Candice Wu 0:00
What an interesting time to be alive. Right now, the world is facing a huge collective experience with the Coronavirus, COVID–19. And this episode is about some thoughts I have, what I'm going through, and some ways that we can harvest the wisdom and cultivate the medicine from the underbellies of what we're experiencing.

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

This episode is brought to you all the way from Mexico. When I first chose to come here, I came on the intention that I wanted to surrender, surrender to what my inner guidance said for me, which meant not making a million plans. But I still made one plan and that was to come home, well, go back to the US on April 1st and go to spend a month in California with my mentor with Horse Constellation, Sarah Fancy, and learn more from her.

So I made that plan for myself to come back and here I am, going along on my trip, and every bit of the way, I'm asking myself, what feels aligned now? What do I want to do now even if I had a previous idea, or desire, what is it now? Where am I called to go now?

And what happened when I continue to commit to that was I landed here south of Puerto Vallarta, on the ocean, on the Pacific, through a family friend, and I felt incredibly lucky. And as I arrived here, I needed a huge rest. This happened right before the US began to feel or began to make changes and feel the concern for coronavirus. And so here I am. And as time goes on, and I'm watching everything happen, Mexico's not quite responding the same way to the virus, everything seems to be going on, as “normal” here, but a few cases popping up.

Then, just last week, the border closed. The Mexican US border closed to non-essential travel. And I knew, looking ahead, prior to that happening, I had seen what happened when the border close to Europe and all the people flooded into the States, and I just thought I do not want to be stuck in that. And I thought, well, I'll definitely miss that and then still try to go April 1st. Well, I don't think so.

So when I chose to surrender, I surrendered here in the feeling that I actually wanted to stay and as the border closed, it gave me that uncomfortable feeling of: Do you really, are you really doing this?

And I did.

So I'm still here and there's a way in which I don't want to get stuck here. You know, some people are asking me, are you going to get stuck over there? Well, I kind of want to. And when I just claimed it, I want to be here. That felt really good and it felt right. It felt aligned with my whole body.

And in fact, it's quite a safe place for me to be considering my circumstances here. And what you're hearing is the Pacific Ocean, the waves crashing against some rocks. You might be hearing some birds here and there. There are lots of pelicans that make their dive, their beaks go straight into the water to catch the fish. It's so fun to watch, delightful.

Today, it's sunny but with a soft, hazy, clear sky look across the water.

So I'm hoping that this ocean sends you whatever you need in this great mystery of what's happening for us as a collective and for you individually, just imagining all of the mystery underneath the waters and how the ocean washes ashore back and forth and cleans up what it needs to all on its own and houses the depths.

What an extraordinary time we are living in and right now, people are experiencing all sorts of things. It's a giant range. I've heard people feeling the best they've ever felt in 10 years. And I've heard people are experiencing really scary, painful experiences like their loved ones getting sick, losing their job. We see the headlines in the news and for many that feeds the fear, it makes it build inside. And what I like to do is just slow down and pause, and feel where that fear is really coming from, is it mine or is it the collective? And see what you want to do with that?

If you want to release the collective fear, the collective emotions, do so. You can imagine that as color releasing from your body. Notice where that is in your body and release it and if it's yours, see what you want to do with it, you can be with it and be present, really look at it. And if it feels overwhelming, take a break.

When there is a big collective experience like this, there is a giant chance for a reset and lots of messages that can be collectively and personally harvested.

Our interconnectedness is one that many people have spoken about how interconnected we are not just with people, but with the planet and animals and the effect that we each have, and that businesses have and that groups have, countries have on the planet and each other. And we're seeing this play out in a very mass massive effect.

Some people are learning about self-sustainability and going back to the basics, discarding, trimming out the fat, doing only what's essential, maybe learning to cook for the first time. And some people are experiencing a lot of time for self-care, to put themselves first in a way where they experience the world slowing down and freeing them up in this way. But all this can stir. All this that's happening can stir up different fears, beliefs, past life stuff, ancestral stuff, relationships with money, relationships with ourselves, what we're going through with death.

When I think about past life and ancestry, I think about all the things that we have gone through as a collective. I think about what my specific ancestry has gone through. I think about the wisdom that I've heard through many people in their ancestors, of the things that they've gone through, and how they've been resilient through them.

So our ancestors have gone through stuff like this immigration, war, seeking refuge, death, illnesses, having to be minimalistic, or perhaps even starvation experiences or near starvation.

And the thing is, you're here. If you're listening to this, you are here. You are alive and your ancestry made it. And what this brings me to is the question of what can you draw upon in the wisdom, in the medicine of your ancestry, and the resilience and the strength of your ancestry, to support you in the now, even if it's just being present with them and imagining them, feeling their presence.

I believe that each of us has a very special message, many messages locked within this experience that we're going through and on a deeper spiritual level that we even co-created this to learn something.

The virus says to me, I'm the energy of making radical change. I'll make a sharp and quick impact and accelerate and magnify whatever it is you're already needing to learn, and that you actually deeply know.

So here's a chance to become very present with your real lived experience. And, all the stuff that stirs up because of it that is part of perhaps what's been undigested from the past, in your history of life, whatever wants to be looked at might come up right now. Where you have dependencies and attachments might come up right now and the beliefs underneath that, past life stuff and ancestry stuff might come up, to be looked at, to be integrated, to be brought into the mix of what you can see and be with, and notice within your embodied visceral experience.

So while there are real functional things that need to happen, or that you may need to support you, like yes, get food, yes, wash your hands, and all of those things, when you have a feeling of fear or anxiety or sadness or something, if you stay a little longer, what reveals itself? If you honor the sensations in your body and listen without trying to push it, what happens next?

If you don't take all your thoughts for face value, but witness, what is it like to be in my body with these thoughts?

Then some of these, can begin to digest and integrate, and perhaps it can reveal more for you.

So whatever it is you're experiencing in this time, I wish for you: presence with yourself. I know that we all wish each other to be healthy and I absolutely wish you to be healthy and at peace and well and safe. And if you're not feeling that or if you're not feeling healthy, or you are sick, or someone you know is not well, notice how it's touching you. Perhaps, let it change you. Be with the process, be with the transformation, and experience it in and of itself, for the most part of our human experience.

So I invite you to look whatever it is you're experiencing in the face. And even if it's for just one moment, one breath, that's great. Take a break. Come back and try it again and see what happens.

I'm here today too, if you'd like to take a moment with me and just tune into your specific alignment and what you need to be doing right now, what your focus of energy and attention is, we can do that together.

So I invite you to place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly or see what's right for your body. And with a few breaths, that you notice, if this part isn't on already turned on the part of you that witnesses and observes. Say hello to your body. Just being here in this quiet little moment with yourself.

And now I invite you to look from an outsider perspective at your life, at your soul, and spirit, the span of your soul's life and notice any information that you're given.

Notice what you see, what you're aware of, and how you feel. Go deeper than the emotions that you feel. Get to the core and the source of what it is that you're experiencing even if it means just inviting yourself to go to those origins, and also ask yourself, where is my attention best place right now? How can I best support myself and those that rely on me? What do I deeply know is for me to do here and now?

If there's anything for you to write down to take note of, feel free to do that so that you're reminded of it as we close our time here today on the podcast.

And as we do close, just send you a sense of peace and grounding, and the reminder to touch into beauty and what's going well, so touching into beauty, what's beautiful in your life right now, whether that's something in your emotional relational life. Something literally that you can see in the space around you, that gives you a sense of beauty. And if there's nothing, you can imagine something that's beautiful. That just helps give your body a sense of safety.

And the second piece being touch into what truly is here right now, that you're alive, that you're breathing. And if you are having trouble breathing, if you have some symptoms, notice how much your body can breathe, focus on what's going well and just take it in. Allow your selves and your energy to connect with that and then go tackle the hard stuff.

So, as we close today, just wishing you all that sense of presence with yourself with whatever's coming through, and what you're here to do right now, what is in alignment for you.

And I want to send a shout out to all those that are out there in the health care world, supporting others. A thank you to all of you, to the scientists, to the people that are running grocery stores. Also, to all the parents out there who are toughing it out at home with their little ones. That's not always easy.

And in some ways, many of all of you that I mentioned are working double time where others are resting and trying to find something to do with their time. So we have very different experiences here all across the board.

And lastly, if you want some more resources to support what you're feeling right now, to work through anything you're experiencing, I recommend a few podcasts, parts work, working with the different parts of you at CandiceWu.com/partswork. The episode on overwhelm and polyvagal theory, to help you feel grounded and resilient through this time. That's at CandiceWu.com/overwhelm. And also, the episode on emotions and the experientials that go with it that support taking breaks, resourcing strength that's at CandiceWu.com/emotions. And there are so many million resources out there of people and wellness practitioners that are offering meditation, yoga, writing, all sorts of things. If you just take a peek and open to whatever it is you need it's likely out there.

Thanks so much for joining me today. And again, I'm wishing you all the presence with yourself that you can possibly have, and with your loved ones with what's happening.

And I'll leave you with a little anecdote that I recall vaguely from a documentary I saw a long time ago. I think it was about the Dalai Lama or monks or Buddhism.

And there was a monk with a group of people and this car was beeping, this car alarm was going off.

“Beep. Beep.”

And it was utterly annoying and it was going on and on for a long time and I heard the monk just saying over and over: The beep is reminding us to be present, the beep is reminding us to be present.

So I want to leave you with that thought that everything you're experiencing is reminding you to be present.

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

Candice Wu 0:00

You’re tuning into the continuation of The Deep Mystery of Life, where I talk about my past life experience unfolding, and the magic of this mystery, of the experience of life. In this episode, I talked about meeting a human from the past life as well as a horse and the land, the land that helped me in this experience. It’s unbelievable on some levels, and that belief is everything. It’s magical.

Candice Wu 0:42

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 1:17

I have a very special announcement that on the website, you can search through all of the healing experientials and meditations and find exactly what you’re looking for. You can search any topic or keyword, and see what there is on the podcast that offers you all the guided healing audios that you can follow along and use in your own practice. So, what I mean is, if this is your first time tuning in, that some of the episodes have healing experiences that guide you through a specific thing that will support your healing or embodiment or loving yourself, and so, you can find that whole database at CandiceWu.com/meditations, and look for specific ones. If there are meditations out there that you want to see, and aren’t there, please feel free to drop me an email and share that with me at CandiceWu.com/connect.

Candice Wu 2:19

Also, the transcripts for the podcasts are out. Almost all of the podcasts are transcribed at this point, almost all of them, and the ones that are not will be very soon. This is just great. If you are looking for something specific that you heard on the podcast and you wanted to pull a quote or something or you wanted to read that section or if you rather digest material through visual form where you can move at your pace and skin, you can find all the transcripts at each podcast link, and all those podcasts ar at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 2:58

So, with all of this be behind the scenes action, which has been quite a bit, the podcast is supported by people like you who listen and contribute. So, if you have felt touched or inspired or want to give back in some way to the creative support of this podcast, of all that it offers the world and the community, the healing topics and ideas, the guests, the experientials, the meditations, all that wouldn’t really be possible without people supporting it and feeding it with some nourishing good vibes as well as money that supports all the editing and production, and love if you were interested in supporting or want to just check it out at my website at CandiceWu.com/support. All of the contributing options used to be on Patreon and now that’s all shifted to my website, so, every penny that is possible can go towards the podcast.

Candice Wu 4:00

Hello, and welcome back. I woke up really dizzy this morning, and in the past, I might have like in a way, way, way past I might have just chalk it up to something weird I ate or something going on. I can’t quite explain or maybe worried that I have some medical condition, but luckily, with Peter Levine’s research and studies and training in somatic experiencing, it really guided me to see that as a dissociation experience, as an experience where my nervous system was overwhelmed and helped myself ground and come down from that, and back into my body. I could see clearer and it’s not completely gone at the moment, but I do feel much more embodied and resourced.

Candice Wu 5:00

So, with that, I wonder how you’re all doing. As you tune in today, just take a moment to check in with your body and feel what’s going on inside. I like to ask myself the question, how much of me is here right now? How much am I here, right now? How available Am I? It doesn’t matter how much, it just helps you to gauge where you’re at, so that you can either support yourself in grounding or you can acknowledge where you’re at and be okay with that or see what’s needed, and what if this became your practice daily, like before you approach your work or before you connect with a friend or loved one or a family member or a client if you have clients. How much of me is available here?

Candice Wu 6:18

So, to give you a little update, I am in Granville, Ohio at Denison University, and I’m thrilled and just delighted to be a part of Molly Shanahan Mad Shak Choreography’s process in their development of their peace for the upcoming years. They’re working on a piece that is called EX/BODY, and it’s the expression of life and movement through trauma and through with trauma and in the investigation of movements that arise from traumatic experience. It was so excited to be invited into the process as a somatic healer and consultant to the group to support them in their creative process and their nervous systems, in having the capacity and the resilience, and the navigation of the process for each individual which is so personal, and group-related all at once.

Candice Wu 7:29

I couldn’t have even imagined a better position for me to be in, a role for me to be in that combines all the things, not all the things but many things I love — dance, collaboration, trauma work, sharing about trauma and working with people and experiences, and supporting self-expression and awareness. So, here’s a shout out to you, Molly Shanahan and all the dancers in Mad Shak choreography, I’m so happy to be here with you and I’m honored.

Candice Wu 8:04

And actually, this experience is part of what catalyzed what I want to talk about today in the unfolding of my past life. So, being here in Ohio, I decided to head out into nature and go camping by myself for about four days before this week, residency with the dance movement group, and I’m not sure when I would have done it otherwise, probably sometime soon, anyway, but I was so excited to go to Hocking Hills, Ohio, because my brother and my sister had gone there, and came back with just nourishment and of course beautiful photographs that I just couldn’t resist and wanted to see myself. So, it gave me the perfect chance to go camping, and just immerse myself. I had no idea what was going to unfold.

