Candice Wu 0:00

I don’t know about you, but some of my best ideas come when I’m least expecting it. Yes, sometimes they happen when I’m on the toilet or when I’ve just hopped in the shower or right before I fall asleep or wake up in this sort of liminal space, but this episode is about cultivating your daydreamer, your ability to daydream and tap into the symbolic imaginal space of your soul, to nourish who you are, your intuition and the depth of what wants to come through and reveal itself through you.

Candice Wu 0:38

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 0:51

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 1:13

Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Last week we had our hundredth episode of the body podcast with Roxanne Partridge, so, we had our hundredth birthday with a very special person that actually has the same exact birthday to the year as I do, within six hours. So, this episode is Episode 101, which is crazy, so, we broke 100, thanks for joining in the journey with me and being here, and I thought it would be just wonderful to follow up with this episode about daydreaming.

Candice Wu 1:52

Daydreaming has been really present with me because I’ve wanted more space to do it, and I know that when I leave time to to be without agenda, to release my attention on the outer things of the world, my daily tasks, to turn off that mental logic and let the soul logic come online, I receive and see so much juiciness, vibrancy, nourishment and I get lots of awesome ideas, some that I just feel delighted in and delighted in, in the moment and just discard very quickly and some that I take with me into the next year, and some, that just momentarily give me pleasure or what’s the word, entertainment, but also I get a lot of connection with the depth of who I am, my intuition my inner self, the story of who I am and the mystery of my experience, and that leaves me feeling very nourished, grounded and plugged into my soul.

Candice Wu 3:15

And with Roxanne Partridge coming on the show last week, I felt even more inspired to be in that imaginal, symbolic, juicy, space of the unconscious, the underworld in the underbellies of our being and what lives under the surface, what wants to be seen, revealed, unfurled, the wild nature that we are, and so, daydreaming was the direction I went.

Candice Wu 3:47

So, before we jump into this, I want to mention that the Ally with Death Audio Experiential has been out there a couple of weeks now, and it’s this very beautifully stirring and provocative audio soundtrack with hand pan music by my friend Larry Saint Germain. It’s gorgeous, and it connects up with my voice prompting you through a series of simulation and series of questions, leading you through your own death, so that you face the things that want to be let go, and you take a good look at them. We end and release what is already decaying or needs to die, to create the space for new life and to look at what is meaningful for you now, and where is your playful, curious, sensing, intuitive self and to let that shine up so that you can really live your life in a beautiful way coming up this next couple of weeks and into the spring, and that sale is going to be from December 15, 2019, until January 6, 2020.

Candice Wu 5:05

So, it’s a lovely way to bring in your new year and to set forth the seeds that will be planted, and I know that some people are using this with a loved one as a ceremony or ritual before winter sets in and some are making some plans to do this on a special night. I know that some people have even done it on New Year’s Eve which is just a cool time to do it, and some do this on the new moon or at some point in their moon cycle. Whenever you do it, I truly recommend it if you want to release the weight that has been building up inside of you, the clutter and to cleanse, so that you feel alive in the present and vibrant like who you are. You can find this at CandiceWu.com/death, and again, the sale is from December 15th through January 6th, so, enjoy as the death that we allow inside of ourselves bring us new life.

Candice Wu 6:11

And as we jump into this episode, I want to just ask you, is this a time and space for you to go inward? Is your energy moving more inward for you or is it going more outward? Is it time to do things in your outer world? Put your energy out there, connect with others. More so, for me right now it’s been going inward and hibernating, and in that little space, I love to cook home-cooked foods and create things, sleep a lot, watch something that feels soothing to watch like something on Netflix. I love to have intimate conversations with friends and loved ones and it’s harder for me to reach out to new people or to put my energy outward and workshops and things like that, and doing things that require my energy to move more outward.

Candice Wu 7:13

Sometimes, it’s been hard to honor that as I have this little part of my mind that thinks, “Oh, you should be doing something more, you should be doing X, Y, and Z.” And I just work with talking to that part of me and seeing what they have in store or what they have thought for me, and usually, it just needs a little update about what it’s safe to do now in my life and what it’s time for. So, I invite you to do the same, is to connect with where your energy really wants to be, how it wants to be, and to make an agreement with yourself that that is allowed that you want that and to look at the parts of you that may have something to say against that. All of those parts of you have some message for you, and it’s important to hear them all out, at least to hear them and then you get to decide how to negotiate bad or what wants healing and wants to be honored.

Candice Wu 8:27

So, this is perfect for our topic today of daydreaming. And for me, daydreaming is really about leaving space for the unexpected. When we set out with our to-do lists our agendas, what our logical mind wants to do in this functional practical world, which is a good thing. When we do that, every minute of the day, there’s very little space for imagination, for play, for curiosity, sensing, and intuition to flourish and make its own way towards us, reach us and touch our hearts. When we have that agenda, it’s hard for something unplanned to come in, something new or spontaneous, unimaginable. Daydreaming is like spending time allowing your soul to dance, allowing your imaginal and symbolic self through images, feelings, senses, sensation in the body, a hit of knowing a song, a sound for all that to emerge and make its way to consciousness for the personal, archetypal, collective, unconscious realms to have a place through us, that shows us the depth of who we are, the depths of what wants to be looked at, what wants attention and the depths of the soul do not care about time, space or mental logic.

Candice Wu 10:20

And so, in that space, we let our mind rest and that gives the space of freedom, the breathing room that our spirit wants. It gives our spirit the space to open up, to vibrate at the essence of your core being, of course with practice, and to align you with who you truly are, with your nature, with your heart, with the specific energetic coding that signature that is you, takes you out of the collective poll of where were pressured to do and who were pressured to be, plugging you into the source of you, and the source of all things.

Candice Wu 11:27

When I daydream, and that sounds to me like a very active process and the real action is just setting aside the time and maybe, doing a few things that let me connect in, with then it becomes a more, I’m not sure if I would say passive, but an allowing space that is without force and natural, organic, a space of witnessing what’s moving through me, what I’m feeling, what I’m sensing, and sometimes, what arrives are aspects of myself that want to be heard or healed or expressed in my daily life.

Candice Wu 12:15

Sometimes, past lives have come to me or entities that feel like they have something to offer me, that are of me, or connected with me. Sometimes, I just have nonsensical thoughts that spring up and seem funny or weird or different. Sometimes, these connect up with real practical and inspired ideas, and other times, it just fuels something of my creative life, and what I love is that it brings me to this messy, unkempt, unsanitized vibrancy of aliveness that is full of possibility that’s not just stripped down or forced into one way of being, but connected to my knowing, perhaps new ideas or awarenesses are already trying to reach you, and with a day to day schedule that doesn’t quite allow for these to marinate in you or to incubate or sift to the surface, then these very important pieces of you may go unseen, important ideas, desires, rich desires, those may be just suppressed.

Candice Wu 13:48

The messages that are coming from within you and through you, the mystery of your life doesn’t quite have so much mystery anymore or aliveness or adventure or exploration. It just has a forced direction, of course, that’s a very exaggerated sense, but there’s a way in which when I am go, go, go and have my to-do list and have my plan set out, I really flattened my experience.

Candice Wu 14:19

So, this podcast today is an invitation for you to nourish and cultivate the symbolic and imaginal space of your spirit, to feed your soul, to feed the wild in you, to bring you to your natural self that wants to be seen and acknowledged and integrated into your daily life and to strengthen your ability to see, to see not only yourself at a deeper level, but to see the grander picture for yourself, to see a playful experience, exploration, give value and worth to the beat and the pulse of your soul, the messages of your spirit, the parts of you that really know, truth, really know how to be easeful that are connected with this deeper source of life-giving energy, the essential being that wants to come through.

Candice Wu 15:35

So, I want to talk about several ways to access and open up your daydreaming space, your dream space, and I also want to mention that sometimes it can be very hard to connect with your dream space because there are other feelings that want to be seen or healed or acknowledged at the forefront. This is especially if you’ve had experiences that have been undigested or leaving you with a trauma response or been overwhelming that when you slow down and give space without any plan that those feelings may want to arrive at your door. And if that’s the case, I would recommend getting support if you need it, tuning into some of the experiences on the podcast that support grounding or pendulating so that you can help your capacity grow, to navigate these feelings, to build your resilience and to move through some of the traumatic response.

Candice Wu 16:49

And as a basic support, if you become overwhelmed during the process of getting into your dream space or being in it or if you start to feel a little bit like these feelings that are coming through are just a little bit too big for my body to handle, and just stop and look around your space and look for something pleasant. Look for something that can give you some sense of safety in the moment, that you’re really safe right here and now or some feeling of pleasure that allows you to feel your embodied safety, and to take in that resource, that pleasant thing to look at or a person that’s nearby that can be supportive and remind you of being in this present moment. I would recommend doing that anytime you start to feel like it’s a little too much.

Candice Wu 17:43

So, some really good ways to access your dream space, your waking dream space or to connect with a part of your body that feels neutral, pleasant, grounded or calm and just feel that part of the body, and then begin to let your mind wander and wonder in its own way, your attention just witnessing anything that comes. You can also do a body scan is from head to toes, feel your body, notice and witness each part of the body, allowing your senses to turn on. You could make contact with your body by touching from head to toe, and feeling what kind of touch feels supportive. So, each of these is really to bring yourself from that logical mental go, go, go space to sensing, feeling, and being.

Candice Wu 18:46

If you need some support with that, you can tune in to some of the experientials I have. There’s one at Episode 59, Experiencing with the Five Senses of Body Scan. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/ep59. Another one to tune into is Grounding Touch and Listening. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/ep47. Another way to connect in is just to begin to witness and observe your own experience like a movie. Very simple thing to do is notice a couple of breaths just as they are, as you let go of your day, release any of your attention from going outward on your to-do list or your daily tasks and turn that attention inward with curiosity and openness, anything really that brings your attention to or heightens the senses is going to help you turn on that more right-brain activity of being, sensing, seeing, feeling and connecting with the deeper parts of who you are.

Candice Wu 20:04

So, for example, listening to music that you enjoy, tasting something delicious and savoring it, taking a good whiff of essential oils, touching or holding something that makes you feel good, like crystals or blankets, stuffed animals, your own body, as we mentioned before. So, these are just a few tips to open up your access point to your dream space, and as you sink into your dream space, the more you’re able to just let go of your attention on your mental life and your logic, and the sense-making that goes on, analyzing, just letting that go on a bookshelf in your imaginal mind if you need more of a visual, and that can let you really sink into being.

Candice Wu 21:02

This is the space of the felt sense and the space where you can catch a dream, rather than dreaming. It’s like catching a dream or harvesting the messages, awarenesses, the knowings, the creativity, the energy that’s alive through you, and that is you, to catching your dream, noticing it, noticing what thoughts and feelings come up and just following it with your curiosity and your openness, not having to make sense of anything in particular and not judging anything that comes through. Letting things come through without filter, and letting your knowing be your knowing. Letting your friends’ perception, be your perception and what is happening to happen, to let what is alive in you and coming through you to be alive and be noticed. To let juiciness come through what is wildly unknown, unseen. You never know what may appear or what will happen when there isn’t that agenda, when there’s just a space for nothingness for being, for agreeing to being in this moment without any plan, without any expectation.

Candice Wu 23:00

So, is this a kind of experience that you want to give yourself more often or give yourself altogether? Do you let yourself have any time to just daydream or to catch a dream? Is your soul or your heart calling you to do this more often? Do you have a feeling of stuckness or you can’t quite move through to the next level of yourself or writer’s block or artist’s block, creativity block, feeling like what you’re doing in your life is not quite aligned with your vibrancy or love or desire or passion? And if so, daydreaming might be part of the answer for you.

Candice Wu 24:01

So, this is a pretty short episode today, and I’m curious what you all have to say or what comes up for you about daydreaming or about having this on planned, fertile space and ground for your soul to thrive and to be seen, to unleash, to come to the surface. I love to hear your thoughts, your envisioning or the inspirations that might come from just practicing this, and what I’ll do later this week is offer a brief meditation to support accessing the dream space and to be with you through a segment of dream time where we can let this messy, aliveness, be heard and held. So, stay tuned for that or you can just jump in right on to my website and find that experiential at CandiceWu.com/daydream.

Candice Wu 25:08

Thanks for tuning in today about this topic that can really allow our souls to wake up even more. I invite you to let the mystery of your life and your story, your soul to come alive and to spend a little more time daydreaming. Thanks so much for showing up today. If you’d like to stay, plugged in with me through my newsletter, you can find that at CandiceWu.com/embody, and there I update you about events, podcasts, experientials and news about my life, and what is being offered as well as self-love notes that come, and this is just about a once a month or every three-week newsletter.

Candice Wu 25:58

Before you go, I also want to drop a little note about the podcast and the meditations that are on the podcast, that all the podcasts that have been published every 101 of them are searchable via the database on my website. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/podcast and search any topic, and if you want to find the meditations and experientials, those are specifically at CandiceWu.com/meditations. So, for example, if you’re looking for something on loving yourself or working with your energetic vibration or relationship breakups, you can search something in that database and see what pops up.

Candice Wu 26:44

Thanks so much for joining me today and wishing you a lovely dream time if you decide to plan that into your week, and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00
This experiential is to support you in surrendering into a state of being that opens curiosity, witness, and spaciousness for daydreaming.

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 this experiential, I will offer a few out of many different ways to come into a spaciousness for daydreaming. You may have your own ways already, that's great, and this may or may not work for you, so, really see what your body and your nervous system would need. If you'd like to learn more about the benefits of daydreaming and just hear some of my thoughts about daydreaming, check out the main episode at CandiceWu.com/daydream.

If you feel overwhelmed at any point in this experience or close to overwhelm, just open your eyes if they're closed, look around your space and just center yourself into the here and now. You can give yourself some soothing touch to any part of your body that would feel supported if you touched it or make contact or do something that helps you feel your own safety. If you're in need of that there is an episode that gives you many different ways to come back into grounding and presence at CandiceWu.com/overwhelm.

For some people, daydreaming is not quite a comfortable experience, and if that's you, you may want a little more healing support before allowing yourself this kind of open free space, but it also may be something that really nourishes you. So, it's just a matter of seeing what works for you and what support you, what feels right. So, let's jump into this experience if you are ready, and let's bring in the mystery, the aliveliness, the messiness, juiciness, playfulness, and curiosity of our dream space.

Whatever you're doing, just take a couple of breaths and feel your body, you can give it touch or just sense from the inside out, drawing your attention inward. With the next few breaths, let go of everything including work, school, outer world relationships, daily to do's, and draw your energy and attention inward into your body, being aware of your breathing and any sensation that's happening inside. Whatever you're sitting or lying on, let your body be as comfortable as it wants to be and feel whatever is underneath you, supporting you, and imagine that your body is melding in with that support and being held.

