This week is part three of the whole conversation around taking, receiving and giving, and the balance of each of these. In this conversation, I explore who is the part of you that’s giving, and the balance of when you give and what that does in a relationship as to its relation to when you receive our take, how to balance relationships in terms of taking, giving and receiving, and what happens in the dynamic. I also talk about self-love and giving to the self as well as how that relates to our dynamics in relationships on the human level.

Candice Wu 0:42

This episode is part three of taking, receiving and giving and the balance of each of these as well as cleansing our dynamics and believes that are in relation to these three ways of being in life. I share some of my own thoughts on the balance of taking, receiving and giving as well as the thoughts of Bert Hellinger from Love’s Hidden Symmetry. Bert Hellinger is the founder of family constellations and explores these hidden dynamics.

Candice Wu 1:18

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

Candice Wu 1:31

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

Candice Wu 1:53

It’s so important to let die what needs to die. If you think about rotting fruit and you just let it sit there and you don’t throw it out or buried in the earth, it just sits there and keeps on rotting and decaying, and often what is within us that wants to be released and felt, and honored to release or end can fester. What wants to complete itself can be overdue. Have you ever had a relationship where it just needed to end or change in some way or something needs to be acknowledged or felt, and because that delayed or it was maybe hard to do so it got worse?

Candice Wu 2:43

Well, this is my experience at times and when I first experienced the death meditation by Ana T. Forrest, through her work of Forrest Yoga, and healing, it was really profound. It was a simulation of death, which brought me to face the experience of if I were to die in 12 hours, what would I want to say do or feel and experience? What would it mean to live? And so, with that experience, I have found inspiration and adapted the Ally with Death Experiential, which is a way to experience that simulation of death through an audio experience, and through prompts that ask of you to look at what needs to end in your life, what belief sets are you carrying that really weigh you down or create suffering, what in your outer world needs to happen, what needs to be said, what needs to be acknowledged, so that you can fully live life and come back to your playful, intuitive, creative, sensing, curious self. And if that’s not something you know, that part of you is, curious and playful parts of you, maybe that doing this can allow that to come and shine through.

Candice Wu 4:12

So, my adaptation of this experience includes the body it includes what happens inside as you’re feeling this, what are you noticing in your body, emotions, images. This is my own creation of what has helped me in partnering with the energy of death to let things truly release and die, and to imagine a death, and to let that happen so that I can find renewal and revitalization.

Candice Wu 4:47

If you’re interested in this experience, it’s fantastic for the winter or for your moon cycle or a phase of the moon cycle, in general, or anytime you’re feeling way down. stuck, anxious, depressed. If there are things you know you need to face or something that seems like it wants to be acknowledged within you, this is a great opportunity to experience it. It’s a 75-minute audio experience, and it’s full of stirring and provocative music that’s handpan music by a friend of mine, Larry St. Germain. He’s an artist and a musician, and he was so excited to take on this project and just poured his heart and soul into the fine-tuning, the mood and the energy that hold space for us to truly look in places, in the dark places, and face what it is that we need to really honor.

Candice Wu 5:52

So, that’s music by Larry Saint Germain, and it’s produced and edited by Chris Spiegl, who’s the editor of the Embody Podcast, and he did a fantastic job of amalgamating his chunks of sound to fit right in with my voice and fill in and hold the space for. You can find this experience at CandiceWu.com/death.

Candice Wu 6:17

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me today. This is going to be an interesting conversation. I’m literally in a robe because it’s cold here in Michigan. I have a cup of tea. I hope you’ll join me with something comforting to yourself in this topic of giving. It’s really beautiful to be able to give to yourself and receive what you’re giving to yourself. That to me means taking time for self-care and doing that in a way that’s woven through your day. So, that is part of you. Not just something you set aside to do, which is a beautiful thing, too, but having this cup of tea here, and receiving the benefit, really feeling into how that feels to give to yourself, the pleasure it is or where it feels comforting or soothing. So, I invite you to do that today. Whatever it is that would make you feel soothed in this moment, whether that’s a little bit of contact to your body or getting a blanket or if you’re in transit, to do something that supports your body in feeling more comfortable and cared for.

