Candice Wu 0:10

In this episode, I give my first update about my trip to Mexico about some spiritual emergence and crisis that I’m moving through, as well as how to use proprioceptive writing to connect more deeply with yourself and the words that you use, and your unconscious self.

Candice Wu 0:31

This episode contains explicit language and themes that may not be for all audiences.

Candice Wu 0:38

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 1:14

For one month, from February 10th to March 10th of 2020, my dream classes is free on Skillshare. So you can learn all about how to remember and record your dreams, and to uncover and awaken your dream life.

Candice Wu 1:29

This class supports you in building a nervous system that feels safe and embodied enough to play and open into your dream world, plus ways to specifically record your dreams with ease to allow the remembering to come with more ease. So check this out, along with the other Dream classes on Skillshare at CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1.

Candice Wu 1:57

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Embody Podcast. It’s really interesting to tuned back in here today. I am in Mexico and I have spent about a week in Mexico City, and now I’m in Oaxaca, which is a little more southeast of Mexico City. And, wow, it’s been only a week of me being here, but I feel like I’ve been, in a sense around the world and back.

Candice Wu 2:26

So far, this is my fourth, Airbnb and finally, I have some peace and quiet to be able to podcast. For me, it’s a really interesting thing to look at myself and notice how I’m not completely overwhelmed by the sounds. I’ve had some traumatic experiences with sound and that has very much affected where I’m able to sleep and if there’s noise around me, I don’t sleep well. I get bothered by noises that just are unpleasant or too loud or overwhelming or when I don’t want it. And here, I’ve really embraced the sound to a large degree except for when it comes to podcasting and working with my clients.

Candice Wu 3:16

One of the first things that the first Airbnb host told me was that sound is an essential part of Mexican culture. There is sound to celebrate, there’s sound to communicate and to alert of certain things, different foods, different services, and it’s a part of what holds the heartbeat of the culture it seems. And so, I gathered a mishmash of sounds for you to just tune into. So here’s a blend… [playing sounds of Mexican street life]

Candice Wu 4:15

And lastly, I met a friend who was playing this beautiful guitar music on the streets, in one of the major areas… [playing guitar recorded in the streets]

Candice Wu 4:57

When I heard this music, it reminded me of my father and the guitar he would play when I was younger. So I just stopped and listened and took it all in and recorded it and it since has been really touching me on a deep level and healing my heart in many ways. So shout out to Juan Ignacio who is from Argentina, who is this musician playing his music.

Candice Wu 5:36

My first reaction when I arrived here in Mexico City was that it smelled just like Hong Kong, Indonesia, Chiang Mai all put together with a flair of Spain and Italy, at least in Maroma and like in Bayside area, which I know has that European flavor, but the exhaust, the tropical plants, the smell of different foods and a little bit of sewage, sometimes sounds, it was very heartwarming. And for this whole week, I have met so many kind people that have really held me in this experience.

Candice Wu 6:22

If you listened to the podcast a couple of weeks ago, about solo travel and some of my fears, you probably know that I had to break down some of the fears that I had about coming here around safety. And once I got here, all of those fears just dissolved, granted, I was in pretty safe locations comparatively, but that’s part of it, you know.

Candice Wu 6:48

In Chicago, where I live for 10 years, where many of you all listening are living as well, there are some areas that you just wouldn’t walk down the street in the dark alone or, you might just be a little more careful in certain areas just because you don’t know what’s going on there or maybe it’s unfamiliar, but there are places like that all over the United States that we would just be careful of. And it was just the same exact thing here. And by and large, people were just so friendly, wanting to connect with me. They’re curious about me, and I think because I’m Chinese, they don’t really know what to make of me. They don’t know where I’m from. They’re curious about what language I speak, and quite delighted when I speak any broken Spanish at all.

Candice Wu 7:43

I was really shy at first. I had been practicing with different podcasts, but once I got here, I was just like, I can’t follow what people are saying, it’s going too fast and it took a little bit to be — a little bit of courage to speak up and ask for what I needed, asked for them to slow down or let them know I couldn’t speak very much Spanish just a little bit, but that has been very well received and the smiles that I receive, the mannerisms of kindness here, I’m really appreciating.

Candice Wu 8:26

The biggest thing here, for me, is that I feel like parts of my soul are coming alive. The food, the sounds, as I mentioned, the people, the colors everywhere, the community, the aliveness, and the movement. It’s beautiful and very soulful. I haven’t got myself to try the crickets. I don’t really think I will. But, the Malays, the corn, I don’t eat corn at home or tortillas, but here, I’m eating that and it feels like a really nice, sacred connection to the land, to the people, the heart of people.

Candice Wu 9:08

So while all this is happening, and I’m discovering this place, it is just so happening that I am feeling through another layer of existential emergence or existential crisis, spiritual crisis, whatever you want to call it. It feels like a breaking down of ego, a breaking down of who I feel I am or who I thought it was, and a lot of grief, some anger, some sadness, some longing, and the questions, well, the thoughts that emerge into questions come in this form: Who am I anymore? What am I doing here like, in life in the world? What’s going on? What am I here for?

Candice Wu 10:01

And while all these questions are emerging, I feel that they’re not really to be answered functionally and if they will be answered, they will be through a revealing and through an allowing and emerging. But so far, those are just the words that are coming up with the feelings in the body and feels like I’m just sloughing off a lot of different layers that I don’t need anymore, and letting that surrender that I, so desired happen, letting myself come into more joy and delight and playfulness, and that has been my experience here.

Candice Wu 10:40

I know that astrologically a lot of people are going through different challenging experiences, different layers of themselves, whether or not you follow that. I’m curious where you’re at and how you’re feeling in yourself. What is the experience of your life right now?

Candice Wu 11:00

So, I invite you to take a moment and tune into that here together with me and with all those listening, just taking a moment to listen in word and feel the sensations in your body and what it’s like to be in your body now. And what is the theme of your life at the moment? What are you looking at spiritually or very functionally? And is there anything you need in your life right now to support you or make it a little bit more comfortable?

Candice Wu 12:01

Okay, so this inner listening just brings us to the main topic today which is proprioceptive writing.

Candice Wu 12:08

I recently went on a proprioceptive writing retreat at Hope Springs Institute, which is in Peebles, Ohio, way out in the boondocks, in this wonderful, gorgeous space held by nature. This space is created by Suzanne Stevens, in her vision of creating a spiritual center, a place where people can really find respite and connect with each other, connect with a deeper sense of themselves. That’s my perception of her, her space and what she’s offering. And here, she hosted Mary Bach, who does an annual proprioceptive writing retreat there at Hope Springs.

Candice Wu 12:58

This way of essentially journaling, or tuning in, has given me just another aspect, another way to integrate my experience and the ways that I already know how to tune in intuitively, it has offered me a deeper connection with myself, a feeling that I’m filling up this space in my body, and that I exist and embrace my existence. I feel surer of myself and I feel more present, loving to myself, as well as a deeper and more open space to be loving to others and to see others in their experience and their freedom with a clear boundary.

Candice Wu 13:52

So let me back up and explain a little bit about what proprioceptive writing is, at least to the degree that I’ve learned it and what I have experienced.

Candice Wu 14:03

Proprioceptive writing was coined by Linda Metcalf and Tobin Simon and it’s a way to listen in word, write down what you hear, and then ask yourself, what do I mean by, and whatever word seems to have some energy or tickles you in a certain way, or has a resonance? And then as you ask, what do I mean by this word, what do I mean by, then you listen again and let this stream of consciousness flow through.

Candice Wu 14:40

Proprioception is the perception and awareness of the physical position and movement of your body in space. So the sense that you know where your body is, and different parts of your body are, the awareness inside.

Candice Wu 14:58

So the combination of proprioceptive writing is this idea that we are moving knowledge, the words that we use carry knowledge from our experience. So our language set, our vernacular, the way we use certain words, is all rooted in our own wisdom, our experience, through our personal lives, societal, cultural, collective, and archetypal experience, and past life and lineage, all the dimensions and other dimensions that I have not named.

Candice Wu 15:34

There are ways that experience cannot be put into words but when we do take the time to let the words come through or any a semblance of words and sensation, or intuitive or appropriate receptive experience come through, then we get a chance to define things as much as it actually is possible. And that would be a quite endless process to let all words come to their fruition of meaning for us. But it’s a really fun experience and it was so deepening and it’s something that I’m going to be using for all sorts of things. But, the best thing that I found about it was to do the process of writing and then share it with the group, which was incredibly healing and powerful and validating.

Candice Wu 16:35

And just another thought, because I’m in Mexico and I’m using some Spanish, I’ve often noticed that being in another culture that has a different language set has a frequency that I need to plug into and as I plug into the language, I plug more into the frequency of shared knowledge, of connection, of the way interaction happens. And then, there becomes a sense of built-in meaning, and it can feel when I use certain Spanish words versus when someone else that is native there or has lived there uses that word, it carries something energetically different. For me, it’s a lot more flat because it’s a newer word.

Candice Wu 17:24

So, what do we mean by the words we use? What does each word carry? What does your name carry? What does mom or dad, work? Love? Play? Listening.

Candice Wu 17:45

Any word that you find interesting, what does that come with and not to use this type of writing as a thinking process? But one of — what do I mean by and letting the words come to you, letting the information be received by your listening and observational ear.

Candice Wu 18:09

So this inner listening is the heart of proprioceptive writing and it’s not so different from a lot of the different healing experientials that I’ve offered here or the type of listening inward that I do for myself that I support others in doing. But it is different when you write it down and it’s hard because there’s this weird interaction of having to slow down or allow the — what’s being — what’s coming forward to slow down enough so that it can be written down.

Candice Wu 18:48

And I have found there’s this weaving in and out of different parts of me coming forward. So different parts of me may be speaking and then another part and another part, but this sensing inward, intuiting, channeling, even perhaps, excavating, following the energy, all that is a part of this process.

Candice Wu 19:10

And as I’ve worked with this, just in these last couple of weeks, I’ve even found myself using words more particularly, but not in a belabored way more so in a way that I feel more connected with the word that I’m saying. I’m more personally connected and I feel that this process can lend itself to speaking in a more powerfully resonant and energetic way.

Candice Wu 19:39

I liked that Mary Bach said that we’re looking into every corner, and it’s like taking your eye towards people and looking through and just seeing everything you can see. And what I’m really left with, is this feeling of what is satisfying to me and what do I mean, and what comes through doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else, even when I read it to someone else, when I read it in the group, none of it had to make sense. It didn’t need to be understandable. And that was incredibly freeing because it just didn’t have to make any sense. None of it did. But it meant something to me and it touched something in me. And when I read it out loud, it gave me a feeling of showing up and being seen, especially in things that were more vulnerable, as well as I was more seen to myself, letting a group receive what just came — stream of consciousness — to me, was bringing me to the emotion more powerfully.

Candice Wu 20:51

So the process goes like this, listening to Baroque music for about 20 minutes, lighting a candle in front of you, just allowing that to be a part of the ritual of creating this time and space where this inner listening is to be had and to be received.

Candice Wu 21:14

So if you’d like to try this, you can pull up some Baroque music on YouTube or Spotify or whatever platform you use and set a timer for 20 minutes. You can even invite a friend to do this with you either in the same room or across distance online.

Candice Wu 21:37

And take a couple of breaths as you light the candle and as you ground and feel into your body, as you feel the space that your body is taking up, and after a couple of breaths, listen to any thoughts, words or sense of communication that’s coming through and begin to write. And just let the flow happen as you write down whatever it is that’s coming through without any filter, without any need to make it sound in a certain way, just how it is.

Candice Wu 22:22

And anytime you have a word that just tickles you a bit or stands out, or has more energy to it or calls your attention, pause there and write down: “What do I mean by” and that word that stood out to you. And then listen again and continue writing, recording whatever is heard from inside and whenever that exhausts itself, you can ask that question again and write it down, “What do I mean by” and check out a new word. And it can be a word that comes to you or word within what was just written.

Candice Wu 23:15

And if you feel like you’re getting stuck here in this thinking mode or blocked here, you don’t hear anything or you’re just writing the same thing over and over again, just allow that to happen, notice it. And the teacher of the retreat, Mary Bach would say, to go back to the thing that you touched upon right before you got blocked or you felt stuck, and that there was something there for you that maybe got glossed over or you missed a word that has some vibrancy, and just check out if anything pops up now. And there’s no expectation. There’s nothing to pressure yourself about. It doesn’t have to sound good.

Candice Wu 23:59

So relieving yourself of all that might be part of letting the flow happen and within what can come through, it is a bit like free association. It’s like, whatever is connected with that word might come up to you and things might be surprising, or things might feel ordinary, like, these are your thoughts every day. It doesn’t matter. Just let it all be recorded and observed, and just continue.

Candice Wu 24:32

And when the 20 minutes is up, your timer is up or the music stops, if you have a way to allow the music to just stop at 20 minutes, then finish the thought or sentence you’re on and write down, “How do I feel right now?” The question itself, and then answer the question.

Candice Wu 24:55

And just making an observational note about how you feel now.

Candice Wu 25:04

When I’ve done Dreamwork, I’ve often asked my dream, or the parts of my dream, different questions. So going back into the dream and tuning in, maybe there’s a car in the dream or certain person or a flower, anything, and I talked to that part, and the way that I do that is I write a question with my dominant hand, like, “What message do you have for me?” And then I answer with my non-dominant hand.

Candice Wu 25:38

This often offers the most powerful, poignant, simple, and profound information. So it seems to distill it and it’s coming from a different place we’re so used to writing with our dominant hand. And using the non-dominant hand is accessing parts of us that aren’t typically are more normally conditioned. And that’s something you can use in this process as well, if you want to try doing the proprioceptive writing with your non-dominant hand, it can offer a whole different experience.

Candice Wu 26:17

I recently did this experience with my sister and my mother and it was incredibly powerful. So it wasn’t the way we normally spoke to each other and the topics that came through, actually, each of us were connecting on certain themes, death, our family, moments of life, how we want to live life, those themes were emerging and yet, we each had such a different perspective. And I don’t know that in a conversation, these words or sentiments might have come through in such a pure way. And what I mean specifically is actually after we finished writing, and wrote how we felt on the piece of paper, we took time to read it to each other, which is what I did at the retreat as well.

Candice Wu 27:11

And each of us read what we had written all the way through and if something could be really hurtful to the other person, we were giving ourselves permission to skip that, just so the process can be really safe for each other and that it can be safe to yourself when — whatever wants to come through, wants to come through.

Candice Wu 27:41

And so we read each full piece out loud and then the other people get to react to it, but mostly share any other words that struck them for the reader to continue their exploration.

Candice Wu 28:03

So for example, my sister caught on to certain words for me that I wrote down then and took with me and it gave me some feedback as to what was striking her and resonating with her for me, and what might have some energy for me to continue to listen into.

Candice Wu 28:29

So this next segment of the podcast, I’ll share some of the themes that I had been working with during the retreat and what spilled into my life thereafter, as well as I will read a couple of excerpts from my writing, just to give you a sense of the experience for me. And keep in mind if you do use this process as a tool or try it or play with it, that your experience, your words, your stream of consciousness might sound completely different. And that’s what I found with my sister and mom, as well as the different people in the retreat itself.

Candice Wu 29:15

So if there’s any part of you that has that inclination to compare or have a sort of right way to do it, it’s just not relevant. And what is satisfying to you, as I mentioned earlier, what is coming to you and interesting to you, what is being heard from inside of you, that’s what’s important.

Candice Wu 29:36

So some of the themes that I was working with were sensuality, intimacy, and using these words in particular, remember, extract, erotic, dragon, sleep, tiredness, father, mother, baby, embarrassment, procure, manufacturer, wounds, choke, freedom, flexible belonging, fuck, uterus, kindness, descent, immigration, trauma, pleasure, trust, shadow.

Candice Wu 30:24

And what was really cool about this process was that using the names of people, the word for a friend of mine or a previous lover? “What do I mean by” and their name can bring up a whole experience that helps some sort of integration happen and reveals what’s there about it and also allowed me to look at some of my shadow parts like what are the associations with certain words, then we know what’s loaded into a word when we use it, what unconscious feeling is there, which reveals itself to consciousness?

Candice Wu 31:09

So here’s a piece from my third write?

Candice Wu 31:13

Sleep. What is sleep? A time of quiet rest into a space of nothingness and everything. My dad would disrupt my sleep. This caused so much torture for me all my life. But why does my uncle have the same issue? Did I repeat this experience? Where is the origin of this experience of torture for us? It has a feel of long before us.

Candice Wu 31:42

And another piece, what do I mean by intimacy, being in touch with what is touching the moment? One with the moment, embarrassment, guilt, sweetness, sadness, all, tenderness with it all. No hiding truth. Visual congruence with unseen but layers of this being in contact, the sensuality of the existence we have.

Candice Wu 32:11

And as I asked myself, what do I mean by sensuality, different words came up, but then more personal experiences came up, some sensual experiences that I had had recently that were bringing me into more intimacy and vulnerability, pleasure, sexuality.

Candice Wu 32:31

And so these were some really vulnerable pieces that I shared within the group and that was kind of exciting.

Candice Wu 32:38

And here’s the piece that I wrote later in the retreat, and I use my non-dominant hand, for me my left hand and this is what came through. You are a dragon from another dimension. You read light, digest energy easily because we’re so connected with the land.

Candice Wu 33:01

What do I mean dragon? Breathes fire, playful, flies, scales, wings, long tail, funny, and majestic all at once. From where? Another world. Does not have word name. It is a knowing — dragon tribe.

Candice Wu 33:23

What do I mean by tribe? Bonded to others in a group. This was the most free way to be in a tribe because I was so big I had a lot of place to travel and to wander but stayed near enough, we could communicate from far.

Candice Wu 33:41

So that piece I felt like I was channeling and connecting with some information about me being a dragon in another life and being in this multidimensional experience. Maybe it wasn’t another life, I’m not really sure but another part of me and I do feel another part of me is in this dragon part of me.

Candice Wu 34:08

And it continued, what do I mean dragon? A baby still growing, a toddler now, at one time I died. But I can live on different or is it simultaneous to now? It is now, I suppose. Deeply free and powerful, no need to prove yourself.

Candice Wu 34:29

What do I mean by prove? Do something to provide evidence that my human form has often felt the need to do.

Candice Wu 34:39

The Ugly Duckling is a human story but some get left behind and die and they just do prove to have felt the need to do things to be enough and worthy.

Candice Wu 34:52

Social media tugs on this, it seems to be the currency, achieve, do, show. This is what I’m doing, “how to be with this.” Look at the parts that are up.

Candice Wu 35:06

And then I’ll just read one more piece and this was the most vulnerable piece that I had written and I felt like I was breaking through some unspoken taboos, that was just my felt sense, which was not necessarily confirmed or not confirmed. But I do have a history in my lineage of sensing when certain topics are taboo, especially sex.

Candice Wu 35:40

So that was a similar feeling and similar to feelings I’ve had when I’ve done — when I’ve been part of group relations, work, or Tavistock group work, where the topic of sexuality is in the room like there — people are feeling it to some degree or something’s happening around it and reactions and defenses are coming up so that’s not felt, not talked about.

Candice Wu 36:14

And so, here I am in like, the fifth write. I think it was the night before the last day. And this is what comes up.

Candice Wu 36:26

Fuck. It’s fuck that wants to be here. What do I mean by fuck? Red energy, aka anger, sometimes, and other times passionate, forceful, something that intrudes for a reason, for desire or for boundaries and decent to keep away, to express a feeling of frustration and exasperation, to have sex with passion, to be filled up to the point of intensity. We’re all women here. At least that’s how I think we’re identifying and just as a point of reference that was at the retreat, and it feels dangerous in a way to approach fucking yet, isn’t it a part of us often?

Candice Wu 37:10

This act of fucking or sex? What power does it have? A putting together, remembering provoked physically if it is wanted, I guess or maybe even not, that’s a whole other can of worms `sigh or am I writing this because I have new relationship energy? Is it a relationship? What is it? It is kind of one. It’s what I want right now. The mystery and the pleasure, the joy, and yes, the fuck. But there’s much more than that. Am I done now? You’re not done with me. Okay, what? It’s not soft, it’s forceful and it’s assertive. Know what I want kind of energy. Maybe I can bring this more into my life for fun, for pleasure, joy. Yes. Why not? Not tucked away or unspoken, like it was in my family, and how it can be in my culture, not even a look or holding hands, or it means you must marry. Well, fuck that.

Candice Wu 38:14

Okay, I think we’re done now. And then I moved on to the question, what do I mean by liberation?

Candice Wu 38:23

So that’s all for what I’ll share today. I hope this was interesting for you. It’s actually quite freeing for me when certain things are hard to talk about or maybe they do feel like they have some sort of power in a room or with people I’m sharing with. As soon as I do share it, I feel like I’ve claimed it. And I’ve claimed that I’m more powerful than the themes or the words or the things that are going on. I’m the part witnessing and that topic doesn’t have power over me, or at least there’s this negotiation of that at times where maybe it feels like it has some power and speaking it truthfully decreases and dissolves that.

Candice Wu 39:12

So liberation. What do I mean by liberation?

Candice Wu 39:19

If you are inspired or compelled to practice this, I encourage you to try it or to take a proprioceptive writing retreat or to get the book that is written by the founders of the work. I will link that on the show notes where you can find Hope Springs Institute as well as Mary Bach and Suzanne Stevens.

Candice Wu 39:44

And whether or not you know what you’re doing, just try it if you want to, it’s really just listening in and not driving the car, but watching the train go by and writing it down.

Candice Wu 39:59

I know that this is a verbal experience, bringing some unconscious, unspoken stuff, some felt sense stuff to the surface into words and I’ve struggled with the fact that not everything can be put into words. And we just recognize that and allow for what can come through. And if pictures want to come through, then that can be a very powerful experience too.

Candice Wu 40:30

So, I encourage you to play with it and just see what works for you and if you have questions, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll do the best to answer them according to my experience, and in the next couple of weeks, I will be continuing on my travels. I don’t know where I’m going next. So in about four days, I will be likely leaving Oaxaca, but unsure of the next destination which is a little bit uneasy for me, but I think I’m okay with it right now. We’ll see what happens.

Candice Wu 41:09

It makes me a little uneasy to not know if I’ll have good Wi-Fi to do my quiet work because I love my clients and I don’t like to disrupt that process. But other than that, I’m really just in that surrender mode of, “Okay, show me where I’m supposed to go next and what unfolds for me, what I meant to be doing here.”

Candice Wu 41:38

And along with that, the spiritual emergence and stuff that is coming through and opening my heart up and breaking me open into grief and some vulnerable, creative, pink center of my heart. I’ll keep you posted on that too.

Candice Wu 42:01

Thanks so much for tuning in today. I hope this was interesting for you and wishing you all very well. And that sense of what is satisfying to you. What do you mean by certain words, what do you mean in your life, really feeling into your own energy and body that already exists.

Candice Wu 42:23

Before you go, I’d invite you to sign up for my newsletter that goes out once or twice a month and updates you on podcasts, retreats, workshops, self-love notes and updates about me and travel as well. You can sign up for that at CandiceWu.com/embody. Thanks so much for listening and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

In this episode, I share about how I have approached my travels and living abroad and the next travel that’s coming up, that includes a surrender into sensuality and flow, as well as some solo traveling tips, and how to connect with your body to develop and cultivate instincts and intuition for your own safety. Lastly, the idea that you can change your life at any time.

Candice Wu 0:30

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 1:06

So here’s a little note from my friend Doreen, and she is the creator of Verdant Faerie, these yummy botanical scents and oils. She says, “I highly recommend Candice’s healing work. I love her podcasts and the Ally with Death experience was pretty powerful. I loved the music and of course her voice. My heart slipped out of its crusty burnt casing (like a burnt marshmallow) to reveal a vibrant pink thing. I wondered why I let a single person or event ever take my joie de vivre and vowed to dance and shimmer among the stars. Here’s to new beginnings!”

Candice Wu 1:50

I hope I pronounced that French correctly. I probably didn’t. French wasn’t my class in high school. But, thank you so much, Doreen, I loved hearing about how your heart slipped out of the crusty burnt casing like a marshmallow. Doreen is talking about the Ally with Death experiential audio. And it is this beautiful audio experiential, that supports you in facing your own death, and looking at what would really be important in those last final hours of your death, looking at what beliefs and things have been holding you back in your life? What would really make life meaningful? Who would you spend your time with at the end? How would you spend your time?

Candice Wu 2:39

And getting that push from death really forces us to look at what is important. I actually did this just a few hours ago for myself and just bald, and some really important things came through, things that I didn’t know, that I wanted, things that I didn’t know were that important to me in this exact moment, came through and I thought, oh, maybe I’ll do that coming up. So I don’t know if I would have revealed that or got the courage to look at those things in this way, had I not been going through this myself.

Candice Wu 3:22

It’s a great way to cleanse or to start a new cycle, start this new year, it’s not too late. You can find that experiential at CandiceWu.com/death.

Candice Wu 3:33

When I started doing some major travels in 2017, my first travel started in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and that’s actually where I began the Embody Podcast in February 2018. In that time, that I set out to Chiang Mai, Thailand, I actually wasn’t really going for travel, I was going to create a life there and see how it would be to live for a long chunk of time.

Candice Wu 4:02

So being in Chiang Mai brought me a sense of feeling pleasure, simplicity, slowing down like downshifting majorly and I also met someone that I had dated for then several years thereafter, and then we traveled together, Chris, who’s the editor of the podcast still, these travels led me and Chris to many different countries together and then some places where I went alone. And that included Bali, Indonesia, different areas of Thailand, Perth, Australia, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Marbella and Malaga, Spain, Hoff, Nuremberg in Germany, and then I took my own travel to Hong Kong or my family lives, and Ireland, Donegal area. That’s when I was with the horses and cut my trip short, came home in February of the last year — 2019.

Candice Wu 5:07

And in this whole last year, I’ve been exhausted by the movement. So, rounding myself in Michigan and just staying in the Midwest of the United States was just the right thing for me and it happens to be a beautiful time for me and my family. After doing so much healing work in my lifetime, for the last solid, you know, 10, 11 years, and all that my mom has done for herself, gave us the best experiences this year, we’ve had so much fun and I feel like all those years of healing work really paid off.

Candice Wu 5:50

So starting, well, coming into January 2020, a friend asked me, so where are you traveling next? And I said, No, I don’t want to travel. I have no plans to travel. I don’t want to leave, I’m happy and I’m still a little bit tired from last year and the years, the two years I had moved around in different places in the world. And then January 8, specifically, January 8, two days before the lunar eclipse, January 10, I felt a strong impulse and desire to travel again. And I felt like I wanted to be in another world. I felt like the world that I wanted to be in was one of sensuality, sexuality, pleasure, surrendering to my soul and what calls me and following the flow of what my heart craves, and what my body is saying yes to and moving towards. So, I am going to Mexico.

Candice Wu 7:04

I wasn’t so scared until someone close to me said that they were deeply scared for me and wanted someone to go with me and I just freaked out. And then I went into all sorts of research to figure out how I’m going to travel.

Candice Wu 7:22

What’s been really important for me is to discern what is the media’s inflation of fear-based on projection, based on the fact that we have our own shadow parts, the country of the United States has their own shadow that they don’t want to look at, and we can distract from what’s not going well here, what’s unsafe here in our own land, by looking at what’s going on in other countries. Of course, there are dangerous things happening all over the world. I’m really encouraged by several women that have traveled the world and women that travel to many places that speak to safety and speak to different themes around the world that unite us.

Candice Wu 8:09

The first black woman to travel the world is Jessica Nabongo. She’s actually from Detroit, and was on a TED talk in Detroit. And she traveled 195 countries, 89 of those which she’s traveled alone. She speaks to how we assume people are bad people because we don’t know them and we’re encouraged to keep people at an arm’s length. And it makes people feel justified to keep guns and to treat people as something to be feared. And we mostly distrust people based on appearance, race, nationality, and religion. And what she has found is that the world is our neighborhood, and the home is in the people.

Candice Wu 8:52

So she speaks of the world being our neighborhood, in terms of online and offline, the online neighborhood that we create in Social media and also the neighborhood of our earth. And the first woman to travel all countries, so all 196 countries, and she was the fastest person and the fastest female to travel all those countries, and that’s Cassie De Pecol. She did it in 2015 and it took her 18 months and 10 days, and she now talks about peace and how to create more peace and sustainable travel. And she noticed a common thread too, that most people have the same needs. We’re all the same people, she said, and we all want a loving family and that brought her to start to respect other people more.

