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

Is your money smiling? This episode is with special guest, Ken Honda, the author of Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with your Money. Arigato In, Arigato Out, is Ken’s mantra with money and he promises that it’s not going to cost you anything.

Candice Wu 0:19

Ken is considered the Marie Kondo of money and he talks in this podcast about money being a neutral energy and the amount of emotional garbage that we put into our relationship with money, how we’re born for expressing who we are, and being our authentic selves, and also how we can compel a planetary shift with a happy relationship to money.

Candice Wu 0:44

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 1:18

This episode is sponsored by your support. Recently, contributions to the podcast went to supporting the transcriptions of all the podcasts, and a database that’s searchable of all the healing experientials and meditations as well as podcasts.

Candice Wu 1:35

All the transcriptions for each episode are digestible in this written form for you to search or to look into if that’s an easier way for you to connect with the content, and you can find all that at each individual podcast link at CandiceWu.com/podcast. And the link for all the healing meditations that I offer, as well as my guests offer, all the experientials, that’s all searchable on the Embody Podcast database by keyword topics and by certain filters at CandiceWu.com/meditation. And just a little disclaimer that the transcripts are still in process, they’re just a small handful out of like 87 or so podcasts that are out there, I can’t even believe it, there’s so many. But the ones that are not there yet, look for them, because they will be coming out soon and the healing experientials and meditations will also be out soon.

Candice Wu 2:36

So I want to just put a shout out to those of you who have supported to the podcast, to the behind the scenes efforts of the podcast and appreciate how much that means to me and to the support of the podcast. If you’ve been thinking about supporting and haven’t yet, or if you’ve felt like you’ve wanted a way to give back to the community in some way that really means something or something on the podcasts has really touched your heart or if you really like the guest on the show, I would just so appreciate your support in donating to the podcast. You can check all that out as well as the offerings that are in return for support at CandiceWu.com/support.

Candice Wu 3:26

Welcome back to the podcast it’s great to have you here today. It’s wonderful to have Ken Honda on the podcast. He’s the author of Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with your Money. He’s the best selling author of self-development books and has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. While his financial expertise comes from owning and managing several businesses, his writings bridge the topics of finance and self-help focusing on creating and generating personal wealth and happiness through deeper self-honesty.

Candice Wu 4:00

I love talking to Ken about this topic, especially because I have been brainstorming all the different ways that I’ve worked with myself and others around money and have felt compelled to write a book about healing money issues at the root, as well as the story of money through the ancestry and connecting in the relationship with money in a way that brings us more abundance, but as part of a fuller abundance that we can touch into in our lives. And this conversation with Ken just came at such a perfect time. You’ll even hear me talk about my own book in the beginning when I really meant to be talking about his. I enjoyed talking with him so much and I hope you enjoy listening.

Candice Wu 4:50

Also, there’s a little treat at the very end, if you listen all the way through, you’ll tune into the audience gift from Ken and myself and it’s a very special one. It’s something we haven’t done before on the podcast and it is going to be in place of any experiential or meditation. But a special treat for one really lucky listener. Let’s jump in.

Candice Wu 5:19

This is a wonderful day to talk about money and a lot of people don’t like talking about money, which may be part of our conversation today Ken, but I think it’s delightful and I’m even more delighted to have you here today on the show. Welcome, Ken.

Ken Honda 5:37

Thank you. I’m so honored to be here.

Candice Wu 5:41

It’s just a pleasure. I read your book, Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with your Money. And you’ve been known as Zen millionaire. Tell me about how you got here.

Ken Honda 5:56

So it’s going to be a long story, to make it short, my father was an accountant, very successful. So he taught me everything about money when I was small. So after I graduated from college, I studied my own company, consulting and accounting firm and I retired when I was 29. And for my baby girl, and during the full year of semi-retirement for my baby girl, I got this inspiration to write about happiness and money. And, I started writing a small booklet and that small booklet turned into a book, and since then I’ve been writing one book every few months for the past 18 years.

Candice Wu 6:43

Wow. And you said you had 140 books, is that right?

Ken Honda 6:46

Yes.

Candice Wu 6:49

That’s a big number. Wow.

Candice Wu 6:53

When you were young, I know in the story in your book “Happy Money”, you talked about being eight years old and learning from your father. Can you say more about what you witnessed and how that began your journey of the way that you see money?

Ken Honda 7:11

Yes. So, I realized when I was very little, there are two kinds of people, business people, happy people, and unhappy people. And I witnessed them going through changes of life and the one with happy money tend to do well and the other ones who are struggling, they’re struggling financially because they have unhappy money. And I realized that there are two kinds of money, happy money and unhappy money in business as well.

Candice Wu 7:48

Yeah, can you say more about what happy money and unhappy money looks like?

Ken Honda 7:53

Yes, happy money is money that makes you smile when you receive it, and gives you joy when you spend it, whereas unhappy money makes you frustrated when you receive it and gives you anger, sadness, depression when you spend it, and obviously, unfortunately, 95% of our money is unhappy money.

Candice Wu 8:19

Yeah, I remember, maybe it was like 15 years ago, when I was examining my relationship to money, I read something, somewhere, I can’t remember where now, but it said, when you spend even $1 when you look at the gas prices or something, is there just a pain in you to even spend that dollar? What does it do to you? Or what do you feel when you’re spending that dollar? And I remember it feeling like it was taking away my life force. It was awful, and a lot of anxiety and like I was losing something. And that was the beginning of my shift in my relationship with money. And you spoke to in the book, everyone has a unique dilemma with money and their relationship with money. And how has yours been? What have you noticed in your life?

Ken Honda 9:17

So, there is one interesting thing that happened when I was in elementary grade school. One time, when I came back from school, my father who was a very strong, Samurai type of guy, he was crying like a baby and I’ve never seen adult men cry up to that age. And I thought, my father is not capable of crying, because I’ve never seen him cry in my entire life. And my mother took me aside and she told me that my father’s best friend and his client committed suicide. And not only did he commit suicide; but before he committed suicide, he killed the entire family and then committed suicide. It’s called family suicide, to save the family, from the disgrace of bankruptcy.

Ken Honda 10:13

So, that incident really changed everything, in my life and in my father’s life and my entire family’s life. And he was a very generous, fun loving person. But after that, he feels so guilty for not lending money. He was going to lend money but at that time, if he loaned some money, it would go directly to the loan sharks. So he waited until his friend filed bankruptcy, and then he can give the money to the family. So they can spend a few months to live on. So, he felt partly responsible for the death of the family that made him very depressed and he slipped into alcoholism, and he lost his smile, and all of our family members lost smile, too.

Ken Honda 11:09

So after that, he became very abusive and at that time, I sort of blamed the money for the cause of all the misery. So my beginning was not a happy journey about money. But at the same time, I really made up my mind that when I grow up, I will make sure that my family will have enough money. So they don’t have to go through this.

Candice Wu 11:39

That sounds like such a devastating experience.

Ken Honda 11:42

Right. Yes.

Candice Wu 11:44

For so many.

Ken Honda 11:45

Yeah, when I think back, you know, my father was so confused about the whole thing and I was confused, too. And I think everybody’s so confused. And now we’re in the 21st century, but still, a lot of us are still confused about money. And a lot of fights, a lot of crimes and disputes are caused by money-related stress, I wouldn’t say it’s money. It’s money-related stress. Money is neutral energy. We put so many garbages on to money. So we think it’s money’s fault, but it’s our fault, humans.

Candice Wu 12:29

Yeah, it sounds easier to blame money than to look at what’s going on in our relationship with it or —

Ken Honda 12:35

Right.

Candice Wu 12:36

What do we need to do?

Ken Honda 12:37

Right.

Candice Wu 12:37

And this is what you’ve set your work to.

Ken Honda 12:39

Yes. So since I was 10, 11, I started reading about money and I learned more about business. And so early on, I started my own business, and become financially independent, very young.

Candice Wu 12:55

So there’s this quote that you have in your book, first, the question is, do you use money or does money use you? And it felt so poignant to look at it that way and you began that section of your book with being at the kitchen table with your father and he said, money has two facets like a coin, God and the devil. And that sounds very poignant to the unfolding of your entire viewpoint towards money. And I have seen that as well. And I wonder if you could speak more to that, and your thoughts about it.

Ken Honda 13:39

You know, money could be so different, depending on who you’re talking to. If people with happy money, they say money is great, money helps you, money gives you great opportunities, money takes away all the stress, which is true. And also, the other one with unhappy money, says money is the cause of all frustration, money creates divorces, money creates fights. That’s also the other facet of money. So money can be so many things to so many people and you can choose it.

Candice Wu 14:17

Yeah, there’s something about giving ourselves permission to enjoy money, which you do speak about in your book as well, to receive it, to be open to receiving money or gifts and having joy about it, like, being excited like a child would. I love it when you tie in how children can experience it this way. Yeah, can you speak more to that? That permission that we can give ourselves.

Ken Honda 14:44

You know, money is interesting. When you are willing to receive it, it’s going to come. But when you say no, I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it, so the money will kind of passes through. So you have to be open to the flow, money is a flow. So, if it flows through you, you’ll be abundant. If money flows in front of you, you have no abundance. So if you are in the flow of money, receive money and then pass it on, that’s abundance. But a lot of us feel so unworthy about receiving money from our clients, from our companies we’re working for and we are afraid to ask for a raise. We are so afraid to receive more. And also we feel frustrated because we have to give away money for taxes and other things that we feel like, ooh, I don’t want to pay but that really creates clogs in your life that stop the flow of money.

Candice Wu 15:52

Yeah, and it feels so bad.

Ken Honda 15:55

Yes.

Candice Wu 15:55

You know, it feels so bad to say, “Oh, I have to pay x y & z.”

Ken Honda 15:59

Yes.

Candice Wu 16:00

And when I really was in that place of feeling bad about money going out from me, paying things, it was so hard to even see that there was another way to be with money.

Ken Honda 16:13

Yes. So think of food, for example, you know, a healthy person eats a lot and then releases a lot. The unhealthy person eats a lot, but not releasing a lot. You know?

Candice Wu 16:30

It gets stuck.

Ken Honda 16:30

Yeah.

Candice Wu 16:31

Exactly.

Ken Honda 16:31

I don’t want to let go.

Candice Wu 16:32

Undigested.

Ken Honda 16:33

Yeah. So it’s not healthy at all when you think of food. But when you think of money, like a lot of people want to stay constipated? Is that the word?

Candice Wu 16:43

Oh, constipated.

Ken Honda 16:45

Constipated? Yes, that’s a hard one.

Candice Wu 16:46

Yeah, it is.

Ken Honda 16:49

They love to be in that situation.

Candice Wu 16:53

To be constipated. They love to stay there.

Ken Honda 16:55

Yes. Even though it’s not quite healthy.

Candice Wu 16:59

Yeah, I had too, in my life, I felt the impact of a lot of my ancestry. And the way that they dealt with money in the story of money. And I love how you asked the question, I believe you said: “If money were a person, what would this person be like? Or who would that be?” And when I was looking at the story of money in my family ancestry, I felt like money was something that divided people, it hurt people and it was something that people hoard and try to stay constipated with, and collect and collect, but it doesn’t really go anywhere and it doesn’t really bring joy.

Ken Honda 17:45

Yeah.

Candice Wu 17:46

It just collects and divides.

Ken Honda 17:47

Yes. So it’s like, when you look at it like a river, if the river flows beautifully and naturally, organically, you know, though, there will be a lot of life. But if you stop the river, you know, it’s going to create a lot of chaos, there will be a flood, and also some areas will be dry and the whole, chaotic situations will occur. So when you just start hoarding money, it’s not good for you and also for the environment too, so instead of hanging on to your money, you have to let it flow, and that will be the ways to keep healthy financially and also emotionally too.

Candice Wu 18:35

Beautiful, yeah, that flow. And can you speak more to how you teach people to get in that flow? Let’s say they do feel that constipation or they —

Ken Honda 18:48

Yeah.

Candice Wu 18:49

Just feel so victim to money, like, no, what if — I’m sure in your many walks of life, and the speaking that you’ve done connecting with so many people in Japan and around the world. What, you know, have you had that question where people say, but really, like, this isn’t working for me?

Ken Honda 19:11

Yes, it’s so true.

Ken Honda 19:13

You know, I’ve, I’ve been fortunate to have many great mentors and one of them is Wahei Takeda who is called Warren Buffett of Japan. And he is one of the wealthiest people in Japan and I had this opportunity to ask him about money, and asking, what is his secret to money? And he said, only one thing: “Thank your money. Arigato your money.” What?

He said: “Arigato in. Arigato out. That means when the money comes in, say thank you to the money, when the money leaves you, also, thank your money. And by doing that, you start this cycle of appreciation in your life, and why I said appreciating about money and worrying about money, you cannot do it at the same time. So if you could focus on appreciation of the money, you will forget about worrying.”

So that’s the beauty of his teaching. So once you start appreciating the money coming in, instead of being frustrated with how little you get, you know, you begin to appreciate your clients, your boss, and all the environment and they react in a positive way.

Ken Honda 20:34

One of my seminar participants was a low paying secretary and she didn’t have a college degree so she didn’t get a high salary. But she was complaining about it, the whole thing and one day, she realized this secret of appreciating, so she started appreciating her boss for giving her the job and she thanked him, and she thanked him in so many other ways. So she became like a different person. A few weeks later, she got to be great. So, you know, without saying much, she showed her appreciation with her attitude and then her boss paid her back. So that’s the beauty of appreciation, what you appreciate, appreciates, if you appreciate money —

Candice Wu 21:26

That is beautiful.

Ken Honda 21:27

The money will also — yeah — be nice to you. So, and it’s not a new age spiritual thing. It’s this psychological impact that people have around appreciation and it works on wonders in family issues, too. If you start appreciating your partners, your kids, your parents, they appreciate you back.

Candice Wu 21:50

Absolutely. And it — as you’re saying, it’s not this new age thing, it’s so tangible, you can feel the visceral feeling of someone appreciating you or when someone appreciates something, there’s a feeling around that. And there’s also so much to appreciate, even if it’s a little money you receive.

Ken Honda 22:12

Yeah, and you know, I’ve been a practical business person all my life. So when I was doing accounting, before my retirement, I divided my clients into two groups. One is a regular group and also the other one is the one with small gifts. Whenever I got to see them, I brought small gifts, like chocolate, a book, or CD or herb tea, and something not too big, and to appreciate their businesses and appreciate about relationships. And six months later, look at what happened from the group, regular group, I didn’t get so many referrals. But the second group with small gifts, I got overwhelmed by the responses that they wanted to refer me to their friends. So with the small gifts, they want to do something for me in return. And that’s the only difference and also the feeling of appreciation, along with the small gifts. And if you feel appreciated by somebody, you appreciate them. So that way, business wise, it really works.

Candice Wu 23:22

That makes sense.

Candice Wu 23:24

The discernment that I feel around what you’re saying is that it really needs to come with appreciation, like a true feeling of that versus just being, I don’t know, a coupon.

Ken Honda 23:33

Yeah.

Candice Wu 23:35

It feels flat, like, Oh, I’m just going to, or if you gave the small gifts just without much meaning. But the meaning you’re imbibing in it is that appreciation and care.

Ken Honda 23:47

Yes, exactly.

Candice Wu 23:49

Yeah. So how do we route through our emotional garbage related to money?

Ken Honda 23:55

You need, like a whole day? But you know —

Candice Wu 24:00

Yeah. Many people need lifetimes, right?

Candice Wu 24:05

Yeah. And you spoke to how important it is to be doing what you love and to be in the appreciation of your gifts, and what you can offer the world and loving that as a way to let the flow in.

Ken Honda 24:05

Yes. Because we’ve accumulated so much garbage around money. You know, first of all, we are worrying about money a lot and we feel frustrated with money. We feel angry, we feel depressed, we feel anxiety around money. And when — I give a lot of counseling, I used to give a lot of counseling to couples, business owners, and housewives so I know how it works. You know, we are addicted to money worries. We are literally addicted because we are so — we stay so paralyzed because we are afraid of money. Because of money fear, we don’t take risks and start doing what we love. We get stuck in these jobs that we don’t like and get stuck in the marriages that we think it’s already over a few years ago. And because of money limitation, we are so afraid to start new ventures in life.

Ken Honda 25:27

Yes.

Candice Wu 25:27

So if we can’t take a risk to do that, it would be very hard to get in the flow.

Ken Honda 25:32

Right. I’ve written more than 20 books on how to find your gifts and how to follow your heart, and it’s very important. But going back a little bit about money emotions, unless you kind of heal these emotions around money, you are so paralyzed. So, you know, we are so stuck. So we know somewhere deep inside, we want to do what we’d love. But we feel like we don’t deserve that good life or we don’t have enough resources financially, mentally, whatever the reasons, we cannot afford to do whatever we love. So unless we heal these money issues and transform our relationship around money, we cannot really start living.

Candice Wu 26:25

Yeah, and in that way, we can’t really afford not to do what we love in life, because we’re really not living.

Ken Honda 26:33

Yes. But unfortunately, not only in Japan, in North America, Europe, China, Africa, India, everywhere -countries everywhere, we’re stuck. Because we are so confused about money. And when you take a look at the issues really closely, we’re not afraid of money, we are afraid of a bad future, to be precise, we are afraid of the future without any money, we are afraid of running out of money in the future. And then no money is no good. You know, it’s scary. Because everything is tied up, we cannot pay for the rent, electricity, so we’ll be homeless, we cannot eat, you know, all these survival issues will come up. But when you take a look at it, it’s nothing to do with money, because I’ve interviewed millionaires intensively and I’ve found at least three or four times before they became a millionaire, they experience a situation without any money. But that didn’t kill them. What kills people is the fear of the situation with no money.

Candice Wu 27:52

That makes complete sense and it seems like in my experience, whether that’s your personal experience, that something has happened, and it was scary or maybe terrifying, that instead of recognizing it’s the fear of that, versus that we often just say, Oh, it was money, and then we kind of like, drop the issue or something, you know, we leave it there; with blaming money. And I found in my work with people in their ancestry, and in my own ancestry that a lot of times, it’s someone in the past that experienced something that did happen, perhaps around money, or perhaps around loved ones, where the money is at, is losing a loved one and the fear and the pain around that was so great it was stuck there without looking at it and healing it all the way through and feeling it, and so it carried on for generations, and it can get placed to money.

Ken Honda 28:56

Yes, that’s your expertise and I agree with you a hundred percent. It’s kind of hard to believe psychologically and scientifically, because the grand grandparents that you don’t even know the names and the faces, they’re just influencing you. It’s almost like the experiences you had last year. Yeah, so I do a lot of healing around money issues, too. So I’m sure you’ll find my work very interesting because what you do must be very similar to what I do. You know, it’s developed in very different ways. But the core issues are the same.

Candice Wu 29:38

Absolutely. I feel that when I read your book and does it come up in your work with people? The ancestry and people that lived before them?

Ken Honda 29:51

Yes. Our culture is so oriented with our ancestry. So we have a little altar, usually every Japanese house as a small altar and then we have these pictures of our grandparents, grand grandparents and then we worship a few times a year, and about our ancestries. So we really respect our heritage and I think that’s something Western people don’t seem to have, as much as we do. So as much as we show respect to our ancestry, a lot of us are restricted from our ancestry. For example, one of my friends feels so unworthy and also so restrictive when it comes to changing jobs because he is a fifth-generation of photographers. And then if he is doing photography, actually, he wants to do more music, but he feels like all his ancestors will be upset if he changed his career to music. So that’s probably what North American people or European people don’t have.

