Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is about how to have clear energetic boundaries, strengthen boundaries to protect from absorbing others energy or emotions, releasing and sorting other’s energies from yours, and how to feel healthy as an Empath with practices and perspectives from Family Constellations, energy work, Somatic Experiencing, Group Dynamics, and psychology. Following these are three healing experientials that can support grounding and strengthening energetic boundaries and clearing absorbed energy.

Candice Wu 0:32

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 0:45

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 1:07

I am really excited about the Soul Body Women’s Retreat, which is the sponsor of this podcast. Soul Body Women’s Retreat is in October 2018. And this retreat was inspired by the idea of connecting soul to body such you feel completely like yourself embodied and at ease, expressing yourself freely and creatively just the way it is truly you.

Candice Wu 1:32

The beauty of connection of soul and body is that you can develop the awareness to transcend the limitations and the belief sets that you’ve been living from that you can feel even freer and more conscious.

Candice Wu 1:45

This is a small group retreat. So if you feel inspired or aligned with this, feel free to reach out to me and I’d be grateful if you share this with anyone you thought would be interested. For this and future retreats, you can find out more at CandiceWu.com/retreats.

Candice Wu 2:00

Now, let’s jump into the show.

Candice Wu 2:06

As a healing facilitator and intuitive coach, I’m often working very deeply with people’s emotions, sometimes on very deep and traumatic ones, and sometimes very pleasurable ones.

Candice Wu 2:20

People are often asking me, how do I stay clear and grounded in my own energy? How do I not pick up other people’s energy? And how do I know what’s inside of me if I’ve picked something up or not? And how do I strengthen my boundaries so that I don’t absorb others energy? Is this possible?

Candice Wu 2:39

And so today’s episode is all about that. This is something I’ve worked hard at for the last 10 years. I would say about 10 years ago, if I walked into a room, a crowded room, I could feel the emotion like a tidal wave, it would feel like suddenly, I’m feeling differently from when I walked in. And when I left, I would either feel bad, self-conscious, maybe I’d have a headache or a stomach ache, perhaps I would feel a wave of sadness or angry or tense somehow in my body. And I really had no idea where it came from, other than, “Wow, I can’t handle being around people.” Or, “Wow, I have so many triggers that I’m just feeling so much anxiety in me, so much emotion. And here it all is.”

Candice Wu 3:29

So I attributed all of that to my own experience and just me solely. Of course, some of it was mine. Some of it was my personal triggers and the things that I would feel anxious about, but it felt like an extra load by times five. So some of it wasn’t mine. It was almost as if I was like a magnet to other people’s negative emotions.

Candice Wu 3:54

Sometimes that was very cool. Like, I would be very aware of how someone was feeling, especially if cared about them and could really relate to them. And other times, I was just left feeling horrible.

Candice Wu 4:06

It wasn’t until I learned about being an Empath, as well as the concept of Projective Identification and psychology and Family Constellations and Somatic Experiencing work, that I realized that I was picking up other people’s energy. And that while I could cope with that, and find ways to navigate that differently, I could also strengthen my boundaries so that I did not have to take in all that energy.

Candice Wu 4:35

Learning about this truly released me because I found ways to strengthen and fine tune my own energetic system, my own body, and my awareness so that I could have stronger boundaries when I needed them. That I could navigate and release any energy that I did pick up effectively, that it didn’t just carry around forever. And how to use the experiences that left me with something that was mine to learn and grow from, grow stronger in my nervous system.

Candice Wu 5:04

At this point in my life, I feel a lot clearer. I feel more grounded stronger in my boundaries. And I have more of a conscious choice of whether I want to tune into energy around me and emotion around me, as well as I can more effectively navigate what’s mine and what’s not and clear it if I need to, if I have picked something up that I’m not aware of. And I feel less blindsided by energy in general, that just somehow has stayed with me from who knows when in the day.

Candice Wu 5:36

So you might wonder if this topic pertains to at all “Have you ever felt icky or a different emotion after being around someone?” Yes, it could be something you’re triggered by. But it also could be some energy that you picked up or are holding for someone else. Perhaps being around groups, you may feel overwhelmed or almost taken over by a certain emotion. If when you’re around others especially if you are some sort of healing practitioner, therapist, a person that works with others in a health or healing capacity, perhaps you feel fatigued or exhausted, you might begin to feel irritation or edgy or angry.

Candice Wu 6:15

This is the body’s natural instinct to push back or reject, push out whatever it doesn’t really belong in your energy field. Perhaps something’s not digesting well in your body, or you’re feeling disrupted sleep or other physical symptoms, headaches.

Candice Wu 6:31

If you’re someone that doesn’t feel like you have enough alone time and you’re feeling overstimulated by sounds, light, smells, touches, and textures. Or if you’re feeling certain emotions, sensations in your body, thoughts that seem to be extra loaded or intense after being around groups or certain people, that may be a sense in you to look at, are you picking up other people’s emotions?

Candice Wu 6:58

Well, many of those aspects can be your own body’s experience or something that you’re reacting to. It can also be added onto by other people’s energies. And we’ll look at how to sort that out in this episode.

Candice Wu 7:16

So today’s episode is five-fold.

Candice Wu 7:19

First, we’ll look at what may be related to the experience of being unbalanced or loaded with other people’s energy. Here we’ll talk briefly about being highly sensitive and an Empath.

Candice Wu 7:32

Secondly, we’ll talk about understanding how to ground and direct your energy to be in yourself, so that your boundaries are stronger.

Candice Wu 7:39

Third, will explore knowing what’s yours and what’s not in terms of energy, sensation, or dynamics.

Candice Wu 7:47

Fourth, how to strengthen your own boundary and heal up any ruptures to your boundary, whether that’s an energetic or physical rupture, or something that’s even deeper.

Candice Wu 7:56

Which leads us to number five, is looking at the unconscious and conscious beliefs, the past conditioning, and internalized projections that connect with why you even take on other people’s emotions to begin with, if it is out of balance.

Candice Wu 8:14

So let’s begin with the first one what may be related to the experience of taking in other’s emotions, and what is an Empath or highly sensitive person.

Candice Wu 8:23

When you’re picking up on other people’s energies or emotions or thoughts, what they’re experiencing, it’s beyond just having empathy for someone.

Candice Wu 8:33

Dr. Judith Orloff who’s an expert with this, says that having empathy means our heart goes out to another person in joy or pain, but for Empath, it goes much farther. We actually feel other’s emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our own bodies without the usual defenses that most people have.

Candice Wu 8:52

So whether or not you would consider yourself an Empath, if you are someone that feels very affected by other people’s energy or their moods, or you feel very intuitive and can perceive others very well, then you might be experiencing picking up other people’s energy or absorbing it not only emotions and energies, moods, and body sensations.

Candice Wu 9:15

People who are very empathic can also feel into other’s wishes, their thoughts, impulses, motivations, and desires like other people with empathic abilities.

Candice Wu 9:29

I was told very early and very young that I was too sensitive. And so this is something that I experience most healers who are Empaths or therapists that are very tuned in to have a struggle with because they’ve had to overcome the criticism of their gifts.

Candice Wu 9:49

Being empathic in this way is actually a beautiful gift. What it can also come with, is being very in touch with your inner world and having a complex inner life, feeling in touch with depth and creativity as well as spirituality or something unseen and deeper. Someone who has this ability to tune in and be sensitive can also be aware of the subtleties and nuances of situations and can attune easily to what’s happening.

Candice Wu 10:19

In my most natural state, I’m easeful and balanced. I feel buoyant and grounded at the same time. And I feel that I can turn on and off my ability to tune in. Once in a while, I feel like something’s hit me. And that’s usually when I look inside to see where that receptor is in me, that I can strengthen that aspect of myself so I don’t get blindsided.

Candice Wu 10:45

We all have the ability to pick up on other people’s energies, it just depends how diffuse or open your boundary system is. And if you are someone who has that ability more easily, you might have more of Vata quality. Vata in Ayurveda is one of the Doshas, one of the three main qualities of the whole universe.

Candice Wu 11:09

And Vata is the air and space quality, where it’s movement-oriented, and open versus Pitta, which is fiery, and Kapha, which is Earth and water. We have all three qualities, but somebody who is more open in their energetic system can have more of that Vata quality.

Candice Wu 11:29

So what I found in myself and in others that I’ve worked with around this topic of taking in other’s energy is that when we do that in an unbalanced way, usually underneath that are some beliefs that relate to it, which cause us to take in unconsciously other people’s energies. Sometimes there’s trauma, whether that’s developmental in the person’s lifetime, a soul like a past life, trauma, and also ancestral dynamics.

Candice Wu 11:59

So the dynamics within a family system that go way back. Sometimes it also connects up with Collective Oppression, or other archetypal and energetic dynamics in our whole system, where there’s a Developmental Trauma, sometimes that can relate to not having an emotionally available and good enough parent to be present, to reflect and mirror and be attuned to us as children, which can make it more challenging for a young person to have a core sense of self and to know themselves. To be able to have that reflection by someone we care about gives us a sense of ourselves.

Candice Wu 12:40

And if we don’t have that, then sometimes we don’t have this individuation that separates us from another. Other attachment issues like neglect and abandonment, or disruption at a certain age where maybe another child was born, or some accident or illness happened with the parents or the children, that can also affect how a person develops their sense of self. And it can certainly affect the physical and energetic boundaries of that individual.

Candice Wu 13:11

The difficulty with Developmental Traumas is that sometimes we don’t even know we have them. And we think that our childhood is just great. But also that it is really challenging for the nervous system to develop, if we’ve had disruptions in our childhood, especially ones that were scary, overwhelming or terrifying.

Candice Wu 13:33

Our nervous system as an infant is not built to handle all kinds of emotions, even pleasant ones. And we need the support of a calm, grounded, and attuned adult parent to support us in co-regulating so that our nervous system can develop and strengthen and be able to handle feeling all that.

Candice Wu 13:58

If we don’t have someone that has that ability to regulate themselves, it can feel like we’re also taking on the parents emotions, then we can quickly see how a very early imprint of this dynamic happens, where we’re absorbing other people’s emotions.

Candice Wu 14:17

And in the Family Constellations work, where we look at how the family dynamic is, it connects up with the whole body experience. And a young person who feels like their mother or their father isn’t able to handle their sadness perhaps, or their anxiety will come in and fill in that role. If there’s a sense of a disconnection between the grandparents and parents in our family system, we may take that responsibility upon ourselves to become like a parent to our own parents so we’d become parentified.

Candice Wu 14:53

And in that way, we take on a responsibility that’s far too great for us. We take on being the parent for our parents, which is not our position at all. And it causes us to take in energies and emotions and hold them for others thinking that they can’t handle it.

Candice Wu 15:09

In this way, we act like we are bigger than our parents. We act like we can handle more and that we’re stronger. And then we apply that to the world and begin to absorb other people’s emotions, just like we did to our own parents, if this is the case for your life.

Candice Wu 15:25

In other cases, one may have a parent who is somewhat narcissistic, where they’re acting as if the child is an extension of them, and must act accordingly. It’s quite manipulative in terms of what a parent might almost push their children into feeling. And so those boundaries between child and parent have been blurred, and messy.

Candice Wu 15:54

And all of this connects to the idea of Projective Identification. This is the concept where when one person in relationship with another, projects in emotion that they don’t want to feel, perhaps it’s undesirable or intolerable, or their nervous system is overwhelmed so much that they can’t feel it. So maybe it’s anger. And instead of feeling their own anger, they push it out of their energy system, and hope that the other person begins to feel it so that is taken care of.

Candice Wu 16:30

And the other person says, “Okay, I’ll take that,” unconsciously. Because their system has learned to take that in and they identify with that, so that they almost claim that anger as their own.

Candice Wu 16:44

This happens all the time in our intimate relationships, in our acquaintance relationships, as well as a whole in society, where certain groups of people don’t want to feel something and projected onto others.

Candice Wu 16:57

So if somewhere in your life, you’ve had this conditioning, whether that’s in your childhood, which can be a very intense kind of conditioning, in society, in your culture, or in a past life, then this can be ingrained in you to take on other people’s emotions.

Candice Wu 17:15

I think of it like this, if one person has all these different rocks of different emotions, and they’re able to feel these five rocks and not these five, and they don’t like feeling any of those emotions. So they toss them out and push them down in suppression or repression. Because it may be too intolerable for them to feel, or they just don’t want to feel that way, whatever is undesirable, this is like the shadow, right? We don’t want to feel these things so we push them out. And someone else not only senses that, but takes those rocks in and puts them into their pot of emotions.

Candice Wu 17:58

Now, the key piece is that even if those rocks are pushed out into the open space, the other person doesn’t have to take them in.

Candice Wu 18:08

Why does one take them in and put them in as their own set of rocks? And in my experience, personally and with others, it’s that there’s some sort of ingrained pattern and conditioning that this was about survival at some point to do so or in some way, it was helpful at some time. And now it’s just become a habit. Now, it might even be dysfunctional, and painful.

Candice Wu 18:33

So I find that I’m most balanced when I’m aware of what I’m taking in. In this example, what rocks I’m picking up, so that there’s a purpose to doing that. It might be to support someone else in being able to hold their own rocks, but not to take them in because I think they’re mine, or, to do so on automatic or unconsciously, and to just absorb everything around me.

Candice Wu 18:59

If you’ve had accidents, like car accidents, or falls, natural disasters, or other physical traumas, then the physical body, as well as the energetic boundary of the body, can be broken in certain areas where energies and sensations can just swoop in.

Candice Wu 19:18

Also, another aspect to consider is that your soul history, what your experiences were in your past lives, if you believe in that, or whatever you believe you came in with, is part of your past conditioning. And if it has anything to do with being a shaman, or healer, or witch in a past life, that may also be connected to how it is you take in energy now.

Candice Wu 19:43

And again here, I think that the ideal, the most healthy and balanced places to find a place of choice where you’re able to choose what to take in and what not to, and also to navigate how to deal with it when you have taken something in.

Candice Wu 19:59

So now, I want to shift gears and talk about how to stay grounded and strengthen your energy boundary without doing deeper work but to just look at how you can take different actions.