Candice Wu 9:48

And who inspired me even more powerfully was the youngest person to travel the world by 21 years old, that’s Lexie Alford, and after about 100 countries, the places became so obscure that people stopped wanting to go with her. And in her TED Talk, she spoke about our comfort zones, and getting out of our comfort zone and how much that has lost its meaning, what does it really mean? And that we may be having the wrong conversation about getting out of our comfort zone.

Candice Wu 10:22

Her idea was that we’re sugarcoating fear and how fear, if we defined it or break it down in between our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves, then we can really look at what it is that we’re fearing, and where it comes from and feel the correlation between our comfort zone and body, mind, and soul.

Candice Wu 10:46

She speaks to how fear has played a major role in the defining moments that she’s experienced. And those include: getting malaria in Africa, West Africa, having public anxiety attacks and other experiences that are less than desirable.

Candice Wu 11:02

And as she shared this, I just began to cry. I didn’t know exactly why, but it really touched something in me. And as I sat with it longer, what I felt was this restoration of trust and my own willingness to be in discomfort, to follow myself and to follow what I need to do in this life.

Candice Wu 11:26

She spoke to one of my fears, which is physical danger, either being robbed, or raped or attacked in some way and maybe killed. And she said that in all of her travels, she was only in physical danger at one time and it was in Yemen.

Candice Wu 11:43

One night she heard gunshots and it lasted for some amount of time. She worried that she potentially be kidnapped. At some point, it all stopped and she cried herself to sleep and the next day, she spoke with her one contact in that country, and that person said, Oh, that? That was just a wedding party, because they shoot guns to celebrate. And so for her, it was only scary because she didn’t fully understand the culture.

Candice Wu 12:14

I love her final question in her TED Talk. How uncomfortable are you willing to become to reach your fullest potential? And that really nailed it for me. It brought it home as to why I was crying. It was a release of past fears and sadness. It was bringing me back and restoring me into a deeper knowing and trust that does live inside, underneath the fear. The trust in myself that this is what I meant to do and the right timing and right place will be everything. If I can tune in, and to a great deal, allow pleasure as my compass, allow my body to be the narrator of what I need to do and what I need to walk towards, and walk away from.

Candice Wu 13:09

In all of the countries that I visited, which are far less than 195 or 96, I would say, maybe 20, I’ve only felt physical danger, could have been imminent one time, but it was a kind of light fare. That was when I landed in Sri Lanka and I made a few mistakes. I was kind of naive and didn’t even think twice about my own safety.

Candice Wu 13:38

I was about 27 years old, and I had enrolled in this homestay program where I would teach Buddhist monks English. It was a two-week program, and I would stay with this host family. I landed in Colombo, the capital and it was 11:30 pm, dark. So while I’m on the plane, I’m suddenly struck by the fact that I’ve not even thought about that I’m entering the country in the dark and my host family said that a man would be picking me up and bringing me to a nearby hotel. And then the next morning, we would take the three-hour drive to Gal, which is on the coast. This is the coast where the tsunami hit in 2004.

Candice Wu 14:29

So I just trusted that and so here I am in the plane and suddenly fearing this because I don’t speak Sinhala or Tamil, the main languages in Sri Lanka. Luckily, I had been conversing with this man sitting next to me on this trip from Hong Kong to Colombo, and he was Sri Lankan and he spoke Sinhala and I just begged him and said: “Please. Can you help me? I just realized that I’m nervous about who’s picking me up. Can you just talk to this man and make sure that I’m not going to be in danger and that I’m going to get safely to my hotel room.” And he did so, and I just trusted that he did that, because it was all in another language.

Candice Wu 15:22

And I took the ride alone to this hotel, and I checked in, it was completely quiet. Nobody was sitting at the reception desk, we had to call somebody to arrive to check me in and the driver left. And so I’m getting checked into my room by this young man who seems to be a teenager, and I locked the door behind me, so I’m still doing fine. But then I just thought, who has the key because it’s this outdoor door entrance and could someone just come in during my sleep.

Candice Wu 15:59

I get up a phone call about an hour later and it surprised me because it had already been about midnight and why was I getting a phone call at 1 AM? The boy that had checked me in said, “Miss, do you want some water?” And I said, “No thank you. I’m fine.”

Candice Wu 16:16

Somehow I managed a few hours of sleep probably in the earlier mornings of the night, with the lights on, my luggage sitting on top of a chair pushed up against the door. And when I got into the van that was meant to take me to this host family, there were some Canadians sitting in the car. And for me, that was a relief at that moment just because I had scared myself so much and this was so unknown to me in the dark.

Candice Wu 16:45

I got to the host family and there were several, different young people from different countries visiting and staying with them and also volunteering.

Candice Wu 16:56

One woman that I became friends with for many years after and still now, she had told me a little story that at the hotel, she had someone come to the door, knock on the door while she was there and bring water to her and asked her if she wanted it. And she said, “Sure.” And he said, “Where should I put it?” And she said, “On the table’s fine.” So he comes in, puts the water down, and he closes the door, and she says, “What are you doing?” And he said, “You invited me in. So can we get in your bed or, should we get in your bed?” And she was like, “No!” And she asked him to leave and he ended up leaving. And I come to find out later through her that if you’re inviting a man into your room, that is sometimes considered an invitation for sex.

Candice Wu 17:53

So, I am glad that I did not accept the water and I’m glad that I survived that night and I did learn some things about how to prepare a little bit better and when is a safer time for me in my ability to sense my surroundings? Yeah, daytime, Candice. And I probably would have asked more questions to my host family about who would be picking me up and how things would go so that I just felt more prepared and could feel settled and then use my instincts and be aware in other ways that I couldn’t be because I was so scared.

Candice Wu 18:33

Other than that, I’ve only had one other time in Vietnam that I was scared. I was with my boyfriend at the time and we were catching a bus from a more rural area back to Hanoi. And the hotel said just stand across the street and wait for the bus, you’ll see it and there’s no bus stop or anything. We’re just standing on the street. So we get on the first bus that stops for us. Several had passed by and said no or not, you know, no. And it appeared that they were not going to Hanoi. And so this bus picks us up and it’s like a party bus. It’s the most unique bus I’d seen anywhere in the world. It’s like flatbeds. So you can lie down, and they’re layered and stacked on top of each other. And you have to take your shoes off because they want to keep it clean. And there are these, like, glow lights on the inside that are flashing.

Candice Wu 19:29

And so we get on this party bus, take off our shoes, we climb into the back, and we’re playing chess on my iPad, suddenly, and I had been tracking with my google maps that I had downloaded. Suddenly, I have a man almost in my face pointing at me saying, “You! Hanoi!”, and gesturing to get off the bus. And I think that they had been yelling Hanoi and sending people off. But I insisted on staying on as I was checking my google maps and noticing that we were not in Hanoi, we were only halfway there. I’m not getting off the bus and my boyfriend’s off the bus. So they’re telling me to get off and he’s off.

Candice Wu 20:13

So I felt like I had to get off. And I grabbed my stuff fumbling to get my shoes on, while I’m walking over to this smaller bus that they’re directing us to. I’m the last one on and I’m shoved in and the door closes on my butt. And I look around me, people are filled up in the seats, sitting all over the ground, on the steps. And there’s one man who has a bloody face, like he had been struck in several places. So that freaked me out.

Candice Wu 20:48

And I’m trying to talk to the men that ushered us onto this bus and they don’t speak English, and I don’t speak Vietnamese, so I’m using Google Translate. I asked why did we get on this bus? And he said, something wrong with the other bus, is what I got and gathered. And for me, that felt like a lie. And someone else on the bus said, sometimes they do this. And so, I just began to gather that it was more of a money-making scheme than anything and that bus that was a more expensive bus, the party bus, and the one we were on was really small and obviously they were cramming people in.

Candice Wu 21:33

So I didn’t stop being scared until we got closer to Hanoi, because I thought, where are they taking us? So I’m tracking it this whole time, ready to just like push my way off the bus into who knows where that would be scary too. We ended up being fine, aside from people trying to pull us off the bus so they could give us a taxi ride which I just walk straight through and try to gather myself away from the crowd of those people.

Candice Wu 22:08

Other than that I’ve never felt physically unsafe but I haven’t necessarily traveled to countries that people tend to warn others about.

Candice Wu 22:19

I stumbled upon this article in my research by Kristin Addis. She’s a woman who speaks about solo female travel. This particular article is called, We need to stop telling women they will get assaulted if they travel solo.

Candice Wu 22:34

She speaks to the fact that people of all genders can be told that you’ll be an easy victim, you’ll get robbed or killed in different countries that are more unknown, but women, more often than men are told that they will get raped. She did not speak to non-binary. She did not speak to trans and she mentioned that she would like to speak to non-binary folks In terms of travel tips, but she didn’t have the experience and spoke only to our competency.

Candice Wu 23:07

She wanted to look further into this and her research in pulling travel-focused Facebook groups, she had 1000 responses, 69% reported that they would be told that they would be raped, That’s women versus men. Again, she doesn’t seem to have any trans or non-binary or other gender identities in her experience. She mentions about how reporting data might be skewed because sometimes men don’t report.

Candice Wu 23:36

In one World Health Organization, global and regional estimate report, the number one crime was stolen passports, and that the perpetrator, being someone that the person did not know was very low. And so her conclusion was that it’s very rare to actually get raped. And while the world is not safe for women in general by traveling, this suggests that a woman’s potentially putting herself in less danger than she is when she’s at home. Because typically, rapes happen by acquaintances.

Candice Wu 24:10

She raised a bunch of really good questions, including, is it simply too threatening, whether consciously or more likely unconsciously, to see a woman going against the typical status quo and having more self-agency? Is it abnormal to see that she does not need a partner or a friend or chaperone to journey to another country with, her challenges that when a woman goes against the status quo, it triggers people’s fear of change, and that their discomfort over a life not fully lived, gets poked? And this may explain why women caution other women about the dangers of solo traveler, and that isn’t always from firsthand experience, that they bring that caution.

Candice Wu 24:53

She states that we need to ask why female autonomy is such a scary concept in modern society, and why are we continuing to undermine women. Her words are: “we are killing a budding sense of self-undermining trust, and could we support them in flourishing and trusting themselves to believe in herself and her abilities instead?”

Candice Wu 25:16

So for me, this article helped me discern that difference between what was just fear living there that is unwarranted, and what is the reality based on what some facts are, as well as the reality that I do have instincts and that I can do things to keep myself safer, and that I can sense good connections most of the time and nourish those connections.

Candice Wu 25:49

And a friend of mine who’s from Mexico said that people are very loving and community-oriented. They’ll look out for you if you nourish those relationships and speaking a little bit of Spanish goes a long way.

Candice Wu 26:06

Another friend of mine that lives there who’s from the States, as a woman of color, also just feels like she focuses on nourishing connection. And of course, she does things to make sure she’s not putting herself in danger. But she doesn’t really think about it. And she’s in San Miguel de Allende.

Candice Wu 26:27

As people, we have basic, instinctual, and intuitive, and energetic abilities. We have those gifts that help us, the body wisdom and intelligence that says, “Oh, this doesn’t feel right. Oh, I feel pressured in a way that doesn’t feel good. Yes, this feels great. Yes, my body says yes.” And that can be clouded by our trauma and wounds that are unintegrated, and it can be clouded by the fact that because of travel, we are more likely to override our experience. And that in our collective society, we are conditioned to override.

Candice Wu 27:14

One of the ways that I learned to not override my body’s messages is through Somatic Experiencing where when you’re working with a client, and when I’m the client, the experience that we get to decide, the client gets to decide where and how and how far and in what direction we’re sitting. And the funny thing about a therapy office, or a space, is that we often go into that space and just say, “Oh, yeah, we’re fine. And we just take what we get.” We sit where the chair is, or some people sit on the floor or lie down. I’m a floor sitter often. And even that seems to break some of the norms or what can feel socially appropriate at times. And how about asking the question: Where do you want the chairs to be? Or where do you want to be sitting? And do you want me to turn towards you or to the side or completely away?

Candice Wu 28:14

And having that preference is often a thing that some of my clients even have thought, Oh, this is weird, or no, everything’s fine. And there’s a little bit of discomfort sometimes, or, I’ve never been asked that question, and we haven’t. It’s uncommon. But if we really get to listen to our body, then we can feel, Oh, this is too close. And there’s a breath of relief when I sit at this distance and at this angle. That just helps me feel good and safe right now, and it can change. It can vary. It can be something that you work with, because you may want a different kind of contact with someone. It may be helpful to work with being in a different comfort zone so to say. And yet, it’s extremely helpful to notice what your body says right now and to not override that need, or that preference.

Candice Wu 29:16

And I transferred that to all different areas of my life, where I prefer to place my things in my room, in my space, letting the timing of my body happen more organically rather than pressuring and pushing and glossing over the message of my body that says, wait just a little longer. Or, now, let’s go now.

Candice Wu 29:43

And a lot of times when we are having some parts of our nervous system in a frozen state where something happened in our lives that was overwhelming or traumatic, there wasn’t enough resource to deal with including time, loving, compassionate support, or it was a dangerous situation, our body can go into an overwhelmed state that paralyzes us and shuts us down like playing dead. If you want to learn more about that, there’s an episode at CandiceWu.com/overwhelm, that speaks specifically to tonic immobility and what happens in that state, as well some experientials to support you in coming out of it.

Candice Wu 30:28

If there are parts of us that are in a frozen state, then we may not act when we need to, we may not run away or walk in the other direction when we do sense danger, we may not even sense the danger, because some of our faculties are turned off in order to protect based on the past experience, based on the fact our body already doesn’t feel completely safe.

Candice Wu 30:55

So for me, as I prepare one of the biggest things I’m going to do and I’m doing right now is cultivating where in my body do I sense when something is feeling good? What are the cues? Is it my breath? Is it a release in my muscles? Sometimes my genitals will speak. It’s like there’s an opening and a yes or a closing up and constriction, no. And for me it is a yes or no, the maybe typically means no.

Candice Wu 31:31

Someone once told me if it’s not an obvious guess, it’s a no. And that’s really helped me a long way. When my body says yes, I feel uplifted and excited. And once in a while, I’ve felt too excited, like over the moon. Oh my goodness. Yes, this is everything and sort of this idealized excitement and connection. And that’s one of my warning signs because in some of my early attachment relationships, specifically with my father, I experienced some more narcissistic empath dynamics and experience where my father would give me this loving attention at some points, and then it was painful and destructive at other points, and emotionally violent.

Candice Wu 32:28

So there’s a part of me that can get attracted by that sparkly energy, that charming energy that usually also asks more of me, and I’m willing to give and there’s something that bites me. So if I get too excited, too happy, like over the moon, then I know that I need to slow down and just feel into the deeper energy and which part of me, is it my younger self that’s craving this loving attention, that gives me some sense of worthiness, and I’ve long worked on that part of me and yet it can still show up here and there, in little pockets, debris.

Candice Wu 33:14

A friend of mine mentioned that when she senses that someone is reaching out to her in scarcity, from a place of scarcity, needing something from her, wanting her energy, wanting any material from her, perhaps also, that she feels like she wants to put something in front of her body, and she’ll instinctively put her hands there, put a bag or something that she has with her, right in front of herself, and that’s one of her cues to know that this may not be an interaction she wants to continue with.

Candice Wu 33:48

So this last chunk of the episode is going to be on some of the more practical tips and tools that I’m going to use on my travel and I didn’t use all these in Thailand and when I went to other countries, a few of them, but this time around, I did a more comprehensive look at what other people are doing to support themselves, besides using your instincts, trusting your senses, but what other mechanisms, so let’s jump into that.

Candice Wu 34:25

Alright, so we are now a couple of days later from when I first began recording this podcast episode. It’s interesting because typically I go all the way through the episode whenever I do an episode, and this one I just had to take a little break and a lot has happened between the first chunk and this chunk. I feel like a whole other person in some ways. And some of that feeling in me has also affected how I’m seeing my trip and I’m building a lot more confidence and just feeling more comfortable. Ready to go. Excited.

Candice Wu 35:01

My trip is coming up in about a week and a half, two weeks now. And at this point, I do have my tickets, my flight tickets into Mexico City. And I’m going to spend about a week there. And then I plan to meet a friend in Oaxaca. We may go together from Mexico City to Oaxaca, so I’m really excited about that. This is a dear friend of mine and I’m super thrilled about two apps that I use that a friend told me about, one’s called Hopper. And it’s this app that tells you when is a good time to buy your flights. I use that a little less frequently now because that one doesn’t quite give me the best flight rates. But it does sometimes give me a sense of when to buy and when not to buy, when to wait a little bit. It creates predictions about when the best time to buy your flight tickets would be.

Candice Wu 35:59

The other app that I love is called Skiplagged. And that shows just the best flights it can find in general, but also shows you where you can take a flight and get off at the connecting flight stop instead of the landing destination and that’s often cheaper. So for example, say you want to fly from Detroit to LA, if you buy that ticket, then you can just get off at LA, as long as you only take a carry on bag with you and make sure that pack fits on the flight. And then you just leave the other leg of the flight, and you’re where you want to be, and it’s usually a lot cheaper.

Candice Wu 36:41

Of course, airlines don’t like that, but I have found that if I look at Skiplagged and then go on to the site itself, I can find that flight or I can book right through Skiplagged if I want to do that in an easier way. I don’t always find the app that easy though. Sometimes it creates an error message. So none of these websites that I’m listing, I have any affiliation with, it’s just me sharing some resources that I use personally. So I get no money from them or anything. It’s just something I recommend to all my friends and family.

Candice Wu 37:16

So now when I share with you all the things on my list that I’m doing, and also remember to bring with me on my trip, I don’t always use everything on this list. But I thought that in case any of you are out there and are going to be traveling solo or even with a group, if you want to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to support your own safety and play it smart, as well as giving yourself the best chance you can to have a great experience of connection with the people, with the culture and place.

Candice Wu 37:51

So some of these travel tips include bringing a doorstop alarm, and I just learned about this. I never used this before and at some point, I may not use it but I’m going to bring it just to feel a little safer. I think it would have helped me feel comfortable while I was in Sri Lanka, where I stacked my luggage on chairs against the door. So it’s an alarm that rings at 120 decibels and it hurts your ears if it gets tripped. And so you put it behind the door and if the door opens, when you don’t want it to or when that doorstop alarm is on, then, of course, it will ring, also have a little handheld personal alarm in case you want to use that while I’m out or walking or in a situation that I might want to have just something extra. And that’s also an alarm that rings at 120 decibels. I’ve tried it and with earplugs on, I can hear a loud noise and without your plugs in it hurts my ears and it’s dangerous for your eardrums. So that’s interesting. I

Candice Wu 39:04

It’s a good idea to take up some personal self-defense classes and to just brush up whenever you feel like your body might need to build that body memory again. And I’ve recently taken a couple of private lessons. One was just unarmed self-defense. To me, I would describe it as offensive defense. It is teaching my body how to not defend but to attack if I feel like I’m in danger, that kind of danger. The second lesson I took was on sharp weapons and I basically learned the same movement for use with several different small sharp weapons. But, I am primarily most comfortable with a pen. And there’s this particular pen that my teacher told me about that I did order and it’s a very sharp pen. It’s not one of those clickable ones. It’s one that is with a cap, but you just leave the cap off, you empty the ink out if you’re going to be pinning it to your body or something or putting it in your purse, or some bag you have. And you can even walk around with it and most people don’t even think about a pen being dangerous or that you might defend yourself with a pen. If it’s a clickable pen, then that pen can retract and break. They’re pretty weak. And this one is super sharp and very strong. Hopefully, I never have to use that but it does give me even more confidence if I do have to be in a situation or end up in a situation that’s dangerous or where I feel unsafe. I will link some of these products in my show notes, the ones that I’ve gotten so that you can see if these are right for you. And I definitely recommend taking self-defense classes.

Candice Wu 41:01

I like to bring an extra lock in case I need to lock my things in a locker or in some sort of space.

Candice Wu 41:08

On my first international trip ever, my father who is a pretty savvy traveler and is very focused on safety, told me to put my money in my socks. And that has served me at times just to spread my money out so that in case I get robbed or something falls out that I have a safe place and if you’re wearing pants, you can tuck your money in your socks and then put your pant leg over that of course, and don’t bring out that money in a public place where everyone’s watching you, of course.

Candice Wu 41:44

Some people recommend bringing a decoy wallet, especially to places that muggings happened more often, where you can just hand someone credit cards and a little bit of cash or even the whole wallet and they may be satisfied with that and leave you alone.

Candice Wu 42:02

One website that I was looking at suggested using a plastic tampon applicator to store your money in. And I don’t think that would work for men or people who don’t look like they’re female who knows maybe. But for women and non-binary folks out there that look appearance-wise, like they might be using tampons, that might work and most people won’t bother looking at your tampon or wanting to grab it.

Candice Wu 42:36

I always take copies of all my important documents, my passport, as well as take pictures of my electronics and important items and either email that to myself or store that somewhere that I can access even if something is stolen, especially the serial numbers. You want to make sure that you have a copy of those somewhere in case you need to make a report.

Candice Wu 43:00

I always like to get a local SIM card, especially because I spent a lot of time in the country, usually when I’m somewhere, and I use a lot of data when connecting with my clients. But most phone companies in the US offer something that can be International. If you’re a TMobile user like me, then it offers a small amount of data almost everywhere, at least everywhere I’ve gone. But it hasn’t been enough to sustain a long period of time. So getting a local SIM and researching how you can get one, researching where you can get one and what the plans are, can be really helpful so that you’re not doing that research when you get there. And of course, buying the SIM card at the airport is always more expensive.

Candice Wu 43:52

I like to download maps from Google Maps. If you download it in advance, you don’t have to use data and you can still use Google search. And using that Google Maps is super helpful when you’re transiting somewhere and you’re taking an Uber or you’re taking a taxi or some other way of transportation, you can see if your drivers going in the right direction.

Candice Wu 44:21

When I was in Vietnam, I noticed the driver was taking a whole loop in a roundabout way to get us to the destination. And I kept telling him, I tried to translate it on Google Translate, which is the next tip I have, download a translation tool and Google Translate is super easy.

Candice Wu 44:42

So I was using Google translate to tell him you’re taking us too far, and you’re taking us the wrong way. And he kept insisting that the roads were closed the other way. I wasn’t convinced because there were several other roads that it seemed we could take on the map, and he still took this really long route. So, by the time that I had told him and insisted that he listened to me a couple of times, I noticed that he turned towards the direction we were supposed to go. And so it is really helpful to pay attention to where you’re getting driven and to use the maps that you downloaded.

Candice Wu 45:22

So I already mentioned a translation tool like Google Translate. Speaking the language goes a long way if you can just speak a little bit. It’s a respectful thing to do and people tend to be a lot warmer to you and want to help you if you are trying to speak the language and respecting it, doing it in a way that is earnest and kind.

Candice Wu 45:48

Some other random tips are to check the windows and all the doors when you arrive at a location like an Airbnb or a hostel, or some sort of stay. Sometimes windows have been left unlocked, and people have their things stolen.

Candice Wu 46:07

The editor of this podcast, Chris Spiegl mentioned that there are some people that even go as far as using this sort of metal netting around their belongings and locking it. And I have read that it’s important to lock things in your safe, or in some way, even when you’re there if you’re in locations that people tend to steal things. Don’t say that you’re alone if you are alone when you’re in transit, or when you’re just talking to random people, unless you truly trust that person, and you have your instincts on board. You might say that you have a partner at the hotel or someone is meeting you. A friend is taking a nap and you’re going to head back to see them. Anything that says that you’re not really alone.

Candice Wu 47:03

If you take a taxi, you can take a picture of the license plate, you can also take a picture of their ID. Usually, that should be posted somewhere inside of the taxicab or behind the seat. I recommend taking Ubers if you can because there’s tracking on Uber and there is a company behind that. So there’s just a little extra measure of safety there.

Candice Wu 47:28

If you take a picture of the taxi license or the person’s ID, you can send it to a friend and let them know that you’re in a cab and that you’re on your way somewhere and then text them as you arrive. Know where your embassy is. Look it up before you arrive and put that somewhere that you can access it even just to know the basics of where it is, like, which city it’s in can really help you feel more confident and get you that information more quickly if you do need it.

Candice Wu 48:05

Find the emergency numbers of the area, there is a link on my show notes to an international list of emergency numbers.

Candice Wu 48:14

Know the scams and the typical crimes of the area and that can support you and just keeping your eyes open all the way around you 360 so that you’re aware and that can really protect you.

Candice Wu 48:30

I like to plan the first couple of nights at least, and at the very least the first night and I don’t like to arrive in the dark, as you can hear in my original story about Sri Lanka I did that naively and didn’t even think about it and learn the hard way. So arriving with plenty of daylight can just feel a lot easier to navigate everything, especially if you’re going to an Airbnb or a hotel and you’ve never been there. It could be in an obscure location and you just don’t know or could be in a place and who knows what is in that area.

Candice Wu 49:10

Reach out to friends in the area. If you have friends of friends that might be someone you meet with depending on how long you’re staying in that location, and nurse any support that you get and receive if you are staying for a short period of time, and there are local people that you see at a restaurant or along the way continually, it’s great to try to use their language and talk to them, say hello, do anything that you can do to cultivate those relationships because people tend to want to look out for others. Of course, that depends on the location, and if you look into the cultural expectations, cultural etiquette of the location, that’s really important too.

Candice Wu 50:00

I think it’s in Thailand, that there are these beautiful gates and doorways. And if you step on the beam, the wooden beam that’s about a couple of inches above the ground, when you go through the doorway, it’s really disrespectful. So just knowing things like that in advance, can support you in building the connections that will keep you safe and support you along the way. Who knows what kind of support you’ll need?

Candice Wu 50:36

Know that you can say no, for your safety, no matter what. You don’t have to listen to someone telling you about a deal about a travel trip. You don’t have to indulge someone in their conversation with you. These are all just really basic tools and tips of safety and you can apply that as you travel and just remember that because sometimes when we land in a place, we can feel a little disoriented.

Candice Wu 51:05

A few more tips, it’s always helpful to get travel insurance and you can get that yearly. It’s a lot cheaper than just doing it per trip. But if you only travel once a year, you might try per trip. And with travel insurance, that usually also covers medical evacuation. And for me, I like it too, just in case I need to get home because of some medical issues.

Candice Wu 51:30

I also like to go to my bank and get some local currency, the place that I’m arriving into, and it’s not always the best rate, it probably is like getting money at the airport, but it feels better to me to have a little bit in my pocket so that I can just get out into where I need to go and have a bite to eat and all that.

Candice Wu 51:52

Let your bank know that you’ll be traveling so that your credit cards and your debit cards work. At Chase Bank, they even have a travel notification place that you can enter where you’re traveling just on the app so it’s super easy.

Candice Wu 52:09

Also, there’s a registry with the United States government that you can let them know where you’re going abroad and for how long so that in case something happens to you abroad, that they can alert your family. I’m not sure totally about how good it is to be on a list like that in terms of the benefits and the disadvantages and what those lists are used for, but of course, the United States does have a record of where you’re going anyway because you’re using your passport to leave. So I figure that it’s just one other measure, in case anything happens.

Candice Wu 52:51

And of course, as I spoke about several times in this podcast, develop your instincts, people say all the time, trust your instincts. Pay attention. But how do you do that? And how do you do that effectively?

Candice Wu 53:05

So work with your own body, in sensing how you know that you feel safe. When you feel safe if you even imagine it or think about your own safety right now a tiny felt safe, what happens in your body? What do you experience? When you’ve noticed feeling in danger, whether that’s a bit of emotional danger or physical danger? What happens in your body to tell you to give you that cue that something’s not right, that you need to run? That you need to say no or that you need to yell? How does your body tell you? And if you’re building that relationship with your body regularly than when you’re on travel, or you’re in a location by yourself that you’re not quite sure about, you can rely on yourself, you can go deeply within your body and check-in.

Candice Wu 54:02

When we have had previous trauma, we don’t always have our instincts online, we’re not always able to use our awareness in a way that reflects the present moment. Sometimes we can have a big startle response when one isn’t needed. Or, we may stand there in a frozen paralyzed state, when we actually need to run or yell or hit or move. And what I found in taking those self-defense private lessons is that a lot of frozen energy, a lot of energy of being paralyzed and overwhelmed, playing dead, moved out of my body.

Candice Wu 54:42

Using Somatic Experiencing and other types of trauma healing, have helped me incredibly in restoring all of the responses of my body and a present and alert awareness that is calm when it’s safe, as well as an alert when I’m not quite sure. Or, when I hear things, see things, feel things, that may tell me that I’m in danger or something’s not right.