Candice Wu 7:43

I just spent about five days in New York on a visit, and so glad to be home in this cozy place in Michigan. There’s snow on the ground. It’s the week of Thanksgiving here in the United States and I just love this cozy feeling before the holidays, but I also want to acknowledge that I didn’t always feel that way, and I know for many people, holidays are a hard time, and that can relate to all sorts of family dynamics, belonging or expectations, but also, hurts and wounds of the past. So, here, as you’re coming towards any holidays of your culture or your ethnicity, maybe it’s a chance to look at what hurt or wounds have been here, what’s the feeling you have now and just take a moment to honor those rather than being harsh on yourself or critical or trying to push these parts of you away. And also, it might be a time to push these parts of you to the side in a sense of, if you need to have some boundaries around what you’re feeling to move towards what’s pleasurable as we started in the beginning of this podcast.

Candice Wu 9:06

So, I would like to just jump into this podcast today. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking about taking, taking what’s given to us, taking what we need, taking up space, and all of the dynamics underneath it that may prevent us from really being able to take what’s ours. We’ve also been talking about taking versus receiving and the active feeling around taking, the active assertion that’s needed to take, to take our place in our lives and in our ancestry. And also, the topic of receiving and how it is to receive, to receive love to receive all the things that are coming our way, and how we can step into by taking our place, step into all of what it is that is here for us, that is specific perfectly designed for us to receive in this life and to take in this life.

Candice Wu 10:06

I’ve talked about taking our place as a way of taking your true position in your family lineage, and also, in yourself, in who you are, the essence of you. What I didn’t talk about is taking our parents as they are, and how much that is a part of and the essential groundwork to being at peace in ourselves and loving ourselves, and feeling whole. Before I jump into that, if you want to hear the previous conversations, you can find that at CandiceWu.com/taking and CandiceWu.com/receiving. That’s part one into and they’re also linked to the show notes of this episode. If you’d like to catch up with that, you can start and that’s totally fine, too, I think. This conversation it all loops together.

Candice Wu 11:06

So, taking our parents as they are. I often hear people saying I don’t want to be like my parents or having criticisms of their parents, rejecting them in some way, and what that does, I know from my own experience, in myself and with my clients is that there’s a way in which that rejection holds the place marker for what we feel and what our young self feels or has felt or needs to feel, and that can be this beacon to where it is that our soul wants us to heal. And at the same time, if we leave it there, as we leave it there, there’s a way that we reject who we are in ourselves. There is a way I reject myself if I reject my mother or some piece of my mother.

Candice Wu 12:06

If we go towards the spiritual truth of the wholeness of who we are, we are all possibility. We are capable of every way of being, and if I reject this certain part of my mother, maybe the way that she is stubborn or something like that, then I also reject that part of me that has stubbornness or is possibly stubborn. And when I do that, there is a constriction inside of me. There’s some part of me that blocks itself off to the wholeness of all energy, which also relates to pleasant feelings and pleasant qualities or more desirable, societally desirable qualities. Our soul wants us to be multidimensional and multifaceted, and in every single way of being, so that if we ever need that way, we’re able to do it, and we have the flexibility, but also, that that’s just the essence of our fullness, period.

Candice Wu 13:23

That is my belief at least, and what I have felt is that when I’ve embraced that stubbornness in me, then I’m able to see myself with more humanity, compassion, and yet, I know why it is that I may have rejected this quality in my mother because perhaps it brought me hurt or in relation to her as a child. And so, these are these place markers, these rejections of our parents, place markers for what we ourselves are wanting to heal and look at, that’s why people around us are our teachers, especially when it brings us an unpleasant experience, just that they’re holding something for us to learn.

Candice Wu 14:15

So, taking our parents as they are, is challenging because it often requires us to feel the feelings that we have in relation to the way that they are, and we often needed our parents to hold that space or wished that they could to hold that space so that it felt safe enough to feel those feelings and that isn’t always there. So, it creates a bit of a bind, in a way, but as adults, we can find resource and other ways to support us in coming to that true acceptance, not just acceptance, but agreement of who our parents are, and when I feel in that place of full agreement of who my parents are with all of what and who they are, and what came before them, it’s a bigger picture than just them. I feel much more in agreement with myself.