Feel the weight of your body and turn on the witnessing part of you that can just watch everything happened, without judgment, without filter, without the need to move forward or make sense, and turn off any pressure or agenda, any expectation on yourself. Release yourself into the freedom of being right here in this moment without anything to do, with nothing to accomplish, nothing that needs your immediate attention right now. Sense into any part of your body that feels safe or grounded or even neutral and feel those spaces.

If it's challenging to feel into safety or neutral feeling, imagine that you could feel safe or okay right now. Imagine what it would feel like if you felt safe, and notice what begins to happen inside.

Feel this container of the body that supports you and catching a daydream or a night dream or notices a feeling, a thought, a sensation, a movement or an image and turn on all of your sensing capacities.

If you're not aware of what your sensing capacities are or even if you are aware, allow yourself to be open to whatever you could perceive and sense in this moment, and with each breath, let your body deepen into the weight of your body, continuing to notice whatever there is to notice without expectation of anything in particular.

And as you deepen into this presence, let your curiosity and playful wellness come to the forefront, the sense of mystery, revealing inner life and soul, what may be unexpected or unimagined, unplanned for, have space here and be open to letting whatever is here, be here, even if it's nothing, and whatever happens release any pressure or need to make any logical sense of anything, and feel free to follow anything that catches your curiosity. Follow what's being shown to you, any whisper, make quiet sense or intuition or knowing. Let yourself be in the daydream space. Don't worry about what's coming to or remembering anything, just be, observe and witness.

Now, feel free to imagine that you are traveling on a rainbow, traveling and traveling to wherever you need to go right now or wherever calls you, not needing to know exactly where that is, but just letting yourself travel.

Release any need to make sense or to make something happen and let herself deepen into this space of daydreaming, of witnessing and observing anything that's happening, letting your imagination be free and brief, letting things from the underworld or unconscious bubble up to the top of what's in the dark, come into light.

Whatever is happening, continue to happen. Allow yourself to flow with whatever is happening as long as you feel safe and that your body can contain what's happening.

Now, I'll give a little bit of quiet time and space as you deepen into your dream space. After two minutes, I will draw you in to close and come back to the present moment together or you can pause the experiential at that time and extend your daydream. So, here's a bit of quiet time as you deepen into however, your spirit, your body, your inner wisdom, want to use this space and want to be in this daydream.

Now, slowly begin to be aware of your surroundings, be in to be aware of your breath. Wherever your mind or your awareness or consciousness has gone, call yourself back to your body right now. Magnetize all of your energy back to the core of your being, right into your body, here.

Feel free to touch your body or start to stretch our move, and take a moment to honor this time that you've given yourself, to do nothing, to have space for daydreaming without an agenda to the best of your ability today, to give some room for your soul and your spirit to breathe, and for the mystery of life to be alive through yourself. The couple more breaths just honoring what came through, anything you noticed or felt or sensed. Notice how your body feels in this moment, as we close, and we'll close this daydream session with love and gratitude.

If you'd like to continue on into the depth of your daydreaming, feel free to stop the experiential. Set a timer if you need a boundary of time or just let yourself be in this space of openness and curiosity and play, just witnessing whatever happens for as long as you'd like to. And if you're closing here today, begin to notice even more your surroundings, opening your eyes if they were closed, and take a little time to transition back into the flow of your day, and notice what might be different for you, now, as you step into the next breath, the next moment and feel free to bring any of the dreams you have harvested with you as you travel through the day.

It's wonderful to have you join me today, and I hope your dream time was lovely, and if difficult or challenging, emotions or experiences came up, be gentle with yourself. Get support if you need from the podcast or from friends, from therapists, coaches or healers. Support yourself in any way you need, and if creative and fun ideas emerge, see what might happen if you let those land a little further into your awareness, and I'm delighted to see where that goes for you. I'd be happy to hear.

So, as we close today, wishing you plenty more moments and spaces of daydreaming and just letting yourself have that as this is the way that your soul wants to speak to you, and the soul of the universe speaks through you and to you, and to give some time to honor that.

Thanks so much for joining today, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

In the words of our guest today, Roxanne Partridge, to all y’all soul working women befriending your shadows, liberating clustered golden eggs, unearthing buried vessels of vitality, lubricating cutthroats with song, cleansing bones of patriarchy, rewiring your birthright to love into the light of your eyes and the fiber of your being, and rebirthing yourself with your blood, I see you.

Candice Wu 0:27

Roxanne works with menstruality, sexuality, empowerment, and embodiment from the depths up and out.

Candice Wu 0:38

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

Candice Wu 1:13

Hey, it’s wonderful to have you here today. It is the first month of December 2019. Wow, we are headed into the depths of winter for some places in the world and how fitting because we’re talking a lot about the darkness and depths within ourselves here in this episode with Roxanne Partridge. She is the founder of Embody Period, which has many meanings, which you’ll hear about in this episode.

Candice Wu 1:47

I have a couple of announcements before we jump into everything, first, this episode is the 100th episode of the Embody Podcast. 100, that means it’s the hundredth episode but that doesn’t include the experiential and meditations that are held under as an umbrella of the main episodes. So the main episodes are up to 100, so that is a big accomplishment for this podcast. And for me, it’s been just wonderful doing this podcast and coming up with ideas, sharing, and putting my voice out there in this way. I thank you so much for all of you who have in some way fueled this podcast to continue forward and to have the life and love that it does. All of you listening, all of you sharing the podcast with someone, a friend or client who may benefit just remembering it and tuning in once in a while or if you are a consistent listener, and if you have supported the podcast in any way with monetary donations, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. And you are all here. I invite you all to celebrate with me the hundredth episode.

Candice Wu 3:14

I have another piece to share but this one is of a different tone. I want to share that Silver, the horse that I connected with at Silver Horse Retreat with Sarah Fancy, my mentor for Horse Constellations, Silver has passed away. If you’ve been following my podcast, you might have already heard about Silver and how he, the second morning I was there on retreat with Sarah and the horses, that he went down, he was lying down and he couldn’t get up because his leg was stuck in a part of the barrier, the fence and she had to pull him out and he like huffed and puffed and finally got on his legs. It was crouching down and then bounced off the railing, and then he was fine. And she was worried at that time that he was getting old and maybe it was going to pass soon but he lived on for another, think, six to eight months after that up until just last week.

Candice Wu 4:18

In another podcast, I’ve shared about my meditations with him and Horse Constellation experiences with him. I’ll link those in the show notes if you want to hear about my experiences and take this time to honor Silver with me. There are three main episodes that highlight my experiences with Silver or stories about him through Sarah and those are at CandiceWu.com/dancingwithhorses or CandiceWu.com/horseconstellations, or CandiceWu.com/sarafancy.

Candice Wu 4:54

And right now I’d like to take this moment to honor Silver, to thank him for his love and presence, connection, and all of the lives and souls and hearts that he’s touched, including mine. He lived, I believe 35 long years of life, and outlived many other horses, according to Sarah, and I am just so blessed that he was on Earth at a time that I got to meet him and share the time together.

Candice Wu 5:27

I will never forget the time I was trying to bring him up to this smaller arena and there was a little trail, a rocky trail that went upward to get to this space and I had taken the wrong way up and he was telling me “No” because he refused to go up it. And at some point, he gave in. I was really patient, but he gave in and said, Okay, let’s do this and sure enough, it was the wrong way and it was this disaster of going uphill. And so I ended up just going back down, of course the right way and at that point, he did not want to go back up and so I chose to listen and we walked together back towards his normal space and we just stayed outside of it. But we stood there and meditated for about 35 minutes just standing there, neither of us even made any moves and we had this beautiful meditation experience, standing in presence together. Even though there was hay on the ground, he wasn’t bothered or interested, he was just with me. We were together and it was magical.

Candice Wu 6:48

Thank you, Silver and I’m sending you my blessings on your journey and may you be in peace and love.

Candice Wu 6:59

Before we jump into the episode, it’s also fitting that the Ally with Death experiential, which is now an audio experience is out there, it is alive despite the name of death. But it is perfectly fitting for the cycles of life and death that we speak too, here in this episode, the cycle of your period, the cycle of your moon cycle, that’s your personal moon cycle and the collective moon cycles, the cycle of life and death that reflect itself through the seasonal shifts, and here, getting into the underbellies of winter.

Candice Wu 7:40

This guided audio experience is beautiful because it features music, hand pan music by artist Larry Saint Germain, who tailored the music to this specific experience to stir and shake up the blood, the stagnancy, the life force in you, anything that needs to die or be let go of what wants to be seen through you, through your soul, through your Spirit, through your body, your mind, and what wants to die off so that there can be more space for life itself, for being, for your vital core essence and the luminosity of yourself that wants to shine through on this next step of your life.

Candice Wu 8:28

And here we are, a month away from 2020 where we’re stepping into another decade of life, well, for some. So, here when we embrace death, that natural cycle of what wants to end and what needs to be looked at inside of us gets it space, gets it’s tending to and attention and love, where it fertilizes the soil for what’s coming up in your life and for beauty to be created in what’s coming, in what’s going to be revealed, all set to music that will support you in embodying this shift and transmitting the energies within yourself so that you can fully, with full-body, move forward into what is coming up for you in purposeful, meaningful experience.

Candice Wu 9:20

A shout out too, also Chris Spiegl, who produced and edited that experiential and spent his artistic attention to crafting the sounds and my voice to go together in a way that stimulates and invokes, conjures up what wants to come forward. You can find this experiential at CandiceWu.com/death and if you jump on now or soon, there’s a sale there for you, it is great as a gift to yourself or as a gift to clients, friends, family, people around you that might benefit from it as well. Again, that’s at CandiceWu.com/death.

Candice Wu 10:05

So this episode was super fun and there’s an added element of surprise here in this episode, where you’ll find out something about me and about Roxanne that connects us. It’s a very binding force between us of resonance.

Candice Wu 10:20

Roxanne Partridge is known for inspiring and guiding others into embodying their unique sustainable fullness. Women, menstruators, and individuals that seek a safe and healing and inclusive space to explore menstruality, sexuality, and embodied identity are empowered through her in-depth and creative approach. She just radiates juicy, soulful play and depth, and I absolutely love talking with her. She’s a healer, scholar, activist and has lectured and facilitated workshops in various locations as well as through her private practice and she’s also an advocate for equal rights to imagination, for images of female embodied experience.

Candice Wu 11:16

She’s informed by feminist post union liberational, archetypal, and eco psychological theory and practices and attends to the nuances of experience in the context of daily life, cultural and familial backgrounds, manifestations of the unconscious, such as dreams. She received her clinical hypnotherapy certification from the Santa Barbara Institute of hypnotherapy and trained with the revolutionary sex therapist, Gina Ogden, in her medicine wheel method of relational sexuality, and received her Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. Her background in holistic therapies and the arts form a creative container for deep and catalytic work.

Candice Wu 12:08

So, you’re in for a treat here. Feel free to grab a candle and a cup of tea or something that just makes you feel in your own aliveness or makes you feel in some sense of beauty, and enjoy.

Candice Wu 12:31

So, Roxanne, we’re here together. Are you there? Okay.

Roxanne Partridge 12:39

Hi. I’m here.

Candice Wu 12:43

You’re there. We both have our candles burning. I’ve got a cup of tea, and my salt light on, salt lamp on. And it’s just so delightful to be here with you today.

Roxanne Partridge 12:56

Same here.

Candice Wu 13:00

I just took a look at your Instagram and I just love looking at your Instagram like the juicy images and luscious words that you write and just feel so much from your soul and your gut and your being, that these words feel like they always in someplace in me and live in and awaken more of me and you, just your work inspires and guides people to bring forward they’re natural and wild and Goddess self and their sexual essence and who they are. I can’t wait to talk to you about this.

Roxanne Partridge 13:50

I love that that’s your experience, looking at my Instagram account. One thing I love about that platform is that it is so image-forward, you know, and having such wonderful access to art and a way for me, it feels like a way of, kind of watering the imagination for what’s possible, you know?

Candice Wu 14:21

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 14:22

To imagine like, you’re saying like a to give representation, excuse me, to parts of ourselves that we may not even fully know but sense. And you know what I mean like, to, to find an image that maybe is surprising or strange but somehow compelling and resonates with some experience, whether it’s like, you know, an experience of cyclicity an experience of like, a sexual sort of sense of identity and having it be reflected back. Because I feel like there can be such I mean, within patriarchy, right? Imagination, embodied imagination for women is often kind of stuck in a corner behind a door that says something like, you know, for reproduction only or crazy, or —

Candice Wu 15:33

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 15:33

You know, it’s just a social construct or something, you know.

Candice Wu 15:38

Right.

Roxanne Partridge 15:39

And how to, like, give it some more space and, you know, wander around and how it wants to speak. And like you said, the kind of messiness of that.

Candice Wu 15:51

Yeah, you know, there’s such a, like a cleaned-up version through patriarchy that you, I often find myself like breaking down in my mind around like, how we even like, the spaces and words were using. How we even let all of that imagination just go full out. In a way, I don’t think I’m describing this well, but I’m just thinking of like, nature, like, being out in nature and breaking down the wall of where we think that good work is or where we think we can do things and experience it in. I don’t even know if I’m making any sense to myself, but that’s what came up. And let’s just shift back to your work of menstrual sexual empowered embodiment and the depth up and out is what — ahm — These are your words and I love to hear from you how you see your work and what you do.

Roxanne Partridge 17:02

Yeah, thank you.

Roxanne Partridge 17:07

Yeah, from the depths, up and out. Some of what that means to me is well, from the depths it’s like the depths of psyche, the depths of soul, the depths of our body, is the kind of underworldly experiences that are of our unconscious, of our dream world at night when we’re sleeping, the parts of ourselves that may not have a lot of representation in our day to day lives and ways of creatively like inviting and befriending and welcoming those parts of ourselves that are in the depths, and getting to know who they are, who’s here? What do they need? What’s their story? And what happens as they begin to meet the waking life versions of ourselves. And I sometimes refer to this as this kind of like inner social justice work of getting to know —

Candice Wu 18:32

Yes, that makes so much sense.

Roxanne Partridge 18:34

You know, like, really befriending the marginalized parts of our psyche. And so that’s kind of what the depths means for me and what it’s like to come up and out of the depths, to rise up from the underworld, from the darkness, and find footing on the topsoil and be integrated into our day to day life and how that can change the landscape of things.

Roxanne Partridge 19:03

And in my experience for myself and also with the women I work with, usually what this begins to look like is a way greater experience of aliveness and like a real, full sense of direction that’s grounded in like, kind of our psychic roots, if you will.

Candice Wu 19:32

That’s beautiful.

Candice Wu 19:40

Your words here, about your paradigm of seeing where you see troublesome, emotional and behavioral symptoms, suffering, questions of identity instead of seeing it that way, you’re seeing that as an invitation into a deeper and wider understanding of your personal purpose, potential healing, transformation and embodied autonomy.