Candice Wu 55:15

Another thing to take note of is that if you have a big jetlag, that when you arrive, you might be more disoriented, your body might feel ungrounded, you might be tired, that can really affect your body in terms of staying alert. So really plan for that first day upon arrival and you can also practice this meditation that I have in Episode 28. It is called Calibrating Earth and Sky within Prana and Apana Tantric meditation. That’s on the episode with nature. Nature as support and medicine.

Candice Wu 55:59

And in that meditation, we are connecting with the earth wherever you are as well as the sky. So wherever you land, if you do this meditation when you land, at some point when you get to safety, a safe place, and groundedness, then doing this meditation can support you in routing into the energy of the place that can help your body feel more grounded and centered. It can help you adjust to the temperature, the culture, the whole sense of the area, and can help with jetlag.

Candice Wu 56:38

I’ve also found that doing some Yoga, when I arrived is really helpful as well as on the plane and putting your legs up the wall. A Yoga pose that you can lie down on the floor, put your legs straight up the wall, that helps to ground the body as well and to help with jet lag so that you’re more in line with the time zone. There are a small handful of other things I do for jet lag and I won’t talk about them here. But if you do need tips for that, feel free to reach out to me anytime. You can find me on my website Candicewu.com.

Candice Wu 57:18

So all these tips, I hope that some of these support you if you’re traveling, and maybe if you live in a city and you haven’t felt safe, maybe those things can help you too. I think it’s really important to look at the places where we’re fearful and to sense into what exactly is the core of that fear. And that can be a piece of trauma healing work. That can be some belief sets that come up, can be projections. It can be ideas and perceptions about others and our self that are not true and are ready for reexamination and healing. So traveling gives these really wonderful opportunities to do that and I recommend doing that.

Candice Wu 58:06

Coming back full circle for me from this place where I freaked out about my safety and was really scared to looking at what beliefs are there, looking at where does this come from and why am I this scared. And coming back to this place where I feel more connected to my body, to my instincts, my intuition, to trusting myself, it’s so restoring, and I’m really excited about this trip.

Candice Wu 58:34

And by the time this podcast is out and you’re listening to it right now, I will likely be getting ready to go. So I’ll give you some updates along the way. So pay attention in the next couple of weeks because I will be sharing how my experiences, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions and thank you so much for listening in today.

Candice Wu 58:59

I encourage you to pass this along to anyone that you know that might be supported by this episode, especially if they’re traveling or living abroad solo and need some support for that first time or are going to some new place that’s giving them a different internal experience.

Candice Wu 59:21

Thanks so much for joining me today and if you want to stay connected with episodes, with experientials and meditations that come out, as well as self-love notes and events, sign up for my newsletter that comes out once or twice a month at CandiceWu.com/embody. Be sure to check out that Death experiential. If you want to cleanse something out or if you’re feeling heavy and stuck inside depressed or anxious, or just want to get some sense of your next steps in life. That’s at CandiceWu.com/death. Wishing you all the self-love and worthiness as well as an intuitive connection with your body. Take care and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

In this podcast, we have Nick Werber back on the show, yay! In this episode, we talk all about intention setting and the process that brings in our lives, what it means and how to move through, as well as where our family systems intentions, our ancestries’ intentions come in, and how to respect those.

Candice Wu 0:22

Find out if Nick and I are the black sheep of our families and whether there’s a black sheep in you.

Candice Wu 0:30

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 1:06

The podcast is supported by so many of you out there listening and people who either quietly donate some money or give their feedback and their encouragement. Thank you all so much. And if you’d like to support the podcast in a more specific way, there are two options right now that are very interesting. You can sign up for a periodic personal meditation that I record personally for you based on your intentions and based on my intuition of what you’re sharing and what might be needed. And that can be a one time experience, an mp3 that I send to you, or a gift to somebody, or by subscription where you get that periodically.

Candice Wu 1:53

Or, if you’re interested in something that has more connection and contact with me, you can join my Embodied Group healing call. These very small groups offer a compassionate and embodied soul support space for anything you’re going through in life. So if you’d like to learn more about that, feel free to go to my website at CandiceWu.com/support.

Candice Wu 2:19

Following this episode will be a special recording by Michael Picucci of an adaptation of Bert Hellinger’s writing. So Michael Picucci is Nick Werber’s mentor and friend and fellow healer. And he speaks about him in the first episode that we have together that we recorded together last year and in this episode, so you can hear a little bit more about Michael Picucci and Bert Hellinger is the founder of Family Constellations.

Candice Wu 2:52

Both of these beautiful people and healers passed away last year and so what a lovely experience to have this on the podcast for all of you to experience. And, Nick was such a close person to Michael, that he’s offered to share this on the podcast and knows that Michael would really love for others to experience it. The offering in this meditation is called consenting and it’s lovely to inspire, bringing consent to people around you, situations, agreeing to what’s happening, and what your human experience is, such that it brings new possibilities or allows ease and brings the next unfolding. So be sure to tune into that later this week or following this episode, depending on when you tune in. And without further ado, here is Nick.

Candice Wu 3:58

Not really sure how to jump in Nick, this is your second time on the podcast. It’s so cool to have you here.

Nick Werber 4:04

Yeah, I’m really excited to be back again. I know, you know, since last week did that first podcast I’ve gotten, it’s surprising. It’s people, you know, every so often. It’s like, “Oh, I found you through, you know, Candice Wu and I love Candice.” So, I’m really excited to be back because, yeah, a lot of people love that first one, at least they tell me, so.

Candice Wu 4:27

Yeah, I get a lot of great feedback from it, too. And people really have enjoyed what you have to say, and enjoyed our conversation, and some people could just feel like that we were friends. And that’s so true. I just so appreciate you, Nick.

Candice Wu 4:43

And the first podcast we did was maybe about a year and a half ago. And for those of you who haven’t listened to it, or maybe want to review, it’s at Candicewu/nick and it’s also on your website. Right, Nick?

Nick Werber 5:02

True. I think it is. Yeah.

Candice Wu 5:04

At nwerber.com. And, Nick, can you just tell the listeners out there a little bit about who you are and what you do, just as a refresher?

Nick Werber 5:17

Sure.

Nick Werber 5:19

So, I call myself, you know, the label that I use as an integrative coach and a healer. And really, what that means to me is that I just, I pull in many different modalities into my work. And some of the big ones are Family Constellations work, which is all about, you know, this work of how so much of what we’re facing and experiencing didn’t start with us. You know that the context that we live in, has a huge effect on who we are so that can apply to family. It can also apply to our nation and our culture as well as our, actually our ancestral history of these things that long tail of history actually has a real effect on who we are.

Nick Werber 6:08

And then for me, all my work is really on this, founded on this bedrock of somatic trauma work, specifically a modality called focalizing. Which is, you know, really just the best practices I think of any time you’re working with trauma, that overwhelm is the enemy and you might hear this just in the way that I speak and the way I approach things is that just I think the best healing is done in this very stable, gentle space where people can feel safe and, you know, in addition to that, I also have a bunch of training and hypnosis.

Nick Werber 6:49

Sometimes the way I say it is that you know, the work is, all of it is focused on, you know, we have these very deep, unconscious parts of ourselves, as far as we know, we might only use somewhere between 1 to 3% of our brain and consciously, I’m sorry, only 1 –3 percent of our mind is conscious. And so all the work I do is really about working with the unconscious and how God affects so much of what we’re experiencing.

Candice Wu 7:22

Beautiful.

Candice Wu 7:24

And, Nick, I think I told you this before, but someone recently told me that you and I could have been brother and sister in a past life or siblings. And that just makes so much sense to me on many levels, which I’m not going to get into now, totally, but that just feels true in some ways, we’re like siblings in this healing, embodied work, and that’s part of what I so value about your work, how much of the experience in the process that you bring forward, that I love as well, and do my own versions of. But I also deeply value the way that you use your language and words to key into very important and relevant topics that we’re all dealing with in some fashion that get people, it like creeps in sideways in new ways, fresh, very refreshing way of speaking and writing that leave an echo in me. So thank you.

Nick Werber 8:49

Yeah, it’s an addition to the practice. I’m absolutely a writer at heart and love writing about the subject and I love that we were brother and sister in a past life. I believe it. I’m sorry, I interrupted you maybe in that past life I, you know, as an older brother, maybe I spoke over you I don’t know.

Candice Wu 9:12

Well, what I was told specifically was that in the past life, I always lived in your shadow. And I felt like, I could never like, come out of the shadow next to you. And so I was struggling with the feelings of like not being good enough in relation to you and always trying to win at that game but never winning.

Nick Werber 9:39

Oh God, it is sad.

Candice Wu 9:41

It is sad.

Nick Werber 9:45

I’m sorry.

Candice Wu 9:46

No. Yeah, you better be.

Nick Werber 9:49

Yeah.

Candice Wu 9:52

And just for all of you listening out there, the reason this came up was that, I, and I think I told you, Nick, I would read your posts and then I would just get, I would feel so, like, jealous to the point of feeling bad about myself, not the kind of jealousy that says, “ooh, this is exciting, this challenges me to grow,” which is probably more where I am at this point. But when I was getting triggered by your wonderful post, I was like, I’m not enough and like, now I need to be doing what Nick’s doing and I need to write like that and I could hear myself and I was like, “Why? Why am I? Why?”

Candice Wu 10:41

So it really helps to bring that into the light and for the emotions to move around it. But yeah, stop speaking over me, Nick. You hardly do that. No. You were just saying before we started recording that this is a totally different experience already and I’d love for you to share why with everyone.

Nick Werber 11:11

Well, last time, basically, I think we spent the first half an hour after we connected just working on why the microphone was so loud. And I, you know, I live in New York City and so there’s always some kind of construction or weirdness. Like, even this call I, you know, this podcast, I purposely asked you to do earlier in the afternoon, because when it gets close to two or three, there’s going to be school buses outside my window, you know, backing up and beeping and all that.

Candice Wu 11:39

The beeping yup. And you’ve got your mic from back in the day when you used to record music.

Nick Werber 11:46

That’s true. Yes. Yeah. I have the microphone that NPR uses and it’s really beautiful, and I pulled it out of the closet and it was dusty and there was something sitting on it so the phone is all deformed, but it sounds good.

Nick Werber 12:05

Yeah.

Candice Wu 12:08

Well, I made a big mistake, Nick, when you emailed me last night about some of the topics you wanted to talk about today on the show, I read it at 10 pm, your email and I, and then I couldn’t sleep for like four hours. So it’s really all your fault. I mean, that I read the email. Yeah, it was like 10 pm and I’m reading your email, and you’re bringing up the topics that you’re interested in, so I’ll just say some of them because I think they’re fabulous and that is what kept me up until like, two in the morning because I was just like thinking about these topics and your thoughts about them and so excited to hear from you about intention and the intersection of family and family history in regards to our intention, or how they weave in, what we reject and what we resist and how that impacts us and stays with us. You wanted to talk about the beautiful mystery and meaning behind who were born to in this life and what that we’re alive perspective can look like versus a dead perspective. And, then a little bit about narcissists versus empath relationships and black sheep, and also this misnomer of letting go of something or letting, letting things go. So, yes, obviously.

Nick Werber 13:42

When you put it like that, now it’s like, “Whoa, that’s a lot!”

Candice Wu 13:45

Right? I was like, boom, my head was like, Okay, yeah, I get it. Also, it was like getting back in the game of life after the holidays and I kind of just went into a cave.

Candice Wu 14:00

So before we jump in, you know, I was wondering, some of the words I wrote down for myself yesterday when I was just gathering myself trying to come back into my regular sort of schedule, as regular as that can be. But some of the words I wrote down were cave, because that was emerging cave and emerging out of the cave, surrender, the need for trust, clarity, but also not knowing at the same time, and then beauty and quiet. And I wonder, Nick, what words are popping up for you in your experience of life at the moment?

Nick Werber 14:41

I think flow is one, shame is another, connection, and I think the word, it’s almost like, expanse comes up because I feel, you know, I, as you know, Candice, I got married in September this past year and there’s, you know, so much an event like that kind of focuses you in such a powerful way. And, you know, right afterward it’s kind of holiday season comes through and now I feel like there’s this sort of expanse so now what do I do with the rest of my life?

Candice Wu 15:24

With the rest of your life? Yeah.

Candice Wu 15:26

It’s like, that’s a huge expanse. Yeah, I can imagine, right? Like having a wedding, you said focuses you so much. It’s like all your energies seem to culminate to that moment and all the people in your life at least from what I, you know what I saw of your wedding, and then coming into this I don’t know, quiet space or open space.

Nick Werber 15:26

Exactly.

Nick Werber 16:01

It’s open, and it’s playful. It’s like, I choose my adventure now. And I mean, I chose my adventure before too, but you choose it and then everything becomes very singularly focused. I feel now there’s a little bit more playfulness with each day, I can choose my adventure. And it doesn’t always have to relate to a particular goal either.

Candice Wu 16:25

Sounds really nice. I like that.

Nick Werber 16:28

Yeah, it is nice.

Candice Wu 16:29

Yeah. And then you said shame, connection. And there’s one other word I just forgot the first word.

Nick Werber 16:39

I think flow.

Candice Wu 16:40

Flow. That’s right. Yeah, do you want to say any more about this before we tune into the topics we have for today?

Nick Werber 16:48

You know, I feel like they’re going to come through in whatever we talk about. Because you know, I think speaking like this is a co-creative process. and whatever is living within us in this moment comes through. I’m borrowing a little bit from writers that I like and I recently a little bit of a tangent but I’ve been watching a little bit of Mad Men again and then interested in Matthew Weiner and you know, he basically said it’s every episode is what he was experiencing, you know when he wrote it. I think that’s true for most creation.

Candice Wu 17:31

Yeah, that makes sense. Where the energy comes through somewhere. So yeah, speaking of, oh, what were you going to say?

Nick Werber 17:41

I was going to say, I think I feel a sense that I’d like to talk about intention a little bit because it is, you know, new year’s time and it’s just so, I think it’s top of mind for so many people right now.

Candice Wu 17:54

Yeah, I was feeling that too. Yeah, did you create an intention for the year or for this time frame?

Nick Werber 18:01

I created several intentions and, you know, I found it actually reminded me how much I love intention that for me when I’m just working, kind of getting through my day doing tasks on a, you know, an hourly or a weekly basis, you know, whatever that kind of goal-line is, I start to lose track of meaning. You know, I feel like I’m kind of floating and I’m not sure where I’m going or, you know, maybe people relate to this where you just kind of realized, like, why am I doing this actually. And intention, I think, sitting down and actually writing down you know, here’s what I think is a life well spent, my time well spent and it’s not that I didn’t create a bucket list it was, you know, my intentions are a little bit more short term than that, but there’s just something very powerful to collecting yourself and in writing down, you know, here’s what I think is a good use of my time, here’s what I want to give to other people, here’s what I want to receive, and I couldn’t believe how much better I felt when I just did that simple process.

Candice Wu 19:27

Yeah, it’s, to me that’s actually such a playful process too, it’s like, I get this chance to gather myself and see what does feel meaningful and to clarify it. And I have felt that power of not just the writing down, but for me, I can use visioning like, seeing it in my mind and kind of carving out that vision in my mind that it’s not always so cut and dry like, I’m going to look at a vision of what I desire, what I’m looking forward into. But it’s this feeling sense that comes with seeing bits and pieces of where things are going for me and, or where I’d like them to go and it’s really fun. It’s like playing with consciousness, playing with myself.

Nick Werber 20:22

And I think when I hear you say that, you’re getting at something that I think is very important about intention, which is that intention is really supported when we find ways of moving beyond our just goal setting, kind of thinking mind. And so visioning is one way, when I do it, intention setting, I really tap into my body awareness quite a bit. And so it’s, you know, I think we have so much intelligence that is beyond our task-oriented mind and that intelligence is so important when it comes to, I think finding intentions that are valuable to us and valuable to the world and, you know, knowing, like you said, seeing what’s emerging ahead of you.

Candice Wu 21:14

I love that and when you say you use your body awareness and your body intelligence, what exactly do you do?

Nick Werber 21:24

So I actually have been playing with and this is what I used and this most recent intention setting process, a very specific way of working with body awareness, which is that I sit and I write the intentions, one intention per piece of paper. And then I actually put them out on the floor, and then stand on each one and embody the intention. And I’m sure this will sound very familiar to Candice in terms of Family Constellation process. You just step into the intention. Just close your eyes, tune in, and I do this with my clients as well. And it’s amazing how quickly just you get that little sense of Ooh, that’s, you know, it’s not the next five years, it’s actually in the next ten years I’d like to receive this or, maybe, you know, you start to suddenly get really strong senses of the wording of what you wrote. And, if you just connect with your body a little bit, you can feel, am I feeling contracted here? Am I feeling expanded here? Does it feel like a yes, does it feel like a no. And so that’s, I like things that get you up off the couch and connecting with things. Not only, you know, in your mind’s eye, but also in a physical way.

Candice Wu 22:45

Yeah, it brings more of us into the picture, alive into the experience. I love that.

Nick Werber 22:56

You know, this is, I have to give a little bit of a nod to one of my teachers, a person named Dr. Michael Pecucci, but he would say at this time, in a conversation like this, that we should set an intention for this conversation.

Candice Wu 23:14

Okay. We are.

Nick Werber 23:17

And I just thought that came to me it’s maybe a good idea.

Candice Wu 23:22

Okay. Yeah, why don’t we take a moment and feel that? Yeah.

Nick Werber 23:41

That’s funny that you said feeling because it definitely feels like a feeling to me actually.

Candice Wu 23:47

What are you getting?

Nick Werber 23:51

So, to me, the intention, and just for kind of our listeners, so there’s the intention that we might think we want to have at the end. But there’s a level of intention that’s kind of, it’s like, what already is there, asking to be connected to.

Nick Werber 24:08

And so that’s what the second part is what I’m speaking to when I say this, that for me, when I just think about the intention for this conversation, there is a fullness in my body. It feels like this feeling that I get when I’m like, wow, I listened to something that I’m going to be thinking about for a couple days and processing and referencing and it’s kind of that feeling of, I’m glad I spent time doing that.

Candice Wu 24:36

I love what you said, like what is already there and asking to be connected to and I find that when I tune in that way and listen, it’s a more aligned intention, like it emerges, it reveals itself. It’s already living. And yeah, I love the feeling that you’re bringing up the fullness, the feeling of the listening to something here.

Candice Wu 25:15

I got the words, being extremely honest with myself and outward, outwardly. And then also playing with the ideas that the concepts that we have put on the table like playing with you, Nick. And I think in your email to me about these topics you said, feel free to disagree or feel free to, you know, argue with this or something. And I was like, Yeah, I’m going to, let’s see what happens. And I could you know, we, just the idea of play and curiosity and what emerges out of that sort of challenge to on both sides, I think, but as more of a collaborative play.

Nick Werber 26:12

It’s, you know, it’s serendipitous almost that you know, honest and being outward, it’s funny, I, my partner Jen was sitting in our kitchen and I was talking about this podcast a little bit. I said to her that I think I’m going to be a little edgier this time. And I’m just going to say what I feel and, you know, maybe it might turn some people off. I don’t know.

Candice Wu 26:37

Bring it on.

Nick Werber 26:41

Yeah exactly.

Candice Wu 26:42

Yeah, I want to play with that, the edginess? Cool. So do we have our intention? Or was that just more, was it? I didn’t know if I heard a specific intention from you or just a feeling you’d like to experience. Is that? Am I getting it right?

Nick Werber 27:02

It was a little bit nebulous. I think the intention is to share something, both between you and I, that provides a sense of fullness provides a sense of, you know, a gift that you can sit with and play with, even, you know, for a time after this conversation and then I’m including the third player in the room, you know, the audience that maybe they can experience something that they can play with and sit with them, digest for a few days that gives them a sense of fullness as well.

Candice Wu 27:43

Yes, thank you for clarifying that. That’s great.

Candice Wu 27:48

And just inviting people to play with, play with these topics and disagree with us, or find where there’s a new opening and you know, I’m just saying that out loud because that also helps me do that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Michael Picucci as well.

Nick Werber 28:11

Yeah.

Candice Wu 28:14

And just honoring him.

Nick Werber 28:19

He’s a major inspiration for everything I do. Funny, you know, on his website, when he was alive, it would, you know, you’d see Ph.D. psychologist but if you met him, he was very just quick to laugh with a very raspy voice, flamboyant gay man, who was a shaman and an energy worker, and you know, I think of him almost as the archetype of the Joker. You know, the one that kind of laughs and tells jokes but if you really think about what he’s saying deeply it’s, maybe the most honest, most real person in the room and a lot of ways. So there’s my little nod to Michael. Thank you, Michael.

Candice Wu 29:12

I wish I had the opportunity to meet him in person.

Candice Wu 29:18

So, intention, what comes up as you play with the concept or the idea of intention?

Nick Werber 29:34

What’s sitting with me about intention? You know, I have this community of healers and intuitive people that I love that are around me and both connected to them online and through some of the workshop spaces and communities here in Brooklyn that I’m in and everyone’s talking about intention. And I think the thing that for me, you know, I don’t think it’s touched on enough that I’d love. I think it’s helpful to acknowledge that, you know, intention is a process.

Nick Werber 30:11

When we set intentions, It’s not just that we write something down, and then we put it away in a shelf. And, you know, we hope sometime a year from now it’s going to end up on our doorstep.

Nick Werber 30:26

For me, and in my experience, and from my clients experience, it’s an active process. And one of the clearest ways that it’s very, really active is that I believe the moment you set an intention, what you’re really doing is saying, I’m ready to see what’s been standing in the way all along.

Nick Werber 30:48

You know, when you say, I want to find a relationship or I want to be making more money, it’s incredible how you know in the next few weeks or months people suddenly are playing in that shadow we stuff, those barriers that have been around for a really long time, that are directly related to these topics and, and I see that actually as a positive, it’s kind of, you know, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, universal intelligence or just the way the universe works is that it puts, it brings a barrier too and then it’s like, okay, now here’s your work. Now bring in your resources, you know who’s maybe, it’s a therapist or healer that you work with or just being a part of your community. You know, you have to resource yourself and actually go through it.

Nick Werber 31:44

For Christmas, I just got to my partner purchase me a sweater that says, “the only way around is through”

Candice Wu 31:54

Nice reminder…

Nick Werber 31:56

Yes, and that’s what this is. He set the intention to see the barrier and I think people don’t realize that happens. And so when they find the barriers, you know, when they come up against suddenly like, it just feels so hopeless and there’s so much doubt or I feel so much fear to go out and do that thing that I want to do, you start to, they might start to think, oh, maybe that’s a sign that it’s not really meant for me or you know, this isn’t going to happen or it’s not the right time. And it’s like no, like that, there it is, like you are now being given the exact wall you have to chip away at and your intentions on the other side of it.

Nick Werber 32:39

So I think what I want to, if there’s one thing people take away from this conversation, it’s that, to see intention as a process and to not be discouraged by the barriers, because that’s exactly what that processes, I believe meant to do is to bring up the barriers

Candice Wu 33:00

Yeah, I’m ready to see what’s been standing in the way all along. I love the words you expressed about that, it’s just such a nice statement. And we don’t always think about that exact position or approach when we’re creating something or like listening or creating something we want for ourselves.

Candice Wu 33:26

And I just think it’s such an important thing what you’re bringing up because, yes, so often, I’ve seen it in myself and clients everywhere. We find the resistance, the thing that scares us the most about it, and then we turn around and think, well, maybe that’s just not where we’re supposed to go because it’s scary or because it’s going to bring us some discomfort or let us look at something that we have not wanted to look at perhaps, and I see exactly what you’re saying too, in the way that barrier comes up and says, okay, you want this, you know, you want what’s behind this. You need this to come along. This barrier is the place where you’ve resisted or avoided, there’s an energy here and when you transmute this, when you transform or look through, go through it, as you say, instead of around it, that energy will come with you and support you in the end if you make it through. And we need it, we need it to go forward into the next thing. We need that expansiveness because that’s what we wanted to begin with. It’s going to bring us more. Thank you for bringing that forward.

Nick Werber 34:55

It’s almost like to give yourself credit. You know?

Candice Wu 34:58

Yes.

Nick Werber 34:59

There’s a reason you might not be making a million dollars a year, it’s because it takes hard, there’s a lot, there’s hard work, there are barriers there, there’s a lot to bust through. Now, if you come from a poor family, you’re leaving behind whole generations of a certain way of life. You know, it’s if you want that, if you want that intention, if you want to connect to that intention, there are some barriers you have to bust through and you know, that takes work. And so it makes sense that you maybe hadn’t connected to it yet. Again, you need the energy, you need the resources to be able to do that.

Candice Wu 35:41

Yeah, that just made me think, well, maybe that’s why people goal set instead of intention set? Because, I mean, maybe it also has a crossover, you know, even when we goal set there’s something that’s going to come up… but for people out there that are like FUI to intentions, like, I don’t want to deal with intentions or I’m not doing that. I’m giving yourself credit. Yeah, that it can be scary to set an intention because of the wave of things that might come in succession after that, on the pathway towards what you’re looking at.

Nick Werber 36:23

Exactly. And that’s why, you know, it’s also beautiful that if you set a really big intention and you’re not ready for it, you can stop.

Candice Wu 36:31

Yeah.

Nick Werber 36:32

You know?

Candice Wu 36:32

Yeah.

Nick Werber 36:32

You can take a pause.

Candice Wu 36:35

Yeah, I just love this. I have this image in my mind of a child, you know, I mean, I’ve been there standing on the edge of like a step and feeling like I want to jump down three steps. You know, I’ve done two. I’m going to jump three steps now. And I have this, I guess, maybe this is sort of archetypal image of an adult or someone older, saying just do it, go, just go. And like kind pushing you to go with their energy and with their encouragement. But there’s something incredibly beautiful about standing there on the edge and finding from within your own sense of I’m ready, or I’m ready to take the jump, and I don’t know what it’s going to bring doesn’t mean I’m ready and this is going to be easy. But that sort of leaning forward and being like, oh, maybe not, and kind of leaning back and playing at that edge, instead of just bypassing that and jumping without some sort of internal choice.

Candice Wu 37:52

And a friend mentioned to me this video, which I still haven’t seen, but I’ve been meaning to and I’ll link it to our show notes. I think this artist just recorded people at a diving board like high dive, and they were doing that, they would come to the edge. And some people would turn around and just never come back. And some people would like to stand there for an hour or something or like a period of time and go forward and back and maybe make the dive but it wasn’t really even about the dive I think. It’s just the process of us being human and being in that experience.

Nick Werber 38:36

And I think that I actually have seen that diving board video. So funny. YouTube is sort of my little guilty pleasure when I have downtime, so I’ve found it somehow. But to follow that metaphor a little bit, you know, I find with intention setting, we set an intention, or I set an intention and then it becomes, you know, okay, I started to receive it, you know, for instance, I had intentions about working with more and more people in group settings. And so I’m getting these group workshops are coming forward, they’re doing really well. And then it’s like, I recently, in the past year I was off or, in the past few months, I got the opportunity to work into this retreat in Mexico, which I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit more about, but you know, you can hit that moment of suddenly, Whoo, it’s like, it’s a much, it’s a bigger thing, it’s going to be more of a commitment, more of a commitment to the people coming. And then suddenly, it’s like the diving board’s too high. I don’t know about this one.

Candice Wu 39:44

Yeah, I asked way more of you.

Nick Werber 39:47

And I think those are, that’s really common that you get on a roll and it’s like, where’s your, what’s your tolerance and I’m not saying, you know, push through everything either. You know, I respect that tolerance level, that there’s, you know, that’s part of this work. That’s one of the barriers is fear, you know that you might come up against the fear, the fear of success, the fear of, you know, maybe speaking in front of a large audience or, you know, whatever your intentions include.

Candice Wu 40:18

Yeah, and this kind of loops me back to the beginning when you said that we can just get on a roll, or we can be in motion and wonder why we’re doing it or is this what we even wanted? And I think that that’s really challenging, it can be a really challenging place when the bigger thing comes, the bigger diving board or whatever it is, and you’re on the roll of the intention that you once had set. And there’s that place of, Okay, now it’s, I think that diving board is too high or this is really scary. This is a lot and it’s asking a lot of me. And when we feel into that place, it can sometimes mean this is no longer what I wanted or this is, wait, where have I gone? Is this what I wanted? And is it what I want now? And distinguishing that from the fear of the expansion and capacity, what it means to step forward and continue on? That can be a tricky place. Do you find that?