Candice Wu 15:15

So, instead of saying, “Oh, my father’s a jerk,” and leaving it there, where my judgment, our perception is distorted because of my emotions, which is natural in a way or we tend towards that, where’s there a bit of neutrality, that may be the truth is he was absent, but that there is a greater reality. We’re truth to that. Where’s the compassion to see where that originated, that it didn’t start with him as Mark Wolynn, a family constellations writer and facilitator says it didn’t start with you in his book. Whether there’s a greater experience of the family system that makes its way down to me, where my experience of hurt has a place. And can we allow ourselves the grace of feeling what we feel and what we need to acknowledge that human experience not to ignore that to honor it, but also see farther back, and to honor a bigger picture? Jim Kolakowski, my first yoga teacher and spiritual teacher I really admire, he was on the podcast as well. He says if we could see the bigger picture, like the biggest picture, we wouldn’t be upset anymore. This we would understand so much more.

Candice Wu 16:44

So, that’s a preface to this conversation of giving is that piece of taking our parents as they are, that I didn’t talk about in that first conversation of taking and it’s so easy essential, and I’ll mention Bert Hellinger later in this episode, which is part of why I recall that piece that I wanted to share that’s so essential to the family constellations work, and the gift that constellations can bring is this very powerful honoring of who the people are behind us that give us the freedom and ability to honor ourselves, and that’s the preface to this conversation of giving.

Candice Wu 17:39

Giving, I have said in the first podcast of taking that it can be often overrated, like we just seem to hear messages or at least I do, that we should give and give, and give and give, and yet, somehow that doesn’t quite feel right. I often find that giving can come out of an incongruence with love, that it’s coming from another place. Have you ever received something from someone with a slight feeling of something more coming with it? Maybe there’s guilt coming with it or obligation or some feeling of debt or there’s, I don’t know, pity coming with it, sympathy, and maybe that’s okay, but this conversation here is to take a look at what it does come with for you in terms of you giving and how you receive or take in those relationships.

Candice Wu 18:44

I’ve certainly used giving as a way of trying to receive validation and love, belonging, and that comes from my early imprints of life that if I gave of myself, not just in gestures or gifts, but if I gave up myself, if I gave up who I was and became someone for someone else, then I would feel worthy. It went to the core it was like my existence was to give, my existence was for others, and that became extremely painful, over time, as I became aware of it. It did help me survive, and so, I appreciate that I survived and I’m able to look at all the pain that came out of that in a very loving way at this point in life, and over time.

Candice Wu 19:46

How does that sit with you to does anything come up for you now, as this conversation opens your relationship with giving, your relationship with what it means to give and what happens when you give? What you might expect or desire? And this is all happening, perhaps, on a subtle level. So, even if you’re like, “No, no, no, I’m pretty clear about that,” you might consider looking a little deep, more deeply and more nuanced, and just see what turns out for you.

Candice Wu 20:29

When I think about giving some words come up with giving time, giving attention, giving energy, gifts, foods, cards, offering attention, hugs, kisses, love, compliments, giving thanks, giving up, giving myself, what that means. When we give what feels like too much only we can know what that is. There’s a polarity. There’s a polarity on the other side of giving too much is asking for too much. What you want from other people, what is underneath that giving might be something that you are wishing for and drawing for energetically.

Candice Wu 21:31

Now, I want to read an excerpt from Love’s Hidden Symmetry. What makes love work in relationships, and this is a book by Bert Hellinger, Gunthard Weber, and Hunter Beaumont. Three very prominent family constellations, people and Bert Hellinger being a founder of this modality and work, culminating the work, and I’m on page 12, 13 and 14 if you have the book or if you’re hoping to get it, but here is this conversation about the conscience and balance in giving and taking.