Candice Wu 20:12

When you’re in a situation where you feel icky, or somewhat uncomfortable, when you’re with somebody, or in a certain situation, try to distance yourself at least by 20 feet, and see if you feel any relief. See if it’s something that you’re triggered by. Or if it’s just as simple as moving away. You can breathe and send your energy downward into your legs and feet, just loosen up the ankles, and press into the bottoms of the feet. And imagine feeling like you are 500 pounds heavy, that you’re just rooted into the ground. And this sending of energy downward and strengthening of the muscles, activating of the muscles, helps the body know its own boundary, physically and energetically.

Candice Wu 20:57

A third thing you can try is to see your energy boundary, imagine what color or thickness or material this sort of energy boundary would be, if you could just make it up. And imagine that sort of force field around you. The interesting thing about some of these practices is that some of them will work for you at different times and some won’t work at all. Because with this exercise of seeing your energy boundary, I tried that very early on and it was like “This, didn’t do anything.”

Candice Wu 21:29

And that’s because I had a lot of developmental, ancestral, and soul trauma that was deeply rooted. And so changing the energy dynamic of all that was necessary before I could even have an energetic boundary around me that was working.

Candice Wu 21:48

So notice for yourself, which ones might work and not. So this third one of seeing your energy boundary, I would recommend practicing this on your own before you’re around people, or in a crowd. I would suggest doing this both physically as well as in your imagination so that it strengthens with your whole body.

Candice Wu 22:08

So as you picture some sort of energetic boundary or bubble that surrounds you, imagine being safe inside of it, and that you could even touch all the parts of your energetic boundary. And notice what color, texture, shapes, or material it would have to be in order to be strong enough for you to feel safe inside.

Candice Wu 22:29

And you can also picture what happens if energy comes at you, or some emotion comes at you and touches the boundary. Does it bounce off? Does it sizzle into flames? And as you feel into the energy boundary, and picture all the way around you like an egg shape up and down, side to side, front to back, use your arms to just check how far out you’d want it to be, or how close, and if there are any ruptures in that.

Candice Wu 22:59

Another thing you can practice is to be like an animal. Porcupines have a really nice boundary of these quills that just can spike up if they’re upset, and they don’t want someone to get near. So that’s something you can picture for yourself. And imagine your own energetic spikes coming up. And that is if you need a boundary that strong, if there’s someone you don’t want to talk to, or don’t want to come near you. Or if you’re feeling like there’s a lot of energy in the room and you don’t want to take it on but even just something into a lion at its rest state, it’s prepared to snarl or show its claws if it needs to. So just having that bit of readiness can support you in feeling a little more grounded in your body and prepared to protect yourself.

Candice Wu 23:49

Something you can always practice is a body scan. It’s just feeling head to toe, all the parts of your body. And as a daily practice, you can even touch your body, head to toe every part of it and just feel into whatever kind of touch feels good and helps you feel the edges of your body.

Candice Wu 24:07

What happens when we have trauma or when we have very loose energy boundaries is that our nervous system almost forgets that it has a physical body, a physical container to support us and to also act as that edge of inside-outside and what we take in and what we don’t. So touching the body from head to toe reminds us of that and gives us a sense of our personal edges.

Candice Wu 24:34

Another thing you can do is to practice setting healthy boundaries and saying no, when you mean no. And no is a complete sentence, there’s no need for an explanation. Sometimes you might need to interrupt someone to take a break. Or if someone asks too much of you, or takes and asserts it, then you can back up and say no, or let them know that this is not comfortable with you.

Candice Wu 25:00

Part of having loose boundaries sometimes goes into giving yourself away to others and letting them do what they want. Or not having a voice in terms of what you prefer. Letting others lead the way or just saying yes to everything that they asked for. And in some cases too, I’ve noticed myself, actually, I had parasites because I was in this place of always saying yes to others, and giving away my energy and letting others come first.

Candice Wu 25:32

At some point, I developed parasites because I had taken a trip to Sri Lanka and probably, you know, ate the food and water and wasn’t really prepared for that. And because my energy system was weakened already by this dynamic of just letting everything vampire off of me, I got sick.

Candice Wu 25:52

So with that, it’s really important to practice listening to yourself and not overriding what you sense, what you need, or what you want. I noticed that I’m most vulnerable in picking up other people’s energy when I don’t want to be in this situation, when my instincts tell me it’s time to go or my social meters out. And if I override that, I pick up a lot more as well as some part of my nervous system gets triggered because I’m not listening.

Candice Wu 26:22

From the Ayurvedic standpoint, I mentioned earlier that there’s a lot of Vata at times when you’re very empathic, or you are picking up other people’s energy. So you can be grounding foods especially if you know you’re going to be on a situation that you’re sensitive too, such as crowds or certain people’s emotions that you magnetized. Give yourself some weight by eating heavier foods that can be meats, if you eat meat or avocado, something that actually feels like it has weight, something sweeter and with more water.

Candice Wu 26:53

This is a lot of information but I want to give you a few more techniques from energy standpoints. At some point, I will transcribe all this and put it on my website so that it’s a little bit easier to follow but I will share just a couple more here.

Candice Wu 27:13

The Zip Up technique from Donna Eden is really nice. It’s like zipping up an energetic coat to protect you from taking on other people’s emotions or energies and it works with the central meridians of the body, the energy pathways that are moving up and down. And the way you do this is you take your hand or two hands at your pubic bone and as you take a deep breath up, slide your hands up the center of your body all the way to your lower lip. And you can do this while touching your physical body or a couple of inches away from it and just repeat this three times.

Candice Wu 27:50

The next one I want to offer you is called “Getting on the Grid”. It’s actually something my friends and I in grad school made up where we noticed this Alex Gray artwork. I will link this in the show notes so you can see it. But it’s this beautiful artwork of a person meditating and you can see each of the Chakras, the energy centers in the body, seven of them in different colors. And this person is sitting on this grid. And its got diagonal lines coming through each side, as well as lines, I think, top and bottom. And for us, it was really helpful to just say to ourselves “Get on the grid.” So, it’s like centering yourselves, containing your energy into your body and then getting on the grid of the universe where your solid and grounded. And I will lead you through that in the meditation that comes connected with this podcast in the next few days.

Candice Wu 28:46

The last thing I want to offer in terms of supporting yourself to be grounded is the approach that you take when you’re around people. Instead of thinking that you were there to help somebody especially if you’re a therapist, healer or wellness practitioner or that somehow you should give advice or be responsible for other people, instead, start to feel people as completely whole and autonomous, full of personal choice and their healing power within, that they have everything that they need inside of them. And sometimes it’s tricky because your mind starts running and thinking, “But they don’t, they need my help.” Even so, if you can release someone to their own inner healing and the universe is healing, you can still support them by showing them tools or guiding them or even sharing your thoughts of them, but to keep that respect, the deep respect and honoring of them as a human being with their own potential.

Candice Wu 29:46

So now we move to the third section of the podcast today. How do you know if you’ve picked up or absorbed other people’s energy? What do you do if you have and how do you cleanse and release?

Candice Wu 29:58

Some of the more general things that I do to cleanse and refresh and reset myself are to shower or bathe, use Epsom salt and baking soda to cleanse and sometimes I like to take a little apple cider vinegar digestively to move anything through.

Candice Wu 30:16

You can also imagine a white or yellow light clearing and cleansing your body like crystal clear light and sunshine, just refreshing all the cells of your body with breath.

Candice Wu 30:28

And the third thing is that I like to cough up energy, might sound funny, but it’s sort of like gagging and coughing and almost throwing up in the air where I feel like there’s stuff releasing out of my body. Maybe it’s my shaman history that I already knew how to do this. But somehow it’s very natural and innate to me. You can do this, it’s simple, it’s a little bit like lion’s breath in Yoga. Lion’s breath is where you take a deep breath in. And when you release your breath, you stick your tongue out as far as you can and you make some noise or a sound. It sounds like this.

Candice Wu 31:13

And you just hold your tongue out as far as you can, with the breath all the way out. You can try it that way just to release anything that doesn’t feel good inside. Or, you can actually try that and begin to cough and gag. It’s not a bad thing or a scary thing. But if you do feel scared, or overwhelmed, take a break or practice with a trained professional.

Candice Wu 31:37

And as you do this, you can also imagine whatever it is, that’s coming out. And when I do it, I just cough and gag. And sometimes I have a couple of tears come out. But almost immediately, I just feel released. Sometimes I’ll feel some sadness with it. Sometimes I’ll feel some other emotion that doesn’t seem like it’s mine. But as I cough, it just comes out. And I imagine what’s coming out if I can sense a color or an emotion and just leave it.

Candice Wu 32:09

Any of the grounding activities that I mentioned before, you can also do when you notice you’ve picked up some energy or when you’re not sure and you’re just checking in. So for example, a body scan or touching your body head to toe, breathing, grounding your feet feeling like they’re 500 pounds, any of those.

Candice Wu 32:28

I find the strongest tool in knowing if I’ve picked up or absorbed other’s energy is checking it in with myself. And the important thing for me is to do that throughout my interactions with others, or whatever interactions I’m having. Sensing into how I’m doing, where I’m at what I’m feeling around me what I’m feeling through me and inside, but also afterward, check in with myself, see how my emotions are, how is my body doing.

Candice Wu 33:01

And if I’m feeling something ungrounded or unbalanced, some other emotion than I was noticing before, something that’s a bit unfamiliar, then I will connect with it. So whatever it is I’m feeling, I will give a little space to myself, and tune in and just breathe into that space if I feel it in my body, in my heart, and I’ll just notice it. Let myself acknowledge what it feels like in my body. And I’ll sense into it.

Candice Wu 33:33

Sometimes this is where I talked to myself and talk to my body and ask “What are you? Whose are you? And sometimes I’ll just have this intuition of ”This doesn’t feel like mine. But what is it?” So I also connect with it and explore.

Candice Wu 33:51

If it is indeed a sense that it’s somebody else’s, the first thing that I do is just try to clear it back and give it back to who it belongs to, or give it up to the universe. I just imagine this energy, whatever color or shape it is, just traveling back to the person it belongs to. And with that person or persons, I just imagine if there’s any energy that’s mine, that I take that back and drop back to myself.

Candice Wu 34:21

This specific practice is another one of the healing experientials that I’ll share with you this week, to guide you through taking back what energy is yours, and releasing any energy that doesn’t belong to you back to where it belongs, so look out for that. If some energy doesn’t want to go or doesn’t want to move, you can stay with it a little bit further, and ask it what it needs to release or to leave, to let go.

Candice Wu 34:47

And whatever it says, without any judgment or filter. Just imagine what it needs and wants. Imagine it happening and see what happens in your body. So, whatever your left with, if you’ve cleared up other people’s energies, or you’ve imagined whatever emotions just going back to who they belong to, if you’ve done some resetting and clearing of your own energy, if you’re left with something still, then that likely means it’s a piece of your own trigger or some aspect of you that is a receptor for that issue, or that emotion or sensation.

Candice Wu 35:27

So what you’re left with, there’s a space in you to receive other people’s emotions in that same way, and it alerts you and lets you know this is where your work is. This is the place that your boundary is ruptured, and that you can transform and heal so you can become stronger if you want to.

Candice Wu 35:50

An example of this is, I was working with a client where immigration was something that had happened in their family history. What seemed to show up was that this family was very excited and hopeful that moving to the United States would be a better life. But it seemed that when they arrived, there was some large grief and disappointment, some pain and survival and struggle, because it wasn’t as they had expected, it wasn’t as accepting to their culture as they hoped it would be.

Candice Wu 36:25

When I was done with this session, I felt that this feeling of grief and disappointment was still sticking with me. I wondered, “Had I picked up my client’s pain, the ancestry’s pain, or was it my own?

Candice Wu 36:42

So I did some of the practices that I had suggested a bit earlier. And what I was left with was still the grief and disappointment. So that point, I knew that it had to do with me.

Candice Wu 36:55

Of course, what I’ve been processing for the last 10 years is the feeling of grief and disappointment of my childhood experience, that there were just things that I really wanted to happen and they didn’t, relationships that I wanted to go a certain way, and they went the entirely other way. So I’ve actually been more recently processing how this experience was to my spirit, that on this grander scale of entering this life with a lot of hope and optimism and excitement for what this life would bring, that early life was disappointing and full of grief and loss, though I wasn’t able to feel those feelings until much later.

Candice Wu 37:38

I’m grateful at this time of my life that I can feel into the gifts of what the trauma and disappointing experiences I had early on, have given me now for my life, but it doesn’t really change the grief and disappointment, those feelings are still there and moving through.

Candice Wu 37:56

So what I was left with after working with this client was my own piece of grief and disappointment. And working with it just reminds your system that this energy is there, and it pulls it up to the surface.

Candice Wu 38:12

So that’s how we know that there’s a piece of us that wants healing, is when something stays with us for longer. Otherwise, for me, at this point in my life, emotions that I’ve perhaps sensed into with others, just roll off my back and move through, or they’re just very easily fluid, and they don’t have something to stick on to, like Velcro.

Candice Wu 38:34

So this brings us to the topic of strengthening your own boundaries and healing up your energetic ruptures.

Candice Wu 38:41

As I mentioned earlier, you can work with your energetic boundary and picture it, use your hands to touch into it and sense where it is. And if you do find ruptures with it, sense what that is, let this attune you to your sense of what might need to be healed so that you can be stronger in yourself, and not let other’s energies come into you.

Candice Wu 39:06

You can work with the experience of energy swooping into your energy field, or, you taking up other people’s energy and absorbing it by imagining it more slowly. Imagine you could see energy coming at you, or that you’re just sucking it up, see how far it goes and where it touches into you, if you could imagine that. Let your body respond back to push it out whether that’s with your imagination of what you would do or literally and physically with your hands. Imagine taking other people’s energy and pushing it back out of your body and your energy field. So that it’s way out and as far out as you need it to be, then keep your hands up as if to say no, this blocks you from taking in more.

Candice Wu 39:55

And that’s something you may need to practice because I’ve noticed that I’m much more of a receiver of negative energies than I am a pushing back kind of person. And it may be something you need to practice to push back.

Candice Wu 40:09

This is a Somatic Experiencing practice. I’m sure it’s in other practices. But if you want to develop that further, you can work with somebody in Somatic Experiencing.