Candice Wu 20:09

I love these words and something that happened for us right before we started recording makes us all click because I was like, did I like, that sounds like something I want to try it. Would you like to share what you just —

Roxanne Partridge 20:28

Oh yes. So, you know, Candice, when I began to look at your work and listen to your podcasts and read your Instagram posts and the words on your website, I was like, so familiar and when we first arrange to talk and we scheduled a time, you know, I discovered we have, you and I have, like, the same exact birthday, and that we were both born the same year, on the spring equinox.

Candice Wu 21:11

It just blows my mind. I mean, I’ve met people with the same birthday before but not someone like you.

Roxanne Partridge 21:21

Oh my god! It was just, I mean, like I said, it’s so uncanny to me, like the modalities that you’ve been drawn to, the way the ideas that you synthesize, your emphasis as well as the embodiment and embodying your nature. And for me, my version of that is Embody Period with a dot at the end to have a little menstrual pun there, but it’s also like, yeah, embodiment full stop, you know, like —

Candice Wu 21:53

Yes.

Roxanne Partridge 21:54

That’s what this is all about. Yeah, you know, and that emergent kind of energy that is, especially in this part of the world, where we have four seasons of like, you know, coming out of winter and coming up, you know, and that kind of Persephone-Demeter type of story of emerging from the underworld and so towards life and new beginnings and restoration and all of that, your work speaks to that, feels so resonant to what is, you know, the ground of what I do as well and it’s just incredible to have this kind of day that we share together, be recognized, you know.

Candice Wu 22:51

It absolutely is. I’m just like, I’m still a little in awe about it and it’s so touching. It’s so cool to meet you. I mean, this isn’t the first time but to discover this together and to really see the resonance in your work and who you are. It’s amazing. Just amazing. Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 23:21

It was so cool. I haven’t met that many people with the same, I’ve met people like the day before or after. You know, and just to feel that, like, shared, I don’t know what it feels like for you. But for me it just, it feels like just part of the fiber of my being, you know, to like this energy that starts to stir as soon as we enter the month of March. It’s just like, bigger than me.

Candice Wu 23:50

Yeah, well, and I just had my astrology read. I have someone I work with every couple of months just to check in and see what’s going on in the planetary shifts and I didn’t, maybe like, ten years ago, eight years ago, I didn’t really believe in astrology very much or just didn’t have a connection and so much more than ever, it makes sense to me. And is so much just clicks with what’s already happening with what my astrologer says and how I already see that happening in my life. And so, when you shared this with me, it just, it brought all that up, this sense of how well orchestrated everything is in this universe and us being born on the same day within six hours apart. We have, you know, two different ways of expression and yet so much similarity and I know I have a moon in Gemini, so that must mean you have a moon in Gemini.

Candice Wu 25:00

You know, for those of you who know what that means, makes sense to why we’re here in this way, in our lives, I think.

Roxanne Partridge 25:09

Yeah. So sweet. Thanks for finding me.

Candice Wu 25:17

Maybe you found me in some way because it felt like, it felt, yeah —

Roxanne Partridge 25:23

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:23

Both ends. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:27

Well, so that really brings me to this question of how did you get to this place on your journey today and what you do and who you are.

Roxanne Partridge 25:41

Yeah. Oh, so many ways to answer.

Candice Wu 25:46

I know it’s a giant question. That’s just not fair. Is it?

Roxanne Partridge 25:51

No, it’s okay. Let me feel into that.

Roxanne Partridge 26:00

It truly feels like a calling that has been sounding within me for as long as I can remember and what I like in that calling, being, mean and kind of fine-tuning it over the years, but it always was being in a space with women and listening to stories. And from a really early age, you know, I’m talking about elementary school years, women of all different ages would tell me their stories and I would hold it, I would sit in that space and yeah, at times, it was definitely a lot for seven years old or something till —

Candice Wu 26:58

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 26:59

But there was also a part of me that was like, Yeah, like I’m ready for this. And there’s always this kind of, I grew up with a lot of esoteric and mystical conversation around the dinner table largely held by my uncles on my father’s side of the family and some family friends. My mom has a best friend who was a midwife and she would come and stay at her house sometimes when she had a birth nearby and I would just stay at the kitchen table with them for hours and hours and listen to her stories of being at birth and her stories of her worldview of like, kind of why we’re here and the soulfulness and purposefulness of our life journey. And it all just kind of made sense to me.

Roxanne Partridge 28:04

I have always been drawn to poetry and art and soul work and the animated world. So in that way it was oh, there was a groundwork. I think that was just kind of there and I’ve definitely done a lot of different things at different points in my life and I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve wandered and when I entered into the field of depth psychology, I think that’s when everything kind of began to take the shape that things are in now.

Roxanne Partridge 28:54

When I found the field of Depth Psychology, I really felt like this kind of homecoming, I was like, okay, like this is the language that articulates what I just kind of know to be possible like this is a way that embraces my own experience, embraces what I felt was calling at me behind like the eyes and the stories of women and a lot of that like, coming from archetypal psychology and like union, psychological framework, and liberation psychology is this idea of a pluralistic psyche and that we contain like a multitude of selves within and a kind of mythopoetics of soul in personifying our different parts of ourselves, you know, like that in our social justice work I mentioned earlier and how healing and liberating it is to acknowledge that there is soul-making happening and let’s say premenstrual experience, which I suppose you know, and I say that since menstruality is an emphasis of my work and I guess another way that brought me here is being witness to really difficult menstrual experience growing up and also being witness to male or patriarchal like, reduction of a woman to her menstruality and the way that menstrual experience is so often reduced to hormones. You know, the female —

Candice Wu 31:20

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 31:21

Hysterical nature, like these types of things. And, like always knowing like, that’s just, that’s not it. Like, that’s not the full story and recognizing now like, there’s so much research that supports us that you know, these things don’t happen. Our menstrual selves don’t exist in a vacuum and that our psyche, you know that there’s, I’m going to pause right here if that’s okay.

Candice Wu 32:04

I don’t think so. I think you’re talking about the juicy stuff, you know. But yeah, you shared a lot. And yeah, let’s just take a pause together.

Roxanne Partridge 32:14

Yeah.

Candice Wu 32:23

Are you interested in sharing what that experience of being witness to a painful menstrual experience was like for you?

Roxanne Partridge 32:34

Yeah. It’s funny when I began writing my dissertation, which is largely on this idea of menstrual imagination, and I was examining what my own transference was to the topic. I had this kind of hand to forehead moment where I was like, Oh, right. You know, I mean, I thought like initially, the topic of my research shifted from embodied sexuality and this kind of relationship between sexuality and ecopsychology and our relationship to the earth and it shifted literally overnight to menstruality, on a night that I was painfully bleeding and decided to have a conversation with my uterus. And that was the turning point. But as I, you know, and when I addressed my uterus and all this pain and asked it, you know, just as I would a dream image like, Who are you? What’s here? What’s going on? What do you need? What I met was this kind of mourners, like, someone who was in mourning and had been in mourning for a very long time. And they were mourning, this image was mourning the loss of meaning. And I sat with that and I was like, I don’t know what this means, but I just need to sit next to this mourner as best as I can. And I had already started a dissertation proposal on a whole different topic and I canned it and I was like, I don’t know what this is. This is exciting. This feels necessary and hard and this is what I’m going to do.

Candice Wu 34:54

Yeah.

Candice Wu 34:57

Thank goodness.

Roxanne Partridge 34:58

Yeah. And as I started to sit with that further and be like, Okay, what do I already, what’s already here? That was the hand to forehead moment of like, oh, like, I grew up with my father pathologizing my mother and her moods, her unhappiness, essentially, you know, anything she did or say that he didn’t like.

Roxanne Partridge 35:31

He would throw under the umbrella of PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Mind you. My father is not a psychologist or a psychiatrist —

Candice Wu 35:44

Like, wait a minute. Why is a DSM language there?

Roxanne Partridge 35:52

Yeah and this was like before the age of Google too, so I don’t know where or how he picked up this term.

Candice Wu 36:02

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 36:05

And, but he found it. And I remember one time being a little kid and my parents had argued that my mom had, like, gotten a car and drove off to like, blow off steam, get some air. I was so upset. And he said, you know, Roxanne, one day, I’ll tell you like, what this is all about, like, one day, I’ll let you in kind of on this secret. And I really held on to that. I was like, ah, like, there’s a reason for all of this. You know, there’s a reason why they fight. And I held on to it and he’s like when you get older, I’ll tell you and so years passed and I remember this and I go up to him like dad, you know, remember when you said XYZ, like what, what was like, what’s the secret? And he started laughing. He’s like, Oh, it’s just that, you know, she’s getting her period.

Candice Wu 37:04

Oh, what was your reaction?

Roxanne Partridge 37:11

Oh, I was so pissed. And I don’t know, probably about 14, 15 maybe when he told me this. And I had my period, I got my period when I was nine. So I just felt my anger in that moment, which I didn’t even really fully expressed to him because I didn’t really feel like there was a point but, it was just the silencing of what I saw of my mother’s experience. And all of her different needs that weren’t being met, her unresolved traumas like the context of her life basically, and how that was showing up in their arguments, and whether or not this was at all timed with her cycle, I don’t know. And she doesn’t know, she, as many women, didn’t pay attention to her cyclicity and, you know, didn’t know what phase she was in from another which is, you know, a very usual situation. But the story of it, you know of, oh, mom’s upset because she is hormonal, because she’s premenstrual, because since menstruation has been thought of like, the marker of womanhood. It’s because she’s a woman. And It just felt so binding to me. And —

Candice Wu 39:06

Absolutely.

Roxanne Partridge 39:08

Yeah. So that was very much a part of the day to day life of growing up and really seeing just the limited space for representation to what my mom was experiencing and just how there wasn’t any kind of befriending or curiosity or acceptance or conversation or relating going on to the different parts of herself that wanted to be met.

Candice Wu 39:45

And how different it would be if the secret that your dad wanted to share was like your mom is going through this magical time. This, like, every month, and maybe I don’t get it. But it’s like, alive and there’s life-giving quality there and who knows what’s happening in this magical beautiful way? That would have been a whole different story.

Roxanne Partridge 40:17

Whole different story, yeah, absolutely.

Candice Wu 40:21

Wow.

Roxanne Partridge 40:22

And so, that, I know, attending to that and understand what this was kind of this menstrual backdrop.

Candice Wu 40:36

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 40:37

You know, and realizing too, like, you know, it definitely exists in my family and I think it is very alive in our culture of, you know, if a woman has a strong feeling or thought or opinion, you know, how the cycle or cyclicity is like, weaponized to silence or dismiss or devalue.

Candice Wu 41:10

Yeah, it’s rampant.

Roxanne Partridge 41:14

And so, of what it’s like to make space for a completely different approach like you’re suggesting, you know, like, that magic, a whole different way of welcoming in the cycle. And so like, that’s part of like, the personal motivation for me again, knowing that, like, of the personal experience of my mom, and then just knowing how historically this is such a common story, of really making space to listen and get to know who shows up at different phases of the cycle, all phases. And, one thing that I lead my clients through is getting to know their various menstrual selves and the premenstrual self as she may show up in different ways every cycle and how sometimes she can be this kind of dark informant as I like to say, you know? Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 42:39

Her message may be raw.

Candice Wu 42:42

Yes.

Roxanne Partridge 42:42

It may be screaming. And, what it’s like not to judge her or reduce her to hormones but to really be curious about her.

Candice Wu 42:58

I think that is so important, you know, even women that, and myself, I’ve done it with that I’ve worked with and just here, you know, in my friendship circles or other arenas in psychology then there is this dismissing of what might happen, what messages we’re getting, what we’re saying, what we’re bothered by, we’re alive by, when we’re on our period. And it does get reduced to, Oh, are you on your cycle? And then it’s like, full stop period there in not a good way, in a silencing way.

Roxanne Partridge 43:44

Yes.

Candice Wu 43:45

Not the kind that like claims that and says, yeah. But yes, tell me more about who you see in your different phases of the cycle, or who your clients see.

Roxanne Partridge 44:01

Yeah. You know oftentimes as we get to know if it’s a moody menstrual self that comes through that oftentimes she’s a tremendous advocate for what like, the woman really wants or needs at that point in her life.

Candice Wu 44:24

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 44:25

And really uncompromising about it.

Candice Wu 44:28

I completely experienced that and I began to listen more on like, certain parts of my cycle because of that very raw, as you said, like, on a bash itself that screams what she knows she wants.

Roxanne Partridge 44:49

Yeah, and how it there’s this kind of thinning of the valve that happens.

Candice Wu 44:54

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 44:54

At that phase, you know, and in the body, premenstrually like, we heat up our body temperature is higher than at any other point like after ovulation. And I kind of think about this as this internal pressure cooker for our stuff, and, you know, whatever our, you know, kind of, ovulatory or post bleeding in our springtime selves who feel a little bit lighter, very focused, a little bit more maybe extroverted or go-getting and clear. You know, they move through the world in a different way, they have their gifts, they have their own style of being and the menstrual self kind of from an archetypal perspective, her style of being and what she has to offer is different and it can show up as like a desire to kind of clear, discern, get rid of things, relationships, jobs, people, you know really ground into like, Okay, this is what really works, you know, it’s kind of like an inner editor in a way.

Candice Wu 46:21

Yes.

Roxanne Partridge 46:22

And I can kind of like really there is such a resource. I mean at each phase of the cycle and I’m emphasizing the month the premenstrual on the menstrual because they’re the ones that usually get the worst rap you know that those marginalized parts of our psyche can really show up and they want attention. And you know what it’s like to befriend these marginalized parts of the psyche again, rather than silence them or just think okay, that’s like a negative mindset that I need to get rid of. But I’m just being curious like, okay, like, what is, who’s here? What does she need? What does she get? What’s important to her? And what does she get to experience when she receives what she truly needs? And typically, there’s a real softening that happens when the menstrual self gets what she needs.

Candice Wu 47:34

Yeah, I experience in a very spontaneous, quick way, like a deep breath and relief, which usually tells me like, that’s really what I need to do. And what you’re saying makes so much sense because during the menstrual cycle, we’re shedding, we’re letting something come off of us and sever from us and die. And it just is so in alignment, if that dark moody part of us, and maybe it’s not so dark and moody for some people, but that part of us that just knows exactly what needs to die and let go and it can be, at least for me a good wake up.

Roxanne Partridge 48:29

Yeah, there’s this wonderful like, death and rebirth that is in potential every cycle I feel and you know, I know some women who love to bleed and love the sensuality of the premenstrual and menstrual time, have liked the way that their body feels, the way that they want to respond to food and you know the way that they want to dress or just their whole central experience shifts and for some, it’s been like a question of like, a couple of clients I have like, really feel, really sexual, really gorgeous, really powerful when they bleed. That’s like this relief like you’re saying this, like, letting go and really being in themselves. And then the invitation being okay and how does this cycle through to the next phase?