Candice Wu 9:08

So, if you’re new to the podcast or if this is your first time hearing about the specific past life story that I’ve been telling over the last maybe month, actually, I began telling this story awhile back, and I want to just tune you into the podcasts that I began telling this story so that if you do feel inspired to tune into those to get the full story, you can take a listen. So, I actually begin telling this story about my past life, about this specific past life because there are many in the episode CandiceWu.com/ep49, which is called Past Life Trauma: Unfolding Freedom.

Candice Wu 9:56

And in this episode, I talked about how tuning into our past lives and letting that reveal can unfold freedom for us in this life now as well as strengthen resource, and I begin talking about a past life in which I got on a horse and took off, and I got in trouble, and I died afterward. And I don’t remember I may have said that, at that time that I think I died while on the horse, but I do remember, perhaps at that time realizing that it wasn’t the horse that kills me or being on the horse, it had something to do with someone else or something else that hurt me or something that happened, and at that time, I remember asking my inner being, “Do I need to know the full story?” And the answer was no, it just wasn’t important. It was specifically to, at that time, important for me to know about being on a horse, and how horses had connected in my past life, but the rest wasn’t so essential at that time. So, you can find that episode at CandiceWu.com/ep49, and that’s about past life trauma.

Candice Wu 11:15

And the next episode where I talk about this past life thread is the episode about a month ago, and it’s called The Deep Mystery of Life, where a pain in my elbow allowed me to go deeper with myself and reveal this whole past life experience of me being a young girl shifting into rite of passage as a woman and feeling so big, in a sense, like big of my personality and fear, stubborn and having my own ways, and feeling like the women of the tribe wanted me to do this rite of passage, of course, our specific way, and I just didn’t want to, I wanted it my way, and it just was a battle in a way. And one night, I decided to go off by myself on my horse and build my own fire and do my own rite of passage, when I got attacked and raped by a white man.

Candice Wu 12:19

So, that whole podcast tells the story of what my connection with horses meant at that time, and how that’s related, my experience of feeling abandonment with father figures that was long before this life, but also manifested very strongly in this life that related to that past life. It was a bit of a confusion that got cleared up as well as my wound, and feeling of victimhood with white man in a specific, violent sort of way, and how that all tied in with my elbow and my uterus, and my feeling that something was taken away from me, which was part of my creative life force that seemed to have been directly attacked by white man.

Candice Wu 13:17

So, if you’re interested in hearing that you can tune into CandiceWu.com/deepmystery or CandiceWu.com/ep84. And the most recent episode, Episode 86, is The Shadow Side of Empathy: When Empathy Goes Awry. This episode has a main focus on the shadow side of empathy, but in the very beginning, I talked a little bit about the progression of where the knowing of my past life had taken me, and that is to come into my ferocity, and to know how to use a knife if I’m going to have to, because the whole past life experience that I described in Episode CandiceWu.com/ep84, with The Deep Mystery of Life, originated from a camping experience where I was out on the rustic side of camp and nobody else was there, and I just feared no one would be able to hear me if something happened.

Candice Wu 14:18

I was sleeping with a knife in my hands, and I would have no idea how to use a knife. If someone came and attacked me, I mean, just the most basic like grab and stab or whatever, but to someone who is trained or is very violent and aggressive, like I just probably wouldn’t stand a chance. So, the last episode, that was a solo episode, in Episode 86, I talked a bit about what I was doing at that time to strengthen myself, and to fine-tune some of these skills that my past life self was asking me to look at, including archery and staying connected with horses. So, you have those three episodes, Past Life Trauma, Episode 49, at CandiceWu.com/ep49, you’ll have the main episode, Deep Mystery of Life that tells the more of the fullness of the story at /ep84, and then you have this last one at CandiceWu.com/ep86.

Candice Wu 15:36

And now, this is part two of The Deep Mystery of Life, and I just, who would ever think that more of this past life would reveal itself, and yet, it has almost every single day, it’s like a bits and pieces, and then some days, some huge downloads of information come to me. And that primarily was due to being on the land. So, again, if I would have asked myself like 10 years ago or even five years ago, if this was real or believable, I would probably, hands down, say probably not. No, this is, maybe you just made this up so you feel better or I don’t know, some logic to describe this unfolding of events, but in my willingness to believe and to trust, I’ve opened up so much knowing and love, and parts of myself that I wouldn’t have known were there. Had I not just leaned in and suspended the disbelief that I had, more and more dots keep unfolding, and it gives me so much more fullness in myself.

Candice Wu 17:08

Things click and make sense about who I am or who I feel I am or the things that have been important to me or that I just noticed in my life, and why? Why do I notice certain things? And this story just captures that all, like this giant puzzle piece, just got put in place that has been missing for my whole life. Well, probably, just because I wasn’t listening, but I’m listening now. So, let’s jump in.

Candice Wu 17:43

So, in the thread of this story of this past life unfolding, I last spoke about wanting to take unarmed self-defense and sharp weapons, and archery, and I am in the process of doing all that. The first class I took with was unarmed self-defense, and I would rename it as unarmed self-defense offense because it’s so, it really taught me to step into my ability to be aggressive and violent, just so that I have that capability if I needed to.

Candice Wu 18:20

Somatic Experiencing has helped with that a lot. There are practices and ways that you can use play and animal noises, and growling, and the continuation of a fighting movement, a scratching, a kicking all of that has been really powerful to restore, the sense of protection and ability to protect myself and fight if I have to. And yet doing it that way, was like a slow-motion way, it provided the safety in my body to experience and navigate the feeling of it without just going into overwhelm and being dissociated from my body, and in the unarmed self-defense class, I found that doing it at like super-fast pace, the way that one would need to, if under attack, like doing a palm strike, you know, several times as fast as I could, to, you know, get someone to protect themselves, and so that I could run, that was a totally different experience.

Candice Wu 19:36

I’ve had this experience once before, but in this case, I think more of myself is present, and I have had a lot more of my trauma healed so that I can really utilize this experience for myself. And so, during the class, it was two hours long, about an hour and a half through I was like, “Oh my gosh, I just have to sit down I think I’m going to throw up.” But I really, I knew what it was, I wasn’t really going to throw up, although it is possible that I could have, but I was really aware that my body was having a whole trauma experience. It was that this movement and fullness in ferocity, fullness in like a fight mode was turning on some other parts of me that needed to fight in the past or that had gone numb and into overwhelm, and shut down and not fought. So, all of that was moving through my body.

Candice Wu 20:41

So, with a few minutes of being with the feeling, orienting and noticing my surroundings, talking with my teacher who was not particularly trauma-sensitive, but he also gave the space for me to do what I needed to do, with some self-touch, especially with my legs and moving my legs a little bit, I was able to feel that feeling of nausea pass, and it was ready again to move forward. So, that was just very potent, and I want to mention that because if you’re out there trying self-defense or certain experiences that allow your body to move in certain ways, even dance or karate or kickboxing, sports, lifting weights, that can bring up the implicit memory of the body that activates the nervous system into that remembrance of something incomplete or an experience where your body and nervous system was overwhelmed or traumatized, and so, to be really supportive of yourself, to know the tools of how you can ground or move through the experience.

Candice Wu 22:11

I mean, that can take years, but to always know you have the resource of looking around you and looking at things that feel safe or good to look at. That’s called orienting and somatic experiencing, and looking for pleasure that can help resource you. So, your resource can be inside your body or outside, and when it’s inside your body that might be looking for a place in your body that feels okay or neutral, feeling touch on your body.

Candice Wu 22:46

Okay, so after these experiences, I was at the stable with the horse that I’m usually with, Sunny, and I meet this woman who has a horse she’s about to sell named Cloud Walker, and I look at this horse, she’s a paint horse. So, she’s like white with black beautiful spots, kind of look like cow spots, and I didn’t think much of it at first, but then immediately, this friend of mine, she became friends of mine. I didn’t know her she was a perfect stranger that day. She said, “You can come and hang out with Cloud Walker and work with her or ride her anytime you want,” and I was just floored. How was this happening?

Candice Wu 23:38

And so, a couple of days later, I was walking around the stables again, all the horses are out in the pasture, but inside there are stalls and they each have their names on them. And I was looking for a halter and rope to find Cloud Walker, and I see her name tag on her stall and it says CW and I do this double take because those are my initials, CW, and that just, you know could just be a coincidence, but in that moment, I was like, what I often tune into names, and somehow sometimes, when names are familiar to me or my name, I pay attention.

Candice Wu 24:34

So, that day I went home with the question, do I know Cloud Walker? Is that a message to me? Do I already know her? Is she the horse from that past life? So, immediately, I went into this mode of — what has this horse been telling me? Where have I not been listening or “Okay, I’m listening now”. What do you want me to know? And I did that both with her, and when I was at home and tuning into her energy, so, tuning into her psychically, without putting too much pressure on her, but just opening. So, I flashed back in my mind to these moments where I was with her, when we were doing some groundwork, and what I was asking her to do was to walk in a certain direction, and to begin to tune into my communication with her, where if I shifted my energy, she would go faster or slow down.

Candice Wu 25:48

So, interestingly, she would do just fine with us going to my left in a circle, when I’d asked her to go to the right, was like, it was like she looked at me like, “Why asked me to do this, what are we doing? And then instead of going, she would get really close to me and put her face like head to head with me, and when we’d get this close, it would be just so peaceful. I loved it, and it was funny because I had this other agenda, I wanted to keep on doing this groundwork thing, and she was just like, No, I just want to be with you. I just want to be with you. That’s all, and then she would put her head down and be like, ”Well, I’ll also want to eat, I’m hungry.”

Candice Wu 26:48

And so, as I thought about what is this horse trying to tell me, is this, in fact, the horse from my past life? Without putting too much pressure on that question, I heard that message, I just want to be with you, and it felt like a really comfortable, peaceful, harmonious connection, that was instant. There was a lot of resonance between us, and I didn’t particularly feel that with other horses, but somehow it didn’t strike me or hit me hard in a way that I thought it might, if it were my soul horse from another life. So, I just didn’t recognize it, and as I felt into this whole, I want to be with you. I felt I wanted to be with her and I just started crying, and it was in that moment of recognition that we wanted to be together and that we had been together, we know each other, and it was beautiful, and I do feel she was an is a horse that I have known for hundred hundreds of years.

Candice Wu 28:02

So, if I was Native American, I feel that that was a life, that was at least two or 300 years ago, like somewhere in between that, and the resonance keeps coming to me that I was an Ojibwe, and I’ve just been learning more about that and what that means, and as this is all unfolding with Cloud Walker and Ojibwe, I have this conversation with a person that has been messaging with me back and forth on Instagram.

Candice Wu 28:43

Ever since that past life podcast, that was like, over six months ago, when I was in Spain, maybe it was eight months ago now. I believe this person who is now my friend had been messaging me and just say that she’s been looking at her past lives, and not just that, but I had just appreciated how she’d been engaging with what I’ve been sharing in my podcast, and it has inspired her in many ways in her own process. And what I didn’t realize was what unfolded in our conversation, when we finally got on WhatsApp together. I had a sudden knowing or feeling that I’ve known her in a past life, and she said, “Yes, I have been Native American before, too.” And when she said that, I realized, we were in that life together. I believe we were in that life together. And I said it and she didn’t think I was crazy. She actually felt it, too, and had all these images come up then that I was around a fire before I died and that she was a younger friend of mine. We were almost like sisters.

Candice Wu 30:08

Everything she was saying, and even hearing her voice. I just cried. I just, I had no idea this conversation would go there. There was a complete connection in my whole being and this knowing it was the feeling like I had found my friend again. Her name is Emily, and she has given me permission to share about her and about my connection with her in this experience of our past life, and how cool is it that we get to talk about this past life that we had together and put together the pieces that feel right. And as this all kept going and evolving, she had received lots of downloads of information and kept sharing with me as well as me to her.

Candice Wu 31:09

And one day, I’m listening to her voice message on WhatsApp about a whole other piece of information that she had received, and this was her side of the storytelling me that her friend had died, which was me, and I’m just crying as I’m hearing this, because I know it’s me, and then she talks, went on to talk about that she had a daughter and more tears from me. And then that she had two boys who were twins, and that they died. And as I’m hearing this, I’m sort of blasted to the present moment when in the seats diagonally behind me, a boy who seemed really overstimulated, and he also perhaps had maybe some Asperger’s or autism. I actually don’t know, for sure, but he made this sound, and it was so perfect. Something had upset him on his laptop, and he made the sound like this, “Huuuuuuuu, huuuuuuu.”

Candice Wu 32:30

And that sound, it made sense. It felt like that was the sound of the grief and perhaps this healing song that would be sung in the tribe, and it was so cool that it just happened in this way that this boy could probably feel the energy of what I was feeling because I was grieving, I was grieving, having lost my friend, and the feeling that my friend had lost me in that life, and that she had been dealing with so much sadness and grief, of loss, not just me, but the boys that she had lost the babies. And the feeling that I had missed that of her life, but in a way, kind of knew also that that was what she was going through. I don’t have any recollection of watching over her or seeing that, but when she says that there is a confirmation in my body, and that is what continues to happen, this confirmation in my body, not just the emotion, but then there’s a deeper knowing that’s beyond the emotion that comes through, and the emotion is very healing and completing.

Candice Wu 33:43

So, now I’ve told you about my horse and my friend that I have known for hundreds of years, and in this life where I got killed, and I’m sure that I’ve met other people that I’ve known in a solo life, and I just never really could recognize the specifics. I just would kind of chalk it up to, yeah, I’m sure I knew them in a past life. There’s a soul of recognition, and to know the specific details of our experiences is incredible, and I believe, and it seems so does my friend Emily, we believe that we have gone through several lives together, and that perhaps the life with the witch, that was the life that I was a witch, she was also witch. I believe that we could have been together at that time, and I don’t have specifics on that at the moment, but I trust that will be revealed to me if it needs to be and when it’s time.