Nick Werber 41:34

Absolutely. When I hear you talk about that, I think we’re really connecting in some way to just the human condition, which is, you know, in some ways, we’re walking down a cave and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, maybe, but we just have no idea what’s there and what’s ahead of us and there’s a lot of mystery so, absolutely, and, you know, there’s, I think this is also why it’s sometimes very attractive to listen to someone that says they know, that they, you know, they know the answers because we’re, you know, in a sea of mystery all the time being alive in this world, you know, and this doesn’t get you out of that process, but for me, I do think, you know, there’s kind of three ways that I think about working with intention.

Nick Werber 42:34

One is the setting it process, like the planting the seed, writing it down, which can be a really exciting and kind of expansive piece. Then, there’s what we’ve talked about, which is meeting the barriers, which is, can be so shocking how different it feels, it’s like, it was so expansive in the beginning now it’s so friction-filled, and that can kind of discourage people but there’s a piece in between and maybe all around, all of it, where I do think it’s nice to have some sort of practice where you’re connecting to your intentions on a regular basis. And you don’t even have to do it every day. But for me that writing it down and stepping on the sheets of paper, I do that once every other week with my intentions, to just see, you know, how am I feeling now? Is there still kind of a change or anything that needs to be shifted here? How am I sitting with it, just to kind of keep allowing my own intuition, my own body awareness to keep teaching me and showing me new things. But if you know even the most trained somatic healers that spend all their time with body awareness, which I really spend a lot of my time leaning on my body awareness even with my clients, that’s how a lot of my intuition comes through. You know, the body. It speaks in feeling, it’s not in words. And you know, even that, I think is a metaphor. It’s like, so much of the way life speaks to us is it’s the exception is when it’s extremely direct and says, go do this. But a lot of it is, you know, there are messages that are kind of in a gray area and it’s up to us to feel, what feels right for us.

Candice Wu 44:27

I didn’t really set intentions this year.

Nick Werber 44:38

You’re screwed. The way you said it was like you dropped a bomb.

Candice Wu 44:52

All this talk about intentions, and well, I think that as I’m reflecting on myself, that there just been different ways that I’ve worked with the process of intention and setting it and some processes feel more epic than others. And there are times in my life where it feels that it needs a very, almost like a ceremony to set an intention and to create the space for it. And other times of my life, it feels like a quieter process that’s, maybe this is also more along with the evolution of my own capacity and healing. That it feels almost like a part of me, a part of each moment, in fact, that if I had to put words as you eloquently said, you know, this is a feeling, this is an experience. But if I had to put words into the process, it might be something like, where am I right now and what am I feeling? And what do I want to lean into right now in the capacity of who I am like, the state of being that I’m in?

Candice Wu 46:17

And so the words I’d give it right now as far as intention, maybe it’s just going back to what I said in the beginning, surrender, and trust. And I’m not sure if that’s the intention, or if that’s just how I want to be right now, surrendering. And it’s very moment to moment.

Candice Wu 46:38

And I found that in the last couple of months, my astrologer said to me that it was Uranus and the chaos of Uranus, that it brings this unpredictability and changing your mind moment to moment even. What was in this moment can be totally the opposite the next or the next day or the next week, and I have felt that very much in the last couple of months. And so when I have planned too far ahead, for me, it will reveal itself. So I just felt like I’m just not going to waste my time doing that. And that’s very particular to me and my process. I don’t know if other people are relating to that. Maybe if you have the same birth chart as I do. But, surrendering to the moment and going deeper though, not just like to the topical, satisfaction of the moment, but something deeper of, a deeper movement towards the next movement. So in a way, it’s very unknown. It’s just this movement to the next. So yeah, there’s my confession about intention.

Nick Werber 48:00

Candice, I feel what you’re sharing about the way you’re working with intention just makes me think, you know, that is so you, and I think that’s one of the things I really admire about you is the way that you just freefall with spontaneity in so many areas of your life, and that’s brave, that’s awesome, and so it makes sense to me that you’d be saying that and I think in some ways, maybe we represent two different poles around on the subject, and people can take kind of little bits from either of us, because for me, it’s the spontaneity and the free fall. I get kind of lost and the planning really focuses me in this way that increases my effectiveness and, but of course, there are things that are lost.

Candice Wu 48:55

It’s beautiful.

Nick Werber 48:56

And you know, and spontaneity is, so who wouldn’t benefit from embracing a little bit more spontaneity, and I think you really are like a role model for that in a beautiful way.

Candice Wu 49:08

Thank you, Nick. It’s not that I don’t get lost sometimes too, though. But I also, I guess I’m okay with getting a little lost. Maybe that’s the thing.

Nick Werber 49:23

You have a high tolerance for it, maybe it’s a way of saying it.

Candice Wu 49:28

Maybe, but yes, I think you’re right. You know, there’s just a time for all different kinds of tools, and I think the processes you’re bringing up, they’re incredibly powerful, and they do work at times, work I mean, they will open things up and they will, if you follow through, if or I guess I should only speak for myself: when I feel through the resistance, I’ve landed in exactly where I want it to be in a way, but in a place, which I couldn’t even fathom! And on the other hand, I know it somewhere in my body, that’s what I wanted.

Candice Wu 50:10

So yeah, I think just putting up a menu of how we can all approach this thing called human experience, it’s really great. But let’s talk about family and lineage; and what you’re thinking about in terms of how that intersects with intention.

Nick Werber 50:38

Sure. So you know, for people that might not know, it’s really the focus of my practice is around how family and family history are at the root of so much of the barriers that we experience and you know, the way when I speak to this, I’m not really speaking to it from this kind of, maybe like a clinical perspective at it for me, it’s really at this kind of soul level that we’re born to these, this mother and father, you know we were, we might have had older siblings or younger siblings, or no siblings at all, and that becomes this very powerful template that follows us around. You know, the roles that we’ve played with our family, the types of people we were surrounded by, you know, I think I said an example is: if you had a parent that was a narcissist, and one of them was distant; and then… did you try to befriend the narcissist or did you reject them; and try to ally with the distant parent or, you know, the permutations are infinite. But it becomes this bedrock by which so much of what we’ve become, or how we emerge out of our family is so much a reflection, either an acceptance or rejection of where we come from, and why this, I think is relevant into intentions is, I think so many of us are probably aware on some level that our family has intentions too, and that those intentions were pushed on us. You know, and so the maybe the simplest one would be, go be a doctor, be a lawyer, but there it goes deeper than that, and then I’m actually very fortunate, and you know, and it’s actually complicated. When you don’t get this, it’s also confusing, too. But I would lean towards saying, I’m fortunate that I came from a family that the main message I got was just all we want for you is to be happy. I mean, that’s like I am very very thankful that I got that message, and there was not a push to be a certain thing. I didn’t have to be something.

Candice Wu 53:10

Wow!

Nick Werber 53:10

However —

Candice Wu 53:12

Yeah.

Nick Werber 53:13

Yeah, not to be glossed over.

Candice Wu 53:17

Yeah.

Nick Werber 53:17

I mean, that’s a huge deal. Yeah, it’s a big deal.

Candice Wu 53:22

But guess what’s the shadow side of it? What?

Nick Werber 53:24

Completely, yeah, completely shaped my life that I received that message.

Candice Wu 53:29

Yes.

Nick Werber 53:33

One of the shadow sides is, if you’re just supposed to be happy all the time, if that’s the goal, then you’re going to be falling short all the time.

Candice Wu 53:42

Yeah, I wonder —

Nick Werber 53:44

-the whole happiness at all times.

Candice Wu 53:45

All we want for you to is to be happy. Yeah, I didn’t know if it was literally happy, you know, and the pressure to be happy to come with that or if that just meant it was open, but it’s, yeah, sounding like that would create a lot of, we’re much more than just happy in our experience of life.

Nick Werber 54:12

And there’s depression in my family, which is, so obviously what that is a reaction.

Candice Wu 54:18

Now when you say that, yes.

Nick Werber 54:23

And so, you know, so then it becomes, well, what if I don’t, you know, it’s a little bit confusing. So it’s you know, it’s funny how these messages no matter what they are, even if it’s so simple and sounding so innocent… we just want you to be happy. It still gets confusing.

Candice Wu 54:41

And in a way, we could just turn it around and say, and maybe this is where you’re going but seeing that maybe the words were, are more, maybe the words are all I want us to be happy, coming from wherever that came from, but impressed upon you, it’s a totally different experience.

Nick Werber 55:09

Well, Candice, I think you’re nailing it right now, and we’re about to go very deep into my own, you know, constellation, but it’s yes, absolutely. It is, there’s a funny way and I think this can be extrapolated that the desires that our family have for us are so much, obviously a desire to have it, reflect on them in a certain way, and you know, absolutely the message of I just want you to be happy was, if you’re happy, then I can be happy and you know, maybe that will fix things for me and funny enough, me and my sibling were not very happy.

Candice Wu 55:56

That’s just a strange thing.

Candice Wu 56:03

Yeah.

Nick Werber 56:05

Yeah, that has to be earned, and it’s a process but I want to kind of bring it back slightly of our family has intentions for us, sometimes they’re very concrete, we’d like you to do a certain job, we’d like to be a certain type of person, and so when we’re setting our own intentions, that has to be included in our awareness about, you know, what is our intentions and what is our the intentions that we’re carrying, actually for someone else in a way, you know, if I’m happy then if I can do that, then finally maybe my mom can be happy.

Nick Werber 56:43

And so there’s a piece of that, that needs to be respected, and there’s also another part of intentions that I think is really important which is that anytime we change in a way that we are leaving this fear of where we come from, you know, you want to make a million dollars, and no one in your family ever did that, you are breaking through a barrier there that you know you are you’re part of this family consciousness and you’re leaving it, and so there is an element of guilt that comes with that. Whether you’re aware of it or not, that sometimes when we connect to our intentions and we’re creating change in our life, there’s a part of it where we are leaving something behind, you know, that’s change and in any form, you know, to connect to something new, you’re always in a way leaving something behind, and so that factors into our intention setting to —

Candice Wu 57:50

Absolutely!

Nick Werber 57:51

-where we come from, you know, what we emerged in within our family.

Candice Wu 57:58

Now, I feel this conversation is flowing two ways in my mind at the moment. Looking at our own intentions, and I love what you said about respecting the pieces that may connect with an inheritance or with other people in our life, or maybe given to us just respecting that versus you saying, no, that’s a bad intention then right? To give that up or change that, but just respecting, just honoring it, is just such a lovely approach you’re bringing.

Nick Werber 58:41

Well, and maybe the way of adding to that would be to say, you know, just because our parents wanted something for us, doesn’t mean it’s bad, and this starts to get into, you know, after working with many different people of different family backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds, you know, I feel very strongly that the family we’re born into is this incredible, it’s a wealth of information, it’s a huge teacher for all of us, and even if you disagree with the pieces of what they shared with you, there’s, you know, they still taught you how to tie your shoes and maybe cook. You know, there’s a million basic things that come across from a family that, you know, doesn’t matter how much you reject or how much you disagree with you. You’ve taken from them.

Candice Wu 59:46

Yeah. Absolutely, and there’s so much conversation in the world event, intention setting about getting to the why or understanding why you’re choosing that, and I think that’s very important and it’s part of what you’re bringing forward in this conversation, is what are the pieces that influence, the reason that you want this or you know, whether that’s personal family or other, any other systems you’re part of or if you believe in past lives, but here we’re speaking about family, and when you said just because parents wanted something for us, doesn’t mean it’s bad. I feel if we also get to the why of like, they wanted to be a doctor say, or they wanted you to just stay in the lines and not make a mess and not stick out, that there’s a why underneath that, and we can really get to that essential love that they wanted for us, and I can’t assume that’s for many people are all people, but it’s in my experience that lives underneath it, that there’s something underneath in the undercurrent of that more topical message that people have gotten, that says, well, we really just wanted you to be safe or we really just wanted you to be yourself or be happy or which, as we’re talking about comes with all sorts of stuff, but there’s something else underneath it that we can look at as well.

Nick Werber 1:01:41

You’re totally right, and I think safety is especially the big word and that brings up for me, you know, something that Suzi said, Suzi Tucker, our shared teacher, about this subject. You know, Suzi had been talking about the just ancestral component of Jewish culture across the world, and where you know how the history of persecution is affected people today, and you know, one of her, she always says these things are always like an aside, all the best, and then it’s like, whoa, I need to write that down, and what she would say is that in the shadow of the Holocaust and how many people were lost, it’s there’s many, obviously, Jewish families that push their children to become doctors, lawyers, bankers, and she put it, she said, you know, what’s the common thread line between so many of these career paths? It’s that there they are central, they are needed. Your society can’t work without them, and you know, when you think about the genocide, it’s like, how do you become necessary in the world? And I think that’s a really clear example of how ancestral history affects family on a really, you know, the macro affects the micro, but this is happening across all cultures and with all different kinds of histories that the past influences exactly what our mothers are telling us today.

Candice Wu 1:03:31

Absolutely, how do you become necessary in the world? That hits somewhere deep.

Candice Wu 1:03:43

So the thought I was going to say about looking into directions, like looking at the family in the past, and looking at what’s been carried through the generations and how that comes into our intentions and looking forward also in the other direction, well maybe it’s the same, but I had an experience where someone told me if you do want to have children, make sure you don’t do it because of wanting to give your children a different experience than you got, and I was like, yeah, of course, and then I was like, oh yeah, of course. Because actually, the thought that came next was, well, then what would the reason be?

Candice Wu 1:04:34

And there was this part of me that couldn’t think of what would be a good reason. Like, how do I verbalize what would be a good reason? How is it clear enough from the reactions of myself or from the reactions of my ancestry? And that was a little tricky, and what I got too was just for love and experiencing, allowing someone to come into life through me, but that they’re completely free to be however they want to be, and that was really hard to, in some ways, articulate it clear enough, you know, because wanting your child to be happy, there just can be so many shadow sides to that and unknowns unconscious parts. But even what I’m saying, I don’t know if there are some dark, like, unconscious parts, but I guess I’m tangenting a little bit because I also, as you know, Nick, I work with horses and I enjoy time with horses, and yet I struggle all the time with the fact that we keep them behind fences, and we keep them accessible to humans the way we want, but do they want that, and it would be some time as a whole for that to shift, but if we really believed in the freedom of another being, then you know, how do we see, and treat them, and think about that? And so I guess looping back to intention when it comes to bringing life in, maybe that does apply too to the things that we create, that are not just human life or animal life or caretaking for others, but what we’re creating as far as what we’re birthing.

Nick Werber 1:06:38

I think there’s so much metaphor and in birth and creation, and I think in many ways, you know, the creative pursuits are kind of a process, a feminine process and a lot of ways that birthing, that creation, that I really, I do appreciate what you said shared, and I just wanted to acknowledge that I think you are not alone, and I can imagine there are many people listening right now that would resonate with that about having children in order to change, somehow change the way, you know, give them an experience you didn’t have, and there’s a piece of me that just wants to say, I don’t want to, I don’t think it’s totally wrong to come into that, to come into it that way, but I think it’s so important to have the awareness that you know.

Nick Werber 1:07:39

There’s a cartoon about this that I love, they’re kind of these candy hearts, like the ones that we give out on Valentine’s Day, but their characters and one of them just has on the candy heart section, it says we will not let you get fucked up, and then the mother side says: our parents fucked us up, and then the little baby heart just says: “a new kind of fucked up”.

Candice Wu 1:08:00

Oh! I love that! Please send me that. we are going to link that here too.

Nick Werber 1:08:05

It’s the clearest, like you get it immediately.

Candice Wu 1:08:11

Yeah.

Nick Werber 1:08:12

And this is a huge thing, I’m sitting with right now where I am talking about with my partner about, you know, when we might have children and what I’m bringing them into the world, why I’m doing that, what is the intention behind that is a big thing, and I do get wrapped up sometimes and all the things I would do differently, and then I catch myself saying, you know, I actually was raised in a way that I think my parents were very focused on doing it differently, and that is, it has its own shortcomings in a funny way.

Candice Wu 1:08:51

I really appreciate you bringing that up and holding space for that not being wrong, and I do feel that too, and when we think that things like that are wrong or like that we shouldn’t do that, it can compel us, yes to find something different but it can also be a way that we don’t acknowledge, that we actually have those true desires inside of us and the more we put a blanket over that, saying, okay, let’s like, let’s not, let’s resist that and let’s not use that intention. Sometimes that really backfires and it just lives anyway.

Candice Wu 1:09:47

Circling back to the beginning of our conversation, you know, where you said, I think these feelings I’m having are going to emerge no matter what, and there’s such a power to just say acknowledging it, and respecting that and seeing where it has an effect if you can and claiming it. So it has a place instead of just this like, lingering thing somewhere in the unconscious that does pass forward and lives itself out is the little baby heart.

Candice Wu 1:10:29

So do you want to talk about one more topic, Nick? I know we just like laid out so many. So good, but we kind of are leaning into resistance, what we resist persists, but what are you wanting to talk about now?

Nick Werber 1:10:49

You know, I think again, it just all feels like a time of year to touch on these guys, but I would love to talk about the phenomenon of black sheep and fan. Because I think this is the time of year where all that stuff comes right back up and there are so many people that were the black sheep that are, you know, still in recovery from their family gathering or have you know, stayed home and held certain boundaries and, you know, had to suffer watching all the family photos go by on their Facebook feed or whatever; and I just, I think something that is just so important to me is a real respect for the phenomenon of black sheep, how they emerge and that they are such an important part of the evolution of our society and our culture, and so that’s what comes up for me, so then, I’ve, and then now I feel like I just want to put you on the spot. Are you the black sheep Candice, of your family?

Candice Wu 1:11:59

I saw your post that you are not the black sheep. And I was like, am I?

Nick Werber 1:12:04

I know.

Candice Wu 1:12:07

Yeah, that was great by the way. I really appreciate that, so am I the black sheep?

Nick Werber 1:12:13

Yeah, I can speak more to that too, but yes, I was not the black sheep in my family which a lot of people are surprised to hear that. But the spotlight was taken by another, but yeah, so yeah, you said did you say yes, you are —

Candice Wu 1:12:28

I was thinking about it. It depends on how you define black sheep, so would you define it for the people listening and for me?

Nick Werber 1:12:44

That’s a, it’s a great, yeah. You know, I think if the black sheep is characterized by being someone that feels very strongly out of place, sometimes people that feel that the black sheep and their family feel like their parents are their parents, in some way.

Candice Wu 1:13:06

Yeah.

Nick Werber 1:13:06

You know, how could I possibly be their child and they are often the carrier and the target of all the shame of the family. It’s like there’s this sense of, you know, its parents might have a tendency to almost project all their shortcomings on to the child that didn’t do what they told them or wasn’t enough or should have been smarter or different in some way, which by the way, children are always a reflection of their parents and so for a parent to somehow pointed to a child and say you’re the problem is just very short-sided. But so it’s I think it’s yeah, it’s often they feel a certain level of shame, black sheep, as they get older, might spend very little time with their family because they might become kind of tired of it all and I, you know, I think the kind of classic was like television show thing of, you know, family dinner and the black sheep eat the fastest, tries to get out of it, gets away from the table as quickly as possible, barely talks, if they do, it’s very brief. You know, kind of, it’s almost like black sheep I think have to be very protective of themselves because they can be such target within families.

Candice Wu 1:14:48

Yes, that was me. That’s like almost everything you named. I was like, oh, yeah, check, that’s been my experience.

Candice Wu 1:15:00

At certain points in my life, good chunks of my life definitely felt out of place. Like, how could these be my parents, but then I also saw ways in which I was just like them, a lot of shame, and very much directed towards me even it trickled into my siblings, how could it not, you know, the same directed to me.

Candice Wu 1:15:28

I was known for like, stirring the pot and making things worse; and that’s by virtue of me expressing my feelings, you know, saying what’s going on and what I feel and it was a lot of things my family wasn’t ready to look at, and I, so desperately needed them to and needed them to acknowledge because, for me, it felt like survival, and not having enough resource for myself to survive the emotions that were going on and the trauma that was passed down many years that hadn’t been dealt with, that hadn’t been integrated.

Candice Wu 1:16:15

Yeah, many moments of like running away from the dinner table, having stuffed my food in my mouth, and crying. Those are really rough memories, you know, and I’ve worked on them so many times, and this is still a little tender place. But I can say now that I’m in the best time of connection with my family after doing so much work, inner work and embodied work, constellations work, there’s still more of course, but I actually enjoy my family and they enjoy me now and they’ve also looked at a lot, and so the same isn’t really is as strong as like a strong of a tidal wave, and just maybe exists in little pockets now, but as far as like the family system, it seems, from where I’m standing.

Candice Wu 1:17:22

So yeah, I don’t feel like I’m the black sheep anymore, but I once was, and I know that you had shared Bert Hellinger’s idea of black sheep, think on your Instagram and your social media; and many people have shared that it’s really beautiful because speaking to the black sheep as the change, the healing bringing the evolution of the family system forward is so real to me too, and at times, that’s felt like too much of a responsibility because it was and other times, it felt like an honor, and of course my place… it makes sense… like I wanted to do that but so you’re not the black sheep?

Nick Werber 1:18:12

You know, it’s so funny, this always happens is that as I connect to something over and over again, it deepens, and I just, as I’m hearing you, I feel like, I have actually felt I really connected to something about me that’s a little bit more than maybe what I had shared, which is yes, traditionally in my family, there’s the obvious black sheep is my younger brother and he just was a huge handful in a lot of ways and really offended so much of the family in so many ways, but what I would say is, you know, I said this: when we started that he kind of took the role for me because I feel if he wasn’t there then it would have been me, and I always kind of wished I could have been as disruptive as him. But then I think I had this awareness of how it would just kind of destroy the family to have another kid that is rebelling like that and so I felt conscious of that of like, I don’t have a place to be the rebel anymore.

Nick Werber 1:19:26

But I will say this, is what I connected to as I was talking is that I’m actually, truly, from a family of black sheep. My father was the black sheep of his family and my mother was the black sheep of her family, and maybe that’s not absolutely 100% clear from my mother. There’s like a little bit of a gray area there but for my father, it absolutely was, and so it’s funny, it’s like I’m the child of, I’m like, second-generation black sheep in some way which has a huge role in so much of who I am because I wasn’t raised with religion. I’m the first person and both sides of my family to not be raised with religion at all; and there are a million other traditions that I was maybe not part of for partly just because of that, because there are so many traditions connected to religion.

Nick Werber 1:20:24

So, there’s a funny, I think I realized I’m broadening the perspective a little bit. I’m kind of in the sphere of the black sheep, but maybe on the micro-level, it was more clear that my brother was the big one. But can I actually, that Bert Hellinger quote, may I just read it?

Candice Wu 1:20:44

Please do.

Nick Werber 1:20:45

I think it really captures what I feel about black sheep and I think so many people when they hear it, have a feeling to add. So I’ll just read it. I brought it up because I think I had a feeling we’d be talking about it, so, “The so-called black sheep of the family are, in fact, seekers of deliberation roads for the family tree. Those members of the tree who do not adapt to the rules or traditions of the family system, those who are constantly seeking to revolutionize beliefs, going in contrast to roads marked by family traditions, those criticize, tried and even rejected those by general, they are called to release the tree of repetitive stories that frustrate entire generations. The black sheep, those who do not adapt, those who scream rebel, repair, detoxify and create a new blooming branch, countless unfulfilled desires, unfulfilled dreams, frustrated talents of our ancestors manifest themselves in the black sheep’s rebellion looking to take place. The family tree by inertia will want to continue to maintain the castrating and toxic course of its trunk which makes its task, the black sheeps task, difficult and conflicting that no one makes you doubt. Take care of your rarity as the most precious flower of your tree. You are the dream of all your ancestors.” And that’s by Bert Hellinger.

Nick Werber 1:21:01

So lovely.

Nick Werber 1:22:29

Yeah, you know, it just for me, it captures so many things, but I just, I do feel that black sheep carve new roads for families, you know, without black sheep, families can just keep repeating over and over again; and it’s the black sheep that kind of forced them to face things. Even if the family that sits around the “black sheep” doesn’t receive anything, doesn’t take anything in, you know that the children of the black sheep are never going to be the same. They’re always going to experience traditions and family in a different way. So it’s, I think black sheep are just so intertwined with evolution and as he says, you are the dream of your ancestors and I really believe that our ancestors, it is their dream that we evolve and become more of who we are and more in tune with, what fulfills us and what serves others in the world and so that’s, I really, I can’t say enough of how I put black sheep on a pedestal, I really have a lot of respect for that role and families. So thank you, Candice, for playing that role and coming through it.

Candice Wu 1:24:08

Oh my god! No, I’m starting to think about black sheep in a broader context too, because originally when you said are you the black sheep and I had read your post referring to your brother, I started to think about black sheep in this sort of identified patient kind of way. You know, that language comes from the world of psychology and counseling. Like when a family says, we need help because so and so has a problem in our family, they could name one person as the one with the problem and yeah, I often think of that person is maybe the black sheep and that they have a lot of, they can typically have a lot of symptoms or maybe there’s alcoholism or there’s something that becomes very severe that the family cannot continue to look away; and I wouldn’t say that was me.

Candice Wu 1:25:14

I mean, the worst thing I ever did was, and it’s kind of bad, when I was 16, I got a speeding ticket for 51 over the speed limit. Yeah, it’s a lot. I don’t know, yeah, it was crazy. I never drove that way again but that’s probably the worst that I ever drove and so I couldn’t relate to it in terms of being a certain kind of like, severe set of symptoms or experiencing rebellion in a way that is very like oppositional or something like that but I think that’s the way I’m seeing now can be helpful for anyone that doesn’t perhaps relate to that kind of experience too, you know, and as you’re talking, Nick, that there are parts of us that feel like black sheep, there might be a part of us that we can connect with — has felt like it’s been black sheep, so to say. Maybe that’s just shame, you know, where we feel shame or —

Nick Werber 1:26:29

Well, I love that, it’s that perhaps the part of us that doesn’t feel like it belongs is actually the part that is bringing something to the world. You know, we don’t belong because something that we are, it’s not here yet, it’s not accepted yet but actually, if we can find acceptance with it in ourselves and just and share it and be it, then we actually are giving something to the world we’re hoping it, you know, by including more.

Candice Wu 1:27:07

Yeah, so we can find our inner black sheep, and parts of us that don’t feel like they belong, those are the most essential to the entire wave of evolution and the dreams of the ancestors of all kinds.

Nick Werber 1:27:27

Wow, it’s like where newness emerges from. Wow.

Candice Wu 1:27:37

That’s nice, Nick, nice. So nice place to close, to feel complete.

Nick Werber 1:27:43

I think there’s no way that we could switch to something else —

Candice Wu 1:27:44

Yeah, we’re done here. We are done, except I would love for you to just briefly talk about your retreat. Yeah, it’s coming out February 14 through the 18th…

Nick Werber 1:28:02

…through the 19th actually. Yeah, so, you know, I know you’ve done many retreats, Candice and I feel very strongly that you know, Family Constellations are beautiful one on one, they’re beautiful in a group workshop setting. But I believe that they take on their most powerful, most resourceful state when they’re in a retreat setting, there’s something about gathering with the group and being in that container for multiple days that just the energy just builds and I see it in my own facilitation. I mean, these the retreat work, I think that’s beautiful, and so, —

Candice Wu 1:28:55

Yeah, absolutely.

Nick Werber 1:28:56

Yeah and you know, I knew, and I know this because we met at the intensive, which is a form of a retreat, which was a super powerful and I think meeting you as a part of what made that so powerful for me

Candice Wu 1:29:11

Same here. Yeah, it’s huge

Nick Werber 1:29:16

So, yeah, so this retreat, it starts we’re going to be in Mazunte, Mexico, which is Southern Mexico, and it’s overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and it’s just a really beautiful place. Again, you, it’s like you can walk five minutes to the water, and we’ll be doing Family Constellations work and various forms of Shadow Work. The stuff that, you know, it really goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this call of, you know, when you set these intentions, you will meet certain barriers and at that point, you know, it’s important to call in your resources. So all the work we’re doing is literally to meet you at that point is, you know, resources that help people actually do the work of chipping away and doing the integration and processing with these barriers. So we’ll get there on Friday and be doing that work on this beautiful terrace that is kind of open-air and I’m just, I’m super excited about it because these groups come together and it’s just people leave as incredible friends and I still see from my past retreats, you know, people basically communicating with each other that I know had met at some of the work that we have been doing.

Candice Wu 1:30:44

That’s awesome. Yeah.