Candice Wu 22:11

And they say, “Our relationships and our experiences of guilt and innocence begin with giving and taking. We feel entitled when we give, we feel obligated when we take. The oscillation between entitlement and obligation is the second fundamental dynamic of guilt and innocence in every relationship. It serves all our relationships since both giver and taker know peace only when both have given and taken equally. When we receive something from someone, we lose our innocence and our independence. When we take, we feel indebted and beholden to the giver. We feel this obligation is discomfort and pressure, and we try to overcome it by giving something back. We can’t truly take anything without feeling the need to give, and taking is a form of guilt. Innosense in the service of this exchange becomes manifest as the comfortable feeling of entitlement that comes when we take fully and when we give a little more in return, then we have taken, we feel innocently carefree and light-hearted when we’ve taken fully, and our needs have been satisfied and when we’ve also given fully in return.”

Candice Wu 23:31

So, in this conversation, what we’re talking about is that when we accept, we take from someone we receive, that it’s typical to feel that sense of guilt and obligation, and that the balance of some energy exchanges is off-balance, but it can be balanced when we give back. I find that to be true and the very basis of relationships of human, of the humankind, which we are here for or we are here in, and where he says, this statement, “it’s better for you to feel obligated to me than for me to feel obligated to you,” is something that really rang true for me when I started to look at my relationships with others and how I was using giving in order to gain something.

Candice Wu 24:29

So, this is beyond just a balance and exchange of energy that’s natural and clean of other things. What I find is that giving is often connected with these other things, of wanting validation and wanting more in return than just a thank you, and wanting someplace of our belonging to be secured by what we’re giving and what we get out of that. With that idea that “it’s better for you to feel obligated to me than for me to feel obligated to you,” they talk about the helper syndrome and say that such self-centered striving for freedom from need is fundamentally hostile to relationships. Whoever wants only to give without taking clings to an illusion of superiority, rejects the bounty of life and denies equality to his or her partner. Others soon want nothing from those who refuse to take and become resentful and withdraw from them.

Candice Wu 25:41

So, when giving becomes so weighted, and someone does not take it all, and I see this when I hear compliments being given back and forth like someone says, “Oh, you did such a good job,” and this was like a team collaborative effort and you did such a good job and the other person says, “No, you did” or they like, they contribute all the credit to the other person back to the other person. It just feels like they’re tossing this ball and back and forth, and it’s getting bigger and bigger, but nobody will really hold it, and to really hold it, perhaps, needs that acceptance of some level of guilt or some discomfort.

Candice Wu 26:23

When I look at all this, my reaction is that yes, I have found this to be true, but also that it’s mixed up with those early dynamics of what we needed from our parents, and we carry around any leftover needs to other relationships. And so, when that ball gets bounced back and forth with more, more need for validation, and instead of just accepting it, we give it to the other person and we hope that they’ll take it, but we hope that they’ll take it and give us something back, and yet, we still can’t take that. I’m describing something very particular which may or may not be part of your experience, but I wonder if you see this in your life or in other people, in yourself. We are the places that it’s very hard to receive and take. Even just a compliment, just to accept it fully. Do you bounce it back to somebody else? Is there a feeling of obligation or guilt? Are you able to feel that and hold that or do you stay in the innocent place where in a way you require others to feel that guilt or obligation instead of you?

Candice Wu 27:53

And maybe guilt and obligation or not the right words for what’s being bounced back and forth, I can imagine others’ feelings there, but there’s this quality of a very basic human need that’s being tossed back and forth that is also being denied back and forth. So, going back to Love’s Hidden Symmetry and what these authors suggest is that a full exchange, fully receiving and fully taking is what creates a very equal balance in relationships.

Candice Wu 28:31

Can you fully receive and fully take? There’s a way that neutralizes and doesn’t let it bounce back and forth, but there’s a place for it to absorb in and to build more. They also talk about when reciprocity is impossible, for example, when the power dynamic is in a way that you’re not meant to or that it isn’t possible to for things to be equal in a give and take, for example, parents to children or when someone is very sick, and they really cannot give back in a certain way, and the answer might be to give it forward, give it forward or to thank and acknowledge that this is something, a gift that one cannot give back. And often that also balances that given take.