Candice Wu 31:10

And yet that experience of being restricted or perhaps being resourced or strengthened by ancestry still exists, even if the sense of the everyday practice of ritual isn’t there?

Ken Honda 31:27

That’s true. So true.

Candice Wu 31:28

Yeah, still living there under these things.

Ken Honda 31:32

Yes.

Candice Wu 31:33

As I see exactly what you’re saying, the sense of this is how I belong to my family if I’m a photographer, too.

Ken Honda 31:41

Yeah, so I do a lot of family shame cleansing too, you know, because we have so many shames passed on from our grand grandparents, like 150 years ago, you know, and then they feel like that they shouldn’t be so flashy and they shouldn’t spend so much money, because we are the farmers. So you know, the time — when their ancestors are farmers are like, more than a hundred years ago, but their grand grandparents used to say, we are farmers, so we don’t, you know, wear flashy clothes. And that passed on to grandparents and parents, and now you’re living in the 21st century, but still, we are living in, you know, in the 1800s almost.

Candice Wu 32:35

Absolutely. I see that as well. So how do you work with the shame cleansing? What do you do?

Ken Honda 32:41

Yeah. So, you know, I always ask my clients to gather all the ancestors and relatives. And some of them, they have the pictures, some of them, they just asked them to just, you know, come to support me. So instead of being the object of the curse, from your ancestry, you just feel the support and respect and care from your parents, grandparents, grand grandparents. So once you feel that you are bound with this shame generation generationally. So all, like, 20 of you can come together, for the first time in history of your family. You know, it’s kind of neat, because they don’t live in the same age. But you can do that in a spiritual way. And then you get them to talk about the shame that your parents had, and you can imagine your grandparents had, and then the rest is almost like in your imagination. And after that, you put camp fire in the center of the circle, and then put all the shame and let it burn. And with the blessings of all your ancestry, and after doing a little meditation of some kind, you know, you feel so much lighter, and amazingly, their financial situation changes in a few weeks. So I don’t know how it works. Some people think I’m a spiritual healer of some sort. But I think it’s just your inner psyche that once you’re free of burden of shame and guilt, I think the money flow can be more smooth.

Candice Wu 34:37

That’s beautiful.

Ken Honda 34:38

I’m sure Candice, you’re the expert. So you know, what I’m talking about. Right?

Candice Wu 34:44

I do, and it’s beautiful, what you’re describing, it’s — I just find it really fascinating too, that it’s very much in line with some of the practices that I’m working with. And I love how it sounds like and you can let me know, it sounds like this is coming very much from the tradition of Japanese culture of ancestry and your creativity of how you can work with your imagination and invite, as well as what is the felt sense or what’s real about inviting your ancestors in.

Candice Wu 35:19

Yes, I find that it can be — it can feel spiritual, who’s to say it’s not, but also it does live in the psyche. There are so many of these beliefs and feelings and when we put them into the light and in your experience that you’re offering, put them in the camp fire and let them burn with blessing. That’s really transforming, something on the inside, for us.

Ken Honda 35:46

Yes.

Candice Wu 35:47

Which gives way to the outside.

Ken Honda 35:49

Yeah. So as you can see —

Candice Wu 35:52

Beautiful.

Ken Honda 35:52

Thank you. As you can see, I’m not just doing this for Japanese families, I’m doing it globally, because look at what happened since the 1930s or even before then, since capitalism started, look at how much shame, guilt, embarrassment, greed, we’ve accumulated energetically on this planet, that’s what’s messing up the environment. So if we can somehow coordinate globally, mentally, spiritually, look at all the issues, and then heal this money wounds, because super-wealthy people feel guilt and upper-middle-class people feel upset and because they’re not treated equally, and the middle class and lower-middle-class people feel frustrated, because somebody is taking advantage, you know, of it. And then financially challenged people feel shame around money. So if all of us get together, and then heal these money wounds and emotions around money, globally, I think there will be a planetary shift. So that’s why I wrote this book, Happy Money.

Candice Wu 37:06

I love that. I resonate with that a lot, that if we are able to shift the energy within us and in our relationship with money and with interaction with other people with money, that just trickles out to everything. And the way, you know, I think, tell me what you’re thinking here. But when you say that this is a global wound and it’s hurting the planet, I think about how, at times there’s greed or fear, fueling how people want to make money and then they may do things that would hurt the planet, or may not consider those facets because they feel like they’re just in survival mode. And there may be many other reasons but feels like it influences our decisions on what we buy, what we offer to sell, and how we live, what would you say?

Ken Honda 38:17

You know, I do a lot of money counseling to different generations, what I found is like, millenniums and younger people, they have a totally different attitude about money. So people in the 30s, 40s, 50s, they love shopping, but the younger people, they love to shop less, and then they want to shop, more fairly traded stuff instead of buying five different jackets and shirts. They are satisfied with a one fairly traded the shirt, and they feel pride in it, and so instead of having more and more, new generations, they’re feeling like satisfaction and fairness, and less, which is so beautiful, because younger people are more advanced in the history of humankind. So they know, the way we’ve been living doesn’t work, and it doesn’t support the planet. So I think there will be a lot less and less consumption of cheap stuff. Instead, I think more about fairly traded stuff will be out there in the market. So there will be less exploitation for young laborers and low paying jobs in developing countries. So I think, as a whole, we’re evolving in a beautiful way.

Ken Honda 40:01

When you take a look —

Candice Wu 40:02

Beautiful.

Ken Honda 40:02

— planetary shift, our place is much better than 200 years ago, 100 years ago, or 70 years ago after the war. You know, there are wars and the people who are in the war zone, it’s estimated about 3 to 5 million people. So in other words, you know, 6 billion and 997 million people are not in war. So globally, we’re shifting beautifully. But you know, not there yet. But I think we’re getting there. So, but we need to have this planetary shift and it has to come from the individual, and it has to come from within. And I think the key is appreciation about who you are and if you can appreciate who you are, you don’t need more stuff. That means less shopping, less money spending, more money in your pocket. So you feel less stress about money and then more satisfaction in life. So more appreciation is really the start of the whole thing.

Candice Wu 41:17

Yeah, that’s beautiful and I think that really hits the core.

Ken Honda 41:22

Yeah, a lot of us are creating money issues because we spend simply too much. The reason is that we feel so stressed, so we shop. I heard retail therapy is a word in English and I thought it’s pretty funny. You know, when I first heard about the retail therapy, I thought the shop attendants will give you therapy and so I thought it’s a service or something, you know, extra service. So I find it’s very funny, very American way of creating words.

Candice Wu 42:05

That’s hilarious.

Ken Honda 42:06

Yeah.

Candice Wu 42:08

Yeah, I think it’s our way of naming something without really actually going deeper in a way. You know, it’s funny, retail therapy, it’s saying exactly what it is. We want to feel better.

Ken Honda 42:23

Yeah, I thought there’s a there’s like, a free, you know, therapist in a shopping mall or something. So like, you just confess, I shop too much.

Ken Honda 42:36

Yeah.

Candice Wu 42:37

You bring your shopping confessions in.

Ken Honda 42:39

Yeah, if you bring a receipt that you bought something at the shopping mall, you can get a free session or something. That’s like a massage thing. If you’re a loyal customer, you get free therapy. Oh, you shop too much. Come back next week.

Candice Wu 42:56

Oh, let’s feed the addiction.

Ken Honda 43:01

Yeah, but you know, it’s funny, but it’s everywhere, in China and Japan. You know, one of the fun comments, one of the fun taglines in one of the most popular shopping centers in Japan. You know, it’s supposed to be a joke. Japanese people make jokes, too. And then, at the entrance of the shopping mall, it says, “Buy now, regret later at home.”

Candice Wu 43:31

That’s funny.

Ken Honda 43:32

Straight, but that’s what they say, and people smile —

Candice Wu 43:36

Yeah.

Ken Honda 43:36

And they give them permission to shop more.

Candice Wu 43:40

Yeah. If there’s a little humor about it and a good feeling about it, then —

Ken Honda 43:44

Yeah. Shop now regret later when you go home.

Candice Wu 43:49

Oh, funny.

Ken Honda 43:50

Yeah. So they don’t hide their marketing strategy.

Candice Wu 43:55

Right. We’re just being transparent with you.

Ken Honda 43:58

Yeah. So I think it’s everywhere. But once you satisfy with what you have, you don’t have this drive to buy more, you know, do more. So you’d be more content with who you are. That’s my Zen philosophy around money. So it doesn’t, you know, require a lot of money. You don’t have to be a millionaire, a billionaire, in order to be in peace with money.

Candice Wu 44:26

Yeah, for a long time, I felt like I needed to have enough and then it was a question, well, what is enough? And what does that even mean? And where’s that coming from? A lot of it was feeling enough in myself, that I’m enough but it also related to a whole shift in the paradigm of money from the accumulation and reaching some sort of bar, even though I appreciate that, if that’s happening. That feeling like, I’ll always have what I need when I need it and that I have this relationship with money that feels more joyful.

Candice Wu 45:11

Someone told me, one of my business consultants early on, told me, her view of money was the exchange of joy from one person with a calling to another.

Ken Honda 45:22

That’s beautiful.

Candice Wu 45:23

Yeah. And when she said that, it really clicked something in me that that’s how I want it to be and that’s how I wanted it to feel on both ways. You know, if I offer a service, and someone’s paying for it, my wishes that they feel they’re excited to give money in exchange for the service or for the gift of the work together and vice versa. If I’m working with someone, I’m so happy to give them what they feel they want for it. And it’s exciting when it feels good for both people.

Ken Honda 45:56

Yes.

Candice Wu 45:57

And so just looking at that whole paradigm of accumulation and thinking we need to be in a certain place but then if you really look at your life, like what do you really want and need? And how are you feeling? How are you feeling?

Ken Honda 46:18

Yeah.

Candice Wu 46:18

I think is a lot of what you’re saying.

Ken Honda 46:22

Yeah. So, thank you. You said it so beautifully in other words.

Ken Honda 46:27

So, you know, one of my greatest joy is to find people with happy money everywhere. So without knowing what happy money is, they are in the flow of happy money. So that’s their way of appreciating their life, expressing their joy, about their life and we need more people like that on this planet. And, because there are many different ways of living on this planet right now, some depressing, some enlightening, some freeing, but when it comes down to living a happy life, there are only two ways, happy life or unhappy life. So I hope everybody feels content with who they are, who he is, or who she is, and start living his or her true life, authentic life. Because that is, I believe that’s why we’re born for, you know, express our gifts and start appreciating what we have and sharing with other people.

Candice Wu 47:37

I couldn’t agree with you more.

Ken Honda 47:39

Thank you.

Candice Wu 47:40

Thank you. Yeah. And so in this place of peace with your life, and it sounds like harmony with who you are and offering to be in your gifts, do you encounter any challenges?

Ken Honda 47:56

Yes. Because emotions hit you hard every day. You know, you feel anxiety and shame, disappointments, and a lot is going to attack you almost, you know. So you have to have this same mentality. Not too much excitement, not too many disappointments, because your life is in the middle. And, for example, when you start earning money, just be practical. For example, if you have more than fifty friends who can let you stay for a week, for free, I’m sure you have at least five or ten friends. And, if you have that many friends, you know, after 52 weeks, which is a year, you can come back to friend number one and say it’s been a while, how are you doing? And then you can start over the next year. So by doing that, you know, you don’t need any money to keep living. So once you realize that you need friends to depend on, not money, seek security in people, not in money, you’ll realize that you have more than enough.

Candice Wu 49:19

Yeah, it’s such a nice way to look at it and also to appreciate the relationships in your life that are part of the resource.

Candice Wu 49:29

Yes, and trust life. Because your friends and your family members and the people who love you will not let you down if you fall, they will catch you, but you have to let them know that you need help. That’s another issue. We are so good at giving but so bad at receiving. So, you know, that’s —

Candice Wu 49:52

It’s like if we can’t receive then —

Ken Honda 49:54

Yeah.

Candice Wu 49:55

Yeah.

Ken Honda 49:56

A lot of, you know, yeah, I give a lot of counseling to single mothers too. But the problem is, they have a hard time asking for help. But once they ask for help, their neighbors, their friends, and family member has, you know, they’re going to, they’re ready to jump on and help you and you’ll be overwhelmed by the support you get but, you know, if you just don’t ask, people don’t know that you’re in trouble or you need help.

Candice Wu 50:26

Yeah, and the way you’re speaking about this, it feels like looking at where we’re blocked in our own energy of trust and abundance. Where’s our psyche or soul asking us to grow?

Ken Honda 50:43

Yes.

Candice Wu 50:44

In the case of a single mother having a hard time asking for help, because that’s a challenge. It may be blocking everything, and that we’re meant to have all the skills and tools that we can in life. And I think that’s where we are flowing the best.

Ken Honda 51:02

Yes. So you have to be vulnerable, to be able to ask for support, because people love to give you one. And you know, we’re good at giving. So remember, if you’re bad at receiving, but there are more people who are good at giving, and you can complete the cycle of giving and receiving by being a receiver. We need people to receive.

Candice Wu 51:31

Absolutely. We need people to receive. I like how you’re putting that.

Ken Honda 51:37

Yeah, thank you. I’m so glad you like what I’m saying because whatever I say may sound Japanese or sometimes weird or strange. But what I’m, whatever I’m saying, is has been proven, with great results over the past two decades. So I think it’s going to work in North America, or in any other culture. Because once we start trusting life, start receiving, and asking for support, you know, you uplift yourself spiritually, emotionally, and financially too. You’d be amazed at how many people would jump on you. They’re going to eat you up, and they’re going to support you.

Ken Honda 52:21

Yeah, and you’ll be overwhelmed by the love.

Candice Wu 52:25

Yeah, you know, I have a very concrete example of that. I was in Austin, Texas for a training and I had gotten an Airbnb, and slept in the first night and the second night, something happened at three in the morning. I don’t think I was in danger, but there was a lot of noise. It was a shared apartment and I just felt like, Oh, I cannot be here and really rest well for my training that I really wanted to partake in. And so I gathered all my things, and that morning, I decided to leave that Airbnb and not come back. I didn’t have a car or anything. So I’m walking with all my stuff, you know, walking like a mile over to the place. And someone said, What’s going on? You have all your stuff. Are you leaving? And I said, no, actually, and I told them the truth, you know, I’m really struggling with where I’m staying. So I thought I would just bring all my stuff and figure it out. But I am looking for a place to stay. And at least seven people offered their home.

Ken Honda 53:36

Beautiful.

Candice Wu 53:36

In a matter of a few hours.

Ken Honda 53:40

Because you are so lovable.

Candice Wu 53:44

Thank you. It was so loving and I felt so welcomed and those relationships that I’m building there, I love them. And there’s so much joy around that. And this isn’t specifically about money, even though I might have had to spend some money to go to a place and now I didn’t need to. But I think that just really is a nice example of what you’re saying.

Ken Honda 54:10

Yes, exactly.

Candice Wu 54:11

About reaching out and people wanting to help.

Ken Honda 54:14

Yes. So thank you for sharing this story.

Candice Wu 54:17

Oh, yes. Thank you.

Candice Wu 54:19

I wanted to ask one more question, Ken.

Ken Honda 54:21

Yes.

Candice Wu 54:22

There’s a lot of racial tension, racial and ethnic tension in the United States about money, that connects with money, in relationship to money. And, for example, this idea of social reproduction, that if you’re born into a place of a certain race or ethnicity in the States, or maybe in the world, that it’s very hard for someone to climb out of that, because it’s so culturally embedded. And the experiences that one might have growing up, are completely different than someone who has wealth. So we’re looking at social class, from this kind of constructive thinking, right? There’s that, and there’s also the amount of trauma that African Americans have experienced in our country as well as Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, so many, that I’m not naming, are having such a traumatic history in the connection with the United States.

Candice Wu 55:33

There’s also so much that was to gain, you know, coming here, I think people saw opportunity, family’s opportunity, and perhaps they did get it. And in some cases, maybe they didn’t. But there’s this hurt and wounding around being here and that does connect to how much money people feel they’re being paid here, or it does seem to bring about the mentality that how can certain groups of people come to find abundance if all this happened. And that it seems to be a societal, the way many people speak of it as societal disease, that relates to how we’re treating people. And so I wonder what your thoughts about it are and what you recommend to somebody that feels like they’re in that position?

Ken Honda 56:30

Yeah. So, you know, since I’m not a politician, I don’t — I’m not in a position of commenting what’s going on politically. But what I know is that people of all, ethnicity or older financial groups, they all feel that they’re mistreated. Now, wealthy people feel like, why they have to pay more taxes, you know, and upper-middle-class people feel the same way, like, all the taxes that they’re paying, are going to poor neighborhoods, you know, like, why am I paying for them? And the poor people feel like, you know, they’re not getting paid enough. They’re not getting enough attention. You know, so everybody’s upset.

Ken Honda 57:22

It’s so interesting from outsiders in North America, everybody seems so upset, you know. I’m not for your President, or I’m not against your president. But whatever I said, everybody gets emotionallycharged. So, you know, I know our Prime Minister, some people say bad things or good things, but we are families, we will not be divided because of him, you know, he doesn’t have that much power.

Ken Honda 57:53

So when you look at the issues, you feel like, it’s not fair. You know, it’s not — people think it’s not fair. And also, we are born with more talent and some are born with pretty faces, and, you know, cute faces, handsome, so we feel like, you know, it’s not, we’re not equally treated. And it’s true, when you look at lives, you know, some people are born with, all the great stuff. But when you think of happiness, I think it’s so fair. Because I have done a lot of counseling for people who come from a wealthy background and more money doesn’t necessarily translate into happiness. And also, you’re born into a very challenging place, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be doomed. Because that gives you the right motivation to go up.

Ken Honda 59:00

So in terms of that, I think life is very fair. I call it the distance to happiness is equally the same even if you’re born in a super wealthy family, you have a great body, you know, good looking, and smart, you know, head. But if you don’t have the right attitude, you feel very miserable. So it’s nothing to do with how much again, how much you have or how much you make, it’s who you are. So the distance to happiness is amazingly equal. So I think it’s great news for all of us. So if, because the reason I’m saying is that, even though you have a private jet, if you’re not satisfied with your jet, you feel miserable.

Ken Honda 59:52

In one time, I had an interview with a very wealthy man and asked him when did you start feeling wealthy. And he said: “I don’t feel wealthy at all”. I asked him why? He said: “I don’t have a private jet”. And then later, I had a meeting with a guy with a private jet. “So do you feel wealthy?” And he says: “No, I’m not a wealthy person, no, I am financially okay.” and I said: “But you have a private jet”. And he said: “No. It’s small. It’s a small airplane. It can sit only six people.” So even —

Candice Wu 1:00:31

It’s all relative.

Ken Honda 1:00:32

Yeah, even though he has a private jet, he said, my private jet is very small. So he feels like a small man when his plane is parked, in you know, right next to the big super jet.

Candice Wu 1:00:47

Fascinating.

Ken Honda 1:00:48

Yeah. So you know, he feels so miserable in this, you know, parking area of big airplanes. So yeah, he feels very poor.

Candice Wu 1:00:58

Yeah. Wow.

Ken Honda 1:01:00

And then probably, if I can grab somebody with a big jet, he says, all my seats are like regularly installed one. It’s not custom made or something, you know, because all the royal families from the Middle East they put everything gold. So —

Candice Wu 1:01:17

Yeah. This is so refreshing, to hear you say that life is fair and the distance to happiness is amazingly equal. I do think that is very much a relief and it does challenge us to let go of or wipe away or look at why we have believed that money is going to solve every issue and money makes happiness, right? It can make happiness, but it doesn’t in all cases. And you have some really beautiful examples of how that’s true. And I think the illusion of people that feel like they’re not rich, or wealthy is that somehow it would, having more would make them happier. And what you’re saying that the distance to happiness is always the same, it’s equal for all people, no matter the situation, it doesn’t, it challenges us to see that it’s more than about money itself, which is everything you’re speaking to.