Candice Wu 40:19

I do that work myself and can also give you some recommendations. But if you practice this, you can develop a stronger energetic center and personal boundary so that you’re less likely to take in energies from outside of you.

Candice Wu 40:35

Now the thing you can practice is, putting your hands out and up like face up, as if you’re receiving and just imagine receiving pleasurable experience, joyful experience, and not taking in what others are feeling or negative emotions or any toxicity, but just taking in pleasure. So both the experience of putting a boundary up and saying “No” to what you don’t want to take in and opening the hands to receive what you do want to take in, letting that boundary be permeable to the different types of experience you want to take in and don’t.

Candice Wu 41:16

There are so many practices that you can do to strengthen your boundary. But I’d like to leave you with those today. As well as just a few thoughts about going deeper and excavating the belief sets and past conditioning that are underneath the whole energy dynamic, to begin with.

Candice Wu 41:35

What I found in myself and others that seem to absorb other’s emotions and energies, is a sense of responsibility for others, that they’re responsible for saving them or responsible for making them feel good or pleasing them. Some of the belief sets that I’ve held in aspects of my younger self and my adult self are that it’s my job to absorb all the negativity. It’s my job to absorb anger and loss, because other people couldn’t handle it in my ancestry at that time. It’s my job to fix all the problems. And I essentially exist for other people and for other people to feel good. It’s my responsibility to maintain others well being. It’s my responsibility to save the world.

Candice Wu 42:24

And you can see where all of these might lead my unconscious energy to just absorb everything bad and take it in and to digest it myself a couple of other belief sets that I’ve noticed in myself and others are what we’re feeling worthy of receiving. For example, believing that I’m only worthy of receiving bad or that I’m undeserving of receiving pleasure in goodness and joy.

Candice Wu 42:52

So taking a look at what unconsciously you feel you’re able to receive, that you’re allowed to receive or have, and also looking at what the conditions are of your worth, and being lovable. Specifically, I find that when we’re growing up, we learn different ways that we need to act or be, in order to be lovable or worthy. So did you internalize or come in with a belief that in order to be worthy and lovable, that you need to absorb all the emotions in the room, or that you need to take on more than what’s yours?

Candice Wu 43:32

Some people even resonate with the words in order to be worthy of God. “I need to save the world,” or “In order to be worthy of God,” etc. Whether or not you believe in God, sometimes that seems to hit some level of our being when you just say the words out loud, and going back to the way that we might have been parentified, or in some position in our family ancestry unconsciously, that takes on more than what our share is, that takes on a position that isn’t ours, what we’re actually saying when we do that is “I am bigger, better and smarter than others.”

Candice Wu 44:09

And in fact, if it was a parental vacation, where you felt like you were a parent to your parent, that’s in the position of saying you are much bigger than your parents. And that is untrue, without your superior to your parents. It also suggests that you can handle more than they can, or that they’re fragile and you’re not. But what I find is actually that’s a very deep lack of trust in others, and a dependency that others need to be in a certain place or in a certain way for you to be okay, that’s actually just more of a younger need, a dependency that our parents need to be okay so that we’re okay so it comes instinctually.

Candice Wu 44:53

And yet, as adults, we don’t necessarily need to be that way anymore. We don’t necessarily need to be dependent on that way. Because we have different resources. So what I suggest is to look at all of the underlying beliefs or dynamics of why it is that you absorb other people’s emotions, and let a lot of gentleness and self-forgiveness come in, you can use the words “I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that – whatever that is.”

Candice Wu 45:25

For example, “I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that in order to be worthy, I need to take in all the negative emotions.” And if you practice this, let yourself feel it, emotions have to move for it to shift your whole energy and physical system.

Candice Wu 45:46

Sometimes just shedding light on what the beliefs are underneath are ready, create a shift and allow for change to happen, so that you don’t have to live by that paradigm or dynamic anymore. Having these beliefs doesn’t mean all of you believes it. And certainly, your mind may not believe it at all, your mind may know completely differently. But there is a feeling sense inside that this is true on some level or in some part of you.

Candice Wu 46:14

So be very kind and compassionate with yourself. Because at this time, in our human consciousness, we are living with so many distorted belief sets and limiting beliefs and places of suffering. So be gentle and let these come to the surface with kindness, so that you can find a different way.

Candice Wu 46:38

So that’s all I have for you today. We talked today about having clear energetic boundaries, how to strengthen your boundaries, and protect yourself from absorbing other people’s energies, and how to sort out what’s going on inside of you and practices to feel healthy and balanced.

Candice Wu 46:57

And so in this next week, I will release three different healing practices that can support you in exactly what we talked about. The first one is about clearing energies back to where they belong, becoming whole again, reclaiming your own energy.

Candice Wu 47:11

The second one is about getting on the grid. This is an energetic way to center your energy system and to ground and the third one is a Family Constellations, healing exercise, to release responsibility for what’s not yours, and to receive only the best. This will support you and seeing other’s strength and wholeness through their entire family system, or through their spirits so that you’re not responsible for anyone else’s emotions, even if they don’t want to take responsibility for themselves.

Candice Wu 47:44

I hope you enjoy these and feel free as always, to let me know how they are, give me feedback, ask questions. And if there’s any aspect of what we talked about today, that’s missing, feel free to let me know, I’d be happy to hear from you.

Candice Wu 47:58

Thank you so much for listening today and if you found anything touching, interesting or helpful, I would be so grateful. If you thought about donating on patreon, you can find the information at CandiceWu.com/patreon. And even just $1 a month can support all the backend of this work, this podcast and all the creations that I put out there so that I can continue.

Candice Wu 48:24

I’m so grateful for all the people who have already donated and several of you have chosen to donate at the level where you can receive a personal meditation and I’ve just loved doing those. So you might consider it if you’re interested in a little bit of personal healing and to exchange.

Candice Wu 48:42

Before you go today, I would invite you to listen to more interviews, meditations, and explorations at CandiceWu.com/podcast and you can subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter, become a member of the Embody Community at CandiceWu.com/embody. We can get lots of free resources on embodiment and healing, meditations and info about some good stuff coming up. On the Embody Community Facebook group, I’ve started to do some more live feeds where I’m sharing some healing tips and ideas that I’m thinking about that you can explore with me and interact with other people in the community. So that’s all for today and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This is the second healing meditation related to the series around energy boundaries and clearing any absorbed energies from outside of you.

You can find the full series of three meditations plus an introduction around tips and tools, about how to clear your energy to know when you’ve absorbed others’ energy and to use any opportunities of absorbing energy to bring more wisdom and strength.

You can find all that at CandiceWu.com/energy.

This particular meditation is called Getting on the Grid.

This was inspired by many experiences of my friends and me during grad school where we felt that we were ungrounded and had picked up on others’ energies after practicing sessions.

Purpose of Getting on the Grid

When we’re with or working with someone intimately with their inner world or with relationships, emotions, or anything that’s touching in at a deeper level, we may be having an energetic exchange at an unconscious level.

This meditation of getting on the grid is to support you in feeling grounded, centered, complete and whole, so that your energy boundary is strong, and that you can support yourself in being as clear and protected as possible from other outside energies.

This also allows you to come from the space of very deep respect and honoring for another person when you approach them, work with them, or if you’re in their presence.

So if you’re not a practitioner of healing work, or a therapist or a wellness practitioner of any sort, that’s okay, you can use this to feel centered in yourself no matter what kinds of interactions you are having.

The words “getting on the grid” actually came from an Alex Grey painting called, Theologue.

This painting is linked in the show notes at CandiceWu.com/energy.

And I highly recommend taking a look at it because it can help you have a visual for getting on the grid.

It’s a painting of a human in a lotus position with the legs folded.

In this person, the energy centers: the chakras, are all lined up the spine, and they’re lined up with a grid of the entire, what feels to me like the entire universe and surrounding this is this entire grid that maps out onto fire, mountains, earth, air, and space.

There’s an energy bubble around this person that feels like a strong energetic boundary and an aura of radiance.

The description under the painting is pretty complex, but it also gives a feel for this painting.

It says the union of human and divine consciousness, weaving the fabric of space and time in which the self and its surroundings are embedded.

And that’s exactly what getting on the grid feels like to me.

It’s aligning yourself to the grid of the universe, the grid of consciousness that you’re rooted and anchored in who you are, and nothing more.

So let’s jump into the meditation.

Take a moment to find a comfortable seated position where you feel supported and at ease.

So if that means placing a pillow or a block, like a Yoga block underneath you, a blanket rolled up. Support your body in feeling grounded and centered.

Now place your palms face down on your knees and touch your pointer fingers to your thumbs. This closes your energetic centers to yourself.

Just using this mudra, this hand position can also help you in grounding and closing off your energy boundaries so that you’re not giving away or receiving as much.

Now feel into your body exactly the way it is.

Sense your breath moving in and out of your nose or your mouth without changing it at all.

Notice any holding in your body, any tension or resistance to gravity and feel however it is to be in your body at this moment.

Awareness of the Energy Centers

Bring your awareness to your belly button.

We will first take a moment to sense into each of the energy centers, the chakras, and to circulate your awareness to the central channel of the body.

Sensing the belly button, take your awareness down to the pubic bone and now notice the perineum, the very base of the pelvis.

Now shift your awareness to your tailbone, and now the spine behind the belly button, and the spine behind the heart, the spine behind the base of the neck, or C7 vertebra.

Now notice the back of the head behind the third eye, the space between the eyebrows, and now the very crown of the head.

Sense the third eye, the space right in between the eyebrows, and now the base of the neck.

Feel into the center of the chest and now come all the way back to the belly button. Now continue to the pubic bone and now the perineum.

As you land on the perineum, draw an imaginary line from there up to the center of your diaphragm.

And now from this point, draw another line up from there through the chest up to the soft palate at the back of the roof of the mouth and imagine another dot there.

And from here, draw a line up to the very crown of the head, placing a fourth point there.

From the perineum at the base of the pelvis, the center of the diaphragm, the soft palate, and the crown of the head, imagine this central channel of the body called, Sushumna, all aligned vertically.

Notice your whole physiology as these four points in line. Imagine the rest of your body just falling away and with every breath out, just letting that exhalation grow longer, smoother, and deeper.

With this central channel of the body, imagine it syncing up with a universal grid. A grid of diagonal lines, vertical lines, and horizontal lines all to keep you rooted and anchored in time and space.

Alignment — Getting on the Grid

Feel yourself completely aligned with yourself, aligned with the universe and flowing, where you can release any holding or resistance and let your natural state be in sync with all.

Where you can see yourself completely connected to source to all things in complete harmony and as you feel yourself connected into this grid, sense your energy radiating and glowing out from the core of your being, that your energy boundary around you is strong, centered, and whole.

Feel free to visualize Alex Grey’s painting if that supports you in feeling grounded and centered.

As you sense into the four points of your body, from the perineum all the way up to the crown of your head, aligned with the gridding of the universe.

Let yourself be aware of any place in the body or in your senses that you’re aware of feeling centered, grounded, whole or calm.

Let those parts of you deepen and expand as you sense into them, staying with them for even longer.

Closing

Take as long as you’d like here and deepen into this feeling of getting on the grid.

And as you complete your meditation at your own pace, feel free to give a little movement to your body and slowly open the eyes.

This is a specific healing experiential or meditation that can support you if you feel that you've absorbed energy from someone or somewhere else or that you feel a little bit ungrounded, uncentered or icky after being in connection with someone else or a group of people, then you can practice this experiential to help clear your energy to also ground yourself and pull back all the energy that is yours that's out there.

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.

To start with, you might not believe in energy working in this way that you could send back energy to where it belongs or you could drop back in whatever is yours. I didn't for a long time, but as I kept practicing it and stumbled upon these practices that were overlapping in many different healing disciplines and spiritual disciplines, I found that I was able to access something that gave me a sense of how energy was working with me and how it's working through me. So, feel free to try this out for yourself and practice it over time, if it resonates with you, and if it doesn't, you can still practice it or you can scrap it, see what works for you.

This is the first healing experiential out of three that is in connection with the podcast introduction around energetic boundaries and having clear energetic boundaries. You can find the full series of this podcast including the discussion about clearing energetic boundaries, and how and what to do if you've absorbed energy from around you or from other people. That episode includes tips about cleansing and clearing your energy or just simple ways to feel in control and navigate energy as well as grounding yourself and healing any ruptures that are causing your energy boundary to be weaker or have a hole in it. You can find the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/energy. And now, let's jump into this meditation.

You can use this healing experiential and meditation when you feel that you have possibly absorbed some energy from outside of you, whether that's from a person, a group or a question. You can use it to check in on whether you've absorbed anything from outside of you or if you feel that your energy has been lost in some way, that you've given something that's yours, and you'd like to reclaim it.

If you're a therapist or energy worker, a healer in some way or you work with people in a deep and intimate way, this might be something you practice after your sessions with your clients or at the end of the day, this can help cleanse you so that you feel like yourself again, whole and grounded. If you're not a wellness practitioner, and you are a sensitive person or an empath or you just feel like you'd like to see if this is something that affects you of energy from outside affects you, you can practice this as well. Also, if you feel that you're having a particularly challenging situation with a person, a place or situation, you can use this tool, this meditation to also clear up the energy between you and whatever it is the thing that you're struggling with. So, let's begin.

Find yourself a comfortable seated position or lie down, and just let yourself release all of the day so far. Feel free to close your eyes, and drop all of your senses inward. Start to hear the sound of your own breath, feel the body from the inside out, and visualize the shape of your body. Begin to picture your breath going in and out of your body, and sense even deeper than the outer levels of the body, going into the cells, the tissues, muscles and even bones in the body. Sense any emotion that you're holding, and just let your body release even more.

Now, imagine your energetic field, and if that's tricky or doesn't make sense to you, just imagine your entire being, including your body and the space around you, and let yourself open to whatever color you might be if you were a color.

Notice whatever color your energy or your being would be, perhaps it's a combination of colors, let's see if there's an essential color that's yours at this moment, and it can be different from day to day, moment to moment.

Now, picture a person that you've been in touch with today or if you have a sense of where your energy is gone today or if you're holding on to someone else's energy, picture that person. If you're unsure of whose energy you may be holding or absorbed, just begin to picture someone that this energy belongs to. And as you picture that person or group of people, sense whatever color they might be if they had a color. It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, just feel into the impression that you get.