Candice Wu 29:37

So, I see this in many relationships, and also, with giving to yourself, with self-love, with healing, with healing the parts of me that have wanted and needed from other people, I’ve come to find a different place, a lighter place where that giving doesn’t ask for as much from other people, and I don’t know if it’s selfless giving, there’s this common conversation or pressure in society to be selfless when you give and not expect anything in return. I think that also comes from very deep philosophies, a spirituality of many kinds, and we have to be careful about that because when we fake it, it becomes this underlying, unconscious or energetic or pushed down, repressed dynamic. And we do make ourselves better than human. In that way, we say we’re not subject to those human desires that we actually have, that we’re pushing down and hiding, and we will pretend that we don’t need anything, and yet, it acts on this unspoken level that can be visceral and palpable.

Candice Wu 31:04

But I do believe that there is a place of selfless giving or giving without expectation, but it comes with earning it. It comes with really looking and feeling through, and having the capacity to feel through where we use giving, taking or receiving to feel belonging or feel worth or to reject it or to ask for it, and what those three x indicate as far as those young dynamics or maybe even past life dynamics that come into this life.

Candice Wu 31:48

I have this view, also, because when I work with horses, I may have told this story in another podcast, but I can see this clear reflection of the places in me or the times in me that I want something back when I give. So, I give a carrot to a horse, and there are some days that I feel like, “Yep, just giving it to them and they’ll enjoy it. However, they enjoy it. Maybe they’ll drop it to the ground even, maybe they don’t want it or maybe they gobble it up and just walk away.” And I’m fine with that. That just is satisfying in itself, but when I first started giving food to horses, I could see that I wanted something back. I wanted them to love me. I wanted them to cuddle with me and give me some sort of loving attention that said, “I like you and I honor, I value you and you’re something to me.” And of course, when they just grabbed the apple out of my hand and walked away and ate it, and didn’t look back, there was something in me that had to look at my own experience in what I was projecting onto that horse, those needs that I was expecting them to fulfill for me.

Candice Wu 33:18

So, working with horses gives me this very clean look at how I can give and not expect, and I don’t know that working with horses is free of the balance of give and take, especially in this setup of when horses are under the care of humans and there is a power dynamic, but it gives me a bit of a cleaner look than most human relationships do. So, it might be a fun exercise for each of us if we gave to someone, if we give a gift or if we give a compliment or give our time and energy, and they just experience it however they experience it and don’t say anything, not even, “Thank you” or, you know, they take it and then receive it. What would we or what would you expect from them in those moments? Would you expect a gracious “thank you?” Would you expect something later in return?

Candice Wu 34:29

I think it’s just important to recognize this level of who we are, and perhaps, how that’s tied to a younger self or another part of us that really needs something, and that actually the kindness that we do to both ourselves and others, when we honor what’s truly there in our desires, we honor our humanity and we clean up the dynamics that are within us, that are between us from these things that we push down and secretly asked for.

Candice Wu 35:09

So, another way to look at this is to look at the opposite. When you receive or when you take, is there a level of your own guilt or unworthiness coming up that you don’t deserve that or feel uncomfortable taking it? Does that ask more of someone else when you reject it or when you slightly bounce it back the other way or fully do that? To you play into the experience that giving means that someone holds a debt to you and that you hold a debt to someone else when you receive? I could feel that very palpably. In my experience in the past that when people gave, I felt so uncomfortable, and that I had to almost immediately give back something or else I wasn’t worthy of that initial giving, I wasn’t worthy of being in a relationship, and how much tension and anxiety was written in that.

Candice Wu 36:23

And so, if you receive something in this way, what does it mean about when you give? What are you asking others for? Is there a way that you’re asking for a favor, care or love, and how much of it? Because it’s okay to ask for care and love. It’s okay to ask for validation. It’s okay to want these human things. How much of that is a healthy level in your adult life, and how much of that is your child’s need? And how much of that asks from another place of a past life or fulfilling, balancing out something from the past life? All of It’s okay. For me, I just rather know where it’s coming from and how much I’m asking of someone, and when I acknowledge that, it seems to go better, for me and the other person. It almost feels like, this, it’s better when we acknowledge that this is a giant boulder rather than pretending it’s a rock and it feels like a boulder when I ask someone to hold that for me or move it from one place to another.

