Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is about relationships and how they serve, to show us more loving in ourselves, and to bring us back to love, as well as for ways that we can get stuck in grieving loss or ending relationships, especially those that are intimate relationships.

Candice Wu 0:20

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 0:33

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 0:55

These episodes on the Embody Podcast are made possible because people like you that are listening or contributing by just even giving a dollar a month or more to the podcast, so that the production and the time and the labor of love that goes on behind the scenes can happen. So, if you feel inspired by this podcast, if you have felt touched or enjoyed in some way, I’d really encourage you to support and give back by contributing on Patreon and just show your love that way. I really appreciate it. It helps a great deal, even a dollar a month. And you can stop at any time and there are some great things you can tap into there if you’re interested in having a personalized healing meditation every quarter or if you’re interested in joining the Embodied Group Call that happens monthly, or the Q and A sessions that go on there. You can contribute at any level at CandiceWu.com/patreon. Thanks so much for considering it and I appreciate it all of you out there. No matter what you are contributing or not. I just feel grateful that you’re out there listening and receiving what I’m sharing. It’s really a joy to be here.

Candice Wu 2:15

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Embody Podcast, it’s wonderful to have you here. I always look forward to sitting down and connecting with what’s alive in me and living here and what’s also coming in my direction. And it’s been so interesting, this last couple of weeks, and mainly this last week, because the energy of ending relationships, close relationships, deep relationships, ending relationships has been present all around me.

Candice Wu 2:54

It’s like four days ago, at least four or five people told me that they were ending a relationship or their good friend was ending a relationship and it was challenging. So, of course, they felt really cold to talk about relationships and how they serve to show us more loving, and also honoring relationships ending. How do you grieve? Everyone has their own process, but what can support you? And how can we set ourselves up to feel even more empowerment, and loving through a relationship ending?

Candice Wu 3:37

People always say that grief takes its own process, and that it never ends. I don’t know if it never ends. There have been situations that I’ve grieved and they’ve ended and they are done. But I’ve certainly had moments where I thought something was done and more came up. And if I’m really attached to the idea that this is done, and it should have been done already, that I can add another layer of suffering and stress. So, I guess it’s safer to say the process is never done. But I also don’t love that because I have found those places, as I said, where the grieving has been complete. And there’s a different place of relating to the person or that situation, that I was grieving for some time and even found more grief later or they’re just pieces that just come up later. But that piece can be completed.

Candice Wu 4:37

You may have a different experience and I welcome you to share that. And also own your own experience and trust that. But this is just my experience. So, in this podcast, I want to talk about some relationships that I’ve been in, and one that more recently ended, as well as some ways that I use some tools and frameworks that support me in the process of grieving and ending and completing the energy and the dynamic with someone that gives me more for myself and more also in my view of others that releases me from the dance of what was meant to be learned in a relationship.

Candice Wu 5:27

One of my healers, Charmayne Kilcup says that, where there isn’t loving, there’s something else to learn. And that is what I experienced. If the walking away from a relationship isn’t completely out of respect, and love, and honoring, then there’s some piece for me to learn in myself and some more loving to be had.

Candice Wu 5:56

So I believe that we have a story soul and our soul is on this journey to love and to be loved and to be fully expressed within and outside of us. To love ourselves, the deepest part of who we are the self, that is the self of all. The self, that is the love, the divine, the energy, the oneness in us, the wholeness in us, that is all consciousness, but expresses itself through this individual being. And in this individual being, in this individual soul, we come with many belief sets, ideas and distortions, and meanings that are not true. True to the self with a big S, to the you with a big Y in front of the you.

Candice Wu 6:52

And our relationships serve as a reflection of these parts of ourselves that truly want to be seen and truly want to be known in our fullest that bring us towards our expansion. So, relationships, whether they feel supportive, and loving, or painful, and hurtful, these all serve to show us our inner dynamic of how we treat ourselves and what we believe about ourselves, that causes us to treat ourselves this way, and also treat others in whatever way that shakes out to be from that way of being, from that state of being.

Candice Wu 7:34

So, our relationships serve as this reminder of where the dark spots in us are of pain, on truth, or where we haven’t loved ourselves, not to show us our deficits, but to show us the pathway that if we walk through, there will be more loving, and we will arrive back at true self with a big S, will arrive back to our wholeness, will arrive back to expansive loving, and our soul wants us to recover and repair all these parts of us. Spirit through us wants us to become one with the wholeness. That is yoga union becoming one to yoke. And that is connected with this, this coming back to self that is the whole that is the expansiveness, but we get to experience it through this body.

Candice Wu 8:40

So, while I think about relationships, ending, especially intimate relationships, and the pain of those, the disconnection that’s needed, the healing that might be needed, or the feeling of “thank goodness is over, I’m out of here”. You know, I’m running as fast as I can, there is still an integration that needs to happen, there’s still an ending, and a need for us to digest to some degree at some point, what this was for us.

Candice Wu 9:14

And if we take up that experience, that digestion, and metabolism, and we can truly see ourselves, using every opportunity of relating to serve a greater love, and to serve the greater loving in us, and to feel more self-loving.

Candice Wu 9:32

So, many of you have heard me talk about my partner, my previous partner. Now at this point, Christoph, and Christoph was also at the Soul Body Women’s Retreat, supporting the structure of the retreat and taking some photography. And he also does the editing for this podcast. And some other work behind the scenes for Embody Your Nature, which is my practice, my business. And for those of you that are not connected with my Facebook page, Candice Wu Self-Love, and Healing, or my personal page, or Instagram, then you may not know this entire story, which I recently shared. And I haven’t been sharing much because overall in this last year and a half, because I wanted to respect our privacy and to allow for things that were unfolding to just be, and to leave them without telling everyone about them. But now I want to share with you all this relationship ending just as we’re talking about relationships ending. A lot of times when people end a relationship, they burn the pictures that they had shared together and created together or don’t know what to do with them. And they often don’t show them in public. I’ve definitely done that before. And sometimes it’s very healing.

Candice Wu 10:51

But in this case of a very unique relationship, one that I’d like to honor in a different way I shared several pictures on social media of our a relationship, because this relationship was one of a very great loving. So, I want to share with you what I posted on social media. If you’ve already heard this, feel free to skip to the next segment of the podcast, but might be interesting to hear it through my spoken word. So, I start off by sharing that when people have ended a relationship, they sometimes burn the pictures or don’t know what to do with them, and much less ever show them again in public. And I’ve definitely done that before. And it was incredibly healing. But this was a very unique relationship that I wanted to honor in a different way. It’s interesting how we don’t necessarily discard pictures of people who have died. But if we’ve ended a relationship, we treat it that way that we don’t even take the pictures out again, for fear maybe, that it hurt someone in our present life, or that it shows that we’re not over them, or maybe there are feelings of pain that come with it.

Candice Wu 12:05

So, I do want to offer to trust that if that’s you, if that’s where you’re at. But in this case, for me, it is not like that this is a relationship of a lot of love and ending with love. So, in honor of my relationship with Christoph, we want to share that we created a powerful loving, communication, growth, transformation, inspiration and dreams together. We supported each other in our spiritual, professional, familial and relational lives. And in a lot of times, we were kind to each other when we individually were mean to ourselves.

Candice Wu 12:47

The honesty in our relationship was astounding to me and it brought me to an even more vulnerable level of myself, and catalyze more self-love, and the ability to love another. And it’s also that honesty that brought me more inspiration to talk about myself on the podcast and to put my voice out there.

