part where you talked about teaching from your process, and from process rather than mastery. I just imagine that helps so many people because we’re all in process. We’re not done.

Kerry Maiorca 55:02

Yup.

Candice Wu 55:02

And that’s exactly whole and right…

Kerry Maiorca 55:06

Yeah.

Candice Wu 55:06

….right now. So, I just, I appreciate the space you’re creating, and so glad that you’re doing this.

Kerry Maiorca 55:15

Thank you, Candice.

Candice Wu 55:17

Well, and there’s one more bit that I’m so excited for the podcast is that you’re offering an experience for people to join into. This will be an extension of this episode, and this episode is going to be found at CandiceWu.com/kerry, KERRY, and so, you’re offering an experience or meditation or some sort of guided practice. Do you want to say more about it now or do you want to leave it as a surprise as it comes out?

Kerry Maiorca 55:51

I think I’d like to leave it as a surprise.

Candice Wu 55:54

Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 55:55

As an exploration.

Candice Wu 55:56

That’s delightful. Yeah.

Kerry Maiorca 55:59

I love that you offer these. I love love love that you offer these, I think it’s just a great way. I think so much of this type of work can seem really just inaccessible or just sort of mystical or too out there, and like when you offer these experiential, you’re taking, I’ve listened to many of the ones that you’ve offered, I just think they’re lovely, and like then you take these ideas and concepts, and you immediately make them felt and embodied just like the name of your podcast. So, I really love that you do that, and I’m so excited to share. I can’t wait.

Candice Wu 56:35

Thank you. Thank you. I’m so excited to experience yours, I know that exactly. It’s like we talk about these concepts in our minds, and that is the way we can communicate across audio, across. Yeah, distance and time, and yet the real thing, the real practice itself is the being in it. So, I can’t wait to hear that and experience that with you. Is there anything else you want to share today?

Kerry Maiorca 57:06

I would like to thank you for having me and to thank you for your friendship and for all of the really amazing explorations that we’ve had together over the years. I just think I’m inspired by the work you do, and the way that you do it in a way that isn’t rigid or about kind of perfecting one thing and then delivering it again, that sort of robotic nature, but how, when I talk with you, I feel more inspired to be more fully who I am, and I love that about you, and so, I’m very grateful to you for inviting me to have this conversation in this way, and I look forward to our continued conversations and friendships, and to all the different ways that we’re going to keep learning more about ourselves, and that you know, and then hopefully, in the process, just inspire more people to do that and love themselves more.

Candice Wu 58:13

Thank you so much. That’s really touching, Kerry, and I have so appreciated our friendship and our companionship, and every time I talk to you, and we exchange our personal lives and what’s going on and just what we’re thinking about, I walk away with this feeling of, “Wow, Kerry notices one simple thing,” and that just makes such a huge difference to me, and then it gives me that feeling of noticing more of the little things in my life and recognizing how important those are and how that’s enough. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kerry Maiorca 58:56

Thank you, Candice.

Candice Wu 58:57

I really appreciate you.

Kerry Maiorca 58:59

And I appreciate you, too, and your wonderful Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 59:04

Thank you, and I do have one more question if it’s okay?

Kerry Maiorca 59:09

Yeah, of course.

Candice Wu 59:10

I would love for you to talk about how first graders are better at meditating than we are. I loved that article.

Kerry Maiorca 59:20

Did you like that?

Candice Wu 59:20

I did, It was so, like, delightful, and I just would love for you to share it with everyone listening today, if they haven’t read this or this now.

Kerry Maiorca 59:31

Oh, that was so much fun. I, so, when my daughter, my middle daughter was in first grade, I was invited to come to the class and, you know, share some yoga with the kids, and I did this, I’ve done this with, you know, all of my kids where I’ve gone to their school and just taught a little yoga until they got too embarrassed to have me come.

Kerry Maiorca 59:54

My son’s in seventh grade now, that is not cool now. But I will say my kids do sometimes grab our yoga pretzels partner deck and do partner Yoga together, and that makes me so happy. But back then, I was invited to come to her class, and I’ve been teaching them yoga and all these wonderful kind of kids’ yoga adaptations and techniques. But when I found the love the most was the relaxation at the end, and I would always do a guided visualization that just helped them relax and seeing their little faces like it was magic. And so, I thought, well, you know, why shouldn’t I just give them more of that if that’s what they want, and so, I decided I was going to also teach them meditation, and I was like, all right, this seems a little intimidating, you know, how are they going to do? Everyone associates first graders have been really wiggly and high energy, and they are.

Kerry Maiorca 1:00:51

So, we went out, and we were really fortunate to be able to do this in the garden. So, we went out to the garden at our school, and I said to them, you know, “Okay, so we’re going to do our yoga, and then at the end, let’s try some meditation.” And I had a bunch of kids just shoot their hands up into the air, like, I know about meditation, cross their legs, put their hands into a mudra, close their eyes, and then go all like really peaceful and serene, just like they owned it like they’ve been doing it forever.

Candice Wu 1:01:19

Oh.

Kerry Maiorca 1:01:19

And they were like, I’m so good at meditation. I do meditate. They were so excited about it, and so that just kind of tickled me a little and I thought, “Okay, well, let’s see how it goes.” When we got there, to that part of the practice, they all took their seats and he got quiet, and you know, these very wiggly bodies really became still. And, you know, I don’t know what was happening for them in their head. I don’t know how much the stuck with them or didn’t, but the reason I wrote that piece why first graders are better at meditation than you are is because they were 100% unintimidated to just try it, and they completely put themselves in it, for how many minutes 2 3 5 minutes that we did it. They just like embodied meditation, and without any, you know, any other sort of inner voice telling them that they’re not doing it right, they don’t know enough, is this really meditation, and that’s been my experience as an adult until, you know, up until the last, like 10 years of my practice. So, halfway through.

Kerry Maiorca 1:02:22

My experience of being a practitioner, was when I finally got comfortable with meditation, I just never felt like I could really do it, until finally one day, one teacher gave me permission, and she said, “You can’t do this wrong.” And I realized, like, “Oh, okay,” and that the kids really got. They weren’t worried about whether they were doing it, right. They just did it, and so, that’s what I would love for anyone who’s even curious if the word meditation is intimidating to you. Use mindfulness, use quiet, use stillness, like whatever word works, but I just think that if we could, even for two minutes or three minutes, five minutes, just sit or lie down. Be quiet, maybe close the eyes if that feels safe, but just take some time to go in. We would feel a change in a shift if we did it on a regular basis, and that’s what I just loved about those first graders. They had moxy man, they weren’t worried about me telling them if they’re doing it right. They just did it, and they were awesome.

Candice Wu 1:03:25

They were telling you how to do it. Like, this is what it is.

Kerry Maiorca 1:03:27

I know, they really were. They really were.

Candice Wu 1:03:32

And just you can’t do this wrong.

Kerry Maiorca 1:03:34

Yes.

Candice Wu 1:03:37

That’s a great place to leave, and close our podcast today. Thank you so much, Kerry. Can’t do this wrong.

Kerry Maiorca 1:03:45

Let’s all go out into our day with that. Thank you so much, Candice, this has been such a pleasure.

Candice Wu 1:03:50

Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:03:55

Thank you so much for tuning in today and joining us. I just got so many little nuggets of information and insight that can just help me feel into a more easeful space, the softening and simplicity, tuning into how first graders can be with their exuberance and joyful delight, playfulness, trust and just doing enough. Thanks so much, Kerry for sharing all these pieces of wisdom and doing this in your daily life, not in a perfect way but as a practice, and showing us that it can be messy, it can be in process, and we can continue to love and know ourselves more deeply each step of the way.

Candice Wu 1:04:49

I encourage you to check out Kerry’s work at KerryMaiorca.com and link to the show notes of this episode at CandiceWu.com/kerry, and Kerry is spelled KERRY. Be sure to check out carries meditation that just takes you exactly where you are, with your messy or imperfect perfect life. Just taking five minutes of your day to be with what is here and to tune into yourself. You don’t have to wait to have a perfect life or the perfect setup to do meditation. This simple guided meditation welcomes you just as you are right now, harnessing your distractions and to do is to create a more spacious and easeful you.

Candice Wu 1:05:33

Kerry’s meditation can be found later this week on the podcast or at CandiceWu.com/kerry, KERRY. If you’d like to check out other healing experientially or guided meditations, and topics and guests on the podcast, you can go to CandiceWu.com/podcast, and when you click on each episode, you’ll find that there are healing experiences that are connected with either the guests episode or the main topic of the week, not every week has experientials, but also you can check out the list of podcasts and you’ll find all the experientials there. If you’d like to stay in touch about future retreats, workshops, or receive self-love notes, and also the podcast information, you can sign up for the Embody Community at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:06:27

I’m so grateful to have you here and listening, and I always love to hear feedback, whether that’s criticism or questions, ways that the podcast touched you or connects with you, and I’ll just leave you with that feeling of simplicity and doing enough that Kerry so inspired today.

Candice Wu 1:06:46

So, as we close today, I invite you to take a few of those deep breaths and feel into any bit of slowness or slower pace at your body can access now.

Candice Wu 1:07:01

Thanks so much and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

Candice Wu 0:00

Do you feel like you have no time for meditation or it’s just too hard to sit down?

Kerry Maiorca’s meditation here just takes about five minutes and you can start anytime, you don’t have to wait.

This simple guided meditation welcomes you just as you are right now, in your imperfect perfect 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.

Kerry on the Podcast

Kerry was on the podcast this week, where we talked about the struggle with more and being a more person, feeling enough, and living a simple life, being enough as well as trusting that you know your truth, and giving yourself permission that you can’t do life wrong. You can find her full podcast episode at CandiceWu.com/kerry. That’s KERRY.

And now, it’s a pleasure to introduce Kerry Maiorca of Bloom Yoga Studio in Chicago, offering this beautiful meditation that just embraces this moment as it is. Here’s Kerry.

Begin with Kerry

Kerry Maiorca 1:41

Welcome, and thanks for joining me for this experiential.

I’d like to invite you to begin by asking yourself two simple questions.

First, are you willing to carve out the next five minutes or so, just for you?

And second, do you believe that five minutes is enough to make a difference? I certainly do, but don’t expect you to take my word for it. So, let’s try it.

I invite you to practice with me today, a meditation that I like to call, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

This meditation doesn’t assume that you’re perfect or serene, in fact, it requires and depends on the fact that there are upsets, disruptions in your mind and life.

So, first, find a comfortable place to either sit, lie down or stand, and then with your eyes open, but just soft, look around you.

Whether you’re in your kitchen, in your office, hopefully not behind the wheel of a car. If you are, wait till later. Just look around and see.

Take in, observe.

Notice the colors, notice the shapes, the objects and just notice any thoughts that are sparked by seeing your everyday surroundings.

Then, if it’s comfortable for you, I invite you to close your eyes.

If not take a very soft and more introspective gaze, and then begin to notice the state of your thoughts, where your mind is at this moment, without trying to do anything at all to change it, and without judging.

Just take a few deeper, slower breaths to tune into your mind state. The pace and rhythm of the thoughts, and the thoughts themselves if you slow in-breath, and out-breath to observe.

Notice and Join

And then, notice if there are any prominent themes that keep coming back in your thoughts or notice if there is an energetic state that you’re observing in yourself, rather than trying to change or deny or pretend it’s different.

I invite you to practice joining, making friends with what currently is. For example, if you’re feeling rushed, you’re multitasking, thinking about all the things on your to-do list, I invite you to practice now. Honoring that and stepping back from it.

You can do this by taking a deep breath in and welcoming in the state you wish to create, and a slow breath out, acknowledging what you wish to let go of. For example, you could inhale spaciousness and ease, and exhale, business.

I invite you to think if there are one or two words that might represent what you wish to welcome in in this moment, and one or two words that you’d wish to let go of, and just practice very simply inhaling to welcome in and exhaling to release.

Remember, it’s totally normal for the thoughts to push their way forward, for your to-dos to keep coming back.

I invite you not to resist that, but to just know that you can do that later.

Now, is the time for you, just a few more breaths playing with this, welcoming in and letting go.

Closing

Now, slowly bring your attention back to your breathing, and it’s normal everyday state, just watching.

Observe the state of your mind and thoughts how you’re feeling, and then if the eyes are closed, I invite you to let them just gently blink back open.

Again, softly taking in the room around you, taking in your internal state and observing how it felt to take just a few minutes to slow down, to get a little quiet and to connect with your breath.

I invite you to use this tool anytime you wish in your normal, everyday imperfect perfect life. Thank you for practicing.

End

Candice Wu 8:29

I’m so glad you joined us today, with this meditation offered by Kerry Maiorca.

If you’d like to tune into more healing experientials or meditations, guided experiences by myself or my guests on the Embody Podcast, you can check it out at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Thanks so much for jumping in, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

So excited for this episode because it’s with my personal healer and spiritual coach, Charmayne Kilcup. And this episode, we talked about the magic of her healing work, her spiritual emergency and how this led to her journey of self-forgiveness and worthiness. She also talks about the importance of self-forgiveness and how to use it in order to heal.

Candice Wu 0:23

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 0:37

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 0:58

Hello, and welcome to back to the show, it’s great to have you here. It is heading into spring, it’s crazy in April, in Michigan, and in Chicago. We still have snow at least two times, and the month is not over yet. But it’s been a really interesting transition and at this cusp of shifting from the cool weather over to spring weather, I have decided to do a cleanse. I’d like to do that seasonally, especially from winter to spring to just let my body release what it needs to release, all the incubation that’s happened over the winter and all the things that have been working itself on the inside, in my heart and my spirit and in my body. It’s good to release that for the spring where it’s warmer and things are ready to blossom and to make a space for what’s coming, what’s growing.

Candice Wu 1:55

We encourage you to do the same thing and if you’re interested, there’s an ally with death experiential, which is a visualization to connect with the energy of death so that you can tune into what needs to go, what needs to release or end in your life, in your psyche and your physical, and outer world as well as your inner world to give you the shiny feeling of inspiration and purpose in life, as well as help you move forward into your abundance and growth for this next season.

Candice Wu 2:30

This experiential is, right now, an online guided format where you are given prompts online and you can do this at your own pace, and then once you hit submit, the responses will be sent back to you within 24 hours. I’ve just recorded the audio version for that, so, if you do end up buying this experience right now, I’ll also send you the audio when that’s complete. If this feels inspiring to you jump on my website and take a look at CandiceWu.com/death. I love to do this at least once a year if not twice or three times, so, it’s a process that helps me get in touch with what’s going on in my life right now that I want to shift and what do I want to nourish and cultivate.