Candice Wu 37:43

There are very subtle ways that we are asking for more or we’re asking for something and not claiming it, and this conversation here, for me, it’s very interesting to just look at that, and clear up some of those things to know where I’m asking of others, something more than perhaps, the relationship can hold or wants to hold, and to be able to give some of those things to myself so that there’s less burden on my relationships, and there’s more delight, and there’s more loving, true acts of loving that I can receive and give, and holding myself. And when I stay unconscious to it all, it just seems like there’s some level of action that has a pull in the relationship that I’d rather know about than not.

Candice Wu 38:52

So, how do we align with a truly loving act of giving and receiving, a delight in the act of it, like, delighting and how the horse just takes that carrot and does what he wants with it, rather than expecting them to do something specific with it or after. My experience, also, comes from Vedic science, where one of my favorite concepts is Pragya, and that is the concept of pure action, complete action, meaning, when you do any action, it comes so connected, it comes out of an intention that’s so connected and clear, and whole that is conscious. An action that comes from why you’re doing it, and all of us or as much of us is in that action as possible, then that action does not need outcomes or fruits of that action in order to feel complete.

Candice Wu 40:10

There are many concepts in Vedic science and philosophy around “action that does not rely on the fruits of that action to fulfill itself”, and the beautiful thing is when that happens, typically, the outcomes and fruits of that labor are quite abundant, but without the pressure on that to come to fruition. So, Pragya, this experience of complete action can be applied to giving when we give, we just delight. We can just delight in the act of giving and feel complete in that, but if there are parts of us, our younger self, other parts of us that want and that don’t feel complete in it and that want something more than that will play itself out, too, so, even though we think that we are complete in our giving or in our action in that moment, there might be unconscious parts or subtle aspects of us that are playing out or it might be conscious. The more we can hold it in our consciousness, the more I can hold my younger self’s hand, and give my younger self what it needs, instead of expecting someone else to give it. Then that action feels complete or more complete, as complete as it can.

Candice Wu 41:53

Not sure if there’s ever a time that one is fully, fully, fully conscious of every single thing, but we continue to unfurl and see more of ourselves as the days go on, and when we look at this dynamic, it is a paradigm and dynamic we live in, at certain times, and we don’t have to, so there’s something more, there’s a different way of being, there’s that human reality of what we wish for and wished for, and where that comes from, and there’s also a level of self-loving where we can give to ourselves so that that isn’t expected in between a relationship, but that doesn’t make us a place where we do that doesn’t make us superior and not needing anyone at all, not needing others to give to us at all, not needing love or validation from anyone at all that can be so violent, on the other hand. So, where’s that balance for you?

Candice Wu 43:12

Another way that I notice what is tied in and entangled with giving and taking is how do I feel when I don’t give, and if others are giving. There was a time in grad school that we were asked to bring food to share, and I did it. I think I was too tired or didn’t have time, and then I just thought, “Oh, forget it. It’ll be fine.” But when I got there, and everyone had brought something and I didn’t, I felt so guilty, and I think that might be what Bert Hellinger, Gunthard Weber, and Hunter Beaumont were talking about in this book, Love’s Hidden Symmetry, that you feel the guilt when you take, and I remember feeling in that moment, “Well, can I exercise the feeling of taking and receiving without having given here? Am I able to just allow this basic human experience of taking and receiving?” And I noticed that that might allow others to take also and not always have to give, that kind of breaks up the dynamic of the back and forth, but it was also my way of justifying that I should just try to take, but that I could separate taking, and this experience of only taking and not giving from defining my worth or feeling judgment about myself, and then I can also separate someone else’s worth or any judgment from when they just take and accept without giving back.

Candice Wu 45:05

Is this something you resonate with? Have you experienced when you don’t give? What happens there? What thoughts go through your mind — judgments, feelings, sensations? What impulses happen? So, for me to be in the wholeness of everything, I think that level of self-loving as well as acknowledging the human level of what I desire, need, and the young parts of me that desire and need, holding all of that in this sphere of what I can see and look at, gives me the best place to have lighter interactions and clean up my ways of giving and receiving, and taking.