Now, notice in yourself, where there's any color that belongs to this other person or these people. Picture where that is in your body and how much space it takes up, what it feels like in your body. And with your breath to help it along, send this energy back to whom it belongs to, and watch it release from your body, move into the air and back to anyone that this belongs to, and if that's tricky, you can also try releasing this energy into the universe, letting it dissolve and fade into nothingness.

Notice the sensation or emotion that might come up, whatever it is that you feel inside as you're releasing any energy that belongs to the other person or people, back to where it belongs.

And now, sense into the other person or the people you're noticing, look for where they're holding any of your color of energy. Sense where it is within them or within their energy field, and again, using your breath to support you, breathe this energy back into your body, back into your energy field, back into your space, and your being. Feel all of the energy that's yours come back to you, and notice whatever sensations are happening in the body, whether that's a tingling, a grief, tension, release, fullness, anything, this getting curious about whatever it is that you feel inside, however, this process is for you, and just double checking that you've received all of your energy back. You've reclaimed all that's yours, and that you've released all that's theirs.

Now, notice any part of you that's feeling expanded, grounded, calm or full, anything that feels good, pleasant or even neutral, and let yourself deepen and expand into any pleasant or neutral sensation in the body, any feeling of peace or feeling like yourself, and take as long as you'd like to hear just to feel into your own energy. If it's necessary to repeat the process with any other people you've been in contact with or someone in particular that you're having a challenging time with or challenging lifetime with, feel free to repeat this process as many times as you need, and at the end of your process, take some time to think yourself for clearing your own energy, reclaiming your energy and giving yourself the attention to rejuvenate yourself and cleanse.

And now, I'll leave you with about 30 seconds of silence that you can feel into whatever it is that you're with here and now, and you'll know when this meditation is over when you hear a little bit of music at the end.

Thank you so much for practicing today, and here's some silence for you.

This is the third of three healing experientials related to the episode about energy boundaries, and clearing absorbed energies as well as strengthening your boundaries. You can find the full podcast as well as the other two meditations at CandiceWu.com/energy.

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 practice is an amalgamation of family constellations, healing practices as well as somatic experiencing. Specifically, this healing experiential is to support you in feeling clarity in your order, and position in your ancestry. It is to support you in releasing any responsibility for other's emotions or their fates, what they bear in their life, any losses or traumas or emotions that are unintegrated from your family lineage from anyone in the past, what happens is sometimes we inherit them, we connect with them, and hold them with our family, and this healing experiential can help you release any of those energies or dynamics that belong to someone else, and shift you into the position, your true and natural position of who you are in your family system to receive the best from your family, to receive all the gifts, the strength, the love, and support, and to leave the rest.

This experience might go very deep for you, it might be challenging to connect with or doesn't resonate. See what happens for you, it is meant to be a taste of the family constellations work, and if you do decide to go further with it working with a clinician, whether that's a family constellations practitioner or another ancestral healing worker, in a group or individually, you can go very deep in shifting the connections of the ancestry that you've inherited, and the ways that you absorb others energy or have strong boundaries.

If you feel at any time that what you're experiencing is overwhelming or a bit too distressing, just pause the podcast, take a break, and let yourself rest in the safety of the present moment. Sense your surroundings and just find some grounding, feel free to come back to this exercise anytime or do it with some support, and just one other thing to mention is that our family lineage isn't exactly what equates to who we are in this world, we are much more than what we are given and who we are in a family system. We don't necessarily need to be dependent on the family lineage, but what happens is there are many unconscious dynamics that we are given that we're tied to. So, dynamics that we're not even aware of, and when we bring these to light, we can release them.

When we bring them to light as well, we also can see that we are much more powerful than the dynamics we are given, that we can tap into a spiritual sense that's far beyond our ancestry, that is the divine energy that's everywhere, that is who we are at the source. So, let's transition now and jump into the healing experiential.

For this particular activity, I'd invite you to stand up, and as you stand and I introduced the different aspects of the healing experiential, see what happens to your body position, to the way you are standing, whether it's easy or hard or where your weight is, what sensations you feel and where, what emotions, and anything you notice in terms of your movement or images that pop into your mind, thoughts, etc. So, we're just opening up to all the information that you could possibly receive and sense.

As I introduce each aspect, see what shifts for you and what might be staying the same, and just notice and get curious about that experience. We'll work with two parts your own family system as well as transferring that experience to another person in your life that you may be having a challenge with, whether you're absorbing their energy or you're not sure or there's just some very connected dynamic that you'd like to work with, we'll do those into segments.

The last bit of preparation is please be sure you have about 15 to 30 minutes from this point so that you can absorb and integrate what's happening in this healing experiential as well as give yourself some downtime in case some different emotions come up or you find out a new insight. So, here we go.

As you stand, just notice how you feel in your body right now. Feel free to keep your eyes open or close them or look down, just sensing inward. Feel your breath in and out of your body, and let your awareness go all the way down to your hips, your legs, your ankles, and your feet. Feel the bottoms of your feet, and just let your body be natural in whatever way it's expressing itself now or holding itself, letting your breathing just be the way it is, and if there's any movement or sensation, let that be expressed and felt.

Now, I invite you to sense and imagine behind you, your parents. If you have adoptive parents or other guardians or important people growing up, feel free to invite them as well.

Imagine one parent behind your right shoulder and one behind your left shoulder. If you have a father and a mother, place your father behind your right shoulder and mother behind left, and just notice what it's like as you imagine them right behind you. Notice any emotion, any experience, just getting curious and letting it be witnessed.

Now, invite your grandparents to stand behind them also in that order. Notice what it's like that they're in the picture as well. See what changes in your body, what might shift, and now, invite your great grandparents. Again, see any shift in yourself, any experience of sensation or emotion, and whether you know your great grandparents or not or even your grandparents, just inviting the presence of that person. It doesn't matter if they're dead or alive or if you were close to them or not, just sensing a presence, and let's continue to your great great grandparents, and farther back adding in their parents, and another two generations at least. Feel free to imagine as far back as you can imagine in your lineage, and just sense the magnificence of this family line that's still alive and strong today.

So, I invite you to turn around and face your family system, and just sense that this is your position. You are a child of your parents, and they're bigger than you. And take a moment if you feel that you are in the right place, just sensing into where your body might want to go. Sometimes, if you've learned early on unconsciously, that perhaps your parent needed someone to help them with certain emotions or your grandparent was absent, then you may have energetically moved to a different position without knowing it or perhaps knowing it. That's called parentification when you become the parent of your parent in some way. Sense whether any part of you has fitted position into another place, and not just ground herself in this place, coming back to your true and natural position of being a child to these parents.

We'll do one more piece of information gathering. If you skim the line of your lineage, just with an open heart and seeing beyond the mind. If you sense into your parents, then your grandparents, then farther and further back, do so slowly and just see if you are called to sense into any one particular person more, and what emotions you feel as you just hover your awareness over each person.

Notice if you feel a certain emotion, as you're aware of any particular person, for example, you might feel sadness as you look towards your grandma or you might feel anger or tension somewhere as you just sense back into the line of your family, and get curious about where you're feeling that and with home. This is not a process of blaming or anything at all, just gathering information about your sense and connection, and it's not necessary to know the exact facts or details, but you might have an awareness of what's connected with these emotions, what kinds of losses, traumas, challenges or situations may connect with the emotions you're sensing and picking up on. If something feels particularly intense, notice that as well.

Now, wherever you felt any emotion, whether that's intense or something that seems connected with someone else in your family line, see what happens if you just release any of those emotions back to who they belong.

You can even imagine a color or shape of emotion or energy and just let it go back to where this belongs, who it might belong to, and notice what happens in you as you do that. You may be carrying someone else's emotions in the family line, especially if that emotion was unintegrated or there was some sort of survival mode or having to move forward after something challenging or overwhelming.

So, check-in with yourself. See if there's anything else that you need to release back to where it belongs, back to whose story that belongs to. It might not be an emotion, it might just be a sense of a feeling or some sort of energy, and then coming back to your sense and grounding of yourself, and as you look upon this family line, your ancestry, feel in your true and natural position, your right position. Feel into the strength, whatever strength there is of this family line and the gifts that you can receive from them. See this family line connected all the way to the source that's behind everyone, and let herself receive from this position, the best of the lineage. Feel free to open your arms as your palms up, as if to receive anything that this family system wants to provide you or give you.

Try out the words: thank you or I receive only the best from you, and I leave the rest or I'm responsible only for myself, you are responsible for you and their support behind me.

Notice any emotions or sensations in your body as you experience these words. Again, the words are: I receive the best from you, and I leave the rest. I'm responsible only for myself, you are responsible for you and their support behind me.

And if that's challenging to see that support or that responsibility, in others in your family line, look farther back to see where there is support, where there is strength, responsibility enoughness, and take a few more moments to feel into anything that's strengthening, grounding or beautiful in this lineage.

Now, thank yourself and thank your family lineage for showing up and showing all of this to you, and when you feel ready, I invite you to turn back around so that they're all behind you. Feel their presence behind you just the best, just the love, the strength, and the gifts as you face the world.

Notice how your body stands. Feel your breath. Notice what it's like to be in your body at this time.

And now, I invite you to segment 2, inviting someone that's close to you forward, someone that you feel challenged with, perhaps someone you feel like you are absorbing their energy or their emotions, invite whoever that is, forward in front of you. You can be as close or as far away as you need to be to feel comfortable.

This may also be someone that you feel responsible for that it isn't your place to feel that way, with that you tend to give advice to or feel lethargic or drained after you see them. You look towards them. I want you to imagine their family line all behind them, just as you did yourself, their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and just keep going as far back as you can imagine, even if you don't know any of these people or they're dead or alive. You can also imagine any other loving support that this person has to stand behind them, and feel whatever it is you feel as you look upon them with all of these people behind them supporting.

Now, feel the words, just as you did for yourself with your family line: I am responsible for only myself, you are responsible for you, and to have support behind you. And see the strength of their lineage, whether or not they can see it themselves. See farther back if you need to, the source, the love, or the light behind all of this family.

See that this person has everything they need in their family system, and within themselves, to be whole, to heal if they need to heal, to be themselves, and that you are not responsible for them. You're responsible for only you. See them with this deep respect and honoring that they are responsible for their own journey just as your parents are, just as each member of your family is, best as you care for yourself.

Take as long as you'd like here to sense into this dynamic and into this presence, into whatever it is you're feeling inside, letting it be noticed, letting it move if it wants to move, and when you feel complete, thank all of the parts of this person and their family line for showing up and release them into the universe. Thank your family line, your ancestry for showing up and just release them as well, and thank yourself for doing this very deep practice and exploring in this way.

Take your time to feel into whatever it is that came up for you, and whatever it is that you feel now, and I'll leave you with a little bit of silence that you can just breathe through your body wherever you're feeling any sensation or emotion, anything at all. You'll know when this guided practice is over when you hear a little bit of music at the end.

Thank you so much for practicing today and I'll see you next time.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is all about anger and its importance. How anger gets a bad rap, how to harness your anger for healing, strength, protection, and confidence. What happens when we repress our anger and how to work with your own anger to discharge the energy, use it intentionally and constructively, and the healing experientials to follow.

Candice Wu 0:08

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

Candice Wu 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 0:44

These episodes are made possible by all the supporters on Patreon that contribute and donate to this work. Thank you so much. I appreciate it immensely. And you have no idea how much it means to me. I’m really excited because there are some lovely offers that are on Patreon. So if you become a supporter, you can have access to different gifts, such as having a quarterly, personalized healing meditation for you that’s designed intuitively based on what you need and desire for your life. And I work with you to create that just with a few thoughts and ideas from you about what you want. And another offer that I just put out there is to join in the Embodied Group healing session that happens monthly. So this is a call with four people in a group where I’ll support you and being at ease in your own body and spirit into tapping into your own wisdom and intuition, and any embodied support or ancestral healing support that you need this month. I can’t wait to begin the first group. If you’d like to check this out, go to my page at CandiceWu.com/patreon.

Candice Wu 1:38

So welcome back everyone. By the time you are listening to this podcast episode, I will be on a flight to Las Vegas, which is the nearest airport to the retreat that I’m holding in October. I’m very excited to take about nine days just to nourish myself, rejuvenate, and to have some off time before I jump into this magical healing retreat called the Soul Body Women’s Retreat. It’s been a really interesting time of expanding in my healing work and in my practice and business. As you noticed in the Patreon offers that had come out, whenever I expand or head into something new, it feels like I have to shift my energy so that it’s larger, so that it’s bigger and can hold more. And that’s exactly what’s been happening, I’ve been onboarding a new team member into the “behind the scenes” work, who I’ll share a bit later. But that’s just created so much inner expansion. And it’s been scary and overwhelming at times. But I’m very excited for the growth that it’ll bring.

Candice Wu 3:17

Also before the retreat, I just get so excited because it is such a meaningful and powerful connection. In the retreat, I always feel like I’m just right in the flow of things. Of course, I’m human. So that might not happen. But I’m really looking forward to this Soul Body Women’s Retreat. By the time you’re listening to this, there will be just like a week and a half before the retreat. But if you’re still interested in coming, there might be a spot or two left. So feel free to reach out and I’ll be happy to keep you posted on how it goes afterward. I know many of you have been listening and tuning into this retreat itself being shared on the podcast. So thank you all for being out there and listening and sharing it with people that it might be interesting too. So now let’s jump into the episode. Let’s get right into anger. That sounds funny, doesn’t it?

Candice Wu 4:16

If you’re tuning in today about this controversial topic, somehow I find it very controversial because everyone has different opinions on anger, and what to do with it. The opinions and thoughts and beliefs that I have here on anger come from my personal experience and from lots of training in both Western and Eastern medicine and science, indigenous practices, as well as practices that come from a basis in the nervous system and why there is a fight and anger energy in us.

Candice Wu 4:52

And if you are listening, I encourage you to listen to the whole podcast, perhaps in bits and pieces as you need, especially if it’s overwhelming. But do take the time to tune into all the different parts. Because I may say something on one part of the podcast that doesn’t quite make sense or isn’t a full complete idea. And I may complete the idea later in the podcast.