Candice Wu 13:09

Christoph and I created the space for the deepest commitment to loving that we ever experienced up until this moment until that moment. And that meant loving ourselves and fully expressing ourselves and each other to the point that if it was better to leave each other to support this than we would and that’s eventually what happened, a great test to our loving. And I thank him for how thoughtful and attentive he has always been to me through this commitment.

Candice Wu 13:40

So, on one level, this relationship expressed itself as an open and polyamorous relationship for most of the time that we were together. Sometimes we were apart in different parts of the world and most of the time we were traveling together. But it meant that we were supportive and open with each other about dating other people and having relationships with other people. And we saw this as a very deep way to know ourselves, all the parts of ourselves and each other. So, we love the way we can learn about the other person, their desires, fantasies, and parts of themselves that they were growing into, through who they were attracted to, or who they desire to connect with. And while we didn’t always act on those desires, we shared them as a way to connect deeper with ourselves and each other, and embrace those very natural human ciders.

Candice Wu 14:35

Sometimes this was really challenging, it meant that we might be triggered by our own fears or insecurities, or jealousies. And all of those feelings fueled our own self-growth and exploration of our own belief sets and wounds. And what I found was so beautiful is that we always trusted each other. We created that trust and support each other in healing. What came up, and that meant growing together even more.

Candice Wu 15:03

So, while we were in Perth, Australia, we discovered that we both wanted a lifestyle of living in a couple of different places around the world. And he wanted to stay in Marbella, Spain. And I was pretty certain that I didn’t want to energetically, it just felt not right for me. And this at the time, created a wound and led to some natural places where we both wanted to know ourselves better. And we needed to choose ourselves.

Candice Wu 15:32

So, at that time, we decided we would continue our travels together, through going to the women’s retreat through going to Spain and Germany, in 2018, around Christmas, and New Year’s, and then into January 2019 and we would see what would happen at that point. But as time got closer to that we didn’t have any more plans to travel together. We ended up savoring each moment but it became clear that we wanted to have our own time and grow in specific ways.

Candice Wu 16:03

So, he wanting more space than I did at the time. I grieved really hard, it was so painful for me, I just wanted closeness with him, I didn’t really want to end things on one level. But on another level, I really knew deeper that this was important and this had to happen. And there were other deeper reasons for myself that I needed the space as well to grow. And I was grateful to him that he was stronger for both of us at the time to ask for more space, and to be strong about that. So, at this point, there’s a lot of love between us, there’s still some shifting happening on both of our ends, to continue a professional relationship and a friendship, and moving into a different space of loving. And if you’ve been following the podcast, you also know that I stepped into a really powerful loving relationship, just recently, that I want to honor my relationship with Christoph to support me and being who I am today that this new relationship has opened up.

Candice Wu 17:12

I also want to thank Christophe because it is due to him and him pushing me and challenging me that the podcast is on its, I don’t know 68 or 69th episode as of now. And he’s an incredibly dedicated business and practice manager, consultant, podcast video and photo editor, and web designer. And he’s invested in this podcast so much. So, we all have him to thank for, for those initial days of birthing this podcast as well as the continuation of it. So, I’m incredibly grateful to him for that. And so, I shared a couple of photos of our time traveling and all these different places as a way to honor the loving in our relationship and how we chose to end it.

Candice Wu 17:59

And as I share all this now, I’m reflecting on the experience of grieving, and luckily, I was able to do a great portion of my grieving while we were together in Germany, because we knew that we were closing our relationship in a certain way.

Candice Wu 18:16

We didn’t know how it would end up later. But we were certain at the time that some things in our relationship were ending. And because we had a polyamorous relationship, we thought maybe that this relationship would continue in another way. And at this point, it isn’t because I’ve chosen to have a monogamous relationship now with my new partner.

Candice Wu 18:38

But that grieving that was happening at the time, was really powerful because I was able to do it with him. We were able to share some of the good moments together and some of the painful ones, and honor the things that were beautiful about our relationship. Even though I did so much grieving with him, there was a lot of, of grieving that had to happen on my own. And sometimes that came up in unexpected moments. And sometimes it was more consciously that I chose to go back through, comb through the relationship and feel into what was there, to let anything else integrate.

Candice Wu 19:19

And what I mean is to let my body and my heart and my soul feel through anything else that was left over from the relationship and to look into the places that my heart and soul wanted to recover something or to look at places where, maybe, I previously blamed him for certain things or look at things that I wanted him to change. And what was that about me that I really needed to learn. So, Isn’t this an amazing thing to be able to care about someone, experience with someone, and for that also to fuel your inner growth and your expansiveness in your own loving.

Candice Wu 20:08

So, some of the places where I felt that I wanted Christoph to change in certain moments, were the moments that I found my own dependencies, the moments where I unconsciously depended on him for certain things or to act certain ways. And if that didn’t happen, then I might be a little bit hurt or upset. And it’s totally fine that that happens. It’s not a bad thing. It’s how we learn. It’s showing us a place where, perhaps we could, if we wanted to, to shift into loving ourselves more powerfully and deeply. And therefore having a cleaner connection of pure loving with our partner or person that is in front of us that we want to have a relationship with.

Candice Wu 21:00

So, where we feel dependent on someone else. For example, if I really wanted him to be there for me, and he wasn’t in terms of listening to my feelings, I saw in myself where my younger inner child was really wanting someone to take care of her. And even though I’d worked on this for years, and years and years, there’s still bits and pieces of my younger self that felt dependent on some interactions there. And those were the little windows of opportunity to depend on myself and love myself more. And it’s okay to ask for help and ask him to be there for me, it’s just that I didn’t want it to be a dependency, or an attachment to him that I needed him to be this way, but that we could share in something together if reached out.

Candice Wu 21:58

There was also another part of me that showed up, and this one’s kind of complex. This experience that I would have with Christoph, wondering, “Do you really love me?”, and my conscious mind understood and felt very deeply that he did. And there was evidence for it. It was super sweet. He was thoughtful. There were certain ways that I could see that he was loving me. And then there was something in me, the most tender part of my heart that wondered, still, do you really love me? And it was quite a sorting process? Was this my inner child, my younger self, needing to feel a certain way? Or was this a reality and the relationship that I had attracted someone who was not quite loving themselves or not quite open in their heart, in their capacity for feeling and being living from the heart?

Candice Wu 23:03

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with not living from the heart, or being wherever you are on your path, wherever he is on his path. But for me, I wanted a fullness of connection of seeing and presence. And what was it in me that I was attracting someone who wasn’t there yet? Did I feel this was a possibility for me? Was I worthy of this?

Candice Wu 23:32

And one of the reasons that I was in relationship with Christoph is that I needed to heal this in myself. I know deep down that he showed me the best loving, he absolutely could and I am grateful for that. And at the same time, there was this part of me that needed to heal, and recognize that I am worthy of someone being full in their heart right now. And it’s okay that he’s not, and I still have love for him. It’s just that, who I want to be an intimate relationship with, is someone who’s full in their heart, full and they’re loving of themselves, and open, and fluid in that right now. So, this is a very sensitive area, especially since it’s very personal. But I wanted to share that today, because our relationships are extremely vulnerable and personal. And they show us the deepest places, the most tender parts of our soul and heart, that want and desire, love. And that want to belong and that want to feel in this amazing divine connection.

Candice Wu 24:51

I went to a spiritual service, Satsang in San Diego when I was out there, and Brahman Kyrie, this woman led this service, it was beautiful. And she talked about how, when we have a relationship, there is an experience on both sides of a lesson, that both people are part of the lesson. And it’s two ends of the same energy.