Ken Honda 1:02:37

Yeah. So, you know, don’t get discouraged that you have little money, or, you know, life is not treating you fairly, you may feel that way. But it’s not going to last for the rest of your life. It’s a temporary situation, and if you, you know, make it that way. So just be willing to receive more, ask for help if you’re in a hard spot, and then you just start your life and don’t let money stop you so, and let money help you.

Candice Wu 1:03:04

That’s a beautiful place to conclude today. Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Ken Honda 1:03:10

Thank you, once again, Candice. You’re such a beautiful person and I can really feel you’re impacting the world in such a beautiful way, so keep going.

Ken Honda 1:03:21

Yes, it’s not going to cost you anything. And then when you spend your money, also say thank you, you know, it’s going to give you such a great feeling, and then it’s going to transform your life. I’ve taught this to hundreds of thousands of people and it works. So just try it out for once. And then you’ll be hooked to this arigato world, because it’s more fun to appreciate people and being appreciated. It’s a happier way of living.

Ken Honda 1:03:21

And listeners, please be open to new ideas. Arigato in, Arigato out when the money comes in. Try that next time. Thank your money.

Candice Wu 1:03:34

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:03:41

Thank you so much, Ken. It’s been such a pleasure. I really enjoyed laughing with you and talking about this important subject, important to all people, and I just love how you’re bringing the lightness to it, and guiding people to look truly at what’s underneath it, and to be themselves in life, to find peace with themselves which gives peace with money. And, Arigato.

Ken Honda 1:04:39

Thank you so much. Arigato everyone. Have a beautiful life.

Candice Wu 1:04:43

Thank you so much.

Ken Honda 1:04:44

Thank you so much

Candice Wu 1:04:45

Have a beautiful life as well.

Ken Honda 1:04:47

Thank you. It’s been such a great experience for me. I had so much fun with you and hope to see you soon in person and all the blessings to you.

Candice Wu 1:04:59

Thank you so much. So I would have to meet you in Japan.

Ken Honda 1:05:02

Yes.

Candice Wu 1:05:03

Where can people find you?

Candice Wu 1:05:04

Thank you so much.

Ken Honda 1:05:04

Yes, come anytime, all my information is KenHonda.com, KEN, and Honda as in the car company. So you’ll find all the information there. So, I will translate a lot of stuff into English. I’m going to make a lot of my courses for free so people can benefit from what I teach. So just look at the information. I’m so happy to share what I know. So I hope you learn how to appreciate more.

Ken Honda 1:05:35

Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:05:36

Thanks to you and your family Ken.

Ken Honda 1:05:37

Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:05:38

I love the energy that Ken brings to our relationship with money and just seeping in these very simple concepts that we can weave into our lives immediately like, Arigato in, arigato out, and it even feels better to say that in Japanese, but to say thank you, as money comes in and thank you as it goes out, to give that gratitude in both directions, just feels like it can be a thing you start right now.

Candice Wu 1:06:13

And I hope that this conversation has been interesting for you and stimulating for you just as much as it has been for me. And if you’ve been listening all the way through and want to partake of the audience gift offer, please send me a couple of sentences about anything that inspired you or what you thought of the episode, or any message that you’d like me to send to Ken as well about your thoughts on this podcast and what he has offered, what we have offered. If you send that to me in email, at embody@candicewu.com by October 1st, 2019, you will be entered in the drawing for one lucky winner to receive this hard copy of Ken’s book, Happy Money. If you’ve missed this deadline and still want to send feedback, I would love to hear it and I’m sure Ken would, as well. And there will be future offers like this where you can receive a copy of a book by the author. So tune into those episodes as they come along and usually it will be about a week and a half that you have in terms of the timing to get back to me, to be entered in the drawing. So again, you can send me an email at embody@candicewu.com or just go to my site Candicewu.com and find the Connect page, and send a couple of sentences with your feedback or thoughts, reactions, etc. I love to hear from you and thanks for participating.

Candice Wu 1:07:44

I also encourage you to check out Ken’s website where he’ll have other books coming out, events and talks and where you can find information on him and his book at KenHonda.com, as well as his Facebook page at facebook.com/kenhondahappymoney.

Candice Wu 1:08:04

So as we end the episode today, I would like to invite you to be part of my bi-monthly newsletter. Sign up for that at CandiceWu.com/embody. This is where you can also receive information about events that are coming up offerings, podcast guests, and other good stuff like self-love notes, information, pictures of me and things that I’m up to as well. So we will end our podcast today. Thanks so much for listening and it feels just rightfully fitting to say, Arigato out.

Candice Wu 0:06

Richard has dedicated his life to loving Love with a capital L. And in this episode, received the invitation to connect with the wildness of the soul, the part that wants to dance with love and die into love.

Candice Wu 0:21

He shares about experiencing life challenges as the deeper opportunity of our lives to love, the experience of intimacy, how relationships are a way to accelerate, loving Love, embodiment as a beginning and endless journey, planting a tree in fear and sitting there until their shelter, and that there are no guarantees of security or identity in life, even if we borrow it from the past or future.

Candice Wu 0:46

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 1:00

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 1:22

This episode is supported by the monthly group call that provides Embodied Healing and spiritual support. In each call, you’ll receive loving support in moving through your emotions, tuning into your intuition, developing your empowerment and body wisdom, as well as clearing limiting beliefs through your entire being, and looking at any ancestral pieces that may be inherited.

Candice Wu 1:46

Each group is limited to four people to keep it in a small group. And the call happens typically once a month on Sunday, the second Sunday or Tuesday of the month at 10 am, Central. You can find this at my Patreon page at CandiceWu.com/patreon.

Candice Wu 2:04

It’s really with great honor that I introduce Richard Moss today. I admired his work as soon as I saw it, when I saw him speaking on YouTube. And, as I looked at his website and his books, I already felt a transmission of energy, this sense of living life the soul, through the heart, and viewing all of our experiences with a loving presence, with witness, this very embodied way to be while also seeing the spiritual development of our consciousness in everything.

Candice Wu 2:44

You might even hear it in this conversation that at some point we talk about why is this called the Embody Podcast and something in me happened where the energy and the conversation of what we’d already been talking about, it just kind of ruffled up my whole being. And you’ll hear what I say. And I’m not sure that I would say that in any other day. But here it is, and what wanted to come through I trust. But I felt so much of warmth in me. And a shift into being as a more fluid experience. And shifting out of this mentality of production, or this outcome of life that my ego, my mind, wants things to be, which has been a life journey. So it’s not this profound moment that just happened here. But it was another level of that, and shedding another layer of that ego drive that can push me at times and moving into more loving.

Candice Wu 3:53

In 1977, Richard was a practicing physician in the ER when he experienced a spontaneous state of illumination. And he describes this as this moment where he sensed that all he could give this patient was love.

Candice Wu 4:10

I love this story. And also appreciate how he experiences this as an ongoing journey, not just this moment of awakening, but something that he’s been deepening in for years and years.

Candice Wu 4:25

Richard’s work is about catalyzing you to live as fully and creatively as you were born to live. And his goal is that you don’t just follow his or her work, but that you learn to become your own teacher. And I love that that’s everything of what the Embody Podcast is about. So I hope that you enjoy this episode with Richard. And I give him a very warm welcome here. Without further ado, here’s Richard.

Candice Wu 4:52

I’m very excited to have you here today, Richard, it’s such an honor, I, my first interaction or connection with your work was actually seeing you on YouTube. And the first sentence I heard, I was just like, oh, and you’d said something at a piece, convention or conversation about, there’s really nothing that we can be grateful for. And it was so much about how you said it and the energy you brought to that, the presence you brought to that moment that really spoke to me. So I want to welcome you here to the show today.

Richard Moss 5:33

Thank you, Candice, thank you very much. Always, it’s always an honor. And it’s so in alignment with my life to speak with someone who wants to help others. And for all of us, who help others really understand the opportunity of our deeper nature and potential. And to share with that and to inspire them to share about that, and to inspire that is the whole purpose of my life.

Candice Wu 6:03

That’s so beautiful. And, I feel that too, although you say it more eloquently than I do. But I also have read a little bit about or maybe heard more, from you about love, choosing to love Love, is —

Richard Moss 6:20

Exactly.

Candice Wu 6:22

Yeah. Can you say more about that now and where you are in on your journey?

Richard Moss 6:27

You’re right. I mean, it’s where I am at my journey now. And I can look back at my life and see how quite literally love was calling me. And that I understood that it only partially, at each time, the call was so clear and profound. And by love in that sense, I don’t mean or I mean a good deal more than but I certainly do mean the love that we can learn to share with another person, the personal love, the love in particular that I’ve created now for 30 something years with my stepson. And that love that we know, with people that were deeply connected to, but there was a different level, a much deeper level, call it a capital L lover.

Richard Moss 7:21

And it was calling to me in an emergency room. I was an ER doc a long time ago because I left medicine a long time ago, but it was a very important training, a different grounding, particularly as to the mind and a particular vision of what we are. But I was in the emergency room and very briefly all that happened was I was about to sedate him and for observation had been quite violent. He was actually a policeman there. And just as I was about to sedate him, this voice in my head, which was not a thought type of voice, it just said, “you have nothing to share this man except love.”

Richard Moss 8:02

Now put this in perspective, I think I was 28 years old. And what I did was I handed this syringe, I was going to inject this man with it back to the nurse and I just said to him, “I’m going to just put my hands on you the way I would want to be touched if I was in tremendous pain and fear.”

Richard Moss 8:31

And I just put one hand at the very top of his head just a kind of — the way you would touch a child’s head in, a baby’s head, just to comfort them, just to create that — to renew that ever always connection and the other hand was just softly over his belly and I got just blindingly hot. And I had been in a meditation group and I’ve met a teacher that showed me how to sense energy. So it was not like it was completely foreign to put my hands that way. But it was the voice that said you have nothing to share with this man that loved.

Richard Moss 9:13

Except for bringing my hands near him and just telling you just hardly touching him, just the softest touch. And this heat, this tremendous heat in the man went completely to sleep. The nurse sat down on a chair, the room got so hot. The security guard actually went to open a window and then he sat down in the chair. And I just was transfixed in a level of energy I never knew existed before. It was just pure love. And, because, I don’t know what else to call it.

Richard Moss 9:49

And then it was over, after, I would see, you know, things always seem longer in memory. But certainly a minute or two I just stood there, which was bizarre. I mean, I even, there was a part of my mind was saying, “oh my god, this nurse must think I’m gone nuts.” I mean, she knew me for a few years.

Richard Moss 10:10

So it was, that was one of the first times I was called. And I was called many other times, to that love that is really literally the backbone of the universe is what Walt Whitman calls it. I mean, the mystic poets and the mystics, and the great spiritual sages all talk about the very essence of creation is love. If you want to attribute something we know is an embodied feeling to the absolute unknowable mystery of God, then probably love is what brings us as close to source and God as anything can and we all taste it in our personal love, we all taste it in our relationships.

Richard Moss 10:52

But that calling of love finally became the realization that it wasn’t about loving another person, it was about loving Love with others. And loving Love with my wife, Katherine, is very different than saying, “I’m in love with you, do you love me?”

Richard Moss 11:12

We have a deep understanding, both of us, through very different paths. That intuitive said it was obeying and celebrating. It was listening to and celebrating the higher self with another. But she, too, has joined me in the language of loving Love itself.

Richard Moss 11:32

And the other one of the other ways that I was called to this love was back in the early 90s, when I found a beautiful piece of artisan paper that was embossed with a series of concentric circles and around the outside or across it in French, it was in French, and I was with a good friend who’s also, at this point, I was many years into being a consciousness or spiritual if we want to call it that teacher, which means a constant student of everything. And then, so he translated for me and the words were from St. Bernard and it goes like this, “Who loves, loves Love. And loving Love forms a circle. So complete, there is no end to love.”

Richard Moss 12:31

And so in the 90s that became a mantra, the emergency room situation happened maybe in 1975, early 76.

Richard Moss 12:43

And those are just examples of what so loving Love is like having a third consciousness. Because you and I are speaking, we’re in a relationship. It’s dedicated to much the same thing it is bringing the opportunity, the incredible invitation of deepening and consciousness and deepening in heart and embodying heart.

Richard Moss 13:11

And then I’d love to know why you ended up calling this the Embody Podcast that to me is really significant. And so that became a mantra that St. Bernard quote, that’s been 26, 27 years with me. And then in the last number of years, I began to realize that it was truly about loving Love, not about being loved or loving someone else, which is all-important and essential and fundamental as well. But that kind of love can come or go, especially personal love, you know, you can love someone and then hate them, if they don’t love you. When transactional love is there, you know.

Candice Wu 13:53

Yeah.

Richard Moss 13:53

I think for the vast majority of us, there’s no transaction between us and our children. The vast majority, it’s, it just is love. But for most of us, you know you love someone and then they stop behaving the way you want them to. And you start having to deal with your own inner stuff and projected on them and vice versa. And pretty soon we’re in conflict. And pretty soon we’re telling ourselves the stories that destroy that love. And it’s gone and is replaced by indifference or defensiveness, or anger or even hate, which is so sad and so basic, to an awakened human consciousness. So that’s what I mean by loving Love. It’s a third consciousness, it’s mediating between Cathy and myself. It’s watching, it’s listening. It’s not just an abstraction for me, it’s a living presence.

Candice Wu 14:52

It’s beautiful. I really feel connected to that loop. From that quote of loving Love. And I feel that experience of what you’re speaking to that there’s this third, living, breathing witness to the experience of relating, and the consciousness that we each are, who we are in it. And seeing it from that place, it holds everything, feels like it holds everything.

Richard Moss 15:28

It does. And that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. It does not mean that all of the work, we must, actually we have to learn to do this. And then we have to become passionate about practicing it but all of the work to understand how we poison love, with our thinking, with our disembodied obstructions, our beliefs, our belief systems, our judgments are unprocessed pain from the past and wounding from childhood, of various degrees, you know, and what we’ve inherited from our ancestral lineage, and then what ultimately all of us are bathing in terms of enormous collective patterns, such as the dominance of patriarchy in the world for thousands and thousands of years.

Richard Moss 16:26

And what that’s meant to men in terms of their identity and how they are even, how they’re blinded, or very limited in their ability to perceive woman, women, the feminine, in themselves, and certainly outside in others, and vice versa. Because patriarchy also has a very limiting narrowing effect on how women see themselves, believe in themselves and behave.

Richard Moss 16:53

And we’re breaking free now. There’s a wildness of a soul that’s coming forth now. And it’s liberating us from that. But it’s a hard work daily, moment by moment often.

Candice Wu 17:04

Yeah, I think you’re really touching on exactly why this is called the Embody Podcast. It’s all of those aspects that you mentioned, ancestry, our beliefs that have been, if one believes it, you know, through many lives, or what we came in with, what we started to think about, through our whole experience, especially from childhood, all the judgments, all of that living in the body. And how do we come to presence now, and align with presence now, but give a rooted healing to those parts that are coming up?

Candice Wu 17:47

And with patriarchy, with the collective ideas and belief, to talk about them as one thing. But I have found that it doesn’t quite shift what’s actually happening when we do relate at unconscious levels and conscious until it gets to the level of the body and the heart, in this human body, in this form. And I think it’s just such a beautiful gift to be able to have this body to be in, to let it all transform and experience what’s really here now.

Richard Moss 18:28

Yes, you know, and what’s so fascinating, which is just coming to me a number of different things as I listened to you just came into consciousness. One is that as we get older, and I’m 72, and I just was on holiday with my wife and visited one of my dearest friends, he’s been a mentor for me, he and his wife although she passed five and a half years ago, for relationship in particularly the profound richness of what they explored, has been such an influence on me. And he’s 88 or just about 88. And his name is Jack Zimmerman.

Richard Moss 19:16

And people can find him, his book, Flesh, and Spirit. And then he wrote a memoir about the last use of the exploration with his wife. Now he’s currently writing a book about the relationship, these five and a half years since she passed, and how vital and alive and profound their third consciousness has grown, even after the transition.

Richard Moss 19:40

And so that came into my mind that the body, is it ages, and I already do experience this, it becomes more and more sensitive. And it becomes wiser and wiser to really what is essential. We know that and we feel it, the skin gets, literally, the skin gets thinner, the defenses, the armor goes down. And since we can’t use the body, as so many people do, so many people use the body.

Richard Moss 20:14

In a way, I would say, sometimes it’s escape, but it’s also the portal. It’s just a portal into flow. It’s a portal into, you know, through surfing and swimming, and running and rock climbing, which was a big one for me, and mountaineering, also a big one, when I was younger, the body sports out in nature, really getting someplace through your own effort, and learning to go deeper and deeper into determination and effort and the adventure of living like that in your body. And I never got very good at surfing, just not enough time to do it. But rock climbing I did learn profoundly, more deeply into the body.

Richard Moss 20:58

I ran for many years. And just to stay fit in between my travels and so forth. And some of that was escape, some of that. And I think for many people that kind of routine of exercises, not only at one level, healthy, good at another level, it’s what they use to tone their emotional body.

Richard Moss 21:18

And as such, if you were suddenly to become ill, or disabled, or like in my case where a disc went bad. And I had years of pain and then eventually had to have a hip replaced and eventually had to have some back surgery. And in those periods of time, if you were dependent on being in nature, the way you were being active in the way you knew how to be, you could really have a tremendous opportunity to accelerate in consciousness because you would have to deal with the emotions that were being sedated, consciously or unconsciously through the physical activity, through the —

Richard Moss 21:57

Because we are a culture now and I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is going to be one of the world’s Apex, is for Superathletes, is that level of fitness in this town. I go to the gym. Oh my goodness, compared to what I saw on the beach in Hawaii recently. Though, that was the one thing I saw on the beach in Hawaii, you know, and people who really have neglected their bodies. And at the same time going by in a zillion miles an hour, people swimming, and preparing for the, you know, the triathlete contests like the Ironman, which takes place in Hawaii and maybe the most famous will be the Ironman things.

Richard Moss 22:34

My wife, in fact, did a half Ironman when she was 50, which is nine years ago, and that’s pretty remarkable.

Candice Wu 22:43

Wow.

Richard Moss 22:44

So these are the two things that came up for me, which is embodiment is going toward love. But we always have to visit fear, there’s always fear there in everyone. And until we make the determination, we’re not going to sedate fear, with exercise or alcohol or any other way. I don’t mean there’s a time for escape, there’s a time for relaxing with a drink, there’s a time for everything like that. But there are times when you just have to learn to go to the place of fear, which always comes up in relationship, always.

Richard Moss 23:21

And plant a tree there and sit down for as long as it takes till the tree grows, and you begin to have a place of shelter in the midst of these very deep fears. Because we don’t leave behind patriarchy without a profound change of identity. We don’t leave behind the wounds of childhood. And I sure you could speak about this just as well as I could.

Richard Moss 23:50

Whether it’s, you know, because some of us had a wonderful childhood. But still there’s always an inherited trauma and ancestral trauma, of lack of real marrying and inability of our parents who are already formed in their own personality, psychological structure, and that coming into the ego is not coming into the me that we become as we go from birth or conception to, I guess, the ego solidly in place by 6, 7, 8 years old for most people.