Candice Wu 5:18

You may be working with anger in your own way or you may be a practitioner that is either including some new practices or very well developed in this area. I may be offering some different ideas or I may be missing things. So I’m always open to learning. But this is what I’ve learned in myself that has worked.

Candice Wu 5:40

A couple of weeks ago, I published an episode about commitment and conviction. It was a story about working with my horse in training, Sage and my teacher. In this episode, I mentioned how commitment and conviction require the power and the energy of anger behind us. It requires us to harness that energy so that we can feel more powerful. So feel free to check out that episode as a preface to this one — it’s at CandiceWu.com/commitment-and-conviction.

Candice Wu 6:15

In my experience, anger has gotten such a bad rap. Growing up in my life, I was never allowed to share anger without getting more punished, without receiving anger back. So it was terrifying. And I got all sorts of messages being a girl and then a woman that anger wasn’t allowed.

Candice Wu 6:38

You may have a different experience. And I’d encourage you to notice your own experience and sense for yourself. The place that anger has in your life, in your psyche and soul, and how it is a tool to you or not, or is it an enemy?

Candice Wu 6:55

So this episode is all about tuning into and exploring anger, it’s importance, what it does in the nervous system, and why it’s there. What happens when we repress our anger, and how to work with our anger, so that it actually is an empowering tool that we can use and access when we need it.

Candice Wu 7:15

Before we jump into all that I want to share with you a story that just came through last night about anger. And this story is just channeled through without editing. It’s pretty raw and uncut, unpolished. So take it for what it is and see what it sparks up in you. Here we go.

Candice Wu 7:39

Anger was so misunderstood. It turned this way and that way telling its human with its color and sensation and heat exactly what it needed. It wanted to put its foot down. Just hear me. It had to be known. After all, Anger was trying to protect this body from the rough and scary experiences, from things that we’re not okay. It wanted to alert when it got stepped on or when it was made to feel small or abused or pushed just a little too much.

Candice Wu 8:10

It didn’t quite understand because the human did not want to listen. I am trying to make it a better place and a better situation for you, to protect our grounds, to make it okay again. I just want to create and play again. That’s the point. But the human didn’t listen.

Candice Wu 8:30

So it needed to find a new way. It was not going to be ignored. But it took a lot of energy, so much energy to come racing up into the human and all for it to just be pushed back down.

Candice Wu 8:45

This time, Anger shot up into the human’s body to ignite something to move, pushed right into the arms and shoulders all the way to the fingers in hopes that something could shift and hopes that it could move out of the body and something would happen.

Candice Wu 9:03

But the Captain says “No.” That’s your father. You can’t hurt him. You can’t be angry at him. He is your protection and your safety. You’re wrecking things. Go away. Anger says “But he’s not protecting us, he’s hurting us, Captain!”

Candice Wu 9:22

“Yes. Right. This is confusing. But he is your safety in other ways. And until you’re an adult you need him.”

Candice Wu 9:32

Anger says “okay, I guess I will go away for now. I guess I’ll just live in the shoulders and the jaws and the muscles. I’ll take a lot of energy. But can I come back when it’s safe?”

Candice Wu 9:47

“Yes.” Years go by and the Captain continues to say no to Anger.

Candice Wu 9:54

“But we’re adults now.” said the Anger. The Captain didn’t understand, would not hear it one bit.

Candice Wu 10:03

After many years. Anger resigned. Gave up layer upon layer of energy, locked up all in the body, tension, and pain. Anger was defeated, resigned to its quarters. It couldn’t do its job. It was a sad story.

Candice Wu 10:27

It really wanted for the human to play, to come back out. To use its creativity to go for it, to step into life and live, to be powerful. But that wasn’t the way things were anymore. There was only one hope left.

Candice Wu 10:45

One day when the Captain wasn’t looking, didn’t have their guard up, Anger busted out. The human felt shame and fear. It was overwhelming. But finally, some daylight and air, Anger came breaking through. But it was just so much. It just needed help and needed guard rails. This was all too new. It needed to slow down and have support and understanding.

Candice Wu 11:13

Blowing steam little by little, but this was just a burst. But Anger was not going back in. And the human didn’t know what to do. Anger just pushed and pushed. And finally, the human just had it.

Candice Wu 11:29

One day at all of the movement and all of the excitement, Anger met up with the adult human. And the adult human had learned something different. The adult human could understand and could see Anger. The adult human could see me and stand there and support me while the feeling, the big feeling just moved.

Candice Wu 11:55

And the human began to feel strong again, capable and worthy.

Candice Wu 11:59

Anger felt worthy of being seen and expressing. Anger felt a huge release. A big breath of life could happen again. I can live. I can be.

Candice Wu 12:12

Anger moved out and into the Aethers were it dissolved into nothingness. But it left a message with the human. “I’m always around to protect you to remind you of your power. And in my best form, I am understood and I don’t need to become aggressive, violent, rageful to the point of explosion. Unless you’re really in a life-threatening situation. And I’ll come to your rescue. I can be used to understand your boundaries. I can be used so you can know yourself more deeply and to open your mind. I can be useful to shave off the layers of unsafe moments, fearful moments where I was required to be there. And I can make sure that you can play, be free, enjoy, create and desire exactly what you want to just as you are, just as you were designed.”

Candice Wu 13:19

So I hope you got something from that, that can paint a picture in a different way from me just telling you. But this is a story about a young person who is experiencing some emotional or verbal abuse from their father. And they want to fight back. They want to scream or punch or show their father that this isn’t okay. The anger wants to, the anger wants to protect. But another part of this young person comes in and stops them because it wasn’t safe. Because it really wasn’t a good idea to hurt their father. They do love their father. And in fact, they need their father to survive.

Candice Wu 14:06

Now, this got multiple dimensions. And we can talk about the varying degrees of abuse and what’s okay and what’s not all day. But the point really is that there are often situations where we feel angry, where we feel like we need to protect ourselves or stand up for ourselves. Often we’ve had these experiences growing up or throughout our lives, where we could not use that energy, where that energy, that instinctual protective energy did not get to express itself.

Candice Wu 14:42

There’s a whole spectrum of places that this could happen. Maybe it’s like the story wherein young life, if you spoke up, or if you moved your body in the way that it needed to, to show how angry you were, that you would have gotten more punished.

Candice Wu 15:02

Or maybe it was that there was a car accident you were in, and you didn’t really want to scream at the person that hit you, or that you were just too numb and the body was so overwhelmed, that you weren’t really even present. That’s also another protective mechanism.

Candice Wu 15:23

Or maybe it was your boss that really upset you. You got triggered by something, and you didn’t like how something happened at work, but you might lose your job if you spoke up.

Candice Wu 15:39

So let’s back up a little bit. What is anger? Anger is the natural signal in the body that something’s wrong. It’s a red flag, which signals a threat, where it signals a trigger inside of us based on our perceptions. We can have layers upon layers of anger built up and accumulated over the years by all the situations that have enraged us or brought us even a little bit of irritation, if we don’t let that be acknowledged or moved in the proper way.

Candice Wu 16:12

And if you’re anything like me, and where anger was just not allowed, I had to stuff it down. Anger tells us about fairness, about right and wrong, which is all subject to our own beliefs and perceptions and our own idea of morality. And it tells us if we’ve been violated in some way, whether that’s our hearts and our emotions, our body, or the way that we’re being treated in a relationship.

Candice Wu 16:40

It also could be the way that we’re treating ourselves. We could be berating ourselves or bullying ourselves. And also another part of us could be enraged by that or angry by that. Anger also shows us where we’re rigid in our thoughts, ideas or beliefs and where we might need to look at something in ourselves that wants to open up.

Candice Wu 17:02

Physiologically, the energy of anger is the energy that wants to come up and protect us. Some people may or may not call this anger, as sometimes it’s just having firmness and speaking up and standing up for yourself. If we don’t listen to that energy and use it in the proper way in the present moment, then that’s where it builds up. Or that’s where we may have something incomplete. And we could benefit from coming through that and releasing that energy. When that energy gets built up. It stays in the nervous system, it stays in the body and accumulates as tension and locked up energy, which eventually creates depression.

Candice Wu 17:46

The amazing thing about anger, when we work with it, and harness it, empower ourselves with it and use it intentionally and constructively is that we can recover our wild self or ability to feel powerful within us and outside of ourselves, where we can protect ourselves and feel confident that we can navigate life, that we are able to create what we want in life, that we’re worthy of it, we can do it.

Candice Wu 18:13

In observation of animals in the wild that have fought against a predator and protected themselves, or if they’ve run away safely, what they do when they’re safe or when they’re social animals with their peers, then they do something called Pronk. They pronk. They celebrate that they’re alive and they stand proud and are excited and happy. So we need the energy of anger to inform us. And when we repress that anger, it doesn’t get to do its job.

Candice Wu 18:46

At the very deepest core of anger, as the story that I shared with you had suggested, is that anger connects up with our absolute creativity, our divine creativity that is unique and special to who we are individually. So what we want in this life, what we desire, and what we want to create, what we want to do, how we want to relate to ourselves in the world, that’s all connected to anger.

Candice Wu 19:16

Think about it, when you want something, when you’re totally going for it and you’re just running towards what you want, whatever that is, something you’re creating in your life, a person that you want to be with or reaching out towards someone, if this gets stopped, if something runs into your pathway, some part of you could get angry.

Candice Wu 19:39

This is connected directly to the energetic channels in the body, the Meridians, related to Chinese medicine. The liver energy that’s on the inner thigh, from the ankle up and up towards the ribs and all the way to the eyes, is the energy of creativity and desire, so what we want, and our inspiration, our life. And when that gets blocked up, or something stops it, then the gallbladder energy is related to that energy of putting our foot down. It runs on the outer side of our body, outer leg, all the way to our foot and the pinky toe. So you can see how it’s putting our foot down. Our right to exist and feel safety, to feel like ourselves, and have boundaries.

Candice Wu 20:29

So when anger comes, the energy of the gallbladder fires up. And if that anger doesn’t move through, it can get blocked up in the gallbladder channel. And also, therefore, blocking up the liver channel, which is its sibling channel. So these are paired and cycle up and down the body, cycling through the inner and the outer parts of the body. And so as one gets blocked, the other one does, too. And that begins to create depression. Our life force becomes stifled and we numb and we go into overwhelm. It’s where it is unsafe to express the anger or the protection, where we leave it in the body and let it build up as tension as the story suggested earlier. And as I see in my work with my clients, and myself, and what happens in depression, I’ve experienced it myself. And I started to believe that I’m not enough, I’m worthless, it’s hopeless, I’m unlovable, I’m weak, I can’t protect myself, no one can protect me, I can’t do anything. I can’t get what I want.

Candice Wu 21:41

These are the thoughts that go with that collapse of the system, the overwhelm that shuts us down and that sends us into depression, then we get digestive issues and all sorts of illness and disease tension in the body headaches, eye constriction, fear, and this can happen intergenerationally. We do know that if you have a parent or someone else in the line of the ancestry that’s close to you, that has depression, your chances of having depression are much more likely.

Candice Wu 22:13

And it is to say that the energy of overwhelm, and the fight responses being suppressed and lodged in the body incomplete, that energy gets passed down. And the soul of the family is working with an energy of protection, reclaiming power.

Candice Wu 22:33

The good thing about knowing this is that we can reclaim our power. We can feel complete and strong. We can feel capable and also improve our digestion and muscle tone and feel that life come back, feel our desire and craving for life, the zest for life, be possible. When we come back to the instinctual sense of anger and work with it so that it moves through, then we can have that empowerment back. We can feel more creative, sleep better, have more space in our mind, and our mental ability. Because then our prefrontal cortex that does the thinking and higher processing comes back online.

Candice Wu 23:21

When we’re in a fight mode, when the anger is not moved all the way through, then we’re actually in the place of activation, where all the energy goes out into our limbs so that we can fight and in other cases, run or do something else to protect. But we’re talking about anger and fight right now. So that energy goes out to the limbs to fight. And if it doesn’t get to use that, if it shuts down, because it’s too overwhelming, or if you push it down, because it’s too overwhelming, or have ideas that it shouldn’t be there, then it gets repressed, it gets stuck into our system. And that’s where the higher thinking shuts down too and the digestion. Because all that energy moves out from the core of the body and out into the limbs. It is quite destructive to let that energy just stay in our bodies. It’s corrosive over time, because we’re only meant to be in fight energy for a couple of minutes at a time.

Candice Wu 24:27

If we look at animals in the wild, as Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, has done, Somatic Experiencing is very powerful in completing these fight responses. And as part of the study that is in my background, and that I use, and so if we look at animals in the wild that are experiencing a threat, they may choose to fight their predator if they can’t run usually. And that only can last a couple of minutes. Either they make it or they die.

Candice Wu 25:03

So if we’re living with it, if it’s lodged in our body, we might not actually feel much if we are numb. If we are not very present with ourselves, then that is the overwhelm that’s the frozen state that is more activated than the fight energy. And to come out of that, the natural progression is to go into fight mode and to move that energy. So how we work with that anger will be to come in this episode and the healing experiential that will follow this main episode.

Candice Wu 25:41

Let’s also talk about the effect on groups and systems as a whole on our communities, our families and the world and society at large when we don’t work with our anger. When we personally repress our own anger or disavow it, push it down. There is an unconscious effect that I’ve witnessed because we are interdependent and sometimes dependent. When we disavow our feelings, especially of anger, then somewhere that anger has to be picked up. And someone tends to feel it the most vulnerable person perhaps to that anger, for whatever reasons in their particular valence, in their history, their culture, or the perceptions that have been picked up over time of who might feel the anger the most. That person can pick it up and feel more anger then is actually theirs.

Candice Wu 26:43

This is something I witness and experience in group relations work in Tavistock. It’s called the Tavistock model of group processing and awareness building. And it’s also something I witness in a Family Systems approach and Family Systems therapy, as well as the only Constellations, the Embodied Healing work that I do with working with the ancestry dead or alive. It’s working with the energy and when we witness constellation where people are representing people in someone else’s family, just to illuminate what’s going on there.

Candice Wu 27:21

If one person who actually rightfully feels anger, or hasn’t rather work through the anger that is living there, someone else in the room can feel it, someone else is picking up on it, or feeling it instead of that person. And it’s often a younger person, a child. So if you are somebody that holds other people’s feelings, or can feel it in the room when other people are feeling things, this may be a way to understand what’s going on.