Candice Wu 34:50

So, just a little sidebar that integrates into the story before I tell the rest is that I received an Akashic reading from Venessa Rodriguez. She was on the podcast early on, and you can find her at CandiceWu.com.venessa, that’s VENESSA, and she does Akashic readings combined with nutrition and feeding your wild, feeding your soul, feeding your body, and I love her work. So, I felt like receiving an Akashic reading about this past life, and what my uterus and my body were going through at that time was going to be supportive for me. And what was revealed through that reading through my guides, and through her senses was that, in fact, this past life more was going to be revealed., and that using pine, and other indigenous plants as medicine might be healing from my body, and there was a lot more of information that really supported me, but I won’t go into that today.

Candice Wu 36:12

But that’s the lead up to me heading out to Ohio from Michigan. I’ve got my whole car packed with all my camping gear, and we’re going to spend three nights in Ohio in the Hocking Hills area before this dance residency consulting experience that I’m having right now. And I knew that day, that I was heading out, I just wanted to hang out with the horses. I had just come back from Milwaukee for from a weekend Milwaukee and I needed to go see Cloud Walker and Sunny. And so I spent like way longer than I wanted to in a way out there with the horses, but I just trusted my timing.

Candice Wu 37:03

By the time I got out to the Hocking Hills area, I arrived at about 12:30 am on a Friday night, and I mapped myself to Knox Acres Campgrounds. When I got there through Google, I ended up in a neighborhood that seemed a little creepy in the dark, that had no reception, phonewise, and there was no campsite. Google was like, “You’ve arrived!” And I was like, “Well, I don’t see the campsite.” So, I backtracked and turn around, and I went to the Hocking Hills State Grounds Campsite, which my sister had recommended me not to go, but at that time, at almost 1 am now, I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t play on well, and this was an easy “go-to” given that I had no cell phone reception.

Candice Wu 38:07

So, I get there. It doesn’t look great. It looks like a football field, and almost like a tailgate, and I’m not even quite sure that any of the spaces are available. So, I go back up to the front registration area, and I sit there for a few minutes trying to see if I can receive any phone service or if I remember where some of the other sites were. And I’m just sitting there, it is one in the morning, and suddenly, an officer pulls up next to me and says, “Hey, do you need some help? We are completely full here tonight. So, there are no sites available.” And I was like, “Ah, yes. I need help.”

Candice Wu 38:54

So, I gave him my scenario of you know, where I planned to go and asked if he had any other recommendations, and he finally said he had never heard of Knox Acres, and then he finally said why don’t you go to Top of the Caves. It’s just this and that way. Usually, they’re walking sites. If not, come back and find me. I should be around here. I’m working the night shift. So, I asked him what his name was, and he felt incredibly grateful. His name was Chad, which is my brother’s name, and so, I felt that moment of resonance again that, “Yes, this is a good sign I’m being supported right now.” Not just by him specifically, but I felt like by something beyond. Things were just unfolding in this really cool way.

Candice Wu 39:49

So, I go to the Top of the Caves Campsite, drive around, and this is in fact better. Still not, you know what I’m used to in Michigan, but I couldn’t find something, and finally, I arrived at this location in the campgrounds that seemed just perfect. It was the spot that was of right before the trailhead, which still was. it’s like the most private spot I could find, but also public enough that if something scary were to happen, that I could get help, and people would hear me. And as I looked up, there were all these pine trees, and that was just perfect. After Vanessa’s reading with me, it was like, “This is the spot, and the other spots didn’t have that.” So, I knew it was the right one. I just unpacked my whole car and set up my tent, and it was wonderful.

Candice Wu 41:00

So, the next day, I leisurely get up and decide to go to the closest cave, which was Ash Cave, and as I get out there, I’m just enjoying the hike, like any regular old hike that I’ve been on, even though this is gorgeous, and I’m just taking all that in, but what really got my attention was when I saw feathers on the ground, and I started to pick them up. I know you’re not really supposed to pick up feathers, and you know, for fear of viruses and things like that, and parasites or mites. I was being very careful and put them in a container, and then I saw a whole bunch of more feathers and I was like, “Whoa, where did these come from?” And I saw these feather-like, wings. If you jump on Instagram or the link to this podcast at CandiceWu.com/deepmystery2, I’ll post a picture of the feathers that I saw, and the bird that I saw next.

Candice Wu 42:12

This dead bird on the ground, it looks really fresh, freshly dead, and I just kind of marveled at this bird and these feathers, and the way that these feathers were laid out. And as I got closer, I heard this boy go, “Eww, gross.” And I just, I didn’t even care. I didn’t find it gross whatsoever. I just was magnetized to these feathers and this bird. And suddenly, now I was really paying attention. It was the same as when I saw CW on that stall, for Cloud Walker, I was paying attention, the feathers got my attention.

Candice Wu 42:55

As a little bit of backstory. Years ago, a medium told me that I was being guided by a shaman, a Native American shaman, guided by him and a grey feather. And that was how he would get my attention. And I, at that time, just didn’t know how working with my spirit guides worked. I didn’t have any connection with that, and I just thought that was just something people say, you know, just like if you find a penny on the ground or it was just something that would happen that could make you feel good. And it did. It made me feel good. I felt like something in me did believe that I was being guided, and slowly over time, my connection with this shaman man, medicine man has really supported me because it helps me to feel my sense of belonging with a soul tribe, belonging with healing and medicine, and here is this bird with all these gray feathers, like, “Jackpot!” But I mean, not great for the bird who’s died, but, “Whoa, this is sitting right in front of me.”

Candice Wu 44:13

And so, now that I’m paying attention, I decided to meditate in this cave, and this cave is gorgeous. It’s huge. There are many people in it. So, I sit down to meditate, and I was just flooded about five minutes and with tears with this feeling of home. This is my home. I know this place, mixed with my logical thoughts of, “Are you sure Candice? Do you really know that? How do you know that’s true? Are you just making this up?” Well, I’m feeling in my body, “Yes, this is home and you know it, you have been here. This is where the tribe and other tribes would gather. This is where we had fires. This is where we were together.” And I felt this clear knowing that sometimes I would dance by the fire here with my friend, with other women and girls, and that this wasn’t where I slept. This wasn’t specifically where I would be all the time, but it felt like such a gathering place.

Candice Wu 45:31

So, I let that move through me, let that settle, and as that settled, it still remained there like, “Yes, this is your home.” And it was a softer knowing that it was like, “Yeah.” And there was still a little bit of inner questioning, doubting like, “Really, really?” So, I continue on my way and walk on that trail, and I see this other little segment of a tiny cave that you kind of have to like, go to the side and in go up, and as I went into that space, I felt, “Oh, this is where I slept, sometimes.” This is really an intimate women’s space, and this is where I took feathers and I would make things, would make beautiful things, and I did do the beating, but it wasn’t my primary thing. Feathers were, birds and feathers were just so great and alive for me, not to mention that I was a hunter, and that wasn’t particularly what girls were meant to do, but I was a hunter and I really enjoyed hunting deer. And whenever someone hunted a bird and got a bird, I would be the first to be up there up close, seeing what feathers I could pluck and receive, and to honor the bird.

Candice Wu 46:53

So, I continue on this path again, and I just see a beautiful forest, and I’m getting a sense of a bigger picture. There’s this cave here, there’s a second little cave here, and I’m walking away from this cave. And the question came, which direction did I go when I left the tribe that night that I died?“ And as I looked in that direction I was walking, I could feel that it was, that was the way, and I immediately turned around and said, ”Wait, is that real?” And as I turned around, I felt I’m going home, I’m going home.

Candice Wu 47:44

And so, this back and forth, like, this was going away, and this was going home was so clear, and I had this flashback to the moment where when I was going to this cave, this area Ash Cave, I had texted my sister and said, “I’m going out by myself, I don’t know what I’m going to find, and if I don’t message you by dark, send a search party.” And that was a familiar experience in a way, like, send to someone if I don’t come back before dark, which is also a safety precaution, but I felt this moment of I’m coming home, and as I felt that in me, and I walked back towards the caves, I knew that what I was meant to receive that day was enough, and it was already completely magical enough, and I felt myself come home, walk home to my family, my tribe, my mother and my mothers, and I did that very consciously and almost ceremoniously, as a way to arrive back in honor of who I am and my sense of belonging, and all of the information that I’m receiving that as part of my belonging and who I am in this particular life and in that particular life.

Candice Wu 49:18

So, it was like a family constellation of my past life family, coming home to my mothers. So, want to make a little comments about the doubt in me because I had gone on a couple of other hikes during that camping trip, and use that as a bit of a measure or a test to see if other places would ignite the same kind of experience in me, and some of the places I went to were like two miles away or three or even eight and 11 miles away. I had the sense in those places that it was somewhat foreign, and that the land wasn’t the kind of land that I’ve lived on, but that sometimes I may have been passing through or hunting, but that would have been a long journey to some of those places, but the feeling of resonance wasn’t there. It was a completely different experience.

Candice Wu 50:22

Have you had any of these kinds of experiences? I’m curious, if you do lean in to trusting and believing what happens then, it’s like a choose your own adventure, like, for a long time, I chose to not believe certain things or not really embrace them in terms of knowing things I know, but maybe I can’t prove, but as I’ve deepened into trusting and knowing, and that has all come with my process of healing, and completing trauma and not being traumatized in my body, but feeling resourced and that embodied, that has all given me the access to these kinds of experiences where I can embrace knowing. So, have you had that experience or do you want to? Do you want to lean into some messages that you’re receiving or information that you’re unfolding in your life? Or little signs and cues that might lead you to the next breadcrumb.

Candice Wu 51:43

It just would be an interesting experiment if nothing else. What happens if you follow those gut, impulses that just last a split second? Is this the way to following your intuition? Is this the way to that deep, intuitive trust?

Candice Wu 52:04

So, I want to close today’s podcast with a poem I wrote that I actually wrote before I connected with the land and Hocking Hills Ash Cave, but completely connects. It’s called The Foolish Journey.

Candice Wu 52:23

I died three lifetimes ago. Silence screaming, innocence shed. Horse, you felt the knife in my uterus, our souls intertwined and bled. Father, frantic and furious blood of His blood, an unspeakable day. How dare white man take the heart of the Ojibwe? Sweet friend, we ran with stars in our pockets, you and me, swallowing moon in our bellies, foolish eyes, only beginning to see. Fierce and stubborn know themselves in me. How could this soul stay inside beaded lines? Mother cannot give life to look, the night forest and fire gave signs. A white man of the dark, I let this bond go. Who is more foolish? Pain asks to flow. Mothers of mother and white man, feather, father, horse and friend, I come home a new knowing. I am all of you, the beginning of that end. Soul of suns and moons ago, more life, I can now make. Wiser with more knowing, the foolish journey I would never not take.

Candice Wu 54:01

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this poem and what’s unfolding for me, and here if you have stories of your own, of what’s revealing to you, what your knowing is, and your experiences of past life. If this poem didn’t make any sense to you, it might be helpful to listen to the deep mystery of life episode where I talk about the story of what happened with the white man, with my father, with the horse — The Foolish Journey. That episode again is that CandiceWu.com/deepmystery, and it’s the first part of this second episode. And I hope that you enjoyed this, it’s really quite a story to tell, and it’s hard to tell all the pieces in a flow, and I’m developing this into a story of a piece where I’m going to submit it to a publication.

Candice Wu 55:03

So, hopefully, by then I have it a little more integrated in terms of how to thread all the pieces together, but isn’t that the way life is threading pieces together of who you are and finding the pieces that integrate into a larger hole. And if we have access to our past life experience, it gives us a large dimension of that opening of more. As I said all of this has given me more trust in my life, and I can feel even more energies that come from this past life, from the connections that I had, my family, my tribe, from nature. My ability to connect with nature is really much more turned on, as well as my connection with horses, and I am just so much more in myself and in my body.

Candice Wu 56:08

Thank you so much for listening to my story, and my sharing, and I appreciate that you’re there. And if you’ve listened all the way up to here, thank you, thank you so much. It’s such a gift to be seen and heard here and to also connect with you on your journey and interweave, and that’s how it even started with my friend Emily, where she just shared something that inspired her on my podcast, and we started talking and then eventually got on the phone together and revealed all this. I’m so grateful for you, Emily, and our continued friendship which it feels so deep already, even just after our show time of knowing each other in this life.

Candice Wu 57:04

Ah, and the last thing I want to mention is regarding signs. Sometimes, the signs come in opposite ways. I remember all through growing up and probably up until last year, I thought, “Who would ever want to go to Ohio?” Like nothing’s in Ohio, the cornfields, and I think that’s just what people say and I’m sure we could say that about a lot of states, but it was specifically Ohio, that I would talk that way about like it almost be like, “Oh, well.” It’s sort of like going to Ohio, if I wanted to describe a place that was completely boring and awful.

Candice Wu 57:46

So, I invite you also to tune into the things that you just randomly dislike or despise or talk badly about for no reason, and maybe you think you have a reason, but maybe you really don’t. That might be a really interesting place to look, and it only was when my brother Chad said, “Hey, I’m going to Hocking Hills, Ohio” And he showed me the pictures. He really had to show me the pictures to get me to think that that was an interesting thing to do. I had to be really proven. And so, look where we are now, I think Ohio is gorgeous, and after looking at the meaning of Ohio, it is the Iroquoian word for it is beautiful.

Candice Wu 58:40

So, I am humbled, and yes, that’s all for today. Thanks again for tuning in, and if you want to stay in touch with me through my bi-monthly newsletters, you can connect with that at CandiceWu.com/embody, and that’s where you’ll get all the updates of podcasts, experientials, and all sorts of other fun and nourishing tidbits on self-love and healing. And also, be sure to check out the transcripts on the podcasts that are at each podcast link. You can find all the podcasts and search through them at CandiceWu.com/podcast. And also, you can find specifically the meditations and experientials that are on the podcast. You can find those separately on a page that’s also searchable, the whole database of all of the meditations at CandiceWu.com/meditations.

Candice Wu 59:43

Looking forward to connecting with you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is about the deep mystery of life, energetic transmissions and downloads that I’ve been receiving, things that you cannot explain, and I talked about past life memory, coming up through the experience of my elbow.