Roxanne Partridge 49:37

You know we’re like, of how to carry that kind of gift of like, renewal and an integrated, it’s like if you think about maybe this, I think this might be a helpful analogy like if you go through, like a retreat weekend or deep ritual or initiation or something or a vision quest and it’s amazing and you have all these insights and all of these openings, and it’s like, yes. And what does this look like in the rest of my life? How do we bring this in?

Candice Wu 50:20

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 50:22

And that’s one thing that like, I’m really like, the idea of like, the sacred space, like, space is the main, I feel like it’s a big topic, space.

Candice Wu 50:35

Space for ourselves, space for discernment, you know, space to bleed, space —

Roxanne Partridge 50:47

Taking up space, exactly, occupying space, having yourself represented in cultural space, space and relationships, womb space, universe inside our bodies —

Candice Wu 51:09

That kind of space, outer space, and inner space.

Roxanne Partridge 51:14

Yeah, like all of those spaces. Ah, it’s something that I am thinking about every day and —

Candice Wu 51:23

We’re creating poetry here. Let’s just shift gears altogether.

Roxanne Partridge 51:31

Yeah.

Candice Wu 51:33

I got only next time.

Roxanne Partridge 51:36

But it’s like, you know the need for like, yeah the navigating, how to navigate all these different spaces and what wants to be integrated and what is, you know, what just wants to be its own space, you know, it’s like, to ground this is like you know, the space to just, to discern like, Okay, what am I carrying that isn’t mine, like, what have I inherited from my family, from culture, from, you know, different perspectives that I grew up with about what it is to be a woman, a person with a female anatomy, what it is to menstruate, have children, not have children, like, all these things.

Candice Wu 52:33

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 52:34

You know, to have this space to discern that and to really connect with what feels authentic and to like cultivate a fuller dynamic sense of self and not get caught into a single role. Because even if that role is true and meaningful, usually there are other roles that also want to be a part of life.

Candice Wu 53:02

The multiplicity.

Roxanne Partridge 53:03

Yeah. Right, and how to like, how to navigate the path. And so often, women will, in my experience, they’ll find a sense of spaciousness that feels really good or safe when it’s like in solitude and then it feels like well, being in a relationship or having a different kind of job may like, you know, or just like, it feels really vulnerable, the space, you know, and I’ve definitely experienced this myself like I’ve had, you know, there’s a big part of me that’s like a total lone wolf.

Candice Wu 53:53

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 53:54

And how to bring a sense of connection to my own inner multiplicity, my changing nature, my cyclicity all the different things and parts of myself that make me, how to bring that into my life and, you know, be in relationships or navigate different spaces or whatever. And it’s this kind of, I feel like we’re in this moment or this is all being very much explored.

Candice Wu 54:37

Yeah, very much. We have a lot more language for this and more connection and collaboration around it in bringing each other forward in support.

Candice Wu 54:55

So, with this, Roxanne, I know you also work with dreams a lot, and I’m wondering if there is a dream or dream fragment that has been striking you lately, or been alive with you?

Roxanne Partridge 55:22

Yeah, I’m recalling a dream. I wish I had my journal at hand. I’ve been dreaming so much lately.

Candice Wu 55:41

Have you? Wow!

Candice Wu 55:44

Yeah. Do you want to get it or just what feels right here?

Roxanne Partridge 55:48

It’s not close enough. Thank you.

Candice Wu 55:56

Take your time.

Roxanne Partridge 55:58

Yeah, there’s one in particular that I’m trying to draw up right now. It’s going to cooperate —

Candice Wu 56:04

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 56:05

Wants to show —

Candice Wu 56:06

Yes.

Candice Wu 56:16

It does have its own life, doesn’t it? Autonomy in a way. Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 56:30

Oh, I’ll go with the dream I had this morning.

Roxanne Partridge 56:34

So this morning I dreamt of coastal mountains in California that are not on fire and being in these mountains and having this wonderful view of the ocean. And there are these kinds of in the dream the language was mountain title tide pools. These like, crevices in the mountains that were once tide pools and they were filled with flowers and the California poppy, that orange wonderful poppy flower wasn’t blue. And it was really beautiful and kind of have a surreal quality and it’s this familiar kind of landscape where I’ve spent a good number of years living in California and that landscape is really dear to me. You know.

Roxanne Partridge 57:45

And I am thinking about the dream now and I had it this morning before our conversation today and I’ve been thinking about this topic of space. You know, where the Land of California has really offered me a lot of space. And I would say through being with and on the land out there when I was really kind of going deep and I did you know my graduate studies out there. It was through a kind of dreaming and thinking and wrestling with the land that I was able to find greater inner space.

Roxanne Partridge 57:48

And it’s been a few years since I’ve been to California and it was in the dream where I’m looking into these mountain top tide pools of blue poppy flowers and it felt like a blue color like, it changed from orange to blue and it was this kind of this, like, there was this sort of feeling tone of sadness and nostalgia.

Roxanne Partridge 59:17

And in the dream, I found myself saying a lot of things like, well, this is where I used to back when I was here I did this, all this kind of past tense stuff. And, I love recognizing that like, yes, like, this actual place opened up this inner space within me and I think there are, I know there are times when I long for that landscape to hold space for me. And I also know that well, you know, I’m sure I feel great if I went back to visit, that there’s something about like, the practice of space within myself, you know, no longer needs to or can or wants to be held by that particular landscape, if that makes sense, you know.

Roxanne Partridge 1:00:44

Feeling into it again, like, just taking it as a dream that came forward on the day of our talk, and embodiment and embodying our nature, embodying ourselves, period, of you know, it’s kind of like this remembrance, you know, of like, there is inner space, you know, and like, yeah, this actual place held back for you. And you’re like, you know, I’m just kind of pointing my attention towards what’s holding it for me now. You know, what are the ways of practicing and enacting and living space and all these different ways that we’re talking about right and like taking up space and holding space.

Candice Wu 1:01:46

There’s so much that’s breathing about what you’re saying and it almost made me think of this actual place, being more physical marker for a birth of your inner space, like, a home away and yet there’s this part of you that once, maybe a different embodiment of that or separation from physical, actual place, but taking that with you in a way. Those are my words but yeah, that’s just what it made me think of.

Roxanne Partridge 1:02:30

Yeah, you know and I think that’s part of where I find my own daily sense of aliveness is in these very mundane, small moments, of grounding into where I am in the Hudson Valley, and the present really. I don’t know how else to say it.

Candice Wu 1:03:15

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 1:03:15

You know, and of remembering that space is here.

Candice Wu 1:03:25

Yeah, and wherever you are.

Candice Wu 1:03:32

Thank you for sharing that.

Candice Wu 1:03:37

And I’m very excited to share with everyone, your meditation on rewilding your sexual ecology and that’ll be coming up here and link to your episode as well. Do you want to say anything about that?

Roxanne Partridge 1:03:55

Yeah, I’d love to. I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about menstrual selves. Another piece here is our sexual selves. And likewise, you know how knowing the different figures of our sexual essence can bring us home to our kind of native, wild, inner sexual landscape.

Roxanne Partridge 1:04:26

And so this offering of rewilding your sexual ecology is an invitation to journey into your inner native sexual landscape and taking multiple levels of life force, you know, Kundalini energy, arousal, desire, joy, where you feel aliveness and to see who comes through. Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 1:04:58

I’ve invited women to explore, you know, where they feel most centrally alive and the images that sometimes come through have oftentimes even nothing to do with a bedroom, you know, or a partner even, it’s like being barefoot and singing in their kitchen.

Candice Wu 1:05:02

Yeah.

Roxanne Partridge 1:05:18

It’s just like, you know, where you feel like your body just feels like, expansive. And, you know, it’s an invitation to really kind of locate that and you know, having this ecological amplification of reintroducing that wild, native sexual archetype essence species into the landscape of your life, you know, and how to have it take up space and how to have, you know, imagine it forward and to experiment in introducing reintroducing your native, wild sexual essence into your life, you know, from the day to day to your sexual pleasure, you know, everywhere.

Candice Wu 1:06:14

Everywhere. Yes. It’s really lovely. So I invite everyone to check that out. It’s some other words I wrote down where rivers and vital energy and I really liked that.

Candice Wu 1:06:32

Thank you for offering that and would you like to say anything about your hypnotherapy, the free downloads you have or the workshops that you offer in New York, and retreats, you also have one on one sessions and a million things that you’re offering that are just gorgeous, magical, and look so meaningful.

Roxanne Partridge 1:06:59

Thank you. Yeah, you can check out several free downloads of hypnotherapy practices that run 20, 30 minutes long. There’s one called Remembering Womb, which is a wonderful way to drop into your womb space with some really nurturing energy. So I always recommend that as a way to kind of befriend womb space and kind of return to yourself. I think it’s a great way to ground and there are several others there too, that you can explore and check out.

Roxanne Partridge 1:07:43

I have monthly women’s councils called Body Storm, and we’re going on a brief winter hibernation after this month but we’ll be coming back in the spring and those take the form of a talking circle that have verbal and movement visioning involved here in Hudson, New York.

Roxanne Partridge 1:08:13

And then, there’s Flame Retrieval, which is a retreat coming up in April. It’s a weekend retreat held here in Hudson. And really ends up body, soul, spirit, heart, mind, kind of initiation into tending your inner flame and retrieving your inner flame if it feels lost or low. And whether that, you know, be showing itself through creative blocks or shut down in the body and really welcoming in wherever you are so often I hear from women like, is it okay if I bring my story here? Is it too negative? Is it too dark? Am I going to overwhelm me? Oh, is this too much?

Roxanne Partridge 1:09:14

And to all of that, I say, Welcome. Come, you know, as this shameful, you know, and there’s such a vital life force in that darkness. And so, really welcoming that not only in, yeah, definitely the Flame Retrieval retreat, but, and all of these different doorways into embodying yourself fully in your life.

Candice Wu 1:09:51

Thank you. That’s wonderful. And where can people find that?

Roxanne Partridge 1:09:55

EmbodyPeriod.com/workshops

Candice Wu 1:10:00

Thank you, Roxanne. I feel like we could talk for days and a long time, and is there anything now that’s coming up that feels vital or alive to share or to say as we close here today.

Roxanne Partridge 1:10:25

I think something that I would love to water the ears of listeners with is that soul is revealing itself to you through your embodied experience, whether it’s menstrually or sexually related or behavioral or story, to remember and to be curious about how is soul showing up through us? What is soul expressing through us and to turn towards yourself just as you’d want to turn towards a beloved, just as you’d want a beloved to turn towards you, to turn towards yourself with curiosity and openness and to invite yourself through these moments back to yourself?

Candice Wu 1:11:45

Thank you. I hear that. I hear you.

Roxanne Partridge 1:11:53

Thank you so much.

Candice Wu 1:11:54

Thank you for watering my ears.

Roxanne Partridge 1:11:57

Yeah, I wish we could talk so much more

Candice Wu 1:12:00

Wonderful.

Roxanne Partridge 1:12:01

We will. All the correlations between your work and list could go on and on.

Candice Wu 1:12:08

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Roxanne and it’s been fabulous to have you. It’s been so good to be here. Thank you.

Candice Wu 1:12:24

Wow, I was so grateful to have you, Roxanne, on the show and I learned so much and just your vibrancy calls forward so much in me that remembers myself and imagination and bringing forward my process and really embracing it. You are this validating force for embracing what is real and true and alive.

Candice Wu 1:12:58

Thank you so much and all of you out there listening, thank you for joining us. I hope this was inspiring to you as well and be sure to listen to Roxanne’s meditation on rewilding your sexual ecology, which is in connection with this episode but will come out later this week if you’re subscribed.

Candice Wu 1:13:17

If you want to go straight to their website and find it right now you can find it at CandiceWu.com/roxanne.

Candice Wu 1:13:26

Before we go and end with a couple of reverberations of Roxanne’s work, I want to invite you to connect with me on my newsletter that comes out once or twice a month at CandiceWu.com/embody, where you can receive updates about where I am in the world and what’s happening with the horses or receive self — notes and updates about the podcast and be sure to check out Roxanne’s work at embodyperiod.com.

Candice Wu 1:13:55

So I want to echo her words: How is soul showing up through this? What of soul is showing through my experience? And also to ask you, what is your story? What is the backdrop of your menstrual story?

Candice Wu 1:14:17

Thanks so much for joining us today on the Embody podcast and see you next time.

Candice Wu 0:00

This experiential with Roxanne Partridge is a beautiful invitation to rewild your sexual self.

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.

Welcome, and it’s wonderful to have you here. I’m so excited to introduce Roxanne Partridge to you here. She has her full podcast at CandiceWu.com/roxanne where we talk all about befriending the many parts of ourselves that come through the menstrual and premenstrual cycle, where we explore the invitations of what life shows us, where life shows us about the soul, how to be curious and connect with the menstrual backdrop of your life, feeling alive and in tune with the darkness and the depth of who we are, to bring our own magic to the surface, all of that is just wonderfully enlivened through conversation with Roxanne so be sure to check that out. And now, without further ado, is Roxanne.

Roxanne Partridge 1:53

Welcome to rewilding your sexual ecology, Dr. Roxanne Partridge of Embody Period and I’ve created this hypnotherapy experience for you to deepen into your inner sexual wilderness landscape, gently moving beyond the layers of conditioning we have all received around sexuality and meeting authentic pleasure, the deep joy of your embodied essence.

Please go ahead and lie down if you haven’t done so already. Get as comfortable as possible, making sure your body feels totally supported from head to toe. Pull a blanket over you if you’d like to feel cozy, as well as to help you deepen into your body, with that extra weight of a blanket.

Settle in, settle into the space, placing your hands over your pelvis.

Good, and now taking several deep breaths.

This is your time, so relax into it. Letting your breath deep and down under the palms of your hands and notice what it’s like to deepen your breath down beneath your belly and to bring it all the way down into your pelvis. Letting your pelvis receive your deep, steady, relaxed breathing right now and allowing your breath and your attention, your awareness to nourish the space between your fingers, the space beneath your palm, bringing warmth and is and relaxation here in between your hips.

And as you do this, your hips begin to relax and open, letting your legs loose, feet at ease, opening from your pelvis down and out.

Eyes closed, eyelids heavy, muscles of your face, relax. Your lips part gently as your jaw relaxes and your head becomes heavy and perhaps even droops a little, the energy of your forehead, your third eye, beginning to draw downwards and inwards.

As your attention moves down, your body relaxing, arms, elbows, back, and shoulder muscles relaxing into your core.

Good.

Feel and imagine a channel of energy now between your third eyes space and your pelvis, your root. Feel and imagine this core of energy moving from your third eye down to your pelvis.