Candice Wu 3:17

So, with this cleanse, I decided to do a bunch of nourishing and nutrient-rich soups as well as smoothies. The thing is about my body, it’s very Vata. Vata is the Ayurvedic Dosha, that is air and space, and those qualities, those elements of nature are very slowly, movement-oriented, drying, quick, and can make me feel unbalanced if I feel a lot of that energy in me, if I’m having more stress in my life or having some emotions come up and not addressing them, or if I start to kind of tailspin into some of my fears, I can create too much movement in myself, and that can lead to more Vata. And so, because of that, I decided to do a more nourishing cleanse where I’m not fasting or anything like that, and the soups, they’re very warming to counterbalance the cooling effect of Vata. And also smoothies. I like smoothies. I don’t like too much sugar, but I do a lot of vegetables in my smoothies. And it felt a little too cold in the weather to have the smoothies cold. So, I started to heat them up. And actually, they’re surprisingly, really good. I know it sounds weird. But if you’re someone like me with Vata, it’s like cooking your salads is the best thing you can do because it already releases one level of heating that my body has to do on its own and it’s already warming my body.

Candice Wu 5:00

So, that and I’ve been doing some dry brushing, as well as Abhyanga, which is sesame oil massage, with marrow points in the morning, and tongue scraping, oil pulling as well as Basti, which is an enema, couple of times this week, I’ll do that. And so far, I’ve already felt a lot clearer, like my mind just feels, it feels easy to focus. Just funny, as I say that sentence, like, not too focused, but it’s like I almost don’t know how to describe it. It’s so clear, and calm and settled. Right before this cleanse, I was feeling so uninspired with my food and meals and just, I don’t want to cook I don’t have anything interesting to make. And with this cleanse, I decided to not do meat. I do eat meat regularly, it helps ground me. But in this cleanse, I’m not doing meat, I’m doing a little a bit of fish. But I’m doing some bone broth and lots of veggies, little bit of lentils, little bit of tofu. And with this kind of restriction or new framework, I’ve been so creative with creating all sorts of soups, my steamer, and my VitaMix. These two are my best friends right now. And it’s just super easy to steam something up real quick with some garlic or onion and throw it in the Vitamix and create a pureed soup and top it with some salted mushrooms or a little bit of tuna on tap, yum.

Candice Wu 6:35

And with all this, I’m just letting myself slow down and feel into what wants to emerge in me as a cleanse. What wants to be seen and to be more intentional as I come out of this cleanse, feeling how good I feel, doing meditation and yoga, as well every day and giving myself extra space between things. Feels amazing and I want to continue some of those practices as this cleanse is over. So, I wanted to just share that with all of you today and encourage you to do something for yourself as the season shifts, whether that’s intention setting or journaling or doing a cleanse for yourself. If you need any guidance with that, feel free to connect with me or someone who really recommend an Ayurvedic practitioner or someone who can really see into how your constitution is and what you might need right now, or someone who’s very intuitive with the work of food and nutrition.

Candice Wu 7:40

Whatever it is that you do to support you, I encourage you to do it with a lot of loving and gentleness. And as the energy of spring comes forward, it’s more open and outward, it’s more lively and moving. And so, might support you to do a little bit more meditation and grounding to feel like you’re in your body through this transition. There’s a podcast episode that’s coming to mind that I recorded about six months ago, about tuning into the elements of nature. And as the season shifts, if you’re tuning in now to the elements and the temperature, the feel of the air, the taste, even of the minerals that are here, and now where you’re at, the smell of the air, the sweetness sometimes can really almost taste and smell, and hear, and feel the vibration of it all. And to do so helps you sync up with nature and what’s happening now and balance yourself. And that episode CandiceWu.com/nature, and it includes some guided meditations that are from tantric practice as well as somatic experiencing to support you and feeling embodied.

Candice Wu 8:58

So, let’s transition it to connecting with Charmayne here. I’m so happy to have her on the show. Charmayne is somebody I’ve been working with for several years now. She’s my healing coach and spiritual coach, whatever she calls herself, which is pretty much where we begin with talking about the magic of her work, which is very similar to my work. So, a lot of you out there that are working with me might hear these echoes and also reflections in the work of Charmayne and what she talks about here in this podcast. She has been incredibly inspiring to me and taught me the power of forgiving yourself, just using words of forgiveness, to help the entire energy system release what it is that I’ve been judging myself about.

Candice Wu 9:47

The forgiveness statements touch to the root of the belief sets that are happening inside of me and within my paradigm, not just on a mental level, but on the body level and focusing on the judgment forgiving the judgment feels like the key to everything because it’s okay that we have these beliefs, it’s okay that we live out of fear, sometimes, or some beliefs that we’ve inherited or created out of an experience. But what we do is we judge ourselves, and that creates another layer of pain and suffering. And we don’t need that layer so that forgiveness is so beautiful. And what I found though, is that the forgiveness wasn’t moving until I got in touch with my body.

Candice Wu 10:38

And so, the work I did before connecting with Charmayne really helped me to feel in my body and be able to tap into my emotions, and open up all the channels of every single emotion to move through and out so that when we touched on some judgment or belief that it could move really easily. But even so, if I couldn’t feel through an emotion that well in that moment, Charmayne was incredible at working with the body as well and allowing that to open up from such a loving, loving, loving place. So, it’s to her that I credit a lot of my self-loving at this stage in my life, and her energy just suits my whole being.

Candice Wu 11:25

So, before we jump in, I want to just share a little bit more about Charmayne. She is a Ph.D. in Psychology and helps people transform trauma, self-judgment, and pain into joy, ease and loving, and she’s trained as a counselor, psychologist, and energy worker, and she’s found that self-forgiveness and self-love are the keys to healing that most modalities are missing. For her, they were game changers that helped her transform in eating disorder, depression, and anxiety into a life of joy and delight. And since the time she’s dedicated her career to helping people learn how to use self-forgiveness to transform the negativity that’s in their lives. She has a private practice and is the co-founder of the Institute of Spiritual Coaching, which trains people to use self-love and self-forgiveness in their private practices. You can tune into also her free gift of a meditation and a self-love quiz at her website. CharmayneKilcup.com/self-love-quiz. So, it’s with great honor and pleasure to introduce Charmayne to the show.

Candice Wu 12:38

Charmayne Kilcup, it is so fantastic to have you on the show today.

Charmayne Kilcup 12:42

Thank you, Candice! I always love talking to you. So happy to be here.

Candice Wu 12:47

Wonderful! I just get so soothed by your voice. I want to introduce you today. You are a spiritual coach and you’re not just any. You are my healer and spiritual coach and I started to get a little nervous. I was thinking, Oh, man, Charmayne is coming on the show. And then I thought, you know what, she’s the most loving, spacious, expansive being I know. So, welcome.

Charmayne Kilcup 13:15

Thank you. Happy to be here. Truly.

Candice Wu 13:19

It has been amazing to work with you. It’s been about two years, I think. And …

Charmayne Kilcup 13:25

Gosh, I think it’s been longer.

Candice Wu 13:26

Has it. You’re, you’re probably right.

Charmayne Kilcup 13:28

It’s been a while. Yes, yes.

Candice Wu 13:29

You remember things sometimes that I’m like: “Oh, yeah.”

Candice Wu 13:33

Yeah, you’re a spiritual coach. And you were trained as a psychologist and a counselor and an energy worker and want to just open up the space for you to share from your perspective, who you are and where you are on your journey, right now.

Charmayne Kilcup 13:50

Okay. It’s always tough for me to answer truthfully. So, professionally, yes. I call myself a spiritual coach, because I haven’t found a better term for, I wish there was a better way to describe, just doing healing work.

Candice Wu 14:04

Yeah, I know.

Charmayne Kilcup 14:06

Doing profound healing work.

Candice Wu 14:07

Yeah, I’m constantly struggling with that, too. It’s a sort of like boxing you into this title?

Charmayne Kilcup 14:14

Yes. And it’s so hard to describe the work I think you and I both do. I mean, it’s a nothing short of magic, is kind of what…

Candice Wu 14:25

That should be the title.

Charmayne Kilcup 14:27

It’s true. I mean I set with a client, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. And we just have to wait for it to happen and listen to the intuitive guidance, and listen, for the magic they want to unfold. So, maybe that is a better title. But until spiritual coach, yes, I’ve been doing that for gosh, nearly 15 years now.

Candice Wu 14:50

Wow.

Charmayne Kilcup 14:51

And it started with my own spiritual awakening when I was 23, which pretty much knocked me on my ass, and opened up all of these gifts. And I mean, well, it was a spiritual emergency. It’s a long story, completely through me. But in the process got me on my aligned path of loving this work. So, thankful for in the long run. And what’s alive in my world? Well, I am 33 weeks pregnant.

Candice Wu 15:20

Congratulations.

Charmayne Kilcup 15:22

So that’s very, very alive in my world as I feel a little being kicking my stomach.

Charmayne Kilcup 15:30

So, that’s probably the most thing that is, the biggest thing that is most alive for me and my husband right now is getting ready for this next adventure.

Candice Wu 15:41

Wow, that’s really exciting. What do you do to get ready?

Charmayne Kilcup 15:45

Still a good question.

Candice Wu 15:49

What does the mother do?

Charmayne Kilcup 15:51

I know that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Mentally preparing myself, you know what, has been the most useful thing is my husband and share the same birthday. And we went to Colorado together for our birthday. And I was out in the middle of the woods, middle of nowhere, and the coolest thing happened, and I felt this archetypal energy of this primal, feminine, force enter my body. And I was like, okay, this is what I need to be ready. And it was this force of total alignment, and willingness to just move through what is to come and talk about the birth process, because the rest I know we can handle but that physical process is going to be interesting.

Charmayne Kilcup 16:40

So, that has helped me get ready, the most spontaneous, almost transmission, if you want to call it that, of wow, the archetypal energy of the millions upon millions upon millions of women, billions…

Candice Wu 16:53

Mm-hmm.

Charmayne Kilcup 16:54

Who have gone through this before.

Candice Wu 16:56

Wow.

Charmayne Kilcup 16:57

But so there’s that and then there’s painting the house, so it goes.

Candice Wu 17:03

That’s great. It’s like, of course, it’s like this magical answer. And then the functional parts, too. I appreciate that.

Charmayne Kilcup 17:11

Yeah, buying a new couch…

Candice Wu 17:12

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 17:13

…into my house…

Candice Wu 17:14

Like the reality.

Charmayne Kilcup 17:15

….and resting on the couch.

Candice Wu 17:16

Yeah. Well, I just so appreciate that to your response. Because I think a lot of mothers, and people just in general trying to prepare for something, are looking at all these more concrete things and lime thinking about how we can prepare. And what you shared was just such a, an opening into this energy that is existed and is and it runs through you. And just synced up with you here in this experience. It’s beautiful.

Charmayne Kilcup 17:44

Yes. Yeah. Kind of an initiation? For sure.

Candice Wu 17:47

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 17:48

Grateful for it. Because I was very, very scared until that initiation I’ll call it happened. So, now much calmer, just getting ready.

Candice Wu 17:58

Wow, yeah. Well, I’ve been reading your book, Heal Your Heart: How to Awaken Your Soul with Self-Forgiveness, and I’m really enjoying it. And you said it was a long story, your spiritual emergence, and emergency.

Charmayne Kilcup 18:14

Yes.

Candice Wu 18:15

Is there anything you want to share about it? I know you do share it in your book?

Charmayne Kilcup 18:18

Well, I can share that, let’s see what I want to share about that. Yes, it was when that happens one thing easily when I was, I think I was 23 years old when it started. And I had never, ever experienced anything like that. But in that experience, I heard my soul begin talking to me. And what the most interesting thing to me about that experience is that I was in meditation, I had been really, really stressed from school and work. And went to the same place in Colorado, actually, where I had this initiation coming, oh, I guess is powerful to me.

Candice Wu 18:54

Oh, Wow! Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 18:55

And I was there all alone. And in meditation, and spontaneously, my soul begins speaking to me. And what I still find fascinating is in the experience of it, it was pure, calm, peace, surrender, love, it was the most gentle experience and feeling I’ve ever had.

Candice Wu 19:16

Wow.

Charmayne Kilcup 19:17

And in this process, my soul was kind of talking to me about awakening, and enlightenment, and it showed me two doors. And so you know, you’re here to do this. Now you get to pick how you do this, you can walk through door A on the left here, and you’re going to walk through and feel instant enlightenment. Or you can do this the slow way, door B, you could have a normal life and do this slowly. And, you know, have a husband and a family and do all of these things. And I wasn’t ready for door A at all because I had a sense that if I walk through that door, I might die. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the feeling was so intense, that it was Iike my body can’t handle this.

Charmayne Kilcup 20:03

I can’t survive this, it’s so immense, I can feel it on the other side. I’m not sure I can do this. So, I very hastily chose door B. And then meditation ended, the voice kind of went away, still peaceful and calm. And it wasn’t until I opened my eyes. And I could feel the minute my mind clicked into, whoa, what was that? Whoa, that was not normal. We can’t make sense of this, I could feel the mind clicking to hear. And that’s when I went into a panic and a spiritual emergency. So, what I still find fascinating is the experience itself was immensely beautiful. But it was when the mind took over that it went into emergency.

Candice Wu 20:46

Fascinating.

Charmayne Kilcup 20:47

So, I just find that a really clear example of the power of the mind. And how it tries I could feel it was like a 1000 spinning years in my head trying to make sense of what just happened. And I couldn’t, right? This experience was so transcendental.

Candice Wu 21:03

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 21:04

The mind can’t make sense of soul. No idea what soul is! God bless it.

Candice Wu 21:11

Right.

Charmayne Kilcup 21:11

No, it tries, but it really doesn’t have any idea. But it was trying really hard. So, that’s still for me is a really useful illustration of how hard we try to do our awakening, our understanding, our connection to spirit through the mind, and how the mind just doesn’t seem to get it. The mindfully really useful in adding good information that helps us get there or keeping us focused or disciplined. But the mind, at least my mind, is inherently a little bit fearful.

Candice Wu 21:44

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 21:44

I have some of these bigger experiences. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that.

Candice Wu 21:48

I have, too, yeah, my, lately, I’ve just been tuning more into just dropping that hole, dropping my attention from the mind and just feeling what happens, feeling my sense of things and usually that pans out much better for me. And I do hear people saying, it’s great to have a balance of mind and heart. I think what you’re talking about is even deeper than that. Is that right?

Charmayne Kilcup 22:15

Yes, definitely. So, what I learned from one of my teachers that there are three energy centers, there’s the lower belly, there are the heart and the mind. So, the mind is still a powerful energy center. It’s just that it’s gone too far. And it’s become the main energy responsible for trying to make sense of our lives. And to help us make sense of healing and spirituality. And it’s just, it’s taken on a job it’s not equipped for. So, it’s an important energy center that does need attention and can do really great things. It’s just that we’re overly tipped into the mind in Western culture. And so we go into monkey mind, when we go into trying to use the mind to do a job that is not meant for, the heart is meant for the belly is meant for the body is meant for. And I think that’s one of the great travesties, I would say in our culture, is that we’re relying so heavily on this poor mind that’s overtaxed, was overburdened, is trying to figure everything out, plus, pay our bills and get to the next restaurant or the next appointment. And make sure there are groceries in the fridge. I mean, these poor minds of ours are just so burdened right now. And, yeah.

Candice Wu 23:29

That was me for sure. Like, I don’t know, 10 years ago, it’s like my mind was trying to do every single kind of task and it absolutely doesn’t digest the emotions. It doesn’t take chance for intuition. No.