Candice Wu 0:18

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

Candice Wu 0:52

Here’s a trigger warning for this episode. In this episode, I talk about rape, violence, interracial conflict, the uterus and vagina, and different past life experiences that come up around this. If those are sensitive to you or you’re not interested, you can feel free to jump to the experientials that are connected with this episode or you can look on the show notes and find where to jump in at the places that are past these topics, and if you are clicking on your, the thing you listen to, for podcasting, if you have some sort of app, sometimes you can see the different time markers and stamps, the titles for each section, and you can skip past to pass where the disclaimer points are the trigger warning points are.

Candice Wu 1:44

In this episode, I talk about things that I cannot prove, things I don’t have evidence for, except for me, and my being, my knowing and my body communicating that it’s resonating. I talk about past life, experiences a particular past life memory that connects itself to so many different memories and experiences I have in the present life, that all seemed to make sense to me, but you may be listening and thinking, well, I don’t believe in past life experiences, you don’t have to. It’s good to be skeptical, and also tune into what you feel. It’s also good to be able to let the mindset to the side, the mental logic so that you can receive something else if that’s interesting for you, but regardless of whether you believe in past life experiences, you might be interested in the story of how I brought some healing to my elbow, into my uterus, and the different things that connected up with.

Candice Wu 2:55

Later in the episode, I talk about the mystery of life, that is you and being in your specific energetic signature, what you were born to be in this life, and connecting with different ways of knowing. So, let’s jump in.

Candice Wu 3:14

Last week, I spoke about how I’ve been working with my elbow, there has been some pain there since mid-January, end of January when I was in Ireland, and the feeling I had at that time was that it just happened very quickly. It was nothing I particularly did, it seemed, physically. But suddenly, I had this very sharp and also deep pain in my elbow, right at the joint, which when I did certain movements, like twisted my arm, palm face down, and as far as it could go, it would be painful or lifting something a certain way, like grabbing something and lifting it upwards would be painful.

Candice Wu 3:58

So, all these different movements, and I recall a time when way back, I don’t know, 15 years ago, if something in my body would feel funny, I’d tell someone and they might say to me, “Well, just don’t do that movement.” And that just, it just didn’t really make sense to me, or like stop doing that, that thing that you’re doing, and I think there’s a place for seeing maybe a repetitive pattern and movements of your body and doing something to balance that or doing something different. But I also felt the instant that this feeling came into my body, it also connected with my low back, the left low back. And it felt like, “Whoa!” This is obviously very emotional, spiritual, and at this point in my life, I’m attuned to all that anyway, so, it was clear that something wanted to reach me, and to be known through me something really deep that wanted to surface so that I could claim even more of myself and know myself more deeply if wanted to be healed.

Candice Wu 5:11

So, if you listen to that last episode, Conversations with the Body, or if you didn’t listen, and you want to it’s at CandiceWu.com/conversationswiththebody. I talked briefly about some of the experiences that came out of the elbow, and that it’s still painfully there. It’s far less than before, and I also offer different experientials that you could use to connect with your body, to support your relationship with your body and turning on all of the different languages, that your spirit, soul, body, mind and heart use to communicate with you, to tell you what’s going on or to inform you of what it wants you to look at, in your present life or in your past, something that wants to be resolved, and the more we can tune in with that, with all the different ways that our being is communicating to us more we can listen. I find that we’re in the flow of our lives and who we are, we’re in harmony with all the parts of ourselves, they have a voice and a place.

Candice Wu 6:26

Do you think about being on a team, and whether that’s like a sports team or a work team, and if someone isn’t getting heard, that’s trying to say something very important. We’re trying to offer something and people ignore this one person, the whole team is out of balance, there’s a tension, there’s a resistance against some part, and I liken that to our inner parts, and who we are, all the parts of us, and all the ways that we are trying to be communicated to from deep inner parts of ourselves. If we’re resisting certain things that are speaking to us, then there’s a tension inside, that’s dis-ease. We don’t have to listen and believe everything, but to be able to witness it, and put it in its right place, in terms of sort out, if that’s the truth, if that’s something that wants to be healed. If that’s just a floating thought, that really doesn’t have much weight in me, or if, “Wow, this thing, this thought or experience or sensation in my body is really crying loudly to me.” And it may be getting even more intense as we resist it.

Candice Wu 7:53

If we try to continue to resist what’s wanting to be heard, and just acknowledged, then it will find a way to become stronger and stronger and fortify itself or find a way that will hit you in the place that you listen. Sometimes, that places hitting you financially, or sometimes it’s hitting you in the body where some part of your physical body starts to be in pain or not function as well, and we have to pay attention or we become exhausted or all of the above. Where it shows up in a relationship, and there’s conflict, a certain kind, that wants to direct you to look at something in yourself, something that’s just desperately asking us to look so we can feel even more empowered inside and responsible for our own lives, responsible for our energies.

Candice Wu 8:53

So, that episode “Conversations with the Body: Body Love and Multi-Language — EP82” was two weeks ago, and I want to follow this thread what’s going on with my elbow, and follow-up here. I saw my acupuncturist in Chicago twice. His name is Brent Garcia. He’s excellent. He is also on the podcast, early on in the podcast. He and I explored shame together. We talked about the light and the dark, and the fullness of our experience and what wants to be seen through us, and he spoke about his way of acupuncture, which is a Japanese way. It’s very gentle, and he’s super energetic, so does some Reiki sometimes, and it’s also a licensed massage therapist. He has a very full dimension in him of his work, and yet stays within the bounds of his work. But you know, me being me, I bring all sorts of stuff, and his presence is just the right presence for me at the moment to reveal, to allow things to reveal, and that is exactly what happened.

Candice Wu 10:06

In the two sessions a lot came up with my elbow, and I was ready for it. But I want to start the story with before I got to Chicago. If you’ve been following my Instagram, you might have seen that I decided to take on a project, I bought a used manual car, I really liked driving a manual, it just helps me feel like I can learn something and master something, and I have a different sense of creativity and control, and I created a hatchback camper. So, I created a sort of like a platform. So, there was flatness with plywood and hinges, and have a foam mattress that goes in the back and made curtains all sorts of stuff. So, I decided to take my mobile home on an adventure and go camping before I got to Chicago, like on the way to Chicago. I chose a campsite that had rustic sites and improved sites, which I think had like a bunch of electricity and better bathrooms, etc. So, something in me was like, I want to have the most rustic experience I can possibly have, I want to just be in the middle of the woods, and I think I’ve always had that deep yearning like to be in the stillness of the woods and to be at home in nature, submerged, immersed.

Candice Wu 11:38

And so it was a beautiful idea, until it got to be like 11 pm and it was pitch black, and I was hearing noises all around me. So, this is me sleeping in my car, and having to make the decision whether to close all the windows and lock doors or keep these sort of like window socks that I have on, which are like fabric screens that allow air to come through but no mosquitoes. So, I chose to keep those on with the doors locked, but really, you know, someone could just reach right through or move the fabric. If they knew to do that or once they saw what the scenario was, and I chose this because I could then hear if anyone was coming along, anyone coming close. I thought about leaving but I had set up all my stuff. It just felt also scary to pack up all my stuff at that moment and leave, and some deep part of me knew that everything was going to be okay, and another part of me knew well, I didn’t really know that.

Candice Wu 12:54

And at some point, I decided to stick it out. It was probably when I found my steak knife and decided to sleep with that in my hands. I didn’t sleep very well. The nervous system was pretty afraid but some grounding kept me okay, and eventually, at like three o’clock I felt like: “Okay, I passed the witching hour. I have gotten through it. And I’m going to be okay”, so I ended up sleeping the rest of the night. But what was coming up, before I could manage to fall asleep, I was just allowing what wanted to be seen about this to emerge, and what was coming up was me asking myself, “Well, what do I really fear? Is it the animals? What is it, is it people?” And it was the feeling that if anything happened to me, that nobody would know, that it was so distant, it was distant enough that people wouldn’t be able to hear me or come help.

Candice Wu 14:02

And then, I felt the specific fear, I had the image of a man coming right up close to me, like to the right side of my body about a foot away from my head, and the fear was that I would be hurt, taken and brutally raped. Perhaps a lot of women or smaller people, I don’t know. I can’t really speak for everyone else, but perhaps many other people also have that fear. But this, this fear, this image is very specific for me. And it’s something that while I was on this camping trip, I realized has been with me since I was young. When I was like five or six, I remember having the same fear, exactly, and a man coming right up close to me and coming up too close for me to have a realized too quick. So, I just took note of that. Hmm, interesting. You know, I’ve had this fear forever, like a terrifying fear when I was younger. When I was at home, I would be afraid that someone will come through the window or come from the closet. Yes, maybe normal childhood fears but a very specific brand and flavor.

Candice Wu 15:22

So, as I noted that I got to Chicago, had some beautiful workshops, constellations workshops, and restorative yoga and somatic experiencing workshop at the neighborhood studio Bloom Yoga Studio I love, and the family constellations workshops were the restore the love the flow of love, workshops, and they were just deep and powerful, and through this, I’d seen my acupuncturist, Brent. So, this is when it all comes together I love, it’s just really amazing when many pieces of things that I’ve sensed or noticed, and maybe even didn’t notice before but realized later all come together.

Candice Wu 16:08

I talked about an experience of a past life trauma, where I, after falling off a horse twice while I was in Spain last year, it revealed itself. I think I talked about it in the episode Past Life Trauma: Unfolding Freedom, it’s Episode 49, and you can find it at CandiceWu.com/ep49. That is part of the puzzle here because what I learned from my healing work around a falling off a horse twice, I knew that I wanted to heal to make sure that I wasn’t going to take on or allow something to manifest this trauma, if you can be really present with what’s happening and allow what wants to happen right there and be with it or at least as early as possible from an incident, and you can have a resource and allow the body to do what it needs to and it doesn’t become trauma.

Candice Wu 17:09

Trauma is the experience of overwhelm that stops the process from happening and manifest later so we can complete it. That’s one way to look at it, and so I was working with the falls and realizing that it was a much deeper issue and realized that it was a past life experience of being with a horse and then my healer had intuited that I got really stubborn about a decision, and other people were telling me what to do and I got just, you know, got on my horse and ran away, but I got in trouble, and it wasn’t the horse that got me in trouble or being with the horse. But that somewhere in this experience, I had died, is what I knew and what I felt. But it wasn’t really important at that time to know what the other details were. I just got what I needed at that time. Well, that experience came back and it wove into what was going on in my elbow.

Candice Wu 18:23

So, while I was in my session with Brent, at some point, he was doing some gentle touch on my arm, my right arm, and elbow, and it was really fascinating to allow this feeling that my hand my arm wanted to reach out to a man, specifically a male energy or person, and to know that they were actually there, to feel the kindness of this male presence, that my acupuncturist embodied at that moment for me. And what revealed after that were the words “you left me to die, you left me to die” and so I got curious about where that came from, and I’ve certainly had my share a whole armful, one could say, of attachment issues and relational trauma with my father. And maybe, those words applied there — “you left me to die” — in a way, yes, and in a way, not quite like there’s a different angle of you left me to die.

Candice Wu 19:37

So, I stayed with it kept feeling it, and I could feel the pain of that, the pain and the hurt and the betrayal. Eventually, Brent left the room, leaving me with some needles in very poignant spots, and I stayed with my imagination and what was coming to me, and I know when something feels like it’s hitting the spot when my body responds, when my emotions come flooding in or some sensation happens inside that is the resonance of my body saying, “Yes, there’s a memory of this. Yes, this, these are the words that can describe what happened or what I went through.” I don’t always say, all right, yep, these are exactly the facts, and I don’t know that it’s important in my book, at least, they don’t, these things don’t seem of consequential importance in this life. You know, if I feel I have a past life experience, and it gave me healing to recognize it, and it gives me strength to let it work its way through imagine, imagine what I wanted to happen instead or notice what did happen and honor, and then that whole thing releases in my body, if I stay with the emotions and the sensation, and I feel more whole afterward, and I also feel like I can then take with me the embodied wisdom that was of that life.

Candice Wu 21:20

All this to say, maybe these things didn’t happen, and yet doesn’t really matter because I feel like I have more of myself, and I feel like it can be part of my story. It is part of my story. So, back to me lying on the table here with some needles in my body, and I realized that I’m holding my dad’s hand, not my dad in this life, in a past life, in some life, another world. It feels that we’re Cherokee, it feels that we’re Native American. This is my tribe. He’s my father. He’s an important man. It feels like I’m saying to him, “You left me to die. You left me to die.” And as I stayed with it, and pictured him, I actually heard in me sensed in me and heard the words, “Yes, you’re right, I left you to the wolf. That’s only because we had to run, that’s only because we had to survive and fight, and you couldn’t do that. You were really far gone.”

Candice Wu 22:38

So, that got my curiosity, like, oh, it felt true, and why was I so far gone? And I felt myself lying, like in a pool of my own blood, and then as I looked, he was to my right, as I look to the left, I saw in sort of a flash of different parts all at once. Different parts of the timeline of the story all at once, that I was, in fact, brutally raped, and it was by a white man, and on our lands, and several men that he was with. But there was one particular one that lead the pack, and no one was around, that would help me. No one was around.

Candice Wu 23:34

So, that brought me back to the feeling of camping, and my fear that if nobody was around, no one could help me and I would die, I could die, and here it was, the real terror, the real thing that seemed to have happened, this thing that I feel has happened in a past experience that nobody was around, and my body was desecrated. It was as if the white man knew to come after the heart of the tribe, the uterus, the creative center, the young life of the tribe, which was me or, you know, I was one of them, and I felt like my uterus and vagina was like, desecrated, taken, and the words like, “You took something from me,” came up. And interestingly enough, those words came to me, those were the words I used in a recent experience with someone in a relationship, and I was surprised that I use those words, because I don’t really believe that they, that person was taking something from me, but it just came out out of my mouth, like you took something from me, and you took it and now, I can’t have it back, like it’s gone.