Candice Wu 27:54

This is also related to Shadow Work, the tossing out or discarding or not feeling feelings that are there and it goes somewhere in your system as well as out of you.

Candice Wu 28:09

So others are affected, and others have to do their own work with whether or not it’s theirs to take on. And if it is all very unconscious, which it usually is, then it’s hard to tell, it’s hard to sense it sometimes. So we look at the world and why are some places in the world extremely peaceful, while other places are erupting with terrorism, with war and rage and are very unsafe places to be, something is out of balance in the world.

Candice Wu 28:42

There was a time period where I was picking up a lot of anger when I was working with the group relations to have stock work that I would feel enraged in a process grip. And I’d have no idea why I didn’t seem to have any rationale. I didn’t have a specific reason to be angry. But suddenly, I’m just filled with it, and can’t really explain it either because the mental processing is not quite online, either.

Candice Wu 29:13

And when I voiced it, when I was brave enough to or could somehow managed to do that, or if I even just expressed it through my body, or words in some way, if someone else claimed some of that anger, if they said, “Oh, yeah, you know what, I’m really pissed off. Because this, and this happened in this room.” And you’re actually feeling the anger that I’m feeling, then I started to feel better, it decreased the load on me. And it was able to see where it belongs to the context of whose anger it was, and mine became a manageable amount. But what I also realized in that process was how dependent I was on other people taking their anger back. And I think that I was getting even angrier when they weren’t taking it back. And so it was just like, layer upon layer of anger. But my work is to have better boundaries, to not take on the anger, to use my own right of having my own energy, and not taking in other people’s stuff, which requires that same protective Red anger, as my teacher calls it, the Red energy.

Candice Wu 30:22

That’s Maggie Klein, who does SE work, she calls it the Red energy. I have to use my own Red energy, anger protection boundaries, to secure my energetic boundary where it unconsciously happens that I pick up anger. For other people, the work is to claim their anger, and to be able to use that energy and acknowledge when they feel angry, or the times they have felt angry in the past, and to work with it, or to get support around the anger because it feels out of control or unmanageable, or they don’t know what to do with it.

Candice Wu 31:06

So just a little sidebar, I want to talk about the messages that I’ve received about anger. Over the years, the messages I received are that, I’m selfish. If I express anger, or irritation, especially to those I love that anger means I don’t appreciate the person if I’m angry with them. If I’m angry, then I’m a bitch. And that may be gendered as a woman. Anger is scary, and has no resolve. There’s no way to come back or redeem yourself if you lose it or if you become angry with someone, there’s no repair, that it’s childish to be angry, that you’re better than that, that you should take the higher road. And I recognized that this is related to the way you express anger or use it.

Candice Wu 31:53

But what happens, at least what happened to me is it told me not to have the anger at all, to just completely dismiss it. And I think that there is a middle space of being able to use it intentionally and communicate it well without attacking a person unless that attack is needed.

Candice Wu 32:12

Other messages I received are that, I’m immature if I have anger. I won’t be taken seriously. I’m a bad person. And there’s no place for anger here. There’s just a lot of judgment that it is not socially acceptable and a lot of stigma about anger.

Candice Wu 32:31

Other messages that I have heard are that it’s corrosive to your health and to people, it’s destructive, which also is true, but there’s more to the picture, it’s corrosive, because we just let it linger, or we let it go out of hand, or if we use it to attack people.

Candice Wu 32:50

What is essential here is just because you don’t feel something, just because you don’t feel your anger, it doesn’t make it go away. So when people say, “Oh, don’t feel your anger, just distract from it and do these things instead.” That might be a temporary solution to help you out of a situation that could potentially go awry and could be useful at times. But if you’re doing that and constantly coming up against the anger, and doing that, it’s a coping mechanism. It’s avoiding the true roots of what’s going on there and what needs to complete itself. What body wants to happen so that it can feel healthier, powerful, and in control.

Candice Wu 33:31

As I listened to myself with all these messages, I feel that we’ve had such an issue with anger, and it is gendered. Often it’s very gendered, where men sometimes are afraid that if they have anger, that they’ll be seen as vicious and scary, or that they’ll get in trouble. Or if they’ve had an experience in their young life where anger was intertwined with aggression, that they did get in trouble, and were given the message that they were bad, shame.

Candice Wu 34:04

And often I work with women who fear being angry at all, because they’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. So even when they’re not in the room with the person they are actually angry with, they have a hard time expressing it to me that they’re angry with them. And that was totally me. Even after a couple of years of therapy, it was really hard for me to tell my therapist that I was angry with her after she no-showed on me for like 45 minutes.

Candice Wu 34:34

And she was like “Candice, it’s okay if you feel angry with me.” And I was like, “No, nope, I don’t.” So you can see how much anger was a threat or at least I perceived it as such a threat to a relationship. And I’ll also talk more about why this was for me.

Candice Wu 34:51

I would like to offer some ideas of why anger seems so threatening to both me and perhaps you or other people in your life. And also how anger has been paired up with different energies and actions that have made it scary.

Candice Wu 35:12

For me, anger has been mixed up in all sorts of childhood experiences that were verbally and emotionally abusive, that were completely unrepairable. At that time the adults in my life didn’t come to me and heal the situation, helped me feel safe again, so I didn’t have the support in regulating and also reconnecting in the relationships that the abuse was happening in.

Candice Wu 35:39

So for you out there, if anger has been mixed up in a young experience, it could be quite scary. It could cause our nervous system to activate in ways that are completely overwhelming. And that’s out of our control, no matter how much we can mentally say, we were okay, as a child. And in our nervous system, we don’t really have control of the perception of threat that causes a reaction inside that causes the energy of anger to come up.

Candice Wu 36:12

If there’s been verbal and emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, then there is likely anger coming from those situations, especially if those situations didn’t go well or didn’t get resolved. And as I said earlier, on, that if their experiences where you wanted to protect yourself or needed to, and didn’t get to, for reasons of various kinds, or if you appease the person, instead of standing up for yourself and making the situation stop, then that energy might be still waiting for you inside.

Candice Wu 36:53

If you received punishment by a caretaker that turned angry, that was aggressive, or it started to feel unsafe for you, then that could also be a reason that angry is quite scary for me.

Candice Wu 37:08

My father slammed cupboards and screamed at me really often, which was very scary for me, the sound mixed with the yelling and the upset was very activating.

Candice Wu 37:22

So fear and anger often come together. And that makes complete sense, because anger comes, the energy that needs to protect comes when there’s a threat. And so the energy of fear is also embedded in that. For many, anger has been coupled and paired with violence or aggression. And it’s not the case that they have to come together. It seems to me that violence, aggression, and being enraged, where physical violence needs to happen, is the results of either anger accumulated, words come too much or were there was a need a true need to just work with the instinctual energy of protection, the physical need, that our body has to push away or to fight to make something that seems threatening our bad to stop.

Candice Wu 38:22

So while we might not always use that anger in social situations, we still need to discharge it from the body because we are instinctual beings. We have a reptilian brain that only looks out for our safety.

Candice Wu 38:38

Another experience and energy that anger can be coupled with is fame. Fame says that you are a bad person, not just that you’ve done something wrong or bad, but that you are bad or that you are unworthy or worthless or that you should be outcast in, that you’re unlovable.

Candice Wu 38:58

When anger happens, sometimes we perceive that someone’s telling us that we are bad or that it is triggered a part of us that feels that way. Or it literally was the case that it came together. And this leads us to anger time together with abandonment or loss of love, that we fear people will leave us emotionally or physically if we’re angry with them, or if they’re angry with us. And so anger can be such a threat and not even looked at at all.

Candice Wu 39:34

And the last piece I want to look at is how anger can be tied into the judgment of it being childish. We often use the word tantrum with children that they’re throwing a tantrum. And I guess we also use that for adults. And in some ways, it can be a way to bring humor into the situation, to lighten it up a bit to bring more safety. But also saying that something is a tantrum is a way to distance ourselves. It’s to distance and disconnect with the thing that is going on. And to just say, it’s a thing that happens, it has a bit of a negative connotation, but it doesn’t have to.

Candice Wu 40:14

But if we’re looking at young children, and they’re just having a tantrum and we dismiss it as just a tantrum, we made us miss the thing that they’re actually upset from. And we may dismiss that they completely need our support. It’s a cry for regulation and help, it’s to say that this is intolerable and I need acknowledgment, I need help with my emotions, I need a present person to be there so I don’t feel so out of control.

Candice Wu 40:41

And as adults, we need that too. It can be extremely overwhelming and intolerable to feel rage or anger. If we abandon ourselves or if we abandon our children when they’re angry, we leave ourselves, we leave our children alone in one of the scariest kinds of inner moments, intolerable moments that doesn’t get them a way to find completion.

Candice Wu 41:07

I’ve watched some videos where people just stay with their children if they’re having an interruption of anger, and eventually, they kick and scream and that anger moves and they start to want to engage again they start to want cuddles or they feel sadness first and then want to connect with their loved ones. And I don’t think that’s far from what we need as adults too.

Candice Wu 41:33

In this way, anger can be constructive and socially engaging. It can tell us what the other person found was upsetting and not okay. And it can bring us closer together.

Candice Wu 41:45

So as we talk about anger, and expressing it and allowing it, I’m not exactly saying to just let it rip with anyone and at any time. Anger can be destructive as we know. It can turn into violence, but it doesn’t have to. And it can be used as an attack even without violence. And that isn’t always helpful, although sometimes it can be. Sometimes it’s very needed. And if you’re in a situation where you need to stand up for yourself, you need to growl a bit so the other person doesn’t do it again, it really depends on who it’s with, and the situation you’re in, and what you feel you want to do.

Candice Wu 42:30

But I’d like to offer ways to understand the anger and use it so that you can feel empowered and feel that you have acted the way you want to in your life and in your relationships, that it feels conscious and intentional, if you want it to, to use anger in a specific way. And that you can reclaim the ability to have anger if it’s necessary to have in a life-threatening situation or a dangerous situation where you need to literally protect yourself or someone else.

Candice Wu 43:05

There are also different ways to use anger. If you’re in a loving relationship versus with an acquaintance versus with a stranger and the degrees of danger that actually is in the moment, you can gauge how much you need to express it in what way.

Candice Wu 43:25

So if it’s a loving relationship, you may want to work with the anger outside from a relationship before you talk to the person about what you felt. Or you may want to just take a couple of breaths and tone it down inside, work with the energy of it later and speak to it in the moment.

Candice Wu 43:46

If it’s with a stranger and they’re attacking you, you may want to do something different. I’m not saying to just go out and be violent. But there are situations where we do need to protect ourselves. And if we don’t have the energy of anger, and the protective energy ability turned on, if we just go straight into a frozen state, or we just cannot move at all, then we really have a hard time protecting ourselves.

Candice Wu 44:13

But if that’s the case for you just know that you can work with that with a trained professional that works in Somatic Experiencing or other Somatic therapies to bring those instinctual and natural abilities back online.

Candice Wu 44:30

So we already talked about the nervous system a bit and in the work of Peter Levine, and Somatic Experiencing that if we don’t use the adrenaline and energy of a fight response, the anger, the Red energy, then it stays in our system until it gets to be released and gets to complete.

Candice Wu 44:49

So what we want with the present situation, and any past situations that have accumulated as trauma or Intergenerational trauma, Soul trauma, we want to complete those five responses.

Candice Wu 45:04

This also connects to the work of Family Constellations. The ancestral healing work that I do and that is out there in the world, Soul work and Shadow work, also touching in on Chinese medicine and Ayurveda as we talked about with the Meridians and in Yoga Non-Resistance, working with the energy and not resisting it, but choosing how you want to respond.

Candice Wu 45:28

The really cool thing about working with past anger is that if you do it in a somatic way, in a body-centered way and energetic way, you don’t have to work on every single situation that you can recall, or everyone you can’t recall even. Because it touches in on that entire channel of times that you needed to speak up or do something or fight when you didn’t. So you can restore all that energy without doing it all.

Candice Wu 45:58

As I mentioned earlier, working with anger is best with a trained professional if they’re somatically informed, their trauma-informed, and nervous system informed is the best that I found. Because we don’t always notice when our nervous system is going into a frozen or tonic and mobility state, it’s shutting down or completely overwhelmed. And, if that’s the case, we may be re-traumatizing ourselves which isn’t the worst thing in the world. But it might accumulate another layer of energy in the body. It might just get more stuck inside and feel a little more stressful, might feel more activating.

Candice Wu 46:40

If you have the support of someone or you if you’ve trained in it, and you feel like you can support yourself through working with anger, I think that’s fantastic. And some of the healing experiences that I will put out this week will support you even further or just support you along where you’re at.

Candice Wu 47:00

I find it also really important to have a trained professional that is attuned to Developmental Dynamics.

Candice Wu 47:07

So what I mean is the development of us as children all the way to adulthood. Because when certain things have happened in our childhood, at different ages, we needed different things. And we don’t always know those things as adults, what we needed back then, but someone who’s trained and sensitive in that can support that with a lot more ease than you doing it yourself or someone who doesn’t know anything about that. You find a lot of therapists and Somatic Experiencing people as well as Constellations, Family Constellations facilitators may be attuned to those dynamics.

Candice Wu 47:12

The biggest thing to know about working with anger is that it can get overwhelming. And that’s where your nervous system can shut down. And the more you support yourself by taking breaks or working with a professional, the easier it is to move through all that energy. It can be a lot.

Candice Wu 48:06

Anger has a unique way and it wants what it wants, and it’s different for each individual. It’s very primitive, and instinctual, the aspects of anger that we’re talking about. So it’s not as evolved as our spiritual selves, or other parts of our cognitive mind. So that the energy may have the impulse of screaming or biting, kicking, punching, slapping, hitting, pinching, climbing, and growling. Or also mechanical things that give a release, like an explosion or something being shot, a crash of some sort.

Candice Wu 48:45

So when we’re working well, with all this, we can remind ourselves that we’re using this anger with the intentions of healing, and reclaiming our right to feel worthy and protected and check in with what feels right to you.

Candice Wu 49:00

Some people worried that if they think these things like if they’re angry with their friend, and they want to use their imagination, to work through that anger, that they’ll actually be sending that energy to their friend. I don’t believe that exactly.