Imagine and feel this as a river. A river that is tidal and can move in both directions. And right now, we’re moving from your third eye down into your pelvis. So feel and see this channel of energy run through your core, connecting your breath from one place to the other.

As we begin to take a journey down this river of energy, beginning here in your third eye, this place of inner visioning, feeling and sensing yourself afloat on a raft or a wonderful tube drifting down this easeful, relaxing river of your energy. Feeling yourself move clearly. This water runs with ease. It runs fresh and clear, gently drifting down through your head and neck, visualizing and sensing yourself as you do this moving down this river and opening up your inner visioning to the landscape.

Beginning to perceive and sense what’s around you on all sides. Noticing the shorelines and what’s here. Perhaps there are trees, fields or mountains, notice what’s here in your own, in our bioregion, as you drift down through your heart space and your solar plexus space and down into your belly, and down beyond into space beneath your palm, the inner place of your sexual ecology coming to stillness here.

Then finding a place for yourself to rest whether it be upon the shore, on a rock, the sand, the grass, bringing yourself to a place of stillness here in the base of your sacks and breathing deeply.

Put the organs and tissues of your sexual ecology. A vital place of your fertile creativity, power, essence, and joy as you land here in this domain. Noticing the air, the light, what grows here.

You meet the homeplace of an inner vital figure of your joy, of your wild, free, sexual essence and she shows herself to you now. A Mary Jane from the landscape, perhaps she comes from the river itself. Perhaps she comes out of the trees or on the horizon and she makes her way towards you and notice how she shows her mood, her way of moving. Perhaps she’s dancing. Perhaps she’s moving slow and steady, arms open like a goddess. Perhaps she kind of just floats in a completely enchanting way over the landscape.

Notice her energy and her style right now and she comes to you and takes your hands and pulls you lovingly into her orb of energy, introducing you to her way of being. And in this moment, her way of being becomes your way of being and together you amplify and expand this essential, vital energy throughout your entire being, throughout this entire landscape and body place, your whole pelvis illuminated and energized and nurtured.

As the two of you become one in this life energy, feel yourself here needing this source of your wild sexual essence, knowing that this lives organically, natively within you and now that you know that this is what lives here, you can bring this energy forward, upriver, traveling with it throughout your entire being, introducing this vital energy that is wild and native to your sexuality, to your sensuality, to your creative essence, introducing, reintroducing this native essence to the fullness of your being, welcoming its power into your solar plexus, welcoming this life force into your heart, feeling your heart expand with its presence of your wildly authentic pleasure, feeling as you continue to move up the river, feeling your sexual essence meet your throat and open your throat and hear and feel the words, the language of this native sexual energy.

What did she say? What is she sing to the world? And feeling you rise and travel further up and out into your third eye, opening your third eye, with her presence that is yours and noticing how she sees the world and your place in it and how you body your wildness forward.

Imagining right now and seeing, knowing it to be true, how you move forward in the world but the wildness of your sexual ecology moving through you, allowing yourself to feel completely energized by this throughout your entire body, feeling it in your toes, your hands, feeling it in the sides of your face, perhaps now, even smiling a little, breathing and expanding into this life force energy and noticing how the landscape of your waking life completely ships in small and significant ways now that this organic, wild, native source of your sexuality has been realized.

Deep breath.

Feeling into the palms your hands, turning the palms of your hands now, upwards and outwards, expanding your arms, opening your arms into a great big stretch of wings, bringing them above your head, stretching out your legs and feet, feeling your pelvis warm, hips open, chest open, back, maybe even arching a little, let your head fall back, mouth open in total pleasure. Expand it and your wild sexual ecology.

Thank you for the vital rewilding work. Body for wild throughout the rest of your day and the rest of your life.

Candice Wu 20:20

As you come out of this experience with Roxanne, take your own time to come back to your surroundings. Support yourself in any way you need to. This is all about you and what you need right now to support yourself, to support your sexual being and as Roxanne invites us to, I invite you also to see how this experience can be brought forward into your life. Thanks so much for taking the time today.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode is part 2, all about love, and here we talk about the different parts of us that want love, and perhaps have different senses and ideas of love, a different need around love and explore the energy of love, and how to shift the energy of love that you can begin to love yourself. And also I share a dream that relates to loving myself and loving the desires that I have and feeling the worthiness of what I desire. There’s also a little bit in here about worthiness and that we are all worthy of love.

Candice Wu 0:40

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 0:54

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 1:14

Welcome back, everyone. It’s great to have you. I wasn’t quite sure what to talk about today. I know I had said last, a couple of weeks ago, in the last solo podcast that I’d be doing some experientials around love and receiving love. And I want to do that, I’m just not sure what is going to come out of that. There are a couple of things floating around in my inner world about it. So, I wanted to just jump on here and meditate about it and see what came up.

Candice Wu 1:46

The episode that I’m talking about is untangling love, from fear and protection. It’s a conversation about how love, the idea and concept, and experience of love has been tangled up with also sorts of other ways of being that we must be in order to receive or to give love. And in order to feel loved or where we just have associated and coupled love with those other experiences. And that’s what we believe love is. So, that episode is about exploring what’s been mixed up with love, so that you can actually receive a pure and clear love that’s free. That episode is at CandiceWu.com/love if you want to check it out. And today, let’s just begin with a little bit of sitting together and meditating with what comes up around the topic of love.

Candice Wu 2:43

So, just take a moment to close your eyes if you’d like to, or look down, if you can, to whatever feels comfortable for you. Just notice your breath. We’ll just do this together feel into the energy of love.

Candice Wu 3:07

Without thinking about it, just see what arises in you, what feeling comes up.

Candice Wu 3:25

And just notice any emotions you have, or sensations in the body. And any thoughts that come to you.

Candice Wu 3:46

So, this is just brief for right now. But what I’m also getting is to do a longer experience around that, to offer the space for that, to see what else comes up around love for all of us. So, I think I’ll do that in the experientials to follow this episode.

Candice Wu 4:08

And what also came up for me was mixing the parts work, IFS or voice dialogue or other parts work, I use mainly voice dialogue. But it can be just in this broader category of parts work. Looking at the different parts of ourselves, and seeing what kinds of love or what kinds of presents, those parts of us need, the kind of attention.

Candice Wu 4:39

And how different parts of us can come into play at different times in our life, in different relationships or at work or at the grocery store. But where different parts of us come up, that are seeking a certain kind of attention and presence in love, where we may not want that part to take the lead. For example, for a long time, my five-year-old self would want to, when I was in a relationship, and got to a level of safety with this partner, my five-year-old self would really want to come up and receive this sort of unconditional love from my partner, from a child’s place. Like just wanting them to be a father or a mother to me in a way and to comfort me. And to tell me all the things I wanted to hear kind of magically, you know, five-year-olds have a bit of magical thinking that’s five years old and under. And around that age, just wanting the adults to be so attuned to you that they know exactly what you need, and exactly what you want to hear, and it also comes from a younger place of not having words or having a non-verbal experience of touch and sensing and someone to be attuned with you.

Candice Wu 6:10

So, that part of me would want to come forward. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just that I didn’t really want that part of me to lead in terms of connecting with my partner, it’s not really a place where you can have true intimacy, it’s a place of a child needing a parent, a child needing an adult that can really support them in healing something and moving through something.

Candice Wu 6:37

And so, yeah, our triggers come up all the time. So, my five-year-old self could be triggered, and I’d want my partner to help me. And that ultimately became a weight on my partner and a dependency that wasn’t really healthy for our relationship. And what came through with that as well is that my five-year-old self would also know how to take care of someone. So, it was not just dependency was codependency where I wanted to please the person around me in order to get love to get what I need, I needed.

Candice Wu 7:12

And so, this dynamic would form where I’d please someone and support someone until they could help me. And ultimately, I had to work very hard to support this person, because I’d attract someone who needed that same kind of thing. So, you can see where the codependency really weaves in together and kind of locks into a dynamic.

Candice Wu 7:36

I don’t want my five-year-old self to lead the way and to connect with an intimate partner or romantic partner in that way. At this point, I’d much rather give that love to myself. But even with that conversation, we had about untangling love from other things, how do we give ourselves, our younger selves or the different parts of us a free and pure love if we’ve never known it? And for me, it took working with several different healers and therapists, and practitioners, to notice the different moments where I might not be loving to myself but hard on myself and thinking that was helpful, or thinking that was loving. And for them to notice that and say, Whoa, try this or just the way that they responded to me with compassion or with gentleness, really shifted slowly. It trickled in like homeopathy, the way that I can love myself. So, I really encourage people to find that kind of support where they feel that someone can offer a different kind of love to them that expands and expands your way of loving yourself.

Candice Wu 8:55

Back to the topic of parts: So, the many parts of us, our inner critic, our creative side, the leader in us, the younger parts of us, the inner mother and her father, as well as our inner wisdom and our full and awareness, all of these parts need attention. And as I talked about in that last episode, your direction of attention is love itself. Your direction of attention is love itself. And so, if you’re not giving any attention to these parts, they may feel undernourished, they may feel unloved. And they may need a specific kind of attention as you are in presence with them. So, each one wanting a different thing, and if different parts of you are coming online, in terms of leading the way like let’s say you get irritated at work, what part of you is present, what part of us getting irritated. And what kind of loving does that part need? It may need a different kind of loving than your younger child would or your inner wisdom would.

Candice Wu 10:11

So, that’s what’s coming to me today about loving. And the second thing that has been coming up is our ability to receive love, to receive anything, to receive abundance, to receive pleasure, to receive joy, but also love. And I think that’s very challenging if we’ve gotten messages that we’re not worthy of receiving or that we’re not enough, or that there we have to do things in order to receive, that we’re not just worthy of receiving just because we exist. And that was a whole new concept to me when I first heard it, it’s a given that I’m worthy.

Candice Wu 10:55

There’s an episode that I did just as a meditation about worthiness and it’s at CandiceWu.com/worthiness. You can check that out if you’re interested and tuning into those words, and that energy of feeling that you couldn’t be more worthy, you already are worthy. But most of us, in our paths, somewhere, whether that’s in a past life, in our personal lives, in our young life, in our romantic relationships or important relationships in our lives, or in our lineage, there’s been a past learning or meaning-making, that we aren’t worthy of love, or that we aren’t allowed to have it, or we don’t have permission to have a full love unless we do X, Y, and Z, or unless we are X, Y, and Z. And the thing is we already are those things, at the core.

Candice Wu 12:00

Perhaps some things are just waiting to be uncovered, but your worthiness is already there, because you exist, because you are a human being with life force energy that is here on its unique journey, to given that you’re worthy of love. And I do believe, for me at least, that it’s this life is a journey of learning how to love myself and how to love others. But very truly how to feel my own worthiness, feel in sync with and in union with the existence that I am that comes from the source of all things, with no question. Animals don’t question their worthiness, they just are. They just move completely in sync with their life, force energy, their vital energy. And I believe that that is part of our journey here, to become in sync so much with ourselves. We don’t even think twice about the fact that this is what we want, and we go for it. And we move and flow with the changes that come in our pathway and love ourselves along the way.

Candice Wu 13:23

And when you do love yourself along the way, you don’t really think about it. When you’re fully in that kind of loving, that’s immersed, you don’t think, “Oh, I’m going to love myself now, let me try to do something different.” But it’s a stepping stone to do that, where you’re changing a pattern, so, you can gauge where you’re at by sensing how much you’re actually thinking about, or changing what’s happening in the present moment, and how much you’re enjoying it. Isn’t it challenging thing to enjoy every single night moment? Even if it’s a tough moment, even if you’re not being loving to yourself in this moment. How is this to experience and to be in it fully so we can feel all of ourselves? This is a pure love, to love everything in our experience, to give attention to everything in our experience, to be more clear here that we can feel through it, and we are full in this juicy experience of every single possibility.

Candice Wu 14:33

And I want to go back just for a moment to the parts of ourselves and what may show up in a relationship, what may show up in an experience, and what kind of love those parts need. I want to just mention that when we come across these parts of us that are wanting something, or that gets triggered and upset or activated because something happened, it’s this beautiful opportunity to love and to shift out of the cycle of the way loving was in the past, if it was mixed in with some way of protecting yourself or some way of being you felt dependent on in order to receive love. But to shift out of that paradigm, and into a fuller one where it’s easy to love yourself worths, simple in a way. When I say easy, I kind of paused inside, like, “it’s not always easy.” Because sometimes it’s so unfamiliar or different or not what we had before, but going into a kind of love that’s universal, that says, “it’s okay.” Forgive yourself or notice how this feels.

Candice Wu 16:01

Just having that gentleness and tenderness, it’s an opportunity to love yourself on another layer, and more deeply. And if you’re able to notice the parts of you that come up, to give yourself, to give this part of you a new kind of love or another level of it or another dose of it, is just such a powerful thing you can do this opportunity is given right to you because your soul really wants to be loved, your soul wants you to love yourself. And so, this opportunity is given and we can kind of drown in the upset of something or why did this happen? Or how? And analyze it all or we can give ourselves the healing love that it’s as needed and resolve it from the inside out. And then, the next time that might be different.

Candice Wu 17:09

So, what does that look like, right? It might look like just being with that part of you. It might look like saying I love you. It might look like saying or sound like saying some soothing words like, “You are enough” or “You’re safe, I’m right here with you, and I’m never going to leave you”, to your inner parts.

Candice Wu 17:36

So, that’s a whole other topic is parts work. There’s a podcast to about parts work at CandiceWu.com/parts. And there are some experientials there where you can work with giving different parts of you what they need, including your inner child.

Candice Wu 17:53

But today, I’m going to leave this podcast kind of short, and jump into the experientials that will be coming out this week. Many of you are sharing with me that you pick and choose which ones really suit you or somehow jumped out at you, or that you just feel drawn to listen to. And you may not listen when they come out, but later. So, you might be jumping in where these experientials are already published. Check them out, and if you’re not sure yet, you can also go to the website at CandiceWu.com/lovepart2. There you’ll find all the experiences for this week that relate to this episode, and relate to the last one about love.

Candice Wu 18:39

So, I’ll leave you with a little taster of what those episodes will be. One is going to be a longer version of tuning into your feeling, an energy of love and just what comes up for you. Maybe a past relationships came up, maybe your heart begins to ache and yearn for a certain kind of love.

Candice Wu 19:03

Another practice will be an energy work practice of self-love. This is what I learned from a friend of mine named Robin Fisher, who is an Ayurvedic practitioner. She was the one that cooked for us at our last healing retreat. And it’s an energetic practice that you can work with to move the energy of love to cycle within herself. Being who I am, and a woman growing up in a Chinese family and also in America, I learned to take care of others and give all my love away in order to receive something back. And giving myself the experience of love is a different thing, and I find that working with the energy of it helps everything along because there’s a certain energetic flow that becomes ingrained. And your energy can just learn that this is the way it needs to flow. And my flow, previously, was straight from my heart out through my hands and to other people. And the flow of receiving of coming back was challenging, but also the flow of the love going to myself also was challenging.