Candice Wu 25:18

And if there is wounding or experience of one person being the perpetrator or a victim, what wants to be learned from underneath that comes from the same place. So, if you’re blaming your partner, or your former partner, or a person that you are in relationship with, or just ended with, you are on the other side of that lesson. And that’s all you have control over of empowerment with, rather, is your piece of the puzzle, your responsibility in that. And it’s not to put blame to anybody but it’s just to see that we’re all part of what’s unfolding. And our relationships serve to show us that.

Candice Wu 26:07

So, want to shift gears to talk about grieving and relationships ending and how you are on that journey. And what you can do to support yourself, in gleaning the wisdom of this relationship that was here to show you something. The first thing to do is open to the idea that this relationship has something to show you. If you’re not already open to that, but to allow yourself to go there, and not put shame on yourself or the other person, not blame yourself or the other person, but to notice the places where you might have and to notice where your heart is drawn about this person or relationship and to give attention to that.

Candice Wu 26:58

Every person’s journey with grieving is going to be different and each person has a different place of what’s needed here. Because our soul is on a very unique journey. And your relationship is meant to show you something exquisitely unique just to you.

Candice Wu 27:19

So, I want to talk about a few places where we might get stuck. Sometimes when a relationship ends, I hear, I have heard myself, and I hear other people saying, but this is just how I’m treated all the time. And this is just the way it is, this is just how my life is. And there’s this angry, sort of stubborn place of this is how it is for me. And this is how reality is. And so, how do you shift from that to finding empowerment with it? Because that is the feeling that you are a victim to the way the world is. And at the core. I believe that that victim place is a way to show us that actually, we are really powerful. And there’s a lot of energy locked up in this idea of this is how it is for me. It’s because we’re so identified with this belief set. And that’s not just in our mind, but viscerally our body feels this so strongly, that this is the reality.

Candice Wu 28:29

So, one suggestion I have is to flip that around. And let this show you just how hard the outer world is confirming your inner beliefs. That the power you have, even if you don’t believe what I’m saying, even if you believe that the circumstances are stronger than your inner being, which I don’t believe. Even if you don’t believe me, the only power you do have though, is to heal the beliefs that are here. To forgive yourself, to find natural healing and releasing and find your way back to self, self that is in truth that this isn’t the only way, this is just one possibility of the way things are for you. And this one possibility is showing you the particular way that your soul wants you to heal so you can come back to the expansive, all possibility kind of being that you are, to the love.

Candice Wu 29:31

The only power you have is to look at and feel through those belief sets in forgive yourself for those for having those so that that can dissolve and the energy and the emotions can move. So, that your pure bright loving energy can thrive again.

Candice Wu 29:56

If we just stay in this sense, or idea that this is how the world is for me, just nobody will love me or nobody will put in the effort to love me, I’m always going to get hurt, there isn’t someone out there for me and this is just the way my life is I’m going to be alone forever, then you don’t have any power, you are completely trapped in your world and your reality will show you that even harder so you begin to see that this is the trap. You are much bigger than this belief that you with a capital Y are much bigger than you with a lowercase y the you that is the small individual self, full of karmic distortions and beliefs. But the You with a capital Y, the love, the divine, the energy of all beings, the wholeness, or the God within that is the You that wants to come through so that you can be pure and full in your loving.

Candice Wu 31:04

Another way we can get stuck when a relationship is ending, or when it’s just ended, or when we’re in grief is that we can feel like this person is the only one for me, or that this way of being in this relationship is the only way I’m going to have this, like, this person is so thoughtful to me and no one’s ever going to be as thoughtful as this, or this person loves music and shows me creativity and inspiration when we play music together and nobody will ever be this way again, I’m never going to have this again. It may be actually very true that nobody will be this exact way again, and you might not feel this exact way again. But the fact that you attracted this into your life, to begin with, the fact that you could receive the loving that was here or receive the pleasant interactions, that means that you have the power to feel it again, and you have in your being, the possibility of feeling that again, because it’s about you, not the other person. You’re able to experience it because you’re connected and tuned into that way of experiencing in your being.

Candice Wu 32:33

So, to reclaim your experience with another person, as your experience, not one that is completely intertwined with this person, but the experience you have or had in your body, heart, mind, and soul. That’s you. And what we do then is to detach the experience from the other person from the form of which this experience came through for you, which is the other person or people. And when we detach from the form of things of how we think in our mind that this experience can come through or should come through, then we have the possibility of feeling that state of being regardless of what form it comes in. You open up to all the possibility of feeling this way, in any form it comes in. But if you attach to just the form of it, it coming through just this person or in this particular way only, I have to have it like this, then you might miss out if that experience comes to you in another way. That might show up like, the person doesn’t look the same way or the experience is just a little bit different. And yet, wow, you feel that same way again, interesting. How can this be?

Candice Wu 34:02

So, one of the experientials that I want to offer later this week, and as a part of this episode, is to detach from the form and detach from the relationship giving you this experience, but using the relationship as a tool to tap in, to begin with.

Candice Wu 34:19

A lot of times when it’s an intimate relationship or a very close one, we know how to feel a certain way through this person or because of this person or with them, and part of what our soul wants us to learn is that we have that within us, ourselves. And here’s this person to show you that you have it in you. And so it is a tool, it is meant to be or can be received in this way, and yet it’s meant to add to the fullness of your being or open you up to the fact that this is already who you are, this is already a possibility and you.

Candice Wu 35:01

So, a lot of times, I experienced that people want to just get past a relationship and move forward, especially if it was a painful one, or it ended painfully or there were pieces about it that were painful. And my experience shows me that it’s extremely important to go back and feel the beauty of it. What did keep you in it? What was wonderful about it? Because that’s part of the light and the love that your soul that you deeply want to experience and receive. And know that you can experience again, or in a different way. And also, the painful parts are showing you the dark, the dark of what you fear or where you’ve collapsed in or closed down about yourself, or about the world, where there’s loving that wants to shine through, but it not yet opened up.

Candice Wu 36:02

And so these painful parts, and the beautiful parts need digestion and if we want to blow past and say, you know, I’m done with this relationship, and it’s over, and I just need to move forward, and I can’t grieve anymore, the problem is our emotions, our heart, our soul still wants to get all the wisdom. So, it won’t let you move forward until it’s done. Thank goodness for that and also sometimes it’s very challenging. And if painful things happen, sometimes we want to dismiss that there were beautiful, inspiring or lovely aspects and we don’t want to, sometimes we want to deny ourselves from feeling that because it can serve to strengthen yourself or around the pain. Meaning that if you felt pain in this relationship, you have a right to feel the pain, you have a right to feel perhaps angry or hurt or upset with this person or upset about the situation. And if we let ourselves feel the good, we have this idea that our hurt will be dismissed. But we can find a place for both, and that’s really important that we do.

Candice Wu 37:31

Another place that we can get stuck in our grieving or moving forward from a relationship or ending a relationship is that our soul and mind have seemingly two different agendas. And when they intertwine, we can get lost in one or the other or confused about it. And then we don’t know what to do, and how to integrate what we experience or experienced.

Candice Wu 38:03

So, here’s an example. Someone recently shared with me that they followed their intuition about seeing somebody, about experiencing a relationship with somebody and this connected with their dreams, connected with their feeling and what their gut told them. And as they experienced this relationship, there was an amount of effortlessness and natural connection and engagement by both people, this person and the other person. And it was wonderful for a short time. And then suddenly, something happened, and it faded out. And it wasn’t a really good ending. It was just no connection about it, it just trailed off and this person was left wondering what happened, and in a lot of pain, disappointment. And the result of that led them to think that I shouldn’t trust myself. I shouldn’t trust my intuition. And I can’t trust my intuition because I got hurt.