Candice Wu 49:17

I think that if you’re having the intention of healing, and the anger is there, you can imagine something and let yourself receive the healing from it. Because we usually land in a different place at the end, we usually land in some sort of compassion, or stepping away at a healthy distance. So it’s actually more corrosive to yourself if you leave that anger inside of you.

Candice Wu 49:45

Let’s get into what do you do with anger, when you have it! How can you develop your capacity to feel anger? So that it’s not so threatening if you find it so. And what are ways to release it so that you’re not living with it? And letting it build up inside of you over years, and years, and into your family generational line as well.

Candice Wu 50:07

So personally, the way I like to work with anger is with my healing coach, or a therapist or with myself, and sometimes friends, away from the situation that it is required in, unless it’s really needed in a situation in that very moment.

Candice Wu 50:26

My goal for myself is to have the right amount of that energy come up when it’s warranted, and not loaded up from the past, so if something really threatening happens to me that I can respond accordingly. But if someone in my life that I love does something that just triggers me that it also responds lovingly, but work with any energy of anger that came up in me, aside from that, and a lot of that work with myself then, is in my imagination, and with my body, and what I sense in my body, the sensations and emotions and the impulses that want to come through.

Candice Wu 51:08

So just some basic tips, what can we do with anger, stay present. And notice it. If we let it build up, then at some point, it becomes an explosion. It’s like shaking up a pop bottle. And if we let a little out at a time, then bottle doesn’t explode. But if we just let like, build it up over a lifetime, and open the cap, all the way just blows, just like the story at the beginning.

Candice Wu 51:36

So staying present, noticing it becoming better at noticing where in your body do you feel anger, when it does arise, work with the anger with a trained professional, as I said, or work with yourself to release some of that charge before you take action in a relationship. That is if you can. Because sometimes the protective energy has to happen immediately and in present time. So it’s about acting and not reacting.

Candice Wu 52:05

You might decide that you want it differently for yourself, and you’re okay with a reaction or that’s okay in different situations, that’s entirely up to you and your responsibility with anger. Working with it with yourself, as I mentioned, and not taking it up with anyone might be helpful especially if you recognize it’s a trigger or something incomplete in the past. Use the safety of your imagination to support you in the release of the energy rather than using it in the situation, especially if it’s a loving one. And also, solve your part of the problem, take responsibility for what you need to change to support yourself, or to take responsibility in a situation. And if you have hurt someone with anger, then take responsibility for that or address it and repair it.

Candice Wu 52:57

So let’s jump into a few more tangible ways to work with anger.

Candice Wu 53:01

One is notice where you feel angry in your body. And when you feel it, notice if it feels tolerable or not. If it feels manageable, then stay with it. If it doesn’t, then take a break, sense into something pleasant or look outside at the trees around yourself so the energy isn’t too intense. And if you want to come back to it, and pendulate, you can find a resource on Pendulation, that is sensing back and forth into a pleasant and unpleasant experience on the episode about emotions at CandiceWu.com/emotions. And there, you can also find a podcast on resourcing, that you can resource safety and come back to safety if something feels so intense. And what I found is that we can power through the intensity we can feel through really tough feelings if we’re practiced at them, or if we push ourselves. But that’s not always helpful or useful. And if you resource yourself with strength, and take breaks, even when you don’t feel overwhelmed, it can make all of the anger move a lot easier. All of that energy of a fight situation, the sympathetic nervous system can just fake that tension easier.

Candice Wu 54:30

So as you notice the anger, you can notice the sensations in your body and be free. Let yourself feel if there’s any heat, any movement, an impulse that you have, or a picture in your mind, even color. If you notice in your vision a color, or color comes over you. And if you have the impulse to move, follow what wants to happen, but do so slowly.

Candice Wu 55:00

You might notice in your arms or legs, that there’s tension. Yes, let that tension happen even more. So you’re letting yourself know it’s safe to be here with that tension and unsafe to feel angry, safe to follow that movement. And of course, take a break.

Candice Wu 55:17

Other things you can do with your anger are, you can punch a pillow very slowly, or your couch and just feel the sensation of what that’s like, you can push against the wall and feel your palms, feel the power and strength in your arms. You can do push-ups and push into the ground. But while you’re doing it, feel the energy, feel the heat or feel any sensation that the body has about your anger.

Candice Wu 55:46

You can draw up whatever you’re angry about and picture what your instinct wants to do with it and embody it in whatever way you can just very consciously, stay with yourself, stay with your body.

Candice Wu 56:02

So I’m very generally speaking on how to let the energy of anger do its thing, and find its way to completion, how to notice it. And if this is helpful to you follow along in the healing experiential that I’ll put out later this week, so that you can get more support and feel through it in a deeper way, in a more guided way.

Candice Wu 56:26

Another thing you can do with anger is notice where the anger is in your body and picture it, as a figure, object or color. And see if you can invite it forward, look at it and ask it what it wants you to know. And what it wants you to express. You can imagine how it wants to express it. If it wants to fight or scream or blow something up. Just imagine and let yourself feel through the energy of what happens.

Candice Wu 56:56

You can rip paper just to get the arms moving and to express that energy of anger. You can stomp your feet or imagine a scream. Let the body do as much as you feel is manageable. But slowly, titrate it so that it’s not going too fast. Because that way the body has a chance to integrate it. That way the body syncs up with what your mind already knows. Your mind knows you’re safe but your body needs to get there too. Because when it’s in the energy of fight, it doesn’t really feel safe.

Candice Wu 57:32

My partner shared with me that there are rage rooms. There’s a company and maybe many companies out there that have rooms where you can go in and break things. So you can have 15 minutes on the clock. And a lot of people that experienced it say that it leads them to feel happy and exhausted, but that they are relieved of some of that anger and tension inside of them.

Candice Wu 58:02

Some people also said that this is controversial because it leads to other behaviors. And that may be a fear of yours as you move through some of the anger with movement, or with pushing or with the desire to punch. And if you do that slowly, with a pillow, you’re not really hurting somebody. But if you’re worried about that, causing you to become more aggressive later, I would talk to a trained professional and work with someone to see what’s going on there or to support you in that.

Candice Wu 58:34

But what I found in my work with people and myself is that I end up feeling great and calm. And it’s not something I want to do because that makes sense to me. Because the energy of the anger completes itself. It’s not that it stays there. But if it does, it’s likely that we weren’t very embodied when we were going through it.

Candice Wu 58:57

So as you sense into what your body needs to support the anger to move through, see if you can take off the social appropriateness lens, and you’re not going to do these things in real life. You’re not going to blow up a building, at least please don’t. I hope you do not. But know that these are things you’re not going to be doing in your outer world. But you’re doing in the safety of being with your therapist or healer or coach that knows trauma work, that knows Somatic work, or that you’re doing it with yourself, and you feel like you can help yourself navigate it.

Candice Wu 58:57

So if you’re going to a rage room, and you’re using an axe, to crush everything, everything in the room, and you love it, great! But make sure you stay embodied. That means, to feel your feet in your arms and notice what you’re swinging at. And see the results, seeing the result of what you picture in your mind or the real result happening can support the discharge of the fight response so that it’s over. And that’s the point.

Candice Wu 1:00:11

The point of it is to let the energy discharge and to help your body feel safer, healthier, more powerful. It’s not to train yourself to do this in your outer world, in your relationships, or in your job. It’s not that at all.

Candice Wu 1:00:26

So that’s where you can remind yourself that it’s okay to express anger, whatever way that your imagination wants to. Whatever way that the impulse wants it to happen. Because you’re not really going to do it in the actual real life.

Candice Wu 1:00:43

So if you’re experiencing anger, and it’s challenging, or you’re numb, and you need support with this, feel free to reach out to me. I love working with people on reclaiming their anger, reclaiming their voice, their ability to feel powerful in themselves. And it’s quite fun. Because when you do it with someone else, you can discharge the energy in a playful way. It can be like playing like we’re wild animals and tigers and growling at each other. Or we can do a role play and experience speaking up and shouting the way you want it to or saying words in a stern way to create your boundaries. And that can be incredibly empowering. You may never use those ways of communicating more expressing in real life. But to be able to is another story. It’s just like going to a karate class and being able to learn how to fight, to use your body and let your muscles know how to do that. But then walk into the world and be incredibly peaceful with your life or know how to protect yourself if you need to, but maybe you never need to. And it’s not something you’re just going to use out in the world to hurt people.

Candice Wu 1:01:56

You can also reach out to me and share with me how you are doing on this journey, what you’re experiencing? And check out the healing experiential this week that will relate to working with your anger. We’re going to do some Lion’s breath, which is a Yoga technique combined with some Somatic Experiencing work of letting anger release out the mouth and picturing a scream.

Candice Wu 1:02:20

We’re going to work with a person, a relationship that you feel anger in and what to do with that and will work with sensing into your anger in your body and asking it what it needs. Letting it have what it needs, in your imagination, and in your own space of safety, where you can completely embody it slowly in a way that allows it to complete.

Candice Wu 1:02:47

Thank you so much for listening in today and engaging with this material. If you have questions or comments, again reach out to me. If you’re not sure if you need support, I would encourage you to take up a free consultation of 20 minutes from me. And we can talk about what you might need, what you want for yourself and if it might be a right fit to work together. And I have plenty of awesome practitioners out there that I refer to. So if I’m not the right fit, I will likely have an idea for you.

Candice Wu 1:03:21

As we close the podcast today about anger. I want to remind you of the story that I shared in the beginning and wish you all the sense of power, play, and creative joy that you were designed to feel and that anger was designed to support you in protecting. I am just hoping that you find your own life, aliveness, and brilliance and know that anger, allowing yourself to use anger as a tool is one of the most powerful ways to step into your true self and be yourself and totally love yourself.

Candice Wu 1:04:03

So wishing all of you can find that true love for yourself and look forward to tuning in with you on the healing experiential. You can find them all at CandiceWu.com/anger.

Candice Wu 1:04:17

And if you would like to tune into more podcasts you can find the whole collection of healing experiential topics and interviews at CandiceWu.com/podcast and also join into my Embody Community on Facebook and my bi-monthly newsletter at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:04:38

Sending you my love and I’ll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00
Hello, thanks for joining me today. This is a special healing experiential, working with anger or working with energy in the body that you want to release. You can listen to the full podcast about anger, as well as check out the other healing experientials that are offered within this podcast at CandiceWu.com/anger.

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.

We've been talking about anger and how to reclaim the ability to use anger in our lives, where it's appropriate, and where we can reclaim the ability to use that, then we also reclaim power, trust, confidence, and the ability to assert what we want and need in our lives. As I mentioned in the full podcast about anger, that it's best to work with a trained professional who's trauma informed, but these are a few practices that you can do on your own, and just a reminder to stay gentle with yourself and to take a break and pendulate or resource yourself when you need that.

If you're unsure of what I'm talking about, I have recorded audio experiences that you can use to practice this. You can access those healing experientials at CandiceWu.com/emotions. There's a resourcing safety and pendulation. The thing about using both of those tools is that the anger or the intense energy can just move so much easier. If you don't mind really intense experiences, that's okay, you can try to power through, but I don't recommend it because we can move these emotions and energies through with much more ease.

Today, we're going to work with lions breath, which is on old yogic technique, but it also aligns with working with screaming and releasing the energy of a scream or energy of the need to protect ourselves that can come with anger, but that can come with overwhelm or the need to assert your boundaries. The thing about working with just one technique is that you might not be feeling the anger or this might not be the appropriate technique for you, for your anger to be expressed, it might want something completely different. So, you can also check out the other two healing experience that are following this episode, which is working with anger when you are angry with a person, anger in relationship, working with that anger so that it's a little less intense before you actually approach a relationship if you do, and the third healing experience of working with the anger and seeing what it wants, in all the ways that anger might express itself or the protective energy might want to be used through the body. So, that may be one where you can tune in and sense what your body specifically needs.

But today, we will work with lions breath, which I think is really fun. So, let's jump in. I invite you to begin by sensing and word. Notice your breath just as it is, any emotions you feel what's happening inside your body right now, and before we jump into what might be intense or unpleasant sense into something that feels good, whether that's looking around, and looking at something that feels pleasurable to look at or imagining a person, place or a thing that makes you feel safe.

Let that wash over your body as if you're feeling it right now, tuning into that connection with a pleasurable thing or the thing that makes you feel safe, and this will be a resource for today.

When you're ready, recall an experience where you felt angry, irritated, violated or were you needed to protect yourself. I would recommend choosing something that's light to medium, depending on your own experience with working with your own anger. If you feel more experienced and more embodied, choose what's right for you, and you may go for something deeper, but if this is new to try something that's mildly irritating. This could be a situation where you wanted to speak up but didn't or you wanted to say no to someone or tell them what you felt or make them stop doing something that you didn't like or any situation that you just got triggered, and felt upset and angry.

As you imagine that situation, notice that you're here in the present moment in your space, listening to my voice, and that you can stop and take a break anytime and sense into your resources. Now, when you're ready, take a deep breath in and fill up your lungs as if you're going to scream, and when you exhale, release the breath really loud or as loud as you can in your space right now, long and stick your tongue out at the same timeaas far out as it goes, it'll sound something like this, haahhhhhh.

And let your tongue stick out for as long and as far out as it can go as that energy of anger or irritation or expression comes out. As my teacher called it, the red energy. Feel the muscles in the face working and feel the breath moving through your body, and repeat this as many times as you want to. And the next time you do it, add in your hands. If you bring your palms face up as if they're forward from your body, like, you're saying, “Oh, not me or stop.” The next time you breathe out with the lions breath, use your fingers by tensing them up and bringing them to as if they look like claws like lions claws, and feel the muscles in the arms and fingers work and activate. Notice anything sensation that comes up or through the arms.

Some people feel tingling, heat, tension move. Some people feel tears or a huge release, some people want more. And while you're doing this, you can imagine the situation that you brought up, and you can imagine the kind of scream or release that might feel completely satisfying in that situation. If you're in a space, you can't make much noise, that's okay, because you can imagine in your mind the volume or the kind of roar or growl that would be needed for your body to feel satisfied in this situation that you're recalling, in this moment right now, the impulse of your body, and this anger. You can even imagine you're a tiger or a lion or some animal that's growing and showing its teeth or that you're a person and you're screaming your head off, but imagine the impact that you have on the situation as you've screamed or as you've growled, and given the energy, sent the energy out of back off. I mean it.