Candice Wu 25:10

So, there, I just like, I realized, wow, there’s another piece of the puzzle, like, this is why I felt this way, and it was in particular, that this particular relationship I had in the present day was with a white man, and there was a racial component that felt like it was coming alive, something, some bond that I had that wanted to be seen in some way or worked out in some way. And I don’t know, you know, some people might say that, maybe that was the same person that was in the past life that rapes me, I, my mind didn’t go that far, and it just went there in this moment, as I’m speaking to this now, which I’ll have to feel into later to see if that feels accurate, maybe, wow, just felt in a little bit. We’ll see, but there was a lot of anger about, like, aspects of our interactions that I felt were violent, and when I saw this image lying on the table, and my acupuncturist, I felt like, “Oh, I get it now, I get why I was trying to work that out with this person in my life right now.”

Candice Wu 26:37

So, back to the story. To rewind a bit to piece it all together, I was riding my horse, a horse that I was very in tune with, and I had gone flying off on my own, out to the middle of nowhere, perhaps or out somewhere I hadn’t been. Regardless, it was alone, and I was attacked, brutally and raped, and it came to me as, like a huge blindside, I was just not aware, because I think I was just so focused on what I wanted to do that it felt like this man came up to me really close, really fast, and I couldn’t stop it. And after that, during that my horse ran off, I have the feel that I’m a little uncertain what happened there and may not be important, I could have been off of my horse, and we just resting and then my horse ran off because he sensed danger or perhaps I was on my horse, and this all happened and maybe I got wounded or something and fell off or got ripped off the horse.

Candice Wu 27:59

Either way, the horse ran off scared, and I was with this man, this white man, and experiencing this extreme violence and rape, and hurt and power over me. And in that moment, I felt myself experience that nobody, nobody can hear me but I had the wisdom to talk to the horses, I kept my connection with my horse inside, can’t help come back for me. I can feel it now in my words, I can feel it in my heart, like how beautiful that connection is, but also how painful the experience was, and I feel that connection of psychic ability with horses, like being in the spirit world and connecting with communication that is not directly, like right next to her and words but in a knowing in an energy. That was something that Sara Fancy reminded me of. She’s the horse constellations person that I spent five days with and with her horses, her herd there, and she one day, just said to me, “Oh, yeah, you can just talk with her psychically and ask if they want to be touched.”

Candice Wu 29:31

And it felt like it opened up this whole knowing of, well, I know how to do this, like, this is something that’s second nature to me, and this image of this past life experiences really clear as to why, because I was so in connection with my horse and the horses, and they were part of me and part of the land, part of the tribe, and we love each other. And so, I here I am telling my horse, like, “Go get help coconut, my father, and he did, and that’s when my father found me on the floor, left to die, and he in the clarity of the spirit, I hear the words from him saying, ”I didn’t really leave you to die. He did.“ Like, the white man did, and we had to protect the family. And I heard myself say, ”Dad, you haven’t left anything.“ There’s a feeling in myself that the white man took something from me, and my recovery, in that moment, the restoration and healing in this moment of me, more so, in the present-day spirit connection, said, ”I have life, I have everything and you have life.” Please know that I am alive, and they can never take who I am away and who you are away, and I felt the deep breath, a lot of tears in grief. I didn’t quite feel much anger. At this time, I think in my present-day life, I had spent a lot of time feeling anger, lately, and in a long span of my life working with anger. So, here I just felt a lot of grief and a lot of pain.

Candice Wu 31:54

There are also things I haven’t mentioned yet. If you listen to my podcast about a year and a half ago, when I was in Bali, the one that is on spiritual crisis, it’s Episode 13, CandiceWu.com/ep13. This episode is where I talked about having a UTI and all this stuff that was coming up around from the feminine and how it was moving through my body and anger, and there have been a few things that have come up lately where there I felt some tension in my uterus, and as I’ve talked to it, it has said, “Let me be free, you know, stop trying to constrict me.” And there’s a lot of insight that is coming from those words, more than I’m going to say here. It can feel very private, to speak to what that means at the moment, but there is a thing I can say now is that feels like my uterus, my body, my vagina, my whole being, my heart wants to be able to love totally freely and without fear, like resolving the fear, and then being in the free-loving, and to acknowledge all that I love. And that one love doesn’t overtake another or cancel another out, but that it all can exist together, the circle for love is much greater.

Candice Wu 33:35

So, all of this stuff that was coming to me on the table, and my acupuncturist was really connecting with all these different parts of my body that were speaking, not just my elbow, but my uterus, all these different experiences that were part of the puzzle piece to this one past life experience that seems to complete, complete something in me, and also gives me a lot more clarity. I’ve always had a connection with Native American ceremony, ritual, and tradition. Whether or not I know, like what it is or not, I haven’t been very, very studied in it, but have connected and picked up things along the way, and they just feel like home to me. They feel really like something I’ve known before, and this gives me a lot clearer picture of why and how I was so connected with the land and tribe, animals, plants, that’s very much in my being.

Candice Wu 34:50

So, I feel a lot more at peace to the past part of me, feels more resolved and has reclaimed what felt like it was taken from me, and I feel really resourced by the horses, also by men, my father, and the tribe, the women as well, and the earth. I feel that the earth took care of me and saw me, saw the experience, the animals heard, psychically heard the experience, knew the experience even though they weren’t there witnessing it. What I mean is that the violence and the rape, and also I felt like I couldn’t scream, in that experience, I couldn’t even shout, and I wondered why and I felt my neck being sliced, I felt like my vocal cords were cut out. And yeah, I couldn’t scream, and that’s something that I have connected within a lot of different places like culture, really being Chinese, there’s a lot of silence, not being able to speak for different reasons, you know, people died when they spoke out, but in this recovery, I realized that my creative force isn’t actually taken away, even though in this life, I died this way, and there’s some cellular memory of my body that remembers this, and felt like I had been lost in that. But like, I as a whole being of love and awareness and consciousness. I, as this particular individual soul, had been taken, and parts of me have been taken, and that really isn’t true, even though the experience was that in that moment, but now I feel a lot of restoration, I feel I could never die, I feel I am always alive, and I will live on and you will live on.

Candice Wu 37:12

This is my message to my father and that life, you will have more, and that really gave me a lot of life and breath, grief moving, and I can feel the pain of the lineages, the white man, white patriarchy, white fear, tribe, the tribe’s fear and violence and protection. This is not all to blame white men at all. It’s really to show, to illuminate the violence, pain, and fear that is living in all of us, with that, particularly, I experienced through my body and that life. So, I recognize you may or may not believe in past lives. This may sound “whoo” to you or who knows what. If you’ve listened this far, that means something, that’s interesting but I can understand if this is not your cup of tea. And I’m about to talk about a few more out there things perhaps, you know, in a past self of mine, I would have thought these things were really out there but also knowing that feeling this knowing that I think this is true, but I have no proof or I have no, you know, I can’t quite, I just can’t prove it, but more things I can’t prove in this episode.

Candice Wu 38:52

Shortly after having this experience, I met up with Darshan Mendoza, who is a beautiful, beautiful person living in Hawaii, and she experienced the volcano erupt a year ago and wrote a book about it. I have interviewed her for the podcast, she, her interviews coming up in a couple of weeks, like the end of August, so, stay tuned for that. You can find it at CandiceWu.com/darshan, once that publishes, but I met up with her in Chicago, she was there what amazing timing, for me, for us, and among many things we talked about, she, after hearing the story of my past life, and the healing that’s coming through, told me about the book, The Sophia Code. It’s written by Kaia Ra who channels information and has experienced some very brutal experiences through sex trafficking when she was just a young kid, and yet has been able to still keep her ability to channel very clear. And one day, a voice came to her it was brutal, really loud, and it was saying, “I’m Sophia”, and Sophia is the Divine Feminine, creator, Sophia Gaia, Mother Earth, the feminine Christ consciousness.

Candice Wu 40:31

And so, I’m listening to this book on Audible, and it’s a bit robotic, the way she speaks on it, I think maybe she was trying to say it this way or something, I’m not sure, but still, since she’s set this book with a vibration of what she received in her interactions and channeling, I’m feeling an incredible energetic transmission. I’m receiving this like, download, it’s like, you could just hit download, and then it loads in, you know, you’re watching the percentage of something downloading, and as it goes higher and higher, like I’m feeling it in my body, it’s pushing out all of what the fears, the grief, the suffering that was in its place before, and filling my body with more knowing and love.

Candice Wu 41:25

So, what I’m getting from this, specifically, is that it’s not words that I, or thoughts that I haven’t heard before, or thought about before taking in before, but from this specific frequency, it’s extremely powerful. It’s different for me, it’s bringing another dimension in, and the words that are specifically bringing me more are the words, Sophia Dragon Tribe, and Star Nation, the White Buffalo Woman, all these words that she’s bringing in these words that signify an energy in a whole magical level of being and love that’s coming through. All that’s giving me some sense of memory, it feels like I know I’m a dragon, feels like, I’m part of Dragon Tribe, and Star Nation like this is my people, and all that might sound crazy to you, I remember hearing the author say, somewhere like, “I can’t talk about Sophia dragon tribe, my career is going to go down the tubes,” and yet, her message was, the message she got was, I have to this is important, and this is the way it needs to be transmitted, and that’s how I feel at the moment, I don’t quite totally understand everything, mentally.

Candice Wu 42:56

And in the last several years, I’ve let go of that need to mentally or rationally, make logic of something, and that’s really served me well. I know that the brain is important and the mind is very important. When we think through things, sometimes, that really helps us, and I’ve spent a lot of years and time doing that in my life but I also used it too much, I overcompensated for my sense, in my heart and in my spirit, my intuition by using my brain to rationalize and analyze, make sense of and also problems solve, that now I’m really enjoying just tuning in, sensing the energy of something and using the other ways of intuitive and knowing that I do have, we all have. And that is a way of knowing that gives me, often gives me the right way for me. Sometimes, I say yes or no to things that it doesn’t even make sense, and I’ve let go of that need to make sense of something, and it’s not quite coming from impulse, or irrationality, even though it’s quite irrational, right? Maybe you could call it that, and really, but it’s not impulse or perhaps a traumatized part of me.

Candice Wu 44:21

Although, sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference, if it’s some part of me that feels traumatized and needing something or if it’s an intuitive part that says, from a very clear, pure place, yes or no for me about something or this is the answer for me, or sometimes I find out later that some of my decisions weren’t so aligned at the source of me, but aligned to some traumatized part of me or part that wanted some sort of retribution for some past thing, something that’s living in the past. But I’m really encouraging you out there, if this is interesting for you, to deepen and cultivate the part of you that has knowing of other forms than the mind, than the mental logic. Sensing, tuning in, using the many languages and tongues, the multi-dimensional ways that our body communicates our hearts, the ways that we may know something without being able to explain it, and to trust yourself, so that you can learn to deepen in your trust. It gives us many ways of moving about the world. It connects us to the energetic, the spiritual, the more subtle ways of being. It connects us to animals, connects us to nature and talking with the plants and earth, talking with other beings and energies.

Candice Wu 45:58

And if you, I swear, if my younger self, listen to these podcasts, probably maybe more like my 20-year old self, high school, college self, she would be like, WTF like, What are you talking about? You don’t make any sense. This can’t be that like, judgment, just judgment. But now, I’m all about it, and it’s really served me very well to trust the knowing I have and see the outcome and to see where I may need to fine-tune and refine my listening in myself or what part of me was showing up so that I can know that part better, and then be clearer about the boundaries, like, is that the part of me that was wounded or is this a more, a deeper knowing of some sort that is not from the wound, from my wisdom.

Candice Wu 47:01

So, as I’m listening to The Sophia Code, I’m receiving a more fortified sense that we’re here to do life uniquely, and specifically, the way that our energetic signature and blueprint shows us, and that is always a free will and choice that is always from our sovereignty. She uses that word a lot in the book, that we’re meant to know our deep creative sovereignty, and the sovereignty of all beings, including the animals and the land, and to remember that we are sovereign, to remember that we have freedom, and all of the conditioning and belief sets and limits that we think are here and that we have manifested.

Candice Wu 47:54

That’s actually not the entire reality of things, but we’re deeply the love that is of all things, and the language that she’s using is that we are Sophia. We are the energy of the feminine Christ consciousness that encompasses every single energy, even masculine energy, and give life is love, is the pure being and consciousness that each of us are. I love when things that resonate with me deeply also align with other things that resonate deeply in the language set of the Vedas and Tantra have always brought me to that feeling and that knowing of freedom, all possibility, and that we are able to choose all possibility, even though our body and our energy systems, right now, have collected in a certain way and propel us in a certain way of being. That there’s more that we are, and that more gives us the ability to heal what we think we are, that we are really not.

Candice Wu 49:26

In this book, she also channels seven or eight different energies archetypes, some who have come into earth form as humans for some time, but who have been guides or mentors for all those who want to heal, or people who were interested in, in that particular energy like Mary Magdalene or Kuan Yin, Tara, and she talks about the Sophia Dragon Tribe, White Buffalo Women, as I mentioned, a couple of others. Some of the pieces of those stories and some of what she says is interesting to me and really light something up in me and other parts don’t resonate at all, parts where the, where she talks about chakras. From what I’ve learned in Sanskrit studies, the word is chakras, and the sound is chakra. And so, when she said chakras, I almost was like, “What has she been saying?” I don’t get it. Which well, you know, I can still let it bypass the part of me that says, I don’t get it, but at the same time, it wasn’t clicking into my system, and I think that was part of why.

Candice Wu 50:52

So, there are parts of the book that really don’t fit for me right now, but right in the beginning, even in the preface, I was already crying, and so, I knew I was receiving something and it was allowing me to release other things out doubts and fears that had been living in me. So, do you experience this, do you experience things you cannot explain, but that you know, there’s something there for you? Things that give you an energetic upgrade or download, and the sort of space when you receive something new that really is enlivening you in a way, but also feels like you’re in major construction because it dismantles other parts of you, and grief can come through anger, hurt, other emotions, all of that coming to the surface to be felt, honored and continue to move and flow. It wants to move out, to experience a sense of knowing inside of you and how, what does it feel like when you know something? Or when you feel something is not right for you, it’s a little bit off? What’s that like for you?