Richard Moss 24:25

And then it’s going to continue to differentiate and most of us get lost in our heads. And we forget the body, we forget to feel, we forget to listen with our hearts in our bodies, moment by moment. And then we don’t have any foundation in anything that we really know. It’s, we don’t have a foundation of what’s really true. And that’s part of the challenge with what’s going on politically now.

Richard Moss 24:56

Trump, President Trump, he’s an exaggeration in such a high office of the challenge to embodied wisdom and the challenge even to reason. So those are the things that get stimulated in me, tell me something, you know for you, what is embodiment?

Candice Wu 25:24

It means to experience what is here in this present moment, and what comes from inside and out. And that, as you said, We must visit fear, it’s to experience all the different emotions that are coming up, all of the thoughts and sensations and images that come up and to see and sort out what’s an incomplete movement or experience from the past.

Richard Moss 26:06

Oh, well put, well put “in-complete”, that’s well put.

Candice Wu 26:11

Right. And to allow it to be here now, because it’s wanting completion. And so that fear of trauma on the past or what’s still stuck in so many places of patriarchy, as it lives in us, as it lives in society, and in each individual, it’s all that opportunity to look at and feel through what’s been incomplete.

Candice Wu 26:37

And I find that when it completes, we, that is a process of loving, to allow the completion to be with it, to sit with it. And then we also arrive back at love. Because what was before the trauma or the hurt or the wound, was a desire for love or connection or presence, that got disrupted by something else. But gives us the opportunity to love both what was underneath and what came to be. And so, yeah, I find embodiment is being with all of that. And allowing that sorting process of what is not me, what is ego? What is something that just was created meaning from an experience that just didn’t get completed?

Richard Moss 27:30

Okay, yeah.

Candice Wu 27:31

Yeah. And what is the presence of my being without that? What’s underneath that? What is the mark? The full experience of my being, which I believe is love.

Richard Moss 27:48

Yes.

Richard Moss 27:53

Some indigenous native people, when they hear something spoken, truth spoke, hard truth spoken, they go, “Oh, I used to lead sweat lodges, many sweat lodges years ago. And so I never trained with Native Americans. I sweated with one, high medicine man many times.

Richard Moss 28:15

So I didn’t ever try to pretend that I was Native American. My sweat lodges were rituals of grounding in the body, grounding in the heart. And we say things like, “Aho” and when I’m in a circle with people as it so often in small circles or large circles, I don’t necessarily ask people to say, “Aho”, but in my mind, sometimes I’m going, “Aho”, and just that we acknowledge each other, that we really hear something that spoke to us, and just to let someone know when you hear that.

Richard Moss 28:51

And two things came up when you’re speaking in particular, the word complete. And I agree with you, I think when we really dive into certain kinds of experiences, that we’ve lived but didn’t let come to completion or we left, let’s say, a residue of anger, or dissatisfaction or unhappiness, there is a moment, there is a work where you go back in and look and begin to look through different eyes, look through a different depth of consciousness, look through your heart, put your ears in your heart, your eyes in your heart, your memory, to be relived at the level of the heart.

Richard Moss 29:34

Again, the heart is a metaphor certainly not what a cardiologist is thinking about. And thoracic surgeon, cardio surgeon, the heart’s not a metaphor for them. Though, I think the great physicians and the great doctors and physician needs energy, life force energy. So, you know, the word doctor is I don’t know, that its origins take us really into what physic means which to be a physician, the great physicians are also poetic, they’re also mystic, they also have a heart.

Richard Moss 30:11

So, complete is relative, some things do get complete, but the journey to know ourselves is a beginningless and endless journey. And, you know, each stage of completion is just the portal to the next opportunity, the next invitation, I should say, to the wildness of the soul, to something, I don’t mean acting out wild, you know, like the wild child image, I mean, like the wildness of the soul, that wants to dance with love and is willing to risk, hurt, and fear, and mistakes and abandonment.

Richard Moss 30:48

And as one part gets completed, it gets complete because of a process of forgiveness, which means that you, you see through new eyes, and therefore the past becomes renewed, it becomes forgiven. And it’s endless. Forgiveness is truly endless.

Richard Moss 31:06

And not one thing at all, but a grace of virtue. And it’s you know, you never go to school and learn about forgiveness, because it’s not a curriculum, everyone can learn it, but it has to be transmitted. The things you can learn, that can be trained, and can be given to you at school are all for the left brain. They’re not for the heart, the things of a heart, forgiveness, and trust, and humility and compassion, and love. They have to be transmitted by people as we live deeper and deeper in each stage of life brings different capacities, different opportunities. So it’s an ongoing thing. It’s –

Candice Wu 31:47

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Richard Moss 31:50

It’s wonderful.

Candice Wu 31:52

I love the beginning with aspect to an endless, and it gives me the feeling. You know, we’ve been so trained to the left brain, we’ve been so trained to the mind, and conditioned to see our lives to that pathway. And that linear path of here’s where we begin. And this is where we want to end up. And this just opens it up completely, the beginningless and endless.

Candice Wu 32:20

It touches on the feeling that I had when I was an art teacher, that this is our unfolding artwork of our lives. That is who we are, and we’re with the beginning or end to be, there isn’t one. And this transmission you’re speaking of also flows in line with that feeling of it can go in any direction. And it’s in any moment. And as you’re speaking to this, Richard, I’m wondering, what’s the opening that you’re having now in your life? What’s the opportunity at this moment or the struggle or the piece of deepening that is emerging for you?

Richard Moss 33:05

Oh, wow. Well, very practical, we’ve been very concrete things. I do, we all do, at some level don’t realize how much we imagine a future and then borrow a sense of security from that future.

Richard Moss 33:23

And right now in my life, something’s happened. It’s taken what I thought was a padding of financial security, for example, specifically, and it’s gone. And with that, anything that I imagined that would mean, and what’s so amazing is that I understand that the part of me that would not have been ready for that without all these years of learning to come to this moment, this beginning, and not borrow identity and security from the future.

Richard Moss 34:01

So it’s very challenging, because it’s caused us to have to make very important decisions about where to live, sell a house, and the house we’re in was the family home for my wife for the past 11 years, she raised her three children, and she took over the parenting time of her ex-husband and raised his three children. She by herself, single-handedly, for every two weeks of the month had six children and the rest of the time her three children. And this is their family home. And so now we’re, we’ve had this house on the market recently and for Kathy, it’s wave after wave of letting go and surrendering and giving away attachment to the memories, not the reverence in the deliciousness of the memories. And for me, it’s watching her struggle with that, for me, it’s recognizing that what I thought was going to be a buffer for security that would take me into old age, we’re 13 years apart, an agent would give her something to rest in.

Richard Moss 35:08

The debt disappeared literally from one day to the next, the whole imagined future went away. And, it’s okay. It actually gives us a second acceleration in our loving of Love with each other, of our landing and third consciousness with each other. The third consciousness of our relationship, which is consecrated to love Love, which is that third is listening to us, it’s teaching me more about her. It’s teaching her about me. And as we listen to that intelligence of love, which is not a left-brain form of a rational, linear conceptual intelligence at all. But deeper and deeper moments of knowing and self-surrender.

Richard Moss 35:56

You know, we reach times where we’re looking at the practicalities and then forget the deeper vision and mission in our lives, the adjustment to things like that, the moving we’ve already done so much to prepare for a move.

Richard Moss 36:13

And the decisions we’re having to make now that are a radical change from what we thought would — we’d have to live just even a few months ago. And it was from one day to the next it was just a bad investment that someone did. And, but it was, you know, that’s where our vulnerability is.

Richard Moss 36:35

Now, fortunately, she’s healthy, I’m healthy, but you never know. You know, whatever imagined future any of us are unconsciously borrowing security from or a sense of continuity of identity in many ways, death can take it, loss can take it, illness can take it, financial ruin can take it. And so we do have to learn, to really rest and to source in ourselves, to feel the ground of our being, which is not just personal, but it is more, it’s transpersonal and personal simultaneously.

Richard Moss 37:16

And the living in the world and being not of the world as the Sufi says, “to live in the world, but not be of it”, is not a dichotomy or a splitting, or it’s not the old break between spirit and flesh, between personal and secular and religious. There actually an indivisible — the beginning of ourselves, which is always this present moment in our bodies aware, those two fundamental things that are divided so profoundly in human consciousness almost the way the brain is divided between the presence right-brain and the presenting through words and concepts left-brain.

Richard Moss 38:04

And the heart, as a metaphor for knowing, to our whole being in the body, very much inseparable from — the language then, if we use modern metaphors, the right brain, the heart, the body, that’s 95% of our intelligence. What we can Twitter and write on Facebook and write in books, other than poetic books, or you know, deep philosophical prose, we can do in music, which is so much the language of heart and mind, or can be profound.

Richard Moss 38:43

We are in a time of bridging, of having to bridge. We must bridge between these seemingly irreconcilable dichotomies and so that is the edge of where I am now. To know death is going to come, we all know that intellectually. But to die into love, in this moment, to just give away an identity from one moment to next. And a sense of hope, and a fantasy of who you are and how you live, that was there for me and for her and it’s just gone. Then it’s, you know, no one’s particular business how it happened, it’s just simply gone. And that, I don’t want to say it’s wonderful, but I would not be deepening as rapidly into heart and loving Love without that sudden surprise.

Richard Moss 39:47

But of course, living that it also makes me see how much climate change, the warming of our climate, the poisoning of our soil and air and waters that with all the diseases that are now, you know, escalating tremendously. Cancers, more and more of it and more and more rare forms of it.

Richard Moss 40:12

Even though our ability to treat cancer in some ways is improving. We’re not winning the war on cancer because we — to do that we have to clean up our environment, and our environments just getting more polluted with global warming. We are in a way, a sense of living in an imaginary future, and that global warming and climate change and pollution is going to take away from, not you and me, but all of us as it is already taken life away from, literally more creatures that become extinct in the last hundred years than it ever, before happened in history.

Richard Moss 40:49

I think this is called the sixth great extinction, only six previous times in those except for the big asteroid 66 million years ago, those other extinctions took tens of millions of years. Now it’s happening in hundreds of years and decades.

Richard Moss 41:08

So, we are robbing the future without realizing it, to protect the economic identities, not just of the wealthy. Everyone lives in some form of many layers of identity. And none of which is real, none of which is going to sustain us as we age or when these profound surprises come. Like, know, everybody that we think we understand what — this is happening every day.

Richard Moss 41:43

Think about the refugees, think about suddenly from having to — think about the people with the courage to get out of Honduras, and places that were, there are such criminality and violence, that this fear for their lives, they fear for their families, their children, and then they come to this country with hope, but they can’t get in, you know, because — and it’s not just our government or its particular policies, or one political party, or this president that makes it difficult. It’s all of us. Because we’re not creating a global identity. We’re not creating a society that can integrate people who — it’s not easy for them to be integrated, it’s not easy for us to integrate them. And yet, if you love Love, what else is there to do?

Richard Moss 42:30

And when someone says something stupid, like one of our, I think it was our secretary of state that said, “Well, with this global warming and people will move.”

Richard Moss 42:39

It’s ridiculous. Sure, if you could afford to move, you’ll move. But then people that can afford to move or move to the places that everyone needs to be. And those places will get so expensive that only the wealthy could be there, too. I mean, it’s so stupid. And you think of something like Chernobyl. Think about how, what really happened in Chernobyl.

Richard Moss 43:00

It was not just that a nuclear reactor broke down. It was that people stood on the bridge watching it happen. And every one of them died, the children, the mothers and fathers thinking the light was beautiful, the light show is beautiful, and that the snow of radioactive ash was like benign snow. And the rest of them that were further away, but still within a dangerous zone. They had a knock on their door, military people and they had to pack a bag in five minutes and walk out of their lives and they never went back. The future was taken.

Richard Moss 43:36

So you were talking much earlier about what happens when we start to clear the past. But when we clear the past, when we start to heal the past and forgive the past, we have to understand that by lending in our hearts, we’re creating a new future. And that future needs to be translated into behavior. And it needs to be translated into not being dependency, not having dependency on what we imagined will be the future. But creating a present moment that truly is obedient to nature.

Richard Moss 44:09

We are the first creatures that we know of, on this planet, and perhaps in the universe, with the capacity to consciously love Love. But our science is not about dominating nature, which of course, it has been about, not true science, but Applied Science, technologies at any level forever, have always been about control and dominance.

Richard Moss 44:34

We are now, though, capable with our science of understanding the enormous and measurable intricacy of nature and starting to consciously be obedient to nature. And if we don’t do that, nature will just slap us as if we were flea and it wouldn’t make it — doesn’t care.

Richard Moss 44:54

You know, this planet earth will continue in some form for billions of years, with life on it. And we’re at an incredible turning point. Everything we’ve done to make ourselves secure.

Richard Moss 45:09

I know I’m talking a long thing now. But this is what you know, I’ve known this before, but suddenly my future was taken away at a financial level. And then just like that, from one day to the next, and not my future to earn money, though I’m 72. And you know, maybe I have another 10 or 15 years of being able to share deeply with people and there’ll be some remuneration for that. But what I saved, received, what I gradually saved over, over a lifetime is gone. And that’s amazing. And it’s not a tragedy, not the least, it’s just the most amazing acceleration. Does that mean I have a bit apprehension? Very little, I’ve had very little fear. What tires me out is all the things that change requires then doing day to day, moment by moment. Very, that can get really tiring. It’s moving and organizing for moves and things like that are stressful. So there you go.

Candice Wu 46:22

Wow, I really appreciate you sharing this. And it’s really refreshing. When you said it’s amazing. Even though everything you’ve been saying is been about this deepening and your journey deepening in love, and this opportunity of what you thought would be there, the security you thought would be there. And how you’re receiving that as this grand experience. Not grand but very deep experience and opportunity to surrender in.

Richard Moss 46:56

Oh, yeah, on one level, really it sucks to be.

Candice Wu 47:00

Yeah.

Richard Moss 47:01

Use it, kind of colloquialism. But on another level, that doesn’t what which it sucks is really trivial. And the level in which the door is opening to love Love is even more so. But there is no security.

Richard Moss 47:20

It’s much you know, the teaching, the Buddhist teaching of Impermanence is so easy to roll off the tongue. But it is only impermanence. And whatever transitory security we have, by borrowing from a savings account, or the notion that I’m healthy, or I eat well, or, you know, I do all the right things or, you know. Yes. The only sure security is when you land deep in yourself. And you can land there with another and live that incredible vulnerability with others.

Richard Moss 48:04

The security is really the shared heart. The shared heart of humankind, the shared earthling nature of all of us. Look at our insanity, the resources under a foot belong to whoever lives above it, how insane? You know, it’s the level of insanity that we just take for granted.

Richard Moss 48:30

These massive cities that have grown up in, Qatar and Dubai, and so I cut, all based on energy dug up from the ground in a time in society and culture where we’re burning fossil fuels is what we need to make ourselves safe, comfortable, and so forth. And we’re really still just in a profound spiritual poverty, not that we’re less evolved than we used to be. I mean, in many ways we’re growing, but our population and our Applied Technology has so accelerated, the mistakes we were always making, there was always a price for security. And there always will be. The only true security is deep in your heart. And in your shared heart.

Candice Wu 49:28

That’s really touching me. There’s always a price for full security. And would that be the only security is deep in the heart and in the shared heart? Would that be how you describe intimacy?

Richard Moss 49:48

What a good question.

Richard Moss 49:55

A wonderful question. It’s a question that a woman would ask on a podcast called Embody.

Richard Moss 50:04

Well, yes. To love Love with another is profoundly intimate.

Richard Moss 50:11

In my particular character, it’s that level of intimacy is also profoundly sensual. If we take the word erotic and the word Eros, which is the larger word, the Greek word for love, it’s Erosic. It’s not you know, it’s not just erotic, but it is all that.

Richard Moss 50:33

It is making, literally, hear the words, “making love.” It’s like making bread, growing the grains, growing the plant, harvesting the grains, grinding the grains, making the dough, baking the dough, making bread. It’s making love.

Richard Moss 51:02

When your user in your heart, with your beloved with your eyes, in your heart, or in your heart with your beloved, she’s not just a woman. She’s all woman, she’s a mystery that has no beginning and end. Likewise, the man in the eyes of the woman.

Richard Moss 51:20

And though I can’t get inside Kathy’s eyes or any woman’s eyes, and whatever the truth of multiple lives, I don’t remember being a woman. I just for me, intimacy is all of that. It’s paying the bills. It’s raising the family. It’s understanding that the other is always truly other. And that deep inside of each of us is that which brings us together in the most profound way. And finding that togetherness with our bodies is the greatest joy. Oh my goodness! What a way to thank God for being born into human form with this consciousness.

Candice Wu 52:16

I just took a couple of deep breaths. Just, I agree with everything you said. And just in my whole body and my whole being. And it’s beautiful. Thank you for describing it through the way you feel it.

Richard Moss 52:30

Exactly. And the joy of it, to just absolute wonderment. I couldn’t have dreamed this life. I couldn’t have dreamed Kathy. I’ve told her that. I couldn’t have dreamed you. And whatever dream I had, I keep waking up into a more profound fullness, emptiness, mystery, richness that really beggar’s words, except baby and poetry.

Candice Wu 53:09

Thank you. Wow, there are so many things coming up in me. I just, I feel so much love at the moment. And how you’re describing your wonderment for life. And it’s really beautiful. I’m really grateful. I’m like, tears are almost here.

Richard Moss 53:30

It’s a direct proportion to the dark.

Candice Wu 53:36

Yeah. And just the way you’ve been talking about paying the bills. There’s such a sweetness to it. And I also feel the embracing of the dark of sometimes it’s not fun at all, or it sucks, or it’s hard.

Candice Wu 53:53

And it’s reminding me of being with horses lately. I love being with horses, and they’re just calling me and this indivisible world of spirit and heart and body is something that really shows itself to me through the horses. And I get that chance to be with the poop. The poop and the breathing there, you know, when they’re just next to me and breathing or when they walk away from me or when I desire something and notice it in me, you know, the pressure I’m putting on the situation. There’s just so much there that is right in front of me. And it helps me bring that into the rest of life.

Richard Moss 54:45

Yeah. And I close my eyes, try to imagine it.

Richard Moss 54:49

I’ve had only minimal contact with horses, but enough to know, intuitive intuitively, that the relationship you can have with the horse is profound, but it’s not cerebral. It’s not. It’s whatever is deeply grounded in us, in the moment.

Richard Moss 55:13

I, you know, and in our bodies at a felt level they can mirror and yes, of course, they require being cared for, now in nature, they required being cared for. But nature as it is, you know, our nature has enclosed nature and fence to nature. And it does it all the time, not just in the metaphor of the planes, and the fences and so forth.

Richard Moss 55:45

But yeah, I can see that the horse can teach us to rest in our bodies in the now. And in so doing, come into communion with the horse. And then our bodies become extended to the horse. And certainly to be. I mean, I’ve ridden horses, but never with the knowledge that I really knew what I was doing. It was always the utility to get into a remote place, to bring the packs in, for my soul in space, wilderness trips that I used to do, year after year in just different wildernesses, just taking people there to do consciousness work completely alone, you know, relatively unreachable. And those were my small experiences with horses. But I stood next to them. I’ve watched when a horse just notices you, when you’re looking, and when it really pays attention to you and when it walks over or doesn’t.

Richard Moss 57:01

So I have that intuition of what you’re speaking up.