Candice Wu 39:16

So, I’m here to tell you that the soul and your intuition and your gut does not guarantee that you won’t be hurt. It does not guarantee that you won’t feel hurt, rather. Because hurt is an essential part of our growth. And where the hurt is, shows us where our heart wants to be loved more. And where there’s already hurt inside of us, that wants to be loved and healed and dissolve back into nothingness, dissolve back into the loving.

Candice Wu 39:58

So, my message for this person was you absolutely followed your soul and your intuition and it was right. Because it led you to feeling this beautiful effortlessness in a relationship that was new, so this light, this beauty, this love, a new possibility, a taste of that. And it also led them to experience where their deepest wound is about themselves in the world.

Candice Wu 40:30

Because the beliefs that came out of that were, nobody will ever put an effort for me. I will never experience love where somebody cares enough to put the effort in. I’m unworthy of that. It showed this person the most core experience of this life that’s related to their younger being, their younger self, and how they experience one of their parents not showing effort. And so this is the template of which the adult experience is set through and it seems as though that’s the reality, because everything comes that way, then. But it’s not the reality. It’s just the lived experience, coming from these beliefs sets, where the outer experience reflected that in a deep, deep, powerful way.

Candice Wu 41:24

So, back to the idea that the soul and the mind have different agendas in a way or different ways of seeing the world is that with this person, their soul wanted them to learn these two lessons that you can experience this beautiful, effortless kind of love. And we want to heal this unworthiness. And the mind can swoop in and say, nope, it just means you can’t trust your intuition, you got hurt, we don’t want to get hurt again. This was the wrong thing to do, because our mind just wants to control the things that are painful or scary, or the basic self wants to control that, and doesn’t want us to have heartache, wants things to feel good.

Candice Wu 42:16

And when I say mind, I do mean this sort of generalized idea of the mind where our thoughts are. Because in Ayurveda, the mind also encompasses the emotions. And in the way I’m talking about the mind, I’m not exactly talking about that, this time around. I’m talking about that basic self that has these thoughts of wanting to stay safe and has decided what we want in our lives. This mental construct of thoughts that have attached to a certain outcome in a certain form of the way things the way we want things to be. And so, when we see that we’ve been led to heartache, to show us where there’s more loving to be had, our mind can say, “Wait, no, that was wrong and we shouldn’t do that again.”

Candice Wu 43:13

The mind tries to rationalize it and make sense of it, and figure out where we’ve gone wrong. While the soul is saying, “Yes, we went through this experience, please now move through the pain of it, or the emotions of whatever is here, so that we can be more whole, we can find our wholeness again, so we can learn this lesson of loving, loving ourselves.” And then the mind comes back in and it’s like, “No, no, no, no, no, this is too painful.”

Candice Wu 43:48

So, while it seems like the soul and the mind are on two tracks, and in some ways they are, they’re completely connected and serve each other. Because if the mind is integrated with the souls journey, then it’s totally right on track with it, but often, our mind serves to show us where those pockets of fear and wounding live, deep, deep deep down underneath those thoughts, that you’re not enough or that you’re unworthy of a certain relationship or whatever it is you feeling worthy of. Underneath that is where the soul is. And the mind connects to it, an expression of those places of fear that our soul wants us to move through, and attend to, so that we can be in our wholeness naturally. So, we can be in our loving naturally. And part of that loving is loving all the emotions that come up around it.

Candice Wu 44:54

So, when we have a heartache or experience that shows us some pain, this is where the healing opportunity is. The beliefs and paradigm underneath that pain is usually not one of the truth. And is one full of assumptions and meanings that were created from a different time. And often that time is when we were children, when we came into this world, so open-hearted and so tender, and so loving and fully expressive, so much of soul, but that the world around us maybe didn’t support it in the right way or where we felt it was painful and didn’t have the holding around it and we would close down and protect ourselves. And that’s the way we close down and protect ourselves through our adult lives, and where our soul wants us to recover that youthful and full expression of all the ways we can feel in this life.

Candice Wu 45:56

The agenda of the mind and the ego also can try to make things permanent, and make them last. And so we think, “Oh, this didn’t work, this relationship didn’t work.” Well, the soul is saying, I think this relationship did quite fine to show us where we can love ourselves more. So, this is entirely your choice. Do you want to see your life and choose and surrender to the soul in this way? Or do you want to choose a different kind of making it work or safety or stability in the earthly life? There’s nothing wrong with either one just is a question of what makes you feel alive in yourself, and what is right for you. And if you do choose the surrender to the soul, and the souls journey of love, then we can get out of the way a little bit if we detach from the sort of end game or making something work so that it’s permanent, and move into, shift into the flow of the way the universe and our being works. There’s a flow to which we’re meant to learn from this and then that and then this ends and something new begins. And this is where we can release our attachment to form that we can experience without the concrete form being exactly the way our mind thinks it should be. But we open ourselves and surrender ourselves to a fuller greater experience that comes in many forms.

Candice Wu 47:35

So, with that, I want to mention one last piece about grieving or relationships ending, is to find the life that is here. Endings are a death, endings are the energy of things going away, letting go, releasing, changing, shifting, dying, decaying, cut off, and where is the life? Where is growth? Where is the inspiration, the inhalation, the in breath? Where is loving? Where’s connection? Where is something beginning? And when we are grieving, we can often lose ourselves in the grief if we really go into it or we fear losing ourselves and to drown in it. And finding the playfulness, or the creative moment or the thing that sparks your enjoyment and feels life-giving. And having that as an important part of your grieving process, to give your body the feeling of safety, to remind yourself that there is something growth full about this or to remind yourself of the things you love, and feel inspired by, all this is extremely important. While you’re grieving, wow, something’s ending.

Candice Wu 49:01

Find the playfulness, find the laughter, have a silly time with someone that you care about, connect by sharing some of the feelings that are hard and then shift to something else. And find connection in another way. I know that I can just get into the seriousness of grieving in the past and it’s not that fun. And this is meant to also be supportive and moving through what’s real, but you can have fun, too. Playfulness is extremely healing. Laughter is extremely healing. Bring in the music, bringing the dance, move your body. Whatever your being feels called to do to feel pleasure.

Candice Wu 49:56

There’s another podcast that I did about the past being over and ending relationships or letting relationships truly die. You can check out that podcast at CandiceWu.com/pastisover and there are healing experientials that go with that. So, feel free to check that out too, if you’re interested and be sure to check out the experiences that are coming up later this week and connected with this podcast. You can find the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending, and there you’ll see all the experientials or if you’re subscribed to the podcast, they’ll pop up on your feed. So, we’ll tune into honoring the beauty in a past relationship or one that you’re ending. We will tune into honoring pain or the wounds and completing what might be emerging around those are what wants to be healed.

Candice Wu 50:54

We will explore self-forgiveness and speak two words of forgiving yourself around belief sets that come up around a relationship or what this relationship is showing you, and we’ll do something about playfulness and an inquiry about where you can tune into playfulness life and loving through the hard times.

Candice Wu 51:22

I want to just end with tenderness, to have softness around your grief or ending, and honor what is there. And this is the most important thing is the loving, the loving yourself through whatever it is you’re experiencing. Maybe it’s not grief, maybe it’s another emotion, maybe it’s anger, frustration or hurt or loss, whatever is there is to find the tenderness and the patience for yourself, and the time to let things move through.

Candice Wu 51:58

I don’t believe that time heals. Time just going on on its own without playfulness and support and looking at the painful parts and the wounds. I believe that it does take an openness to all of those feelings that are coming up for the healing to happen. And so, if you’ve given things time, and that hasn’t worked, that might be why, and just forgive yourself and come to a different tool. Try out something that I’m offering later this week, or if anything resonated with you in this podcast, encourage you to sit with that and allow that to come into your life, into your heart.

