Embodied Trauma Healing: From Science to Soul and Spirit – EP32

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is about the science, soul, and spirit behind Trauma and Trauma Healing. How our animal body responds to threat. How the whole bodies function and our experience are impacted by the nervous systems fight and flight responses, and the connection of the body to spiritual aspects of Trauma. It will be followed by one body-centered Trauma Healing experiential to guide you in your self-healing process.

Candice Wu 0:11

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 0:17

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 0:28

Today’s episode is brought to you by my supporters on Patreon. I’m really grateful for those of you who feel inspired and touched by the podcasts and the work that I’m doing and have decided that they want to support with a financial contribution. If you found this podcast helpful, I’d invite you to check out whether you’d like to contribute on Patreon. If you contribute at a certain level, you can receive a personalized healing meditation from me based on whatever it is that you’re wanting, desiring or going through in your life right now, that can help you in your self-healing or empowerment, whatever your intention is. All of the money goes to supporting the behind the scenes production of these podcasts and other experiences that I offer. And check it out at CandiceWu.com/patreon.

Candice Wu 1:47

Before we get to the episode, just a little update on me. I am happily back in Michigan and just thrilled to be back to see family and friends and to experience a little bit of the first world again. I just heard that people in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia are experiencing earthquakes and possible tsunami coming up, and I’m hoping that everyone there stay safe. And finding it very interesting that I felt so stressed while I was there in some ways, and that I’m not there during this earthquake and tsunami, but had my own inner earthquakes and inner tidal waves, so to say, of spiritual stuff going on, spiritual turbulence and crisis at different times.

Candice Wu 2:32

Now that I’ve been back here, I’ve been exploring the idea of shifting from alignment to the biorhythms of the body, what we believe is truth and what our senses are, and all of the trauma and soul debris that’s here to light rhythms where it’s beyond what I can even really comprehend, actually. But we’re touching into other energies, that brings us closer to a truth of who we are, but still staying embodied with that.

Candice Wu 3:05

If you’re wondering, like, “What the heck is she talking about?” Sometimes I wonder that as well. But something in me is resonating with it, and understanding it at some level.

Candice Wu 3:18

So I’ll be here in Michigan for a couple of months. And looking forward to the Women’s Retreat in October that I’m holding in Zion National Park, Utah, called the Soul Body Women’s Retreat. And it’s going to be really beautiful. And if you haven’t checked that out, feel free to at my website.

Candice Wu 3:36

So that’s all I have for today about my updates. Oh, other than one last thing, I found out that my other grandma died the other day. And if you’ve been following on my podcasts, you probably know that my grandma in Hong Kong, my maternal grandmother passed away only about a month and a half ago. And here now is my other grandma.

Candice Wu 3:59

And it’s an interesting experience, a lot of transition is going on in my life already. A lot of ending, a new beginning and shifting as I mentioned, the turbulence before. It’s all starting to settle down a bit as I’m back in the Midwest, but my grandma, so I want to just honor her as well. I probably won’t be doing a whole podcast on her. My experience with this relationship is a bit different. But it’s just an interesting time.

Candice Wu 4:33

And I know a lot of you out there are going through very rough times as well. It’s been a rough year, and a lot of planetary action is happening. So stay on your path, and continue to be gentle to yourself, if you’re going through things that are hard, as I’m trying to remind myself of. So let’s now jump into the episode.

Candice Wu 5:00

For about 25 years of my life, I didn’t realize that I was experiencing Trauma, the ongoing kind. The kind that affected my daily life and permeated every thought and belief, action and movement and my body, how my body was functioning.

Candice Wu 5:16

When I first started therapy in my 20s, it was because I was experiencing repetitive situations where I was in the same conflict or felt the same kind of upset in relationships. Even some sort of disagreement with my phone company could bring me to tears. And I needed help. At that time Talk therapy was just the right thing to get me started, I had no idea that my childhood could affect my life, my current life in my adulthood to that degree. And it was just fascinating to take that apart and look at what those dynamics were still happening in my life.

Candice Wu 5:57

At some point, it felt overwhelming. I felt like I couldn’t make the changes that were talked about in therapy, or that the emotions that were coming up were just so much and the same things kept happening.

Candice Wu 6:12

Well, Talk therapy was incredibly helpful to have a supportive person. Someone that I trusted, someone I could bring anything to. It also didn’t seem to go deep enough for me.

Candice Wu 6:23

It was when I began seeing an EMDR therapist that I realized I had trauma. And that I needed a whole body experience of healing. What began in relationship and in the body, needed healing through the body and through relationship.

Candice Wu 6:42

When we experience early situations that are overwhelming, our nervous system isn’t prepared to handle it. We need the co-regulation of a caretaker, an adult or parents that are compassionate and attuned. And because it didn’t have that in that way, when the way that I needed it, it affected my entire nervous system. My nervous system just couldn’t calm down and feel safe.

Candice Wu 7:07

I had the thought to myself, “How come I just couldn’t be calm?” You know, when people say, “Just calm down,” or “let it go,” I couldn’t just accept things and release them, they just seem to be pervasive and come back again. If we could do those things, then we would, wouldn’t we?

Candice Wu 7:24

At this point, I’ve come to a place in my healing, where I have access to those tools. To just let it go or to be calm. And I can do that because most of the trauma in my system has been completed and I still find more pieces. But I have different tools to work with it and move through it and come back to calm and safety.

Candice Wu 7:46

I’ve realized that our nervous systems, our entire physiology, are both set to protect and to grow. We are magnetized towards situations that have been a struggle for us, ones that are incomplete that we want to find a new solution and renegotiate so that we can take the wisdom, leave the rest behind, in a sense, digest the experience and find our empowerment with it, find our ability to protect ourselves and to be capable in the world.