Charmayne Kilcup 23:43

It tries. But usually there’s a bottle of fear that it filters through, so, it doesn’t do a great job. And truthfully, my experience and what if this is your experience, too? Is it when I was so living in the mind that way, I couldn’t actually feel much joy.

Candice Wu 24:00

Oh, yeah. It was like a false sense of joy for me. It was like, oh, I thought it was happy. My mind thought it was happy because these are the reasons that we are happy, because I have those …

Charmayne Kilcup 24:11

Interesting

Candice Wu 24:12

But, yeah, but I couldn’t really feel anything. I was pretty numb, yes. So yeah,

Charmayne Kilcup 24:18

I didn’t feel joy until I dropped into my body. I’m guessing that similar for you until actually began feeling the interior of my body, and oh, my gosh, look how good the sun feels on my legs. And look at how good this taste of coffee is my taste buds, so, the body essential experience of being alive, is where I actually found my joy.

Candice Wu 24:41

Yeah. And we have this to experience.

Charmayne Kilcup 24:46

Yes. So, these poor sweet minds, God bless them.

Candice Wu 24:50

Yeah, right.

Charmayne Kilcup 24:52

It’s not their fault.

Candice Wu 24:54

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 24:56

They’ve got too much going on.

Candice Wu 25:00

I want to talk about forgiveness. As I was reading that chapter in your book, it was right, at the kind of like the conversation that was going on in me, because I hear people saying, oh, I forgave them, right? And I have this experience with this relationship that was really hard from what I forgave that person. And I’m left feeling like, oh, I feel that the forgiveness is in me. And that experience of forgiveness is actually me acknowledging myself and loving myself, or what you’ve taught me, which was incredibly powerful when I first learned it from you, the self-forgiveness of the beliefs and the judgment around the beliefs that we hold in ourselves. So, I want to talk about that and just open up that topic of forgiveness. And what comes to you now about forgiveness and self-forgiveness.

Charmayne Kilcup 25:50

Well, this is one of my favorite topics.

Candice Wu 25:52

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 25:52

Seriously, I wrote a whole book about it.

Charmayne Kilcup 25:57

And I have to credit my teacher, Robert Waterman, with teaching me the importance of self-forgiveness, I had no idea, I had no idea how important it was. So, most of us are trained into believing that we’re willing to forgive other people, for things that have been done to us. And it’s so interesting, when I began studying psychology and working with this teacher, Robert Waterman, what I began to see is that forgiving others doesn’t really matter all that much.

Candice Wu 26:26

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 26:27

What matters more is forgiving ourselves. And people often resist the topic of self-forgiveness, because they say, they think, “Well, I didn’t do anything wrong. You know, that person divorced me or betrayed me or abandoned me or hit me or sexually abused me, I was the victim. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Yes, I know, I completely understand. And what’s interesting about these minds of ours is that even when we have been the victim of some kind of challenge, I don’t like that word so I kind of, look for different word, but there isn’t one, we’ve been the person to experience some kind of betrayal, abandonment, abuse, neglect, our brains find a way to judge ourselves for it.

Charmayne Kilcup 27:12

So, that might look like I work a lot with sexual abuse survivors. I love working with that. In every single sexual abuse survivor that I have found, that I have worked with, excuse me, I have found that there is a belief that forms unconsciously that this is my fault, somehow. It is my fault that’s happened to me. So, if a woman is abused in some way, every single time I found a belief, I was asking for it, or it was my fault. And this is the false belief that gets created in the unconscious. And it limits joy, self-esteem, it can create depression, anxiety, all of it robs a person of their life force energy.

Charmayne Kilcup 28:00

And so, with self-forgiveness, we go in and we say, I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that would happen to me, it was my fault. And even I don’t know about you. But even as I say that this is hypothetical, I still get goosebumps. Because it’s just so powerful, to go to that level of self-forgiveness.

Candice Wu 28:19

Absolutely!

Charmayne Kilcup 28:23

And this happens over and over and over with big experiences, small experiences, everything. I’m noticing that happened with me already with pregnancy.

Charmayne Kilcup 28:35

I’m not able to exercise much, because when I do, I threw up. And he was like, you need to get strong, you need to exercise keep yourself healthy, keep the baby healthy. And all of his messaging coming at me of you know, you should be doing this and this and this. And my mind, I can watch it now is internalizing that is, “Oh, I’m doing something wrong already.” I’m not being a great mother already. And these are really insidious federal beliefs that can just shame us anytime we’re feeling shame. It’s because we’ve found a false belief that the culture is trying to put on us isn’t true for us. So, even with things like this, I’ve had to do a tremendous amount of self-forgiveness of, “Okay, well, I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that I’m doing this wrong as a mother.” So, it’s incredibly powerful.

Candice Wu 29:25

Thank goodness, you’re doing that.

Charmayne Kilcup 29:26

Yes, I have to, Thank goodness, I have training in it.

Candice Wu 29:29

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 29:30

And what I have found is that when there is a real experience of abuse, neglect, abandonment, the self-forgiveness often spontaneously leads to forgiveness of others. Not always. And when it doesn’t, I completely trust that, because I’ve worked with clients who’ve experienced some really, really, really traumatic things. And I have no need to push them into forgiveness. I have a desire to help them find self-forgiveness, and that sometimes leads to forgiveness of others often does. But if not, that’s okay, too. Every experience takes us into healing and wholeness. So, that level of release, which is what forgiveness is, will be found at some point for everybody.

Candice Wu 30:16

I appreciate that so much. And I found the same, like profound healing with it. And before I worked with you, I was doing EMDR and a lot of embodied therapies and that helped tremendously for me to be in my body, to feel the joy to feel like I was releasing beliefs sets that I was living from. But when you dropped in that forgiveness piece, it was like, oh, it just clicked. And it for me, touched into the love, not only the love, but the level of responsibility and freedom that comes from that self-forgiveness, it touches into the core of this entire experience connected with belief sets and judgments that just creates this ripple effect outward and completely changes energetically, and frees me of what it is that I thought I was.

Charmayne Kilcup 31:14

Yes, exactly. And that’s, I think why I love self-forgiveness so much more than forgiveness is because self-forgiveness allows ourselves to get free from whatever happened to us, and whatever false beliefs others are bringing us, without needing anything different from our external reality.

Charmayne Kilcup 31:32

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 31:34

So, we don’t need to change what happened.

Candice Wu 31:35

Right.

Charmayne Kilcup 31:36

We want to change what happened, we don’t have to change how people are responding to us or what they’re doing. If we forgive ourselves, or whatever is happening. We’re judging ourselves for even just feeling emotions, that we’re unconsciously judging. Oftentimes, if we’re women, we’re judging our anger, or judging ourselves, we’re feeling sad. So even just I forgive myself for feeling angry about this right now. Hoo! It unlocks the energy and you begin to feel more free. And it’s incredible.

Candice Wu 32:05

It is.

Charmayne Kilcup 32:09

It’s magical!

Candice Wu 32:10

It is!

Charmayne Kilcup 32:11

It’s magical.

Candice Wu 32:12

It helped me get to this place of realizing that, and you say this in your book, like, there’s nothing wrong. And any choice you’ve made, anything you’ve done, there’s nothing wrong with that. And how each thing that we have being or experience that we can have is part of that freedom. We can choose it at any time we can choose a different way of being, and there’s no way of being that deserve shame or unworthiness.

Charmayne Kilcup 32:43

Yes.

Candice Wu 32:43

So beliefs, worthiness in ourselves.

Charmayne Kilcup 32:46

Yes, I have found self-forgiveness to be the antidote to shame and unworthiness.

Candice Wu 32:51

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 32:51

And as a person growing up in this culture, we’re just imprinted with shame and unworthiness. And what I have seen in the hundreds, if not thousands, of our clients, I said at this point, is that the unworthiness we feel, the shame we feel is not even our fault. Not our fault.

Candice Wu 33:11

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 33:12

It’s just a product of growing up in a shame-based culture but it is our responsibility to go in and release and heal and get clear. And in doing so the exciting part is we get free. But we also create more freedom for people around us. Have we pull out of the shame-based culture and say, “No, I’m not going to do that with myself or other people.”

Candice Wu 33:35

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 33:36

We begin to change the culture. And then there’s no need to go into the shame in the same way. So, it’s already happening. There’s …

Candice Wu 33:45

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 33:46

People are being shamed to last for certain things in this new generation, then say, we were the people above us.

Candice Wu 33:54

Yeah, I feel that and I feel that trickle effect of just one person experiencing themselves differently and connecting with others from that place of love and expansion much more. Just reaching out from there.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:09

Yes,

Candice Wu 34:10

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:10

Right? I mean, I’m sure you’ve met people who don’t carry shame, in the same way, that most people do.

Candice Wu 34:18

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:18

They’re like beacons of light.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:20

Oh yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:20

They’re so safe.

Candice Wu 34:21

Absolutely. Well, how did you get in touch with your own shame and unworthiness, beliefs? That’s my guests that you have.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:31

Yeah.

Candice Wu 34:31

Yeah, that’s part of your own gift.

Charmayne Kilcup 34:35

That was part of my spiritual awakening, actually. Was having to do a deep dive into looking at that. And luckily, I found a great master’s program, which really addressed this level. It was lucky to do that. So, the Western College in Santa Fe just changed my life. So, there was support for it. And once I began seeing, oh, wow, look at what happens to us without our knowledge or consent. Has being pro-sensitive products of you know, this world.

Candice Wu 35:03

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 35:04

You just inherit the shame and the sense of unworthiness. I find it to be especially true for sensitive empathic people. We just walk around like little sponges, and if there’s shame, we’re just going to take it.

Candice Wu 35:16

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 35:17

And so once I began seeing what was happening with me, it’s like the light bulbs are going on. And I could see, oh, wow, look at how this is operating for most people most the time. And I began being able to do a deep dive in myself, to look at all of the places I was carrying a shame, and that’s still an ongoing process. But what I have found is it’s the level of unworthiness that keeps us from getting what we truly want. So, I noticed this for myself, one great example was relationships. So, I was my whole entire life, my deepest yearning was to have a really incredible relationship, really know, husband, family, all of that it was this deep, deep yearning that well, first I judge myself for, as it didn’t seem very spiritual or enlightened, to just want to be married to a great guy.

Candice Wu 36:14

Another one of those judgments and beliefs, right?

Charmayne Kilcup 36:17

That was the one I had to work through. So, worked through that, and then began dating a host of men who were not right for me in some way, either emotionally abusive, never physically abusive, I wouldn’t have tolerated that but who were narcissistic, very selfish, and we know runs the whole gamut. And it’s kept happening to me over and over and over again, and finally gotten one relationship and I was head over heels in love with this man and moved to Seattle with him. I thought: “This is it. This is the one and I’m crazy about him.”

And again, I was mistreated. I felt like: “No, I’m really not getting what I think I probably deserve in a relationship. I really am not feeling very valued here. I’m feeling kind of misused or abused, like I’m being taken advantage of.”

And that relationship ended. And it sent me into a deep soul searching. Okay, what’s going on here?

Charmayne Kilcup 37:23

And what I got to uncover was, there was a still a pocket of unworthiness that I felt from being really bullied and shamed as a young kid, actually, what I could see is wow, I was a very chubby kid very late bloomer. And I got so much teasing and bullying for it. And this little young version of me was holding on to unworthiness. And she truly didn’t believe that she was worthy of the kind of guy, adult me, consciously, really wanted. So, I had to go on a really deep dive and looking at all the beliefs that this younger me formed around unworthiness. And I did that, took me. Once I set my mind to it was with me a night, it took months leading up to that.

Candice Wu 38:14

Yeah, I understand that.

Charmayne Kilcup 38:17

And then months later, I got to meet my now husband, who’s the most incredible being who just cherishes me, and I cherish him, and we’re just absolutely madly in love with each other.

Candice Wu 38:28

Beautiful.

Charmayne Kilcup 38:28

But I know it’s only because I had to excavate the part of me that was holding onto beliefs that I wasn’t good enough.

Candice Wu 38:38

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 38:39

So, what I’ve noticed is this unworthiness really tends to operate, especially in terms of our relationships we pull in, and the abundance we pull in.

Candice Wu 38:49

Mmm, yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 38:50

So, that’s been fascinating for me to look at is, okay, this unworthiness thing that we inherit is a big deal, because it can block us from our deepest desires, and our even our soul desires.

Candice Wu 39:04

I’d love for you to talk more about the abundance piece with worthiness. And you had mentioned to me that you’re really interested in women. I think you said calling in their abundance or what did yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 39:20

Having abundance?

Candice Wu 39:20

Yeah, that being in abundant self.

Charmayne Kilcup 39:27

Yes. This is what I also see healers in particular struggle with and spiritual people struggle with. And this has been one of my biggest struggles as well, I mean, to be totally blunt, we have so much conditioning, as highly sensitive spiritual people, to not want material things.

Candice Wu 39:46

Right.

Charmayne Kilcup 39:46

Right, I mean, I work sometimes with past lives. And I know for me, and most people I see who are really old souls, is that we’ve had so many past lives, where we chose to get rid of belongings, get hurt into the church, other people, serve, serve, serve, serve.

Candice Wu 40:05

Yep, yep. And I’m laughing because I’m like, yep, me. Yep. Yeah,

Charmayne Kilcup 40:09

Yes, I know, it’s just about every healer, I know, has this some level.

Candice Wu 40:13

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 40:14

And it’s just the sense of okay to be worthy of God, to be worthy of love or enlightenment, I have to give myself away. I can’t enjoy life, I have to be of service to others. And truthfully, this is one that’s a little bit backward.

Candice Wu 40:33

Hmmm.

Charmayne Kilcup 40:33

And I believe that it was a level of evolution at the time that 400 years ago, 300 years ago, it was important to learn self-discipline. And it was helpful to be of service to others, and get out of the ego. But I’m seeing it work against people who are deeply spiritual and old souls, who are now still living that paradigm and trying to give everything away. And I noticed this in myself, because I just, gosh, was barely surviving, financially. And my heart wanted to serve everybody, every client, everybody who came to me, and I went through a period of really overworking myself and really undercharging and barely getting by. And luckily, things have been clicking into place inside of me, where there’s this inner knowing that says, “Wait, hold on.” This, this is no, this no longer has to be true for me.

Candice Wu 41:34

Yes.

Charmayne Kilcup 41:35

Doesn’t have to be true for other people. And that actually, the spiritual path can lead to greater material wealth, and that’s okay. And it’s okay to enjoy life. And it’s okay to have luxury. And it’s okay to enjoy pleasure. And this sensate experiences, that money can help facilitate.

Candice Wu 41:55

That they both exist together.

Charmayne Kilcup 41:58

Yes. And I find so much resistance to this belief even inside of myself at times other people, this conditioning that we have to serve, serve. It’s so ingrained, especially if we have a lot of earnestness or integrity around who we are, and our spirituality. So, the earnest and wonder, right, and we have an unconscious belief, I will do things right. I’ve got to be poor, here, everything is everything away. We’re really going to go for being poor.

Candice Wu 42:29

Yeah, everything. Right.