Feel everything that's happening in your face, in your throat, your jaws, your teeth, your eyes, your fingers, and your arms, and allow whatever you're feeling to move, evolve and be felt, and whenever you need a break, release your hands, come back to normal breath, open your eyes if they're closed, sense the spacer and then come back to your resource, the thing that felt safe, person, place or thing or just looking at something in your space that feels pleasant to look at, and let yourself take that break.

And if you choose to go back and see if there's more tune into the thing that you felt angry about that irritated you, and just check to see the intensity level of this emotion now, is it the same? Has it changed? And if you want to if there's a desire from the body from the inside, to do more, you can play with it. Repeat this as many times as you'd like to, and check in with yourself often to see if you're feeling overwhelmed, and if you are, take a break, and if you sense this, the moment before you're overwhelmed, it's a great idea to take a break there. Just to let this energy move through with more ease with more lightness, and remember to keep a level of playfulness with this. Imagine you're just playing with being an animal and reclaiming your wild self, but at the same time using as much ferocity and protective energy as you desire, and practice that you might use a mirror to see what your face looks like and to see if you can actually scare yourself, and when you feel complete with this, go ahead and go back to your resource. Sense what brings you safety or look at something pleasant and feel that all over again in your body.

I'll give a little bit of silence here as usual in the healing experiential so that you can work with it a little more if you want or feel free to click on the show notes where the healing experience begins, with the directions begin and do the process over again. You'll know when this experiential ends when you hear the concluding music of the podcast, and as you move through more with yourself, if you choose to, feel free to sense my presence with you in the room, sence my support and me cheering you on and being there with you.

Candice Wu 0:00
I'm so glad you're joining me today. Today's healing experience is working with anger when you have anger in a relationship or you feel angry with someone. This is part of a series around anger and reclaiming the ability to use the energy of anger, to feel empowered. The full episode is at CandiceWu.com/anger.

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 is the second healing experience that's connected with this episode. The first one is screaming and using the lion's breath or growling using your voice, and the third one that will be coming out after this is sensing what your anger specifically needs to be expressed and to release. Just like the first healing experience where I recommended that you use the resourcing and pendulation exercises, before this, I would recommend that now. You can find the guided resourcing and pendulation audios at CandiceWu.com/emotions. Now, let's jump into it.

When we feel anger in a relationship, it's typically that something got triggered in us, something in us doesn't feel okay, maybe we feel violated or our feelings are hurt or that we have boundaries and they were crossed. Sometimes, that something that really happened in the relationship and it went too far, and sometimes its internal where this situation resembles a past experience or an experience that someone in our lineage has experienced where viscerally we feel upset, where we feel angry, irritated or like, heat is rushing up to our heads and arms, and our fists are tight or shoulders become tensed. That's the red energy as my Somatic Experiencing teacher would call it, Maggie Klein. And whatever you call it, if it's related to anger, if it's a fear, whatever it is, we can work with it before we step into our relationship or before we approach the person that is our loved one or an acquaintance or a friend, if we choose to.

I recommend working with this anger or protective energy with yourself, with a therapist or a healing coach, somebody who is trauma informed or can work with the body sensations around anger. If your practiced with yourself, you can also work with yourself or follow along in this guided healing experience, and of course, I still recommend working with someone even if you're using this audio. At anytime that you feel overwhelmed, like always, I recommend taking a break, looking around your space so that you can orient yourself to here and now. Also, feel your feet or touch your body so that your body feels its container. And speaking of the container, let's start with that, just take a moment and touch your body from head to toe. Feel the sensation of your hands on your body, just feel that you're here, that you have all of your body here with you.

And when you are ready to, just release your hands and notice how you're feeling inside. Feel free to close your eyes if you'd like to or look down or keep them open. It's up to you.

Now, when you're ready, invite yourself to picture a relationship where you feel anger. This could be isolated to a moment where you felt angry or irritated with someone or irritated in an interaction or it could be a situation you feel angry almost all the time or more frequently. If this is your first time working with anger in this way, I recommend just choosing a moment that's more mild or momentary in a relationship that's somewhat safe.

To ask you, picture this person and the situation that got you angry or feeling violated or protective. Notice the person and place them as far away as you need to so that you feel safety, that may be across the room in your mind or maybe five blocks away, a mile away out and outer space. Just see what you need right now.

When you're ready, invite that person in your mind to come a little bit closer, so you just feel a bit of the sensation of irritation or anger or whatever comes up now.

Notice we're in your body you feel any anger, irritation, heat, tension, all of that's the protective energy of the body. You might notice tension in your jaw or teeth, and your eyebrows, constriction in your eyes or tension in your fists, like your hands clenched up. Check in with your shoulders and your arms, and also your legs and hips where a lot of that fight energy is stored. Notice your ankles and your feet, and any impulse of the body. And also, notice your voice. There's any desire to say something or to scream or express anything.

If you're feeling numb, or nothing's happening, even though you know you are angry with this person, then I would recommend taking a break, doing some self-touch again and sensing into your space, orienting. If you're tuned into your anger, notice what your anger wants to do. Follow any movement or the tension that exists, so, if you feel tension in your arms, let it tense up more. Is it exaggerated by many degrees, what would it do? And this doesn't have to be rational or appropriate, but just see what your body would want to do to express this anger. Luckily, this is not real life, and I do not recommend you doing this in real life with this person, but that you get to do this and the safety of your private space, and tuned in with me right now. No one else has to know what came up for you, what you truly want to say or do, but really, it's what your body and your instincts and the animal body in you want do, because your higher wisdom and higher self might want to do something different.

But for right now, we're making way for the instinctual part of us that wants to have a fight or wants to yell at the person or tell them what we feel, and if you are in this private space where you can do that, I invite you to let your body follow through with a movement that wants to have, maybe it's clawing a pillow, maybe it's pushing against a wall or shaking a pillow, to imagine shaking the person into waking up or hearing you. If your body wants to scream something or say something to them, you can imagine that in your mind while saying the words out loud.

So, take some time to sense what your body wants here, and don't worry, because if this is new to you, this might not be that easy, might take some time before it opens up or the next movement happens or for you even to notice, “Hh, there's a little tension in my shoulder.” And if I tense that up more or let it happen, what happens now? Still allow whatever's happening to happen, and give voice to whatever anger is there. You might say out loud: I feel angry with you. I feel angry with you because or don't do that again or you can't treat me that way. However, your anger wants to express itself or be known, allow that to happen now, nd feel my presence here in support of you with whatever wants to come through, it doesn't matter what it is without any filter, because you're not going to say this out loud to this person in this particular way, so, you can be free to express it how you want to now.

And take a break, anytime you need to. Notice your surroundings and feel your body with some self-touch, feeling your feet, your legs and noticing any sensation that might be moving through any emotion.

And for today, just taking a little check to notice this person again that you feel some anger or irritation with and check to see where you are now. Is your level of irritation or anger different? Is that the same? What's left over or what amount? Feel free to continue to work with it if you'd like to or just stay with sensing into your body now, resting, taking this break so that your body can integrate what already happened.

It's really good to let your body have the time to absorb and to feel into safety, to feel that your present here and now, and you can even shift your mind to something that makes you feel good or like yourself, an activity or an object in the room just to give a little boost to the pleasure in your body, and take a moment to honor yourself. Thank yourself for doing this practice, and in some cases, having the courage to go there, and in some cases, having the courage to not go too far and just stay in the pleasure or safety by just dipping in and coming out of it like we have today.

I'll stay on a little longer with some silence as you sense into the present moment and the space that you're sitting in, feeling into any pleasure, noticing the difference and changes in your body, if any. And at the end of the silence, you'll hear the music that concludes this healing experiential.

Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll leave you with sensing in and allowing yourself to feel my presence with you.

Candice Wu 0:00
Hello and welcome back. This is the third healing experiential connected with the episode about anger and how to embrace and reclaim your anger, for confidence, power boosting and being in your alignment with yourself, being in your full power. You can find the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/anger.

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 cocreative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Just like with the other two experientials in this series, I encourage you to have worked with inner resourcing and pendulation. You can find those healing experientials in a guided format just like this experience on the podcast series about emotions, and that's at CandiceWu.com/emotions. If you go to that site and scroll down, you'll see the three healing experiences that connect with it and one of them is Resourcing Your Inner Strength and Safety and the other is about pendulation, about moving from pleasant to unpleasant experience.

I recommend having that ability so that when you're moving through anger, or the emotions and sensations that come up around anger, that you can resource yourself with safety, so help your body through it, and come back to a feeling of safety so that the anger can move through with more ease, that it's not as an intense experience as it needs to be.

If you like the intensity of it, no problem, that's just fine. It's just that it's not always as easy for the nervous system to integrate, if you do it that way. So I recommend taking breaks by pendulating, when you feel overwhelmed, or before you even feel that way, just take a break, take a pause, look around or do that in a resourcing technique that you have built for yourself.

So now let's jump into this experience.

This is working with any anger that you have inside. So with whatever situation that draws up anger, irritation, rage, or an intensity of a protective feeling, you can work with that here. In this experience we'll be using the tools of visualization, and embodiment and letting the body move, the sensations and emotions through, as well as talking with the anger that's in you and see what it wants to express. So this sort of talking with this part of you might require some practice, it may not come very easily at first and it's also not a thinking process. It's more like, you ask and you sense, you sense into that feeling and allow it to show you what it needs. So let's jump in.

Make sure you have ample time, I would suggest at least 20 minutes so that you have some time to integrate whatever happens in this experience and to also come down from any intensity, if there is that, and to let yourself have some rest before moving on to the next thing.

Let's start with a little grounding. So just take a few moments to notice your breathing just as it is right now. Allow yourself to release the stress of the day, release any work, anything that's weighing on your heart. Let go of any plans or future thoughts and feel in your body where your breath reaches and where it may feel blocked. And as you feel inside, sense any emotions that you're having. Notice your body's temperature. Sense and visualize where there's any tension or holding, as well as any other sensations or desire to move. You might notice tingly sensations, aching, a warmth. Noticing anything that's there.

Now I invite you to call up one piece of anger that's living inside of you, one experience or situation or relationship that you're in that brings up a feeling of anger. It also might be irritation, frustration, rage. As you sense into this feeling, you might have an image come to your mind of a situation you're involved with or the thing that brought this feeling on. And allow yourself to just picture it if there is one, without thinking too much about it and if there isn't an image, that's okay. Whatever you're sensing now, feel downward into your body, feel into your heart, your gut, your hips, your legs, ankles, feel into your shoulders, and arms, as well as your hands, neck and jaw, your face and eyes and just sense where there's any tension, any holding or tightness. And whatever's happening if you feel muscles tightening, allow them to tighten. If you feel heat or tingliness allow that to happen.

Notice where in your body, there's any sensation or emotion, where's the energy located? And if there's a place that the anger resides in a larger way, sense that space. Sense any colors or textures that come with it. And as you breathe, let your breath honor it with a gentle compassion and witness.

And now I invite you to draw the energy of this anger or irritation, frustration or rage draw that energy forward as if you're inviting it in front of you to look at. And as you look at it, notice what it looks like. Be open to any image that you sense if it's an object, person, color, a part of your younger self, whatever it looks like. And with lots of love and awareness, ask it: “What would you like me to know?” And listen to whatever it tells you or shows you without any judgment or filtering. Pay close attention to the little whispers of anything it says, or if it's screaming at you.

What do you want me to know? And with whatever it's sharing with you acknowledge it, take it in, and honor it. Just listen.

And if there's more, just pause this recording and stay with it or take a break anytime. And if you're ready to go on, ask it: “What do you need to release?” How would you like to express your anger and let it show you or share with you however it wants to express itself, in whatever ways it needs to show you the amount of anger it feels.

And as you see, however it expresses itself through screaming, throwing things, or even in silly ways like stabbing forks into pillows, or whatever it wants, stay with it and feel in your body any movement or sensation that's happening. Just let your body follow any movement that it has, any movement that it wants. If it's following along with that anger, stay with yourself and feel what's happening inside of you as you continue to picture how this anger wants to express itself. And see for this anger, exactly the kind of outcome it wants to have.

See the results of the expression of this anger, irritation, frustration or rage without any need to be socially appropriate, just whatever wants to come through in your imagination, in your feeling sense. The beauty of it is that even though it's not real, it's in your visualization, in your imagination, your psyche doesn't really know the difference in terms of how it feels to the nervous system and the soul, and so it can release all of what comes with it, little at a time.

So when you need to take just a pause or a break, notice your breath. Just release that for a moment and come out and look into your space and just notice anything that looks pleasant around you. Notice your feet and give your toes a little wiggle. Feel any shift in the body as you just take a moment's break.

And you can take as long as you want here to take a break. Just feel free to pause the recording if you'd like. But when you are ready, feel free to come back to this anger, irritation, rage or frustration. And just check back in and ask it: “What else do you need?” Just listen and let it tell you or show you.

You're just being the anger whisperer and giving it some love so that you can be with yourself and that you can let this feeling move through. See anything else that it needs and whatever it tells you, see if you can give that to this part of you, in your imagination or in your body and see how it's feeling and notice how you're feeling in your body.

You may feel like taking another break or going in for another round and just seeing what else it needs. But if you're ready now to step away and close, think this part of you, think the anger, rage or frustration. Notice where it's at now and what's left over, or what it wants now. And honor it for exactly where it is at the moment.

Now come back to yourself and take your hands and just do a little bit of self-touch, giving yourself a hug or placing your hands on your heart or touching your legs and giving them a squeeze. Whatever feels good to your body at the moment. And as you become aware of the space you're in and what's around you, attune yourself to something that smells or looks pleasant.

Come back to here and now and allow whatever's happening in your body to continue to happen.

And now I invite you to give your body some quiet time to rest. Integrate what's happened without any thinking but just being, and after this quiet time you'll hear the music at the end to let you know that this recording is over.

And I look forward to seeing you next time and as always, if you need support, please reach out to your healer or therapist or feel free to reach out to me, and now I'll leave you with that quiet time.