Candice Wu 57:07

And some other things you were saying, Richard, I was thinking about what’s going on in Hongkong right now. With the extradition bill that China, well, that Hongkong, that the leader of Hong Kong wants to put in place, which and what I’m seeing with all the protests and the amount of love that I see in that, where so many Hongkongers may not be affected by this bill, or what happened five years ago, with the previous protest, but they’re being called to come out and speak up and say no, and —

Richard Moss 57:51

Say no to another offense.

Candice Wu 57:54

Yes, say no to another offense. Another idea that could create hurt –

Richard Moss 58:03

And repression –

Candice Wu 58:04

or someone that –

Richard Moss 58:05

Repression —

Candice Wu 58:05

Yeah.

Richard Moss 58:06

-of the souls urge to liberation.

Candice Wu 58:13

Yes. And you ask, what else is there to do about love Love.

Candice Wu 58:18

And I have, for myself, I’ve arrived at this place of, well, when I see something happening, when I feel something happening, allow myself to feel it and see what’s there for me, see what I’m compelled to do about it. But to really feel the power of my own awareness in myself as something that is doing something, not that that’s the point, but deepening in myself, has that impact.

Candice Wu 58:57

And there’s also the other part of me that’s like, ’Well, why do you do with that?”

Candice Wu 59:01

And there are a few ideas I have. But, I wonder if you have any thoughts about all these things that are happening in the world, in our country, and in the world. And you’ve spoken about the global community that we are and what do you do when you see something that really pains you in the world?

Richard Moss 59:28

Well, you feel it, you know, I feel it. I feel the sadness, the tears of pain, because I can make an argument through — an argument that is respectful of the soul, for why a law would be passed, in terms of creating order and boundary, which might then allow for a general movement of large populations toward something like less poverty, or, you know, certainly China has elevated so many people out of poverty, but the price we pay is always repression. And so the people, the action you have to take is to be unrepressed in your loving, but not, I don’t — what I mean by that is not — Oh. –

Richard Moss 1:00:39

The essence of non-violence in protest is love. It’s not — non-violence is a strategy it took. And it’s a result of an understanding, to become nonviolent inside of ourselves is the real work. So you have to do that. You have to learn to be nonviolent inside of yourself. And that’s so easy to say, but just watch your thoughts, and how violent they can be toward you. How violent they can be toward others, into a mild violence, you know, it doesn’t have to be insanely violent. But to just watch, and you get to know that part of you, that’s ugly. And, then you have to love that part of you that’s ugly. Because deep down, it’s trying to protect you deep down. It was a way of separating you from others. Because separating differentiation is endless. It can’t stop. And yet the one that we emerged from and the one we’re always in, is also endless and does not stop.

Richard Moss 1:01:39

So what do you do, is you listen to your heart, and then you act in the ways you can act right now.

Richard Moss 1:01:48

Does that mean that you, because you were born in Hongkong would fly to Hongkong and join the group? It could mean that. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if you decided to join that group just from an impulse that you felt in your heart, and then you noticed, “wow, it’s amazing!” There was a special sale, and I got this really low price ticket. And you know, and I went over there, and I was with people and all that happened was my heart open more and there was no enemy.

Richard Moss 1:02:19

And then, “wow!”

Richard Moss 1:02:22

That’s irresistible.

Richard Moss 1:02:25

It’s irresistible. It’s like a solvent. It’s like water, and the sugar cubes of even though they look like bricks that will you know, can’t dissolve, but the sugar cubes of identity, of political belief systems, of ideologies, of cultures themselves, because a culture beliberated a group of people, but it makes distrust and distance from a different group of people, and society overall, which is an attempt to assimilate many cultures. Can only do that by having deep principles that are very hard for anybody to really know.

Richard Moss 1:03:08

I mean to dream of democracy is just that. It is a dream. And it’s only as good as the consciousness of the people who live it. And right now, and it’s always been the case, always from the very beginning of this democracy or any experiment in democracy, we elect people according to our consciousness, and they run to seduce our consciousness at the level they believe we can be seduced with maybe fear or distrust. And the ones that are too ideal have told the ideal so high, are important, but they can’t truly, they can’t lead us politically.

Richard Moss 1:03:50

And the ones that are cynical in some ways, as many of the political leaders we have now, and so fear-based in the manipulation, they are successful because we want to be manipulated by fear, yet we haven’t planted a tree and fear. We haven’t sat down inside our fear, we haven’t sat down inside our own ugliness, and wait and silenced ourselves enough to allow the seed of love to grow in the vast fields of fear, and grow a new tree and then gradually nourish us. And so we transmute that fear. But that takes everything we’re talking about. And it takes a practice, a journey, it takes meditation, it takes every practice, it gets your energy flowing, it takes such tremendous honesty and transparency and vulnerability, and hard work. Like any composer, like anyone that becomes a neurosurgeon, like anyone that writes a book that took every ounce of their gifts and genius determination. It takes that kind of work on the part of every single human being to the best of their ability, every day.

Richard Moss 1:05:10

And it starts with listening to our conversations and the things we listen to that inspire us. And the action you take, then, is the one that’s right in front of you. And you take that, embodied, and in your heart, without hope, because it will always be hope for the wrong thing.

Richard Moss 1:05:27

The only hope is in your own commitment to love Love in yourself and with others. And, that’s the only hope. And to love Love, that’s transactional, that’s I love you if you love me even though we deny it often, you know, but in fact, is if you make me feel good, and then I’ll make you feel good. If you start to threaten now I feel well then, it’s your fault. I won’t look at why I feel threatened. I won’t go into my fears.

Richard Moss 1:05:57

And you can see the picture I’m painting, the picture that I think all awakened people have been painting forever, is that, you know, why it’s so, you know, it’s easier to pass a businessman through the eye of a needle or a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to enter the kingdom of heaven, by whatever name you want to call it.

Richard Moss 1:06:23

And all deep spiritual movements are radical, in the most positive sense of the words, they go to the root of who we really are. And, I can’t tell anyone what to do. I know what I’m doing right now in the phase of my life. I know what I, the minimal that I can do in terms of things like recycling or how I purchase and what I give my money to and things like that. That matter a little but collectively can matter a great deal.

Richard Moss 1:06:58

And unfortunately, the political movement doesn’t, no political movement gives us much choice. And right now maybe, in terms of air pollution and cutting back carbon production, a government such as China’s given the population of China, maybe actually more effective than a government like ours in the United States, because we are still per capita the number one or number two polluter and we are way, you know, China’s behind us, per capita.

Richard Moss 1:07:27

But we are no longer giving an example to the world at least at the level of the kind of the loudest noise that the media tends to attune to.

Richard Moss 1:07:42

There are millions of people working along the lines of what you and I are talking about, and in very practical and grounded ways, in so many ways. And there were millions of people who want to learn and are learning in the fields of science to revere this planet. And, that’s going on also.

Richard Moss 1:08:04

So the most important thing is if it hurts, feel the pain, don’t try to numb it. And if it’s saddening, feel the sadness, don’t try to numb it. Don’t make yourself special, don’t become self-involved, because you’re angry, or you’re sad, or you’re disillusioned. That’s all self-indulgence.

Candice Wu 1:08:31

Thank you.

Richard Moss 1:08:33

Well, I don’t know how long our listener would want to sit and listen. And I’m aware of the time, and it’s not because I have, you know, limited time now. It’s just simply in respect of a listener, maybe we should try to wind up.

Candice Wu 1:08:52

I think so. I think this is a perfect place.

Candice Wu 1:08:57

Richard, it’s been such an honor to have you here and to hear you speak and bring your transmission of who you are and what you’re interested in. And that’s really touched me and I feel a shift in me. Even with just this hour of conversation with you and such a gift.

Richard Moss 1:09:20

Thank you. I mean, truly, thank you.

Candice Wu 1:09:23

Truly.

Richard Moss 1:09:25

It’s what we’re here for.

Candice Wu 1:09:27

Yeah.

Richard Moss 1:09:28

My wife says, “Is there a better game in town? Is there anything you’d rather?

Candice Wu 1:09:35

Not for me.

Richard Moss 1:09:36

And not for me?”

Candice Wu 1:09:39

Thank you so much. Is there anything else you’d like to say or leave things with here?

Richard Moss 1:09:45

Well, just in terms of, perhaps you can say but just in terms of, you know, I’m 72 as many people as I can reach in my work, which is very experiential, and really teaches people that is it, there’s a transmission and a teaching that is about what we’ve been talking about and how to live it.

Richard Moss 1:10:06

And so I have my YouTube channel, you know, these just short videos I put up every month, and I have a Facebook, beginning to post on Instagram, but also I have my retreats, which people can find at my website which is, www.richardmoss.com.

Richard Moss 1:10:29

And I work with people individually through Zoom or Skype, or they come to visit me and I work with them with my wife. And we work with couples, a tremendous opportunity for couples because I think when two people live this, it’s a much faster path than when one person lives it.

Richard Moss 1:10:50

And there’s always third consciousness, whether you live in a monastery, there’s still God in whatever form you imagine. God becomes your third and there’s always community of some kind. But when two people, really, side by side want to live this, it’s profound.

Richard Moss 1:11:11

So you know, I know just a tiny bit about you from what we said before we recorded so I just say, I hope you get to share this in your life with someone, anyone.

Candice Wu 1:11:25

Thank you, I believe I do, with a couple of people actually. And this couples experience sounds right up our alley. All of it does. And also Richard, you have, is it eight books now?

Richard Moss 1:11:44

Seven, but they’ll be an eighth sooner or later. I think I’ve had a little more time with, I know there will be a book about third consciousness in relationship, probably a short book. And something about really, what it means to stop borrowing from the past or the future. Stop. No. Outgrow that and land here because that’s where we have a truly new future. So that’ll come —

Candice Wu 1:12:22

The word borrow.

Candice Wu 1:12:24

Yeah, that’s great. I can’t wait to read both of those.

Richard Moss 1:12:30

I don’t know that.

Candice Wu 1:12:30

It’s like so poignant.

Richard Moss 1:12:32

Yeah, I don’t know, I wrote a book that I think is good a book about the weaving of psychology and spirituality together called them on our being that was my next to the last book. And then I realized, it could make the methodology of that book a little simpler, and speak about a few things in briefly.

Richard Moss 1:12:53

In my last book, Inside-Out Healing, and those books are both in print and not hard to find on Amazon. Our online through — basically online. The other books, there’s, you know, people find them, The Black Butterfly, The I That Is We, meaning the capital “I” that is we, which was my very first book, which was published, I guess, in 81, or 82, something like that. And, when I was a little younger than you are now. So it’s been a long journey. And –

Candice Wu 1:13:33

Wow!

Richard Moss 1:13:33

Thanks for mentioning the books.

Candice Wu 1:13:35

Absolutely.

Richard Moss 1:13:36

But there’s also, there’s this, for in terms of a simple methodology for mindfulness, for really deepening and meditation and presence, there’s free e-courses on my website.

Richard Moss 1:13:48

And in fact, I’m talking to someone from the Netherlands soon, whose husband, for her birthday present, give her a session with me and she’d been practicing these, the free e-course, it’s based from the Mandala of what I call, the Mandala of Being. It’s based on that methodology of recognizing thoughts coming back to the present moment.

Candice Wu 1:14:16

So beautiful, the connections that you’re having with it.

Richard Moss 1:14:22

Yeah, it is so beautiful.

Candice Wu 1:14:24

Thank you.

Richard Moss 1:14:25

It is so beautiful.

Candice Wu 1:14:26

Yeah, it really is.

Richard Moss 1:14:29

But you know, I’m gradually, you know, the complainer inside of me is got a comfortable position nearby, but doesn’t take the microphone of my heart and soul, a voice for feeling very much and all these different parts have come to understand. They’re all welcome inside of me, every one of them. And, they all serve me, and they’ll serve all of us. It just as you say, we just outgrow and we come to completion in terms of not the end of those voices, but the end of their power in us.

Candice Wu 1:15:12

A harmony within all the parts within.

Richard Moss 1:15:14

Yes.

Candice Wu 1:15:15

And a love that holds them all.

Richard Moss 1:15:16

Yes. And everything I’m saying comes from thousands of hours of wanting to go deeper, gradually, slowly, intermittently in the early years, and then deeper. And because I’ve been a teacher, it was a perfect way, retrospect, to create an environment for learning for me, as well as for the others.

Candice Wu 1:15:46

We’re alike in that, in me being a teacher as well and also supporting people in their healing or in their journey the same way. I read something where you said that it’s about finding the teacher within and the chance that I got to get as well, that sounds like you’ve gone very deep and it’s bringing this joyful conversation here.

Candice Wu 1:16:16

Thank you so much, Richard. And I wishing you the best.

Candice Wu 1:16:19

You’re very welcome, Candice. Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:16:22

Thank you, blessings to you on your journey of loving and may that continue in all its forms.

Richard Moss 1:16:30

I received that. Thank you. And I know that what you’re saying is also back to you.

Candice Wu 1:16:41

Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:16:46

This conversation was expansive for me. And I deeply appreciate Richard the way that you speak so vulnerably and eloquently. And it feels that you are living in your experience of what you say and what you offer.

Candice Wu 1:17:04

If you’re listening and you enjoyed this, be sure to check out in the next couple of days, the meditation that Richard is offering. I was delighted with the softness that he offers and brings forward in the meditation and the ways that he described the quality of our awareness and giving space to notice parts of ourselves and what we might name those parts of ourselves.

Candice Wu 1:17:29

It’s a lovely healing experience and meditation. So check that out at CandiceWu.com/richardmoss or subscribe to the podcast and it will drop into you in a couple of days.

Candice Wu 1:17:43

It hasn’t left me yet that I want to visit him and his wife and just spend time with them, and see how they live, experience what comes up. Sounds fascinating and like a lovely experience. So, if that compels you as well, feel free to check his work out at richardmoss.com.

Candice Wu 1:18:02

Everything’s linked in the show notes as usual. So you can find that on my website. And also be sure to check out other healing experientials, meditations, topics on the podcast around self-love, awareness, healing, and embodiment all CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 1:18:23

Also, if you feel inspired to stay updated with upcoming retreats, events, stuff about Horse Constellations and meditation, also the updates on my travels and other podcasts, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:18:42

It has been lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much, Richard, for all of your insight and the years of connecting in with loving for yourself and those around you. And with that, I’ll leave you with a quote by Richard, “That love brings us as close to source as we can be.”

Candice Wu 1:19:04

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

Candice Wu 0:00

Today’s meditation is brought to you by Richard Moss, who is a teacher of consciousness and love.

In this meditation, touch into the quality of your awareness, your presence, and your being.

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.

If you haven’t already listened to the introductory podcast with Richard Moss, it’s a beautiful episode around intimacy, planting a tree and fear, relationships as a way to accelerate loving Love, that embodiment is a beginningless and endless journey. And the question if you love Love, what else is there to do? Find all that at CandiceWu.com/richardmoss.

It’s with great pleasure and delight that Richard has offered to share this beautiful meditation here today, and here it is.

Beginning With Richard

Richard Moss 1:35

I’m Richard Moss, and I’m very honored to be making this contribution of a guided meditation to Candice Wu’s really very excellent Embody Podcast.

Before going any further, let me just caution you that the best way to listen to this is to be seated or lying down comfortably. And it would really be a mistake, and you shouldn’t try to be doing anything athletic or driving a car, anything where your attention really doesn’t need to be, on what I’m about to share with you.

So the meditation I’m about to guide you in is really at the very heart of what it means to be present. And what the practice of meditation actually is, as you begin to deepen into it more and more.

There are just several simple and yet very profound foundations for what I’m about to share with you.

Foundations of our Aware Self: There’s Only Now

The first is, to our aware self, to our presencing self, there is only the present moment, there is only now.

And without going into all the ways in which we are taken from the now and why that’s important, but also why it’s the source of, pretty much all mind-made suffering, let us simply say that, when we’re talking about being in the now, we’re talking about actually deepening into a part of you, which we can call by many names, the aware self is what I call it, and it’s not a thing, so it’s more a process.

It can also be called the witnessing self, the witnessing process. And there are levels and depth to which we become not only the witnesses, but at one with the experience that we’re witnessing as we deepen.

So the first premise, there’s only now.

The Law of the Present Moment

The second premise is that in this moment, the way that you touch or experience anything depends on the way you are touching it, that is the way you are bringing your awareness to it.

So for example, if there’s fear or fearful sensations, if you bring awareness to it, that is a more basic kind of ego awareness, it’s about survival and feeling good. And you’re going to want a sensation, like fear or feeling like fear to go away. So you’re touching it with rejection. And so the fear, in essence, rejects you and it gets more intense, becomes more distressing. And if you bury it with activity or any way in which you can displace fear, without actually getting to know fear, all it does is it works in your subconscious mind and it comes back always, again and again.

So the second premise, how you touch is how you’re touched. This is the law, I call it the Law of the Present Moment.

So if you touch with a soft awareness, fear will become softer. If you touch a sensation of unsafety softly, it will get softer. If you touch anger softly, it will melt and become aliveness, potentially even stillness.

As you touch the present moment with your awareness, with the quality, and the purity, the clarity of your attention, so you experienced that present moment, and it’s true of every aspect, everything that happens in the present moment. And of course, it presupposes that you’ve developed enough of an aware self, that you’re choosing a relationship in the moment that is new, with every feeling, every emotion, and with your thinking process itself.

So those two basic foundational premises, it’s only now how you touch this moment with the quality of your attention is how you experience this moment emotionally, at the level of sensation in your body and in every other way in terms of what kind of thoughts it generates or whether you move into stillness and spaciousness.

Who You Are

In that sense, the third premise, and it could have been in a different sequence, is that who you really are, who any of us really are, is beginning again, over and over in this moment, who we are, who you are, begins right now and is determined by how much awareness you have, and the quality with which you bring that awareness to the immediacy of your experience.

Let’s Begin

So, I suggest you sit comfortably or lie down. Close your eyes. If you’re lying down, you need to know that you’re a person who can stay awake through a guided meditation. In fact, from my point of view, even if you fall asleep, that may be exactly what you need, if you drift off into another space between waking and sleeping.

So the first thing is, the body is always in the now, even in the depth of sleep, your breathing, body’s functioning even though there’s no remembered consciousness, there’s just a kind of absence of any kind of experience that we would usually call conscious awareness.

So the body is always in the now and breathing. It’s like a sine wave. It’s like a wave from the first inhalation at birth to the final exhalation at death, the breathing never stops. It just changes according to the demand we place on ourselves for oxygen or emotional state, where our breathing can get very shallow and very fast.

There are many centering practices are about learning to slow your breathing down. Of course, if you’re going to slow your breathing down, you also have to have awareness of your breathing.

Breath Awareness

And in this meditation, we’re not going to control breathing in any way. All that you’re going to do is bring your conscious, witnessing self and bring it, enjoy it with your breathing.

The breathing’s been with you all your life, it’s accompanied you through anguish and joy, every moment of your life, you could think of it as a friend that’s never abandoned you and never will all your life.

And then you can think of your aware self, which is the liberating power of your consciousness. And I’m actually going to try to show you how it liberates in this meditation. That aware self now, just let it rest with your breathing, like a friendship who, timeless, wonderful friends are meeting.

So we now have what we can call breath awareness. Just feel that, feel that friendship, don’t manipulate yourself to feel something special. But I often say for me, it’s just like a soft smile, resting my aware self process with the breathing in my body.

Let’s begin to bring that breath awareness to a place where there is an obvious sensation. So, assuming that you’re breathing through your nose. Bring your breath awareness into your nose, into the last half-inch or centimeter or two of your nose, experience the sensation, not just a spectator looking at it but moving into the sensation with your breath awareness.