Candice Wu 52:45

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you know someone who’s going through a hard time with grieving, loss or relationships ending, I love for you to share this podcast with them if you feel it will be supportive for them. And also, I encourage you if you’re going through something or a friend is going through something to reach out for support to whoever is there for you. And if you’re needing someone or if you feel that you resonate with what I’m saying, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to give referrals for healers, therapists coaches, massage therapist, acupuncturists, all sorts of alternative healing practitioners. And if something calls you to work with me, I would love to talk with you and explore that and see if it’s a right fit. When it is just very, very deep, powerful things can happen.

Candice Wu 53:45

So, if you’d like to connect with me, feel free to find me on my website CandiceWu.com/connect. And if you’re interested in connecting into my newsletters, where you receive updates from me, self-love notes, as well as workshops and retreats that are coming up, you can sign up at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 54:07

Music has always been healing to me when relationships are ending or when I’m feeling pain or working through stuff. So, I want to leave you with just some lovely, sweet music to enjoy as we close today. Thanks so much and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experiential is to support the receiving of the gifts and beauty from a relationship that has ended so that you can integrate this embodied knowledge and love into your being.

This experiential is one of four healing experiences that are connected with the episode about relationships ending, honoring relationships ending, grieving, as well as for places that we get stuck while we are ending relationships and grieving.

You can find the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

This can be used when any relationship, whether that be intimate, friendship or familial relationship, and in whatever capacity it ends. You can join in as little or as much as you want in this experience, and just choose what applies to you and what resonates with you.

Hello, and welcome. You’re listening to the body podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, embodied healing, and self-love.

My name is Candice Wu, and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artists sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support, and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Relationships Ending — Inspiration and Fears

Thanks so much for joining me today. I really wanted to share this healing experience because each relationship that I am in, I know that this other person is some sort of teacher to me and brings to me some healing medicine, brings to me some energy that I was attracted to, at some point or still am, and that is a piece of myself that I want to get to know.

So, when we have a relationship end, it can be challenging to shift and grieve or say goodbye to this relationship when there’s something that’s there for us still, when there’s something in our heart or our soul that we yearn for that the other person gives us or enlivens in us, and it can be hard to say goodbye to that.

So, with this healing experience, you don’t have to say goodbye to that feeling, that experience, that capacity in you, and that state of being, but you can receive that fully digested and integrated into your being, and say goodbye to the person you’re saying goodbye to. Especially if you are pushing or challenging yourself to, “get over someone” or “move forward” or “get on with it, move on.” This healing experience can be very supportive in that full release of your dynamic and what your soul is clinging on to here, if it is clinging or still connected and bonded.

Essentially, what we’re doing is allowing the soul and the heart to glean, extract and receive every bit of what you came for, in this connection with this other soul. Whether your relationship ended peacefully or with hardship or trauma or challenge, I encourage you to check in with what is the beautiful part of the relationship, what drew you to begin with, as this may be an indicator of what your soul deeply desires to experience in yourself, and reclaim for yourself.

Also, sometimes, when we’re ending a relationship or when a relationship has ended, in whatever capacity it’s ended, we sometimes have the fear that we won’t experience this kind of experience again with anyone else, and that’s coming from a place of attachment with this concrete form of the way things came to be here, and from that concrete form of this interaction with this person, it’s our hearts’ and souls’ desire to take from it. The experience takes from it the capacity to feel this way and know that we can feel this way again, that this is you that experienced it, and therefore, you have every possibility of feeling that way again. Everything is within you and your capacity to experience and to feel your worth, that you’re worthy of receiving all of this.

Sometimes, we’re also afraid of feeling the good stuff from a relationship if we feel pressured to get over someone, especially they hurt us in the end or if we felt hurt at some point, we tend to want to push it away because the painful feelings come with it or we feel that we will be attached forever to this person, and we avoid integrating the true beautiful feelings that were birthed from this relationship and co-created in this connection. And so, that feeling of fear that we may never get over this person or never shift from grief or get swallowed and the grief can stop us from actually integrating and metabolizing the beautiful experience that did come with it or the pieces of loveliness that came with it. It can stop us from digesting that and keep us bonded with this experience even longer.

It’s kind of like being a bear in hibernation and storing food in your gut so that you can have food later. It’s a slow-release, but that food will last a long time if you don’t eat it all at once and digest it all at once, and with this integration of a relationship experience. If we don’t look at what the beautiful part of the connection is and digest that, it will still stay there for us later to integrate, and we may feel prolonged in our bondedness to this person, because our soul wants us to take that, wants us to have that beautiful experience and claim that feeling for ourselves.

And the last thing I’d like to say before we begin is that this relationship may become sort of a place marker for the pain or for the beauty. Anything that’s unintegrated or undigested, and what I mean is feeling the experience fully and really taking it in, and letting it come into the expansiveness of your own being. If that isn’t done with both the pain and the pleasure, then part of our soul, part of our being will resonate still with this relationship or with this experience of the relationship. There’s an attachment to this form for a reason because something may be incomplete and wanting this completion of integration.

Trauma

If you had a traumatic experience within your relationship or it ended in a traumatic experience or something very overwhelming, I encourage you to receive support around this as even connecting in with the goodness or the beauty, the things that you did enjoy feeling and that you want to honor, that can bring up all the rest. So, with this healing experience, dive in as much or as little as you want to take breaks if you need and get that support if you’re nervous system, your body starts to feel overwhelmed and wanting to integrate this with someone that can guide you through it.

Claiming Your Own State of Being

So, let’s jump into this experience where you get to claim your own state of being, your own pleasure, enjoyment, expansion, and beauty that got shown to you through this relationship.

Go ahead and find a comfortable place to sit or to stand. If you’d like to stand, this is a lovely way to connect with this experience of the full body and what the body wants to show you. However, if you’d prefer to sit you’re more than welcome to do so and feel the sensations and emotions, and impulse from a place of sitting.

Now, just release the outer world, feel free to close your eyes or look down and tune into your breathing.

Notice your breathing just the way it is, and just allow yourself to receive a breath.

Check-in with your entire body and feel if there’s any temperature, sensation, emotion or anything else happening inside your body.

We open to our ability to notice and witness whatever’s happening without judgment, without trying to change it, and with the intention of gathering information that everything you feel inside, everything you’re aware of is part of your information gathering.

Opening to Love

Now, let’s invite the energy of love to completely surround you, the energy of love being the most non-judgmental, tender, compassionate and gentle space. Let it fill up your whole body and being.

Let love connect all the way up with the core of your being that already is this love, truth, and compassion. The place of you that knows you’re on this journey of loving, learning and growth.

And now, with your eyes closed or open, it’s up to you, imagine the person that you have ended a relationship with right in front of you. Whether you’re standing or sitting, as you imagine this person in front of you, begin to notice what happens in your body, and if there’s movement, follow and allow the movement. If there’s emotion, feel into that emotion and allow it to be shown and express through your body in whatever way it shows up. There’s no need to think about it or analyze it, and if nothing happens, notice that, too.

Open to the Pleasure in the Relationship

Now, open to the experience of this relationship that brings you the most connection, excitement or pleasure, the thing that you really love or were drawn to in this relationship.

Sometimes, that’s connected to painful feelings, so, we just let those painful parts go to the side. Those painful parts we can look at later in the next healing experiential or another time.

And right now, we just put our attention on the beauty of this, the pleasure, the resonance that you have with what your soul really desired about this relationship or really enjoyed.

If this is challenging to connect with, take a moment here. Take your time.

And as you connect with this, allow your emotions to resonate with it.