Candice Wu 8:18

We also want to protect. And what we do, I find is that we protect in the same way that has been familiar to a period of survival in our lives that our nervous system isn’t realizing is over. And so we continue to use the same way of protection of the past, which was very helpful at one time, and adaptive and brilliant, but that now using it still becomes a bit dysfunctional or stressful event, it becomes a suffering.

Candice Wu 8:51

And because that tool of protection in that specific way isn’t helpful for the present moment, it can be experienced as self-sabotage or ruining what’s happening now in the present. So we have these two parts of us, the parts that want to expand and grow and resolve something, even if it’s been a long time struggle and the parts of us that need to protect, find safety, and steady ourselves, balance and back and forth action.

Candice Wu 9:22

Shifting from realizing that our bodies in protection mode and has a reason for it, is a really compassionate way to look at Trauma, or even any aspect of why we do what we do. I used to fall into more of a critical and judgmental as well as shaming way of treating myself and can still do that to parts of me or fall into that at times but now looking at how our body adapts yet also wants to move towards the healing, I can find a lot more compassion for myself.

Candice Wu 9:59

Even statements like “Why can’t I do this?” Or, “Why can’t I walk away in these situations?” Or statements like “I should have done this.” For example, “I should have said no,” or “I should have told them what I thought” or “why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep feeling this way?” Or, “Why do I keep yelling at my partner when I want to be calm? Why do I keep -?” Fill in the blank.

Candice Wu 10:25

All of those are ways that we criticize and judge what’s going on in our system and actually stop us from the healing process. So when we look towards Trauma Healing, from a body-centered perspective, one that links up with energy, mind, and spirit, it brings a lot of compassion because we see how the body needed to protect in a certain way. And that thought of “I should have said No, and I couldn’t. Why didn’t I or I should have done x,” we can realize where that came from. Because saying no, might have been too dangerous or doing the other thing that you wanted to do might have been dangerous or risky at the time, in a past time. And it’s just waiting to find some sort of completion and safety now.

Candice Wu 11:13

I will explain this a little deeper as this conversation goes on. But let’s begin with Trauma. What is Trauma?

Candice Wu 11:22

Trauma isn’t just an overwhelming experience that we have, or something that’s scary, or something that you find scary that you think others would also find scary. It’s how each person individually and personally response to it as well as how we respond to it as a collective. So Trauma is any overwhelming experience combined with fear or terror that needed more resource than you had at the time and is incomplete.

Candice Wu 11:53

So if there’s something that wanted to happen in your mind, like mentally you wanted something else, or in the body instinctually, in our animal body that didn’t get to happen in that situation in the past, then that’s Trauma.

Candice Wu 12:12

There’s a severity level and a spectrum of that severity, whether it’s like a smaller thing or a very big experience that overwhelmed you a lot. So anything that the body perceives as threatening and then how you responded to it or how your nervous system responded to it, is the key component of it being defined as Trauma.

Candice Wu 12:35

Many therapists and healers define a couple of types of Trauma. Small “T” and large “T” Trauma for example, and large “T” meaning, with a capital “T” are including things like accidents or being spanked, being raped, physical abuse, serious illness of a loved one, pregnancy and birth can be a large “T” Trauma, macro aggression, terrorism, natural disasters, so big incidences and usually one time incidences or a couple of times.

Candice Wu 13:10

When it becomes more frequent and ongoing, it’s considered small “T” Trauma. And that’s where it can be so pervasive that you don’t even notice it’s happening. For example, if you experienced neglect as a child, or abandonment or emotional abuse that was repetitive and the only thing you knew, feeling unwanted, racism, and ageism, because it’s so prevalent in our society, discrimination, and microaggression.

Candice Wu 13:39

All of those are small “T” Traumas. And it doesn’t mean it’s a lesser trauma. In fact, it can be more challenging to heal from. It can be even more overwhelming to our system. Because it’s pervasive, ongoing, and in that way cumulative. It’s almost layer upon layer every single day. It has more complexity then, because it’s tied in with almost every aspect of our lives and all of our belief sets and all of how the body responds to the world.

Candice Wu 14:12

Other experiences of threat that can become Trauma or traumatizing, are being in large groups or certain social demands and pressures, changes in life, transitions, something new and unfamiliar happening. So, any of these can become overwhelming to our nervous system, to our spirit and soul, and can feel incomplete.

Candice Wu 14:37

So again, it’s not what happened to you, that equals Trauma. It’s not the bad thing that happened, it’s how you and your system responded and how it experienced it.

Candice Wu 14:48

The amazing thing about seeing Trauma from the perspective that it’s something incomplete of response that wanted to be had, but didn’t get to be had or support and calling for help, that didn’t get to be had in the past, then gives us an opening where we can complete the response today, even though it happened in the past. It’s as if our body doesn’t realize that it’s over. And if we complete it in the present, then the nervous system catches up to realize that you are safe now.

Candice Wu 15:20

Another aspect of this is that we’re most likely in a present situation as adults, where we have more resource. We have different friendships or different people that we can go to, then in the past, or when the thing happened, depending on how recent the incident or incidences were, and we have access to a different place that can help the healing process.

Candice Wu 15:44

If you’ve been following along with me in any way. By now, you know, that I look at the intergenerational line as well, the ancestry and the losses and trauma that may have happened there, the things that were overwhelming to a family or to a person in your family that have been passed down.

Candice Wu 16:03

So if we think about, for example, grandma experiencing the loss of a baby, and it, being so horrible or overwhelming, and it may or may not have been to her, but let’s just say it was, then, it might have been forgotten, and the grieving may not have been had. So something that the instinctual being, our soul and our body need to do is to grieve something that’s so upsetting.