Now, just to create a contrast, let’s do the same thing. Bring your worst self resting with your breathing into what we mean when we use the word feet, into your feet. A baby doesn’t have feet as a place of sensation without a name, that’s why babies are so close to the depths of, what in some contexts could be called the kingdom of heaven, but by whatever name, the babies in an awakened state and doesn’t know it but right now and bring your aware breathing process into the sensation in your feet.

Now come back to your nose. They are going in. Notice how it feels cooler. The tide of the air coming out, it’s warmer.

Notice

Let’s begin to notice something. Because what I’m inviting you to do, which is the foundation of many starting points for meditation. But this activity of witnessing in your body with your breath, with your awareness and breath is no real interest to the ego-self unless he thinks he can do something with it, unless he turns it into a competition and things, I’ll be really good at this. I make myself good at this. Or, unless he judges it as nothing worthwhile and people just stop, they quit.

In fact, this is a really no interest to your ego and so the mind will wander, and rather than what is often said to you, just bring your mind back to the breathing.

First, just appreciate the genius of the ego, in itself preservation, it’s going to take you to something that interests it, like worrying about something, or planning something or revisiting some situation and thinking about how you could have done it differently, on and on. But that’s what’s really interesting to that part of you and all of our ego minds.

So when you see that, just appreciate that’s the genius of the ego-mind and then choose, come back to the breath awareness and your nose purposeless from the point of view “the ego”.

Now bring the awareness to your lower legs, from your knees to lower legs, your ankles, into your feet. Just bring that witnessing consciousness there.

Let’s begin to give some qualities to this witnessing consciousness and this is the essence of the practice of how you touch.

Just imagine, sense that as you breathe presencing with your breath awareness in your lower legs, you’re doing so with gentleness, breathing innocence of gentleness and curiosity.

What’s here?

So you start to feel sensation and feel molten swirling clouds tingling. It’s like colors with different tones or music with swirling sounds. It doesn’t mean anything to the ego so it will lose interest pretty quickly. But you’re building a muscle now, the most important one of all, which is the muscle of your aware self.

Let’s come back and bring the attention, this gentle, curious, witnessing, presencing back into your nose.

How precise can you notice the sensations without forcing, with gentleness, with curiosity?

And as if you’ve never done this before, as if it’s the first time ever. That’s like a thought experiment to bring gentle receptivity to the sensation and your nose, as if for the first time.

And of course, there’s a part of you that remembers doing this even a few minutes ago as I’ve been guiding you.

Remembering and Evaluation

In fact, all the time, there’s a part of us that’s remembering what was just a little before, long before, days, months, years before. And the ego can only make something have meaning by comparing it to something else. So a basic function of the ego-mind, of the little mind is to create a contrast of what the what is of the moment, actual sensation in your nose right now with something remembered. And as soon as there’s remembering this evaluation and that evaluation says this is good or this is not good, this is positive or not so positive. This is pleasing or not pleasing. This is satisfying, this is dissatisfied, that’s inherent in the minute there’s the past and comparison.

So now bring your breathing awareness to your hips and your bottom, and your upper legs. Curious, gentle, relaxing, comparing, relaxing, keeping this some sort of meaning to any kind of memory swifts as if for the first time.

All the way from your hips and bottom, your upper legs, your lower legs to your feet, breathing into that part of the body, Those words are representations of gentle, curious as if for the first time.

So we were in the basic level of mind, not only do we have to make meaning by some form of comparing, by remembering something from the past, which means that nothing is ever really new, or now. But there’s also a movement into the future. We want to do this well, for example, now, maybe want to not have to do it or not do it at all, want to get better at it.

But understand, there’s always a quality of anticipation of the future, wanting an outcome, wanting a result. So what is this experience now, breath awareness. Your bottom and lower legs already your feet if you released wanting.

But no one can do it. Because you’re not really meant to, you have to be able to see the wanting self which is always there and turning everything you do into concern with whether it will get you to where you want to go or whether it will take you a place you don’t want to go.

Choosing a space for your wanting self always leaning toward the future, off to one side, not the other side, as if for the first time, curious, gentle, wanting to be left to one side comparing off to the other side, in your big mind.

And your worse self just getting stronger, softer. Now you have the idea. Whatever we mean when we use the word body, means breath awareness is witnessing consciousness that’s resting with your breath.

Bring it into your whole body. Sensing in your whole body. Noticing where there is brighter colors or sharper sensations, duller colors, or no sensation with the music seems off, caustic or the music is soothing in different parts of the body, different, subtlety different sensations or obviously different sensations.

If there’s a pain, that’s a strong sensation. Bring this aware self breath awareness witnessing consciousness with curiosity and gentleness without wanting. Nobody heals because they want to heal and they have set an intention for healing. But healing comes as to deeper consciousness when all forms of comparing and all forms of wanting just gone away.

And suddenly there is a new, deeper connection to yourself and sometimes that brings a new frame for understanding. We call that forgiveness. What brings us sensation, unpleasant sensation, or an opening of a door into a new perspective that you couldn’t have asked for.

In your whole body just breathing, aware, presencing, and practicing sitting, wanting to one side, your big mind comparing to another place off to the side in your big mind.

Bringing to Closure

This is a wonderful starting point and I’m going to suggest we stop now. Take a really deep breath, full-body breath, stretch the belly in the lungs to full capacity and then let the air out much further out than you normally would.

Big sensation comes into the body and you open your eyes.

If I have a chance to journey with you again, the next step will be to start to visit in this way, sensations like fear, sensations like dissatisfaction and unsafety.

Because the whole work of love and learning to love is to learn to sit down in those dimensions, those places of fear and dissatisfaction and instead of believing what your mind tells you about them, get to know them in the immediacy of your worse self presencing and you’ll drop deeper and deeper gradually, slowly, freeing yourself of what the mind creates when there’s fear or pain or need.

By need, I mean mind-made needs, not the deeper need.

It’s been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

Closing

Candice Wu 27:40

And as you shift from this meditation that Richard has offered, feel free to tune into anything your body needs here as you transition, connect with what resonated for you, perhaps which you’d like to carry with you throughout the day.

And we’ll leave you with a little bit of music here today as you continue to shift.

Again, feel free to check out the podcast with Richard Moss is fantastic and just as good as the meditation or better. That’s at CandiceWu.com/richardmoss and also feel free to check out other podcasts, meditations and healing experience at CandiceWu.com/meditations as well as other podcasts at CandiceWu.com/podcast. See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is with special guest, Joy Curran, who authors Equine Assisted Counseling with the help of her amazing horse, Chaya. We talked all about the ways that horses can be an embodied and powerful way to learn about yourself, move through blocks and challenges, and build confidence as well as the spiritual connection and love that horses can bring.

Candice Wu 0:22

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 0:36

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 0:59

Today’s episode is brought to you by the Sound Sleep Alchemy album, which is an album of 11 healing experientials and meditations that will help you feel more grounded, restful, and easeful in your sleep and throughout the day. It’s a stepping stone towards healing trauma, bringing your nervous system to a baseline where you feel relaxed and calm. And looking at the deeper aspects of sleep issues and feeling disembodied.

Candice Wu 1:23

It’s one of my offerings that you can find at my website at CandiceWu.com/soundsleep. Your support in ordering an album helps me to make more healing albums, content, and produce more podcast episodes.

Candice Wu 1:35

Thank you all out there for being awesome listening in to the show and supporting it in ways that you can and now let’s get to the show.

Candice Wu 1:44

So for the month of July, I was house-sitting and cat-sitting in Perth, Australia. Being in the suburbs of Perth, I was seeing all sorts of farmlands, expansive fields, as well as horse farms. And I just remembered that spark in me that wanted to learn to ride horses.

Candice Wu 2:04

I’ve only ridden a horse one other time. And this time as I thought about horseback riding, thought about my spirit animal that comes to me in my dreams often, which is a horse, I just started crying, realizing that I needed to do this. I needed to learn how to ride a horse. I needed to be with horses and learn from them.

Candice Wu 2:26

So I was actually connected to Joy through the friend that I was house-sitting for, and I just could not be more thrilled about this meeting. And what’s even more exciting to find someone that did Equine Assisted Learning and Counseling. So horses mixed with healing and therapy and empowerment. Two things that I already know I love.

Candice Wu 2:47

So here today, we have Joy Curran with us and she is Joy by name, but also by nature. She just lives to help others discover the joy in their life. And using her own experiences of overcoming anxiety and depression, she is able to relate to many others going through similar struggles.

Candice Wu 3:06

Joy’s work is based in Sunny Perth, and she offers these Equine Assisted Counseling and Learning Services with the help of her amazing horse Chaya. She’s a qualified counselor and uses her intuition to select from a wide range of counseling techniques and Equine activities and just blends them in this creative way, which she also gives an incredible amount of space for whatever you want to bring, and how you want to explore being with a horse or working with any of the struggles, challenges or desires you have.

Candice Wu 3:38

So here’s our conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And following this episode, there’s a bonus, a video of me having a session with Joy and her horse, Chaya. In the session, which was very powerful, I touched into some of my long-standing sufferings and feeling a new baseline of rest and ease in my body.

Candice Wu 4:00

Also, I want to mention, as usual with most of my guests on the show, there’s a special gift offered by Joy to those who are inspired to work with her and Chaya. And, if that even means taking a trip to Perth. Great, feel free to check that out at the end of the episode. And just one more thing before we jump into the episode, just to give a heads up, Joy starts with a prayer just like with her clients in her sessions, she invites prayer, if you feel comfortable with it, and if you desire it.

Candice Wu 4:30

And so, in this episode, we start off with a prayer and if it’s not for you, you can skip it and just move forward or you can just receive whatever it is that you can from it. If you’re curious about that, you can check out also near the end of the episode where Joy talks more about prayer and how she incorporates it. So, without further ado, here is Joy.

Candice Wu 4:54

Okay, here we are with Joy Curran. And we are in Wanneroo, the northern suburbs of Perth in Australia. And I’m so thrilled to be here with you today. Welcome.

Joy Curran 5:05

Thank you, Candice. I’m very excited to be here with you today and feel very privileged and honored to be part of this podcast. So thank you and welcome.

Candice Wu 5:14

Thank you. Yes, I’m a guest here and you’d like to start with a prayer and I would welcome you to do that.

Joy Curran 5:21

“Dear Lord, I just acknowledge your presence here with us now. And I just ask your blessing on our time together, that everyone who hears this podcast may just receive a blessing from it, that they may grow in some way personally, socially, spiritually, emotionally, and just get whatever they need out of that time together. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

Candice Wu 5:47

Amen. Thank you.

Joy Curran 5:50

Thank you.

Candice Wu 5:51

So we are here. Would you call this a farm or just more just like a horse?

Joy Curran 5:56

Yeah, the owners call it a farm, I’m from much larger properties. So for me, this is more of a lifestyle property. So, it’s about five acres in size, mostly green, even in summer, because we have a reticulation here. And yeah, it is a beautiful farm because of all the animals and birds that tend to be wandering about the place as you can see. Some ducks and some chickens and some lambs, who you might hear their little footsteps heading on the ground around us, and an occasional bleat.

Candice Wu 6:36

And one of them was gnawing at the mic, excuse the different noises or enjoy them, rather.

Joy Curran 6:43

Yes, I can see him jumping on a little owl statue at the moment.

Candice Wu 6:49

They’re quite enjoying that over there.

Joy Curran 6:51

Fascinating!

Candice Wu 6:53

I want to just begin with inviting you Joy to share what it is you do, who you are, and anything you want to about the Equine Assisted Living, in teaching that you do.

Joy Curran 7:05

Beautiful. Thank you.

Joy Curran 7:07

So maybe we can break that down a little bit. Because those questions like I could speak all day on this question. So, um, so who am I? It’s one of those things I never really know how to answer. Because I feel like I’m such a big person. And, I feel like I extend into so many different areas that I find it hard to just narrow it down to who I am.

Candice Wu 7:33

Yeah.

Joy Curran 7:34

But yeah, who I am. I love people. I love animals. I love the expression of self, in myself. And — yes, thank you very much.

Joy Curran 7:51

I love it. Yeah, just beautiful.

Joy Curran 7:54

Lambs expressing themselves or people or whoever I come in contact with, just allowing that personal individual to shine. It’s jumping around now quite joyfully to me.

Candice Wu 8:10

I know it’s so interesting. This is just beginning as you’re talking about your self-expression.

Joy Curran 8:16

Yeah.

Candice Wu 8:17

Who you are and just being yourself and being connected.

Joy Curran 8:23

Gorgeous. And, I might have to do some Sheep Assisted Learning

Candice Wu 8:38

You’re thinking about Sheep Assisted Learning?

Joy Curran 8:40

Well, I am right now.

Joy Curran 8:44

With the response from the sheep as we’re talking, I’m thinking, “Yeah, why no?”

Joy Curran 8:49

The kind of stuff that we get happening with the horses all the time, just that, somehow they just respond to what we’re talking about. And they just kind of act out, what we’re thinking or feeling or expressing.

Candice Wu 9:01

Yeah.

Joy Curran 9:02

And I feel this letting go in being here and being with horses, being with animals, you can’t plan things, you can’t — and they won’t go as planned. And it’s kind of fun, just to see what’s going to happen and embracing the unexpected things. That’s a huge part of it, yeah. And being a practitioner, you know, getting to that point where I can let go and trust that, whatever happens, is going to be beneficial. Whatever happens, we’re going to get something good out of it.

Candice Wu 9:35

So tell me more about your work. And, well, first, I want to say, I completely understand that sense of not being like the challenge of how do you describe who you are, because we’re so many things, we are so big, and often in our lives, we’ve been told to kind of lodge ourselves into something.

Joy Curran 10:01

Yeah.

Candice Wu 10:01

A way to describe ourselves, and it’s just so narrow.

Joy Curran 10:06

Yeah, I definitely feel that.

Candice Wu 10:09

And it’s nice to remember that we’re just so many more things than the career that we have chosen or the things that we love or do, but we’re just much more than that.

Joy Curran 10:19

Yeah.

Candice Wu 10:19

So how did your love of horses begin? And how did you begin in doing this work with Equine Therapy?

Joy Curran 10:26

Lovely. Yeah, I believe that it’s something that was placed inside of me since pops before time began. I don’t know. They’ve got a saying that once you’ve got horses in your blood, it’s in your blood.

Joy Curran 10:41

So my parent, my mum side of the family, are pioneers and farmers and of course, they used horses to work the land to make a living and I had a very strong love for the horse. And I guess that just flowed through to me.

Joy Curran 11:01

When I was a child, I remember getting, given My Little Pony as a gift for my birthdays. And that was just my favorite present. And I would spend hours and hours playing with these My Little Pony toys. And I guess I just got this romantic view of the horse and their beauty and their speed. And something about their spirit captured me as well, I think.

Candice Wu 11:26

That makes so much sense about, once they’re in your blood.

Joy Curran 11:31

Yeah.

Candice Wu 11:31

And it makes me think of, hadn’t really thought much about this, but have you — about Centaurs and how human and horse were connected at some point, or is it just a myth or what?

Joy Curran 11:43

Well, I personally believe this Centaur is like a picture or a metaphor. So, the combination of the human leadership and the horse strength and speed and agility combined, I think that just, it’s a picture of wisdom. You know, the Centaur is known for being a wise creature, and to get that oneness with a horse requires wisdom. And so, I sort of view it as a, as a picture something to work towards, to strive towards, to be able to achieve that oneness, the human with the horse.

Candice Wu 12:23

That’s a beautiful image. Well, and I just started writing. And I’ve kind of tuned into that concept of being one with horse, how do you do that? If you personally, or how do you teach people?

Joy Curran 12:38

It’s a journey, it’s not something that is a quick thing to learn, let me just set you up for that.

Candice Wu 12:46

Thank you.

Joy Curran 12:46

It’s a lifelong journey in a lot of ways. And I’m thinking in terms of mastery, because that sense of oneness, like you, can achieve moments here and there, where everything comes together and live got things like being grounded, things like being open to your environment, aware of what’s happening around you. And then, there’s that spiritual element of connectedness as well. And, there’s a communication between you and the horse. And that happens on all three different levels as well.

Joy Curran 13:23

And so it’s that coming together of the communication, the heart space, and that awareness and groundedness at the same time. Does that make sense?

Candice Wu 13:38

It does. It feels like tuning into your own body, and your own all of your senses, intuition, and what’s going on inside of you, as well as with a horse you’re working with or being with?

Joy Curran 13:52

Yeah, definitely.

Candice Wu 13:53

Yeah.

Joy Curran 13:54

And there is that added dimension of the horse who has its own mind. So in feelings, thoughts, and desires, and they may or may not align with yours.

Joy Curran 14:07

So it’s that journey of how can I encourage the horse to accept my ideas, my way of going and what does the horse need from me in order to want to become one with me. Because that oneness is not something that can be forced from a horse. It’s something that can be enjoyed. But it’s not something that can be forced.

Candice Wu 14:32

It’s a really interesting thing to keep in mind. It feels interesting to me right now. Because I think with human connections, we often want to force them.

Joy Curran 14:44

Yeah.

Candice Wu 14:44

And it is clear you can’t with horses. It just feels like something easier to accept, even with, like, cats, you know, when cats just walk away and flick their head, you’re just like, “okay,” when a person does it, we can often feel so rejected or hurt or wounded, or at least that’s, you know, I have had that experience. There seems to be an element of acceptance when it comes to working with horses.

Joy Curran 15:15

I think, because the horse doesn’t have an ego, it’s much easier to accept their actions, and not perhaps take them so personally. And of course, when it comes to forcing, you know, the horse, if we’re going to get into a tug of war, he’s a lot bigger, a lot stronger, even possibly faster, much more aware. So we really can’t get into that, that game of push and pull and forcing, because if it comes down to it, he’s just going to squash you.

Candice Wu 15:53

So that is one aspect that you work with people on communication?

Joy Curran 15:58

Very much.

Candice Wu 15:59

How is the process of working on communication with the horses translate to human relationships? Is that what you’re seeing?

Joy Curran 16:09

Definitely. So, the beautiful thing is that once you’ve learned those skills, and those ways of being, you naturally, then translate them into other areas of your life.

Joy Curran 16:19

I can give an example. But sometimes it does require a bit of focused effort, like there is an element of that natural flow. But there’s also this element of intentionally focus in that direction. And I had an experience where I was really working on allowing my horse to feel comfortable and relaxed in each moment when I was asking how to do things. And I was really working hard at it. And then, my daughter says to me, “Why don’t you do that with me, mom?”

Joy Curran 16:57

So I had a good look at myself, and thought, yes, I actually do need to translate that to the other areas of my life. So when the horse kind of forces me to learn how to do these things that I should be doing everywhere else, they actually, you know, do teach me those skills. And I can translate them when I put my mind to it. And in fact, is aware of it.

Candice Wu 17:20

That makes sense. So I want to just backtrack a little bit and talk about how do you communicate with horses?

Joy Curran 17:27

As I said, there are different levels of communication that we can engage with horses on. So, there’s the physical level, and that’s probably the most obvious. And then the thing that’s easiest to observe amongst the horses themselves. And it’s what you see when you see a horse person, you know, they will put their body in a certain way, point where they want to go, and those sorts of things. So there’s that physical aspect of communicating through the positioning of our body.

Joy Curran 17:58

There is a tonal aspect, in terms of voice, horses tend not to use their voices, much in communication in the wild, more so in domestication. But wild horses, if we go back to the roots, very little voice, it’s used mainly for locating each other over long distances. So when humans use voice, we have to use it sparingly, or, the horse needs to learn to become accustomed to us using our voice, which is quite common these days. And so horses can be trained to respond to voice commands, you can say, trot on, and the horse will actually trot because it’s been trained to respond to a voice command, so we can communicate in that way.