Allow your whole body to experience this moment.

This feeling of the beauty of your connection, the pleasure of this connection, what you loved the most about it.

And as you feel into it and experience it, notice, again what’s happening in your body, in your heart, in your movements.

Allow yourself to feel and experience this in whatever fullness or capacity you can right now.

Stay with it and continue to deepen into this feeling of this loving connection or this beauty or these small or big moments that really meant a lot to you.

If there are many beautiful parts to the relationship, many moments that really were drawn to or loved, take some extra time here or rewind the exercise and do it again with each piece that really captures your heart.

Notice how you are the one experiencing it in your body, in your heart, in your being.

This is your experience, and you have the capacity to feel this way.

Imagine integrating this experience as yours, that you can call upon this tool, this memory of this person to evoke this feeling in you, in your body right now.

Healing Statements

And as you look towards this person, if it feels true and right to you, feel free to say to them:

Thank you so much for this experience. Thank you so much for showing me that I could feel this way.

And if it feels right or true, you can say:

You will always have a special place in my heart.

Notice what happens as you say these words or notice the words that feel even more right to you.

Trust whatever comes forward to you inside of yourself, and allow yourself to experience the words or the sentiments that feel right in this moment. This is just for you.

If it feels right, you can say to them:

I bless you on your journey and please bless me on mine.

Other words that might resonate with you are:

• I will never forget these beautiful experiences and memories
• OR
• I will always take the beauty of this relationship with me.

Stay connected with the loveliness, the pleasure, the experience that this person particularly invoked in you.

Allow that feeling to grow in you, and if you need to look at that person, that memory that brought you there to that feeling, connect with that as much as you want to.

Say Goodbye

And then when you’re ready, If it feels right, say goodbye to this person.

If it doesn’t feel right, trust that, and it might be farewell or it might be no words at all.

Start to let this person walk back away from you, only if that feels right to you right now, and as you do that, stay with this feeling that’s full inside your body or as much of this feeling that you’re feeling for yourself.

Stay connected with that as this person just starts to fade back, little by little, farther away from you.

We’re just focusing on the good parts of the relationship right now, and if you feel you’ve lost that feeling as they fade back, just ask them to stop where they are, come just a bit closer, reconnect with the feeling, the memory that brought you to this feeling that’s so good for you.

Start to solidify and fortify your own inner state of being, this feeling that is inside you, as this person fades farther and farther back into their own lives, onto their own journey.

And as you are on your journey, you now have this beautiful experience of yourself to take with you, to let flourish, and to let come alive in other experiences in your life.

Feel the sensations and emotions that are happening inside.

Allow whatever is here to be felt and trust, that it’s just the right thing for you right now.

Honoring Your Beauty

As we give this space for you to honor the beauty in your relationship, take a moment to honor the beauty in you, and to thank yourself for giving yourself this space and time to grieve or continue your healing, and to allow yourself to integrate the beauty, love or pleasure of this relationship that has ended or is ending.

Feel free to place your hands on your heart as you thank yourself, letting a couple of breaths move through your body.

And as you feel ready, if your eyes are closed, open them.

Gently just look around your space and orient yourself to what feels pleasurable to look at around you, acknowledging to yourself that you’re here.

Ending

And I’ll leave you with just a little music to transition, and I send you my deepest wishes and blessings that you reclaim all of the experiences that have been enlivened in any relationship that’s ending, past or present, and to know that this is your experience, your capacity to feel that allows you to receive this or even better, again in your life.

Thank you so much for joining me again. I

f you want to connect with the introductory podcast about relationships ending, and honoring relationships ending, as well as for places that we can get stuck in our grieving process, check out that episode at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

This is the first of four healing experientials that are connected with this episode of relationships ending, and today, we looked at and explored the beauty of the relationship, and the next one will be about honoring any pain or wounds that came from the relationship or emerged within it.

There’s also a healing experiential that supports you and self-forgiveness for any beliefs or actions that are tied up with this relationship, and tuning into playfulness and where there’s life happening as you end this relationship.

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experience offers the space for you to honor the pain, hurt or wounds within a relationship that’s ending or has ended. This is the second experiential of four that are connected with the episode about relationships ending, honoring grief as well as for places that we get stuck in relationships ending. You can find the full podcast and all the experientials at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

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

Honoring Pain, Hurt or Wounds

In the first healing experiential in this series, we honored the beauty, the pleasure, or what was enlivened in us through whatever relationship that we’re ending or a past relationship. That is to take the beauty, the goodness, and extract that so that we can claim that feeling for ourselves, and have that capacity as we move forward in life, and to take the soul lesson from that experience.

And in this healing experience, we are honoring the pain, hurt or wounds that arrived or emerged from this relationship so that we can truly put closure on it, release the binds of our soul on this relationship.

When there is pain in a relationship, when there’s an experience that your heart was hurt, your soul wants you to love yourself through it to feel the experience in its fullness, and to allow the natural healing to emerge and unfold from your heart, your soul, from your body and being, and if we do not do that healing, then some part of our soul continues to reach for that lesson. That might be feeling still attached to this relationship or this person or feeling like you’re not moving forward from it or it can be to repeat the same lesson again within another relationship, and that’s okay if that happens. It’s just you wanting to truly feel into this experience, and to heal it or find a new place with it in yourself.

So, whatever way your relationship ended, whether that’s a family relationship, an intimate one or a friendship or even a career, collaboration or partnership, this experience can support you in giving you the space to honor what’s here. If it was a traumatic or very overwhelming experience, you may want to move slowly and do a piece at a time, and I highly encourage you if it was traumatic to get support from a healer, therapist or somebody that’s trained in working with trauma or overwhelming experiences.

Use What Works for You In This Experience

With this healing experiential, you might find that everything resonates with you, and you might find that nothing resonates with you.

So, feel free to use what works for you, and what really connects with yourself right now, and at different times different things may connect, trust yourself and allow yourself to have this space while we’re together to let what wants to come through emerge.

So, in this experience, we will be connecting with the person that you are in relationship with, where the wound lives. We won’t be going into the exact experience of what happened, even though those images or feelings or thoughts may come up, we’ll be working with more so the feelings and what needs to happen now for the loving and for the healing to occur.

Let’s Begin

So, if you’re ready to jump in with me, feel free to find a comfortable private space to be.

I encourage you to either sit or stand, and as you begin, just start to notice your breathing and your body, become aware of the belly and the hips.

Bring your attention down to your legs and your feet, and notice your heart, and open the part of you that just receives all sensation, emotion, thoughts, images, and movements as information.

So, we’re just staying curious about what shows up and allowing what’s here to be seen as much as you’re able to right now.

If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a break, just pause and feel your body by touching it or moving your arms and legs and look around your space and just ground yourself by sensing into where you are right now, breathing and just letting yourself come out of it.

And now, if you’re ready to begin, go ahead and surround yourself with the energy of love. That might look like a color of light to you or just a sense of a feeling of love. Love being the most non-judgmental, compassionate, tender space.

Let that connect up with the love in your being the love that you are inside, deep deep down.

Imagine the Person in Relationship

Now, I invite you to imagine the person in relationship that you feel or felt this pain, hurt or wound with.

Whether the relationship is ending or has ended or is ending right now, just imagine that person in front of you, and place them as far or as close as you would like them to be so that it feels comfortable for you.

You might feel some uncomfortable feelings or discomfort in your body. Notice that and allow that to move and come through, naturally just as it is, and if it’s overwhelming, this is where you can take a break or you can invite the person to go a little farther away in your awareness.

If you’re feeling nothing at all, you can invite that person to come closer to you.