Candice Wu 52:19

And are there things in your life that are going on right now or ways you’re being, things you’re involved with, or relationships where you feel something’s not quite right for you? It’s hard to pinpoint, maybe, or maybe it’s speaking loudly, screaming at you. This is a deep mystery. Life is a deep mystery, and when we try to rationalize everything, or make it fit into our ego, egoic mind, it collapses, what we experience into something flatter, one that no longer has the dimension of magic or mystery, the beauty, the unknown and unseen. And to do that, we must know something, we, it’s funny, we must say we don’t know. We must acknowledge and be in a place of not knowing anything at all, and being able to scrap what we do think we know or have known before, to know something more.

Candice Wu 53:33

So, while I say I know all of this and what happened, and all that I’m also open to it being washed away with something else and a new knowing to come, and also that it integrates so that it’s just a part of my body, my body wisdom, my embodied knowledge, me as a moving being, moving body of wisdom and also different possibilities, pleasant and unpleasant. So, how do you support yourself in embracing the mystery of life? What do you do that connects you with what’s unseen and what’s beautiful, and what’s truly you? Right now, for me, it’s just connecting with the words and the vibration that Sophia Dragon Tribe brings, and Star Nation and I’ve just been opening and asking out loud, sometimes, and in me in a sense prayer and meditating with, just saying, “Star Nation, show me what I need to know, show me what’s next. I receive you. I open to the wisdom that’s here, I open to all of it, open to experiencing.”

Candice Wu 55:15

This might be similar if you have connection with certain animals or ancestors or people in your life that are now, that if you feel they’re bringing something to you to learn, there’s a feeling of magic about the connection or maybe fear that shows you, that shows itself first that eventually wants to show you there’s something there for you.

Candice Wu 55:43

In the movie, Aqua Man, I love this part when he is about to do the big thing that he’s meant to do. I’m not going to say what that is, but he tells his mother, I’m scared, and she said, “Good, then you’re ready.” So, perhaps the fear is here showing you there’s something here for you, and that it does mean if you can feel the fear, you are ready for what’s coming and what’s next for this next opening or action on this journey of you being you, being at peace with yourself in harmony with yourself. Who you truly are, not all the belief sets that have accumulated the energies that have accumulated and collected itself to create your physical body and the aches and pains, and tensions that manifests itself as so you can see it, but the deeper you that wants to come through, the cells of your body that know they are loved somewhere and want to be reminded that you are loved. Let us embrace the deep mystery of life.

Candice Wu 57:12

Thank you so much for joining me today. It felt really alive and connected in sharing this episode. I invite you to connect with me if something inspires you or if you have questions, something didn’t rub you the right way, anything. If you feel compelled, I invite you to follow that. I’ll add a few healing experientials to this episode around embracing the mystery of life, around sensing and letting your mental logic be bypassed so that you can tune into knowing, not exactly sure what will emerge. So, you’ll just have to see later this week as it comes out or find it at the episode link at CandiceWu.com/deepmystery.

Candice Wu 58:12

If some of the topics in this episode interested you, you can also go to my website at CandiceWu.com/podcast to find other episodes that relate to these topics. Some of them include the episode about the Soul and Science of Trauma. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/ep32, Embracing All the Parts of You at CandiceWu.com/partswork. The episode Freedom and Expansion: The Terrifying Gifts of Spiritual and Existential Crisis AKA WTF is Going on? #AmIGoingCrazy? – EP13, that’s at CandiceWu.com/ep13, and the one I mentioned earlier, Past Life Trauma: Unfolding Freedom at CandiceWu.com/ep49.

Candice Wu 59:07

I also mentioned my acupuncturist, Brent Garcia, who is awesome. I totally recommend his work. It’s super gentle yet powerful, and you can listen to his podcast at CandiceWu.com/brent. I also mentioned anger, working with anger, you can find that podcast at CandiceWu.com/anger. Feel free also to join me on my newsletter that comes out one or two times a month. This is full of self-love notes, podcast episodes that are up to date, experiential, events, workshops, retreats, and experiences that you can join in on with me. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 59:54

If you found that this podcast or the experientials or guests on the podcast have given you something, brought you in touch with something of yourself that felt important or inspires you to love yourself or anything that you connect with here, I would invite you to contribute back to the podcast and feed it, nourish it with your energy, and some donation that fits for you, feels aligned for you. You can find all that information at CandiceWu.com/patreon on how to contribute, what also rewards or gifts you can receive in return if you’d like something else that is a little bit extra, like the Embodied Healing Group or personalized meditations. And I just want you to know how much your words, you’re sharing, your contributions, all fuel me and praying each episode with love and ease.

Candice Wu 1:01:06

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening, and today I’ll leave you with a little bit of music as we close today. And as you take in the sense that you have about your life, being the mystery, your life being the way, you being the way.

Candice Wu 1:01:31

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

Introduction

This experimental is to support you in your knowing and your being, in the deep mystery of life that is you, and connecting with more of yourself, more of yourself than your mental logic and receiving messages from different parts of you, your body, your heart, your soul, your intuition, your thoughts as well.

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

Inspiration for This Experiential

This experiential is inspired by the episode that is connected with around energetic downloads, things you cannot explain, sensing and knowing instead of logic, as well as past life experiences that emerged for me. It’s also connected with this sense of who we are as the way of our lives, who we are and aligning with specifically who we are in order to love ourselves the deepest that we can in this life. You can listen to the introductory episode at CandiceWu.com/deepmystery.

Let’s Begin

And now, let’s jump into this experiential.

Go ahead and find a place to sit or lie down to be with yourself. Feel free to touch your heart or belly. Feel your own resonance with yourself.

Notice where your mind is. Let yourself release your attention on any of the things that are in your outer world — work, school, if you have school, stressors, relationships, daily life tasks. Invite all of that energy to turn towards yourself with great love and power, strength, wholeness, and ask nothing of your body, your heart, and your mind right now.

Feel this space of asking nothing of yourself that there’s nothing here in this moment to do, nothing to accomplish. Feel what it’s like to be in your body, right now. Be with yourself at peace and in harmony.

Feel anything that’s coming up in you. Feel free to close your eyes if you haven’t already, as you go even deeper and as we openness space together with love completely surrounding us, circling us, filling the entire space that you’re in.

And with your breath receiving and drawing in the love surrounding you, let it fill your whole body, your heart, your energy. Let it touch every single cell of your body, reminding you, reminding each cell, tissue, muscle and organ, bone and the mind of who you are, that you are this love, letting every cell be reminded that you are love.

Let this connect with the core of your being that already knows you are love, the part of you on touched by conditioning and layers of beliefs and experiences that take you away from love, take you away from knowing and truth, only to remind you of a deeper truth and knowing that you love that is connected with all love.

And we invite our mental logic, the mind the analytical part of us to step to the side of it. We let it have an open door that lets more knowing and information come in and be seen even if the mind and the logic don’t understand.

Connect with this moment, this breath that connects you with the deep mystery of life. Connect with the space of not knowing and unknowing. Letting everything that you know or think take a rest, for now, letting your feeling sense and intuition, your body, letting that all be as you sense and feel. Making yourself available, making this space for more to be known more to reveal itself to you for what is already here to show itself.

Releasing Statements

Feel free to say in your mind or out loud, “I let go for this moment of my need to know. I am in the place of not knowing. It is safe to be in uncertainty and not knowing right now.”

And as you feel those words, allow any emotion, sensation or movement to come up. There may be parts of you that resist or feel scared, feel anxious or nervous or want to fight you.

Witness all those parts of you and feel or say the words, “I am open to the deep mystery of my life. I surrender to my life as the mystery of being.”

Say, “I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times in places I did not trust my life, and for all the times in places I forced my knowing to fit into rational logic where I may have cut-off parts of myself in order to make sense.”

Tune in and feel what these words evoke in your body right now, staying with any emotions that come up.

Track what’s happening in your body with a loving witness, a gentleness that allows you to keep seeing what’s here, feeling what’s here, and if there any other words or intentions that come up to you in this moment, say them to yourself or out loud as they come to you, anything that you’re doing wisdom wants you to acknowledge or say or be open to.

And as you connect with anything that comes up, maybe there’s nothing, that’s okay too. Stay with your body and feel your hips, feel your legs, feel any part of your body that helps you feel that you are here.

We’ll conclude with the words, “I am myself. It’s safe to be me, and I embrace myself fully or I begin to embrace myself fully.”

Notice how this experience is for you right now, and what happens for you, what images and emotions, what feeling or sensation in your body, what color, texture or feel that is inside, and come back to the loving presence that we called in in the beginning — the love that’s surrounding you, that we invite here and that already is, the part of you that already knows truth and already knows who you are, that you are love, and slowly come to this moment of honoring yourself.

Honoring Yourself

Honor this time and space you’ve taken, honor who you are. Appreciate who you are or what you can appreciate in this moment, and go to the simplest things, appreciating that you’re alive right now.

Thank yourself for being with yourself in this little space and time and slowly start to move your body or your hands to allow movement or self-touch that is soothing, connecting or calming, and as you open your eyes, notice the things around you that make you feel like yourself or support you — colors that you like objects that look pleasant, nature. Look at your surroundings and just feel that you’re here.

Closing

And as we close today, I’ll leave you with a little bit of music to bring an open the senses even more into the space that you’re in, this life, this body that is your vessel and temple that moves you through life and that you get to create with, you get to partner with in this deep mystery of life that is you.

Thank you so much for joining me today, and if you’re interested in checking out more healing experientials or meditations go to my website at CandiceWu.com/podcast. Also, there are interviews and experientials by other practitioners and guests.

It’s great to be here with you today, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00
Welcome to the episode about my personal stories of past life and past life trauma, the relevance of past life stories to being and loving yourself, and how you can begin to access the wisdom and parts of you that transcend time.

Candice Wu 0:16
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 0:29
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 0:51
The Embody Podcast is made possible by my supporters on Patreon. I am so grateful for the people that are donating some amount of money even if it's $1 a month, it helps out a lot with the backend production and all of the little details that go into creating each episode.

Candice Wu 1:11
Thank you so much to the people who just joined on who are contributing not only their money, but just to know you're out there, your energy in support of the podcast is just so touching and means a lot to me. If you're interested in checking out how you can contribute or support, you can go to my page at CandiceWu.com/Patreon. And on that page, you'll also find that there are some gifts for you if you make a donation at certain amounts. So if you're interested in something like a personalized healing experience, that I intuit just for you based on what you're going through, or what you'd like to create for yourself in the next coming months. I record those and send them straight to your email or if you'd like to be part of the Embodied Group Healing Session that happens monthly, or the Q and A or anything else that's on there, just check it out.

Candice Wu 2:10
And I'm just so grateful that all of you are out there listening and sharing the podcast to people that you think might be interested. All of that just goes a long way and really allows the spark to grow. Thank you.

Candice Wu 2:26
So as we jump into the episode today, I just want to give you an update on where I am. So if you love hearing about my travels and what's going on. And right now I am still in Spain. I went to Tarifa for some time. Tarifa is one of the most southern points of Spain. That's right next to and across the water from Morocco, which was just incredible to see that Morocco was just like across this water, it looks like I could even swim across and it was magnificent.

Candice Wu 2:58
So I was there for some time and experienced some challenges with finding the right place to live where I could have silence and Wi-Fi and feel like I was nourishing myself. So after learning a few hard lessons, my partner and I decided to come back over to near Malaga a little bit outside of it, where we're near the coast. And as I look out right now I can see the water right there, it's sunny, the skyline is meeting up with the water, both different shades of blue. It's beautiful. And between here and the water it's just a bunch of small, little white, Spanish homes with that sort of red terracotta roofing that waves over it. There are lots of trees, including some palm trees just waving in the wind. And it's a beautiful day, even though it's winter here but quite mild.

Candice Wu 4:01
Lately, I've been exploring and working with the theme of pleasure and how much pleasure I'm allowed to have. And my mental mind says all of it. But how does that play out into reality? Can I make it a reality? That I do things for just the sake of pleasure and joy? And how much of my time can be that? And how much of what I do is that? Can I connect everything to pleasure and joy? And what doesn't connect? What needs to shift? What can just fall off the list because it's not necessary anymore, or it's not important anymore?

Candice Wu 4:46
And I'm also exploring pleasure in relationship, clearing up and completing some beliefs that I've had about being able to have pleasure in relationship especially in relation to masculine energy. And all of this pleasure exploration relates to the stories I want to tell you today about riding horses, and it relates to the desire to be with horses more often. I just feel such a strong connection with horses. It's like something deep in my being that loves them and wants to feel communication with them and have this inner dialogue that strengthens itself through being around them. And it goes as far as just wanting to spend like all day with horses and asking myself how can I make that a reality? And do I want to?

Candice Wu 5:45
So the stories today I want to tell you about past life trauma, I think, connect right up with that love for horses. And I think that this will come clear to me as the week's go on. And as I share this story with you today. Is any of this resonating with you? Do you explore what brings you joy and allow yourself that just for joy sake, not for any other purpose. But what brings you pleasure? What brings you the feeling of complete happiness for yourself?

Candice Wu 6:28
You think these are essential questions, and it's the guide to who we are, and what we deeply want in this life. So let's jump into the topic of this episode which is just so yummy and juicy.

Candice Wu 6:43
I've been interested in past lives since early High School. And the first encounter that I had with some stories around past lives were in the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss, and he is a psychiatrist who became interested and fascinated with past life stories and reincarnation because of a client that he had who he called Catherine in his book.