Joy Curran 18:50

And then, there’s a deeper space, there’s a heart space of communication. And because of their sensitivity, somehow, the horses understand what we’re feeling towards ourselves and towards them, and towards our environment at the time, and they actually respond to that as well. And, what I try and do is try and communicate to the horse, the purpose, why are we doing this. And that heart space and setting them up to succeed and give them a purpose, they actually want to do it because there’s a reason to do it. But if I’m just like, do this, and there’s no purpose, they get bored and cranky and angry at me, and like, come on, why do I have to? Do you see, just like a child might?

Candice Wu 19:40

Yeah, it brings me back to my days of teaching art.

Joy Curran 19:42

Right, exactly the same.

Candice Wu 19:45

And adults, we want to know why we’re doing something and not just being told.

Joy Curran 19:49

Yeah, and then, I do believe there’s a kind of spiritual connection that can happen that’s much more difficult to put words to, the spiritual realm is for some, very difficult to perceive. And for those who can set some people are very gifted in and really understand the spiritual realm very well. And those people probably if they’re able to learn to be grounded, they will probably be able to communicate very well with horses because horses do have very big spirits, they’re very spiritual creatures.

Candice Wu 20:27

So when you say spiritual realm, I know it’s a bit hard to describe, but what do you mean by that?

Joy Curran 20:35

Yeah, great question. I guess I’m thinking of a story, an ancient story of “Balaam’s Donkey”, have you heard of that?

Candice Wu 20:45

No, I haven’t, what’s it about?

Joy Curran 20:46

There was a man and he was riding a donkey, and he actually was a prophet of God, but he was being disobedient to God. And he was going off to curse some people because he was getting paid to do it. And he was riding his donkey on the way there, even though God told him not to do it.

Joy Curran 21:07

And his donkey started turning aside and not going the direction that he wanted to go. So he started beating the donkey and the story goes that after the third time, because he ended up getting his foot crushed against the wall by the donkey, and he was really angry at this donkey and he’s hitting him and baiting him, and the donkey opens his mouth and says, “Why are you hitting me?”

Joy Curran 21:35

And for some reason, he’s not concerned with the idea that the donkeys talking to him, but he talks back to the donkey and he says, “Because you’re not going where you’re supposed to be going!”

Joy Curran 21:47

And the donkey’s like, “But there was an angel.”

Joy Curran 21:52

And so his eyes were opened, and he saw an angel standing in front of him blocking his path. And he had a sword in his hand ready to kill him, basically, because he was being disobedient to God. And so, I kind of have this picture of the donkey could see what was going on in the spiritual realm. There was this angel there to destroy the man and the man just had no clue. No idea. And then he was taking it out on the donkey.

Joy Curran 22:24

I think that’s part of it. You know, I believe in spirits and angels and demons and God Himself. And so I believe that and I believe we have our own spirit within us as well, that can connect to other spirits in various ways.

Joy Curran 22:43

And so then, with the horse having its own spirit, we then can connect on that spiritual level, which is different from our natural level, physical level.

Candice Wu 22:54

That deep or unseen.

Joy Curran 22:55

Yeah, beyond understanding kind of level.

Candice Wu 23:00

Yeah.

Joy Curran 23:01

The infinite level beyond time and space.

Candice Wu 23:05

And that can be what it feels like to be with a horse.

Candice Wu 23:07

In my experience, it just feels like it can take me into another place.

Joy Curran 23:13

Beautiful.

Candice Wu 23:14

Yeah.

Joy Curran 23:15

And I believe that can be on the natural realm and the spiritual realm as well, because they’ve done studies that show that they’ve measured the electromagnetic field of the heart of the horse, and depending on the size of the horse, can expand to about 10 feet beyond the horse.

Candice Wu 23:33

Wow!

Joy Curran 23:34

Yeah, it’s quite a big distance. And so then, once you come within that electromagnetic field of the horse, the horse’s heart is actually a lot bigger than ours. And so it can have an impact on our heart.

Joy Curran 23:50

And they’ve done studies where if you look up the HeartMath Institute, they’ve recorded the heart rate patterns of humans and horses separately and together. And what they found is that a human, by sitting in that space of the horse for 20 minutes, by the end of that 20 minutes, their heart will be beating in the same pattern as the horses’ heart.

Candice Wu 24:18

Nice.

Joy Curran 24:19

And since the horses have a lot less ego and junk to deal with than humans do, they usually have a correlative heart rhythm, which is that kind of happy, stress-free, natural, healthy kind of rhythm that we want to have in our lives. So just by being with the horse, you can feel more relaxed just because of that.

Candice Wu 24:40

Mirror Neurons, I would imagine is one part of that, like, we’re mirroring that vibration or is it more —

Joy Curran 24:49

There’s also the influence of mirroring, I think it’s a separate thing. I may be mistaken. It’s not really, I’m not an expert in that field of study. But in my mind, it’s two separate things.

Candice Wu 25:02

Yeah. And it’s interesting, it’s not the other way around in that study. That the horses are well, because as their heart, is much bigger and the radius of the field, the electromagnetic field can be 10 feet. That’s quite big.

Joy Curran 25:17

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:18

And for humans, I’m not sure what the radius is.

Joy Curran 25:21

About two feet.

Candice Wu 25:22

Is it?

Joy Curran 25:22

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:22

Okay. So I know for babies and mothers, it’s important to be within 36 inches of mother and baby. So that’s fascinating.

Candice Wu 25:32

I checked out your website. And it’s beautiful. And you share so many different aspects of what a person can work on in their lives, through working with horses and being with them. And I’m saying this also, this list of things, I’m just going to list a couple of these things that Equine Assisted Learning can strengthen —

Joy Curran 25:52

Sure.

Candice Wu 25:52

And enhance. Sense of belonging, safety, self-worth, balance, care, relationships, flexibility, perseverance. Let’s see, self-improvement, creativity, spirituality, a sense of purpose, and you also had on your website, money, family, career, which ones are interesting to you to talk about today?

Joy Curran 26:23

I think family is one of those things because of the dynamic of the horses and living in family groups, and just been this, from a parenting aspect, like working with the horse is a lot like parenting. The things that we have to grow in and overcome as parents are the exact same things that we need to overcome and develop to become a good horse master.

Candice Wu 26:52

And what kinds of things do you mean?

Joy Curran 26:53

Yeah, so emotional intelligence, for one.

Joy Curran 26:58

The horse is looking for a stable, steady, strong leader, but also a leader that’s going to listen and give them a voice. And so, it’s this combination of traits that we need to develop, that confrontation of why are you doing what I want you to do right now? And managing yourself in that? Am I going to react out of my ego? Or, am I going to recognize that the horse is just being a horse? And realize that is a change in myself that I need to make in order for this to proceed in a positive way.

Candice Wu 27:39

Yeah, I can see how that can apply to children or relationships, mostly children, I think in that more that —

Joy Curran 27:46

Yeah. Because the children, their minds are not fully developed. And I guess there’s that similarity, because, with the horse, they don’t have much of a mind. Their brain is actually the size of a walnut. So there’s very little cognitive processing going on, but they have big heart, big emotions, and that, you know, that animal instinct that’s going along there. So, I think children are quite similar, that they have very limited cognitive processing abilities, but they have big emotions and big hearts and things that they really want to do. And so it’s that learning how do I communicate with someone that’s actually not on the same level as me intellectually.

Candice Wu 28:33

Bridging that connection.

Joy Curran 28:35

Definitely, yeah.

Candice Wu 28:37

And can you talk more about the quality of family within the horses or the herd, or I imagine that’s part of what can come into the work with people as well?

Joy Curran 28:51

Yeah, it’s very interesting, because just like people, every horse has its own kind of personality. Some people call it a “horsonality”.

Joy Curran 29:02

You just like, with every family’s going to look different, every herd is going to look different. And so what you’ve got to work with this, what you’ve got to work. So there’s this acceptance of who you are. And there’s this idea of working together for the good of the community.

Joy Curran 29:22

In particular, in wild horses, they’ve always got someone looking out for danger, there’s always someone on the alert, looking out for a lion, or a tiger, or a pack of wolves that are a threat to the herd, the person or the horse that gets that job is the one that’s the most alert. So out of all the horses, they have these little tests, these little trials, to see who is the most alert at any one time. And so, a horse might do something like try and sneak around behind another one, and see if they can surprise them. And if they can surprise the other horse, then, they’re not that alert. So they shouldn’t be the leader right now.

Candice Wu 30:06

It’s interesting, have you seen this happen, or —

Joy Curran 30:11

I’ve seen it on videos. I haven’t really seen it in person. But it’s something that, if you know Carolyn Resnick, sort of watched her training DVD, read one of her books, and it’s something that she observed from spending time in the wild with horses. And it’s something that she’s carried on as a training technique with the horse, to say, “Can you keep your eyes on me? Can you pay attention to me as the leader?”

Joy Curran 30:38

And so that’s something that the leader will do that will say, “Are you paying attention to me? Because I’ve got to say, when we got a run for it.” You know, it’s important. So the horse will be checking in with each of the herd members, “Are you watching me? Are you ready to run if I say go?”

Joy Curran 30:55

So yeah, there’s this constant communication between one another, we can learn from that in our families, I think. Especially today, we just so easily let everyone go off and live their individual lives. And there’s less of that interaction of that, in the family dynamic. I mean, some families probably interact more on Facebook than they do in person, you don’t send a Facebook message, “Time to do the dishes.”

Candice Wu 31:24

Oh my goodness! I think that does happen a lot.

Joy Curran 31:26

It does, it really does.

Joy Curran 31:29

So yeah, I think the horses can be really good examples to us in how to get back to that, that physical connection, and even just interacting with each other, and staying alert to one another’s needs and desires and any potential threats as well.

Candice Wu 31:48

Yeah, there’s a lot of cooperation that you’re speaking to.

Joy Curran 31:51

A lot.

Candice Wu 31:52

Yeah.

Joy Curran 31:53

And there is that sort of, you know: “Are we together?” A sense of togetherness, because they do operate as one unit. Because if someone gets separated from the herd, they are in a very dangerous situation, because it’s very easy for them to be picked off by a pack of wolves, or a lion or tiger. So, having them all together is the sets of safety. And so their survival instinct ensures that they really dedicate themselves to having that connectedness and staying together.

Candice Wu 32:30

That makes sense.

Joy Curran 32:31

To even hear that domesticated horses, they will always be checking in with one another. There’ll be a flick of the ear, you know, a flicker of the eye, they’ll be just like, very slot, subtle body movements. That would be like, “What’s going on? How are you doing? This is how I’m feeling right now.”

Candice Wu 32:52

Checking in here and there.

Joy Curran 32:54

Yeah, they’re very alert, very aware to one another. And so, let’s say, we’re bordering some bush here for that side there, we had an emu come passed the other day. And the two horses in the end patty. They threw their heads up and their bodies became really tense. And then they started to sort of need to get rid of some of that tension. And they started galloping around the patty. As soon as their heads were thrown up, my horse, Chaya down the other end of the property away from all of this. She knew straight away that they have seen something that could be a potential danger. And she was watching them, you know, keeping an eye on them say, “Do I need to do something? At all times?”

Candice Wu 32:54

Yeah, a couple of things are coming to me. One is that, for a long time, for nine years, I lived in Chicago, in the city. And this is such a different life.

Joy Curran 32:54

Yes.

Candice Wu 33:05

And when you get into just being out in the open grass with horses, I’m not thinking about the things I’m thinking about when I’m in the city. I have to be in my body. I have to.

Joy Curran 34:05

Yeah.

Candice Wu 34:06

I have to pay attention to what’s around me. Because who knows? Like a horse could be right there that I don’t know. Or, they don’t know, me, or some other animal who knows? The things that are re-front and center here are just very much bringing me into my body.

Joy Curran 34:24

Awesome!

Candice Wu 34:24

Yeah, it’s really neat.

Joy Curran 34:26

That’s definitely one of our goals, is to help people come back into their bodies. And I think sometimes in everyday life, it’s very easy to almost become ahead, you know, we’re thinking a lot, we’re planning all these different scenarios that may or may not happen, we’ve got to make a living, and all these so much in our heads. But out here, it kind of forces you to be in your body and kind of get a bit of that balance back.

Candice Wu 34:54

So, I’m so curious about how you work with things like abundance and money?

Joy Curran 35:01

Really, the sky’s the limit. You know, my creativity is the limit. But we can do things like projection. So we can say, “Okay, this horse is going to represent money to you.” So, depending on what your goal is, let’s say, someone may not feel worthy of receiving money very much. Okay, so let’s say the horse is the money, what are you going to do to receive that money?

Candice Wu 35:33

Siri wants to help.

Candice Wu 35:39

She says, “What can I do?” Is that what she said? How can I help?

Joy Curran 35:42

Nothing? Thank you. Siri.

Candice Wu 35:44

It’s funny when that just pops in.

Candice Wu 35:45

Yes. So you were saying, what are you going to do to receive that horse? Or to invite them forward?

Joy Curran 35:54

Yeah, and it might be, I mean, we could do any number of things. Let’s say there’s an obstacle, it could be a jump, or it could be something that the person’s constructed themselves, and we go say, “Okay, now, how are you going to face this with your horse?”

Joy Curran 36:14

And it’s amazing, because something different happens every single time that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. So whatever that person needs, is what happens. So it might be, for example, I had this slightly different topic, but it’s the same principle. I had a girl who could not face going to school, she was living at home, she couldn’t leave the house, but she was able to come out to visit the horses. That was her first step of leaving the house. And so that was her therapy. And she just could not face the idea of going to school. And so, okay, so this jump is going to represent going to school, and she’s like, “Okay.” She worked up, she got closer, beat by beat, went forward, went back. And then she finally was able to do the jump. And she was so elated with herself. And she said, “Can I do it again?”, and I said “Of course, you can. Do it again.”

Joy Curran 37:17

And it was actually got a breakthrough for her. And she was able to start going to school. So it can be the same with money, just like, “Okay, this obstacle represents getting money,” like, how are you going to face that? What are you going to do? And then whatever that person needs to do, they’ll do with the horse. Or maybe it’ll be for them it might just be sitting with the obstacle with the horse and going, “This isn’t so bad after all.”

Candice Wu 37:51

And that can just create a shift in their mindset when they’re thinking about it. That’s beautiful. It’s reminding me of Family Constellations work, it’s just adding a horse into the picture.

Candice Wu 38:02

I mean, just briefly, it’s using anything to symbolize whatever obstacle, challenge or desire or another person and with that spiritual component, we can tune into the energy of that dynamic.

Joy Curran 38:18

Yeah.

Candice Wu 38:19

And so even if a stranger is representing something for you, like money or your mother, we don’t have to say any information. And that dynamic can show up.

Joy Curran 38:31

That’s right.

Candice Wu 38:32

And with horses, they’re so in tune as well. There’s some connection, even if we’re holding the intention is my sense that I’m getting.

Joy Curran 38:40

Yeah.

Candice Wu 38:41

But I’m not sure of how you see that?

Joy Curran 38:43

Yeah, there will be patterns that people come with, ways of being that they present to the world, or ways of receiving the world in general. And these usually show up in the work with the horses. Yeah, so I mean, it could be a mindset of the world is a dangerous place. And then someone with that kind of mindset is going to be quite jumpy around the horse, because I do a little safety talk before we start with the horse and explain it.

Joy Curran 39:18

Horses are prey animals and they can be startled by sudden noises and sudden movements. So yeah, that kind of person will be very jumpy, and so then it’s working. Okay, so how can we help you feel safe? How can we help you feel comfortable in this situation? And if they can learn to do that in this situation with the horse, well then, maybe they can learn to do that in other areas of their life as well.

Candice Wu 39:47

Yeah, I work with trauma a lot. And, I’ve been thinking about that, as you’ve been talking, is that something you work with and how? And that safety component sounds like an important part of it.

Joy Curran 39:59

Yes, it is. It’s important to be realistic about the risk and the danger but to also be aware that there’s a real joy and real beauty and pleasure that we can get from interacting with the horses as well.

Joy Curran 40:18

In terms of trauma, is that grounding of the person. So we will always do grounding exercise before we go anywhere near the horses, because you need to be grounded to interact with horses safely, that can be beneficial in itself, before we even get to the horse.

Joy Curran 40:38

Once we’re with the horse, is that learning to be in the embodiment, which is so hard for people suffering from trauma, that for them to learn that they can be safe in their body, beat by beat.

Joy Curran 40:54

So, one of the activities that’s really helpful is brushing the horse. It’s a relaxing, calming, soothing activity, the horse enjoys it, the person enjoys it. And it’s this continual movement, that repetitive, and rhythmic kind of movement. And of course, we understand that rhythm is something, it’s very soothing to the human body, also feels like a level of control you could have —

Candice Wu 41:24

That’s right

Joy Curran 41:24

In relation —

Joy Curran 41:25

Yeah, there’s a lot of control because the horse is just standing still. And the client is in complete charge of where they’re going to brush, how hard they are going to brush, what direction, which brush they going to use? Yes, it’s completely up to them.

Candice Wu 41:43

These all sound like very small and simple things. But even me, I noticed going up to a horse and brushing them. It’s not. It’s like quite a big important moment.

Joy Curran 41:56

Yeah.

Candice Wu 41:56

Of being in that moment doesn’t feel smaller, silly or anything, it’s really powerful.

Joy Curran 42:03

It’s a point of connection. It’s a point of giving and receiving with the horse.

Joy Curran 42:13

Can be, you know, apart from getting the dirt out of the coat you giving them a little massage at the same time. And so it feels good to the horse. And then it feels good to us because we get to be in their presence. And we get to make someone feel good. And that makes us feel good.

Candice Wu 42:31

Yeah, this reciprocal energetic synergy.

Candice Wu 42:36

How about sexuality, and, like sexual development, sexual trauma?

Joy Curran 42:42

I find that horseback riding can be very therapeutic. There’s a close connection between the person and the horse. And because it’s very, you know, that sexual area is very close, and with the movement of the horse, then you’re moving your pelvis and your pelvic region. And that can trigger all sorts of emotions, memories, things that have come up, but because you’re on the horse, you kind of have to stay embodied, you kind of have to stay grounded.

Joy Curran 43:20

So, it really is a huge support to help people and the horse literally will carry someone through that. Well, they’re processing the sexual trauma, because obviously, I would never put someone on a horse straightaway. I always build a relationship between the client and the horse before we get to that point. So by the time a client is sitting on a horse’s back, they know that their friends. They know that the horse cares about them, and it’s going to look after them. And so being able to have that safe space, that supports from the horse, to process that trauma, that’s just huge support for them.

Candice Wu 44:02

I can just imagine that and imagine so many aspects of what the body might be carrying, can release or can be held in that space without us even knowing it. Sometimes just what’s moving through.

Joy Curran 44:16

And you’ll often see the horse will do some processing for the person. So they might start yawning. They might start, you know, dropping their head, they’ll do various thing that might even give a little shake, shake their body.

Candice Wu 44:32

You just got to shake it off.

Joy Curran 44:34

Literally.

Candice Wu 44:36

Or, they’re like —

Joy Curran 44:38

Yes exactly.

Candice Wu 44:38

They’re like, stressed and releasing it.

Joy Curran 44:40

Yeah, very much so.

Candice Wu 44:43

I’ll look out for that. That’s really cool! Yeah.