Candice Wu 16:29

If that process gets interrupted, then it’s still waiting there somewhere in the soul of the person and the family to be had. What wasn’t felt will be continuing on and it will continue on in the generations later. That’s how something gets passed down.

Candice Wu 16:46

So again, it’s an incomplete response from some time period. And yet, if we receive that energy and visceral sense and resonance in our life now, and we have no clue about grandma, or maybe great great great grandma that experienced that, then it can be quite confusing when we feel loss in our lives a lot or anxious or whatever it is that it reverberates out to in our present-day life.

Candice Wu 17:14

So when we don’t seem to find a root in this life of what’s going on, of what’s happened, we might look back that way just to check out where something may need to be completed. We can find the context for which something happened and wants completion. But the beautiful thing about working with a body is you can still do that work without knowing the details. And sometimes the details show up if we open our imagination and our openness enough that we accept the senses that we get, or the intuitive hits that we get.

Candice Wu 17:48

Also, if you believe in a past life or a soul, what continues on and the energy of our soul can reverberate through this life and other lifetimes. Something in us may want completion from a past life, just as something in us may want some completion from a collective experience of Trauma, or a collective societal experience that was so overwhelming and upsetting.

Candice Wu 18:13

Many of the things that have happened in let’s say, American history, and Native American history, for example, can reverberate and permeate our nervous system, our body, our hearts, and want some sort of reconciliation, healing, acknowledgment and we can bring that today.

Candice Wu 18:34

So the beautiful thing, again, is that if we’re present, conscious, and having some compassionate support, something new can happen. Whatever healing that wants to be had, or whatever it is, that wants to be completed and acknowledged, can be within your sphere of working with yourself, or someone else, a therapist, healer, coach, someone that understands Trauma Healing, especially. Or, it might be something new happening in your life where you take action differently. And all of that can be helpful to the healing of the soul and the body.

Candice Wu 19:08

So today, we’re going to jump into the science behind Trauma and Trauma Healing. So if you’re somebody that wants to understand it from a very grounded basis, this is for you. We’ll also jump into bridging that with the soul and spirit so that it really comes into an integrated picture.

Candice Wu 19:28

Just going back to my personal experience, when I was in Talk therapy, I found that it’s just working from the head up, you can only go so far, you’re thinking, you’re analyzing, and you’re using your brain capacity. And we have a whole body, we have our spine, we have our gut, our legs, and arms. And if we’ve had any experience in life, of trauma, of overwhelm, it certainly affected our whole body, our whole system, our energy, it didn’t just affect our head.

Candice Wu 19:58

So healing things from our mind are just one tool. And while it can work with some things, other things might require working with the whole system, working with the movement that wanted to happen, that didn’t get to or how the body was impacted, or how the emotions were when something overwhelming happened. And the last thing before we jump into the science of Trauma is the thought about time, that sometimes time can heal you.

Candice Wu 20:22

In some ways, time is a tool. We can realize that something in the past is over. And if we do realize it, we need to realize it far more than mentally because even if our mind believes something, we can find ourselves still in a situation where we feel differently, or where we get in that repeated situation again, that is upsetting to us. And we want it to stop. So even if we realize it in our minds, our body, and our nervous system also needs to catch up to speed with that.

Candice Wu 20:54

So in my experience of trauma healing, the body knows no time, it just knows completion. It just knows what it needs and wants, to survive and be safe. And this is where what we understand is the mental capacity can work together with the body because it can imagine. When you actually rationally know you’re safe, you can bring that as an asset and extra resource to the healing so that you can complete the things that want to happen to find full safety in your body.

Candice Wu 21:27

So let’s jump into a bit of the science and the technical stuff behind Trauma. One of the types of healing work that I use and incorporate with every session that I work with or every healing aspect is Somatic Experiencing. It was developed by Peter Levine. He looked at animals in the wild and wondered that even how animals in the wild are repeatedly exposed to life-threatening events, why don’t they develop PTSD as humans do? Why don’t they have symptoms of trauma as we do?

Candice Wu 22:00

What he found was that animals in the wild actually innately complete the cycle of anything that needs to happen for their protection and safety. So if you think of an animal in the wild, if they notice a threat or are perceiving something, energy is going to start to increase in their body so they can perceive that threat and start to mobilize. If they are in danger and they see a predator coming, they’re going to run if they can, the flight response. If they can’t run, they’ll try to fight. If they can’t fight or flight, then they’ll go into tonic and mobility or the free state where they’re playing dead in hopes that their predator will leave.

Candice Wu 22:40

So if the predator does go away, and it, in fact, is safe for the animal to start moving again, what will first happen is that it will start to shake and discharge all of the energy that flooded the system in order to help mobilize them and then to freeze their body. So that they are in this immobility state, so all the energy comes towards the center towards the core of the body in that state and conserves itself.

Candice Wu 23:09

When the nervous system is coming out of a frozen response, it needs to move through the fight or flight response energy to release that. So at that point, the animal might continue to shake all that energy out, or, it will just run and complete that response so that they get to a safe place of their own, where they can be free to enjoy nature again, relax, engage socially, find a mate, food, whatever it is that their regular life entails.

Candice Wu 23:39

I will link example of this in the show notes where an Impala is in a frozen state because I think it’s a jaguar or a tiger has got it by the head. And it’s like right on top of it. And this Impala is in an immobility state but still like a movable state where the body, the limbs, are just limp and its predator eventually goes away, gets excited by something else and this Impala starts to shake and tremble and then gallops away eventually.