Charmayne Kilcup 42:33

So, it’s in a way, a sweet sign of our earnestness and integrity is just no longer true. This is the paradigm we’re operating under. So, what I have seen is, gosh, we actually need more spiritual people and more conscious people and people with integrity and earnestness having more money.

Candice Wu 42:56

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 42:57

That’s how we got to change what’s happening around us is but actually allowing ourselves more means to change things and to even vote with our dollars.

Candice Wu 43:11

Well, I also really appreciate the sense that you’re giving about, this may have been very helpful in the past. And that’s often something I’ve used, like within my ancestry and thinking about the ways of being that have been passed along or that I’ve taken up. But what you’re saying here that maybe it was helpful to be self-disciplined at some point, but now it’s not really serving in the same way. It’s so refreshing. And it’s so helpful to see it all with that kind of love.

Charmayne Kilcup 43:44

Yes.

Candice Wu 43:45

And yes, I’m so with you. And that story you shared, completely resonated with me. And you know that I relate to that as well. And just want to support all healers in their abundance and seeing that they can have all that.

Charmayne Kilcup 44:04

Yes. And all good-hearted people. Yes, I want to support everybody in there.

Candice Wu 44:09

Yes.

Charmayne Kilcup 44:11

If we had more people, like you and me, is really people who want to do a lot of good in the world, to claiming more abundance. Gosh, I mean, a lot of these things we see happening wouldn’t be able to happen in the same way.

Candice Wu 44:26

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 44:28

So, I am very passionate about this now, because I’m seeing how in myself, I kept myself disempowered for so long financially, and the ramifications were, were huge.

Charmayne Kilcup 44:41

And now it’s changing, thank goodness! But it’s like, gosh, I wasted 15 years on just barely getting died, barely enjoying all I wanted to enjoy. And I just don’t want to have, I don’t want others to have to live through that if they don’t have to.

Candice Wu 44:57

Well, and do you think this relates to the word selflessness? I mean, it just sounds exactly like that idea of people very much valuing the idea of selflessness, completely letting go of all self, and I get that there’s different levels of self, like the small ego self, or the mind self. But to completely be selfless, doesn’t make sense anymore, with what you’re saying.

Charmayne Kilcup 45:24

Yes, I, what I have seen is that it’s appropriate for certain individuals and a certain level of awareness. So, people, I’m going to just talk in terms of soul age, young souls coming in who it’s all about them, and they’re learning about themselves, and they’re fiercely independent, and is very ego-centered. I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. It’s what’s supposed to happen.

Candice Wu 45:48

In the development.

Charmayne Kilcup 45:49

They’re men’s evolution,…

Candice Wu 45:50

Mmmm.

Charmayne Kilcup 45:50

….yeah. is to learn to take other people’s perspectives, and see other people’s needs. So, in that case, yes. Learning to be selfless, is a huge act of maturity and evolution. What I’m talking about is mostly people who are old souls, who’ve done this were deeply wise and sensitive and empathic. And we learned that selfless thing, but we took it too far.

Charmayne Kilcup 46:21

We didn’t want to let that one go.

Candice Wu 46:25

Get to the extreme here.

Charmayne Kilcup 46:26

Yes, yes. And we hold on to this one tenaciously because it’s become such an important part of spiritual identity.

Candice Wu 46:36

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 46:36

Who am I if I’m not giving? Oh, I mean that’s a good question. I just felt it. Yeah, and am I worthy if I’m not giving? I mean these are huge questions.

Candice Wu 46:47

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 46:49

And if I’m not giving to be good, or get to God, well, am I okay, just as I am. And that’s when you really have to the worthiness. And that’s a place that scares a lot of people, and myself included. It did for a long time. And you’re displaying your worthiness can claim that you’re here for your own pleasure, your own awakening, can you claim that you’re not here to save the entire world? Can you claim that giving everything away, doesn’t even work and saving the entire world?

Charmayne Kilcup 47:27

So, it’s the next evolution to really realize that, as someone, and I’m sure, your audience or listeners identify, as someone going for true awakening, the selflessness only gets us to a certain point. And then we’ve actually got to choose ourselves, and choose our lives, and choose being alive, and choose pleasure, and choose expansion.

Candice Wu 47:53

I love how you said that.

Charmayne Kilcup 47:56

Yeah, it’s not selfish in the way that we’ve known our to be selfish. It’s actually us choosing ourselves is in service to all, because as we choose ourselves deeply, really take place. As we choose life from a really deep place. We open up a template or path for other people to do the same. And there is no greater service to humanity than that.

Candice Wu 48:26

Absolutely. I mean, even in saying that there’s or maybe, I don’t know, this is something I’m grappling with. So, please challenge me. But it feels almost like even in saying in choosing ourselves, it’s the greatest service to all. It’s a great service to all. That’s like comforting to the part of me that wants to be of service.

Charmayne Kilcup 48:47

Yes.

Candice Wu 48:48

And then there’s another part of me that says, and choosing myself for myself is enough.

Charmayne Kilcup 48:55

Yes. Absolutely, you nailed it. Yeah.

Candice Wu 48:58

And that’s why does it have to fee for the service? But then I got to go back, and I toggle back and forth.

Charmayne Kilcup 49:05

Well, yes, and I speak to that part of us that just so deeply needs to be of service because of these big hearts. We have.

Candice Wu 49:13

Yes, yes, we want to love.

Charmayne Kilcup 49:14

The truth. We want to love doing this for yourself is enough. Absolutely enough. Absolutely. But I find it really hard for people, myself included to just make that leap to, Oh my, I’m just going to do this for me. Yeah, gosh, I mean, it’s been so many lifetimes, yeah, experience doing things for us, that the business itself can’t quite get on board fully with that, for most people I work with.

Candice Wu 49:41

Yeah, I have a good friend who has lived many lifetimes and seems to be right there with it, where she’s able to say no, this is about you and this is your life. And so, it kind of shocks me every time. Like oh, yeah. Like she was like a shake to my system.

Charmayne Kilcup 49:59

She’s clear.

Candice Wu 50:00

Oh, yeah. She’s so clear, right? And it’s a great reminder to me to find my own balance with it. Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 50:08

Good for her.

Candice Wu 50:09

Yeah, I want to go back to victimhood. And you were saying you don’t really like that word. And I just pulled a quote from your book. What happens in our lives, truly is here to serve us. Things don’t happen to us, they happen for us. And later, you say our lives are designed to bring us into greater levels of awareness, freedom, and love. So, when you said you don’t love the word victim, or the idea of victimhood I think, this quote seems to connect with it, things don’t happen to us. Can you speak more about your thoughts about this? Or your feeling of this?

Charmayne Kilcup 50:51

Yes. So, what I have been taught and really explored in my own life and found to be true, is that the places we’re still struggling, in places where we do feel like we’re victims, places that we’re not fully empowered. Those are places that are still uncleared inside of us, that our souls trying, they’re places where our soul is trying to work something else, though.

Charmayne Kilcup 51:17

So, in terms of, for example, one was talking about relationships and myself, I felt like a victim at times, like what is wrong with me? Why am I attracting and guys who are like this? Just seem great and then turn kind of mean or whatever, neglectful, what is going on? I felt “victim”. You know, I’m watching all my friends. Choose guys who are incredible and treat them well. And it was really easy to go into this place, oh, poor me, why can’t I have that?

Candice Wu 51:50

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 51:50

And now looking back, what I can see is, I couldn’t have that until I cleaned and worked with this piece of unworthiness inside of me. And the soul’s goal here was to get me to look at that place of unworthiness, and clear that shame and clear these false beliefs and empower myself at an even deeper level. So, even though I was going through it, I felt really victimized. Like, gosh, everyone’s getting married. And I was quite, it was quite later when I met Walter compared to most the average most people. But what I came to find is that, wow, my soul really wanted me to get this one. And it did and attain that awareness of this place of unworthiness. I was hanging on to changed everything for me. Absolutely everything. And so, it was a piece I had to get, even though I felt like it was unfair at the time. Yeah, the victim place I see is a place where we’re still trying to work something out.

Candice Wu 52:57

Hmmm.

Charmayne Kilcup 52:57

I think we’ll have those places as long as we’re human.

Candice Wu 53:00

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 53:00

It’s part of us.

Candice Wu 53:01

Yes. That’s part of the journey.

Candice Wu 53:04

Yeah. So, I just have a few more questions for you. What are you tussling with right now? What do you challenge with on your journey?

Charmayne Kilcup 53:13

Gosh, so the biggest challenge I am grappling with is how to balance my different passions and becoming a mother, which is I’ve wanted and passionate about that. Maintaining a really fruitful marriage, and doing the work I love. So, there’s a place inside of me that’s in fear about, can I do all of this? Can I do all of this well? So that’s probably my main issue that I’m grappling with is I want to give 100% to all areas of my life. And just the fear I won’t be able to.

Candice Wu 53:54

That’s a real thing. or big things being a Shannon’s. Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 53:59

I don’t have an answer. Yep. But check on a year.

Candice Wu 54:04

Well, I guess I just kind of go back in my mind, to what you said about you being you, is of service to all. And even when you’re made, I don’t know, the thought I had was just even when you’re in your life and being the mother and taking a little time off of working with clients are doing your healing work. That’s already going to be in service.

Charmayne Kilcup 54:29

Yes. It will, and I love my clients. And I love my work.

Candice Wu 54:35

I know you do. We will miss you. For the time you’re away.

Charmayne Kilcup 54:43

This will be interesting.

Candice Wu 54:43

But we have your book, we have your book, too.

Charmayne Kilcup 54:46

That is true, that is true. Actually, I got that out before this happens. But yeah, how the modern woman does it right now?

Candice Wu 54:56

Oh, I know.

Charmayne Kilcup 54:56

Kind of a mystery to me. So even without marriage, and without kids, life was a lot.

Charmayne Kilcup 55:04

Those are on table two, it’s like gosh, how do people do this? So…

Candice Wu 55:09

Yeah, yeah, let me know in a year.

Charmayne Kilcup 55:11

I will!

Candice Wu 55:12

I don’t know.

Charmayne Kilcup 55:12

I have more wisdom about this in a year or two.

Candice Wu 55:16

That’s the question I’ve had to, like, how if I want kids and if I choose to what do I do with all the other parts of my life that already take up all the time?

Charmayne Kilcup 55:28

Yes.

Candice Wu 55:29

And enjoy that.

Charmayne Kilcup 55:30

The place I’m getting closer to with it is that believing and feeling you’re worthy of support or I’m worthy of support in this. It’s something that’s my growing edge right now in terms of worthiness is am I worthy enough to really ask for the help I need?

Candice Wu 55:49

Hmm, you’re not doing it alone.

Charmayne Kilcup 55:51

Right, a nanny or food delivery service, or how could all these things? Am I worthy enough to ask for more help?

Candice Wu 56:02

Yes, you are.

Charmayne Kilcup 56:03

Thank you, thank you!

Candice Wu 56:04

Yes, you are! That’s my growing edge.

Candice Wu 56:09

Thank you for sharing this. And I wonder, this is the last question I have for you: What brings you joy right now? What just feeds your soul?

Charmayne Kilcup 56:20

You know, it’s those little moments that always has was since I had my spiritual awakening, what I found was this little tiny daily moments that bring me joy. So, this morning, I’m really obsessed with the Cara Cara oranges, habit Whole Foods. So, this morning…

Candice Wu 56:38

Oh, those are yummy.

Charmayne Kilcup 56:40

…I was sitting down and eating an orange first thing in the morning. Because pregnancy really affects your blood sugar. So, those first few bites of a cold orange, deeply joyful and pleasurable.

Candice Wu 56:55

So happy that you give yourself that gift, that moment to enjoy.

Charmayne Kilcup 57:00

Yes. Going out and watering the yard and just smelling the flowers that are in bloom, joyful, it’s feeling the sun on my bare arms, because it’s quite warm here today, joyful. So, it’s still those little things and I always think it will be a good cup of coffee. So, it’s those daily sensei pleasures.

Candice Wu 57:23

Yeah, lovely. Thank you so much. I mean, is there anything else you want to share today?

Charmayne Kilcup 57:32

See if anything arises. Oh, that feels pretty complete. I mean, I could talk about all of this for three hours.

Candice Wu 57:38

I know it takes you forever.

Charmayne Kilcup 57:42

But perhaps we will in the future…

Candice Wu 57:44

Yeah. Right.

Charmayne Kilcup 57:46

to complete, for now.

Candice Wu 57:48

Yeah. Oh, well, thank you for being you, for being out there in your life, enjoying your life and sharing that joy with others and supporting others and doing that. Where can people find you?

Charmayne Kilcup 58:03

So, I can be found on my website www.CharmayneKilcup.com. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram. And it’s just my name, Charmayne Kilcup.

Candice Wu 58:15

Great, and you have the self-love quiz that people can tune into?

Charmayne Kilcup 58:20

I do. Yes. I’m having trouble figuring out how to put it on my website. Perhaps I can find that link and send it to you and you can post it with this.

Candice Wu 58:30

Yeah.

Charmayne Kilcup 58:31

Yes.

Candice Wu 58:31

I think I have the link will go with the show notes.

Charmayne Kilcup 58:35

The tech stuff is so difficult for me. So,

Candice Wu 58:40

You don’t have to do it all.

Charmayne Kilcup 58:42

Exactly. I feel worthy of support there. I will tell you that.

Candice Wu 58:46

Yeah. You already have a good example of it for yourself.

Charmayne Kilcup 58:50

Yes. Yes.

Candice Wu 58:52

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Charmayne Kilcup 58:54

Thank you, Candice.

Charmayne Kilcup 58:56

Thank you for the work you’re doing, too. I know you’re spreading all the self-love, all the joy as well. I just want to thank you for that, too.

Candice Wu 59:06

Thank you.

Candice Wu 59:13

It so, lovely to be able to have Charmayne on the show and to connect with her on this beautiful, magical healing work that we’re both doing. And how she awakens love in people is just so inspiring. Thanks so much for joining us today. And if you want to touch into her book, check it out on Amazon. It’s called Heal Your Heart: How to Awaken Your Soul with Self-Forgiveness. And you can find that at her website as well CharmayneKilcup.com and all of this information is linked on the show notes on my website at CandiceWu.com/charmayne, and her name is spelled CHARMAYNE, Charmayne. Don’t forget to check out her free gift of a meditation and self-love quiz at her website. And also at her website, you can find the information about the Institute of Spiritual Coaching.

Candice Wu 1:00:10

Thank you so much for tuning in today. It’s wonderful to know that you’re out there. So, if you have any feedback, questions or topic ideas, or just want to share your personal story of something that is connected with an episode or anything at all, feel free to connect with me on my website at CandiceWu.com/connect. And if you’re interested in receiving my newsletters that share some self-love notes, as well as personal updates about my life and what’s going on in my inner world, you can sign up at CandiceWu.com/embody. They’ll also be up-to-date with retreats and workshops, as well as podcasts that I’m having. And each of these podcasts has a very special theme or guest and they’re all meant for you to just tune into what feels inspiring to you. So, you don’t have to listen to every single one but to pick and choose what really calls to you at what time. So, as we close today, I want to just invite you all to give yourself a moment to tune into your heart.