Candice Wu 7:10
And he was very scientific apparently and didn't really believe much other than what was scientifically proven and credible in the Western science world. And so it's just quite an interesting story to hear how he went from there to delving into this client's experience with her. She had anxiety attacks and some other symptoms where once she revealed certain memories that were not related to this life, those symptoms went away and that sent Dr. Weiss into this fascinating world of looking into past lives as a reality and or modality for healing.

Candice Wu 8:04
This book was fascinating, but what really got me hooked and starting to believe in past lives is this story about Shanti Devi. I want to share with you this story which is reprinted on Carol Bowman's website. Carol Bowman is a past life therapist that I've also read about and have been interested in. But this story is posted on her website and it just touched me in a way that got me believing something.

Candice Wu 8:37
So the story goes that Shanti Devi was born in 1926 in Delhi. By the time she was four years old, she began talking about her husband and her children and this town called Mathura. I'm not sure if I'm going to say all the names in the story very accurately, but I'll try my best. She spoke of the cloth shop that she owned with her husband, her son, She spoke of connections and incidences in her life in Mathura with her husband. And during meals, she would say that she eat different kinds of sweets in Mathura and sometimes talked about the different dresses she used to wear while her own mother was dressing her. And then she'd always mention really distinctive features about her husband like a wart on his left cheek and reading glasses that he wore. And she even knew about certain locations like that their cloth shop was located in front of a specific temple.

Candice Wu 9:40
Her parents thought it was a fantasy for some time and just really didn't take much notice. But by the time she was six years old, and she continued to give detailed accounts of parts of their lives, especially about her death following childbirth, they were unsure of what to do. And this mystery began to open even deeper.

Candice Wu 10:06
The parents started to wonder if these memories were part of a past life, and began to open that up. So it was about eight or nine years old when she insisted that she go to this village and to see her husband and her family. It was customary in India that wives don't utter the names of their husbands and so she wouldn't even say her husband's name. But one of her teachers told her that if she told him her husband's name, that he would take her there. So she did. And they made arrangements that one of her husband's cousins would come to Delhi. And upon his arrival, she recognized him as her husband's cousin and gave him many details about the house in Mathura and her husband as well as where she had buried some money.

Candice Wu 11:01
So with that, her husband decided to come visit. And even upon the visit, when the initial cousin decided to introduce him, the husband as someone else, she blushed and said no, this is my husband it's not the older brother of this man. So this man Kedarnath, again I don't know if I'm saying the names right, but doing my best. He asked her all these questions and she answered all of them correctly as far as their life together previously, and what she remembered. And he was completely convinced when she told him about the story of how they managed to become pregnant, because she had arthritis and was not totally physically in good shape. She told him the story of how they had intercourse and how they managed to become pregnant. And after that Kedarnath was convinced that this, in fact, was his wife.

Candice Wu 12:23
The money that she had buried was in fact, not there anymore, because her husband said he had taken it out. But through the course of their connection and meeting with the rest of the family that she claimed was hers. Everyone was crying and feeling that connection, it seemed of a knowing that they were family. And she was able to name all the different people that were there and recognize who they were. She was able to recognize her husband's favorite meals and dishes. And it seems that the family was quite convinced that she was who she said she was, who was named Lugdi in that past life. She had died after giving birth to a second child, the first child was stillborn. And the second child was C-section and nine days later she died.

Candice Wu 13:09
So here I'm not asking you to believe this story or believe in past lives at all. But I just wanted to share how I got into my curiosity of past lives. And actually, I think in that moment, when I read that story, I believed it. Her stories spread all over the country and media and Mahatma Gandhi heard about it and called her. And at that time, he even appointed 15 prominent people, including national leaders, members of the media, and researchers to look into her story.

Candice Wu 13:45
So there are always skeptics and people that are going to be cutting down her story. But many people do believe in it. And for me, it just sparked something quite magical. The fact that a four-year-old child was speaking about her past life, her husband and children and all the details of this village without ever having an experience with it in this life, just made sense to me. Why are there certain parts of us that seem so developed? Or are super gifts that perhaps we never cultivated in this life? Why do we have certain fears that are so peculiar, deep? And what about memories and strong connections to certain experiences or cultures.

Candice Wu 14:31
So what I've seen over and over and my experience and my work with people and healing is that over and over, time and space don't matter to the soul and heart. I've experienced where we can be bound to an experience that is incomplete. And no matter how many years go by, it doesn't change. People say time heals. But I don't believe that. Time can be correlated with healing that it can happen at the same time. And sometimes, just leaving things and letting the body's intelligence heal can be the most useful and powerful way to heal. But when something is so traumatic or overwhelming, that our physiology, our energy, and body cannot heal it we've we get stuck. And that experience holds over time. And it doesn't matter how much time goes by, it doesn't change, or it can even grow stronger, so that you listen.

Candice Wu 15:34
So the unconscious pulls the memories for things that are long forgotten in the conscious mind. But the feeling sense and the context still live in us because they haven't completed themselves or they need to be known in some way or brought back to our entirety to our wholeness. They're stored for later understanding or reclaiming or completion.

Candice Wu 16:02
We see that with trauma in our personal lives where certain experiences that didn't get to be completed, whether that's a need to find safety, or a reaching out movement that didn't get to happen with a loved one, early tell experiences, all these are still waiting for us to be healed and to be recovered. And that trajectory of completion spans across lives if you do believe in this.

Candice Wu 16:33
In family constellations work, I see time and again that the soul doesn't care about time. So a hurt that was experienced by grandmother, or great grandmother, even farther back, can pass down the generations and be repeated, or someone later in the later generations can connect with this because the soul of the family wants to heal. And it's all for the purpose of being complete and whole and knowing all the aspects of us and moving through the story. So that we're back to who we are, we're back to love and freedom or back to the source of everything, the connection, and oneness.

Candice Wu 17:26
When that is disconnected or split off or undone, incomplete, our soul and psyche want for this to complete. It wants to bring us to the experience that will tell us and remind us of what did happen. So that we can restore the love that's flowing through all of us and with family constellations flowing through the lineage. So that's one place I've seen where time doesn't matter, the heartbreak of Great Grandma, when she lost a baby, it can flow downward. And that heartbreak doesn't care if it happened 100 years ago. It's still there if it wasn't felt at the time.

Candice Wu 18:15
With the modality of family constellations, I've also worked with past lives. And when people see a past life or piece of their soul constellated in this format, there's some resonating factor that they have felt, wow, this really pertains to be now or this somehow makes sense in me. So the things that don't make sense in our mind, we don't always like to accept. But when we feel something that we know has something to do with us, you can't mistake that. It just doesn't always match up with our logical sense that wants to clarify everything in a concrete way.

Candice Wu 19:04
So I think if you're open to past life trauma or if you are interested in it, or have already delved into it, that is a key factor, letting go of the need to explain it all, and for all to make logical sense. And tuning into the way the heart and spirit and soul make sense. And that is through the way of love that is through who we are and our way of being. And when things violate that or hurt that or get stuck about that, we want to find reconnection again.

Candice Wu 19:46
So why did I want to bring this up now and today? Well, first, it's a topic that I haven't talked too much about. And if you've been listening to the podcasts, there have been times I've mentioned either past life experience of mine or the idea of past lives. And then I always say this disclaimer of if you believe in it.

Candice Wu 20:06
Well, today I want to share that I really do believe in it. And, it has helped many of my clients that do believe in it. And if you don't, I do have clients that don't believe in a past life. That's okay too. Because the patterns exist whether or not we believe in something before this life.

Candice Wu 20:27
So why I want to bring this up today is actually that you might have heard in a couple podcasts ago that I was riding and I fell off my horse twice. I was practicing cantering. And this was still pretty new to me at that time. I was taking lessons in Michigan before I left for Europe and was just beginning to canter with the horse that I've been riding on for a couple of months. So I was used to being on that horse and being on a much bigger horse. And the first time with this horse and a new teacher as well. It was pretty scary. So I fell off twice, the same exact way, rounding a corner while cantering. I was losing my balance. And I just couldn't really even see, I felt like things were blurry.

Candice Wu 21:20
Both falls were a bit scary and startling and painful. But in the grand scheme, I knew it wasn't that bad. But knowing what I know through Somatic Experiencing and how the nervous system can hold trauma if it doesn't get to complete the experience of coming back to safety in the moment or later, I just stayed with myself and did exactly what I knew how to do with letting my body take the lead and take it's time to come back up. I wasn't needing to get up and get back on it right away. So I just did it slowly. And what I did feel somewhat ready, I got back on.

Candice Wu 22:05
Well, when I got home that day, I was in a lot of pain, even though the falls were quite minor. And what we know through Somatic Experiencing is that, when falls are minor falls or accidents, they can actually leave a much greater impact on the nervous system. Symptoms can appear later that we just don't think twice about. Don't think that they're related, but they do stem from these little falls over and over. And the body repeats itself in terms of the way you fell. If it didn't feel like it resolved itself in coming back to safety or something around that experience.

Candice Wu 22:51
As I was working with myself with these falls, I became very well aware of how numb and disconnected and overwhelmed I was feeling while I was getting ready to move into the canter from a trot with the horse. And as I even recalled the experience, it was like I couldn't see anything around me, couldn't have any clarity in my vision. And all of that is to show how overwhelmed my nervous system was. And likely in a phrase or a tonic and mobility state where I just froze up and I wasn't really in my body. And my body capacity also shut down. So it wasn't really able to even be fully present to what my body needed to do even though my instructor was clearly telling me what to do, I couldn't even register.

Candice Wu 23:50
So I combed through this experience several times. And so much of that fear moved out of my body tingling and heat, and tears. And yet, as many times as I went through it, there still seemed to be a giant fear lurking behind, I just felt it. I felt like this is much more than these two falls could have warranted. This has to do with something much deeper.

Candice Wu 24:22
And for me, I know that experiences can layer on top of one another experiences through the ancestry or our personal history, the collective past life. So all these were coming into my awareness, and I like to go to the root of some things so that it can clear up deeply. And as much of it as possible can clear out of my body and my system so that I can feel safe and whole again.

Candice Wu 24:56
So it wasn't until I was working with my healing coach, the healer that I work with. Suddenly she just said, “Candice, do you feel that this has to do with past life trauma?”. And as soon as she said that, it seemed like something in me was validated. And something that I just was on the tip of my tongue. And I just burst into tears. And all this fear and terror just rose up into my body and started to move. And I said yes. And it just seemed immediately to release. The next question she asked me was, is it necessary to know the details? Because sometimes it has been necessary. Sometimes the story does need to be told or heard or acknowledged.

Candice Wu 25:47
So I asked myself, and the feeling sense I got was no, I don't need to know the details. I just needed to feel through that fear and recognize that it was something to do with the past life.

Candice Wu 26:01
Well, the story goes on where my healer says, “Okay, I have this sense right now and can I tell you the image I see?” She's super intuitive and I believe she's quite clairvoyant. And she's been really right on about a lot of images and senses that she's had about past life, ancestry, my personal life.

Candice Wu 26:24
So, of course, I wanted to hear what she said to me was, “Candice, this is the image I got. That in the past life, you were being told by many people around you what to do. And they kept feeding you information, and you did not like it, it didn't seem to align with you. And it was really challenging. And so you got really stubborn and decided to go your own way. But you got in trouble. And so you came in with this conflict of do I follow myself? Or do I follow others?”

Candice Wu 27:03
That even is a question shows the polarity of that energy that this conflict that existed in me, because of course, we can listen to both, we can tune in both ways and find that helpful. But somehow this was so against me in a way where I felt it was that I got so stubborn and then it led me to travel.

Candice Wu 27:27
And as she told me this, I just cried even more, because, at the end of my lesson with this horse Jack, he was so stubborn. He did not want to do anything I asked him to do and this was just grooming. This was just taking off the saddle and brushing him, like he just was so unhappy and stubborn and didn't want to move if I asked him to. And I didn't quite understand it. But somehow we were quite connected in that experience.

Candice Wu 28:01
And when she said that I had this experience and was really stubborn about it. More emotions in my body released at that point, something clicked. And it was clear that the horse had picked up on that energy that was coming through around me being stubborn, and he was becoming stubborn. And it was just quite magical how this all began to unfold.

Candice Wu 28:28
As the days went on after that, I felt like I was grieving I had this sense that I had died while on the horse. Which wasn't such a bad fate, I guess, you know, there are worse ways to die. But something about the experience of that felt so tragic and painful and terrifying.

Candice Wu 28:51
And so just to recognize that the feeling was that I died while on that horse seemed important for something in me to heal. And for me, it's not so important to know whether or not this was all true. We don't need to dig into the facts or, you know, try to figure it out. I don't even know where I would get that evidence. But the evidence I have is that my body just felt like yes. And even though I was clearing up a lot of the fear and the trauma through Somatic Experiencing and what my body needed in the present form, recognizing that had to do with something way back seem to give much more healing and release.

Candice Wu 29:40
So following this, about three days later, I wrote again, and I was still scared. I didn't want to canter with this horse. I just wasn't used to riding such a big horse. But I did feel like the fear had moved quite a bit. And that had gotten to the bottom of it.

Candice Wu 29:59
So recently, I started to ride again, after taking about two weeks off, and I don't have that same amount of fear. I think I just have what feels appropriate to this situation in time, of course. I don't really want to fall off a horse. And so my body is a little bit scared. But the amount of fear that seemed quite unreasonable to the present life, that seems all gone. But not just that, what I've gained from this was a lot of wisdom about, I don't even know, in a way it feels like something is integrated in me around knowing and trusting myself. What's happening at the moment is that I tend to forget what has healed and what came from it after it happens. And that's how I know it's cleared. But now that I'm talking about it, I do remember much more. That what I gained from recovering this past life experience and honoring the grief was a lot of grief moved out of me, a lot of fear moved out.

Candice Wu 31:10
And that wisdom of being able to trust my knowing, my deep knowing of something for myself, is being restored and it's still continuing. But I felt a greater sense of trust in myself and knowing what to do for myself. And even being able to tap into the wisdom of knowing how to be with horses and connecting with them. Because I always have felt that there's some deep connection that I have with horses. But I wasn't sure how to access that.