Candice Wu 24:14

So while animals in the wild are doing this, humans tend to avoid skip or ignore those responses. Because we do this, our nervous system doesn’t think that the threat is over, the response cycle is incomplete. So we may be in a constant readiness, believing that there’s danger, anxiety, hyperfocus, or hypervigilance, looking around. Those are all responses of a nervous system that feel unsafe and at risk.

Candice Wu 24:46

All of the chemicals in our body that energize us to fight, flight, or freeze, for example, epinephrine and norepinephrine, as well as endorphins. And there are higher levels of endorphins needed for the freeze response, all of that stores up in the nervous system in the body if it doesn’t get discharged.

Candice Wu 25:07

So if you imagine a fight response needed to happen in a situation or the instinctual response was to fight back or to push back, then, energy will charge up into the arms to do that. And if it doesn’t get used, where does it go? It stays there.

Candice Wu 25:26

So then we have tension, we have pain, we have blocked energy, we have other systemic issues in the organ systems and all of that relates to the incomplete response.

Candice Wu 25:38

Sometimes I experienced myself going through things and I feel fine. I feel just like, “Wow, these big things happened. But I’m fine?” And maybe later come to realize that I was actually numb. That my nervous system was a bit overwhelmed or more overwhelmed than capable to feel the emotions. And when we can’t feel through the emotions, when they’re so overwhelming, then we go into this playing dead states, the tonic immobility state, where we are protecting ourselves from feeling the overwhelm.

Candice Wu 26:14

The shutting down response is actually more activated than a fight or flight response, than other emotional responses because it happens when we can’t feel those emotions, when that’s even too overwhelming. And all of these are survival mechanisms. We have our mind and our spiritual selves, which tell us that we might want to respond differently. But we still have an instinctual body.

Candice Wu 26:40

So with this research of looking at animals in the wild, what Peter Levine did was he created all sorts of tools and understandings as to how to work with the fight, flight, and freeze responses in the body, so that we don’t re-traumatized ourselves.

Candice Wu 26:55

Sometimes just telling the story of what happened does re-traumatize us. We just stay numb or we go into more overwhelm, and we don’t have the conscious resource to be able to move through it differently.

Candice Wu 27:09

So the work of Somatic Experiencing gives extra resource and support someone in feeling stronger and safer so that we can work through some of the overwhelming areas with the compassionate person that is competent in the work.

Candice Wu 27:25

In my work as combined Somatic Experiencing and other Somatic therapies with Family Constellations healing, which is the intergenerational healing work that I mentioned. And if you bring and weave those both together, and we’re completing what may not have been completed in the ancestry as well, whichever has its reverberation through our nervous system today.

Candice Wu 27:48

We’re working with the collective nervous system, the soul of the family, and the nervous system of the family system, as well as society or whoever else you’re working with in your constellation, whatever energies inside of you or outside of you, and all of that pertains to the body.

Candice Wu 28:07

So speaking of the nervous system, the healthy nervous system can move from activation to settling frequently throughout the day with ease. And what we would call a normal range is where it feels healthy and able to move up and down in that activation and settling and it doesn’t go too far, in one way or the other.

Candice Wu 28:27

When our nervous system spikes upward or downward in a sort of stuck-on position, what they call it in SE work, Somatic Experiencing. Stuck-on is having anxiety and hypervigilance all the time or frequently feeling startled, often, or that the world’s very scary. And that experience might come with sleeplessness or digestive problems, feeling emotionally flooded, panic, scattered.

Candice Wu 28:55

Whereas a stuck-off position might be depression, lethargy, feeling disconnected or isolated, having dissociation, exhaustion, low motivation or affect, and it might come with low blood pressure, poor digestion or having a hard time staying asleep or sleeping too much.

Candice Wu 29:14

So each person’s nervous system might have a different baseline and capacity as well as different aspects of the fight, flight, and freeze in various situations ar that can come out at different times. Different things activate us, which bring us to different states. And all of that relates to some past situation that is incomplete.

Candice Wu 29:37

We’re only meant to be in the fight and flight as well as the frozen response for a few minutes, if necessary. And sometimes in human life, we experience it all our lives, we’re in a constant global activation, that’s a constant anxiety or depression. And if we sit in that energy our whole lives, perhaps that’s also intergenerational or relating to something in the past beyond us, which can be complete as well.

Candice Wu 30:06

The other thing I want to mention that, is a bit different from animals, is that we’re quite challenged as infants. We take, I don’t know, seven months to a year to walk. And we need a lot of love and care and attention beforehand and all throughout our lives. If we have a parent or a caretaker that’s able to attune to our needs or desires, wishes, our feelings, as well as is able to step back gradually and let us have certain frustrations or a level of feeling upset while being present, so that we can co-regulate, then our nervous system builds its capacity to feel both pleasure and upset or pleasure and challenge.

Candice Wu 30:50

Donald Winnicott was a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst that coined the term “good enough mother”. And we can broaden that to good enough parents or caretaker and he was referring to just that. That we need someone to be good enough to have an attunement to us, as well as let us have those imperfections of life to experience small frustration increasingly over time, so that we can feel the expanse of various emotions and energies well being regulated. And the attunement that a parent would give can help us build our nervous system so we need the co-regulation.

Candice Wu 31:29

Well, we have this very expansive spiritual and mental side of us this rational mind, the ability to see well, what we think is reality and what we perceive. We also have the body that needs to catch up to all of what we want to believe of ourselves or the world, what we think we’re capable of and what our body is doing can often be very different. And so it’s letting it catch up to that.

Candice Wu 32:01

Let’s just go one level deeper into the science of all of this. All of this fight, flight and freeze response connects with Polyvagal Theory. And Stephen Porges does a lot of research and discussion about this. So if you look at any of his videos or people talking about his work, it’s excellent.