Candice Wu 1:01:20

Just notice what’s happening without any changing it or judgment. Just this moment of connection with yourself to allow and notice what you’re feeling. And as we leave here with a little bit of music today, invite you to send some to that energy of loving and let that infuse into your day.

Candice Wu 1:01:50

And on behalf of both Charmayne and myself, just wishing that you all have that self-loving that can guide you through life with gentleness, playfulness, curiosity, and fun.

Candice Wu 1:02:08

Take good care and look forward to connecting with you again on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is about relationships and how they serve, to show us more loving in ourselves, and to bring us back to love, as well as for ways that we can get stuck in grieving loss or ending relationships, especially those that are intimate relationships.

Candice Wu 0:20

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 0:33

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 0:55

These episodes on the Embody Podcast are made possible because people like you that are listening or contributing by just even giving a dollar a month or more to the podcast, so that the production and the time and the labor of love that goes on behind the scenes can happen. So, if you feel inspired by this podcast, if you have felt touched or enjoyed in some way, I’d really encourage you to support and give back by contributing on Patreon and just show your love that way. I really appreciate it. It helps a great deal, even a dollar a month. And you can stop at any time and there are some great things you can tap into there if you’re interested in having a personalized healing meditation every quarter or if you’re interested in joining the Embodied Group Call that happens monthly, or the Q and A sessions that go on there. You can contribute at any level at CandiceWu.com/patreon. Thanks so much for considering it and I appreciate it all of you out there. No matter what you are contributing or not. I just feel grateful that you’re out there listening and receiving what I’m sharing. It’s really a joy to be here.

Candice Wu 2:15

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Embody Podcast, it’s wonderful to have you here. I always look forward to sitting down and connecting with what’s alive in me and living here and what’s also coming in my direction. And it’s been so interesting, this last couple of weeks, and mainly this last week, because the energy of ending relationships, close relationships, deep relationships, ending relationships has been present all around me.

Candice Wu 2:54

It’s like four days ago, at least four or five people told me that they were ending a relationship or their good friend was ending a relationship and it was challenging. So, of course, they felt really cold to talk about relationships and how they serve to show us more loving, and also honoring relationships ending. How do you grieve? Everyone has their own process, but what can support you? And how can we set ourselves up to feel even more empowerment, and loving through a relationship ending?

Candice Wu 3:37

People always say that grief takes its own process, and that it never ends. I don’t know if it never ends. There have been situations that I’ve grieved and they’ve ended and they are done. But I’ve certainly had moments where I thought something was done and more came up. And if I’m really attached to the idea that this is done, and it should have been done already, that I can add another layer of suffering and stress. So, I guess it’s safer to say the process is never done. But I also don’t love that because I have found those places, as I said, where the grieving has been complete. And there’s a different place of relating to the person or that situation, that I was grieving for some time and even found more grief later or they’re just pieces that just come up later. But that piece can be completed.

Candice Wu 4:37

You may have a different experience and I welcome you to share that. And also own your own experience and trust that. But this is just my experience. So, in this podcast, I want to talk about some relationships that I’ve been in, and one that more recently ended, as well as some ways that I use some tools and frameworks that support me in the process of grieving and ending and completing the energy and the dynamic with someone that gives me more for myself and more also in my view of others that releases me from the dance of what was meant to be learned in a relationship.

Candice Wu 5:27

One of my healers, Charmayne Kilcup says that, where there isn’t loving, there’s something else to learn. And that is what I experienced. If the walking away from a relationship isn’t completely out of respect, and love, and honoring, then there’s some piece for me to learn in myself and some more loving to be had.

Candice Wu 5:56

So I believe that we have a story soul and our soul is on this journey to love and to be loved and to be fully expressed within and outside of us. To love ourselves, the deepest part of who we are the self, that is the self of all. The self, that is the love, the divine, the energy, the oneness in us, the wholeness in us, that is all consciousness, but expresses itself through this individual being. And in this individual being, in this individual soul, we come with many belief sets, ideas and distortions, and meanings that are not true. True to the self with a big S, to the you with a big Y in front of the you.

Candice Wu 6:52

And our relationships serve as a reflection of these parts of ourselves that truly want to be seen and truly want to be known in our fullest that bring us towards our expansion. So, relationships, whether they feel supportive, and loving, or painful, and hurtful, these all serve to show us our inner dynamic of how we treat ourselves and what we believe about ourselves, that causes us to treat ourselves this way, and also treat others in whatever way that shakes out to be from that way of being, from that state of being.

Candice Wu 7:34

So, our relationships serve as this reminder of where the dark spots in us are of pain, on truth, or where we haven’t loved ourselves, not to show us our deficits, but to show us the pathway that if we walk through, there will be more loving, and we will arrive back at true self with a big S, will arrive back to our wholeness, will arrive back to expansive loving, and our soul wants us to recover and repair all these parts of us. Spirit through us wants us to become one with the wholeness. That is yoga union becoming one to yoke. And that is connected with this, this coming back to self that is the whole that is the expansiveness, but we get to experience it through this body.

Candice Wu 8:40

So, while I think about relationships, ending, especially intimate relationships, and the pain of those, the disconnection that’s needed, the healing that might be needed, or the feeling of “thank goodness is over, I’m out of here”. You know, I’m running as fast as I can, there is still an integration that needs to happen, there’s still an ending, and a need for us to digest to some degree at some point, what this was for us.

Candice Wu 9:14

And if we take up that experience, that digestion, and metabolism, and we can truly see ourselves, using every opportunity of relating to serve a greater love, and to serve the greater loving in us, and to feel more self-loving.

Candice Wu 9:32

So, many of you have heard me talk about my partner, my previous partner. Now at this point, Christoph, and Christoph was also at the Soul Body Women’s Retreat, supporting the structure of the retreat and taking some photography. And he also does the editing for this podcast. And some other work behind the scenes for Embody Your Nature, which is my practice, my business. And for those of you that are not connected with my Facebook page, Candice Wu Self-Love, and Healing, or my personal page, or Instagram, then you may not know this entire story, which I recently shared. And I haven’t been sharing much because overall in this last year and a half, because I wanted to respect our privacy and to allow for things that were unfolding to just be, and to leave them without telling everyone about them. But now I want to share with you all this relationship ending just as we’re talking about relationships ending. A lot of times when people end a relationship, they burn the pictures that they had shared together and created together or don’t know what to do with them. And they often don’t show them in public. I’ve definitely done that before. And sometimes it’s very healing.

Candice Wu 10:51

But in this case of a very unique relationship, one that I’d like to honor in a different way I shared several pictures on social media of our a relationship, because this relationship was one of a very great loving. So, I want to share with you what I posted on social media. If you’ve already heard this, feel free to skip to the next segment of the podcast, but might be interesting to hear it through my spoken word. So, I start off by sharing that when people have ended a relationship, they sometimes burn the pictures or don’t know what to do with them, and much less ever show them again in public. And I’ve definitely done that before. And it was incredibly healing. But this was a very unique relationship that I wanted to honor in a different way. It’s interesting how we don’t necessarily discard pictures of people who have died. But if we’ve ended a relationship, we treat it that way that we don’t even take the pictures out again, for fear maybe, that it hurt someone in our present life, or that it shows that we’re not over them, or maybe there are feelings of pain that come with it.

Candice Wu 12:05

So, I do want to offer to trust that if that’s you, if that’s where you’re at. But in this case, for me, it is not like that this is a relationship of a lot of love and ending with love. So, in honor of my relationship with Christoph, we want to share that we created a powerful loving, communication, growth, transformation, inspiration and dreams together. We supported each other in our spiritual, professional, familial and relational lives. And in a lot of times, we were kind to each other when we individually were mean to ourselves.

Candice Wu 12:47

The honesty in our relationship was astounding to me and it brought me to an even more vulnerable level of myself, and catalyze more self-love, and the ability to love another. And it’s also that honesty that brought me more inspiration to talk about myself on the podcast and to put my voice out there.

Candice Wu 13:09

Christoph and I created the space for the deepest commitment to loving that we ever experienced up until this moment until that moment. And that meant loving ourselves and fully expressing ourselves and each other to the point that if it was better to leave each other to support this than we would and that’s eventually what happened, a great test to our loving. And I thank him for how thoughtful and attentive he has always been to me through this commitment.

Candice Wu 13:40

So, on one level, this relationship expressed itself as an open and polyamorous relationship for most of the time that we were together. Sometimes we were apart in different parts of the world and most of the time we were traveling together. But it meant that we were supportive and open with each other about dating other people and having relationships with other people. And we saw this as a very deep way to know ourselves, all the parts of ourselves and each other. So, we love the way we can learn about the other person, their desires, fantasies, and parts of themselves that they were growing into, through who they were attracted to, or who they desire to connect with. And while we didn’t always act on those desires, we shared them as a way to connect deeper with ourselves and each other, and embrace those very natural human ciders.

Candice Wu 14:35

Sometimes this was really challenging, it meant that we might be triggered by our own fears or insecurities, or jealousies. And all of those feelings fueled our own self-growth and exploration of our own belief sets and wounds. And what I found was so beautiful is that we always trusted each other. We created that trust and support each other in healing. What came up, and that meant growing together even more.

Candice Wu 15:03

So, while we were in Perth, Australia, we discovered that we both wanted a lifestyle of living in a couple of different places around the world. And he wanted to stay in Marbella, Spain. And I was pretty certain that I didn’t want to energetically, it just felt not right for me. And this at the time, created a wound and led to some natural places where we both wanted to know ourselves better. And we needed to choose ourselves.

Candice Wu 15:32

So, at that time, we decided we would continue our travels together, through going to the women’s retreat through going to Spain and Germany, in 2018, around Christmas, and New Year’s, and then into January 2019 and we would see what would happen at that point. But as time got closer to that we didn’t have any more plans to travel together. We ended up savoring each moment but it became clear that we wanted to have our own time and grow in specific ways.

Candice Wu 16:03

So, he wanting more space than I did at the time. I grieved really hard, it was so painful for me, I just wanted closeness with him, I didn’t really want to end things on one level. But on another level, I really knew deeper that this was important and this had to happen. And there were other deeper reasons for myself that I needed the space as well to grow. And I was grateful to him that he was stronger for both of us at the time to ask for more space, and to be strong about that. So, at this point, there’s a lot of love between us, there’s still some shifting happening on both of our ends, to continue a professional relationship and a friendship, and moving into a different space of loving. And if you’ve been following the podcast, you also know that I stepped into a really powerful loving relationship, just recently, that I want to honor my relationship with Christoph to support me and being who I am today that this new relationship has opened up.

Candice Wu 17:12

I also want to thank Christophe because it is due to him and him pushing me and challenging me that the podcast is on its, I don’t know 68 or 69th episode as of now. And he’s an incredibly dedicated business and practice manager, consultant, podcast video and photo editor, and web designer. And he’s invested in this podcast so much. So, we all have him to thank for, for those initial days of birthing this podcast as well as the continuation of it. So, I’m incredibly grateful to him for that. And so, I shared a couple of photos of our time traveling and all these different places as a way to honor the loving in our relationship and how we chose to end it.

Candice Wu 17:59

And as I share all this now, I’m reflecting on the experience of grieving, and luckily, I was able to do a great portion of my grieving while we were together in Germany, because we knew that we were closing our relationship in a certain way.

Candice Wu 18:16

We didn’t know how it would end up later. But we were certain at the time that some things in our relationship were ending. And because we had a polyamorous relationship, we thought maybe that this relationship would continue in another way. And at this point, it isn’t because I’ve chosen to have a monogamous relationship now with my new partner.

Candice Wu 18:38

But that grieving that was happening at the time, was really powerful because I was able to do it with him. We were able to share some of the good moments together and some of the painful ones, and honor the things that were beautiful about our relationship. Even though I did so much grieving with him, there was a lot of, of grieving that had to happen on my own. And sometimes that came up in unexpected moments. And sometimes it was more consciously that I chose to go back through, comb through the relationship and feel into what was there, to let anything else integrate.

Candice Wu 19:19

And what I mean is to let my body and my heart and my soul feel through anything else that was left over from the relationship and to look into the places that my heart and soul wanted to recover something or to look at places where, maybe, I previously blamed him for certain things or look at things that I wanted him to change. And what was that about me that I really needed to learn. So, Isn’t this an amazing thing to be able to care about someone, experience with someone, and for that also to fuel your inner growth and your expansiveness in your own loving.

Candice Wu 20:08

So, some of the places where I felt that I wanted Christoph to change in certain moments, were the moments that I found my own dependencies, the moments where I unconsciously depended on him for certain things or to act certain ways. And if that didn’t happen, then I might be a little bit hurt or upset. And it’s totally fine that that happens. It’s not a bad thing. It’s how we learn. It’s showing us a place where, perhaps we could, if we wanted to, to shift into loving ourselves more powerfully and deeply. And therefore having a cleaner connection of pure loving with our partner or person that is in front of us that we want to have a relationship with.

Candice Wu 21:00

So, where we feel dependent on someone else. For example, if I really wanted him to be there for me, and he wasn’t in terms of listening to my feelings, I saw in myself where my younger inner child was really wanting someone to take care of her. And even though I’d worked on this for years, and years and years, there’s still bits and pieces of my younger self that felt dependent on some interactions there. And those were the little windows of opportunity to depend on myself and love myself more. And it’s okay to ask for help and ask him to be there for me, it’s just that I didn’t want it to be a dependency, or an attachment to him that I needed him to be this way, but that we could share in something together if reached out.

Candice Wu 21:58

There was also another part of me that showed up, and this one’s kind of complex. This experience that I would have with Christoph, wondering, “Do you really love me?”, and my conscious mind understood and felt very deeply that he did. And there was evidence for it. It was super sweet. He was thoughtful. There were certain ways that I could see that he was loving me. And then there was something in me, the most tender part of my heart that wondered, still, do you really love me? And it was quite a sorting process? Was this my inner child, my younger self, needing to feel a certain way? Or was this a reality and the relationship that I had attracted someone who was not quite loving themselves or not quite open in their heart, in their capacity for feeling and being living from the heart?

Candice Wu 23:03

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with not living from the heart, or being wherever you are on your path, wherever he is on his path. But for me, I wanted a fullness of connection of seeing and presence. And what was it in me that I was attracting someone who wasn’t there yet? Did I feel this was a possibility for me? Was I worthy of this?

Candice Wu 23:32

And one of the reasons that I was in relationship with Christoph is that I needed to heal this in myself. I know deep down that he showed me the best loving, he absolutely could and I am grateful for that. And at the same time, there was this part of me that needed to heal, and recognize that I am worthy of someone being full in their heart right now. And it’s okay that he’s not, and I still have love for him. It’s just that, who I want to be an intimate relationship with, is someone who’s full in their heart, full and they’re loving of themselves, and open, and fluid in that right now. So, this is a very sensitive area, especially since it’s very personal. But I wanted to share that today, because our relationships are extremely vulnerable and personal. And they show us the deepest places, the most tender parts of our soul and heart, that want and desire, love. And that want to belong and that want to feel in this amazing divine connection.