Candice Wu 20:26

So, that practice I want to share with you because it was very powerful for me and I want to do something else with receiving and tuning into what you can receive, what you feel you can receive and expanding that so that there’s more. And you can have everything that you want.

Candice Wu 20:48

I might also throw in the classic Loving Kindness Meditation. So, look out for that, and I hope this week is filled with lots of love for you as you practice, and enjoy these practices.

Candice Wu 21:01

Thank you so much for joining me today, and it’s always great to be able to talk about these topics and hear your feedback. Feel free to reach out to me and share your thoughts, your questions, your reactions, I love getting a challenging question or a challenge to what I’ve said. Everything that I say is just what’s coming up for me and what I’m learning. And I know that everyone’s on a different part of their journey, and can offer something different. So, feel free to reach out at CandiceWu.com.

Candice Wu 21:34

And if you would like receiving updates from me with self-love notes and updates about my travels and experiences that I’m going through with my life, and thoughts that I have for you, you can sign up for the Embody newsletter at CandiceWu.com/embody, there’s some freebies there for you as well that you can receive once you get there. And I want to just tune you into the dream workshops that I’ve been having on Skillshare, there are two of them out right now and another coming very soon. And all of these are about supporting your dream life with the physiology that can create a thriving space for your dreams to flourish and for you to remember your dreams. I love working with dreams. And it’s just one way that I give love to myself. I turned that attention towards my unconscious and the parts of me that want to be emerged through imagery and color, and cookie things that happened.

Candice Wu 22:35

Just the other day, I had this dream about trying to pass through a place with a box of king crab legs and shrimp. And this man said, “I don’t think you can go through with that, that’s too much.” And I said, “No, no, I think I should have this, I am true.” Those were the words that came through — “I am true.” And I said, “That’s why there’s a little bit less shrimp because I want all these king crab legs.” And it just so happens I’ve been working on desire and being able to have what I want, fully and even more. And the crab legs and the shrimp are just messages from my inner world because when I felt an experience in my younger life of feeling like I wasn’t allowed to have, it was actually at my great grandmother’s funeral. And my grandparents were taking the shrimp so fast from the table in the center, the plates of the center that I didn’t even really get any. And I love the shrimp at the time. And I just experienced that moment as I am not allowed to have.

Candice Wu 23:50

And I felt their sense of urgency and panic that they needed to have it before anyone else. So, it’s like abundance was limited, the food was limited. And it was just so upsetting to me in the mix of what was also going on in my family dynamics around the time that my great grandmother passed away. And so, shrimp was always this little signal of nourishment and what I could have, and king crab legs, I one day, down the line like maybe I don’t know, six years later, was eating king crab legs with the person I was dating at the time. And I just started crying because I felt like, “Oh, would my grandparents be able to have this? Would they have had this?”

Candice Wu 24:38

There’s this sense in my family line that people were poor, or that we are poor. We don’t have enough. But I never really totally believe that that was true. I just wasn’t sure. But the belief sets certainly made it real, that we felt that way, and that my grandparents felt that way, we don’t have enough. So, grabbing the shrimp had to happen quickly. And so, I just had this association with it that maybe they would never allow themselves to have king crab legs. And I’ve seen them live very frugally. And I asked myself that question of, “Am I allowed to have these?” And so, here’s at least 12 years later that I’m having this dream about king crab legs, and shrimp in a box and a man asking me if I’m, you know what’s in the box. And I, I tried to convince him that I’m allowed, which seems to be some process that’s happening in me.

Candice Wu 25:36

So, here’s a very long story for why I love dreamwork and what’s coming through with my dreams right now. And I do feel I’m stepping in more and more to this feeling of, I can have what I want. And to be able to even ask myself, “What do I truly want exactly, what is it that I want.” And then to hold my experience around me, consistent to that and to say no to the things that aren’t that, to say no to the things that fall short of what I want, and to align with exactly what I want. To be congruent outside of me is a really interesting process, and a lot of people tell me that they see my life and they see that I’m having everything I want. And that’s not untrue. It’s just that there’s more, and there’s always more layers. It’s not the end, just because my life is the way it is, which I’m so grateful for and feel really privileged about and also I recognize my own work in it my own healing work, and my own risk-taking and slowing down to hear myself.

Candice Wu 26:53

This is a deeper level now of being able to access things that I want that might be scary or not have been in my, on my menu before of what I could have in my life and in myself, and my relationships.

Candice Wu 27:09

So, I want to just offer that little tidbit for you today. And again, long story short for sharing the Dream Work classes with you on Skillshare, and you can find that at Candice.com/dreamphysiology. You can also find all of the classes that I have at CandiceWu.com/dreams.

Candice Wu 27:28

All right, that’s it for today and check out those experientials that are coming out and I’ll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

You’re tuning into an experiential around Love and this is in connection with two episodes, Part One and Two of Love and that’s at CandiceWu.com/love, as well as Love Part Two.

Part Two offers several different experiences and this is just one of the four that are coming out.

Feel free to pick and choose which ones you like and which ones resonate with you or touch your heart in some way right now.

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.

So let’s jump in.

Tune in With Me About Love

Today, I just want to offer some space for all of us to tune in together, to the energy of love and for you to feel into the energy of love for yourself, and what comes up for you.

In this experience, I’d invite you to be completely open and curious and compassionate with yourself. In other words, be loving to yourself. And funny enough, that also includes being loving to yourself when you’re not loving to yourself, and just being with yourself.

Having your attention towards yourself to notice that experience of not loving yourself, not being kind or being judgmental, whatever comes up.

The Energy of Love

So when we look at the topic of love, and when we feel into the energy of it, so much can come up, our body can show us, our energy can show us and our souls can show us images of what we need to look at, around this topic and concept, and presence in our lives that we so desire.

You might find something surprising or interesting come up, you might find something distressing or triggering come up so go at your own pace if this feels right for you to do right now, feel free to jump in with me.

And if it doesn’t come back later (or don’t come back) — try something different if it’s not the right experience for you to have right now.

Let’s Begin

So if you’re ready to jump in with me, I encourage you to find a comfortable place that’s private.

Feel free to get some blankets or something to sit on, make yourself just feel pampered.

And now as you get settled, watch your body just move in any way.

Allow yourself to be with what is here right now. No matter what it is.

And just release your day so far, let your breath wash away any thoughts or attention that’s directed to past events, things that happened or to do lists and come to alignment with the present moment.

Feel here. You’re here right now.

Notice your spine, your breath, feel the weight of your body towards the ground with gravity.

And now as we begin, I want to invite the energy of love to surround us, the kind of love that is completely, purely, free, available, an abundant, the kind of love that holds every single experience without any judgment, with pure compassion, truth, and understanding.

And let that energy surround you and circle you, fill up the space around you, as well as fill up your entire being, every single cell, muscle, an organ, and let this energy connect up with the love that’s already deep inside your being, situated at the heart, the very core of your energy, the very essence of you, that is love. And that knows love and truth and compassion, that has been untouched by any wounds, beliefs, hurts. Clear love.

Just begin to notice how your body feels now.

What sensations are happening? What emotions are happening? If you’re seeing any color or images… observe.

Open Your Sense of Love

And now, I invite you to open to the energy of love, specifically for you and your life or tuning into what wants to emerge here. What’s already here about love.

And we’re open to seeing what love might be tangled with or coupled with. What sensation you have in your body as you focus on the experience of love in your life. What emotions come up, and how your body moves or doesn’t move, how it feels.

We’re receiving everything as information and notice any thoughts or images or colors that arrive in your space as you feel into the energy of love as it is in your life.

Be aware of where your attention goes and just witness like you’re watching a movie and you’re experiencing all the things that are coming up.

Perhaps a person comes up in your mind. Perhaps the feeling comes as a result. Perhaps some words come to you about love.

There’s no need to think about this right now or analyze it. Just letting anything come into your space about the energy of love in your life, in your history.

One Thing

And now I invite you to focus on one thing that came up if anything did come up and if nothing came up, notice that as well. And just be with that one thing or the nothin and notice what happens as you stay with it.

Go deeper and deeper into the feeling sense of this one part that you chose that came up.

Without any judgment or noticing the judgment that comes, stay aware of what else unfolds or what emerges.

Track how you feel inside and what comes up. What develops or evolves?

And now I’d like to invite you to tune into your desire with loving, your desire with love.

Notice the kind of loving that your heart aches for and yearns for.

Notice other desires you have about love, or about your process with love.

Take just a couple of breaths to feel into those desires, if they’re there and just open back up to the whole energy of love for you today, and what love in you wants to tell you or show you.

And if there are any other messages from your inner being about what you need to know about love, about loving yourself.

And as you receive all this information, just take a couple of breaths to notice everything that came through for you and take a moment to thank yourself and appreciate that you took this time to look at the energy of love in you, until that your direction of attention, your love, come inward to yourself here.

And just knowing that this is a process of cleansing and healing that naturally happens when you bring your attention inward, when you become aware of what’s in your body, what’s in your energy, your thoughts with love.

Coming Back to Earth

So as you come back to the space you’re in, be aware of your surroundings.

Feel free to open your eyes if they’re closed or begin to look around your space. Stretch or move if you need to, if your body wants it.

Just feel your presence here.

End

And I invite you to tune into the next experience where we’ll dive right into those desires and what you ache for, the kind of loving you want for yourself and the loving you want to receive from the outer world.

And we will embody more of the receiving of love both inside of yourself and outside in that next experience. So check that out at CandiceWu.com/lovepart2.

And I appreciate your attention today and your presence. Hope this was interesting and hope to see something else today.

And I look forward to having you in the next experience with me if you’re interested and I’ll leave you with a little music here to transition and to enjoy. I’ll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

This is an experiential to support you in tuning into your desire for loving yourself, for receiving love as well as using somatic practices to transform the energy of receiving in you. This experiential is one of four that are connected with the episodes about love.

If you want to tune into those episodes there at CandiceWu.com/love and /lovepart2. This is where we explore untangling love from fear and other ways of being that have been associated with love, so that you can feel a freer and clearer version of love.

Introduction

So, the inspiration for this experiential is to support you in receiving the kind of self-loving and loving from others that you’d like to receive, a love that is free and clear of any of those things that have been tangled up with, love in your past or in your ancestry.

So, this practice of getting to the kind of love you desire may not be easy at first, especially if you’re just opening to this exploration for yourself. If you’re already tuning into this, it might be quite easy for you or taking you to the next step of what you desire. And so, I invite you to be curious and have the courage to love yourself through this process and be non-judgmental about what you experience.

Let’s Practice Being in Loving

So, let’s jump in. Find yourself in a space that feels comfortable, safe and private.

Feel free to close your eyes if you’d like to, and place your hands on your heart, if that feels good or supportive to you, and if it doesn’t, just find a way to be in your body that feels comfortable right now.

And just let your breath be noticed as you wash away anything that’s been stressful to you today, letting your breath just simply move in and out on its own.

Let your awareness go down to your belly, into your hips, and into your legs, and feet.

And now, I invite you to open to the kind of love you want to have with yourself, the kind of loving that you desire yourself. There’s no need to think too much about it, just open to an image of what it looks like if you were to love yourself fully and wholeheartedly.

Notice the energy, the state of being of loving yourself, and notice how it is that you might experience that.

Feel in your body if there are any sensations or emotions that emerged or show itself as you feel into this image. Notice your breathing and the way your body might move or be still. Feel if there’s any tension or openness, if there’s any sense of color, inside your body or outside of you.

And in your image, notice how you carry yourself and how you move through your day and the world, with this kind of self-loving, with a state of being, of love coming from within.

You might also notice how you might treat others or others treat you as you’re in this state of being, of love, and the state of being of love is where it all begins from within, but sometimes that’s challenging to have that from within, if we haven’t received it from the outside first, as children or as young people, and even as adults. So, these two segments of this practice go hand in hand, and one may resonate more than another.

Now, I’d like to shift gears into the second segment of tuning into the kind of love you wish to receive, and just let your mind or any rational part of you, logical part of you just be invited to sit to the side. We are connecting with the heart and the soul, which doesn’t need any logic of the earthly ego world. So, whatever your desires are, they are allowed here.

And so, just taking a couple of fresh breaths to shift gears and open to an image of exactly the kind of love you wish to receive, and it can be from anyone or anything, without any judgment of what you wish to see here, just let your desire take over.

Follow your desire, perhaps it’s a kind of love and gentleness from an intimate partner or from a parent kind of feeling that you haven’t received but really wish to and need to. Perhaps it’s from an animal, and that connection you feel or from nature, from the angels or ancestors. Invite yourself to feel exactly what your desire is, for receiving and receiving love.

And follow this feeling, follow the desire. See every bit of it, and imagine that it’s happening right now. Notice your emotions and your body sensations. Notice what it’s like to be in your body as you imagine this and follow exactly what your heart yearns for.

Adding in the Body

Now, if you’re interested in including even more of the body and the energy, take your hands and invite your palms to slowly turn to face upwards, to receive this kind of love that you want to have. Feel the movement slowly as your palms turned upwards.

Notice anything that happens as you move, and you can try it a couple of times even if you’d like to, just explore and feel that movement of turning your palms upwards to receive the love that you want, and pause when your palms are upwards and feel the love that you desire coming towards you even picture it as if you could see the energy of love arrive right into your hands into your body into your experience all the way to your heart, and notice if this is challenging or difficult, and what emotions might come up or if you’re putting feel a little bit stuck, your wrists and your arms feel tense or if they feel open and fluid.

Sometimes, there’s some blockage in the arms and the energy of receiving, and this movement might bring certain challenging experiences up or difficult emotions, times were loving wasn’t there at all that’s to begin or continue to clear the energy so that you can fully receive with ease and fully be in your worth to receive.

So, let’s take it a step further, and if your palms are open and face up or not, see how you want to be as you invite your arms to slowly reach forward or outward or a little bit of both to reach towards what you want, and just experience with that feeling of reaching, reaching towards is like, and do this with super slow motion so your awareness can track what you feel on the inside, in your arms in your hands, in your heart, in your belly, even in your legs.

Feel free to repeat this a few times or as many times as you’d like to, but doing it very slowly, like slower than you think, and feeling what it’s like to reach towards what you desire, the love you desire, and find the place where the arms feel natural to go to and where there may be a stuckness if there is any stickiness or a feeling of blockage or can’t go farther.

That requires feeling into it and buying into this experience a little, sinking into what’s here in the body, and if there’s an edge of it feels a little harder to move this far forward, but it’s easy over here, just feel that edge, was like, you’re slowly digging a hole or carving away some soil. Just feel into that little by little, and notice a couple of breaths here with whatever comes up inside of you with it.