Sometimes, we’re feeling nothing at all because we’re actually feeling numb, and our nervous system is overwhelmed.

So, check to see if there’s a sense of being out of your body or not here, spacey or overwhelmed or if it’s just that you need this person to come closer to you to tune into any pain, hurt or wound that’s connected with them.

Notice the emotions that come up.

Notice where they are in your body.

Feel any sensations inside of yourself or in your energy.

Notice where you want to look or where you’re able to look without forcing yourself, just being aware of how your body wants to be, how your body is, where your eyes go.

If you’re not already looking at the person, invite yourself to open to being aware of them or glancing at them or looking at them in the eyes.

Whatever pace or place you’re at is okay.

Expressing

Now, notice what you want to say to them about this hurt, pain or wound.

Whatever it is, in the privacy of your own space, in this experience of healing, allow yourself to say whatever it is that you need to say from the part of you that feels hurt.

Right now, give yourself the space that there are no consequences to whatever you want to say or do in your healing space.

So, if there’s anger, if there are tears, if there’s a desire to fight, bite or push or punch or to ask for something, to receive, tune into what’s here for you and trust whatever wants to come through.

Your emotions serve to support you in integrating this experience and to move towards what your soul needs for healing.

If there’s anything else you’d like to say, feel free to do it now or anytime. If you notice you feel hurt or anger or sadness, just state that out loud, “I feel hurt. I feel angry.”

And see what happens if it feels right to say out loud to this person in your awareness, Thank you for the lesson.

Notice what happens in you. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t say it.

Taking Responsibility

Now, see how it is to say, I take responsibility for my part in any hurt in this relationship.

And if there’s something that you wish that they would say or do imagine that now, what it is that you wish they would say or do.

You get to create in your mind’s eye the exact thing that would feel so healing, supportive or loving just right for you

As you imagine this now or invite yourself to imagine it, notice the experience in your body, your heart, notice what happens.

This is the healing that you get to have for you. So, receive anything else that you’d like to receive in relation to this pain, wound or this person that is connected with, this person that showed you this pain in you.

You might notice any beliefs that come through as you feel the hurt of this relationship.

This is what you can think the person for, for showing you these beliefs that are already here living in you, giving you the chance to see yourself more deeply, to see where there’s already hurt in you that wants to be healed to show you where your soul desires to repair and mend.

Feel free to take as long as you’d like to, and if there’s anything else you’d like to say, do or ask or imagine, feel free to do that now.

Feel right into this moment of what’s happening inside your body as you imagine it or as you say or do, anything that needs to be said or done.

Take a Break, Releasing the Person, and Turn Towards Love

Feel free to pause this recording if you need more time.

If you’re ready to go on, release the image of this person and turn towards yourself with love.

Feel free to place your hands on your heart or on your belly

If it feels like right, you can say to yourself the part of you that got hurt or felt wounded or pain, “I am so so sorry that you felt hurt. I am so so sorry, you had to experience this. I love you. Please forgive me. I forgive myself.”

Allow a couple of breaths to move.

Feel free to repeat any of those words that felt right, and if none of them felt right or somebody them do not feel right, just leave them

Thank yourself or giving yourself the space to honor the hurt and you in connection with this relationship.

Closing

And when you feel ready, release your hands if they’re on your heart or belly. Gently open your eyes and allow yourself to come back to where you are in your space right now.

Take your time to move slowly and honor anything your heart or your body is feeling, and I encourage you to nourish yourself today.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like any support and connect in with the other healing experientials that connect with this podcast.

That’s at CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending, and I’m sending you so much love as we end here today. Look forward to connecting with you again.

Introduction

Welcome to a healing experiential around self-forgiveness for any beliefs or actions that you experience within a relationship. This is the third of four healing experientials that are connected with the episode around relationships ending, grieving, and honoring what pain wounds and experiences come out of your relationship. You can find the introductory podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

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.

In Relationship — Love and Forgiveness

When we’re in relationship, or when a relationship is ending or has ended, no matter how much time has gone by, some part of our soul wants to connect with any pain or beauty from the relationship.

So the first two healing experientials were around integrating both the pleasure and beauty, as well as any hurt or wounds, and repairing that so that you can move forward in your life.

In this episode, we’re bringing a lot of love and self-forgiveness around any judgment for yourself around beliefs or actions, or experiences that you had within a relationship, or that you’re having now.

We will invite so much love and self-forgiveness around any judgment that pertains to beliefs, actions or experiences that you had within this relationship. And in a big way, this is Shadow work, because we are looking at any places, any situations or experiences that you might even blame or project on to the other person or, where you feel frustration towards them.

And to turn towards yourself, to go even deeper with yourself and look at your responsibility, your beliefs, your ways of being that contributed to this experience and drew it in for you to learn.

My Teacher

As we begin the self-forgiveness experiential, I want to just honor where I learned this and how I came towards self-forgiveness in my own practice and in my work with clients, and it’s through one of my healers, Charmayne Kilcup. And she learned this process through Robert Waterman and found that self-forgiveness was incredibly powerful for her and her clients as well.

Self-Forgiveness

Self-forgiveness is the most important part around any belief set, any experience you’ve had. We are so hard on ourselves and we tend to judge our actions and judge that we have different beliefs.

We judge our fears. We judge when the other person gets hurt in many cases and forgiving ourselves for the judgment.

I have found is one of the most powerful ways to just dissolve the belief set that we’re naming as well as that self-judgment, self-criticism that we have and it’s a deep way to love yourself so that you can open up back to who you are, the love that you already are, that you can come back to your grounded energy and so that you can move forward.

Some people fear that forgiving yourself will cause you to do that bad thing over again or for you to just accept any behavior that you have. That’s not necessarily true. Self-forgiveness of judgment supports you in addressing whatever it is that you didn’t like in the situation or addressing any belief in yourself with love.

And it allows you to return home to the love in yourself so that you can move forward with that and from that place.

Instead of forgiving the other person for something, it’s more important to forgive yourself for what part you played in the situation. And any forgiveness of others can come really naturally.

Feel free to use whatever parts of this healing experience, work for you and leave the rest. So let’s jump in if you’re ready.

Let’s Begin

Find yourself a comfy place to be.

Take a moment and just notice your surroundings.

Notice that you’re alive, right here and now.

Let your breath wash all the way down into your belly, into your hips, into your legs, and feet.

And surround yourself with the energy of love that holds no judgment, only compassion, understanding, and truth.

And now bring up a situation that you felt challenged with. Whether that’s in your current relationship or any relationship that is ending or has ended. What is the situation or experience that you were challenged with?

And as you bring up this situation, begin to picture it without analyzing it. Just imagine the situation.

Notice how you feel inside without changing it at all and whatever emotions or sensations you feel in your body, if any, tune into where you feel them in your body.

Notice the color of the sensation or emotion if there is, texture, the size.

As you feel your emotions and body sensations, open to any thoughts that you have that come through about the situation, about the other person and about yourself.

Listen to the words that you might hear or say about the situation and about yourself.

Self-Forgiveness

Let’s begin with some basic self-forgiveness.

Feel free to say these words out loud, repeating after me, whether or not you feel the words are right, and just see what happens as you say them out loud and if for some reason you feel they’re definitely not right for you, feel free to just wait until the next one. And check to see if that resonates for you.

So just repeating after me out loud and feeling what happens in your body.

I forgive myself for judging myself, for being in this situation.

I forgive myself for judging myself for having to learn the hard way.

Sometimes when situations happen, we start to believe things about ourselves. Or it tugs on something inside of us that already believes this.