Nick Werber 1:30:45

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:30:46

It sounds beautiful, and what a great time to you know, if you live in the Midwest or somewhere called to get out into a little bit of warmth and get the fire on the inside.

Nick Werber 1:31:01

That’s a big part of it. Yeah, that was a big part of why we reschedule it, you know, there’s going to be really beautiful deep work going on. But there is a lot of space built in to just go chill on the beach, which is, you know, just as important, and the weather I think is like, you know, the mid–80s basically, winter.

Candice Wu 1:31:28

So good.

Nick Werber 1:31:29

Sounds pretty good to me.

Candice Wu 1:31:31

Awesome. Where can people find that retreat, Nick?

Nick Werber 1:31:37

So if you go to my website, which is just NickNWerber.com, you can go there or my Instagram is @nwerber (instagram.com/nwerber), and then all of its actually being hosted through Maha Rose, which is this incredible organization that’s based in Brooklyn, and that’s of Maha Rose’s website, www.maharose.com is another place where you can read up about it.

Candice Wu 1:32:06

Thank you so much, Nick. This was fun, and do you feel like we, you? Yeah. How did we do on our intentions?

Nick Werber 1:32:19

I think we did great, and I really am. I think we did well, because I really, that it was funny that moment where you said, I think we have to close there was actually the moment where I had felt a sense of, oh, wow, I actually this is, it’s the exact kind of subject that I will spend the next few weeks thinking about of. You know, all those places where I don’t feel I belong, of which there are many, you know, is that possible? That’s just something that’s emerging that the world can I respect it in that way. So I think there is a fullness that I feel when I just connect to that right now, so I think we did well and, you know.

Candice Wu 1:33:04

Absolutely, yeah, to each their own of their experience and yeah, I’ll be thinking about that too, and it’s kind of like a twist on something I’ve been doing for some time. But the words are so poignant now like all the ways I feel that I don’t belong now or maybe in the past, yeah.

Nick Werber 1:33:33

Yeah, well, it’s so, you know, obviously, the reflex of way to experience that is it’s just the opposite. I don’t belong and there must be something wrong with me and all the stuff that we talked about. So it definitely is turning an idea on its head in a way that you know, I don’t know about you, but the moment I connect with it, I just, I feel that sense of my body relaxes and I feel clearer and you know, for me, it’s all the signals that there’s —

Candice Wu 1:34:03

Yeah, same here. I feel that playfulness that I was wanting about it, to approach it with playfulness. It’s a fun process to think about it in this way and I learned so much. Thank you, Nick.

Nick Werber 1:34:23

Thank you, Candice. I feel like we can do this again.

Candice Wu 1:34:26

We still have to talk about all sorts of things like letting — like, kind of

Candice Wu 1:34:33

I love that topic, that was the ones that kept me up and what we resist persists. Like how just looking at that in different ways and through the body. So yeah, a little teaser for our next podcast whenever that comes, but let’s do it.

Nick Werber 1:34:52

The perfect cliffhanger for now.

Candice Wu 1:34:55

Thank you, Nick. Okay, definitely see you next time and just want to say one more thing, actually, thank you so much for offering the music for the Embody Podcast, the intro and outro music. I still use it. It’s still on every single podcast and you created it. It’s so lovely.

Nick Werber 1:35:17

I know. I love it.

Candice Wu 1:35:18

Thank you.

Nick Werber 1:35:20

Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m so glad.

Candice Wu 1:35:26

I’m so grateful for Nick’s presence out in the world, and what he’s doing in support of other people, and in growing the work of Family Constellations in his unique way. It’s really beautiful to be challenged by his work and to learn and grow from it and also to exchange in the ways that we do as friends and as colleagues. Thank you so much, Nick, and thank you all out there for listening. I hope this does give you something to nibble on as we close today. Be sure to check out Nick’s website if you’re interested in his work or the retreat coming up, and his Instagram where he shares a lot of his writing, and again, his website is nicknwerber.com, and you can find all of the links at the show notes related to this episode at candice.com/nickparttwo.

Candice Wu 1:36:24

And as we send each other forward into this new year 2020, this is already been quite a long podcast, so I’m just going to pretty much close it out from here and send you off with of course Nick’s lovely intro outro music if you’re interested in staying connected, you can feel free to sign up for my newsletter at candice.com/embody where I share all about the podcast, and the experientials, and meditations that come out as well as events, self-love notes, and updates about me. Thanks so much and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

As a gift, Nick Werber has offered one of his favorite audio meditations on the subject of consenting to people and the present moment as they are. The meditation is originally written by German psychologist, Bert Hellinger, and as read by Dr. Michael Picucci. Dr. Picucci was one of Nick’s greatest mentors before he passed away, and Nick spent a year recording several of his meditations along with the audio version of his book, Vocalizing Source Energy. The content of the meditation gets at universal and enduring truth that our perception of the world around us shapes the world around us. What an honor to have him here on the podcast, sharing this experience with all of you. Though I’ve never met either one of you, Michael and Bert Hellinger, thank you.

Michael Picucci 1:11

This is Michael Picucci. I’m going to recite my own adaptation of a brief guided meditation, originally written by German psychologist, Bert Hellinger. The name of this meditation is Consenting. It is intended to be a deep and meaningful experience.

Before doing so, may I suggest you find a private, comfortable place for yourself, and then slowly find a sense of embodiment and an awareness of your body, perhaps take a few conscious breaths just noticing the natural in and out of the breath. Give yourself a few minutes to notice that we have a live body as well as a mind and let this awareness be an accompaniment to the meditation. As I share the meditation, feel free to let the words wash over you as you are listening to them.

This particular guided meditation is intended to have its own special effects on many levels and dimensions of your experience. Feel free to listen to it as often as it can be helpful to you in finding a better ground of being.

I begin, consenting, as soon as I have consented to other persons as they are, they can feel at ease. As soon as I have consented to a situation, as it is, it changes. It reveals to me new possibilities for action. On an inward journey, I may experience that an obstacle stands in my way. Often, it is something that I have not yet consented to, for example, a pain or loss that I have not gotten over, was something that must be resolved. There is something else to which I must agree, the time that I still need. As soon as I have agreed that I need more time, time leaves me in peace. I may move on.

I experienced something similar with my pain. What happens when I agree to it? When I no longer try to get rid of it? When I take it close to my heart and allow it to calm down in me? When I permit it to take the lead? Perhaps, this pain wants to take me to something that I have lost sight of, for example, another person, maybe this pain guides me back to something that is waiting for recognition and for a solution. Therefore, I stay with this pain as it is the whole time.

With this pain, something recollects itself inside of me. Is it that I pause on my inward journey, in the moment, exactly here? Or is it that this pain is leading me on to a decisive step because I have agreed to it? It takes me by the hand and leads me further and deeper. When I simply surrender, what happens to my pain? My pain, too, calm down and finds its peace. It closes its eyes as if its work is done.

As soon as I agree to everything, as it is, I gain precious time. As I stay in peace with me, something in me and outside of me grows as if of its own accord. These inner journeys are movements of life, I have agreed to everything as it is, I feel free to engage in the essential aspects of life. I may move on in a decisive manner.

These inward journeys of movements of life, what I have agreed to everything as it is, I feel free to engage in the essential aspects of life. I may move on in a decisive manner.

The forces of life first collect inside, only then, do they turn outside. Insights too, a first perceived inside. After that, they set something in motion outside. On our inward journeys, we consent everything as it is, first to ourselves and to our situation, to life as it is, and to the lives of other people. In this way, our inward journeys continue outside as well.

Our journeys to source energy, open other space for us inside. Rilke calls this space, the inner space of the world. In this space, we relate to life in a more comprehensive way, we see it differently, and we become different. After this, we return to our own space, changed, and we turn toward our everyday lives, changed. What is the nature of this change? We are in its service, a line with enough love.

Candice Wu 0:00

In the words of our guest today, Roxanne Partridge, to all y’all soul working women befriending your shadows, liberating clustered golden eggs, unearthing buried vessels of vitality, lubricating cutthroats with song, cleansing bones of patriarchy, rewiring your birthright to love into the light of your eyes and the fiber of your being, and rebirthing yourself with your blood, I see you.

Candice Wu 0:27

Roxanne works with menstruality, sexuality, empowerment, and embodiment from the depths up and out.

Candice Wu 0:38

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 1:13

Hey, it’s wonderful to have you here today. It is the first month of December 2019. Wow, we are headed into the depths of winter for some places in the world and how fitting because we’re talking a lot about the darkness and depths within ourselves here in this episode with Roxanne Partridge. She is the founder of Embody Period, which has many meanings, which you’ll hear about in this episode.

Candice Wu 1:47

I have a couple of announcements before we jump into everything, first, this episode is the 100th episode of the Embody Podcast. 100, that means it’s the hundredth episode but that doesn’t include the experiential and meditations that are held under as an umbrella of the main episodes. So the main episodes are up to 100, so that is a big accomplishment for this podcast. And for me, it’s been just wonderful doing this podcast and coming up with ideas, sharing, and putting my voice out there in this way. I thank you so much for all of you who have in some way fueled this podcast to continue forward and to have the life and love that it does. All of you listening, all of you sharing the podcast with someone, a friend or client who may benefit just remembering it and tuning in once in a while or if you are a consistent listener, and if you have supported the podcast in any way with monetary donations, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. And you are all here. I invite you all to celebrate with me the hundredth episode.

Candice Wu 3:14

I have another piece to share but this one is of a different tone. I want to share that Silver, the horse that I connected with at Silver Horse Retreat with Sarah Fancy, my mentor for Horse Constellations, Silver has passed away. If you’ve been following my podcast, you might have already heard about Silver and how he, the second morning I was there on retreat with Sarah and the horses, that he went down, he was lying down and he couldn’t get up because his leg was stuck in a part of the barrier, the fence and she had to pull him out and he like huffed and puffed and finally got on his legs. It was crouching down and then bounced off the railing, and then he was fine. And she was worried at that time that he was getting old and maybe it was going to pass soon but he lived on for another, think, six to eight months after that up until just last week.

Candice Wu 4:18

In another podcast, I’ve shared about my meditations with him and Horse Constellation experiences with him. I’ll link those in the show notes if you want to hear about my experiences and take this time to honor Silver with me. There are three main episodes that highlight my experiences with Silver or stories about him through Sarah and those are at CandiceWu.com/dancingwithhorses or CandiceWu.com/horseconstellations, or CandiceWu.com/sarafancy.

Candice Wu 4:54

And right now I’d like to take this moment to honor Silver, to thank him for his love and presence, connection, and all of the lives and souls and hearts that he’s touched, including mine. He lived, I believe 35 long years of life, and outlived many other horses, according to Sarah, and I am just so blessed that he was on Earth at a time that I got to meet him and share the time together.

Candice Wu 5:27

I will never forget the time I was trying to bring him up to this smaller arena and there was a little trail, a rocky trail that went upward to get to this space and I had taken the wrong way up and he was telling me “No” because he refused to go up it. And at some point, he gave in. I was really patient, but he gave in and said, Okay, let’s do this and sure enough, it was the wrong way and it was this disaster of going uphill. And so I ended up just going back down, of course the right way and at that point, he did not want to go back up and so I chose to listen and we walked together back towards his normal space and we just stayed outside of it. But we stood there and meditated for about 35 minutes just standing there, neither of us even made any moves and we had this beautiful meditation experience, standing in presence together. Even though there was hay on the ground, he wasn’t bothered or interested, he was just with me. We were together and it was magical.

Candice Wu 6:48

Thank you, Silver and I’m sending you my blessings on your journey and may you be in peace and love.

Candice Wu 6:59

Before we jump into the episode, it’s also fitting that the Ally with Death experiential, which is now an audio experience is out there, it is alive despite the name of death. But it is perfectly fitting for the cycles of life and death that we speak too, here in this episode, the cycle of your period, the cycle of your moon cycle, that’s your personal moon cycle and the collective moon cycles, the cycle of life and death that reflect itself through the seasonal shifts, and here, getting into the underbellies of winter.

Candice Wu 7:40

This guided audio experience is beautiful because it features music, hand pan music by artist Larry Saint Germain, who tailored the music to this specific experience to stir and shake up the blood, the stagnancy, the life force in you, anything that needs to die or be let go of what wants to be seen through you, through your soul, through your Spirit, through your body, your mind, and what wants to die off so that there can be more space for life itself, for being, for your vital core essence and the luminosity of yourself that wants to shine through on this next step of your life.

Candice Wu 8:28

And here we are, a month away from 2020 where we’re stepping into another decade of life, well, for some. So, here when we embrace death, that natural cycle of what wants to end and what needs to be looked at inside of us gets it space, gets it’s tending to and attention and love, where it fertilizes the soil for what’s coming up in your life and for beauty to be created in what’s coming, in what’s going to be revealed, all set to music that will support you in embodying this shift and transmitting the energies within yourself so that you can fully, with full-body, move forward into what is coming up for you in purposeful, meaningful experience.

Candice Wu 9:20

A shout out too, also Chris Spiegl, who produced and edited that experiential and spent his artistic attention to crafting the sounds and my voice to go together in a way that stimulates and invokes, conjures up what wants to come forward. You can find this experiential at CandiceWu.com/death and if you jump on now or soon, there’s a sale there for you, it is great as a gift to yourself or as a gift to clients, friends, family, people around you that might benefit from it as well. Again, that’s at CandiceWu.com/death.

Candice Wu 10:05

So this episode was super fun and there’s an added element of surprise here in this episode, where you’ll find out something about me and about Roxanne that connects us. It’s a very binding force between us of resonance.

Candice Wu 10:20

Roxanne Partridge is known for inspiring and guiding others into embodying their unique sustainable fullness. Women, menstruators, and individuals that seek a safe and healing and inclusive space to explore menstruality, sexuality, and embodied identity are empowered through her in-depth and creative approach. She just radiates juicy, soulful play and depth, and I absolutely love talking with her. She’s a healer, scholar, activist and has lectured and facilitated workshops in various locations as well as through her private practice and she’s also an advocate for equal rights to imagination, for images of female embodied experience.

Candice Wu 11:16

She’s informed by feminist post union liberational, archetypal, and eco psychological theory and practices and attends to the nuances of experience in the context of daily life, cultural and familial backgrounds, manifestations of the unconscious, such as dreams. She received her clinical hypnotherapy certification from the Santa Barbara Institute of hypnotherapy and trained with the revolutionary sex therapist, Gina Ogden, in her medicine wheel method of relational sexuality, and received her Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. Her background in holistic therapies and the arts form a creative container for deep and catalytic work.

Candice Wu 12:08

So, you’re in for a treat here. Feel free to grab a candle and a cup of tea or something that just makes you feel in your own aliveness or makes you feel in some sense of beauty, and enjoy.

Candice Wu 12:31

So, Roxanne, we’re here together. Are you there? Okay.

Roxanne Partridge 12:39

Hi. I’m here.

Candice Wu 12:43

You’re there. We both have our candles burning. I’ve got a cup of tea, and my salt light on, salt lamp on. And it’s just so delightful to be here with you today.

Roxanne Partridge 12:56

Same here.

Candice Wu 13:00

I just took a look at your Instagram and I just love looking at your Instagram like the juicy images and luscious words that you write and just feel so much from your soul and your gut and your being, that these words feel like they always in someplace in me and live in and awaken more of me and you, just your work inspires and guides people to bring forward they’re natural and wild and Goddess self and their sexual essence and who they are. I can’t wait to talk to you about this.

Roxanne Partridge 13:50

I love that that’s your experience, looking at my Instagram account. One thing I love about that platform is that it is so image-forward, you know, and having such wonderful access to art and a way for me, it feels like a way of, kind of watering the imagination for what’s possible, you know?

Candice Wu 14:21

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 14:22

To imagine like, you’re saying like a to give representation, excuse me, to parts of ourselves that we may not even fully know but sense. And you know what I mean like, to, to find an image that maybe is surprising or strange but somehow compelling and resonates with some experience, whether it’s like, you know, an experience of cyclicity an experience of like, a sexual sort of sense of identity and having it be reflected back. Because I feel like there can be such I mean, within patriarchy, right? Imagination, embodied imagination for women is often kind of stuck in a corner behind a door that says something like, you know, for reproduction only or crazy, or —

Candice Wu 15:33

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 15:33

You know, it’s just a social construct or something, you know.

Candice Wu 15:38

Right.

Roxanne Partridge 15:39

And how to, like, give it some more space and, you know, wander around and how it wants to speak. And like you said, the kind of messiness of that.

Candice Wu 15:51

Yeah, you know, there’s such a, like a cleaned-up version through patriarchy that you, I often find myself like breaking down in my mind around like, how we even like, the spaces and words were using. How we even let all of that imagination just go full out. In a way, I don’t think I’m describing this well, but I’m just thinking of like, nature, like, being out in nature and breaking down the wall of where we think that good work is or where we think we can do things and experience it in. I don’t even know if I’m making any sense to myself, but that’s what came up. And let’s just shift back to your work of menstrual sexual empowered embodiment and the depth up and out is what — ahm — These are your words and I love to hear from you how you see your work and what you do.

Roxanne Partridge 17:02

Yeah, thank you.

Roxanne Partridge 17:07

Yeah, from the depths, up and out. Some of what that means to me is well, from the depths it’s like the depths of psyche, the depths of soul, the depths of our body, is the kind of underworldly experiences that are of our unconscious, of our dream world at night when we’re sleeping, the parts of ourselves that may not have a lot of representation in our day to day lives and ways of creatively like inviting and befriending and welcoming those parts of ourselves that are in the depths, and getting to know who they are, who’s here? What do they need? What’s their story? And what happens as they begin to meet the waking life versions of ourselves. And I sometimes refer to this as this kind of like inner social justice work of getting to know —

Candice Wu 18:32

Yes, that makes so much sense.

Roxanne Partridge 18:34

You know, like, really befriending the marginalized parts of our psyche. And so that’s kind of what the depths means for me and what it’s like to come up and out of the depths, to rise up from the underworld, from the darkness, and find footing on the topsoil and be integrated into our day to day life and how that can change the landscape of things.

Roxanne Partridge 19:03

And in my experience for myself and also with the women I work with, usually what this begins to look like is a way greater experience of aliveness and like a real, full sense of direction that’s grounded in like, kind of our psychic roots, if you will.

Candice Wu 19:32

That’s beautiful.

Candice Wu 19:40

Your words here, about your paradigm of seeing where you see troublesome, emotional and behavioral symptoms, suffering, questions of identity instead of seeing it that way, you’re seeing that as an invitation into a deeper and wider understanding of your personal purpose, potential healing, transformation and embodied autonomy.

Candice Wu 20:09

I love these words and something that happened for us right before we started recording makes us all click because I was like, did I like, that sounds like something I want to try it. Would you like to share what you just —

Roxanne Partridge 20:28

Oh yes. So, you know, Candice, when I began to look at your work and listen to your podcasts and read your Instagram posts and the words on your website, I was like, so familiar and when we first arrange to talk and we scheduled a time, you know, I discovered we have, you and I have, like, the same exact birthday, and that we were both born the same year, on the spring equinox.

Candice Wu 21:11

It just blows my mind. I mean, I’ve met people with the same birthday before but not someone like you.

Roxanne Partridge 21:21

Oh my god! It was just, I mean, like I said, it’s so uncanny to me, like the modalities that you’ve been drawn to, the way the ideas that you synthesize, your emphasis as well as the embodiment and embodying your nature. And for me, my version of that is Embody Period with a dot at the end to have a little menstrual pun there, but it’s also like, yeah, embodiment full stop, you know, like —

Candice Wu 21:53

Yes.

Roxanne Partridge 21:54

That’s what this is all about. Yeah, you know, and that emergent kind of energy that is, especially in this part of the world, where we have four seasons of like, you know, coming out of winter and coming up, you know, and that kind of Persephone-Demeter type of story of emerging from the underworld and so towards life and new beginnings and restoration and all of that, your work speaks to that, feels so resonant to what is, you know, the ground of what I do as well and it’s just incredible to have this kind of day that we share together, be recognized, you know.

Candice Wu 22:51

It absolutely is. I’m just like, I’m still a little in awe about it and it’s so touching. It’s so cool to meet you. I mean, this isn’t the first time but to discover this together and to really see the resonance in your work and who you are. It’s amazing. Just amazing. Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 23:21

It was so cool. I haven’t met that many people with the same, I’ve met people like the day before or after. You know, and just to feel that, like, shared, I don’t know what it feels like for you. But for me it just, it feels like just part of the fiber of my being, you know, to like this energy that starts to stir as soon as we enter the month of March. It’s just like, bigger than me.

Candice Wu 23:50

Yeah, well, and I just had my astrology read. I have someone I work with every couple of months just to check in and see what’s going on in the planetary shifts and I didn’t, maybe like, ten years ago, eight years ago, I didn’t really believe in astrology very much or just didn’t have a connection and so much more than ever, it makes sense to me. And is so much just clicks with what’s already happening with what my astrologer says and how I already see that happening in my life. And so, when you shared this with me, it just, it brought all that up, this sense of how well orchestrated everything is in this universe and us being born on the same day within six hours apart. We have, you know, two different ways of expression and yet so much similarity and I know I have a moon in Gemini, so that must mean you have a moon in Gemini.

Candice Wu 25:00

You know, for those of you who know what that means, makes sense to why we’re here in this way, in our lives, I think.

Roxanne Partridge 25:09

Yeah. So sweet. Thanks for finding me.

Candice Wu 25:17

Maybe you found me in some way because it felt like, it felt, yeah —

Roxanne Partridge 25:23

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:23

Both ends. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:27

Well, so that really brings me to this question of how did you get to this place on your journey today and what you do and who you are.

Roxanne Partridge 25:41

Yeah. Oh, so many ways to answer.

Candice Wu 25:46

I know it’s a giant question. That’s just not fair. Is it?

Roxanne Partridge 25:51

No, it’s okay. Let me feel into that.

Roxanne Partridge 26:00

It truly feels like a calling that has been sounding within me for as long as I can remember and what I like in that calling, being, mean and kind of fine-tuning it over the years, but it always was being in a space with women and listening to stories. And from a really early age, you know, I’m talking about elementary school years, women of all different ages would tell me their stories and I would hold it, I would sit in that space and yeah, at times, it was definitely a lot for seven years old or something till —

Candice Wu 26:58

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 26:59

But there was also a part of me that was like, Yeah, like I’m ready for this. And there’s always this kind of, I grew up with a lot of esoteric and mystical conversation around the dinner table largely held by my uncles on my father’s side of the family and some family friends. My mom has a best friend who was a midwife and she would come and stay at her house sometimes when she had a birth nearby and I would just stay at the kitchen table with them for hours and hours and listen to her stories of being at birth and her stories of her worldview of like, kind of why we’re here and the soulfulness and purposefulness of our life journey. And it all just kind of made sense to me.

Roxanne Partridge 28:04

I have always been drawn to poetry and art and soul work and the animated world. So in that way it was oh, there was a groundwork. I think that was just kind of there and I’ve definitely done a lot of different things at different points in my life and I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve wandered and when I entered into the field of depth psychology, I think that’s when everything kind of began to take the shape that things are in now.

Roxanne Partridge 28:54

When I found the field of Depth Psychology, I really felt like this kind of homecoming, I was like, okay, like this is the language that articulates what I just kind of know to be possible like this is a way that embraces my own experience, embraces what I felt was calling at me behind like the eyes and the stories of women and a lot of that like, coming from archetypal psychology and like union, psychological framework, and liberation psychology is this idea of a pluralistic psyche and that we contain like a multitude of selves within and a kind of mythopoetics of soul in personifying our different parts of ourselves, you know, like that in our social justice work I mentioned earlier and how healing and liberating it is to acknowledge that there is soul-making happening and let’s say premenstrual experience, which I suppose you know, and I say that since menstruality is an emphasis of my work and I guess another way that brought me here is being witness to really difficult menstrual experience growing up and also being witness to male or patriarchal like, reduction of a woman to her menstruality and the way that menstrual experience is so often reduced to hormones. You know, the female —

Candice Wu 31:20

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 31:21

Hysterical nature, like these types of things. And, like always knowing like, that’s just, that’s not it. Like, that’s not the full story and recognizing now like, there’s so much research that supports us that you know, these things don’t happen. Our menstrual selves don’t exist in a vacuum and that our psyche, you know that there’s, I’m going to pause right here if that’s okay.

Candice Wu 32:04

I don’t think so. I think you’re talking about the juicy stuff, you know. But yeah, you shared a lot. And yeah, let’s just take a pause together.

Roxanne Partridge 32:14

Yeah.

Candice Wu 32:23

Are you interested in sharing what that experience of being witness to a painful menstrual experience was like for you?

Roxanne Partridge 32:34

Yeah. It’s funny when I began writing my dissertation, which is largely on this idea of menstrual imagination, and I was examining what my own transference was to the topic. I had this kind of hand to forehead moment where I was like, Oh, right. You know, I mean, I thought like initially, the topic of my research shifted from embodied sexuality and this kind of relationship between sexuality and ecopsychology and our relationship to the earth and it shifted literally overnight to menstruality, on a night that I was painfully bleeding and decided to have a conversation with my uterus. And that was the turning point. But as I, you know, and when I addressed my uterus and all this pain and asked it, you know, just as I would a dream image like, Who are you? What’s here? What’s going on? What do you need? What I met was this kind of mourners, like, someone who was in mourning and had been in mourning for a very long time. And they were mourning, this image was mourning the loss of meaning. And I sat with that and I was like, I don’t know what this means, but I just need to sit next to this mourner as best as I can. And I had already started a dissertation proposal on a whole different topic and I canned it and I was like, I don’t know what this is. This is exciting. This feels necessary and hard and this is what I’m going to do.

Candice Wu 34:54

Yeah.

Candice Wu 34:57

Thank goodness.

Roxanne Partridge 34:58

Yeah. And as I started to sit with that further and be like, Okay, what do I already, what’s already here? That was the hand to forehead moment of like, oh, like, I grew up with my father pathologizing my mother and her moods, her unhappiness, essentially, you know, anything she did or say that he didn’t like.

Roxanne Partridge 35:31

He would throw under the umbrella of PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Mind you. My father is not a psychologist or a psychiatrist —

Candice Wu 35:44

Like, wait a minute. Why is a DSM language there?

Roxanne Partridge 35:52

Yeah and this was like before the age of Google too, so I don’t know where or how he picked up this term.

Candice Wu 36:02

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 36:05

And, but he found it. And I remember one time being a little kid and my parents had argued that my mom had, like, gotten a car and drove off to like, blow off steam, get some air. I was so upset. And he said, you know, Roxanne, one day, I’ll tell you like, what this is all about, like, one day, I’ll let you in kind of on this secret. And I really held on to that. I was like, ah, like, there’s a reason for all of this. You know, there’s a reason why they fight. And I held on to it and he’s like when you get older, I’ll tell you and so years passed and I remember this and I go up to him like dad, you know, remember when you said XYZ, like what, what was like, what’s the secret? And he started laughing. He’s like, Oh, it’s just that, you know, she’s getting her period.

Candice Wu 37:04

Oh, what was your reaction?

Roxanne Partridge 37:11

Oh, I was so pissed. And I don’t know, probably about 14, 15 maybe when he told me this. And I had my period, I got my period when I was nine. So I just felt my anger in that moment, which I didn’t even really fully expressed to him because I didn’t really feel like there was a point but, it was just the silencing of what I saw of my mother’s experience. And all of her different needs that weren’t being met, her unresolved traumas like the context of her life basically, and how that was showing up in their arguments, and whether or not this was at all timed with her cycle, I don’t know. And she doesn’t know, she, as many women, didn’t pay attention to her cyclicity and, you know, didn’t know what phase she was in from another which is, you know, a very usual situation. But the story of it, you know of, oh, mom’s upset because she is hormonal, because she’s premenstrual, because since menstruation has been thought of like, the marker of womanhood. It’s because she’s a woman. And It just felt so binding to me. And —

Candice Wu 39:06

Absolutely.

Roxanne Partridge 39:08

Yeah. So that was very much a part of the day to day life of growing up and really seeing just the limited space for representation to what my mom was experiencing and just how there wasn’t any kind of befriending or curiosity or acceptance or conversation or relating going on to the different parts of herself that wanted to be met.

Candice Wu 39:45

And how different it would be if the secret that your dad wanted to share was like your mom is going through this magical time. This, like, every month, and maybe I don’t get it. But it’s like, alive and there’s life-giving quality there and who knows what’s happening in this magical beautiful way? That would have been a whole different story.