Candice Wu 31:49
And this experience has helped me to trust in the fact that somewhere, my body knows, my soul knows how to be with horses, and how to trust my decisions. Also the stubbornness, I can use that tool if I need to. And I can see where my stubbornness came from, and release some self-judgment about how stubborn I have been in the past and some of the situations that I've caught myself in because of stubbornness.

Candice Wu 32:21
And then all of this moving through, I also remember the first time I saw a horse wasn't that long ago. The first time that I was up close to a horse and working with a horse, I actually was scared. I felt like this was such a big animal and so much power. So with connecting with past experiences, I feel so much for you and it gives me a lot of clarity and support and validation in who I am today. The things that I experienced, as well as feeling more in myself.

Candice Wu 32:55
There are other experiences that I felt very strongly about as well.

Candice Wu 33:14
I read this book about a young girl in the Holocaust. And it was not a true story. But when I read it, I just felt so enamored with this story. So touched in a very deep way. And I felt like it resonated with who I was. Well, we could say symbolically, yes. That resonated with my experience of hiding myself and not being able to be fully seen. I was a really shy girl and very afraid to be myself. I didn't feel supported in being myself.

Candice Wu 33:38
Well, where did that come from? Who knows? But I do want to share that I felt that I was connected in some deeper, deeper way to the Holocaust. And in later years, I actually had dreams where my best friend and I would be escaping by train or something. But we were escaping the Holocaust. And when I woke up from those dreams, I just felt like that wasn't just some imaginative story. This is something very real to me.

Candice Wu 34:13
So who knows what that was. But I still do feel that connection. Although that connection has decreased for me, I still feel very strongly about the pain of the Holocaust, and what went on for a lot of Jews and also all the people that were connected with a Holocaust in any way, a very strong passive experience that seems to completely connect with who I am today as a healer, that I have mentioned before in the podcast. I think it was the one about Spiritual Crisis Episode 13. But being a shaman and being a witch in a past life, I'm not sure if it's important, which it was, although I think that I've had different lives as healers.

Candice Wu 35:02
So this particular feeling is around being exiled as a witch, as someone who has a lot of healing power. And knowing and it was really gifted, that people got scared, and that wasn't allowed. And I was condemned for those powers. And I did a lot of healing about a year or two ago around this where it felt like my leg had been cut off. I even had physical pain in this life around it. And also experiences of being whipped and burned.

Candice Wu 35:48
So those experiences seem completely foreign to this life. I was never abused in that way. In this life, I was never physically hurt in this life at all even in my lineage. I don't know any experiences of my family lineage where they were whipped like that, or where they had limbs cut off.

Candice Wu 36:15
So primarily when I sense into my past life experiences, it just has the sense and I trust it. And as I follow it, it leads me somewhere else to more of myself and healing.

Candice Wu 36:47
So I'm not so attached to to the story of what did happen or who I was, even though it's still kind of fun to hold those or to tell a little bit about those. But more so with the intention of freeing myself of the ways of the past or the ways that I got stuck. Whenever there's something traumatic, we get stuck. And so it frees me up to be more of who I am today. So with this experience of being a witch, and whipped and hurt, for my powers, I came into this life, whatever life that was so I'm not concerned with the order of things.

Candice Wu 37:11
But in this life, I felt very much like spirit and emotions, healing powers, intuition, psychic powers, and energy work all of that in for most of my life, probably 25 to 28 years of my life. That was something that felt like a No, it felt like taboo, and it felt like I would be judged for it. And even early in my career as the therapist, I wasn't sure that I could unleash those powers and bring those powers to the work because Western science and the way of research-based studies and practices, it just didn't feel like it had a place.

Candice Wu 38:06
So while all that's true, there is judgment for certain alternative practices, or indigenous practices, or healing powers, there's always skepticism and people who perhaps abuse it or are not really using it for good or for healing, or for pure purposes that exists. But for me, my experience was so much that I would judge myself and I would keep those powers down and put them away to the point where it felt like bringing them forward would bring me death. It was that scary.

Candice Wu 38:47
And so, of course, bringing that forward now in this life, in this time period isn't all that scary? Like it wouldn't bring me death. And so when I experienced that something feels that life-threatening, I know that it must be because of something else that wants to tell its story now through me, whether it was past life in my soul, or through my lineage, or through the archetypal energy of the collective, so something wants to come through.

Candice Wu 39:20
The other piece I'll mention is that I've worked with my feet a lot. My ankles are not the strongest. And I've had to work a lot with what's been the blockage there and strengthening that through themes of the root energy, first Chakra, which relates to community and the way that I belong, the safety. So you can see how all of that connects to being exiled and whipped and almost killed off.

Candice Wu 39:58
But this, when it got brought to my attention, just seem to touch the exact right place in me that perhaps in my heritage, being Chinese, that Chinese foot binding affected the women before me and therefore affected me. And that has to do with cultural energy and the lineage. But someone who does believe in past lives once suggested to me that perhaps I was someone in my ancestry or that I was somebody who was a woman who had my feet bound.

Candice Wu 40:37
So if you're not aware of this practice, Chinese women have been binding their feet for a long time. It doesn't, I don't know of accounts of it happening anymore. But part of the story is that women bound their feet so that they could find a man to marry because it would make them more beautiful. And it was seen as the higher class. And the more a woman would be beautiful if they were delicate, and had small feet.

Candice Wu 41:13
So there's obviously a lot tied up with that, the relationship of men and women, masculine and feminine, and power involved in that. But there is a strong connection with me and where that came from. I don't know exactly. But I have worked with that in my own healing. And it is brought me a lot more strength in my feet physically. But more so, the reclaiming of I have a right to be here in my full self. I am beautiful with my whole body and the way I am versus having to change myself, for anyone, for a man. So just wanted to mention that piece as well, the crossover of lineage and culture with a past life, perhaps.

Candice Wu 42:07
So now that I've shared some of my stories, you might be wondering, why is this important or relevant? Does it really matter? Why do we need to go there? And as I said earlier, in my opinion, it's not important to go to past life experiences, to dwell on the past or to get stuck there. But for me, it's number one kind of interesting, because it shows me all these dimensions of myself. It helps me feel connected to more people in difference. But I think the biggest thing that it can be relevant to life now is that it has everything to do with the way of being that we are now. It can relate to patterns of the way you are or habits, fears that you have, ways of moving around the world, even physically, as well as how you feel inside yourself, could relate to situations that happened in a past life that were tragic or traumatic, or where you died suddenly, and life got cut short.

Candice Wu 43:20
And so the beliefs that you have now, whether they're related to who you are, or how the world works, whether they're related to money, or relationships, you're worth, or ability to love, or who you can love, what you can love, how you can be all of those can connect up with past life experiences. But it's only if you're curious, and it's only if you want to go there with your healing.

Candice Wu 43:48
It can be incredibly freeing to know that this happened in a past life and that's what reverberated into this life. I can complete it if it needs something. And I don't need to repeat it. And in fact, it can bring me some piece of wisdom. Usually, it can bring back a piece of a gift that I might need in this life. For example, the knowledge and wisdom and the knowing, the communication with horses that I so desire, it's already there, you just need to open that up. And I think that the fear that was related to the past life trauma needed to clear out before I could truly embrace the rest of the wisdom.

Candice Wu 44:37
So if you do tap into a past life, it can free you from the binds of having to repeat that pattern, to repeat the suffering. It's there so you can learn something more about yourself. All of the dimensions of who you are want to be acknowledged and past lives can give some key to that.

Candice Wu 44:58
If we can see the soul as the expanse of our wisdom, as the expanse of our consciousness, rather than wisdom only being found in this life only, we can gain so much more. Because we can only do so much in one life. But we can use all sorts of parts of us different tools for different purposes. And they can come in and weave in and bring us even more in this life now.

Candice Wu 45:26
It's a combination of energy, over time, a collection of energy and ways of knowledge and wisdom that can be used for eternity. But we don't necessarily want to repeat the suffering. And so by going to that experience, if there was a trauma, you can clear that up so that the wisdom can be gained.

Candice Wu 45:48
And I think the biggest thing that working with past life experiences helps me with is that I can love more of myself. Not only more of myself, but I can be clearer and freer and more authentic to my spirit. Because the soul carries all sorts of attachments and experiences. The spirit which is the energy of creation and oneness, that energy can move through me with more ease. And I can be more of my essential being.

Candice Wu 46:24
So truly loving myself in a deeper way. Loving who I am, rather than all of the traumas that happened to me or all the fears that developed over time, all the distortions that can be in more truth about myself.

Candice Wu 46:44
So how do you know something is a past life trauma? Or how do you know about your past lives and access it? Who can you go to for support with it? And how do you open this up for yourself? This was a question that was posed to me just recently, and it was just such perfect timing of course.

Candice Wu 47:07
There are all sorts of healers and therapists, as well as intuitive that can support you in validating what you already know deep down or opening up what might be there in the unconscious. Some people use hypnotist and past life regression. Some people work with past life, and reincarnation and experiences of past life. Shamans, and also people who read Akashic records can tune into something of past life.

Candice Wu 47:46
This is something that I've developed for myself, because I've been curious about it, but just trusting my own senses and my intuition, and allowing the images and dreams, and sense of something to come through. No matter if it makes sense or not, in my logical mind, but to let the soul give some semblance of a different kind of logic, the logic of love.

Candice Wu 48:15
So you don't necessarily need someone to read your past life for you. And it might not even be relevant. You might be curious about different aspects of past life, and find that it has some relevance or not. It can open up something and support you in realizing something for yourself. But it might be interesting to come from what is interesting, or can support you in yourself now, and to see what relates to that so that it's relevant to your specific growth in the present day.

Candice Wu 48:51
Over time, I've been able to just sense into my own past life and distinguish whether it's past life or stuff with my lineage or personal to this life. And a lot of times it has that crossover, as I said. But I've been also able to intuit or sense that with others and for others with their collaboration. If someone's open to that experience, it can really illuminate very easily.

Candice Wu 49:21
But what I encourage you to do if you are interested, is to open up that trust for yourself. And just scan your world and your psyche for the images and messages that you have received, the little inkling that something is resonating with you about some experience, some image, some thought, some new story, you heard, that's always an interesting piece of what you latch on to when things come your way. Just start listening as one way to let your unconscious began to speak to you, so that you can learn more.

Candice Wu 50:04
I definitely encourage you to work with your own Embodiment, meaning, be in your body, take care of your body but also let your awareness go into your body, whether that's through yoga and movement. But do it with awareness. Be aware of what's going on inside, tune into your sensations, your emotions, your movement, and what the body tells you. As well as feeling that you are in your body as much as you can through the day. And doing healing work like Somatic Experiencing or other body-centered practices that clear up any numbness and nervous system, fight and flight responses that can get in the way of feeling embodied and enjoying being in your body.

Candice Wu 51:00
Another thing you can do is connect with your inner knowing and your inner wisdom. As I mentioned, you can be open to the little messages you get, that's part of it. That's one way of doing it. And another way of doing it is sitting with yourself and connecting with yourself, loving yourself by listening inside and talking to yourself like you're a friend connecting with a friend. And just asking, you know what is there to know right now, we can't exactly pressure past life experiences to come through because they will come through when they do and there may be some sense in you when something does come through that it's related to a past life.

Candice Wu 51:49
Another thing you can do is just open to seeing the world and your life like a dream, or a painting something artful that isn't a coloring book with a set of guidelines of mental explanations and logic and direction. But an unfolding source of knowing that offers messages, wisdom, and knowledge of a different kind, through pictures, through a flush of your face, through a gut reaction.

Candice Wu 52:27
Starting to trust that your body can tell you more than your mind might be able to about your experience, your whole experience. And let things that don't necessarily make sense to your mental mind be explored. Let them be honored through drawing or journaling. Or just letting your imagination go with it and seeing where that takes you. That's exactly the way I discovered certain experiences and let the healing happen.

Candice Wu 52:59
We can trust our inner being to show us a clue. And if we follow that clue, and honor it and acknowledge it, respect it. We take that seriously enough, then it'll show us more.

Candice Wu 53:15
So try this out for yourself. I would love to hear how this works out for you. And what starts to open up for you is you allow these awarenesses is to come into your being, allowed us to open up for yourself. And also, if you've already delved into the world of past life, I would love to hear if this was supportive to you or brought up something new for you.

Candice Wu 53:42
And if you have past life experiences that come up or ideas, questions, curiosities, feel free to connect with me, email me or message me in some way. And I would love to hear from you. If you're someone who would like support with this, to have validation or go deeper, to really use past life experiences to heal, feel free to reach out to me I would love to work with you one on one or you can join the Embodied healing group that can support that as well or I'm happy to give referrals to you of people that are either in your area or online that might support you as well.

Candice Wu 54:21
As we're ending this podcast today, I'm just smiling because, for me, this is really fun. It's really exciting when we can come from the angle of love, curiosity, and embracing of all the ways that our inner being tries to show us wisdom, wisdom that we knew long ago, wisdom that we are just learning right now. But it's so fun to collect all these parts of us that can bring us forward into life and where we can feel even more like ourselves.

Candice Wu 54:59
Thanks for listening in today and just sending you lots of love and wishing you that you love yourself even more deeply today.

Candice Wu 55:10
Before you go today, I would love to invite you to be part of the Embody community, you can receive my newsletter every other week. This is full of self-love support and healing tips as well as updates about what's going on with me and the themes that I'm exploring. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/Embody or you can join the Facebook group. It's called the Embody community where I offer about 5 to 10 minute videos of healing experiences or meditations that tap into self-love or being in your body healing, anxiety, all sorts of things, feel free to join me there and tune into that safe space where we can support each other in healing and loving ourselves.

Candice Wu 56:00
Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm just enjoying the candle that's sitting next to me and thinking of all of you out there that are listening. I appreciate each and every one of you. And I love the messages that I get from time to time, just let me know that you're out there. Take care and I'll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.