Candice Wu 32:20

Today, we’ll just talk a tiny bit about it. The main thing I want to talk about today with the polyvagal nerve, this nerve that goes up and down the body along the spine is that it connects with every single aspect of our nervous system and body. It connects with all the vital organs in the chest and in the gut, and controls, sends input into those systems.

Candice Wu 32:46

So when our body experiences a threat and shifts into a fight or flight state, those responses are to protect the vital organs in the chest and the gut, for example, tension in the chest to mobilize a fight or flight and to protect the heart or tension and numbness in the gut to get the body moving, to bring the energy to the legs.

Candice Wu 33:10

So not only does this connect with depression or anxiety, the association or shut down. All of the things I mentioned before when our nervous system is stuck-on or off, it also connects with how we’re digesting and how we’re seeing.

Candice Wu 33:27

I’ll connect a link of this image of the Vagus nerve and all the organs to the show notes of this podcast.

Candice Wu 33:34

But when we’re in a sympathetic state where our nervous system is active or a feeling, any sensation that’s going to help us protect, then our pupils dilate in order to keep our eyes on a target or threat.

Candice Wu 33:48

Our saliva inhibits and digestion slows down so that the energy can go in other places where it’s needed. Our heart rate is accelerated so that we can keep moving.

Candice Wu 34:00

The energy that can typically go towards digestion and elimination actually moves out to different parts of the body that need to run or need to fight, or need to move in some way or yell. But as I said earlier, if the nervous system doesn’t know it’s safe and that threat is over, and that you’ve completed the cycle, then it can stay in this sympathetic state versus the parasympathetic state where we are calm. The energy isn’t needed to respond to a threat to run or to get away, instead, it can energize our whole system for social engagement and connection for finding food and enjoying pleasure.

Candice Wu 34:43

All of this connects to how available we are for an emotional connection with someone else, whether or not we look and sound safe, that we’re in a state of calm or another person.

Candice Wu 34:56

And as I mentioned earlier, the tension in our body, if there’s still stored up energy from incomplete responses, then we have tension or pain or other illness in the body.

Candice Wu 35:08

So I mentioned this primarily because it shows just exactly how trauma or experiences that were overwhelming physically and emotionally affect our digestion, affect how we feel in our body moving around. It affects our connection with others and to what we’re able to receive and do in the world.

Candice Wu 35:29

So, Trauma, without even knowing it may be a source of whatever you have going on in your body. Sometimes we just look for a physical remedy for something that we’re going through. And while that’s helpful, and especially if it’s severe, it might be very helpful to weed out those factors and offer a different solution to the body to complete something that wasn’t completed. And if you don’t know what was incomplete in your life or in your ancestry, or in our soul history, or even something that you’re affected by in our society that we may not be able to pinpoint with the mind, the body knows.

Candice Wu 36:08

The body remembers all of that. And if you’ve heard the statement, “The body doesn’t lie.” Here’s where it’s true: That the body will not let you forget what it’s gone through, especially if something is incomplete, it will still want that completion.

Candice Wu 36:22

In the work of Family Constellations, this shows up really clearly. As I mentioned earlier, just the example of grandma losing a baby. When we set up a Constellation with people representing these parts of someone’s family system or the energies of someone, if we follow the movements of what the body’s giving us or if something is revealed, then we see where that tension exists in someone’s body or where the ulcers began, or who starts to feel pain in their chest, or just starts to cough. We realize where those physical symptoms connect to.

Candice Wu 36:57

So I don’t know about you but I feel incredibly empowered by all of that. Just knowing that there’s a way through, there’s a way to heal, there’s a way to feel better, as well as feel more and to release the things that seem to repeat in my life, and that they don’t have to happen that way anymore. And as we clear up all of those incomplete things that we have the space for, actually, what’s happening now, the authenticity of the present, the availability to be able to receive, to take, to want, and create right now.

Candice Wu 37:32

So let’s shift gears and talk a little bit about how this all affects us as people if we have Trauma.

Candice Wu 37:39

What strikes me is if the body didn’t get to protect itself in the past, if it didn’t complete something that wanted to be had. For example, if your father yelled at you a lot when you were younger, or even once and you wanted to scream back, or you wanted to instinctually you wanted to push or bite or punch, or do something to express that you didn’t like it but you didn’t get to, it likely would have been more dangerous or scary to do so to stand up to your father who was much bigger.

Candice Wu 38:13

Then that energy that wanted to make that happen to protect yourself, to make you feel empowered, gets locked into the nervous system in the body. And the body acts as if it can’t protect man. It may feel defeated. And defeat has the same physiology in the body as shame. So we internalize that as something wrong with us or something we’re incapable of, who we are is not okay.

Candice Wu 38:41

So when we complete these responses in the body that didn’t get completed, we end up building confidence, capability, empowerment, we feel strong again and we feel able to hold our boundaries, or able to speak up when we need to, even fight if we need to. But then able to look at the reality of the situation now and use what’s needed now.

Candice Wu 39:03

So if someone says, “Do you want this soup?” You don’t just scream at them and fight and say, “No!” because that’s not really appropriate. But maybe you end up in a really, truly, life-threatening situation where somebody is going to hurt you, then you may need to fight. You may need to do something to protect yourself.

Candice Wu 39:23

So we want all of those capacities available to reclaim all the ways that we can protect ourselves so that we feel able to be in the world, and that we feel like we’re safe. And we can do something about it if we’re not safe.

Candice Wu 39:37

And if we shift into the soul and the spirit, which are obviously connected to how we experience ourselves in our body, we can see that at the soul level, we might look at the beliefs and the meaning behind what we’ve experienced, and what’s incomplete in our lives.