And depending on where you are today, you might go for the full reach and experience taking what you want, not just receiving but taking, and if there’s a movement that connects with taking what you want, maybe closing the hands in and taking, and drawing towards you. Whatever emotion is there, images there, see it and do it slowly again, feeling permission to take what you want.

In family constellations, the order of love is first taking, taking from your caretakers and then giving. And so if we missed out on that, we may not have learned how to take, not just to receive but to take.

So, notice what feels more comfortable for you, what might feel uncomfortable in terms of taking or receiving, and feel free to pause and notice what’s happening inside. Notice your heart, your heartbeat, the energy of what’s happening inside you, letting any emotions move through and witnessing everything that’s going on.

And now, just letting it all go and coming back to the present moment. Take a couple of breaths to move your body or stretch if you need. If your eyes are still closed, take your time and open them when it’s right. If your body would like a little bit of containment or touch, feel free to give yourself a self-hug or just touch your body from head to toes or touch the place of your body that wants a little soothing.

Closing

Notice your surroundings, and take a moment to thank yourself for giving yourself the kind of experience that can support you in your loving yourself and in receiving and the ability to take what you desire

Let all that you experienced be information and a tracking of where you are today on this evolution of your self-love and love in this world, in this life.

Feel free to do this practice as many times as you’d like to. I encourage you to try it several times, and see what happens each time, how things evolve.

How you can move differently each time or what might feel stuck, and to honor what comes up, and to allow the inner intelligence of your body and your energy to do its healing magic, with just your witnessing, with just your presence and your attention to yourself in this way.

So, thank you so much for tuning in to this practice today. I hope it was interesting or brought some new awareness to you, and I hope it gets you closer to your desires. If not today, then eventually, and I encourage you to check out the other experientials that go along with this podcast, and that’s at CandiceWu.com/lovepart2, and I’ll leave you with a little music here to transition and for your pleasure.

I’ll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

Thanks for joining me today.

This experiential is an energetic practice of self-love, of cycling the energy of love towards yourself so that you can nourish your whole being.

This is the third of four experientials in this series of the topic of love. There are two podcasts that go along with this.

This conversation around love is untangling love from fear and protection, and other ways of being that love has been mixed up into, so that you can receive love at its truest instead of taking along with it everything that’s been associated with, and the sense of which parts of you are needing different kinds of love and wanting an experience of love, and healing around it.

So, that conversation, again, can be found in the two podcasts, one at CandiceWu.com/love, and the second at CandiceWu.com/loveparttwo.

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.

My First Time

Let’s jump into today’s experience.

It is an energetic practice that I learned from Robin Fischer. She is an Ayurvedic practitioner, and was the Ayurvedic chef at The Soul Body Retreat in October 2018, and I just love this practice.

The first time I did it, I felt a huge rush of energy inside my body and just tears came out of my eyes because I felt that I hadn’t experienced my energy go in this way before. And when I say my energy, I mean, the feeling sense I have inside of the direction of the way my energy goes was totally flipped around in this experience.

As I mentioned in the intro podcast in love part two, I was very used to sending my energy outward and giving it away, giving it away and hoping that others would give me love back, and learning to love myself also required shifting my energy pattern.

Instead of my energy going out of my body, literally out my hands into the world, into other people that it could cycle back into me. So, this practice is a practice of doing that.

Let’s Begin

So, let’s jump in, I invite you to find a comfortable space.

Feel free to sit on something that will help support your low back and your hips, folding your legs or sitting on your heels, whichever kind of sitting posture is good for you right now.

And as you sit, feel free to close your eyes, and effortlessly if possible, lift your spine up tall and simply feel your breath going in your nose and out your mouth.

With each breath in, is feeling that breath go into your body, and this time, the breath out of your mouth with a soft “hah” sound, “Hah,” and just draw that exhalation out so it’s long.

Now, take your palms together so the palms and the fingers are touching like a prayer pose, and lift your palms up as they’re touching so that your thumb presses against the forehead.

And just notice what that feels like as your thumbs press against your forehead, your palms together, and imagine at the heart, at the center of your chest actually that there’s a ball of light, radiant and bright, and with each breath, it just glows brighter, brilliant and beautiful. Don’t worry if you can’t literally see it, just imagine that you could.

And as you breathe in, on your next breath in, imagine this ball splitting into two and reaching out into the shoulders and following a line into the arms towards the elbows all the way to the wrists and the palms, and that energy meets at the palms where they connect and goes right into your forehead into the center of the head, and as you exhale, that energy comes down through the head, to the neck and back into the chest where it started.

And your next breath doing the same thing breathing in and letting that energy of light reach through the arms, follow that with your eyes, with your inner eyes, following tracing through the arms to the wrist, to the hands and to the center of the head.

On your exhalation release the energy going down through the head and neck into the chest and landing at the center of the chest.

Feel free to do that three more times at your own pace, for a total of five, seeing the energy moves through the body and cycle back into yourself, into your heart to nourish you, that your own energy, your own love, your own attention can move through you and back to you to nourish yourself, to love yourself, to give to yourself.

And when you complete five, bring the palms down towards the center of the chest so that the thumb presses against your sternum, at the chest itself, and allow yourself to notice anything that’s happening, any shifts in your body, and how you feel any emotions that are emerging and unfolding here.

Continue to notice and notice.

Take your time here to let everything integrate, and for everything that’s happening to continue to happen.

Notice that ball of energy, that ball of light at the heart and let it spread out into your whole body, and as it does, that it just fades out into your entire being.

Closing

When you feel ready, release your hands bringing your palms face up or face down on your thighs or knees.

Feel a few more breaths here, and thank yourself for doing this practice of self-love, for working with your energy body, for giving to yourself.

Feel free to touch your heart to give thanks or bow your head or just say it to yourself whatever feels right to honor yourself.

And as you’re ready, feel free to move or stretch, to open the eyes if they’re closed.

Come back to here and now, your surroundings, and let yourself ease slowly into rest or slowly into the next step of your day.

End

And I will leave you with just a bit of music here to transition and to support you in slowly moving and enjoying this next moment.

Thanks so much for practicing, and see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This is a loving-kindness, healing meditation and it incorporates feeling and sensing into the body to support you in learning to feel and receive love. This is one healing experience of four in the Love Part Two healing experiences.

And you can find the larger conversations around Love and Untangling Love from all sorts of other things that we’ve mixed up Love with at CandiceWu.com/love and also CandiceWu.com/lovepart2.

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.

Loving Kindness

So with this practice of loving-kindness, which is Metta in the Buddhist practice, encourage you to practices several times, maybe a couple times in this week, couple of times in this month, and see what evolves, see what changes for you and what strengthens or what may feel challenging for you, and be open to what comes up.

Perhaps you’ll feel a great joy in different parts of this experience and perhaps you’ll feel some sadness come through. And all of it is to support you in healing so that you can feel even more love in your life.

Let’s Begin

So if you’re ready to come in with curiosity and openness, feel free to jump into this experience with me.

As you let your body rest into a comfortable seated position or lying down, create this space and time for yourself to feel loved.

Take a moment to notice your mind, the frequency of your thoughts, your heart and any emotion or sensation, and the rest of your body syncing any holding or tension.

Notice without changing anything at all and let this be a time of curiosity, non-judgment, and awareness.

Now imagine a person, animal or spiritual figure that you feel safe with.

Notice any reactions that come up with that question.

Feel free to choose anyone that brings you a feeling of calm, peace or safety.

Now imagine this person, animal or spiritual figure. Notice all of the details that you can. Imagine them looking towards you with love.

Now imagine sending them a loving message and seeing them receive it. Send them the message:

May you be at peace. May you be healthy and well and may you love yourself exactly the way you are.

Notice what it’s like to send this loving message to this person, animal or spiritual figure.

Feel free to get curious about any emotion or sensation or movement in your body.

Receive

And now switch gears and let yourself be the receiver while this person, animal or spiritual figure sends you this loving message:

May you be at peace. May you be healthy and well. May you love yourself exactly the way you are.

And notice any sensations, reactions, and emotions that come up as you receive this loving message.

And now either release the image of this person, animal or spiritual figure, or invite them to sit next to you as you send this loving message to yourself.

Give and Receive to Self

Notice what it’s like to both send and receive the message internally.

May I be at peace. May I be healthy and well. May I love myself exactly the way I am.

And notice any reactions, emotions, or sensation and allow whatever comes up.

Let yourself continue to be curious as you practice this loving-kindness meditation over time.

Take a couple more moments to feel yourself in the space.

Closing

Feel yourself right now and to appreciate that you took the time to practice this experience and to heal what gets in the way of you, feeling even more love.

To take this next step on your journey takes great courage and attention. So thanking yourself and as we close today, feel free to stretch your body, to take some deeper breaths

End

I’ll leave you with a little bit of music here to transition back into your day and to support you in feeling, loving of yourself in this moment.

Thanks so much for joining me, for the loving-kindness meditation and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode brings you an experience of embracing endings, impermanence, truth, and death to unfold what’s life-giving and wanting to express itself through you in the new year. I’ll walk you through a cleanse of last year’s energy and what’s held in the body so that you can start fresh in the New Year loving and being yourself.

Candice Wu 0:22

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 0:36

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 0:56

This episode is sponsored by the Ally with Death visualization and experience. It’s a meditation guiding you through a simulation of your own death so that you can experience what you need to face, what’s been limiting you, what really needs to die and clear out and cleanse so that you can truly live.

Candice Wu 1:18

This is a guided process online. And at some point, very soon, there will be an audio version that will walk you through it. You can find this experience at CandiceWu.com/death. It’s only $6. And all of that money goes to the production of the podcast to continue to create more episodes like this for you.

Candice Wu 1:40

Again, that’s that CandiceWu.com/death.

Candice Wu 1:45

I specifically wanted to talk about death today and bring up the Ally with Death meditation because it is truly embracing the energy of death that allows us to live. When we resist death, we also resist life.

Candice Wu 2:02

Have you ever had the experience where you’re so afraid of things changing or ending that you don’t really make a choice to step forward? That if you choose to step forward and take up what’s really for you, what’s really truthful and authentic for you that other things around you have to shift. I’ve seen it where people are married, or in families or in long term relationships where you find a new part of yourself that you want to express. And you’re afraid that taking that step forward will break something or completely alter what’s already going well in your life or pieces of what’s going well.

Candice Wu 2:42

Maybe that’s true, maybe those things do need to change or will change. And maybe not, maybe they kind of recalibrate around what the new changes are. But when we do resist the shift of something when we don’t want it, we’re so attached to the safety of what already is now. And we don’t choose something life-giving, we stay where we are, we actually die a slow death, we stagnate, we decay very, very slowly. And it’s so slow, we just almost don’t even notice it until we don’t quite feel like ourselves or something feels off or we feel lost or depressed. And by staving off the discomfort that we think might come. We are actually stifling the joy that would come along with it.

Candice Wu 3:31

So we’ll talk about this more as we talk about going into this New Year, and ending this year with grace so that you can be fully present next year. And in your next steps.

Candice Wu 3:44

I think change is such an important aspect of what we think about around the New Year. Everyone thinks about: “What can I change? What can I do differently? How can I be different or what can I bring forward?” And sometimes we can get a little crazy to buy all of that, the hype around it or the sensationalizing around it. Because really every day is a new beginning and ending. And it’s a chance to moment, send yourself into the intention that you desire, who you want to be and live that in this day and end it and conclude and reflect.

Candice Wu 4:26

So sometimes that’s where I land with New Years and creating, “resolutions” or themes of the year. I don’t always want to get caught up in it. But sometimes I really do sometimes I feel like yes, I want to really end this year and start anew or start with a different intention.

Candice Wu 4:47

So if you’re looking for that today, or as you start this New Year, this episode is going to guide you through something around that.

Candice Wu 4:57

Last year, I wanted congruency for myself, I wanted to feel that my inner feelings and desires were congruently expressed outside of me, in my physical world, in my surroundings, and in my relationships. And just reflecting on that. Think that this last year was a huge step in living out the lifestyle that I wanted to live. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do healing work online, and stay connected with people all around the world.

Candice Wu 5:32

I actually had no idea that I would launch this podcast all year, I knew I was going to start something but little did I know that it would be fun, enriching, challenging, and also so rewarding. I have loved the feedback that I’ve gotten from all of you, and the challenges, as well as questions and feedback. So it’s been an incredible year, thanks for following along with me at any point in this year, if you’ve tuned in, and if this is your first time tuning in, I’m glad to have you here today.

Candice Wu 6:09

So we’re ending the year with grace. We are ending this year so that the energy of this year and the accomplishments, the challenges, the failures, all of what’s been, can be honored and laid to rest, and can also inform with wisdom what is upcoming for you, what you desire. And the interesting thing about asking yourself what you desire is you have to get really true, clear and deep with yourself.

Candice Wu 6:43

It’s been almost, I don’t know most of my lifetime, where I haven’t asked myself that question, what do I desire? And that wasn’t even a question growing up. But more and more, what I desire is actually what gives me so much joy and so much life. And it’s simple as it sounds, asking yourself daily, because you change daily. And so let’s do this round of asking so that your inner wisdom can show you truly what’s aligned with you.

Candice Wu 7:19

I started the conversation out with death and the energy of death. And I think this is so essential when we’re ending, this is a death, the death of this year. Death can bring the acknowledgment of this completion. And when completion happens, we can fully embrace and feel what’s happened. We can acknowledge what this is that’s ended. The vibrancy of truly living is brought forward by the acknowledgment of death in terms of when things die, when we honor that things actually do and they die, and they are no longer, we can honor what we really want now. We can honor the present moment, and what death brings, what it changes, what’s lost. When we honor all of that with a whole heart. The feeling that we can have in life is just much more accessible and powerful, it’s more alive. We’re actually experiencing everything that life has to bring including death.

Candice Wu 8:28

One way to really bring that force into our daily life is to remind ourselves that death can happen at any time. And it can bring to the surface what we really need to face about ourselves or our relationships, our lives, where our choices lie and what we want. And if this is not something you do already, be gentle because things can be backlogged, maybe it’s a build up of things that you may not want to look at. Or maybe it’s just a few things in pockets that you’ve hidden away and tucked away that kind of fester there, but you can stave it off if you don’t look. But what we know is as we stave off some feelings, and we don’t want to feel certain things, we also start to not feel some of the more pleasant feelings and experiences that we actually do want to feel we can’t just feel happiness.

Candice Wu 9:26

Many of you know Brene Brown’s TED talk, her first one where she talks about how, when we numb our unpleasant feelings, sadness, grief, anger, loss, discomfort, we’re actually also numbing the joy, connection, love, and excitement, things that we want to feel. And we do know that death can bring all of those feelings.