Candice Wu 45:56

For me, that gives me a way to feel in alignment and congruence with the way I’d like to be in this life and the way I’d like to relate to others. So, both feeling that self-loving, fulfilled, that is earned, and noticing indicators of where there are unconscious places that I asked for more than I’m claiming or that I asked for something in return and continue to find more and more subtle layers of worthiness, feeling worthy of taking and receiving, feeling worthy of giving and not expecting others to be of certain way as they receive it or don’t receive it, and this interesting place where if others asked more of me when they give me something if I can sense that or if there’s a wish on their side that something is returned. Do I want to play into that dynamic? Do I want to name it? Do I want to just acknowledge it internally? What’s the most loving thing to do in that moment for myself and others or what do I want to do and play with and experiment with? We don’t have to live in the same dynamic as someone asserts towards us.

Candice Wu 47:32

So, what comes up for you now, at the end of this conversation, in this balance of giving and taking, and what’s tied up in your dynamics, as we approach Thanksgiving in the United States, even in our saying thanks. How can we do that in a more genuine and full way? And if that’s challenging, being compassionate and gentle with ourselves to look at what’s there, what’s embedded in that, what’s embedded in the impulse to give back right away if that’s what we feel, or to not even take it at all. Is your “thank you” way of saying, “No, I can’t accept this.” Why do you say that? Or you shouldn’t have. What does that say? And to have that loving for yourself that just allows all of it to be experimental and playful, and a way to see more of ourselves, because we’re all in this, we’re all experiencing some of these dynamics somewhere, because we are human, and this is our playground to explore other ways we can share and assert ourselves, and receive and relate.

Candice Wu 49:12

So, this Thanksgiving, I want to give thanks to myself for the grace in that playfulness and curiosity, and exploring, doing it without judgment if possible, and just loving myself where that judgment does come up, and I invite you to do the same, and I also want to send a very big thanks from my heart for all of you out there that listened to the podcast, that share it with other people that feel inspired naturally, and also, those that are supporting the podcast in other ways by giving some money, financial contribution to nourish the podcast on the back end, and to keep it going in that way. This goes back all the way to the beginning of when I started the podcast of why or from what place I was doing the podcast.

Candice Wu 50:17

I actually felt like this was in a lot of ways for me, like a gift to myself that I could just have this platform to express things, to push my own edges, and share things that have been harboring inside of me, but also ideas and knowledge, and practices that I wanted to just put out there in some format. And people would ask me, does it cost you money? Or are you getting anything in return? Is that a good marketing platform? Things like that, like people in the business world.

Candice Wu 50:56

I feel that I really ran with this Vedic concept and philosophy of pure action, of being in congruence with the clear and pure intention of why I wanted to do this podcast, which wasn’t to expect some outcomes, but it was the action of doing it just for doing it and the delight of that, that this podcast has actually given me many returns and other ways, and all of you have been a part of that, just by receiving and giving me feedback and sharing kind words, sharing your support.

Candice Wu 51:42

You know, this is interesting timing because this is the 99th episode, and next week will be the 100th episode of the Embody Podcast. It’s crazy, and the count does not include all the meditations and experiential that would be, I don’t know, 130 if we counted all those pieces as separate, but all those experientials relate to their umbrella, their parent episode, which is 100 episodes.

Candice Wu 52:16

So, while we’re here, I want to just share that you can find all those episodes at CandiceWu.com/podcast, and you can even search episodes that relate to what you might, what kind of nourishment you might need or topics you’re wanting to explore, and you can go to CandiceWu.com/meditations to find all the experiential and meditations that I’ve created and shared as well as those of my guests on the podcast.

Candice Wu 52:44

Thanks so much for joining me today, and I look forward to connecting with you with the 100th podcast next week. So, tune in for that if you’re interested. I have a very special guest that she and I share something very important in common, and you’ll find out what that is next week.

Candice Wu 53:03

Take care, and see you all next time on the Embody Podcast.