For example, I’m unworthy of love, or It’s always my fault. Or, I’m just not good enough. Or, In order to be loved, I have to…

So check in with yourself and see if there are any of these beliefs that live in or around the situation in this relationship.

Now using any beliefs or actions that you’ve had within the relationship, let’s say a couple of forgiveness statements.

I forgive myself for judging myself for believing. And then fill in the blank with the beliefs that came up for you.

Again, the words are, I forgive myself for judging myself for believing.

Notice what emotions or feelings come up for you and just honor them. This is the energy of the judgment, leaving your body, being expressed and seen so that it can move.

Now go one by one until you move through each belief that came up. I forgive myself for judging myself for believing.

Be sure to take a couple of deep breaths after each statement. Feel free to say the words as many times as you need and take a pause after each.

And if you need more time here, just pause the recording and take your time and if you’re ready to go on to all of the actions that you may be judging yourself for, let’s move forward.

So repeat after me: I forgive myself for judging myself for… and then place any actions here that you feel you’d like to take responsibility for or that you feel you’re judging yourself for.

For example, I forgive myself for judging myself for lying. I forgive myself for judging myself, for betraying myself. Or, I forgive myself for judging myself for not trusting in who I am.

Feel free to insert any actions or any ways of being that connects with the situation whether their actions within yourself or towards the other person.

Again, the words are, I forgive myself for judging myself for…

And if this action has happened more than once you can say, I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times and places that I…

Take a moment and use those words for anything else that comes up for you around the situation and if you need more time, or need to hear a repeat of the words, feel free to just skip back or pause here.

And we’ll do one more segment here, just noticing any places where you blame the other person, where you feel angry or frustrated with them.

As you feel into that, go deeper within yourself and ask yourself, What part did I play in this situation?

Ask yourself, What beliefs caused me to act in this way in the situation pr to draw a situation like this toward me?

One way to connect up with that question is to ask, What beliefs emerge if I feel into what I’m left with, from this situation? What beliefs about who I am, come forward if I turn that energy towards myself?

And with any beliefs that came up or any ways of being, just repeat the forgiveness statements. Placing those beliefs right in the statement.

The words again are, I forgive myself for judging myself for believing. Or, I forgive myself for judging myself for all the times and places that I… Fill in the blank with any action or way of being.

Sometimes the beliefs or ways of being don’t emerge very easily. Just feel free to take your own time with it and chip away at it just a little bit at a time. Feel free to repeat portions of this healing experience that just fit for you.

Closing

And right now, just take a moment to open your eyes if your eyes are closed.

Feel into your heart, placing your hands right on top of your chest and thank yourself for taking such great responsibility with your inner world, for giving yourself the grace of self-forgiveness and loving yourself.

If you felt stuck or overwhelmed in any part of this experience, feel free to reach out for support to someone you love or a healer, coach or therapist.

Feel free to reach out to me. And just be gentle with yourself as you continue this journey forward through any uncovering of yourself through relationships or relationships ending.

I appreciate that you joined me today and feel free to check out the other three healing experiences that connect with this podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

Hi, thanks so much for joining me today. This is Candice, and I’m bringing a self-inquiry today on playfulness and the life that’s blossoming from any relationship ending, or that has ended in your life.

Whether you’re in that relationship right now, or it’s a past relationship, sometimes endings can cause a lot of hard feelings or challenging feelings that is literally a death of something, things ending, things shifting, things dying off.

We can sometimes get stuck in that feeling of grief, or the challenging emotions or overwhelming emotions. And it’s super helpful for our nervous systems, to tune into the playfulness, where something is growing or the life that’s happening in any part of our experience.

First of Four Healing Experiences

This exploration is one of four healing experientials that are connected with the main podcast about relationships ending, about grieving relationships ending, and honoring places we might get stuck, when we have a relationship ending or that has ended. You can find all of those experientials, as well as the main podcast at CandiceWu.com/ep70 or CandiceWu.com/relationshipsending.

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 practice petitioners from all over the world.

Let’s Begin and Journal If You’d Like

So here we go.

Feel free to get a journal and pen or pencil or something to write on if you’d like to, or just tune in by sitting comfortably, and listening and hearing your inner voice, or noticing what comes up for you as we go along in this process.

So find yourself a comfy place to be, get yourself as comfortable as you want to be. If you want any pillows or blankets, a cup of tea, feel free to pause here and do all of those things to just support yourself now if you’d like to.

Feel free to join in to as little or as much as you want out of this experience. Some of these questions may pertain to you and some may not. Some may really resonate with you and others may just fall flat.

Feel free to pick and choose what is helpful for you and if at any time you feel overwhelmed, just take a break, look around your space and orient, tune into something supportive or nourishing for you.

Close Your Eyes

So let’s begin by closing our eyes or looking down whatever feels more comfortable with you.

Tune into your body.

Notice how it is that you feel right now and allowing and accepting anything that’s happening inside.

Now I’ll move through a series of questions and feel free to just notice what comes up in your awareness, in your heart, emotions, and body as well as any images that pop up.

So the first question is, Where is there love and connection forming? In this relationship ending or the relationship that has ended.

And notice, if there’s any love and connection inside of yourself, within yourself, any loving of parts of who you are, or connecting with yourself and also notice any love and connection that’s happening with nature. Other people, animals, or your passions, things that you enjoy. Notice the love and connection that is there or just beginning to bud.

Now notice, Where is the life or something that’s growing, blossoming, or coming alive. Whether that’s within yourself or in your outer world.

What are the moments of creative energy or inspiration, whether that’s just a flash of a thought or a hit of intuition or whether you created something like cooked a meal, planted a seed in the garden, opened a book, got creative with what you are wearing today?

Continue to notice any emotions that come up, any feelings in your body as you tune into those moments of creativity or inspiration or love and connection.

And don’t worry, if you can’t find anything, there are plenty of pockets that will look into here in this experience.

Any sensations or feelings that feel pleasant to you, focus on those and just allow them to grow in your body.

Allow yourself to marinate and feel into them without trying to think or analyze, just feeling.

Now connect with any moments in the last few days or weeks that you felt like yourself or you felt validated or firm in who you are or where you felt alive.

Take a moment to notice how it feels to reconnect with that experience of when you felt like yourself, when you felt validated or affirmed, or alive.

Whole Life

Now broaden this to your entire life.

What have you connected to in your life that brings you a feeling of aliveness, validation or affirmation of yourself or that brings you back to feeling like yourself? What brings you home in yourself or what has brought you home to yourself?

And now tune back to this present or past relationship that you’re connecting with or that you’re shifting from, and notice what good has come from this ending.

What gifts or wisdom or energies have come from the ending of this relationship or the shift in the relationship? And notice if this relationship leave space for something new, what does this leave space for now?

How could this new space or space of shift or absence of this relationship?

How could this space be enjoyed and what could bring you into more love and playfulness?

Notice any emotions that you have, any sensations in your body and anything that stands out to you now.

And as you notice all of your responses, feel free to tune into one image or sensation in your body or experience that you would like to connect with now.

As you make deeper contact with that sensation or feeling or memory, or the thing that could give you love and playfulness, whatever you’ve chosen, let that feeling grow inside your body and radiate out from your body, just focusing on where it feels pleasant or where you feel neutral and expansive or spaciousness, warmth, any pleasant feelings.

Feel free to spend as long as you’d like to here.

Close

And as we close today, I’ll just leave a little music so that you can continue to feel into this if you’d like to, or you can begin to transition into the next part of your day.

Thanks so much for joining me today and I hope you found something supportive for you here in this experience. And I invite you to take it one step further, to take that nourishing action in your life that will support you in deeper love for yourself, more playfulness, and noticing the life that’s already here. Namaste.