Candice Wu 9:53

So as we look upon this last year, you might feel some unpleasant things. And as things complete this year, you might recognize some truths about yourself or who you’ve been, how you are now that maybe don’t feel so good. Hopefully, there’s something there in a way, because then you can grow.

Candice Wu 10:17

And as I was saying, things can be backlogged, let’s be gentle with ourselves because there may be layer upon layer upon layer of things that you don’t want to look at, or that have happened this year that may need attention, want attention. But also things can be backlogged from our ancestry, or past life or young life as well, or the collective experiences that have affected us. I know, there’s been a lot going on this year, that can tug on our hearts and has.

Candice Wu 10:52

But also let’s take this time for looking at the wonderful things that have happened this year, both externally and in internally, the things that you’ve done with yourself and your energy, the things that you’ve committed to, the choices you’ve made, the accomplishments, the way of being that perhaps you’ve tapped into, or the healing that you’ve worked with yourself. And even the fact that you’re listening in on these podcasts and giving yourself the time to grow on the inside, to heal, to have a little time to yourself, to even bring your attention inward. All of these are things to celebrate.

Candice Wu 11:31

So looking at what are the inner accomplishments that you’ve had this year? What freedoms have you gained and what inner beliefs have you released that make you feel even more yourself, or what desires have you tapped into just having awareness is building and developing yourself.

Candice Wu 11:56

I invite you to cleanse out the energy of last year with me by integrating, honoring, and acknowledging all of what came before this moment. All of what this year brought, and all of the choices that you made, and will step into this new year and invite fresh life that wants to be known.

Candice Wu 12:15

Acknowledge truth and invite the energy of impermanence to support us through bringing forward what is life-giving.

Candice Wu 12:27

So let’s connect in together and find yourself a comfortable place. I like to lie down when I do this, so that I’m just totally relaxed. But see if you want to do that, or sit. Take a moment and close your eyes, if it feels comfortable for you, or look down.

Candice Wu 12:48

Let yourself arrive here in this moment.

Candice Wu 12:54

Invite all of yourself here.

Candice Wu 13:01

And let your breath just flow as it is. Let your body breathe without any effort.

Candice Wu 13:10

Feel that there’s nothing to do but be present here. Nothing to accomplish.

Candice Wu 13:19

Let your body be at ease. Or imagine what it would be like if you could feel ease right now.

Candice Wu 13:26

Now just imagine a white light completely surrounding you, supporting you and clearly seeing yourself and honoring yourself with love.

Candice Wu 13:49

And I invite you to take your mind to the beginning of this year, January.

Candice Wu 13:57

As you bring your attention to January.

Candice Wu 14:01

Notice any emotions, body sensations. Notice what it feels like to be in your body as you imagine starting off this last year. Notice where you were for that month whereas you began the year.

Candice Wu 14:23

Feel into any intentions you had at the start of the year if you can remember. If nothing comes to you, don’t worry, just feel what you feel because the body is holding the memories well.

Candice Wu 14:38

Be curious about whatever shows up for you as you feel into what’s here now. And it may be different from what you felt back then. So this is part of the cleansing.

Candice Wu 14:51

The body holds the emotions and information that may not have been acknowledged before. And we have the space and time here and now to do that acknowledging.

Candice Wu 15:10

Notice any accomplishments, challenges, how you spend your time in January.

Candice Wu 15:22

And with just a couple of breaths, honor that. Acknowledge whatever was there without any judgment, without any criticism.

Candice Wu 15:36

And also notice if you have judgment or criticism

Candice Wu 15:42

As you feel into your body, into this moment of feeling January,

Candice Wu 15:49

Just let a couple of breaths move through to release and shift to February.

Candice Wu 15:55

Noticing where you were in February. Where you were on your journey of life. What important things were going on. How you felt and how you feel now and just honoring any feeling sense you have inside. Anything that comes up, taking a couple of breaths to let this emotion, let this feeling sense move through the body.Whether that’s a peaceful feeling, or an uncomfortable feeling, just acknowledging what’s here and now.

Candice Wu 16:56

And shifting to March, noticing anything that the body wants to show you about this month of March.

Candice Wu 17:18

And now April, noticing anything there is to celebrate. Anything there was to grieve or feel, discomfort or loss, maybe even challenges. Be open to whatever’s here.

Candice Wu 17:40

And again, checking in with the body and feeling whatever is felt.

Candice Wu 17:47

Letting it come to the surface so that it can just naturally move.

Candice Wu 17:57

And now shifting to May, acknowledge anything that’s here. Just using your breath to support you and feeling through whatever shows up.

Candice Wu 18:26

And stepping into June, noticing any transitions you’ve had in your life at this time where you were on your journey. What that month was like? How do you feel about it now?

Candice Wu 18:57

July.

Candice Wu 19:13

August.

Candice Wu 19:24

Letting any messages from the body show itself to you. Any thoughts come up about this month.

Candice Wu 19:35

And that shift to the fall into September and October. Any significant events or moments that were powerful for you. Any challenges?

Candice Wu 20:04

And into the month of November, any inner celebrations, outer celebrations, anything that shows up for the month of November.

Candice Wu 20:26

And now December this month, sensing into how it feels to be in your body. How it felt this month for you. What was important was interesting.

Candice Wu 20:46

As you arrive now back to this present moment, just scan the whole year and feel into anything that shows up now, any big events, small events, life changes.

Candice Wu 21:10

Notice any feelings that come up now as you take a good look at the full year. And what’s transpire what life was lived here.

Candice Wu 21:36

And feel free to take a little extra time here if you’d like. Feel free to pause the podcast.

Candice Wu 21:44

If you’re ready to move on to the next step of shifting into this New Year, coming into your desires and intentions, feel free to continue on with me. We’ll have just a little music to transition.

Candice Wu 22:08

Shake off the energy of last year. Shake your head, shake and move your arms and legs. Let some clear fresh breath move through the body.

Candice Wu 22:22

And now let’s open up what your true desires for this next year are. Opening up what truth wants to be acknowledged through you what you like to express, how you want to feel.

Candice Wu 22:39

For this one, I’d invite you to stand up, move around. Look around your environment and just see what’s around you.

Candice Wu 22:50

Let yourself be truly present here. Feel your feet, wiggle your toes.

Candice Wu 22:57

Take some deep breaths, let that flow down to your hips and your belly.

Candice Wu 23:06

Feel your spine lift all the way to the top of your head. Imagine there’s a little space in between each spinal vertebra.

Candice Wu 23:18

Making a long spine brings forward your wisdom, your full energy, allowing you to be in your body.

Candice Wu 23:31

So when you feel like it, you can sit down or stay standing if that feels right for you. But keep your spine tall and long.

Candice Wu 23:42

Stay connected with your breath.

Candice Wu 23:46

And as I ask a few questions here, allow anything to come up in your mind.

Candice Wu 23:57

If you’re someone that journals, feel free to pause now and grab a journal or piece of paper if you like to have notes. If you’re someone that just likes to let this be known inside of you, let’s continue.

Candice Wu 24:18

So as you breathe this full breath feeling alive right here and now.

Candice Wu 24:27

Ask yourself, if you were to die tomorrow, what would you be compelled to do, say, or change? Right now. Right here and now.

Candice Wu 24:44

Imagine that if you were to die tomorrow, what would feel unresolved? And what would it feel like if you need to face it today?

Candice Wu 24:59

Other people on your life you would talk to, say something to?

Candice Wu 25:08

Are there ways that you would forgive yourself or beliefs of yourself that you would let go and forget about it and just live?

Candice Wu 25:22

Notice what comes up without analyzing it much just letting it come to you.

Candice Wu 25:27

If you were to die tomorrow, what would you be compelled to say or do and what truth needs to be acknowledged.

Candice Wu 25:47

But perhaps if you’ve been ignoring, that is really important to look at now.

Candice Wu 25:56

But if you turned your back onto, looked away from what wants you to look.

Candice Wu 26:15

And now looking at the new year ahead, what do you want to feel this year?

Candice Wu 26:26

Forget about what society or other people want. Or what people think you should want? What is your unique idea of what you want to feel this year?

Candice Wu 26:45

It doesn’t have to be some giant thing or accomplishment as to what feels right for you.

Candice Wu 26:55

Is it peace? Is it balance, power, congruence, joyful, playfulness, love?

Candice Wu 27:13

What energy do you want to embody this year?

Candice Wu 27:24

And if you’re not sure, just allow that question to stay with you. And if you are clear, if you have an idea, feel into that energy now, feel into what it would be like to feel ease or that piece that you want, playfulness, whatever it is.

Candice Wu 27:51

And from this energy that specifically what you want to feel, what do you desire for your year? What do you want? Let yourself be surprised and reveal what might be here right now, in this moment.

Candice Wu 28:23

Can you imagine a picture of what it is that you desire and just see it through? See what it would be like. Even if it’s outrageous, silly or different, or simple.

Candice Wu 28:41

Even if you already knew what you wanted before, see what else. See if there’s another layer. Notice how this feels right now being in your body picturing this, feeling as if it’s already happened now.

Candice Wu 29:08

Now ask yourself, how can you incorporate these desires or this energy into your life this year? What changes might you need to make?

Candice Wu 29:27

What small step can you take to move towards this?

Candice Wu 29:53

Bringing the energy of impermanence and death into the mix?

Candice Wu 29:57

Are there things you need to let go of?

Candice Wu 30:02

Are there dynamics or relationships or belief sets that need to go, need to end.

Candice Wu 30:19

Are their emotions that you need to face and feel and allow so that you can move forward?

Candice Wu 30:45

And the last question for now, how can you love yourself through this year? What ways can you care for yourself, support yourself, or bring more loving to yourself this year?

Candice Wu 31:13

Does your body and your heart crave from you that it can truly feel loved?

Candice Wu 31:38

Take a moment to feel your breath. As you notice and acknowledge anything that has come up for you, anything that’s being acknowledged, any new awareness, anything you already knew.

Candice Wu 32:01

Take this moment to thank yourself and honor. This time you gave yourself to envision your New Year, to find new ways to love yourself, to get closer to your desires, and as you feel ready, give a little movement to the body. Stretch if you need a couple of deeper breaths.

Candice Wu 32:40

If your eyes are closed, slowly open them, feel into your reality as it is right now.

Candice Wu 32:57

Opening your eyes to the world, your world.

Candice Wu 33:03

This might be a lovely time to create a ritual for yourself that helps you feel love for yourself or helps you feel embodied, or supports you in the emotion or energy you want to feel this year.

Candice Wu 33:22

This is about a state of being not necessarily all of the actions and goals that you have this year.

Candice Wu 33:31

But a ritual is one of those actions that can support you in that state of being that you want for yourself, in the loving you want for yourself, or that feeling and desire you have that you want to manifest.

Candice Wu 33:51

You might not know this about me, but I don’t do Yoga every day, despite what some people think I do. And being a Yoga teacher, Yoga spans much more than doing Asana, doing the poses. But people think I’m doing yoga like a couple of times a day or something. And what I am doing is actually Yoga all the time, it’s knowing self, self as in the creative energy that runs through all of us, matching up with that and releasing the beliefs, the impressions, the experiences that don’t align with that that aren’t just pure love, that aren’t mistruths that I’ve just carried along the way. All of that is Yoga.

Candice Wu 34:40

But what I did start doing yesterday is Yoga Asana. I did start doing some poses again. I noticed that my body was really craving it. I haven’t been riding in about a week or two. And since I’ve been in Germany, so I’m really craving the movement and the muscles being used.

Candice Wu 35:05

Somewhere in me, I’m reigniting the love I have for doing Yoga poses that I once had long ago. And now it feels totally different, a new way to connect with myself, it’s fresh, yet, still so familiar.

Candice Wu 35:22

So sometimes things weave in and out of your life. It’s not something to be hard on yourself. Or if you’re not meditating every day, or doing the thing that you set out to do, I don’t know, years ago, or that you think you should do but to find what ritual or what activity can really help you feel like yourself today. And right now and in this time period, it changes all the time.

Candice Wu 35:51

So for me doing Yoga and Dreamwork is just giving me so much life, so much connection and ease in my body. And that time with myself feels just precious right now.

Candice Wu 36:03

What brings you that feeling? What do you do with yourself that just feels so precious? So life-giving. So you. And if you don’t have something like that right now, maybe it’s time to find it. Maybe it’s time to just be open to what is that thing that can make me feel so good right now.

Candice Wu 36:25

I’ve really enjoyed doing these activities with you today. And being on your journey with you this whole year, it’s been incredibly special. Especially when I find out that people have been listening, that I just didn’t know were listening in, or when you messaged me and introduced yourself to me, and we don’t know each other. I just love the connections that we’ve gotten to make through this podcast. And I hope that you’re finding that connection with yourself in a deeper way, with every episode.

Candice Wu 36:58

And I want to end this episode and end this year with a quote by one of my teachers, my family constellations teacher Susie Tucker, she says that life will go on without you, but be enriched by your presence.

Candice Wu 37:16

So I love that because as we’ve been talking about impermanence, death, also purpose and why we’re here and what we want to be doing with our attention, our time, our energy, it’s really important not to pressure yourself that you must find that purpose that is yours in a way that makes it harder to find. It almost creates more resistance and judgment around it perhaps. That pressure isn’t exactly helpful, but opening up to what your purpose might be, opening up to what your desires are, all that can guide you breadcrumb by breadcrumb to what you’re here for on this life journey.

Candice Wu 38:01

And this quote of life will go on without you, but be enriched by your presence, that gives a level of relief and release that things will carry on, things will go on and be just fine. And yet, by having a presence, having a human experience, and being here, being alive, the world around us can be incredibly enriched by who we are.

Candice Wu 38:29

But, more so I think that our own experience, our own spirit can be enriched by our own spirit that we can just truly be here to enjoy what we want to enjoy, and what we feel we’re here for. And that’s enough.

Candice Wu 38:53

So we’ll end this podcast today, will end the year out today, with each other. And I encourage you if you especially liked the question about if you were to die tomorrow, what would you do today?

Candice Wu 39:07

If you liked that, check out the Ally with Death visualization that can bring you even into a deeper process around that and more knowing and flush out all of the things that need to let go or the things that are decaying inside of you that want to be cleared out and support you in that clarity of what is really essential for you in this life.

Candice Wu 39:35

I also invite you to check out the class, it’s free right now on Skillshare about dream work and the ability to remember and recall your dreams and start to embody them. This is the first of many of a series of dream work where we’ll be working with how to take your dreams and harvest them so that you can bring that wisdom into your embodied life.

Candice Wu 39:59

You can check that out at CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1, the number one.

Candice Wu 40:04

Well, I really enjoyed this year with you and wishing you just a lovely transition into the New Year. You are completely worthy of all the things you desire and worthy of life.

Candice Wu 40:17

See you in the New Year and next time on The Embody Podcast.