Candice Wu 39:55

At the soul level, we might look at what our souls are asking us to learn in this situation. What perhaps have you, as a soul, decided to come into this life to learn? And what agreements have you made with others to remember certain aspects of yourself or to evolve to your full potential?

Candice Wu 39:55

And when I say incomplete, we might even be talking about the experience where your brother passed away and you didn’t get to say goodbye, or tell him how you felt. It could be an abuse that happened where you wanted to fight back but couldn’t. Or, that your body froze up because it was overwhelmed and that was the best thing you could do then.

Candice Wu 40:17

So with the meaning behind all of that, the beliefs we internalize because of it, we look at that level and see what we’re learning here. What wisdom we want to take?

Candice Wu 40:30

I love to look at a situation and ask myself, “What did I actually want from this? If I designed this, and you may or may not believe that you did but let’s just say: ”I designed this, what did I want from this? What is this situation? Show me. Does it show me my own strength or power? Does it show me that I need to learn how to say no, or to rest, or to use a certain part of my capability? What is the true learning behind it?”

Candice Wu 41:20

And of course, as we look at that aspect and that level, whether we intuit or we think about it, we still need to move it through the body. We still need the emotions, the sensation, and the movement to complete.

Candice Wu 41:34

If we go a level deeper than the soul, we get to spirit. And what I mean by that at the moment is the sense of awareness, consciousness, or energy that’s underneath everything, that we all have weaving through us. It’s the energy of creation, it’s light itself. And we are enlivened by that energy. But that energy lives itself through the soul, through the belief sets that we have, through the ways of being that we’ve inherited and all the past Karma, all the past action. But spirit itself is untouched by all of that. It’s untouched by pain or wounds and untouched by Trauma.

Candice Wu 42:17

And the reason I want to just bring that up today is that it can be, of your healing aspect, a part of us that reminds us that we are already whole. That we are already every potentiality and possibility that exists. That all of that is in our grasp. And we’re capable of anything we can think of, and that we’re already healed.

Candice Wu 42:40

So there’s a part of us that don’t even need healing. And that can see everything as a play to learn something, to look at a part of us that we haven’t looked at yet.

Candice Wu 42:51

When we clear up all of the soul level, trauma or drama, and I see that with just gentleness, then we have this space, this vessel inside of us in this body. That this body is aligned with a higher vibration and we can carry our inner light and spark out into the world. What we’re here for, what we want to create, and what we want to create in collaboration with the entire universe?

Candice Wu 43:21

So I’ll end today with just some thoughts on how there are so many tools to heal Trauma. There’s not one way that’s the best. There are ways that have worked for me that may not work for you. But it’s about expansion into all the aspects of ourselves and to use any tool that works for us at any given moment, to go deeper and then learn more.

Candice Wu 43:43

So to sum up, the main key to healing Trauma in my eyes is that we can learn to complete all the responses in the body and the soul that want completion. Anything that seems untrue, distorted, any belief that we have or meaning that isn’t the truth, we can resolve that and complete it. So that we come to and arrive at what the truth is.

Candice Wu 44:10

And, any response in the instinctual body, the animal body that wants to fight or push or bite, something that it wanted to do in the past, we can do it now in a conscious way, in our imagination and feel through that, or in our physical body and move it in the body. So that we can actually carve out that territory of movement in our physical being, again. As well as let those energies discharge out of the body.

Candice Wu 44:39

The body is key. The emotions, sensations, the movement, energy, all of that needs to find completion and to come back to truth, safety, and embodiment.

Candice Wu 44:52

So with so many practices out there, what do you choose?

Candice Wu 44:56

Meditation can help you to have embodiment and get into the body, to start to witness and separate spirit from all of the body and soul action.

Candice Wu 45:07

Yoga can bring that as well and can bring some movement, as well as that awareness. Any embodied healing that is Trauma-informed will likely be supportive.

Candice Wu 45:21

Family constellations, as I mentioned earlier, can support that embodiment and completion. And other practices can help you feel more embodied so that some of this can continue to move in different ways like massage therapy, Acupuncture, Craniosacral, Chiropractic work, Energy work. These all can support the nervous system and in feeling safety and groundedness so that you can clear up other aspects that need to be complete.

Candice Wu 45:53

If you think you have Trauma or know you do, it’s important to work with somebody that is aware of the nervous system and Trauma-oriented because it is a refined skill to look at how your body’s responding so that you don’t get re-traumatized.

Candice Wu 46:09

Someone that you trust and someone that can be attuned to you can help you to explore that edge of where your stem can overwhelm and where you feel that it’s manageable. All of that to build your resilience and your strength.

Candice Wu 46:26

If you’re looking to try some of this yourself and to experiment, you can check out the previously recorded experientials, the healing experientials as well as meditations that I put out on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 46:40

The ones I would recommend now to feel grounded are Getting on the Grid, the meditation that is linked at CandiceWu.com/energy. This helps you feel grounded in your body.

Candice Wu 46:54

Another one is the meditation called Body Like Mountain. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/nature.

Candice Wu 47:02

The third one I’d recommend is to resource safety and that’s on the podcast about emotions. So CandiceWu.com/emotions. As well as the one about building emotional capacity with Pendulation that’s on the same link, CandiceWu.com/emotions.

Candice Wu 47:19

And lastly, I would recommend Being in the Body with Love, it’s a guided meditation that can support you in just feeling compassion towards all the parts of your body and experience. You can find that meditation at CandiceWu.com/embody by signing up for my newsletter and receiving that for free.