Candice Wu 24:51

I went to a spiritual service, Satsang in San Diego when I was out there, and Brahman Kyrie, this woman led this service, it was beautiful. And she talked about how, when we have a relationship, there is an experience on both sides of a lesson, that both people are part of the lesson. And it’s two ends of the same energy.

Candice Wu 25:18

And if there is wounding or experience of one person being the perpetrator or a victim, what wants to be learned from underneath that comes from the same place. So, if you’re blaming your partner, or your former partner, or a person that you are in relationship with, or just ended with, you are on the other side of that lesson. And that’s all you have control over of empowerment with, rather, is your piece of the puzzle, your responsibility in that. And it’s not to put blame to anybody but it’s just to see that we’re all part of what’s unfolding. And our relationships serve to show us that.

Candice Wu 26:07

So, want to shift gears to talk about grieving and relationships ending and how you are on that journey. And what you can do to support yourself, in gleaning the wisdom of this relationship that was here to show you something. The first thing to do is open to the idea that this relationship has something to show you. If you’re not already open to that, but to allow yourself to go there, and not put shame on yourself or the other person, not blame yourself or the other person, but to notice the places where you might have and to notice where your heart is drawn about this person or relationship and to give attention to that.

Candice Wu 26:58

Every person’s journey with grieving is going to be different and each person has a different place of what’s needed here. Because our soul is on a very unique journey. And your relationship is meant to show you something exquisitely unique just to you.

Candice Wu 27:19

So, I want to talk about a few places where we might get stuck. Sometimes when a relationship ends, I hear, I have heard myself, and I hear other people saying, but this is just how I’m treated all the time. And this is just the way it is, this is just how my life is. And there’s this angry, sort of stubborn place of this is how it is for me. And this is how reality is. And so, how do you shift from that to finding empowerment with it? Because that is the feeling that you are a victim to the way the world is. And at the core. I believe that that victim place is a way to show us that actually, we are really powerful. And there’s a lot of energy locked up in this idea of this is how it is for me. It’s because we’re so identified with this belief set. And that’s not just in our mind, but viscerally our body feels this so strongly, that this is the reality.

Candice Wu 28:29

So, one suggestion I have is to flip that around. And let this show you just how hard the outer world is confirming your inner beliefs. That the power you have, even if you don’t believe what I’m saying, even if you believe that the circumstances are stronger than your inner being, which I don’t believe. Even if you don’t believe me, the only power you do have though, is to heal the beliefs that are here. To forgive yourself, to find natural healing and releasing and find your way back to self, self that is in truth that this isn’t the only way, this is just one possibility of the way things are for you. And this one possibility is showing you the particular way that your soul wants you to heal so you can come back to the expansive, all possibility kind of being that you are, to the love.

Candice Wu 29:31

The only power you have is to look at and feel through those belief sets in forgive yourself for those for having those so that that can dissolve and the energy and the emotions can move. So, that your pure bright loving energy can thrive again.

Candice Wu 29:56

If we just stay in this sense, or idea that this is how the world is for me, just nobody will love me or nobody will put in the effort to love me, I’m always going to get hurt, there isn’t someone out there for me and this is just the way my life is I’m going to be alone forever, then you don’t have any power, you are completely trapped in your world and your reality will show you that even harder so you begin to see that this is the trap. You are much bigger than this belief that you with a capital Y are much bigger than you with a lowercase y the you that is the small individual self, full of karmic distortions and beliefs. But the You with a capital Y, the love, the divine, the energy of all beings, the wholeness, or the God within that is the You that wants to come through so that you can be pure and full in your loving.

Candice Wu 31:04

Another way we can get stuck when a relationship is ending, or when it’s just ended, or when we’re in grief is that we can feel like this person is the only one for me, or that this way of being in this relationship is the only way I’m going to have this, like, this person is so thoughtful to me and no one’s ever going to be as thoughtful as this, or this person loves music and shows me creativity and inspiration when we play music together and nobody will ever be this way again, I’m never going to have this again. It may be actually very true that nobody will be this exact way again, and you might not feel this exact way again. But the fact that you attracted this into your life, to begin with, the fact that you could receive the loving that was here or receive the pleasant interactions, that means that you have the power to feel it again, and you have in your being, the possibility of feeling that again, because it’s about you, not the other person. You’re able to experience it because you’re connected and tuned into that way of experiencing in your being.

Candice Wu 32:33

So, to reclaim your experience with another person, as your experience, not one that is completely intertwined with this person, but the experience you have or had in your body, heart, mind, and soul. That’s you. And what we do then is to detach the experience from the other person from the form of which this experience came through for you, which is the other person or people. And when we detach from the form of things of how we think in our mind that this experience can come through or should come through, then we have the possibility of feeling that state of being regardless of what form it comes in. You open up to all the possibility of feeling this way, in any form it comes in. But if you attach to just the form of it, it coming through just this person or in this particular way only, I have to have it like this, then you might miss out if that experience comes to you in another way. That might show up like, the person doesn’t look the same way or the experience is just a little bit different. And yet, wow, you feel that same way again, interesting. How can this be?

Candice Wu 34:02

So, one of the experientials that I want to offer later this week, and as a part of this episode, is to detach from the form and detach from the relationship giving you this experience, but using the relationship as a tool to tap in, to begin with.

Candice Wu 34:19

A lot of times when it’s an intimate relationship or a very close one, we know how to feel a certain way through this person or because of this person or with them, and part of what our soul wants us to learn is that we have that within us, ourselves. And here’s this person to show you that you have it in you. And so it is a tool, it is meant to be or can be received in this way, and yet it’s meant to add to the fullness of your being or open you up to the fact that this is already who you are, this is already a possibility and you.

Candice Wu 35:01

So, a lot of times, I experienced that people want to just get past a relationship and move forward, especially if it was a painful one, or it ended painfully or there were pieces about it that were painful. And my experience shows me that it’s extremely important to go back and feel the beauty of it. What did keep you in it? What was wonderful about it? Because that’s part of the light and the love that your soul that you deeply want to experience and receive. And know that you can experience again, or in a different way. And also, the painful parts are showing you the dark, the dark of what you fear or where you’ve collapsed in or closed down about yourself, or about the world, where there’s loving that wants to shine through, but it not yet opened up.

Candice Wu 36:02

And so these painful parts, and the beautiful parts need digestion and if we want to blow past and say, you know, I’m done with this relationship, and it’s over, and I just need to move forward, and I can’t grieve anymore, the problem is our emotions, our heart, our soul still wants to get all the wisdom. So, it won’t let you move forward until it’s done. Thank goodness for that and also sometimes it’s very challenging. And if painful things happen, sometimes we want to dismiss that there were beautiful, inspiring or lovely aspects and we don’t want to, sometimes we want to deny ourselves from feeling that because it can serve to strengthen yourself or around the pain. Meaning that if you felt pain in this relationship, you have a right to feel the pain, you have a right to feel perhaps angry or hurt or upset with this person or upset about the situation. And if we let ourselves feel the good, we have this idea that our hurt will be dismissed. But we can find a place for both, and that’s really important that we do.

Candice Wu 37:31

Another place that we can get stuck in our grieving or moving forward from a relationship or ending a relationship is that our soul and mind have seemingly two different agendas. And when they intertwine, we can get lost in one or the other or confused about it. And then we don’t know what to do, and how to integrate what we experience or experienced.

Candice Wu 38:03

So, here’s an example. Someone recently shared with me that they followed their intuition about seeing somebody, about experiencing a relationship with somebody and this connected with their dreams, connected with their feeling and what their gut told them. And as they experienced this relationship, there was an amount of effortlessness and natural connection and engagement by both people, this person and the other person. And it was wonderful for a short time. And then suddenly, something happened, and it faded out. And it wasn’t a really good ending. It was just no connection about it, it just trailed off and this person was left wondering what happened, and in a lot of pain, disappointment. And the result of that led them to think that I shouldn’t trust myself. I shouldn’t trust my intuition. And I can’t trust my intuition because I got hurt.

Candice Wu 39:16

So, I’m here to tell you that the soul and your intuition and your gut does not guarantee that you won’t be hurt. It does not guarantee that you won’t feel hurt, rather. Because hurt is an essential part of our growth. And where the hurt is, shows us where our heart wants to be loved more. And where there’s already hurt inside of us, that wants to be loved and healed and dissolve back into nothingness, dissolve back into the loving.

Candice Wu 39:58

So, my message for this person was you absolutely followed your soul and your intuition and it was right. Because it led you to feeling this beautiful effortlessness in a relationship that was new, so this light, this beauty, this love, a new possibility, a taste of that. And it also led them to experience where their deepest wound is about themselves in the world.

Candice Wu 40:30

Because the beliefs that came out of that were, nobody will ever put an effort for me. I will never experience love where somebody cares enough to put the effort in. I’m unworthy of that. It showed this person the most core experience of this life that’s related to their younger being, their younger self, and how they experience one of their parents not showing effort. And so this is the template of which the adult experience is set through and it seems as though that’s the reality, because everything comes that way, then. But it’s not the reality. It’s just the lived experience, coming from these beliefs sets, where the outer experience reflected that in a deep, deep, powerful way.

Candice Wu 41:24

So, back to the idea that the soul and the mind have different agendas in a way or different ways of seeing the world is that with this person, their soul wanted them to learn these two lessons that you can experience this beautiful, effortless kind of love. And we want to heal this unworthiness. And the mind can swoop in and say, nope, it just means you can’t trust your intuition, you got hurt, we don’t want to get hurt again. This was the wrong thing to do, because our mind just wants to control the things that are painful or scary, or the basic self wants to control that, and doesn’t want us to have heartache, wants things to feel good.

Candice Wu 42:16

And when I say mind, I do mean this sort of generalized idea of the mind where our thoughts are. Because in Ayurveda, the mind also encompasses the emotions. And in the way I’m talking about the mind, I’m not exactly talking about that, this time around. I’m talking about that basic self that has these thoughts of wanting to stay safe and has decided what we want in our lives. This mental construct of thoughts that have attached to a certain outcome in a certain form of the way things the way we want things to be. And so, when we see that we’ve been led to heartache, to show us where there’s more loving to be had, our mind can say, “Wait, no, that was wrong and we shouldn’t do that again.”

Candice Wu 43:13

The mind tries to rationalize it and make sense of it, and figure out where we’ve gone wrong. While the soul is saying, “Yes, we went through this experience, please now move through the pain of it, or the emotions of whatever is here, so that we can be more whole, we can find our wholeness again, so we can learn this lesson of loving, loving ourselves.” And then the mind comes back in and it’s like, “No, no, no, no, no, this is too painful.”

Candice Wu 43:48

So, while it seems like the soul and the mind are on two tracks, and in some ways they are, they’re completely connected and serve each other. Because if the mind is integrated with the souls journey, then it’s totally right on track with it, but often, our mind serves to show us where those pockets of fear and wounding live, deep, deep deep down underneath those thoughts, that you’re not enough or that you’re unworthy of a certain relationship or whatever it is you feeling worthy of. Underneath that is where the soul is. And the mind connects to it, an expression of those places of fear that our soul wants us to move through, and attend to, so that we can be in our wholeness naturally. So, we can be in our loving naturally. And part of that loving is loving all the emotions that come up around it.

Candice Wu 44:54

So, when we have a heartache or experience that shows us some pain, this is where the healing opportunity is. The beliefs and paradigm underneath that pain is usually not one of the truth. And is one full of assumptions and meanings that were created from a different time. And often that time is when we were children, when we came into this world, so open-hearted and so tender, and so loving and fully expressive, so much of soul, but that the world around us maybe didn’t support it in the right way or where we felt it was painful and didn’t have the holding around it and we would close down and protect ourselves. And that’s the way we close down and protect ourselves through our adult lives, and where our soul wants us to recover that youthful and full expression of all the ways we can feel in this life.

Candice Wu 45:56

The agenda of the mind and the ego also can try to make things permanent, and make them last. And so we think, “Oh, this didn’t work, this relationship didn’t work.” Well, the soul is saying, I think this relationship did quite fine to show us where we can love ourselves more. So, this is entirely your choice. Do you want to see your life and choose and surrender to the soul in this way? Or do you want to choose a different kind of making it work or safety or stability in the earthly life? There’s nothing wrong with either one just is a question of what makes you feel alive in yourself, and what is right for you. And if you do choose the surrender to the soul, and the souls journey of love, then we can get out of the way a little bit if we detach from the sort of end game or making something work so that it’s permanent, and move into, shift into the flow of the way the universe and our being works. There’s a flow to which we’re meant to learn from this and then that and then this ends and something new begins. And this is where we can release our attachment to form that we can experience without the concrete form being exactly the way our mind thinks it should be. But we open ourselves and surrender ourselves to a fuller greater experience that comes in many forms.

Candice Wu 47:35

So, with that, I want to mention one last piece about grieving or relationships ending, is to find the life that is here. Endings are a death, endings are the energy of things going away, letting go, releasing, changing, shifting, dying, decaying, cut off, and where is the life? Where is growth? Where is the inspiration, the inhalation, the in breath? Where is loving? Where’s connection? Where is something beginning? And when we are grieving, we can often lose ourselves in the grief if we really go into it or we fear losing ourselves and to drown in it. And finding the playfulness, or the creative moment or the thing that sparks your enjoyment and feels life-giving. And having that as an important part of your grieving process, to give your body the feeling of safety, to remind yourself that there is something growth full about this or to remind yourself of the things you love, and feel inspired by, all this is extremely important. While you’re grieving, wow, something’s ending.

Candice Wu 49:01

Find the playfulness, find the laughter, have a silly time with someone that you care about, connect by sharing some of the feelings that are hard and then shift to something else. And find connection in another way. I know that I can just get into the seriousness of grieving in the past and it’s not that fun. And this is meant to also be supportive and moving through what’s real, but you can have fun, too. Playfulness is extremely healing. Laughter is extremely healing. Bring in the music, bringing the dance, move your body. Whatever your being feels called to do to feel pleasure.

Candice Wu 49:56

There’s another podcast that I did about the past being over and ending relationships or letting relationships truly die. You can check out that podcast at CandiceWu.com/pastisover and there are healing experientials that go with that. So, feel free to check that out too, if you’re interested and be sure to check out the experiences that are coming up later this week and connected with this podcast. You can find the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending, and there you’ll see all the experientials or if you’re subscribed to the podcast, they’ll pop up on your feed. So, we’ll tune into honoring the beauty in a past relationship or one that you’re ending. We will tune into honoring pain or the wounds and completing what might be emerging around those are what wants to be healed.

Candice Wu 50:54

We will explore self-forgiveness and speak two words of forgiving yourself around belief sets that come up around a relationship or what this relationship is showing you, and we’ll do something about playfulness and an inquiry about where you can tune into playfulness life and loving through the hard times.

Candice Wu 51:22

I want to just end with tenderness, to have softness around your grief or ending, and honor what is there. And this is the most important thing is the loving, the loving yourself through whatever it is you’re experiencing. Maybe it’s not grief, maybe it’s another emotion, maybe it’s anger, frustration or hurt or loss, whatever is there is to find the tenderness and the patience for yourself, and the time to let things move through.