Roxanne Partridge 40:17

Whole different story, yeah, absolutely.

Candice Wu 40:21

Wow.

Roxanne Partridge 40:22

And so, that, I know, attending to that and understand what this was kind of this menstrual backdrop.

Candice Wu 40:36

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 40:37

You know, and realizing too, like, you know, it definitely exists in my family and I think it is very alive in our culture of, you know, if a woman has a strong feeling or thought or opinion, you know, how the cycle or cyclicity is like, weaponized to silence or dismiss or devalue.

Candice Wu 41:10

Yeah, it’s rampant.

Roxanne Partridge 41:14

And so, of what it’s like to make space for a completely different approach like you’re suggesting, you know, like, that magic, a whole different way of welcoming in the cycle. And so like, that’s part of like, the personal motivation for me again, knowing that, like, of the personal experience of my mom, and then just knowing how historically this is such a common story, of really making space to listen and get to know who shows up at different phases of the cycle, all phases. And, one thing that I lead my clients through is getting to know their various menstrual selves and the premenstrual self as she may show up in different ways every cycle and how sometimes she can be this kind of dark informant as I like to say, you know? Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 42:39

Her message may be raw.

Candice Wu 42:42

Yes.

Roxanne Partridge 42:42

It may be screaming. And, what it’s like not to judge her or reduce her to hormones but to really be curious about her.

Candice Wu 42:58

I think that is so important, you know, even women that, and myself, I’ve done it with that I’ve worked with and just here, you know, in my friendship circles or other arenas in psychology then there is this dismissing of what might happen, what messages we’re getting, what we’re saying, what we’re bothered by, we’re alive by, when we’re on our period. And it does get reduced to, Oh, are you on your cycle? And then it’s like, full stop period there in not a good way, in a silencing way.

Roxanne Partridge 43:44

Yes.

Candice Wu 43:45

Not the kind that like claims that and says, yeah. But yes, tell me more about who you see in your different phases of the cycle, or who your clients see.

Roxanne Partridge 44:01

Yeah. You know oftentimes as we get to know if it’s a moody menstrual self that comes through that oftentimes she’s a tremendous advocate for what like, the woman really wants or needs at that point in her life.

Candice Wu 44:24

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 44:25

And really uncompromising about it.

Candice Wu 44:28

I completely experienced that and I began to listen more on like, certain parts of my cycle because of that very raw, as you said, like, on a bash itself that screams what she knows she wants.

Roxanne Partridge 44:49

Yeah, and how it there’s this kind of thinning of the valve that happens.

Candice Wu 44:54

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 44:54

At that phase, you know, and in the body, premenstrually like, we heat up our body temperature is higher than at any other point like after ovulation. And I kind of think about this as this internal pressure cooker for our stuff, and, you know, whatever our, you know, kind of, ovulatory or post bleeding in our springtime selves who feel a little bit lighter, very focused, a little bit more maybe extroverted or go-getting and clear. You know, they move through the world in a different way, they have their gifts, they have their own style of being and the menstrual self kind of from an archetypal perspective, her style of being and what she has to offer is different and it can show up as like a desire to kind of clear, discern, get rid of things, relationships, jobs, people, you know really ground into like, Okay, this is what really works, you know, it’s kind of like an inner editor in a way.

Candice Wu 46:21

Yes.

Roxanne Partridge 46:22

And I can kind of like really there is such a resource. I mean at each phase of the cycle and I’m emphasizing the month the premenstrual on the menstrual because they’re the ones that usually get the worst rap you know that those marginalized parts of our psyche can really show up and they want attention. And you know what it’s like to befriend these marginalized parts of the psyche again, rather than silence them or just think okay, that’s like a negative mindset that I need to get rid of. But I’m just being curious like, okay, like, what is, who’s here? What does she need? What does she get? What’s important to her? And what does she get to experience when she receives what she truly needs? And typically, there’s a real softening that happens when the menstrual self gets what she needs.

Candice Wu 47:34

Yeah, I experience in a very spontaneous, quick way, like a deep breath and relief, which usually tells me like, that’s really what I need to do. And what you’re saying makes so much sense because during the menstrual cycle, we’re shedding, we’re letting something come off of us and sever from us and die. And it just is so in alignment, if that dark moody part of us, and maybe it’s not so dark and moody for some people, but that part of us that just knows exactly what needs to die and let go and it can be, at least for me a good wake up.

Roxanne Partridge 48:29

Yeah, there’s this wonderful like, death and rebirth that is in potential every cycle I feel and you know, I know some women who love to bleed and love the sensuality of the premenstrual and menstrual time, have liked the way that their body feels, the way that they want to respond to food and you know the way that they want to dress or just their whole central experience shifts and for some, it’s been like a question of like, a couple of clients I have like, really feel, really sexual, really gorgeous, really powerful when they bleed. That’s like this relief like you’re saying this, like, letting go and really being in themselves. And then the invitation being okay and how does this cycle through to the next phase?

Roxanne Partridge 49:37

You know we’re like, of how to carry that kind of gift of like, renewal and an integrated, it’s like if you think about maybe this, I think this might be a helpful analogy like if you go through, like a retreat weekend or deep ritual or initiation or something or a vision quest and it’s amazing and you have all these insights and all of these openings, and it’s like, yes. And what does this look like in the rest of my life? How do we bring this in?

Candice Wu 50:20

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 50:22

And that’s one thing that like, I’m really like, the idea of like, the sacred space, like, space is the main, I feel like it’s a big topic, space.

Candice Wu 50:35

Space for ourselves, space for discernment, you know, space to bleed, space —

Roxanne Partridge 50:47

Taking up space, exactly, occupying space, having yourself represented in cultural space, space and relationships, womb space, universe inside our bodies —

Candice Wu 51:09

That kind of space, outer space, and inner space.

Roxanne Partridge 51:14

Yeah, like all of those spaces. Ah, it’s something that I am thinking about every day and —

Candice Wu 51:23

We’re creating poetry here. Let’s just shift gears altogether.

Roxanne Partridge 51:31

Yeah.

Candice Wu 51:33

I got only next time.

Roxanne Partridge 51:36

But it’s like, you know the need for like, yeah the navigating, how to navigate all these different spaces and what wants to be integrated and what is, you know, what just wants to be its own space, you know, it’s like, to ground this is like you know, the space to just, to discern like, Okay, what am I carrying that isn’t mine, like, what have I inherited from my family, from culture, from, you know, different perspectives that I grew up with about what it is to be a woman, a person with a female anatomy, what it is to menstruate, have children, not have children, like, all these things.

Candice Wu 52:33

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 52:34

You know, to have this space to discern that and to really connect with what feels authentic and to like cultivate a fuller dynamic sense of self and not get caught into a single role. Because even if that role is true and meaningful, usually there are other roles that also want to be a part of life.

Candice Wu 53:02

The multiplicity.

Roxanne Partridge 53:03

Yeah. Right, and how to like, how to navigate the path. And so often, women will, in my experience, they’ll find a sense of spaciousness that feels really good or safe when it’s like in solitude and then it feels like well, being in a relationship or having a different kind of job may like, you know, or just like, it feels really vulnerable, the space, you know, and I’ve definitely experienced this myself like I’ve had, you know, there’s a big part of me that’s like a total lone wolf.

Candice Wu 53:53

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 53:54

And how to bring a sense of connection to my own inner multiplicity, my changing nature, my cyclicity all the different things and parts of myself that make me, how to bring that into my life and, you know, be in relationships or navigate different spaces or whatever. And it’s this kind of, I feel like we’re in this moment or this is all being very much explored.

Candice Wu 54:37

Yeah, very much. We have a lot more language for this and more connection and collaboration around it in bringing each other forward in support.

Candice Wu 54:55

So, with this, Roxanne, I know you also work with dreams a lot, and I’m wondering if there is a dream or dream fragment that has been striking you lately, or been alive with you?

Roxanne Partridge 55:22

Yeah, I’m recalling a dream. I wish I had my journal at hand. I’ve been dreaming so much lately.

Candice Wu 55:41

Have you? Wow!

Candice Wu 55:44

Yeah. Do you want to get it or just what feels right here?

Roxanne Partridge 55:48

It’s not close enough. Thank you.

Candice Wu 55:56

Take your time.

Roxanne Partridge 55:58

Yeah, there’s one in particular that I’m trying to draw up right now. It’s going to cooperate —

Candice Wu 56:04

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 56:05

Wants to show —

Candice Wu 56:06

Yes.

Candice Wu 56:16

It does have its own life, doesn’t it? Autonomy in a way. Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 56:30

Oh, I’ll go with the dream I had this morning.

Roxanne Partridge 56:34

So this morning I dreamt of coastal mountains in California that are not on fire and being in these mountains and having this wonderful view of the ocean. And there are these kinds of in the dream the language was mountain title tide pools. These like, crevices in the mountains that were once tide pools and they were filled with flowers and the California poppy, that orange wonderful poppy flower wasn’t blue. And it was really beautiful and kind of have a surreal quality and it’s this familiar kind of landscape where I’ve spent a good number of years living in California and that landscape is really dear to me. You know.

Roxanne Partridge 57:45

And I am thinking about the dream now and I had it this morning before our conversation today and I’ve been thinking about this topic of space. You know, where the Land of California has really offered me a lot of space. And I would say through being with and on the land out there when I was really kind of going deep and I did you know my graduate studies out there. It was through a kind of dreaming and thinking and wrestling with the land that I was able to find greater inner space.

Roxanne Partridge 57:48

And it’s been a few years since I’ve been to California and it was in the dream where I’m looking into these mountain top tide pools of blue poppy flowers and it felt like a blue color like, it changed from orange to blue and it was this kind of this, like, there was this sort of feeling tone of sadness and nostalgia.

Roxanne Partridge 59:17

And in the dream, I found myself saying a lot of things like, well, this is where I used to back when I was here I did this, all this kind of past tense stuff. And, I love recognizing that like, yes, like, this actual place opened up this inner space within me and I think there are, I know there are times when I long for that landscape to hold space for me. And I also know that well, you know, I’m sure I feel great if I went back to visit, that there’s something about like, the practice of space within myself, you know, no longer needs to or can or wants to be held by that particular landscape, if that makes sense, you know.

Roxanne Partridge 1:00:44

Feeling into it again, like, just taking it as a dream that came forward on the day of our talk, and embodiment and embodying our nature, embodying ourselves, period, of you know, it’s kind of like this remembrance, you know, of like, there is inner space, you know, and like, yeah, this actual place held back for you. And you’re like, you know, I’m just kind of pointing my attention towards what’s holding it for me now. You know, what are the ways of practicing and enacting and living space and all these different ways that we’re talking about right and like taking up space and holding space.

Candice Wu 1:01:46

There’s so much that’s breathing about what you’re saying and it almost made me think of this actual place, being more physical marker for a birth of your inner space, like, a home away and yet there’s this part of you that once, maybe a different embodiment of that or separation from physical, actual place, but taking that with you in a way. Those are my words but yeah, that’s just what it made me think of.

Roxanne Partridge 1:02:30

Yeah, you know and I think that’s part of where I find my own daily sense of aliveness is in these very mundane, small moments, of grounding into where I am in the Hudson Valley, and the present really. I don’t know how else to say it.

Candice Wu 1:03:15

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 1:03:15

You know, and of remembering that space is here.

Candice Wu 1:03:25

Yeah, and wherever you are.

Candice Wu 1:03:32

Thank you for sharing that.

Candice Wu 1:03:37

And I’m very excited to share with everyone, your meditation on rewilding your sexual ecology and that’ll be coming up here and link to your episode as well. Do you want to say anything about that?

Roxanne Partridge 1:03:55

Yeah, I’d love to. I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about menstrual selves. Another piece here is our sexual selves. And likewise, you know how knowing the different figures of our sexual essence can bring us home to our kind of native, wild, inner sexual landscape.

Roxanne Partridge 1:04:26

And so this offering of rewilding your sexual ecology is an invitation to journey into your inner native sexual landscape and taking multiple levels of life force, you know, Kundalini energy, arousal, desire, joy, where you feel aliveness and to see who comes through. Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 1:04:58

I’ve invited women to explore, you know, where they feel most centrally alive and the images that sometimes come through have oftentimes even nothing to do with a bedroom, you know, or a partner even, it’s like being barefoot and singing in their kitchen.

Candice Wu 1:05:02

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 1:05:18

It’s just like, you know, where you feel like your body just feels like, expansive. And, you know, it’s an invitation to really kind of locate that and you know, having this ecological amplification of reintroducing that wild, native sexual archetype essence species into the landscape of your life, you know, and how to have it take up space and how to have, you know, imagine it forward and to experiment in introducing reintroducing your native, wild sexual essence into your life, you know, from the day to day to your sexual pleasure, you know, everywhere.

Candice Wu 1:06:14

Everywhere. Yes. It’s really lovely. So I invite everyone to check that out. It’s some other words I wrote down where rivers and vital energy and I really liked that.

Candice Wu 1:06:32

Thank you for offering that and would you like to say anything about your hypnotherapy, the free downloads you have or the workshops that you offer in New York, and retreats, you also have one on one sessions and a million things that you’re offering that are just gorgeous, magical, and look so meaningful.

Roxanne Partridge 1:06:59

Thank you. Yeah, you can check out several free downloads of hypnotherapy practices that run 20, 30 minutes long. There’s one called Remembering Womb, which is a wonderful way to drop into your womb space with some really nurturing energy. So I always recommend that as a way to kind of befriend womb space and kind of return to yourself. I think it’s a great way to ground and there are several others there too, that you can explore and check out.

Roxanne Partridge 1:07:43

I have monthly women’s councils called Body Storm, and we’re going on a brief winter hibernation after this month but we’ll be coming back in the spring and those take the form of a talking circle that have verbal and movement visioning involved here in Hudson, New York.

Roxanne Partridge 1:08:13

And then, there’s Flame Retrieval, which is a retreat coming up in April. It’s a weekend retreat held here in Hudson. And really ends up body, soul, spirit, heart, mind, kind of initiation into tending your inner flame and retrieving your inner flame if it feels lost or low. And whether that, you know, be showing itself through creative blocks or shut down in the body and really welcoming in wherever you are so often I hear from women like, is it okay if I bring my story here? Is it too negative? Is it too dark? Am I going to overwhelm me? Oh, is this too much?

Roxanne Partridge 1:09:14

And to all of that, I say, Welcome. Come, you know, as this shameful, you know, and there’s such a vital life force in that darkness. And so, really welcoming that not only in, yeah, definitely the Flame Retrieval retreat, but, and all of these different doorways into embodying yourself fully in your life.

Candice Wu 1:09:51

Thank you. That’s wonderful. And where can people find that?

Roxanne Partridge 1:09:55

EmbodyPeriod.com/workshops

Candice Wu 1:10:00

Thank you, Roxanne. I feel like we could talk for days and a long time, and is there anything now that’s coming up that feels vital or alive to share or to say as we close here today.

Roxanne Partridge 1:10:25

I think something that I would love to water the ears of listeners with is that soul is revealing itself to you through your embodied experience, whether it’s menstrually or sexually related or behavioral or story, to remember and to be curious about how is soul showing up through us? What is soul expressing through us and to turn towards yourself just as you’d want to turn towards a beloved, just as you’d want a beloved to turn towards you, to turn towards yourself with curiosity and openness and to invite yourself through these moments back to yourself?

Candice Wu 1:11:45

Thank you. I hear that. I hear you.

Roxanne Partridge 1:11:53

Thank you so much.

Candice Wu 1:11:54

Thank you for watering my ears.

Roxanne Partridge 1:11:57

Yeah, I wish we could talk so much more

Candice Wu 1:12:00

Wonderful.

Roxanne Partridge 1:12:01

We will. All the correlations between your work and list could go on and on.

Candice Wu 1:12:08

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Roxanne and it’s been fabulous to have you. It’s been so good to be here. Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:12:24

Wow, I was so grateful to have you, Roxanne, on the show and I learned so much and just your vibrancy calls forward so much in me that remembers myself and imagination and bringing forward my process and really embracing it. You are this validating force for embracing what is real and true and alive.

Candice Wu 1:12:58

Thank you so much and all of you out there listening, thank you for joining us. I hope this was inspiring to you as well and be sure to listen to Roxanne’s meditation on rewilding your sexual ecology, which is in connection with this episode but will come out later this week if you’re subscribed.

Candice Wu 1:13:17

If you want to go straight to their website and find it right now you can find it at CandiceWu.com/roxanne.

Candice Wu 1:13:26

Before we go and end with a couple of reverberations of Roxanne’s work, I want to invite you to connect with me on my newsletter that comes out once or twice a month at CandiceWu.com/embody, where you can receive updates about where I am in the world and what’s happening with the horses or receive self — notes and updates about the podcast and be sure to check out Roxanne’s work at embodyperiod.com.

Candice Wu 1:13:55

So I want to echo her words: How is soul showing up through this? What of soul is showing through my experience? And also to ask you, what is your story? What is the backdrop of your menstrual story?

Candice Wu 1:14:17

Thanks so much for joining us today on the Embody podcast and see you next time.

Candice Wu 0:00

This experiential with Roxanne Partridge is a beautiful invitation to rewild your sexual self.

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.

Welcome, and it’s wonderful to have you here. I’m so excited to introduce Roxanne Partridge to you here. She has her full podcast at CandiceWu.com/roxanne where we talk all about befriending the many parts of ourselves that come through the menstrual and premenstrual cycle, where we explore the invitations of what life shows us, where life shows us about the soul, how to be curious and connect with the menstrual backdrop of your life, feeling alive and in tune with the darkness and the depth of who we are, to bring our own magic to the surface, all of that is just wonderfully enlivened through conversation with Roxanne so be sure to check that out. And now, without further ado, is Roxanne.

Roxanne Partridge 1:53

Welcome to rewilding your sexual ecology, Dr. Roxanne Partridge of Embody Period and I’ve created this hypnotherapy experience for you to deepen into your inner sexual wilderness landscape, gently moving beyond the layers of conditioning we have all received around sexuality and meeting authentic pleasure, the deep joy of your embodied essence.

Please go ahead and lie down if you haven’t done so already. Get as comfortable as possible, making sure your body feels totally supported from head to toe. Pull a blanket over you if you’d like to feel cozy, as well as to help you deepen into your body, with that extra weight of a blanket.

Settle in, settle into the space, placing your hands over your pelvis.

Good, and now taking several deep breaths.

This is your time, so relax into it. Letting your breath deep and down under the palms of your hands and notice what it’s like to deepen your breath down beneath your belly and to bring it all the way down into your pelvis. Letting your pelvis receive your deep, steady, relaxed breathing right now and allowing your breath and your attention, your awareness to nourish the space between your fingers, the space beneath your palm, bringing warmth and is and relaxation here in between your hips.

And as you do this, your hips begin to relax and open, letting your legs loose, feet at ease, opening from your pelvis down and out.

Eyes closed, eyelids heavy, muscles of your face, relax. Your lips part gently as your jaw relaxes and your head becomes heavy and perhaps even droops a little, the energy of your forehead, your third eye, beginning to draw downwards and inwards.

As your attention moves down, your body relaxing, arms, elbows, back, and shoulder muscles relaxing into your core.

Good.

Feel and imagine a channel of energy now between your third eyes space and your pelvis, your root. Feel and imagine this core of energy moving from your third eye down to your pelvis.

Imagine and feel this as a river. A river that is tidal and can move in both directions. And right now, we’re moving from your third eye down into your pelvis. So feel and see this channel of energy run through your core, connecting your breath from one place to the other.

As we begin to take a journey down this river of energy, beginning here in your third eye, this place of inner visioning, feeling and sensing yourself afloat on a raft or a wonderful tube drifting down this easeful, relaxing river of your energy. Feeling yourself move clearly. This water runs with ease. It runs fresh and clear, gently drifting down through your head and neck, visualizing and sensing yourself as you do this moving down this river and opening up your inner visioning to the landscape.

Beginning to perceive and sense what’s around you on all sides. Noticing the shorelines and what’s here. Perhaps there are trees, fields or mountains, notice what’s here in your own, in our bioregion, as you drift down through your heart space and your solar plexus space and down into your belly, and down beyond into space beneath your palm, the inner place of your sexual ecology coming to stillness here.

Then finding a place for yourself to rest whether it be upon the shore, on a rock, the sand, the grass, bringing yourself to a place of stillness here in the base of your sacks and breathing deeply.

Put the organs and tissues of your sexual ecology. A vital place of your fertile creativity, power, essence, and joy as you land here in this domain. Noticing the air, the light, what grows here.

You meet the homeplace of an inner vital figure of your joy, of your wild, free, sexual essence and she shows herself to you now. A Mary Jane from the landscape, perhaps she comes from the river itself. Perhaps she comes out of the trees or on the horizon and she makes her way towards you and notice how she shows her mood, her way of moving. Perhaps she’s dancing. Perhaps she’s moving slow and steady, arms open like a goddess. Perhaps she kind of just floats in a completely enchanting way over the landscape.

Notice her energy and her style right now and she comes to you and takes your hands and pulls you lovingly into her orb of energy, introducing you to her way of being. And in this moment, her way of being becomes your way of being and together you amplify and expand this essential, vital energy throughout your entire being, throughout this entire landscape and body place, your whole pelvis illuminated and energized and nurtured.

As the two of you become one in this life energy, feel yourself here needing this source of your wild sexual essence, knowing that this lives organically, natively within you and now that you know that this is what lives here, you can bring this energy forward, upriver, traveling with it throughout your entire being, introducing this vital energy that is wild and native to your sexuality, to your sensuality, to your creative essence, introducing, reintroducing this native essence to the fullness of your being, welcoming its power into your solar plexus, welcoming this life force into your heart, feeling your heart expand with its presence of your wildly authentic pleasure, feeling as you continue to move up the river, feeling your sexual essence meet your throat and open your throat and hear and feel the words, the language of this native sexual energy.

What did she say? What is she sing to the world? And feeling you rise and travel further up and out into your third eye, opening your third eye, with her presence that is yours and noticing how she sees the world and your place in it and how you body your wildness forward.

Imagining right now and seeing, knowing it to be true, how you move forward in the world but the wildness of your sexual ecology moving through you, allowing yourself to feel completely energized by this throughout your entire body, feeling it in your toes, your hands, feeling it in the sides of your face, perhaps now, even smiling a little, breathing and expanding into this life force energy and noticing how the landscape of your waking life completely ships in small and significant ways now that this organic, wild, native source of your sexuality has been realized.

Deep breath.

Feeling into the palms your hands, turning the palms of your hands now, upwards and outwards, expanding your arms, opening your arms into a great big stretch of wings, bringing them above your head, stretching out your legs and feet, feeling your pelvis warm, hips open, chest open, back, maybe even arching a little, let your head fall back, mouth open in total pleasure. Expand it and your wild sexual ecology.

Thank you for the vital rewilding work. Body for wild throughout the rest of your day and the rest of your life.

Candice Wu 20:20

As you come out of this experience with Roxanne, take your own time to come back to your surroundings. Support yourself in any way you need to. This is all about you and what you need right now to support yourself, to support your sexual being and as Roxanne invites us to, I invite you also to see how this experience can be brought forward into your life. Thanks so much for taking the time today.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is a 10-minute segment of my appearance on Mind-Body Radio recently, where I talked about what I offer, how I came to my healing work practice, the clients I see, and the offerings that I have as well as the podcast, and what I’m up to.

Candice Wu 0:21

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 0:34

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

Thanks so much for tuning in today. We’ll just jump right into my Mind-Body Radio appearance that was early in September 2019 this month.

Mind-Body Radio 1:06

Alright, and we are back. This is Mind-Body Radio and I have Candice Wu on the line. She is calling from Chicago and the name of her business is Embrace Your Nature. Candice, thanks for joining us today.

Candice Wu 1:17

It’s great to be here, Chris, actually it’s Embody Your Nature.

Mind-Body Radio 1:20

Oh, I’m sorry. What did I say then?

Candice Wu 1:22

Right. Embrace —

Mind-Body Radio 1:24

I said Embrace? Oh.

Candice Wu 1:26

That’s perfect anyway because that’s what it’s all about, Embracing your Nature.

Mind-Body Radio 1:31

Well, I have Embody here. I guess my mind just went to embrace for some reason. Well, either way, why don’t you? —

Candice Wu 1:37

You probably sensed it.

Mind-Body Radio 1:39

Why don’t you tell us a little more about yourself, Candice? And what exactly it is that you do?

Candice Wu 1:44

Thank you. Yeah, I am a holistic healing facilitator and I love to support people in feeling like themselves, that they can feel like themselves at ease in their bodies and that they can deeply love themselves. So I support them through the process of being in alignment with themselves and navigating their emotional and their physical, felt-sense-experience in their body. And when it does come up, which it usually does, that there are things that feel like they’re stuck or blocked, or related to past trauma, intergenerational trauma, or even past life trauma, I support people in navigating how to heal that from within.

Mind-Body Radio 2:29

Now, how would you describe yourself as a coach, as a healer? Or, as even a counselor? Do you have a title? Or, is that a few factors from all of that?

Candice Wu 2:40

You know, I’ve really struggled with that. Because what I — the way I see the work is supporting someone in deepening in their experience of humanity. And yet, I have this very big healing background. So the best I can come up with for myself is a healing, holistic healing facilitator, and an intuitive coach.

Mind-Body Radio 3:02

Excellent. Now, let’s rewind a little more, why did you get into this kind of work? What was it that puts you on the path to helping other people?

Candice Wu 3:14

It’s really my own healing work that catapulted me into it. And it was about 12 years ago that I felt like, how, what is going on in my body? I felt this numbness on my right side. I felt like, I really was anxious all the time, headaches all the time, from pain and different parts of my body and I couldn’t quite get supported from all the typical avenues.

Candice Wu 3:43

And when I found the work that really supported me, I did a lot of EMDR work, which is a type of psychotherapy, that’s integrative, and Yoga and Ayurveda. I did some Somatic Experiencing, but then what I really found this type of work called Family Constellation, it’s completely integrating mind, body, and spirit, but also the different levels of who we are like our physical body, our emotional state, and our spirituality.

Candice Wu 4:15

In this experience that connects our ancestry, I just was floored at how I could heal from the inside out. And so in my own process of healing, I just found deeper and deeper levels of myself and my own gifts, and a way to feel like myself. And I found that other people just drew towards me and saw that and wanted that form me too, so wanted that support from me so I continue to do that.

Candice Wu 4:44

And I actually developed the Embody Podcast, which I’m the host of, which is a place that I can share some of the experiences that I continue to have, as well as the ways that I heal myself and reach out to others for that healing.

Mind-Body Radio 5:00

Great, and now while you were talking about it, how can our listeners access that podcast?

Mind-Body Radio 5:06

It’s at my website at CandiceWu.com/podcast and you can access it through any of the platforms like
Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, etc. But you can find it all right there and it’ll guide you through, you can listen right on the website. The really cool thing about this podcast is that I have guests every other week and both me and my guests often offer healing experiential and guided meditation. Because that is the way of my, where I see myself healing the best and others healing the best is that they’re moving through experiences in their body that helps them transform from inside. So the — you can tune into certain guided meditations and experientials that really connect with your life or resonate with you from there.

Mind-Body Radio 6:02

Now, talk to me about the clients that you’re seeing, who exactly is coming to you? Are you seeing any kind of commonality? Or, any kind of trend in your clients? Or, would you say it’s all across the map?

Candice Wu 6:16

The trends that I see or the trends of commonality are, that people are really interested in a deeper sense of themselves, wanting to really be kind to themselves, and feel like themselves. So they’re really wanting a deeper experience, rather than just trying to solve a quick problem.

Mind-Body Radio 6:36

Right.

Candice Wu 6:36

But I have people coming from all different avenues. Sometimes it’s through a physical tension or injury or pain that they can’t seem to get to the bottom of or resolve. And sometimes it’s a repetitive pattern in their lives that they keep finding themselves and really just don’t want to be in it anymore.

Candice Wu 6:58

And other times if I have this vision for myself, but I can’t quite get there or I’m on that but I’ve had challenges. So, that can be anyone.

Candice Wu 7:07

I also see people in relationships, in couples, as well as polyamorous relationships and I mentor and train coaches, healers, and other wellness practitioners in either developing or continuing to develop their personal voice in their work, or supporting trauma-sensitive and scientific approaches, as well as spiritual coaches into their, like waving that into their current practices already.

Mind-Body Radio 7:39

And now, are you able to perform this work remotely? Or, would you prefer face to face?

Candice Wu 7:46

Yeah, I love those.