Candice Wu 47:39

So we talked about the science, soul, and spirit of Trauma, the nervous system, the polyvagal nerve.

Candice Wu 47:47

And this week, I will leave you with an additional healing experiential about letting the body lead you in an organic unfolding of what’s in the body so that the body can start to inform you of what’s going on. And you can work to complete what’s incomplete at the instinctual and body level. So look out for that this week, or go to CandiceWu.com/trauma to find that link added.

Candice Wu 48:17

So let’s just leave you with one last thought. If you’re wondering at all, why I’m just so excited about Trauma work, and why it’s been a passion of mine. Some people have asked me, you know, “How do you deal with this deep painful stuff?”

Candice Wu 48:33

It’s just what I love because I enjoy how I feel when I move through something and feel more empowered. I feel more resilient and creative, expansive, and I get to know myself very deeply. And I just love to accompany people through that process for themselves with them as the source of their own healing, with them feeling their own empowerment and resource and strength inside and through their family systems, so that their inner light just shines through and they get to have the life that they want to have.

Candice Wu 49:14

It’s amazing to feel when Trauma response is completed, what comes from it all, the “Aha” moments and the feeling of pleasure and strength, the ability to feel expansive and have new possibilities. It’s an amazing journey.

Candice Wu 49:33

So I say all this also to offer continued hope and self-compassion, kindness, gentleness, through whatever process you’re going through. Whether or not you have Trauma, I hope you found something that’s helpful in this discussion. It really doesn’t matter what we label it. But if we can use the tools and they help us, then I think that’s incredibly powerful.

Candice Wu 49:57

As always, I’m available if you have any questions, if you need any support or referrals, or if you’d like to work with me one on one or in your relationship. This is just magical that I get to do this work with people and get to hear about your stories along the way.

Candice Wu 50:16

I’ll leave you today with a quote that is anonymous. I don’t know who said it. If you know, let me know. It’s that: “The body keeps an accurate journal regardless of what you write down.”

Candice Wu 50:28

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find it helpful. And before you go. I’d like to invite you to join my community CandiceWu.com/embody. There’s a Facebook group where you can interact with others, can sign up for a bi-monthly newsletter and receive other updates, meditations, and resources. See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experiential connects with the podcast episode about Healing Trauma, Embodied Healing from Science to Soul to Spirit. You can find the full episode at CandiceWu.com/trauma.

This healing experiential is to support you in feeling in your body grounded, centered, and bringing you to connect mind, body, and spirit.

We will practice setting aside the analytical mind to give way to the body to unfold its wisdom to us.

The body holds implicit information that does not relate to space and time, but across all of our experiences, whether we know them or not.

The body is saved by the echoes of our personal history, the collective and archetypal energies and dynamics in society, our past lives and our family lineage.

So, anything that happened in the intergenerational systems that isn’t resolved or the empowerment that is there, the resource, all of that’s how the within the viscera, the muscles, the cells, the energy that’s underneath this physical body.

So, here in this practice, I’ll guide you to listening to your body, letting it take the lead, and letting an organic movement happen to unfold and reveal whatever the wisdom is behind that.

As you do this, you might get experience emotions, thoughts, images, other movements coming forward, and all of this as part of the organic healing process.

Preparation

In the beginning of the experience, I’ll guide you to feeling a resourced or calm or grounded part of yourself, part of your body so that you can come back to that at the end or if you’re feeling overwhelmed at any time, if something just tips the scale of feeling like it’s not very tolerable anymore or manageable, then I recommend just pausing, slowing down and going to this part of your body that we will connect with in the beginning.

If that happens, it’s actually a really good thing to take that break, to feel into a pleasurable part of your body, and to come back to the rest of the practice or whatever else is happening in your body, when you want to.

Choice

It’s all your choice, how you want to move and where you want to go, and when you want to take a break. It’s also very important in the process of healing trauma and feeling empowered.

I recommend this practice as just one of the ways that you can heal trauma with yourself and support your own practice. Y

ou can find a list of the other healing meditations and experientials that I recommend in healing trauma, and to support your body in the safety and embodiment that it needs to heal trauma by going to the show notes at CandiceWu.com/trauma or listening to the episode and it’s at the very end of the episode.

Why We Let The Body Lead at Times

As I mentioned earlier, we’re going to tune into the body, and the reason we do that and let the body lead, is that the body holds all sorts of information that we may not have access to mentally, and that may be because, in some experiences, we repressed what we felt because it was scary, that our nervous system took over and just protected in certain ways, and some of those ways may be incomplete in the body.

When we have trauma, we have a body experience that wants to complete itself.

The nervous system still has control over how our body responds, and it needs to find safety by completing certain movements or reaching out in a certain way or calling for help, and we don’t always have access to that in the mind.

So, we let the body take the lead and show us what it wants to do.

We often override our body’s impulses, because maybe it’s dangerous or socially inappropriate or we think it is or we perceive something as scary and uncomfortable or vulnerable.

What the Body Wants to Do

In this practice, we’re going to sense into what the body wants to do, how it wants to move, and let it have space without judgment to move in this way. We will open to being aware of what the body wants, sensing into impulse, noticing whatever comes up with that, and allowing the body to feel through what it wants to feel through.

This practice is meant to be an introductory practice where it’s supporting you and getting in the body tuning in, sensing, and learning to follow the lead of the body so you can practice this any time of the day, but I would recommend having a little bit of space afterward so that you can integrate anything that comes up or come down from the experience.

Some days, you might feel an intensity or something come up and other days, you might just feel good or feel more neutral. All of it is good information, and I invite you to look at all of what comes up is good information and to be curious about what happens, and to learn about yourself. So, now let’s jump in.

The Invitation to Begin

As we begin, I invite you to stand up and start to tune into your body.