Joy Curran 44:47

I think so too. I love it. Yeah, that is a real connectedness, in that the horse is going with you on the journey and you’re not on your own.

Candice Wu 44:59

Yeah.

Joy Curran 44:59

And then some understanding that the horse has of what you’re going through, and there’s a sharing in that being with you, supporting you in that, this very beautiful, very healing.

Candice Wu 45:11

It’s so powerful.

Joy Curran 45:13

Very powerful. Yeah.

Candice Wu 45:15

I had a couple of questions, you know, within this area from people on Instagram.

Joy Curran 45:22

Yeah.

Candice Wu 45:24

And one was about Fibromyalgia and to work with that. And how, with the horses?

Joy Curran 45:30

I haven’t so far, but I would be very open to it. If I did have someone with that. Yeah, I guess everyone is different. So we need to go with what that person needed. So I would be asking, you know, what are your symptoms? What generates the symptoms and how can we manage that during our session? And how can we make sure that we’re not triggering you and keeping you safe in the interaction?

Candice Wu 46:01

Yeah, that’s so interesting. Yeah.

Candice Wu 46:03

And the other question was, well, and I think you’ve answered it already in the process of this was, is this something you do over a period of time, like repeatedly? Is that the recommendation when you’re working with Equine Learning or therapy?

Joy Curran 46:19

Great question. Well, it really varies according to the individual, a huge amount. So, for any instances of, for example, violent sexual abuse, that’s something that’s going to require probably multiple sessions over a long period of time to help really, to get full healing and freedom.

Joy Curran 46:44

But then you’ve got some people that just, you know what, “I’m just got this issue right now.”

Joy Curran 46:50

And I just want to help to work through that. And they might only need one session or they might only need three sessions and they’re completely happy, free to go, and live life as they want to live.

Joy Curran 47:01

So, there’s a huge spectrum of needs and what people can afford, as well. So, I don’t like to have that as a limiting factor. I really try and find sponsors for people who really can’t afford it because I really hate the idea of someone not being able to get treatment because they can’t afford to.

Candice Wu 47:24

Yeah, that’s great. What a lovely idea to have sponsors. How do you find sponsors?

Joy Curran 47:31

Good question. Networking. Yeah, just letting people know what I’m doing, the value, the benefit, and then by telling someone’s story.

Joy Curran 47:41

At the moment, I’ve got a girl who’s about 14 years old, she’s in a single-parent family and her mother is living on disability pension and this girl suffers from severe anxiety and is unable to get a part-time job, struggling with school. So, that’s the kind of person who we need a sponsor for. Because she really — there’s nothing she can really do in her current position, to be able to afford that.

Joy Curran 48:15

So when people sort of understand that, Oh, it’s not just because they’re lazy, or they just want to hand out, but you know, there are actual, you know, real-life situations that have put them in that position that they, you know, it’s a real struggle for them. I think a lot of people want to get on board, and they want to help those people because they want to help themselves. And they just need a little support to do that.

Candice Wu 48:40

That sounds like exactly what you talked about with the horses looking out for each other. And checking in. And —

Joy Curran 48:46

Yeah.

Candice Wu 48:47

Who can offer something and who might need it or —

Joy Curran 48:51

Exactly.

Candice Wu 48:53

Fit for something at this moment or another?

Joy Curran 48:56

Yeah.

Candice Wu 48:57

So cool.

Candice Wu 48:59

So we have a little bit of time left, let’s switch gears into challenges. What kinds of challenges do you see in your work or in your life? What are you working with now?

Joy Curran 49:10

Lots of things.

Joy Curran 49:12

There’s a couple that come to mind. I think one is that, is the big one is that, overextending myself. There’s such a big world and there are so many people who need help, and I can help them. But, actually, I have a limited amount of resources to give. And I find that really frustrating because I kind of have this deep belief that I’m connected to limitless energy. And I can actually, you know, do anything and everything. But then I find myself actually being limited. And it’s so frustrating!

Candice Wu 49:48

Yes, you just have a big heart and big desires to be out there.

Joy Curran 49:52

I do!

Candice Wu 49:53

And being in a human body.

Joy Curran 49:55

It’s a beautiful gift being in a human body. But it’s limiting. And that frustrates me.

Candice Wu 50:02

I can imagine that. And I can relate to that a lot, too. Is it something you work with yourself on with the horses? And how do you do that?

Joy Curran 50:13

Yeah. I may take you on a slight tangent, like with the horses as a lot of personal growth that I do with the horses. And one of them is like, this whole task versus relationship thing. I’ve done a lot of meditation, on the whole, like, you know, getting tasks done is important. Relationships are important, which one’s more important? You know, is perhaps, at one time, the task is more important, in another time, their relationship is more important. And I feel like from working with the horses, yeah, there’s this dance of relationship and task. And I think the beauty and the joy comes from doing the task in relationship.

Joy Curran 51:03

But if you’re doing the tasks at the sacrifice of the relationship, unless it’s like an emergency situation, or, you know, health concern or safety concern, I think if you’re sacrificing their relationship, that’s when the task loses its joy. And so I’ve got these little debts of like, I need to get this done. But then, if I rush the horse, I’m going to feel rushed, they’re going to respond to my feeling of being rushed, and we’re going to get into a fight. And it’s not going to be fun anymore, you know, just lost the whole lifestyle that I wanted to enjoy in the first place, that peace and that joy, and that relaxation, freedom to be present in the moment, kind of letting go of all these tasks that could have saved me.

Candice Wu 51:49

And I mean, as a side note, your name is Joy.

Joy Curran 51:52

Ah. It is!

Candice Wu 51:52

Not so much of a side note that is so poignant.

Joy Curran 51:57

Yeah, and that, it’s probably a name of my life journey of, you know, from my history of depression and anxiety, and learning to overcome that, and to live in a state of joy. You know, that’s the story of my life in a lot of ways.

Joy Curran 52:15

And then I had a vision where I was crying out to God to bless me. And he came, and he changed my name to “Joyful” and I went, and I looked it up in the dictionary, and, I’ve realized these three kinds of aspects to the word “joyful,” and one was actually feeling joy, one was causing joy, and one was expressing joy. And so yeah, my new name of Joyful then reflects that not only was my name to be Joy, but I was actually to experience it. And to help others to feel that and to express that joy.

Candice Wu 52:55

Full of joy, joyful.

Joy Curran 52:57

Exactly.

Candice Wu 52:58

In all aspects.

Joy Curran 53:00

Exactly.

Candice Wu 53:01

Speaking of joy, just what is one tip that you have for people or thought around joy and how to cultivate it, or to be in your joy.

Joy Curran 53:12

There’s one thing that will keep you joyful, and that is being grateful and being thankful in every moment. There’s always something to be thankful for. And if you can be thankful, even in darkest moments, then you can experience joy, even in those moments.

Candice Wu 53:30

That’s a really good reminder. I feel it’s also very integrating to feel grateful, like tuning into something I’m grateful for, helps me absorb that and feel into the joy. And then I’m just feeling refreshed for the next thing.

Joy Curran 53:46

And it’s interesting, because joy is an emotion and is a feeling. And so we feel it in our body. And so if we are off in our minds somewhere else, we actually not going to feel joy because we have to be in our body to be able to feel joy in the first place.

Candice Wu 54:05

Where do you feel joy in your body? Ah, everywhere. But mainly in my heart, I think.

Joy Curran 54:10

Yeah, it just feels like life, you know, it just feels like being alive. And when I’m especially grateful, It’s like, this bubble comes out from my heart. And it’s just like, this bubble of joy. And I think sometimes other people can feel it and see it. And —

Candice Wu 54:31

Thank you for that.

Joy Curran 54:32

Thank you.

Candice Wu 54:33

So Joy, is there anything else you’d like to share today? Anything else that’s feeling alive for you, that you want to mention to all the people listening?

Joy Curran 54:44

Something I’ve been exploring this week that came to me is that whole idea of, you know, it’s been proven in research, that forgiveness is hugely important to healing, emotional healing, and even physical healing, I believe, we’re all interconnected. But, there’s that, I kind of felt to take it another step further. So, I go to the Bible to get a lot of wisdom and understanding and there’s this verse that says, “Bless your enemies, and do good to those who persecute you.”

Joy Curran 55:27

I wrote a list of all the people who had significantly caused me harm in my life. And then I found all the blessings in the Bible that I could find. And then, I spoke all of those blessings over each person, one by one, okay, so I didn’t get all the blessings from the Bible, because there’s a lot in there. But, you know, a significant amount that I could grab at that time. It took me about 15 minutes. So, I dedicated 15 minutes to each person to go through and just bless them.

Joy Curran 56:03

And I found that as I did that, I became lighter and things like dark energy left my body that didn’t need to be there. And I just had more room in myself, a lot. That makes sense.

Joy Curran 56:21

So yeah, I think that is just something beautiful, that I’d like to share with people that in your healing journey, to just find those points of pain that people have caused you. And even yourself, if you feel that you causing yourself pain, put yourself on that list as I did.

Joy Curran 56:41

And it was beautiful, because, you know, two of the people who cost me the most pain, were my parents and to be able to say those blessings over my parents from my heart space of meaning it and then realizing that the beauty of doing that means that those blessings then flow on to me, as their child and that interconnectedness. Something very healing, very therapeutic about that, and very joyful about that even.

Candice Wu 57:11

It feels so, I’m not sure, redeeming is a right word?

Joy Curran 57:15

Yeah.

Candice Wu 57:16

Like redeeming of those parts of you, that are your parents, that you’re putting, your giving blessing. And then it just cycles back to you. And it’s something outside and inside.

Joy Curran 57:28

Exactly. I think it’s a good picture of how we actually are all interconnected, even though we may not realize it. And to be able to bless those who cause us pain and mean it from the heart. That’s very freeing.

Joy Curran 57:48

And it means that no matter what people do to you, you can experience joy. Because I can bless my enemies. And honestly wish them good. And just wholeness and financial blessings, and just everything to have a beautiful, joyful life. And that somehow comes back to me.

Candice Wu 58:13

It’s like transforming the energy completely.

Joy Curran 58:16

It is.

Candice Wu 58:16

Of what was there.

Joy Curran 58:17

It really is.

Candice Wu 58:18

Yeah, exactly. Incredibly empowering. Thank you for sharing that.

Joy Curran 58:24

You’re welcome!

Candice Wu 58:24

It’s so, I can feel it, kind of chills in my body. I mean, it’s not a new concept.

Joy Curran 58:29

Yeah.

Candice Wu 58:30

Hearing you speak to it. And your heart coming through from it, makes me want to go home and do that.

Candice Wu 58:39

You know? What’s left over for now.

Joy Curran 58:40

And that’s the thing, like, I thought I’d forgiven everyone a long time ago. But, doing this just kind of took it a step further.

Candice Wu 58:50

Yeah.

Joy Curran 58:51

And just really erased any residual unforgiveness that I didn’t even realize was there.

Candice Wu 58:57

I think that’s the thing about human life, the complexity is that we there are so many things that we don’t know that are there and then we only know them when we know them. And the layers of that can peel open, the more work we do with ourselves, the more expansion that we have, the more joy we have, I find it just wants to push out all the other things. Amen.

Candice Wu 59:20

And now it’s raining here!

Joy Curran 59:22

A beautiful symbol of abundance and blessing! You’ve got showers coming down.

Candice Wu 59:28

I know. I love it. Perth has so much rain, at least this winter.

Joy Curran 59:33

Yes. And I’m quite thankful for that, I think, to have an abundance of water.

Joy Curran 59:39

Yeah. So necessary.

Joy Curran 59:41

Yes. Very much so.

Candice Wu 59:43

So there — I want to just pull back to something you said, about blessing and prayer. And we started off with a prayer and you offer that, I appreciate that. And I noticed on your intake form that you had a checkbox, like, do you want to start with a prayer and I wanted to offer space for you to speak about that. Because I know that even though I’m not, I don’t call myself Christian or Catholic, or use the Bible in the same way you are. I always appreciate a prayer when it comes from love, when it feels like it is a blessing. It’s, you know, it’s a loving gesture.

Candice Wu 1:00:26

It just doesn’t even matter, then, you know what format it’s coming in, but I want to offer that space for you to to speak about that with your clients and with your work.

Joy Curran 1:00:38

Thank you. Yeah, and I think that is important. What you’ve noticed about that coming from that space of love. Because I think love has got to be the foundation of everything we do as healers and practitioners. Because without it, I might as well just pack up and go home, I think.

Candice Wu 1:00:58

Right. Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:00:59

What else is it about?

Joy Curran 1:01:00

Exactly. Yeah.

Joy Curran 1:01:02

So for me, trying to do prayer without that space just doesn’t compute. It doesn’t make sense to me. But I do know that some people do that. But that’s not me.

Joy Curran 1:01:15

So for me, it really depends on what you’re comfortable with. I limit myself depending on what the client is comfortable with. What I experience is miraculous breakthroughs through prayer that wouldn’t otherwise happen. And I’m talking even physical, you know, miracles.

Joy Curran 1:01:35

So I had a young woman who had seen me once, and then she attempted suicide, a month later, unrelated to me. And then she came back to see me as part of her condition of getting out of the hospital that she come and see me again. And so she would slit her wrists across ways. And she damaged nerves that they couldn’t repair. And she said, “Now, every time I move my arm like this, I get this tingling in my fingers. And there’s nothing the doctors can do about it. I’ve got it for the rest of my life.” And I said, “Would you like me to pray about that?” She says, “Oh, yeah, if you want to.”

Joy Curran 1:02:20

And she describes herself as a believer, but not a follower. So she believes that God is real, but she doesn’t by any means try and follow Him. And so, I just said a simple little prayer. And I said, try it out now. And it was still there. And so I said, another prayer. And then, she just like this look on her face. And she was just like, her jaw dropped. And she was like, wow, and she was like, trying to like, test it out.

Joy Curran 1:02:52

And, it was completely gone.

Candice Wu 1:02:53

In minutes?

Joy Curran 1:02:55

Completely gone in minutes.

Joy Curran 1:02:57

So, some healing miracle that happened where the nerves were kind of moved or healed. Somehow, I didn’t even know how, but that problem that she had didn’t exist anymore. So we got things like that.

Joy Curran 1:03:11

I had another experience with the same woman, coincidentally, at a year later, and she was complaining to me saying, I’ve got to give up smoking because she was coughing. And it was really impacting along some — and I just felt impressed. I tried to be very intuitive, and I just felt impressed to ask her if she was interested in doing a listening prayer.

Joy Curran 1:03:34

So a listening prayer means we basically just give God space to speak to us whatever’s on his heart to speak to us. And so she was like, “I don’t mind listening.” So, okay, so I just said a little prayer, inviting God to come speak. And before I’d finished speaking the prayer, this waste removal truck drove up.

Joy Curran 1:03:58

It’s kind of one of those moments where you’re like, “Interruption to my prayer time,” but I looked around and like, waste removal truck? There’s something about that. So I said to her, “Oh, what are you getting? Is anything coming to mind?” And she’s like, “Oh, no,” I said, I noticed a waste removal truck just drove up.

Joy Curran 1:04:19

Sometimes, God speaks to us through our surroundings, in our environment. I said, “I think God saying he wants to remove some rubbish from your life.” I said, “Would you be willing to give him some rubbish?” And she said, “Oh, no, I’m not ready for that yet. I’m okay. That’s no problem.”

Joy Curran 1:04:36

We moved on to the next thing that we’re talking about. A couple of minutes later, she said to me, “I can breathe.”

Joy Curran 1:04:45

I said, “What do you mean, you can breathe?” She’s like, “All the tar for my lungs has gone, I can breathe.” And I was just like, “That is so awesome!” whether or not she was ready to get rid of the rubbish. It was going. Yeah.

Joy Curran 1:05:02

So I get these beautiful, miraculous moments when I use prayer. And so I always like to give people the opportunity to be open to that if they want to.

Candice Wu 1:05:13

That’s beautiful. And it’s really cool that people are just willing to try it sometimes.

Joy Curran 1:05:17

Yeah.

Candice Wu 1:05:18

And can find some miracle in it or something different. Just being open.

Joy Curran 1:05:24

Yeah,

Candice Wu 1:05:25

I am very grateful that we get to be doing a session together. So thank you so much for both this part of the podcast and for the session we’re going to be having. Before we shift gears and end this segment, where can people find you?

Joy Curran 1:05:44

Well, my website is one place, equineassistedlearning.com.au. I’m reasonably active on Facebook. So facebook.com/alignedlivingeal. I post quite regularly pictures of clients interacting with horses or little things I see around the place, little birds and animals and things that show up and that can be quite fun. I also put some events on there from time to time, retreats and things, and I’ve also active on Instagram. I confess, my daughter runs it for me. I’m not that Instagram-savvy. But my daughter is my life-saver there. And yes, so @alignedliving is my tag on Instagram.

Candice Wu 1:06:31

Okay, lovely. I will find you there.

Joy Curran 1:06:34

That’s great.

Candice Wu 1:06:35

Is there anything else before we close?

Joy Curran 1:06:38

I’ve really enjoyed it.

Joy Curran 1:06:40

Some moment of EXHALES

Candice Wu 1:06:44

I feel that too, especially the rain coming down harder.

Joy Curran 1:06:49

That release, clouds emptying out, what they’ve been carrying around. Happens to be a blessing to us. Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:06:59

Thank you so much.

Joy Curran 1:07:01

Can I finish with a blessing?

Candice Wu 1:07:04

Please do.

Joy Curran 1:07:05

May God bless you and keep you. May he cause his face to shine upon you. And grant you peace in every area of your life. May be blessed as he goes in and as he comes out, and in all that you do, Jesus name. Amen.

Candice Wu 1:07:24

Amen.

Candice Wu 1:07:28

Thank you so much.

Joy Curran 1:07:30

You’re welcome.

Candice Wu 1:07:31

Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:07:38

I’m so grateful that I got to come out to the horse farm where Chaya lives and where Joy works to have a session with her, and to have this conversation with her.

Candice Wu 1:07:48

I hope you found this episode inspiring and intriguing, just like I did, and if it does call to you, feel free to check out the video that will come out later this week, highlighting the session that I had with her which is quite vulnerable and deep.

Candice Wu 1:08:03

Joy has a special deal for her Embody Podcast listeners. If you mentioned the Embody Podcast that you’ve listened to, you get to receive 20% off of your first session with Aligned Living, that’s her company. And if you book six sessions, you’ll receive a bonus seventh session free. That sounds awesome. And if I’m in Perth again, I will definitely take that up.

Candice Wu 1:08:24

You can find all this information, as well as Joy’s contact info, in the show notes linked to this episode or you can go to her website at www.equineassistedlearning.com.au.

Candice Wu 1:08:38

It was truly a magical experience to meet Joy and to work with her horse, Chaya.

Candice Wu 1:08:43

Chaya is just sweet and loving and affectionate and will just go for what she wants, moves around with ease. And that just taught me a lot, even witnessing her move around.

Candice Wu 1:08:56

Thank you so much for joining us in this very special episode with Joy Curran in Australia. And before you go, I’d like to invite you to join my newsletter which comes out twice a month. This newsletter offers healing meditations, self-love notes, information about upcoming events and offerings. You can also become part of the Embody Community on Facebook, check it out at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:09:22

And if newsletters or the community aren’t your thing, you might check out my Patreon page at CandiceWu.com/patreon where you can even contribute $1 a month and where you can get access to receiving personalized healing meditations that are tailored just for you, for the time of your life right now, and whatever you need.

Candice Wu 1:09:43

Hope you’re all doing well out there, sending my love to you and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.