Candice Wu 7:48

My regular clients are with me remotely and sometimes we see each other face to face. And that’s primarily because I’m also somewhat location independent at the time. So I travel the world at different times of my life, and my clients can still connect with me remotely. When we’re in the same location, it’s really great to be in person, also, because I do some touch work that supports the nervous system, their bodies, and the experience of being together in person. But I also do workshops and retreats and immersion and that will be on-site somewhere. So whether that’s —

Mind-Body Radio 8:30

That sounds lovely.

Candice Wu 8:30

Yeah, a retreat somewhere out there or near people’s home.

Mind-Body Radio 8:36

Now, let’s keep moving forward. We have room for about one more question here. So I’d like to hear about the future and what kind of goals you have moving forward, anything on your agenda?

Candice Wu 8:47

Oh, yeah.

Candice Wu 8:50

Two things come to mind. Two major things, three.

Candice Wu 8:55

One is that I am developing more and more of a simple lifestyle for myself. So this is more of a personal mixed with professional goal. But I just more and more feel this deep sense of being in every action of my life and in the simple thing. The second thing that’s really related to that is that I also offer experiences with horses and I’m developing in my own experience with horses, my connection with them, and how I can communicate with them psychically, and then experience what they have to offer me. And it’s lovely to be able to offer that to clients who are interested in working with horses, to just be with them, and also find their own wisdom and receive wisdom from them. So that’s an opening up. And the third piece is that I’m writing a book about money and healing money issues.

Mind-Body Radio 9:59

Really? So getting into the financial side of things.

Candice Wu 10:03

Yeah. Well, and I find that it is related to self-worth and value so deeply and our ancestral stories of money.

Mind-Body Radio 10:10

Oh, absolutely.

Candice Wu 10:11

That will all be in there.

Mind-Body Radio 10:12

Money is very much in our DNA.

Candice Wu 10:15

So much.

Mind-Body Radio 10:17

I would agree with that.

Mind-Body Radio 10:19

Now, before we do wrap up, I know you mentioned though, you have Candicewu.com you can access the podcast on there. Any other points of contact, social media, YouTube, anything like that?

Candice Wu 10:32

Yeah, I’m on Instagram, that might be the best social media platforms to connect with me on, and it’s CandiceWu.com/instagram and same as Facebook CandiceWu.com/facebook. I’m also on YouTube just a bit — CandiceWu.com/youtube. There are just the podcasts on there as a way — as a platform if you do like YouTube better.

Mind-Body Radio 10:53

All right. Excellent. And one last time again, Candicewu.com, that website. And Candice, thanks for joining us today. Great to hear from you.

Mind-Body Radio 11:02

Great to hear from you, too. Chris, thank you so much for having me on here. It’s such a pleasure.

Mind-Body Radio 11:07

And as always, big thanks to our audience as well. This is Mind-Body Radio.

Candice Wu 11:12

Thanks so much for listening today, it was really fun to be on the Mind-Body Radio show. It was a really fascinating process, as well as exhilarating to be live. If you want to learn more about anything that I talked about in this 10-minute segment, feel free to go to my website at Candicewu.com. And you can also sign up for my newsletters at CandiceWu.com/embody. That’s all for today and see you next time on The Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

A new Earth began to form beneath our feet, volcanic ashes filled the air, sulfuric particles embedded themselves into our hair, onto our skin and tongues. My mouth was coated in ashes, my lungs were processing the particles alongside the grief of so many things passing, burning too quickly for my heart to comprehend. I found these notes and postings I’d written during the first month of the eruption. A reading from The Luminary Journey: Lessons from a Volcano in Creating a Healing Center and Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be by Darshan Mendoza, who’s our special guest today on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:42

She says, once you accept the visions and mission arising from within you, dear luminary, if you haven’t already experienced the quickening, your life will accelerate beyond your imagination. It will not kill you, although parts of the journey will entail many deaths of old identities and belief systems, it will awaken you.

Candice Wu 1:08

Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, Embodied Healing and self-love.

Candice Wu 1:22

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 1:44

This episode is sponsored by listeners like you who support the podcast, specifically today I want to speak about the personal meditations that I offer. The personal meditations are designed intuitively just for you based on a couple of words that you offer me or a sentence of what you desire in your life or are having struggles with or challenges with, or want to grow into, and I create a 10 to 20 minutes healing experience or meditation for you to practice on your own. And send that to you as an audio file that you can download and listen to that is personal just to you.

Candice Wu 2:25

And that personal meditation can be received with a donation contribution of your choice or the suggested amount that’s found on my website, and all that money goes to support the production of the podcast, behind the scenes, and all the time, energy and love that is put into it by me and those who support the editing process and publishing process. You can find all that information at CandiceWu.com/support.

Candice Wu 2:53

Previously, all of that support was on a Patreon page, and in this next month, all of that going to be shifting over to my website so that more of your dollars and cents can go towards direct contribution to the podcast and other offerings that he put out there. Thank you so much for your consideration, and for those of you who already contribute and donate, and for all of the loving feedback that I receive about the podcast, questions that I get, and other comments and connections. I’m so grateful.

Candice Wu 3:32

And another note before we jump into the podcast with Darshan today is that the Embody Podcast now has transcribed episodes. Almost all of the episodes are now transcribed and they’re on the website. So each of the links that you connect with, for example, this one at CandiceWu.com/darshan or CandiceWu.com/podcast for all the podcasts that are listed. The transcripts are right below where you will listen to that episode.

Candice Wu 4:04

For those of you who’d rather read the episode, or want to find something within the episode that you saw that you wanted to reconnect with, find the transcription, the experientials are also going to be transcribed. But those have not been done yet and they’re going to be started from the last episode in this last couple of weeks going backward.

Candice Wu 4:29

So before long, those will also be set up as blog posts where you can access that and tune into those experientials by reading the words and instructions. So I hope you enjoy that and find that helpful and also a way that you can digest whatever is really here for you to digest and peacefully and lovingly release the rest.

Candice Wu 4:56

So now let’s jump into the episode today with Darshan. I’m really happy to have her here on the podcast today.

Candice Wu 5:02

I began to just notice Darshan’s work on Facebook and notice that we both had Family Constellations in common. And when I realized that she lived in Hawaii and wrote a book about lessons and experience around the volcano erupting in 2018, I just, I was so interested and love what she’s doing with her retreat center, which she is shifting and closing this chapter and stepping into something new as we speak. But I’m thrilled to have her here today on the podcast, talking about the lessons that she received from the volcano, being in the volcano itself, talking about her spiritual name and the names that we are given and what they mean, as well as connecting with the Hopi saying that we are the ones we’ve been hoping for.

Candice Wu 5:59

Darshan is a spiritual director of Akuahā, a healing retreat in Volcano, Hawaii, and she curates personalized journeys of healing transformation, and visionary incubation for her guests and clients for planetary transformation.

Candice Wu 6:15

She recently launched The Luminary Journey, a New moon to New Moon program and residency where luminaries birth their visions in a holistic and embodied way into the world.

Candice Wu 6:26

Darshan was born in Manila, Philippines and moved to Chicago with her family at the age of seven, and graduated with a political science and minors in English and philosophy degree. She explored the world of law as a student at John Marshall Law school and creative writing at Columbia College, Chicago, and has worked as a paralegal journalist and editor before her spontaneous Kundalini awakening, which led her onto a healers path. And soon enough, the ancestors of Hawaii called her to the Big Island where she began and accelerated decade-long Mystery School, where she learned from wisdom keepers from the Philippines, Hawaii, India, Tibet, the Blackfoot and Navajo nations, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mexico, Japan, China, New Zealand, the bioenergetics quantum field, and the Kundalini Yoga and meditation lineage. So the simplest way to describe Darshan is that of a visionary, healer, and teacher.

Candice Wu 7:30

She’s committed to anchoring in heaven on earth by creating healing centers, which are visionary incubation labs, and schools all over the world, supporting luminaries and discovering their genius and sharing it with the world.

Candice Wu 7:44

As a gift to all the listeners today, she’s offering the advanced reader copy of her book, Luminary Journey, which you heard an excerpt from at the beginning of the episode. It’s a beautiful book and it’s lovely for anybody who is experiencing themselves in a new way and wants to heal or wants to set forth on a path of a vision that they have. Whether you call yourself a luminary or not, you might be one. And you can find all that at CandiceWu.com/darshan.

Candice Wu 8:18

Just a heads up at the very end of the episode on my side of the conversation, things start to sound a little bit chaotic or with interference, maybe it was the amazing energy that was feeding through and just making my technology go crazy, because that sometimes happens when I’m online with people. But also maybe just some stuff was popping up on my computer or it was overheating. So I apologize for the interference on my side of the conversation and I hope you enjoy the conversation nonetheless. So let’s jump into this episode with Darshan.

Candice Wu 9:00

It’s really wonderful to have you here today, Darshan. You’re here all the way connecting with me from Hawaii.

Darshan Mendoza 9:06

Yes. Hi. I’m so honored to be here. Really excited for this conversation.

Candice Wu 9:13

Oh, it’s fabulous. It’s coming at such a wonderful time because you just released your book. Yes, congratulations!

Darshan Mendoza 9:21

Thank you! It’s really surreal. And as I was saying, in our, just private conversation that this is going to be like the first time I’m actually talking about it. So it’s going to be grounding and magical and I’m just really honored and grateful.

Candice Wu 9:39

I’m just so grateful that you are here with me and we get to share what comes with this conversation. And I thought about you know, how do I start this conversation and what I read in your book was about your name, Darshan. Yes, and it means vision of the Divine. And I know that word through Vedic studies, Ayurveda, Yoga, Sanskrit. And I’ve always loved that word. It’s also, my Yoga teacher created a center called the Darshan Center, that’s the first time I’d heard of it.

Darshan Mendoza 10:22

Yeah.

Candice Wu 10:23

Right. So when I saw you on Facebook and began learning about your work, and now that I’ve written, not written, maybe that’s a Freudian slip.

Darshan Mendoza 10:34

I think you are going to be writing a book.

Candice Wu 10:38

I kind of wish I have written your book, but —

Darshan Mendoza 10:40

Now it’s recorded —

Candice Wu 10:41

But I only wish I have written my book —

Darshan Mendoza 10:43

You said it. It is now in the works.

Candice Wu 10:50

Now that I’ve read your book, vision of the Divine is exactly how I would describe you and the work you’re doing.

Darshan Mendoza 10:59

Yeah, in hindsight, now, when I think about the last, you know, 12, 13 years since I received the name, and started using it, I realized that name has actually called me forward, like my true purpose and my gift forward, that I didn’t know was my gift 13 years ago, you know?

Candice Wu 11:26

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 11:27

And in the book, I do talk about the story of how I decided to take that name. And this amazing, super magical couple, just showing up at a store that I was managing and basically telling me that I had it backward, because I thought, “Oh, my gosh, it’s such a sacred name. And there’s so much responsibility in that and that’s too big for me, and there’s no way I can take it.”

Darshan Mendoza 11:54

And so I was vibing that belief for a few weeks, and then they just walked in, you know, we didn’t know each other up until that day and she asked me what my name was. And I said, Beverly, which was my birth name, and she just looked at me with this super clarity, and almost like amusement in her heart, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, but that’s not your name.” You know, and for some stranger, right to say that, I, you know, I was just really sort of shocked in that moment. But I felt —

Candice Wu 12:31

Wow!

Darshan Mendoza 12:32

— the truth of what she was saying, in my heart, my body, I was super awake, like, super aware, and I’m connected to her words. And then she just explained, you know, it’s really about taking the name and letting the name, we set our vibration and call us forward, and that was it. It was such a simple thing she was saying. She wasn’t trying to convince me of anything. She was just sharing her truth. And it was such a message for me. You know, and soon after that, probably a week or two, I took the name. And I started seeing it like, yeah, this is my name and explaining it.

Darshan Mendoza 13:13

And, you know, fast forward to now, I’m realizing one of the gifts that really surface from that is that when I meet people and listen to people’s stories, I really hear and can clearly see the genius and people, you know, what their gifts are. And so, that’s really seeing the divine in people.

Candice Wu 13:42

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 13:43

You know, so I get it. I’m like, “Oh, my God, I’m so glad. I’m so glad I ran into that couple. I’m so glad I was open enough and ready enough to receive that divine message and I listened.” You know, and yeah, such a gift. I’m so grateful for that name.

Candice Wu 14:04

She really saw you that day.

Darshan Mendoza 14:07

Because Beverly, you know what Beverly means? Have you ever heard about this?

Candice Wu 14:13

No, what does it mean?

Darshan Mendoza 14:13

So Beverly means hardworking beaver in a dam.

Darshan Mendoza 14:19

Yes!

Candice Wu 14:19

Wow!

Darshan Mendoza 14:21

I think about it, like, “Yeah, I totally hustled.”

Darshan Mendoza 14:25

I hustled. I was a hard worker, I still am. You know, but that doesn’t completely define, I think where I am evolving to as a human, you know, so, I mean, I’ll take it, it’s part of me.

Candice Wu 14:38

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 14:39

Right. I still vibe it. My dad’s the one who chose it and I honor him for choosing it. But it’s like there’s something more that I’m evolving into. You know?

Candice Wu 14:48

I can see that.

Darshan Mendoza 14:49

Yeah.

Candice Wu 14:50

Wow.

Darshan Mendoza 14:52

From beaver to, yeah, divine sight, it’s awesome. I’ll take it.

Candice Wu 14:56

Oh my gosh, right. That’s definitely an expansion.

Candice Wu 15:03

But I love that you owned it.

Darshan Mendoza 15:05

Yeah.

Candice Wu 15:05

At some point.

Darshan Mendoza 15:06

Yeah.

Candice Wu 15:07

And started feeling it shift you and you shift it in a sense, that is just you’re stepping into this part of you that was already coming alive.

Darshan Mendoza 15:17

Yeah. I mean, I believe that time and spaces, a simultaneous event. So sort of everything is happening simultaneously. And it just really depends on what frequency we’re tapping into. So that’s, you know, that also includes our names, right. So different parts of our lifetime, there’s certain names that we really connect to or words that even describe us that we use to describe ourselves. Right. Sometimes we have nicknames, and like, our real names, and professional names, and spiritual names, and all kinds of things that we really connect to. And then there are also the words that we use to describe who we are. Words are powerful to me, I feel like they carry such magic, you know, so it’s important to know, and to be conscious and mindful about what words and syllables and sounds we are connecting to and using frequently. You know, to describe who we are.

Candice Wu 16:20

That makes sense.

Darshan Mendoza 16:21

Yeah.

Candice Wu 16:21

Yeah, and that vibration you’re speaking to, it’s not just, well, it’s magical. Right? What you’re saying is there’s a magic to the sound, the words, there’s a magic to what we call ourselves and who we say we are and at the same time, magic.

Candice Wu 16:45

Maybe there’s a quality, let me know what you think. Maybe there’s a quality of unknown or mystery there and at the same time, we also know that sound has vibration itself, like, vibration isn’t, you know, magical isn’t something we can’t grasp in a grounded way.

Darshan Mendoza 17:04

Yeah. It’s very tangible.

Darshan Mendoza 17:07

Yeah, thank you for noting that. I do love to talk about names because my nickname was Jingay, which was completely made up. It was like a sound that I must have left out when I was a child, and my grandfather made that up, and then it became my name that everyone called me, you know, so even though I still get called all of these different names, just depending on where I am and who I’m with. So that’s always really fun too.

Candice Wu 17:41

That is. Yeah.

Candice Wu 17:43

I have that experience too, being Chinese American.

Darshan Mendoza 17:48

What were your names?

Candice Wu 17:50

My, like when I was younger, I was called Candy.

Darshan Mendoza 17:55

Oh, wow! Candy.

Candice Wu 17:57

Yeah. I know. And it came through because my mom wanted, she was called that at some point for no reason other than she liked it.

Darshan Mendoza 18:05

Oh, really?

Candice Wu 18:06

And yeah, and her name doesn't have anything, her name is Yuk Leung.

Darshan Mendoza 18:11

Oh, okay.

Candice Wu 18:11

And then sometimes she calls herself Bo. So it has nothing to do with her name, really.

Candice Wu 18:17

And then that name, that nickname crept its way into just a few people into high school that somehow caught on to that, or hurt my family or I don’t even know they made it up.

Darshan Mendoza 18:29

Right. How that happened.

Candice Wu 18:31

Yeah, and I don’t know, really feel that identified with that name at all.

Candice Wu 18:38

And then my Chinese name is Yun Yun.

Darshan Mendoza 18:42

Oh, really?

Candice Wu 18:43

Yeah, and I really like it. And it’s interesting, I’ve told this story a few times, probably just once on the podcast, but my brother’s name is Chadwick and his Chinese name is Chat Wei. My sister's name is Lauren, right, and her Chinese name is Lauk Yee. And I was, one day, thinking to my mom, like, I was first born, how did this happen with my name and everyone else has a name that sounds similar to their English? What went on with me?

Candice Wu 19:24

And she said, “Well, I thought it would be easy for you to write.”

Darshan Mendoza 19:29

Oh my gosh!

Candice Wu 19:30

Sound twice.

Darshan Mendoza 19:33

Really? Oh my gosh!

Candice Wu 19:35

Yeah. I was like, “Really mom? Thanks for the faith.” You know, well, thanks for the ease too, you know.

Darshan Mendoza 19:42

Right.

Candice Wu 19:44

But then, she said, “Well, it actually means double happiness.”

Darshan Mendoza 19:51

Oh, yeah.

Candice Wu 19:53

Yeah. So then I became, then I came to some more appreciation. Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 19:58

And would you say, that’s the frequency and vibration of you?

Candice Wu 20:07

That’s a great question and I haven’t really thought about that, and it just fits here.

Candice Wu 20:12

Yeah. I feel my Chinese name has a stronger vibration of me than my English name. And I still very much vibe with my English name.

Darshan Mendoza 20:24

Yeah. You do both.

Candice Wu 20:26

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 20:27

Yeah. That’s the wholeness of you.

Darshan Mendoza 20:29

That’s great.

Candice Wu 20:30

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 20:30

It’s almost like your Chinese name is this secret power you have. You know, it’s like your superhero power. And oftentimes, especially in Chinese culture, you know, that tends to be secret. It’s like you don’t say that out loud too often. It’s like it’s weaved within you. But then you’ve got your, like, world name that you walk around with. You know, we were just talking about this yesterday, it was so fascinating, about names.

Darshan Mendoza 21:01

I was talking to actually a Chinese woman and how she named her daughter. And her daughter used to love to reveal what her middle name was to everyone. And then now that she’s becoming a teenager, she’s shy about it. And I said, you know, I don’t even know if she’s shy. I think she just realizes how powerful it is. And maybe she’s just, she likes subconsciously knows that she needs to keep that like sacred as her like power name.

Candice Wu 21:28

Whoa!

Darshan Mendoza 21:29

You know, and we all got chicken skin. We’re like, “Yes!” Because their daughter, so wise. Her daughter’s so bright and wise. I don’t think it’s about like, shame or, you know, embarrassment, but like the teenage stuff. I really think, she like, really knows in her wisdom, like, this is too powerful to just say.

Candice Wu 21:52

Right, and being a child and just being so out with it —

Darshan Mendoza 21:56

Yeah.

Candice Wu 21:57

— expressive of it, and then there’s a threshold where we start to be so aware of the world around us.

Candice Wu 22:05

Wow.

Darshan Mendoza 22:05

Yeah.

Candice Wu 22:09

Wow. Well, I really appreciate this conversation.

Darshan Mendoza 22:12

Yeah me too. I love it.

Candice Wu 22:15

Yeah, and I just think about, I’ve had this conversation in grad school with a few friends who had shifted their name to, I guess the best way to put it as a more Americanized.

Darshan Mendoza 22:29

Yeah, that’s right.

Candice Wu 22:30

Palatable version to American English. And when I said, “Well, what’s your real name and how do you really say it from what your birth name was?”

Candice Wu 22:40

There’s just so much more to them that comes through.

Darshan Mendoza 22:43

Isn’t that wild?

Candice Wu 22:45

Yeah, it’s —

Darshan Mendoza 22:46

I love that.

Candice Wu 22:48

It brings all that wisdom of where it came from?

Darshan Mendoza 22:51

Absolutely.

Darshan Mendoza 22:53

Yeah, I love it too, when I meet folks who, later on in their lives take on their original name, that’s in their language, that too, is such a rite of passage, you know?

Candice Wu 23:08

Oh, very much yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 23:09

So, it’s super important. And, you know, Darshan’s not in the Philippine culture or language. You know, since we know, it’s Sanskrit, so that too, I was like, you know, I had to really think about am I dishonoring my culture if I take this name and or appropriating another culture, you know, but I just really sat with how it was given to me and the messages that were coming after that, the people that were coming to sort of reflect to me, that this was such a gift, you know.

Darshan Mendoza 23:45

And so I took it and I really reconciled anything that I had just some worries about, I reconciled that. And then what was wild was probably a decade later, after I took the name, I was attending a Mystery School in Joshua Tree. It’s a school that I’ve been going to since my 20s. And I was sitting next to this Chinese woman and we were just having lunch and she looks at me and she says, “I know you’re part Chinese.” I said I am and she says, “You know, your name Darshan, means big mountain in Chinese.” And she wrote it for me, and the symbols are beautiful. I still have it written on like, I think, a napkin or something.

Darshan Mendoza 24:32

And that makes sense now too, because —

Candice Wu 24:37

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 24:37

I live on, you know, I live in the longest mountain in the world and I’m also very much connected and honor the biggest mountain in the world, which is Mauna Kea, here in the Big Island. So that too, was a really special moment, to learn more about what that name means in Chinese. And then, you know, it was monumental because I thought, that’s what, I can connect to the Chinese part of me. Like, I get it. I get that. You know, like, that’s so good, that’s part of my actual DNA and culture.

Candice Wu 25:13

Oh, yes.

Darshan Mendoza 25:14

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:15

And the symbols are for, in Cantonese, it would be Dai San.

Darshan Mendoza 25:22

Dai San, yeah.

Candice Wu 25:26

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 25:27

Wow.

Candice Wu 25:28

I think she’s speaking Mandarin.

Darshan Mendoza 25:29

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:30

Dashan.

Darshan Mendoza 25:30

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:31

And the symbols are basic, really elemental.

Darshan Mendoza 25:37

Oh wow!

Darshan Mendoza 25:38

Absolutely. They’re just like alchemy, very basic strokes and simple in its character. Well, which not all Chinese symbols are. So that just feel so, that feels like you too, you know, there’s this elemental quality of getting to the essence of who you are, and supporting other people and doing that.

Darshan Mendoza 25:59

Oh my gosh, Candice, thank you! You just gave me a huge puzzle piece right now.

Darshan Mendoza 26:06

Because I did never heard it in Cantonese, and that’s where my great grandmother spoke Cantonese.

Candice Wu 26:12

Oh, really?

Darshan Mendoza 26:13

Yeah, and she’s a mystery. She’s a total mystery to us, because —

Candice Wu 26:17

Is she the one who was possibly in a circus?

Darshan Mendoza 26:23

Yes.

Candice Wu 26:25

Tell us about that.

Darshan Mendoza 26:27

Oh, my gosh. So, what I know of my great grandmother, and I actually so blessed but when I was born, I got to spend four years with her. She was still alive when I was born. And her name that she chose for herself was Carmen Cady. And we have no idea where she found that name. But she was known to be, to have moved to the Philippines, because she was fleeing an arranged marriage. And that’s all we know.

Darshan Mendoza 27:02

And all we know is she was a stowaway on a boat, and she just chose the boat, because she needed to run away, and she had no idea that it was going to land in the Philippines. And it landed in the Philippines, right. And there’s she — she’s this beautiful woman, she’s walking off the boat and my great grandfather, Victorino saw her and immediately was drawn to her and then just asked her to move in with him and his sister.

Candice Wu 27:33

Oh, my goodness! Isn’t that wild? She sounds like she has had this giant trust for life.

Darshan Mendoza 27:41

Absolutely.

Candice Wu 27:42

Or had to.

Darshan Mendoza 27:43

She sounds like an absolutely, just some magical being, you know, that has quite a history. And she’s a bit revolutionary, and she had, her secrecy made it so much more intriguing because she refused to talk about anything in her past. And but she, like what she exhibited, as this woman and mother and grandmother and great-grandmother was just so forward-thinking, and just so sovereign, like she didn’t care what anyone thought or anything.

Darshan Mendoza 28:17

And my mom would tell me that she took care of my mom and her nine siblings, you know, after school, the day we would come home, and she’d be like, brewing all kinds of different medicinal things and stews.

Candice Wu 28:31

Oh, I love it!

Darshan Mendoza 28:32

And people would be over, talking very passionately in Cantonese and she’d have her own crew like over at the house, almost talking like about revolutionary things. But no one understood, like, none of the kids understood what she was saying. And she was just a tough woman, like any bullies that would you know, bully my mom and her sisters. She would literally like, chase them down on the street with a knife in her hand.

Candice Wu 29:04

Oh, she’s hilarious — Oh my goodness! Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 29:08

Yeah. When we recently found out that perhaps she was in a circus, because we found a book written about our family. And so all of us started reading it over Christmas break, because we had a big reunion this past year, and all of us were reading it. And then when that, when we all got to that part, everyone had their own, you know, responses to it. But I was just, I knew in my heart like that was probably true. Yeah.

Candice Wu 29:38

Wow.

Darshan Mendoza 29:39

So like, that explains it. It explains why I am who I am perhaps, you know, that too.

Candice Wu 29:49

How does it explain?

Darshan Mendoza 29:50

I don’t know. I just imagine her being just so adventurous in her life, and like, really open to the mystical and open to magic. And I haven’t quite found an ancestor or relative that’s like that. So I always wonder I’m like, “I wonder where I got that from?” You know?

Candice Wu 30:16

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 30:17

Yeah.

Candice Wu 30:20

I feel her presence through you.

Darshan Mendoza 30:22

Yeah.

Candice Wu 30:23

Who she is, and it does feel like that is who she is.

Darshan Mendoza 30:26

Yeah, like somebody who could be, you know, hanging out with tigers and like, just the —

Candice Wu 30:32

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 30:32

— the magicians and oddballs and people on the fringe of society. You know?

Candice Wu 30:39

Thinking that it all works.

Darshan Mendoza 30:42

Yeah.

Candice Wu 30:42

You know, that it’s all in the magic of everything. It’s like normal.

Darshan Mendoza 30:47

Right.

Candice Wu 30:47

It’s normal.

Darshan Mendoza 30:48

It’s totally normal. Like, who knows what she would have done in the circus. But it’s such a big clue. And someday, I really want to follow it and find out more, because I think you can, now that you know, you can look up Circuses around that time.

Candice Wu 31:04

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 31:04

Around that area, I think we can totally, it’s the clue that she must have given us from wherever she’s journeying now, and it’s something that we could follow. You know, that’s a big one. A big one. I mean, China is a big freakin country. There’s a lot of Chinese people. It’s like, how am I ever gonna find? And we don’t know her real name? How are we going to find out who she is? You know? Yeah, it’s her life so —

Candice Wu 31:31

Well, hearing about her and what you’re saying that she is a big piece of the puzzle of who you are, and shines this light on who you are, it makes sense. And I want to read a piece of your book.

Darshan Mendoza 31:44

Oh, okay.

Candice Wu 31:46

Where this really does shine through, you know, this adventure and this trusting of whatever’s coming your way. Let’s see which piece will I read.

Darshan Mendoza 32:00

While you’re looking, I’m going to sip my coconut water.

Candice Wu 32:04

Sounds good.

Candice Wu 32:07

So I’d like to read two snippets from your book, The Luminary Journey: Lessons from a Volcano in Creating a Healing Center and Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be.

Candice Wu 32:19

“May 26, 2018, barely slept and felt something coming. Earthquakes and explosion on the daily. New Earth ash in my mouth, and on my skin. We’re becoming new humans, something is happening within. What a primal existence, each of us getting shaken, each of us letting go. Tutu is creating. This is life on a volcano.”

Candice Wu 32:57

And this second segment, “A new Earth began to form our feet, volcanic ashes filled the air, sulfuric particles embedded themselves into our hair, onto our skin, and tongues. My mouth was coated in ashes, my lungs were processing the particles alongside the grief of so many things passing, burning too quickly for my heart to comprehend.”

Candice Wu 33:25

I can feel something as I read that.

Darshan Mendoza 33:30

Yeah, that brings tears to my eyes for sure, to remember how I felt last year.

Candice Wu 33:40

It’s so wild to me that this was just last year.