Feel free to do any movement that feels good to your body.

As you start to feel your bones, your muscles, the breath, feel your breath move as far into the body as it can, notice where it reaches and where it doesn’t.

Now, look for a place in your body that feels grounded, restful, pleasurable or neutral.

For example, I like the way my legs feel grounded and solid at the moment or even my pinky toe feels neutral and be any tiny little place.

Another way to connect with this is to sense into where in your body do you feel like yourself, and wherever that is, imagine the space where you feel this.

Notice the size of what you feel as if you could see it, even notice if it has color or texture. Notice how far this pleasurable space or this neutral space reaches in your body and where it ends.

Let yourself enjoy it and savor the feeling of this.

Notice any reactions that come up.

Notice how your breathing is as you sense into this space.

Let yourself feel it even more.

If your mind wanders, just come back to this space gently without any judgment or effort.

We’ll call this the pleasurable or neutral space in your body that you can come back to anytime if you feel overwhelmed, you want to break or at the very end when you want to integrate and rest.

Letting What Wants to Happen Emerge

Now, I invite you to sense whatever your body wants to do right now.

Take your mind, and imagine setting your mind, you’re thinking, you’re analyzing self to the side and put it on an imaginary shelf, rest there, and invite your body, your sensation, and energy to take the lead.

Let your body be the guide to whatever happens next, it is you witnessing what’s going on, and as you invite your body to move into the position or movement that feels just right for right now, feel what happens.

Your body you might want to lie down, stand up, move or stay still, crouch down or curl up. Sense whatever it is that feels just right to the body.

Sometimes, just right feels good, and pleasurable and sometimes, just right feels uncomfortable or challenging.

Give permission to your body to show you what’s exactly right for this moment.

Notice if your eyes want to be closed or open, where they want to look if they’re open. Notice how your arms want to be, your head, your neck.

Notice how your belly, your hips want to be, where they want to be, whether they want to move or hold still in a certain way.

Sense your legs and let your legs show you exactly what feels right for the moment.

Notice any stillness that your body is wanting and craving or how fast or slow a movement wants to be and play with it.

Sometimes, something happens and you notice it’s just the right thing, and other times, you might notice that that doesn’t quite feel right, I’m deciding what to do, you can shift back into letting your body show you what it wants to do.

As you tune in to what your body wants to do, the impulse of the body, feel any emotions, sensations or movement that wants to come up.

Sense any images in your mind or pictures that pop in, with that you’re noticing and allow anything that’s here to continue to be here.

Pause

And at any time if you feel overwhelmed or something feels unmanageable, take a moment to pause.

It’s really good for trauma healing and for the body to just pause, come to the neutral or pleasant space that you found in your body earlier or if that’s not helping or feeling grounded, look around you, and just sense your space and orient to whatever feels pleasurable to look at, neutral to look at.

And if you’re taking a break, feel free to rest there as long as you want to.

If you’re staying with your body’s impulse, your body’s movement or what your body wants, and you to witness anything that’s coming up for you.

Notice your breath, and how, your breathing wants to be.

Let your body decide and show you exactly what’s perfect in the moment.

In this moment, notice tension or holding in the body, and if you feel curious about that, allow it to deepen or expand wherever there’s tension, letting it get even more tense or where there’s a reaching out, letting your reaching reach farther or expand, feeling the edge of emotion or feeling how fluid emotion is, or feeling pure stillness.

Whatever it is that your body wants right here and now.

If your mind comes in and says you should be doing this or wants to take charge to invite it to go back to the shelf, on the side, take a breath or two and let your body guide you again.

Follow your body.

Follow anything that wants to happen, noticing what your body wants.

If there’s any impulse, allowing that to be.

Express itself without any judgment or criticism, any filter.

Feel the experience all the way through, moment to moment, what’s happening in your muscles and the cells of your body, joints, and your bones, your body wants pressure against something or on top of you, sensing what that might be and allowing it to happen.

If your body is moving quickly, allow it to move as quickly as you want to, giving full permission, whatever wants to happen now.

There’s nothing you need to do to change whatever is happening, unless you feel like taking a break or you’re overwhelmed.

In that case, just come back to ever space in your body felt pleasant or neutral. Feel any part of your body that’s feeling pleasant.

Notice any emotions coming up. Feel any discomfort that you have inside, and let whatever’s happening happen even more.

Feel free to take as long as you’d like here following the lead of your body and listening to whatever it wants, and if you’re ready to wind down, you can follow along with me, and just start to follow what the body wants now that feels good.

Grounding the Body

Begin to tune back into the neutral or pleasant space that you found earlier in your body.

You might even touch that space, bring more awareness there, and let yourself rest into this ease, pleasant feeling or neutral feeling.

Whatever’s underneath you, the floor chair, pillow, anything at all. Let it support you. Release your weight into it.

Let your body’s pace begin to sense your surroundings, just looking at what’s around you, sensing sounds around you, smells, noticing that you’re right here, right now.

And if you’d like to, bring your hands to your heart, palms together or palms on your heart.

Take a moment to let your body feel some containment and connection, and thank yourself for practicing this unfolding and organic healing practice.

Gratitude to the Body

Give gratitude to your body for learning or for showing you the way, show you its wisdom and honor, anything that came up, taking it all is information, being curious about anything that showed up.

And as you end this practice today, feel free to let your body continue to lead you, and sense whatever it wants to do, if it wants to have some tea or move around. Let it do what it wants.

Let the practice Integrate and ease back into the regular flow of your day.

Thank you so much for practicing today, and I’ll leave you with a little bit of silence that you can continue to integrate, rest or begin to move towards the next step in your day.