Candice Wu 51:58

I don’t believe that time heals. Time just going on on its own without playfulness and support and looking at the painful parts and the wounds. I believe that it does take an openness to all of those feelings that are coming up for the healing to happen. And so, if you’ve given things time, and that hasn’t worked, that might be why, and just forgive yourself and come to a different tool. Try out something that I’m offering later this week, or if anything resonated with you in this podcast, encourage you to sit with that and allow that to come into your life, into your heart.

Candice Wu 52:45

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you know someone who’s going through a hard time with grieving, loss or relationships ending, I love for you to share this podcast with them if you feel it will be supportive for them. And also, I encourage you if you’re going through something or a friend is going through something to reach out for support to whoever is there for you. And if you’re needing someone or if you feel that you resonate with what I’m saying, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to give referrals for healers, therapists coaches, massage therapist, acupuncturists, all sorts of alternative healing practitioners. And if something calls you to work with me, I would love to talk with you and explore that and see if it’s a right fit. When it is just very, very deep, powerful things can happen.

Candice Wu 53:45

So, if you’d like to connect with me, feel free to find me on my website CandiceWu.com/connect. And if you’re interested in connecting into my newsletters, where you receive updates from me, self-love notes, as well as workshops and retreats that are coming up, you can sign up at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 54:07

Music has always been healing to me when relationships are ending or when I’m feeling pain or working through stuff. So, I want to leave you with just some lovely, sweet music to enjoy as we close today. Thanks so much and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experiential is to support the receiving of the gifts and beauty from a relationship that has ended so that you can integrate this embodied knowledge and love into your being.

This experiential is one of four healing experiences that are connected with the episode about relationships ending, honoring relationships ending, grieving, as well as for places that we get stuck while we are ending relationships and grieving.

You can find the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

This can be used when any relationship, whether that be intimate, friendship or familial relationship, and in whatever capacity it ends. You can join in as little or as much as you want in this experience, and just choose what applies to you and what resonates with you.

Hello, and welcome. You’re listening to the body 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 artists 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.

Relationships Ending — Inspiration and Fears

Thanks so much for joining me today. I really wanted to share this healing experience because each relationship that I am in, I know that this other person is some sort of teacher to me and brings to me some healing medicine, brings to me some energy that I was attracted to, at some point or still am, and that is a piece of myself that I want to get to know.

So, when we have a relationship end, it can be challenging to shift and grieve or say goodbye to this relationship when there’s something that’s there for us still, when there’s something in our heart or our soul that we yearn for that the other person gives us or enlivens in us, and it can be hard to say goodbye to that.

So, with this healing experience, you don’t have to say goodbye to that feeling, that experience, that capacity in you, and that state of being, but you can receive that fully digested and integrated into your being, and say goodbye to the person you’re saying goodbye to. Especially if you are pushing or challenging yourself to, “get over someone” or “move forward” or “get on with it, move on.” This healing experience can be very supportive in that full release of your dynamic and what your soul is clinging on to here, if it is clinging or still connected and bonded.

Essentially, what we’re doing is allowing the soul and the heart to glean, extract and receive every bit of what you came for, in this connection with this other soul. Whether your relationship ended peacefully or with hardship or trauma or challenge, I encourage you to check in with what is the beautiful part of the relationship, what drew you to begin with, as this may be an indicator of what your soul deeply desires to experience in yourself, and reclaim for yourself.

Also, sometimes, when we’re ending a relationship or when a relationship has ended, in whatever capacity it’s ended, we sometimes have the fear that we won’t experience this kind of experience again with anyone else, and that’s coming from a place of attachment with this concrete form of the way things came to be here, and from that concrete form of this interaction with this person, it’s our hearts’ and souls’ desire to take from it. The experience takes from it the capacity to feel this way and know that we can feel this way again, that this is you that experienced it, and therefore, you have every possibility of feeling that way again. Everything is within you and your capacity to experience and to feel your worth, that you’re worthy of receiving all of this.

Sometimes, we’re also afraid of feeling the good stuff from a relationship if we feel pressured to get over someone, especially they hurt us in the end or if we felt hurt at some point, we tend to want to push it away because the painful feelings come with it or we feel that we will be attached forever to this person, and we avoid integrating the true beautiful feelings that were birthed from this relationship and co-created in this connection. And so, that feeling of fear that we may never get over this person or never shift from grief or get swallowed and the grief can stop us from actually integrating and metabolizing the beautiful experience that did come with it or the pieces of loveliness that came with it. It can stop us from digesting that and keep us bonded with this experience even longer.

It’s kind of like being a bear in hibernation and storing food in your gut so that you can have food later. It’s a slow-release, but that food will last a long time if you don’t eat it all at once and digest it all at once, and with this integration of a relationship experience. If we don’t look at what the beautiful part of the connection is and digest that, it will still stay there for us later to integrate, and we may feel prolonged in our bondedness to this person, because our soul wants us to take that, wants us to have that beautiful experience and claim that feeling for ourselves.

And the last thing I’d like to say before we begin is that this relationship may become sort of a place marker for the pain or for the beauty. Anything that’s unintegrated or undigested, and what I mean is feeling the experience fully and really taking it in, and letting it come into the expansiveness of your own being. If that isn’t done with both the pain and the pleasure, then part of our soul, part of our being will resonate still with this relationship or with this experience of the relationship. There’s an attachment to this form for a reason because something may be incomplete and wanting this completion of integration.

Trauma

If you had a traumatic experience within your relationship or it ended in a traumatic experience or something very overwhelming, I encourage you to receive support around this as even connecting in with the goodness or the beauty, the things that you did enjoy feeling and that you want to honor, that can bring up all the rest. So, with this healing experience, dive in as much or as little as you want to take breaks if you need and get that support if you’re nervous system, your body starts to feel overwhelmed and wanting to integrate this with someone that can guide you through it.

Claiming Your Own State of Being

So, let’s jump into this experience where you get to claim your own state of being, your own pleasure, enjoyment, expansion, and beauty that got shown to you through this relationship.

Go ahead and find a comfortable place to sit or to stand. If you’d like to stand, this is a lovely way to connect with this experience of the full body and what the body wants to show you. However, if you’d prefer to sit you’re more than welcome to do so and feel the sensations and emotions, and impulse from a place of sitting.

Now, just release the outer world, feel free to close your eyes or look down and tune into your breathing.

Notice your breathing just the way it is, and just allow yourself to receive a breath.

Check-in with your entire body and feel if there’s any temperature, sensation, emotion or anything else happening inside your body.

We open to our ability to notice and witness whatever’s happening without judgment, without trying to change it, and with the intention of gathering information that everything you feel inside, everything you’re aware of is part of your information gathering.

Opening to Love

Now, let’s invite the energy of love to completely surround you, the energy of love being the most non-judgmental, tender, compassionate and gentle space. Let it fill up your whole body and being.

Let love connect all the way up with the core of your being that already is this love, truth, and compassion. The place of you that knows you’re on this journey of loving, learning and growth.

And now, with your eyes closed or open, it’s up to you, imagine the person that you have ended a relationship with right in front of you. Whether you’re standing or sitting, as you imagine this person in front of you, begin to notice what happens in your body, and if there’s movement, follow and allow the movement. If there’s emotion, feel into that emotion and allow it to be shown and express through your body in whatever way it shows up. There’s no need to think about it or analyze it, and if nothing happens, notice that, too.

Open to the Pleasure in the Relationship

Now, open to the experience of this relationship that brings you the most connection, excitement or pleasure, the thing that you really love or were drawn to in this relationship.

Sometimes, that’s connected to painful feelings, so, we just let those painful parts go to the side. Those painful parts we can look at later in the next healing experiential or another time.

And right now, we just put our attention on the beauty of this, the pleasure, the resonance that you have with what your soul really desired about this relationship or really enjoyed.

If this is challenging to connect with, take a moment here. Take your time.

And as you connect with this, allow your emotions to resonate with it.

Allow your whole body to experience this moment.

This feeling of the beauty of your connection, the pleasure of this connection, what you loved the most about it.

And as you feel into it and experience it, notice, again what’s happening in your body, in your heart, in your movements.

Allow yourself to feel and experience this in whatever fullness or capacity you can right now.

Stay with it and continue to deepen into this feeling of this loving connection or this beauty or these small or big moments that really meant a lot to you.

If there are many beautiful parts to the relationship, many moments that really were drawn to or loved, take some extra time here or rewind the exercise and do it again with each piece that really captures your heart.

Notice how you are the one experiencing it in your body, in your heart, in your being.

This is your experience, and you have the capacity to feel this way.

Imagine integrating this experience as yours, that you can call upon this tool, this memory of this person to evoke this feeling in you, in your body right now.

Healing Statements

And as you look towards this person, if it feels true and right to you, feel free to say to them:

Thank you so much for this experience. Thank you so much for showing me that I could feel this way.

And if it feels right or true, you can say:

You will always have a special place in my heart.

Notice what happens as you say these words or notice the words that feel even more right to you.

Trust whatever comes forward to you inside of yourself, and allow yourself to experience the words or the sentiments that feel right in this moment. This is just for you.

If it feels right, you can say to them:

I bless you on your journey and please bless me on mine.

Other words that might resonate with you are:

• I will never forget these beautiful experiences and memories
• OR
• I will always take the beauty of this relationship with me.

Stay connected with the loveliness, the pleasure, the experience that this person particularly invoked in you.

Allow that feeling to grow in you, and if you need to look at that person, that memory that brought you there to that feeling, connect with that as much as you want to.

Say Goodbye

And then when you’re ready, If it feels right, say goodbye to this person.

If it doesn’t feel right, trust that, and it might be farewell or it might be no words at all.

Start to let this person walk back away from you, only if that feels right to you right now, and as you do that, stay with this feeling that’s full inside your body or as much of this feeling that you’re feeling for yourself.

Stay connected with that as this person just starts to fade back, little by little, farther away from you.

We’re just focusing on the good parts of the relationship right now, and if you feel you’ve lost that feeling as they fade back, just ask them to stop where they are, come just a bit closer, reconnect with the feeling, the memory that brought you to this feeling that’s so good for you.

Start to solidify and fortify your own inner state of being, this feeling that is inside you, as this person fades farther and farther back into their own lives, onto their own journey.

And as you are on your journey, you now have this beautiful experience of yourself to take with you, to let flourish, and to let come alive in other experiences in your life.

Feel the sensations and emotions that are happening inside.

Allow whatever is here to be felt and trust, that it’s just the right thing for you right now.

Honoring Your Beauty

As we give this space for you to honor the beauty in your relationship, take a moment to honor the beauty in you, and to thank yourself for giving yourself this space and time to grieve or continue your healing, and to allow yourself to integrate the beauty, love or pleasure of this relationship that has ended or is ending.

Feel free to place your hands on your heart as you thank yourself, letting a couple of breaths move through your body.

And as you feel ready, if your eyes are closed, open them.

Gently just look around your space and orient yourself to what feels pleasurable to look at around you, acknowledging to yourself that you’re here.

Ending

And I’ll leave you with just a little music to transition, and I send you my deepest wishes and blessings that you reclaim all of the experiences that have been enlivened in any relationship that’s ending, past or present, and to know that this is your experience, your capacity to feel that allows you to receive this or even better, again in your life.

Thank you so much for joining me again. I

f you want to connect with the introductory podcast about relationships ending, and honoring relationships ending, as well as for places that we can get stuck in our grieving process, check out that episode at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

This is the first of four healing experientials that are connected with this episode of relationships ending, and today, we looked at and explored the beauty of the relationship, and the next one will be about honoring any pain or wounds that came from the relationship or emerged within it.

There’s also a healing experiential that supports you and self-forgiveness for any beliefs or actions that are tied up with this relationship, and tuning into playfulness and where there’s life happening as you end this relationship.

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experience offers the space for you to honor the pain, hurt or wounds within a relationship that’s ending or has ended. This is the second experiential of four that are connected with the episode about relationships ending, honoring grief as well as for places that we get stuck in relationships ending. You can find the full podcast and all the experientials at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

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 opinion journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Honoring Pain, Hurt or Wounds

In the first healing experiential in this series, we honored the beauty, the pleasure, or what was enlivened in us through whatever relationship that we’re ending or a past relationship. That is to take the beauty, the goodness, and extract that so that we can claim that feeling for ourselves, and have that capacity as we move forward in life, and to take the soul lesson from that experience.

And in this healing experience, we are honoring the pain, hurt or wounds that arrived or emerged from this relationship so that we can truly put closure on it, release the binds of our soul on this relationship.

When there is pain in a relationship, when there’s an experience that your heart was hurt, your soul wants you to love yourself through it to feel the experience in its fullness, and to allow the natural healing to emerge and unfold from your heart, your soul, from your body and being, and if we do not do that healing, then some part of our soul continues to reach for that lesson. That might be feeling still attached to this relationship or this person or feeling like you’re not moving forward from it or it can be to repeat the same lesson again within another relationship, and that’s okay if that happens. It’s just you wanting to truly feel into this experience, and to heal it or find a new place with it in yourself.

So, whatever way your relationship ended, whether that’s a family relationship, an intimate one or a friendship or even a career, collaboration or partnership, this experience can support you in giving you the space to honor what’s here. If it was a traumatic or very overwhelming experience, you may want to move slowly and do a piece at a time, and I highly encourage you if it was traumatic to get support from a healer, therapist or somebody that’s trained in working with trauma or overwhelming experiences.

Use What Works for You In This Experience

With this healing experiential, you might find that everything resonates with you, and you might find that nothing resonates with you.

So, feel free to use what works for you, and what really connects with yourself right now, and at different times different things may connect, trust yourself and allow yourself to have this space while we’re together to let what wants to come through emerge.

So, in this experience, we will be connecting with the person that you are in relationship with, where the wound lives. We won’t be going into the exact experience of what happened, even though those images or feelings or thoughts may come up, we’ll be working with more so the feelings and what needs to happen now for the loving and for the healing to occur.

Let’s Begin

So, if you’re ready to jump in with me, feel free to find a comfortable private space to be.

I encourage you to either sit or stand, and as you begin, just start to notice your breathing and your body, become aware of the belly and the hips.

Bring your attention down to your legs and your feet, and notice your heart, and open the part of you that just receives all sensation, emotion, thoughts, images, and movements as information.

So, we’re just staying curious about what shows up and allowing what’s here to be seen as much as you’re able to right now.

If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a break, just pause and feel your body by touching it or moving your arms and legs and look around your space and just ground yourself by sensing into where you are right now, breathing and just letting yourself come out of it.

And now, if you’re ready to begin, go ahead and surround yourself with the energy of love. That might look like a color of light to you or just a sense of a feeling of love. Love being the most non-judgmental, compassionate, tender space.

Let that connect up with the love in your being the love that you are inside, deep deep down.

Imagine the Person in Relationship

Now, I invite you to imagine the person in relationship that you feel or felt this pain, hurt or wound with.

Whether the relationship is ending or has ended or is ending right now, just imagine that person in front of you, and place them as far or as close as you would like them to be so that it feels comfortable for you.

You might feel some uncomfortable feelings or discomfort in your body. Notice that and allow that to move and come through, naturally just as it is, and if it’s overwhelming, this is where you can take a break or you can invite the person to go a little farther away in your awareness.