Darshan Mendoza 33:43

I know. Me too. And then you know, everything, since the eruptions have really accelerated, my life and thinking the collective here, you know, from what I’ve gathered, as I’ve been traveling this year to, so I think our timeline sped up.

Candice Wu 34:06

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 34:07

And, yeah, it was such a powerful time.

Candice Wu 34:12

When I read these parts of your book in the very beginning, it was just like, “Oh, my goodness, I can’t even imagine what this really would be like.”

Candice Wu 34:22

I love how you described it so viscerally. Like, how your body experienced it.

Darshan Mendoza 34:29

Yeah.

Candice Wu 34:29

What are the tears in your eyes? What do you feel?

Darshan Mendoza 34:33

There’s just this gratitude. Because I think since then, my experience, you know, being on this island, and it’s such a different energy now, it really does feel like the new Earth. And, you know, we’ve been hearing about the new Earth, right, and this new paradigm.

Darshan Mendoza 34:57

I think, especially if you’re on the spiritual path and you’ve been traveling the path of healing and understanding who you are, understanding what your gifts are in the world, and understanding your role in creating with people. What you’re here to create and share and be of service with, you know, that whole journey.

Darshan Mendoza 35:26

We hear from our elders and our teachers, that we are moving towards, you know, golden age or a new Earth, there are different words for it but we understand, not just intellectually, that there’s a great shift happening. We’re seeing it and experiencing it every moment now and it seems like it’s so much more prevalent, but I think it’s also because we have access to see this live through social media, the Internet, and we’re still connected.

Darshan Mendoza 36:05

And so, you know, it’s wild to have heard about this, throughout our journeys of awakening and transformation, and then to be in it, to literally be so immersed in the actual shift. You know, and so that’s, what was so viscerally moving about this whole year since the eruptions began, May 3rd.

Darshan Mendoza 36:43

You know, it’s like, I want it, you know, you just kind of want to walk around be like, “Oh, my God, you guys, it’s happening. We’re really in it.”

Darshan Mendoza 36:50

It’s no longer like a prophecy, you know, we are the prophecy and we are the children of the prophecy. Right? And we are, you know, like, the Hopi elder had said in that very famous poem and incantation, you know, we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for, like, this is it, this is the time.

Darshan Mendoza 37:12

And so when I recognize that last year, it was almost like, you just see a movie of your life, and all the teachers and all the lessons, and all the things start to really align to show you, okay, these are some of the things that you still have to let go of and learn, and transform from and heal. And then here is what’s calling you forward, here are the gifts that are just waiting for you to own and share. You know, and here are the people like, the essence of the people that are calling you forward, to serve their visions and dreams to and play your role. And so all of that was happening, while you know, physically the earth was literally destroying and creating. And so, we’re so connected, right, and so on a macro level that was happening on this global Earth stage and then on such a micro-level internally, that was happening, too.

Darshan Mendoza 38:23

So it’s literally the most sacred time I’ve ever experienced in my life so far. You know, and so to think about it now and to just hear, you know, that what I wrote on May 26th, or whatever day that was, but just to hear how I was feeling, then, knowing that something was shifting, and we are becoming new humans on this new Earth. You know, our paradigms are shifting and we are ascending with this Earth. And to like, physically feel it, blew my mind.

Darshan Mendoza 39:02

And now, you know, a year later looking back, like, “Oh my gosh, we, yeah, we totally shifted paradigms.”

Darshan Mendoza 39:11

And the way we’re becoming new humans is really just we’re embodying more of our divinity. You know, that’s what it is. We are understanding that we are gods and goddesses walking on this earth and through our actions and through the love that we emit, we are ushering in heaven on earth. That’s how it’s going to be done. It’s going to be through us, stopping to like, descend upon us and we’re not going to ascend to it, you know, it’s, I feel it kind of like a Taurus, where it’s literally coming through us, you know?

Darshan Mendoza 39:49

Yeah. It’s wild because it’s no longer intellectual. It is super embodied. Yeah, and you can see the artifacts because its ashes, literal ashes, there are ashes literally falling from the sky. There were these really amazing blobs of lava that was filled with air so it was very light. There were these green Olivine crystals falling from the sky. And there was what people call here Pele’s hair, but it’s these glass, very thin glass particles, you know, bursting out of the volcano, but also falling down from the sky. So it was very elemental, sulfur is a huge part of alchemy, it’s energy and we were covered in it. You know?

Candice Wu 40:50

Oh, my goodness.

Darshan Mendoza 40:50

Yeah. So there was like, it was actually an alchemical thing that was going on. So yeah, that’s why tears because it’s just so profound. You know, when you’re watching birth, you know, child’s birth, when you’re watching someone die and transform into the next life when you’re watching, just the genius of life. That kind of all. Like, that’s how it feels right?

Candice Wu 41:24

Absolutely. Wow. I can’t even imagine that experience.

Darshan Mendoza 41:34

What’s wild is I think we all got it. Like, I honestly felt so connected to everyone on the planet that knew what was happening here and I know people were connecting to us. You know, I know folks were feeling it. Because I happen to like, just, I don’t know, I was just asked to travel a lot this year. So I got to connect with a lot of people. And even during the actual eruptions, like within two weeks, I was brought out to Seattle, to connect with Tom Kenyon. And he did an amazing sort of weekend workshop and I wasn’t sure why I was signed up for this months ago. And when the eruptions were happening, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this is the worst time to be leaving the island right now but I have to.”

Candice Wu 42:27

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 42:28

Because I’m super called to go. And so I showed up and then I’m sitting in this, you know, Hilton, or something, some hotel waiting for him to get on the stage and I was thinking, “What am I doing here?”

Darshan Mendoza 42:40

All I can think about what was going on at home. And then he gets on the stage and he says, “You know, normally, I would just start chanting right now and introducing you all to the Hathors Star Nation and I’ll just do it through frequency.”

Darshan Mendoza 42:56

But he said, I had a dream last night, and the goddess Pele, came to me. And as many of you know, the Big Island is erupting right now. It’s literally new Earth is coming out. And he said, the people on the island are transforming a lot for the whole planet, we’re all in it together, and they’re doing it right now. But we can so support them and connect to that, because it’s happening to us, too.

Darshan Mendoza 42:59

And he said, “She wants me. This is the Goddess. She wants me to chat for her.”

Darshan Mendoza 43:35

So then he just started chanting for her and playing the drum for about 45 minutes. And I just sat there and I looked around, everyone was crying just like me. And I was shaking, like just pure on, just vibrating. And I felt like he was attuning and she was attuning us through him and I was just in awe. I thought, “Oh my God, it’s happening.” It’s happening and everyone we’re all getting rebirth. It makes sense that the earth is rebirthing herself. She’s ascending. And for us to be on this planet, we are too, you know, in all the small ways, and also the big ways that we’re being called to do that in our lives.

Candice Wu 44:26

Absolutely.

Darshan Mendoza 44:27

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 44:29

And even, you know, what was wild when another, like, sort of red flag indicator that this is really happening, you know, was, it was on social media, a lot of people captured it, but Fox News, actually, you know, was covering the eruptions. I mean, everyone was covering the eruptions and the media, but they’re covering event was, you know, they were talking about the lava and all the evacuees, and all the houses that were being covered. But then there is at the bottom of their screen, there is this ticker, moving, you know, and it actually said, “The Goddess Pele is erupting, yeah, on the Big Island of Hawaii.” And I knew, I’m like, this is the ushering in, look at what Fox News is talking about. You know, she made it on Fox News.

Candice Wu 45:25

Whoever she got through too.

Darshan Mendoza 45:29

It’s so awesome. So yeah, that was also like, wonderful to see.

Candice Wu 45:35

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 45:37

Yeah.

Candice Wu 45:37

Go ahead.

Darshan Mendoza 45:38

No, just to see the medicine and how it just spread exponentially through the planet, you know?

Candice Wu 45:45

Yeah. And I think that that’s a really, I guess, key part to everything you’re saying. Everything you’re about is this shifting from just seeing things as the concrete, in this case, devastation. The way, you know, some people can see it and I imagine it was devastating on many levels. But that it doesn’t end there. It didn’t end there, for you and for the people that we’re experiencing, and for the people you were connecting with, it was a spiritual message. It was many pieces of transformation coming through that were being felt and we’re receiving the information, the wisdom.

Darshan Mendoza 46:40

Absolutely. It’s so humbling and it’s so empowering at the same time, you know. We’re all in it and we are stewards, for sure. And the ascension of the earth is interconnected with our growth, transformation, healing, and ascension. Yeah.

Candice Wu 47:07

Yeah, you said that life was accelerating pretty quickly now.

Darshan Mendoza 47:12

Absolutely.

Candice Wu 47:13

And the events —

Darshan Mendoza 47:14

Absolutely.

Darshan Mendoza 47:17

I didn’t think I was going to write a book this year. You know, I, also, on a personal level, I’m getting divorced, moving, you know, shifting in relationship. And I also feel that this role that I’m stepping into, is really catapulting me to just show up on this level, where I feel that I’m being called to support people who have a vision and dream. And it can be anything, it doesn’t have to be creating a healing center, although I feel that everything we do now as humanity, as we are awakening, is healing and transformative, and that’s sort of the new baseline of what we are all being asked to create in this world. Right?

Darshan Mendoza 48:11

But I do feel that I am here to help support midwives bring into reality, and manifest all of these visions that luminaries are having. And because we’re all connecting to that to certain frequencies, you know, which is the next paradigm, or the new paradigm, right, and these heavenly, very harmonious and awakened ways of living on earth. So everyone’s getting the download that they’re supposed to get. And they’re becoming, everyone’s, you know, being tapped to be vessels for it.

Darshan Mendoza 48:48

So I feel like, that’s how my life is accelerating. And one of the biggest things that I know I can do is I can help people open up schools and temples and eco villages and healing centers. Because that’s been my experience these last five years here. And I’m really like, the last 15 years, you know, of getting the idea, and then just letting it transform my life so I can be a vessel for it.

Darshan Mendoza 49:21

And so yeah, I feel like that’s going to be accelerating too. I’m being called to create another center. I’m being called to transfer what we’ve created here in volcano into the next steward, who I believe is going to be creating a mystery school here for children. That’s just been recent, you know, a recent development. So there’s a lot of movement and it’s exciting. You know?

Candice Wu 49:51

That’s really exciting.

Darshan Mendoza 49:52

Yeah, I’ve been tapped to help a woman here create a temple for the bees, as well.

Candice Wu 49:59

Oh.

Darshan Mendoza 50:00

I know, it’s so exciting.

Candice Wu 50:02

We need them.

Darshan Mendoza 50:04

Oh, yeah. And I get it now. I’m like, “Oh, okay. This is so exciting.”

Darshan Mendoza 50:09

Because yes, the new Earth is here, we’re on it. You know, it’s been infused in our DNA. We all swallowed it last year, you know, somewhere or the other. And now it’s time to create what wants to be created in harmony and in support of life, and this earth, right, and each other, and that’s like, it’s really happening.

Darshan Mendoza 50:35

Sometimes I gotta pinch myself. You know, and be like, “Oh, no, I’m really awake, this isn’t a dream.”You know, this is reality as we know it and this is really happening.

Darshan Mendoza 50:46

I learned recently to check all the time, if this is a dream or not, because I’m also learning that a dream in my sleeping hours, in a very awakened and lucid way, so sometimes, you know, you wake up with a dream and you think you’re awake, but you’re still really dreaming and stuff.

Candice Wu 51:05

So I have this thing where I poke my hand. And apparently, if you’re dreaming, there’s nothing solitary like your finger may go through your hand if you’re dreaming. But if you’re awake, it’ll hit your flesh and bone and muscles, tendons. So I do that often. I’m like walking around poking my hand. Like, “Okay, no, this is, I’m awake.” So like, these decisions are going to have consequences, keep poking my hand. Yeah, but it’s kind of cool. You know to live that way.

Candice Wu 51:37

It’s hilarious.

Darshan Mendoza 51:38

Yeah.

Candice Wu 51:38

Yeah. Beautiful.

Candice Wu 51:42

Oh, and I don’t know if I’ll say her name correctly, Anutosh?

Darshan Mendoza 51:47

Anutosh? Did you know Anutosh?

Candice Wu 51:50

No, I didn’t know.

Darshan Mendoza 51:51

You didn’t get to hear?

Candice Wu 51:52

I didn’t.

Darshan Mendoza 51:53

But have you heard of her before or no?

Candice Wu 51:56

I feel like I’ve heard her name. Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 52:00

She’s a — She’s so, she is such — I mean, she’s like my guide, my angel, my spirit animal. Like, she’s everything to me. Yeah, I had the privilege of meeting her because I reached out to a mutual teacher of ours, Francesca Mason Boring, who’s the Shoshone elder that shares you know, Family Constellations with the world and that ceremony. And I reached out to Francesca because I just had this calling to invite her out here so that she could share Constellation work with our community in Hawaii. And it was Anutosh who wrote to me, because Anutosh was helping Francesca facilitate and coordinate all of her facilitation in Seattle area in the United States.

Darshan Mendoza 52:52

So, Anutosh wrote to me, and she’s also an incredible facilitator. And Francesca knew to send her first to sort of like feel it out in Hawaii and see if it would welcome more so Anutosh became our first facilitator that came out here and it was such a special gathering.

Candice Wu 53:15

Beautiful.

Darshan Mendoza 53:18

I mean, truly blew my mind as the healing power of Systemic Constellation work and what it did for our community, what it did for me, how fast and quantum it was, and deep. I just loved how efficient it was, you know, and I love Francesca using the word elegant efficiency.

Candice Wu 53:44

Oh, yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 53:44

When I met Anutosh, it was such a deep connection and she knew that already that she was only going to be on earth for just a little while longer and that too amplified our connection.

Darshan Mendoza 54:00

And I’ve just basically just sat at her feet and listened to everything she wanted to share and she had so much wisdom, and she’s so humble and hilarious, and irreverent. And she’s just this like, the cutest, most vibrant, I think woman I’ve ever met and yeah, and she gave everything. I really felt like she knew she was going to be transitioning so she gave it all. Like, all the wisdom.

Candice Wu 54:36

Wow.

Darshan Mendoza 54:36

We’re so lucky.

Candice Wu 54:37

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 54:37

Our community was so lucky to have her come, she came twice.

Candice Wu 54:43

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 54:43

She did two sessions here and we just soaked it up.

Candice Wu 54:48

And you said in your book, two weeks before she ascended from the earth plane, that she left you a message, saying, “Darshan, I wanted to share the most beautiful experience of dying, call me back when you can.”

Candice Wu 55:01

And your thought was, “Could she be possibly calling me from heaven?”

Candice Wu 55:06

That was surreal.

Darshan Mendoza 55:09

Our conversation was super surreal. When I called her back, I thought, what, I mean, it’s like talking to an ancestor. You know, talking to God, it’s like talking to an angel, like someone who’s been there, and just has recently come back to have a telephone conversation with you. You know, and it was wild too, we were talking about how we would stay connected as if she was just going on a trip.

Candice Wu 55:38

Yeah. What did you agree upon?

Darshan Mendoza 55:41

It was just through song and through moments of just hilarity? Like, she will continue to show me what’s so hilarious about this Earth and this existence. And then I said, I don’t know if I’m, like, just laughing so hard, like how we always laugh together, about everything, about just the human, the human life, right, and our human traits.

Darshan Mendoza 56:07

She always looked upon people so kindly, and she saw like, human nature is pretty funny, you know, the way that we navigate. And so that’s what she said. She said, “I will show up that way, for sure. And I’ll be laughing with you.” Which was so great to know.

Candice Wu 56:32

Okay, that’s helpful.

Darshan Mendoza 56:34

Yeah, and what a gift. I mean, I, you know, when I’m transitioning, if I’m blessed to know that I am, and I’m blessed to be really awake and conscious through it, that’s what I’m taking from her too is her wisdom, like, leave nothing unfinished. And definitely, like, make sure that you are giving all the wisdom that you want to give. And also, making sure people know that there’s this constant, like eternal connection and you can communicate with each other, you know, through these veils.

Candice Wu 57:22

I’m receiving that. Yeah, for you from her.

Darshan Mendoza 57:25

Yeah.

Candice Wu 57:26

Thank you.

Darshan Mendoza 57:27

Yeah. And she even said, “I’m going to help through the whole manifestation of what you’re creating and stuff.”

Darshan Mendoza 57:34

Which is so I mean, it’s so wild, right? Because we’re so used to praying to our ancestors for these things, but to actually be planning it and talking about it with someone before.

Candice Wu 57:47

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 57:48

Before they become it. Yeah. Such a gift she gave.

Candice Wu 57:52

Oh, yeah.

Candice Wu 57:55

My sister and I agreed that we would show up in each other’s dreams.

Darshan Mendoza 57:58

Really?

Candice Wu 58:00

Yes.

Candice Wu 58:01

That’s wonderful to know.

Candice Wu 58:03

Yeah, I’ll look for you there.

Darshan Mendoza 58:04

A solid contract.

Candice Wu 58:06

Right.

Candice Wu 58:08

Yeah, but this is wonderful.

Candice Wu 58:12

So Darshan, what are you, well, this is the question that wants to come through is if you were writing another book right now, which you might be, what would the title of this chapter be? Right now.

Darshan Mendoza 58:28

Oh, that’s such an intuition.

Candice Wu 58:32

You have lovely titles in your book. They’re just so zingy with energy.

Darshan Mendoza 58:39

You know, the first word is just literally gratitude. I feel that. I was walking around this weekend on the land here, I was hosting the person that I will be handing this place off to as the next steward. And that was a surprise, like, this just recently happened a few months, sort of the universe preparing me to do this. But I did not expect to meet this person right away, and I met her right away, literally, just to the tee exactly how this elder who was guiding me told me how it was going to happen and everything. So I was in shock. You know, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, it’s, I’m going to be handing this place over soon.”

Darshan Mendoza 59:36

And so she was, I think, integrating it herself too. And so she was somewhere in the house, and I decided to walk around outside and just really connect to the land and the ancestors. I just started balling my eyes out as I walked everywhere, because I not only felt my gratitude for the journey that I was on in birthing this place, and I not only saw like flashes of all the humans that have helped me create, co-create this and all the teachers and mentors who believed in me and help guide me through all of my dark nights and doubts and fears, and who were always super compassionate when I failed, and did terrible things, you know, and had to learn lessons in a really hard way too, like, all these people started flashing into my mind, and I was just so grateful.

Darshan Mendoza 1:00:45

So I’m crying, you know, because of all of this is sort of this, like recapitulation of the last decade of my life and the fact that the book just launched over the weekend. That too, I just thought, “Oh, my God, I just wrote a book about the creation of this place.” It almost felt like it was a thesis or dissertation. And I was graduating, because I’m being called to do something, you know, do something else into my next role. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, so this is sort of this graduation.”

Darshan Mendoza 1:01:23

And it was all just dawning on me on the timing, you know, and then what just pretty much put me on my knees, I felt like I was on ecstasy at this point, as I started to feel and receive the gratitude of the land and the gratitude of our ancestors. And what I felt is this is the most easeful transfer of stewardship I’ve could ever imagine.

Darshan Mendoza 1:01:53

The person that showed up was like, I know this is a divine appointment. And it’s a yes. I don’t even know how much you’re gonna sell it for. But it’s a yes. Like, how easy is that? You know?

Candice Wu 1:02:05

Yeah, so easy.

Darshan Mendoza 1:02:08

Yeah, it’s just so divine and so it’s divine flow. And so I was floored, totally floored at how that came to be and I just felt everyone’s ancestors hers, and also the descendants that are going to be blessed by what I’ve created, and what she’s going to create here and just how happy the land was.

Darshan Mendoza 1:02:46

And so, I would say that this would be, if I was to write about this part, just this weekend, I feel like it’s just absolute gratitude, you never know, really how things are going to interweave and how things are going to connect in your life, you know, and who you’re going to meet around the corner, that’s going to be like a monumental meeting, you’ll never know. And the only responsibility is to just show up authentically, to each moment.

Darshan Mendoza 1:03:26

You know, the way I met this person was, I was on a call with my publisher. And I was just, yeah, just sitting on that call and she hopped on, even though she wasn’t gonna hop on the call, either, because she was, because I wasn’t going to make it on the call either. But I thought something called me like, “You have to, no even if you’re driving, just get on the call, just listen.” You know?

Darshan Mendoza 1:03:54

And so she was traveling, so she’s literally walking through TSA. And something told her to hop on the moment she got through the line. And within that moment, someone just happened to mention on the call that I have a retreat center out here on the Big Island. And she heard it and she needed to hear that. Right?

Darshan Mendoza 1:04:13

And so, you know, you look at these, all these connect the dots and stuff. And when you’re sitting in those moments when you get to look back and see how things connected and weaved, man, like the flood of gratitude. It’s pretty amazing. Because then you realize, Oh, my God, all these miracles had to happen, all of these synchronicities and it really took everyone listening to their hearts and intuition to get to this place.

Candice Wu 1:04:47

You trusted yourself that impulse in you that I just had to get on this call. Who knows why?

Darshan Mendoza 1:04:55

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:04:55

And you showed up as yourself and what I see too, Darshan is that circling back to your name, again, is that vision of the Divine. You see that in people, you see the magic, and the gifts, and the genius, you said of people. And it also feels really clear, and beautiful, how you receive visions of others about you and that goes deep into and goes a long way. No other people have seen your name in you. Other people have seen, you said that, was it your ancestor, or somebody that said, oh, sorry, your teacher that said described how easy this would transition. And here it was landing on your space?

Darshan Mendoza 1:05:53

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:05:53

This is a nice circle and loop of what you give and what you also receive.

Darshan Mendoza 1:06:00

Thank you for reflecting that. I totally, just like, ate that up into my heart. Thank you. Yeah. It’s and how divine is it that we get if we continue to just see the divine in one another? Imagine the cocreations that are going to come forward from that.

Candice Wu 1:06:31

It’s a beautiful reminder and message and syncs us back to who we really are.

Darshan Mendoza 1:06:40

Absolutely.

Candice Wu 1:06:41

Well, I have so much gratitude for you.

Darshan Mendoza 1:06:45

You too.

Candice Wu 1:06:45

You’re doing and you’re sharing today and I knew it from the first moment we connected. And then it just was so easy to talk to you from the beginning and I’m so happy that we’re connected. Thank you so much for being here today.

Darshan Mendoza 1:07:03

Thank you for doing this. This is such an incredible way to gather and share and witness each other, you know, in our divinity and in our gifts and the wisdom that we all hold. This is big, you know, thank God for technology and podcasts and all this stuff and the people —

Candice Wu 1:07:25

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 1:07:26

— that really use this technology to share love and this frequency in the world, and I just bow down. I’m so grateful. I’m so honored. This has been a really an incredible healing and grounding experience for me to talk about this. And yeah, I’m just super excited to see how you continue yourself to spread, you know, your Yun Yun and your double happiness all over? I think you are an amplification of happiness, for sure. You’re an amplifier. So thank you, Candice.

Candice Wu 1:08:06

Thank you. Wow, I’m really receiving that too. And where can people find you and your book?

Darshan Mendoza 1:08:17

So right now it is out as an ebook. And today, well, it will be later, so but today, July 1st, it’s for free. But I am offering it as my advanced reader copy. I sent it to you, to Chris, and so you guys are so welcome to share that. Just share it and forward it to each other. But it is available that way and it is also in ebook form right now on amazon.com. It’s called The Luminary Journey. And then it’ll be a print book eventually in I think, February next year, it’ll be in bookstores next year. And then we’re going to work on the audible also next year, probably around August, which is exciting.

Candice Wu 1:09:08

Oh, that’s exciting. Are you going to speak it yourself?

Darshan Mendoza 1:09:13

Yeah. Oh, no, actually, I think no, I think they’re going to choose someone more professional that can enunciate. And you know, I think, you know, we’ll see, I don’t mind not speaking it myself. I feel like, —

Candice Wu 1:09:27

Yeah.

Darshan Mendoza 1:09:28

I love audible books and so I really trust my publisher and picking the right voice. And I get to, I think to choose too, but I love hearing like professional speakers that have that. I just have that frequency and vibration in their voice, you know.

Darshan Mendoza 1:09:48

You have it. I love you how your voice really sounds. So I totally trust that it’s going to be a divine appointment. It’s going to be the perfect person to do that. So they can definitely find me through those venues but right now, when this comes out, Amazon. And then you can log on to theluminaryjourney.com, and there’s a giveaway there that kind of condenses the 8 milestones of The Luminary Journey, and a giveaway, a free giveaway. And you’ll also have an opportunity to schedule a time to chat and tell me about your dreams and vision because I am definitely here and open to help people manifest that. Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:10:38

Oh, that’s great. That’s wonderful. I will link all of that to our show notes here. And this podcast specifically and your experientials, your advanced reader, and the links for Luminary Journey are going to be at CandiceWu.com/darshanmendoza.

Darshan Mendoza 1:10:58

Oh, thank you!

Candice Wu 1:10:59

So it would be very easy for everyone to just jump on there and receive all the gifts that you’re offering. It’s wonderful. It’s such a gift and I have so much gratitude for you.

Darshan Mendoza 1:11:12

Oh, thank you.

Candice Wu 1:11:13

And send it to.

Darshan Mendoza 1:11:15

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:11:16

And I’m excited that people will have a chance to connect with you.

Darshan Mendoza 1:11:20

Me, too. I’m really grateful Candice. Thank you so much and thank you, listeners.

Candice Wu 1:11:27

Thank you so much. Is there anything you want to leave with today?

Darshan Mendoza 1:11:31

Oh.

Candice Wu 1:11:32

See what comes into your heart?

Darshan Mendoza 1:11:34

Yeah, you know, I feel everyone through time and space. And I just want to say to all of you, that this divine spark that you know, you have within you, this is truly the time to share it and amplify it, with the world. It is such an incredible, beautiful, scary, liberating, empowering experience to do so. And you’re so not alone in that journey, because we’re all awakening to that within ourselves.

Darshan Mendoza 1:12:23

So you know, listening to podcasts and reading the books, and just having incredible conversations with each other, and vulnerably sharing what your dreams are, is so integral right now. And I’m just really excited for myself to be part of all of this that’s happening on earth and connecting in this way. So keep connecting. Yeah, and keep shining it. Because we all need it. We all need to be called forward.

Candice Wu 1:12:58

Yeah, in our fullest as much as we can. Thank you.

Darshan Mendoza 1:13:03

Absolutely.

Darshan Mendoza 1:13:05

Thank you. Mahalo. Salamat.

Candice Wu 1:13:07

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for bearing with us through the interference on my end of the podcast, and I hope you enjoyed this podcast, regardless.

Candice Wu 1:13:22

It’s incredible to hear Darshan’s story and to read these bits of her notes that she took while going through the volcano and experiencing this life-changing life-altering devastation, where she found transformation and meaning in where she saw and experienced a vision for what life could become on this earth.

Candice Wu 1:13:51

It’s very inspiring and invites us all to look at what’s going on in the world, with earth, and in our lives, that is showing us a new way, is showing us to leave the old paradigm or to let things die, to let go or surrender into something else.

Candice Wu 1:14:17

Thanks so much, Darshan for coming out to the show. I truly enjoyed it and I look forward to hearing more from you.

Candice Wu 1:14:24

As a reminder, tune into your copy of the advanced reader of The Luminary Journey: Lessons from a Volcano in Creating a Healing Center and Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be that Darshan wrote after the volcano, you can download that for free just by following the links at CandiceWu.com/darshan.

Candice Wu 1:14:44

Darshan also mentioned Francesca Mason Boring a mutual friend and colleague of ours. You can find Francesca’s episode at CandiceWu.com/francesca.

Candice Wu 1:14:56

If you want to connect with the transcription of this episode, it should be out soon in the next couple of weeks from the published date of this episode, and be sure to check out previous episodes and their transcriptions at the website at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 1:15:13

If you want to stay connected to me and receive updates of my travels, self-love notes as well as workshops, retreats, and podcast updates, find me at my newsletter that comes out every two to three weeks at CandiceWu.com/embody where you can sign up to receive those.

Candice Wu 1:15:33

It’s really wonderful to have you here today and I will leave you with a couple of thoughts and feelings from me. I can just hear Darshan saying mahalo, and I invite us all to look at our lives as transformation happening and how we can see transformation through devastation. How can we look for the learning that’s coming through, with things that feel out of our control, and also how we can cleanse ourselves so we can shine brightly in the world as ourselves.

Candice Wu 1:16:23

Thank you so much for joining us today. And see you next time on the Embody Podcast.