Candice Wu 0:00

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

Candice Wu 0:42

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

Candice Wu 1:17

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

Candice Wu 2:19

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

Candice Wu 2:58

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

Candice Wu 4:00

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

Candice Wu 5:00

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

Candice Wu 6:18

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

Candice Wu 7:29

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

Candice Wu 8:04

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

Candice Wu 9:08

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

Candice Wu 9:56

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

Candice Wu 11:15

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

Candice Wu 12:19

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

Candice Wu 13:17

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

Candice Wu 14:18

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

Candice Wu 15:36

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

Candice Wu 17:08

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

Candice Wu 17:43

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

Candice Wu 18:20

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

Candice Wu 19:36

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

Candice Wu 20:41

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

Candice Wu 22:11

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

Candice Wu 22:46

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

Candice Wu 23:38

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

Candice Wu 24:34

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

Candice Wu 25:48

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

Candice Wu 26:48

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

Candice Wu 28:02

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

Candice Wu 28:43

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

Candice Wu 30:08

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

Candice Wu 31:09

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

Candice Wu 32:30

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

Candice Wu 33:43

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

Candice Wu 34:50

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

Candice Wu 36:12

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

Candice Wu 37:03

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

Candice Wu 38:07

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

Candice Wu 38:54

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

Candice Wu 39:49

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

Candice Wu 41:00

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

Candice Wu 42:12

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

Candice Wu 42:55

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

Candice Wu 44:13

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

Candice Wu 45:31

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

Candice Wu 46:53

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

Candice Wu 47:44

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

Candice Wu 49:18

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

Candice Wu 50:22

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

Candice Wu 51:43

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

Candice Wu 52:04

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

Candice Wu 52:23

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

Candice Wu 54:01

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

Candice Wu 55:03

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

Candice Wu 56:08

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

Candice Wu 57:04

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

Candice Wu 57:46

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

Candice Wu 58:40

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

Candice Wu 59:43

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