If you’re feeling nothing at all, you can invite that person to come closer to you.

Sometimes, we’re feeling nothing at all because we’re actually feeling numb, and our nervous system is overwhelmed.

So, check to see if there’s a sense of being out of your body or not here, spacey or overwhelmed or if it’s just that you need this person to come closer to you to tune into any pain, hurt or wound that’s connected with them.

Notice the emotions that come up.

Notice where they are in your body.

Feel any sensations inside of yourself or in your energy.

Notice where you want to look or where you’re able to look without forcing yourself, just being aware of how your body wants to be, how your body is, where your eyes go.

If you’re not already looking at the person, invite yourself to open to being aware of them or glancing at them or looking at them in the eyes.

Whatever pace or place you’re at is okay.

Expressing

Now, notice what you want to say to them about this hurt, pain or wound.

Whatever it is, in the privacy of your own space, in this experience of healing, allow yourself to say whatever it is that you need to say from the part of you that feels hurt.

Right now, give yourself the space that there are no consequences to whatever you want to say or do in your healing space.

So, if there’s anger, if there are tears, if there’s a desire to fight, bite or push or punch or to ask for something, to receive, tune into what’s here for you and trust whatever wants to come through.

Your emotions serve to support you in integrating this experience and to move towards what your soul needs for healing.

If there’s anything else you’d like to say, feel free to do it now or anytime. If you notice you feel hurt or anger or sadness, just state that out loud, “I feel hurt. I feel angry.”

And see what happens if it feels right to say out loud to this person in your awareness, Thank you for the lesson.

Notice what happens in you. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t say it.

Taking Responsibility

Now, see how it is to say, I take responsibility for my part in any hurt in this relationship.

And if there’s something that you wish that they would say or do imagine that now, what it is that you wish they would say or do.

You get to create in your mind’s eye the exact thing that would feel so healing, supportive or loving just right for you

As you imagine this now or invite yourself to imagine it, notice the experience in your body, your heart, notice what happens.

This is the healing that you get to have for you. So, receive anything else that you’d like to receive in relation to this pain, wound or this person that is connected with, this person that showed you this pain in you.

You might notice any beliefs that come through as you feel the hurt of this relationship.

This is what you can think the person for, for showing you these beliefs that are already here living in you, giving you the chance to see yourself more deeply, to see where there’s already hurt in you that wants to be healed to show you where your soul desires to repair and mend.

Feel free to take as long as you’d like to, and if there’s anything else you’d like to say, do or ask or imagine, feel free to do that now.

Feel right into this moment of what’s happening inside your body as you imagine it or as you say or do, anything that needs to be said or done.

Take a Break, Releasing the Person, and Turn Towards Love

Feel free to pause this recording if you need more time.

If you’re ready to go on, release the image of this person and turn towards yourself with love.

Feel free to place your hands on your heart or on your belly

If it feels like right, you can say to yourself the part of you that got hurt or felt wounded or pain, “I am so so sorry that you felt hurt. I am so so sorry, you had to experience this. I love you. Please forgive me. I forgive myself.”

Allow a couple of breaths to move.

Feel free to repeat any of those words that felt right, and if none of them felt right or somebody them do not feel right, just leave them

Thank yourself or giving yourself the space to honor the hurt and you in connection with this relationship.

Closing

And when you feel ready, release your hands if they’re on your heart or belly. Gently open your eyes and allow yourself to come back to where you are in your space right now.

Take your time to move slowly and honor anything your heart or your body is feeling, and I encourage you to nourish yourself today.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like any support and connect in with the other healing experientials that connect with this podcast.

That’s at CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending, and I’m sending you so much love as we end here today. Look forward to connecting with you again.

Introduction

Welcome to a healing experiential around self-forgiveness for any beliefs or actions that you experience within a relationship. This is the third of four healing experientials that are connected with the episode around relationships ending, grieving, and honoring what pain wounds and experiences come out of your relationship. You can find the introductory podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

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.

In Relationship — Love and Forgiveness

When we’re in relationship, or when a relationship is ending or has ended, no matter how much time has gone by, some part of our soul wants to connect with any pain or beauty from the relationship.

So the first two healing experientials were around integrating both the pleasure and beauty, as well as any hurt or wounds, and repairing that so that you can move forward in your life.

In this episode, we’re bringing a lot of love and self-forgiveness around any judgment for yourself around beliefs or actions, or experiences that you had within a relationship, or that you’re having now.

We will invite so much love and self-forgiveness around any judgment that pertains to beliefs, actions or experiences that you had within this relationship. And in a big way, this is Shadow work, because we are looking at any places, any situations or experiences that you might even blame or project on to the other person or, where you feel frustration towards them.

And to turn towards yourself, to go even deeper with yourself and look at your responsibility, your beliefs, your ways of being that contributed to this experience and drew it in for you to learn.

My Teacher

As we begin the self-forgiveness experiential, I want to just honor where I learned this and how I came towards self-forgiveness in my own practice and in my work with clients, and it’s through one of my healers, Charmayne Kilcup. And she learned this process through Robert Waterman and found that self-forgiveness was incredibly powerful for her and her clients as well.

Self-Forgiveness

Self-forgiveness is the most important part around any belief set, any experience you’ve had. We are so hard on ourselves and we tend to judge our actions and judge that we have different beliefs.

We judge our fears. We judge when the other person gets hurt in many cases and forgiving ourselves for the judgment.

I have found is one of the most powerful ways to just dissolve the belief set that we’re naming as well as that self-judgment, self-criticism that we have and it’s a deep way to love yourself so that you can open up back to who you are, the love that you already are, that you can come back to your grounded energy and so that you can move forward.

Some people fear that forgiving yourself will cause you to do that bad thing over again or for you to just accept any behavior that you have. That’s not necessarily true. Self-forgiveness of judgment supports you in addressing whatever it is that you didn’t like in the situation or addressing any belief in yourself with love.

And it allows you to return home to the love in yourself so that you can move forward with that and from that place.

Instead of forgiving the other person for something, it’s more important to forgive yourself for what part you played in the situation. And any forgiveness of others can come really naturally.

Feel free to use whatever parts of this healing experience, work for you and leave the rest. So let’s jump in if you’re ready.

Let’s Begin

Find yourself a comfy place to be.

Take a moment and just notice your surroundings.

Notice that you’re alive, right here and now.

Let your breath wash all the way down into your belly, into your hips, into your legs, and feet.

And surround yourself with the energy of love that holds no judgment, only compassion, understanding, and truth.

And now bring up a situation that you felt challenged with. Whether that’s in your current relationship or any relationship that is ending or has ended. What is the situation or experience that you were challenged with?

And as you bring up this situation, begin to picture it without analyzing it. Just imagine the situation.

Notice how you feel inside without changing it at all and whatever emotions or sensations you feel in your body, if any, tune into where you feel them in your body.

Notice the color of the sensation or emotion if there is, texture, the size.

As you feel your emotions and body sensations, open to any thoughts that you have that come through about the situation, about the other person and about yourself.

Listen to the words that you might hear or say about the situation and about yourself.

Self-Forgiveness

Let’s begin with some basic self-forgiveness.

Feel free to say these words out loud, repeating after me, whether or not you feel the words are right, and just see what happens as you say them out loud and if for some reason you feel they’re definitely not right for you, feel free to just wait until the next one. And check to see if that resonates for you.

So just repeating after me out loud and feeling what happens in your body.

I forgive myself for judging myself, for being in this situation.

I forgive myself for judging myself for having to learn the hard way.

Sometimes when situations happen, we start to believe things about ourselves. Or it tugs on something inside of us that already believes this.

For example, I’m unworthy of love, or It’s always my fault. Or, I’m just not good enough. Or, In order to be loved, I have to…

So check in with yourself and see if there are any of these beliefs that live in or around the situation in this relationship.

Now using any beliefs or actions that you’ve had within the relationship, let’s say a couple of forgiveness statements.

I forgive myself for judging myself for believing. And then fill in the blank with the beliefs that came up for you.

Again, the words are, I forgive myself for judging myself for believing.

Notice what emotions or feelings come up for you and just honor them. This is the energy of the judgment, leaving your body, being expressed and seen so that it can move.

Now go one by one until you move through each belief that came up. I forgive myself for judging myself for believing.

Be sure to take a couple of deep breaths after each statement. Feel free to say the words as many times as you need and take a pause after each.

And if you need more time here, just pause the recording and take your time and if you’re ready to go on to all of the actions that you may be judging yourself for, let’s move forward.

So repeat after me: I forgive myself for judging myself for… and then place any actions here that you feel you’d like to take responsibility for or that you feel you’re judging yourself for.

For example, I forgive myself for judging myself for lying. I forgive myself for judging myself, for betraying myself. Or, I forgive myself for judging myself for not trusting in who I am.

Feel free to insert any actions or any ways of being that connects with the situation whether their actions within yourself or towards the other person.

Again, the words are, I forgive myself for judging myself for…

And if this action has happened more than once you can say, I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times and places that I…

Take a moment and use those words for anything else that comes up for you around the situation and if you need more time, or need to hear a repeat of the words, feel free to just skip back or pause here.

And we’ll do one more segment here, just noticing any places where you blame the other person, where you feel angry or frustrated with them.

As you feel into that, go deeper within yourself and ask yourself, What part did I play in this situation?

Ask yourself, What beliefs caused me to act in this way in the situation pr to draw a situation like this toward me?

One way to connect up with that question is to ask, What beliefs emerge if I feel into what I’m left with, from this situation? What beliefs about who I am, come forward if I turn that energy towards myself?

And with any beliefs that came up or any ways of being, just repeat the forgiveness statements. Placing those beliefs right in the statement.

The words again are, I forgive myself for judging myself for believing. Or, I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times and places that I… Fill in the blank with any action or way of being.

Sometimes the beliefs or ways of being don’t emerge very easily. Just feel free to take your own time with it and chip away at it just a little bit at a time. Feel free to repeat portions of this healing experience that just fit for you.

Closing

And right now, just take a moment to open your eyes if your eyes are closed.

Feel into your heart, placing your hands right on top of your chest and thank yourself for taking such great responsibility with your inner world, for giving yourself the grace of self-forgiveness and loving yourself.

If you felt stuck or overwhelmed in any part of this experience, feel free to reach out for support to someone you love or a healer, coach or therapist.

Feel free to reach out to me. And just be gentle with yourself as you continue this journey forward through any uncovering of yourself through relationships or relationships ending.

I appreciate that you joined me today and feel free to check out the other three healing experiences that connect with this podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

Hi, thanks so much for joining me today. This is Candice, and I’m bringing a self-inquiry today on playfulness and the life that’s blossoming from any relationship ending, or that has ended in your life.

Whether you’re in that relationship right now, or it’s a past relationship, sometimes endings can cause a lot of hard feelings or challenging feelings that is literally a death of something, things ending, things shifting, things dying off.

We can sometimes get stuck in that feeling of grief, or the challenging emotions or overwhelming emotions. And it’s super helpful for our nervous systems, to tune into the playfulness, where something is growing or the life that’s happening in any part of our experience.

First of Four Healing Experiences

This exploration is one of four healing experientials that are connected with the main podcast about relationships ending, about grieving relationships ending, and honoring places we might get stuck, when we have a relationship ending or that has ended. You can find all of those experientials, as well as the main podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

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 practice petitioners from all over the world.

Let’s Begin and Journal If You’d Like

So here we go.

Feel free to get a journal and pen or pencil or something to write on if you’d like to, or just tune in by sitting comfortably, and listening and hearing your inner voice, or noticing what comes up for you as we go along in this process.

So find yourself a comfy place to be, get yourself as comfortable as you want to be. If you want any pillows or blankets, a cup of tea, feel free to pause here and do all of those things to just support yourself now if you’d like to.

Feel free to join in to as little or as much as you want out of this experience. Some of these questions may pertain to you and some may not. Some may really resonate with you and others may just fall flat.

Feel free to pick and choose what is helpful for you and if at any time you feel overwhelmed, just take a break, look around your space and orient, tune into something supportive or nourishing for you.

Close Your Eyes

So let’s begin by closing our eyes or looking down whatever feels more comfortable with you.

Tune into your body.

Notice how it is that you feel right now and allowing and accepting anything that’s happening inside.

Now I’ll move through a series of questions and feel free to just notice what comes up in your awareness, in your heart, emotions, and body as well as any images that pop up.

So the first question is, Where is there love and connection forming? In this relationship ending or the relationship that has ended.

And notice, if there’s any love and connection inside of yourself, within yourself, any loving of parts of who you are, or connecting with yourself and also notice any love and connection that’s happening with nature. Other people, animals, or your passions, things that you enjoy. Notice the love and connection that is there or just beginning to bud.

Now notice, Where is the life or something that’s growing, blossoming, or coming alive. Whether that’s within yourself or in your outer world.

What are the moments of creative energy or inspiration, whether that’s just a flash of a thought or a hit of intuition or whether you created something like cooked a meal, planted a seed in the garden, opened a book, got creative with what you are wearing today?

Continue to notice any emotions that come up, any feelings in your body as you tune into those moments of creativity or inspiration or love and connection.

And don’t worry, if you can’t find anything, there are plenty of pockets that will look into here in this experience.

Any sensations or feelings that feel pleasant to you, focus on those and just allow them to grow in your body.

Allow yourself to marinate and feel into them without trying to think or analyze, just feeling.

Now connect with any moments in the last few days or weeks that you felt like yourself or you felt validated or firm in who you are or where you felt alive.

Take a moment to notice how it feels to reconnect with that experience of when you felt like yourself, when you felt validated or affirmed, or alive.

Whole Life

Now broaden this to your entire life.

What have you connected to in your life that brings you a feeling of aliveness, validation or affirmation of yourself or that brings you back to feeling like yourself? What brings you home in yourself or what has brought you home to yourself?

And now tune back to this present or past relationship that you’re connecting with or that you’re shifting from, and notice what good has come from this ending.

What gifts or wisdom or energies have come from the ending of this relationship or the shift in the relationship? And notice if this relationship leave space for something new, what does this leave space for now?

How could this new space or space of shift or absence of this relationship?

How could this space be enjoyed and what could bring you into more love and playfulness?

Notice any emotions that you have, any sensations in your body and anything that stands out to you now.

And as you notice all of your responses, feel free to tune into one image or sensation in your body or experience that you would like to connect with now.

As you make deeper contact with that sensation or feeling or memory, or the thing that could give you love and playfulness, whatever you’ve chosen, let that feeling grow inside your body and radiate out from your body, just focusing on where it feels pleasant or where you feel neutral and expansive or spaciousness, warmth, any pleasant feelings.

Feel free to spend as long as you’d like to here.

Close

And as we close today, I’ll just leave a little music so that you can continue to feel into this if you’d like to, or you can begin to transition into the next part of your day.

Thanks so much for joining me today and I hope you found something supportive for you here in this experience. And I invite you to take it one step further, to take that nourishing action in your life that will support you in deeper love for yourself, more playfulness, and noticing the life that’s already here. Namaste.