Candice Wu 0:00
This episode is about how to sort out your inner dialogue and explore the many parts of yourself so you can feel clarity, heal the wounded parts of you, know what part of yourself is talking or engaged in various moments, lead yourself with intention, and love and embrace all of yourself.

Candice Wu 0:21
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 0:35
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 0:57
There is no sponsorship message today. But I do want to share a new dream class that I created which is on Skillshare. This is one of my passions is to explore dreams I love, love dream work. And speaking about parts work today is actually really connected with dream work because, in a dream, it's as if every part of the dream is you. And we can see the different parts of the dream as parts of yourself revealing to you, the parts of yourself.

Candice Wu 1:30
And so I created a dream class on how to remember your dreams, the basics about how to prepare yourself, create intentions around it and the tools you'll need, as well as the key factor to remember your dream when you wake up.

Candice Wu 1:47
This is the first class in a series of many that will dive into the juicy parts of dream work which is embodying the energy and the gifts and wisdom that a dream brings you so that you can bring that into your life and feel even more whole. You can find this first class that's about 35 minutes long on Skillshare at Kennedy School.com/dreamclass1, the number one, right now this classes offered for free, I'd love for you to just get a taste of it. And please leave me a review and share your feedback about what you thought about the class and that helps to also share that work with other people who are looking for a class about remembering their dreams.

Candice Wu 2:32
If you sign up through the link that I'm sharing with you today, CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1, you can also get two months free of the premium subscription. I think that after two months, it's about $10 to access a wide variety of classes and offerings that are on Skillshare.

Candice Wu 2:53
So hello everyone, welcome back. It's great to have you here today. It is December 24th for many of you. It's a holiday and perhaps you're with family or friends, perhaps you're off on your own. Whatever is happening with you, I know that holidays can bring up a lot inside. Right now I'm in Germany, spending some time with my partner's family and him. And it is interesting, I haven't been home to Michigan with my family for the holiday time in maybe three or four years, it's been some time. I've spent a lot of my Christmas times with my family in Hong Kong, especially since my grandma was near the end of her life. And last year she passed away. So it's a bit of a shift for me here to be in Germany.

Candice Wu 3:42
How have you all been feeling as the holidays are here as the new year starts to come around the corner? For me, I've been having some interesting experiences on the surface emotionally. I'm just very grounded and calm, almost blank, almost boring. And then I'll go to sleep and have these marvelous dreams.

Candice Wu 4:09
And just my dream life is like wild. And it feels like a lot of the inner stuff that I've been working on for the last 12 years, maybe 10 years at least is just clearing out and making its way through and my waking life is just like calm as can be. However, having said that, this morning I did wake up with a bit of an experience, which is not uncommon in the last couple of weeks, where I'll just wake up with this vague feeling of fear.

Candice Wu 4:43
And if I take myself a little bit seriously, which what I mean is just to slow down with myself and notice what that is, and not just dismiss it not just pretend it's not happening. Well, if I do, and sometimes I do, it just continuous much longer. But if I slow down with it, then I can find out a lot more about myself and heal something that's trying to make its way to the surface.

Candice Wu 5:12
And that's really what I experienced often when we are having emotions that are coming up that don't seem to totally feel in proportion to what's going on in our current life, or what's happening as we know it consciously. It seems that something in us is making its way to the top so we can heal and release it. It is if we have even more capacity in ourselves to look at something that wants to heal, something that wants to show us another piece of ourselves.

Candice Wu 5:48
So moving right into the parts work and dialoguing with the many parts of ourselves, I want to share with you what I experienced this morning. This is like fresh off the press. Not that my life is like broadcast-worthy. But apparently, it is now on this show. But I wanted to share this as an example of how you might use parts of work if you're not already, or to just give you some more to boost what you're already doing.

Candice Wu 6:38
When I woke up this morning, I felt this feeling of a little bit of dread, a bit of fear. And I thought okay, well I can easily dismiss this. But let me just feel into it. So as I felt into it and felt the emotion of it, felt into the sensation in my body and just asked out loud, who's talking? Who is feeling this fear in me? And what I did, I just let my imagination open up, let my awareness open, my heart open. And what showed up was a teenage part of me, was the between the ages of 14 and actually 21. So a little bit older than teenage as well.

Candice Wu 7:07
And I just sat with this part of me and wondered what is scary, and it just immediately clicked and I think the many years of me doing work with parts of myself and younger parts, the inner child, all of that really helped me to be able to just feel into what's going on pretty quickly. So if you're not there don't feel bad, it just takes some time. This all didn't really quite make sense for me for many years. I think, in the beginning when I was working with an EMDR therapist, and doing parts work for a couple of years, it still felt hard to navigate. I didn't really know what I was doing or where to go next. But now it feels like second nature. It's how I take care of myself. That's how I love myself and relate to these many different parts of me, past, present, and future.

Candice Wu 8:04
So I'm talking to my teenage self and witnessing how she did life so alone, in a lot of ways. I had many friends growing up. I had good friends in high school and college. But as for the big decisions in life, I felt like I was doing it all by myself.

Candice Wu 8:23
My parents are immigrants. And so they didn't really have that much knowledge to navigate the American worlds of universities and career choices. My dad was an engineer, and he had gone to U of M, University of Michigan. He was very busy at his work and he just didn't really know how to mentor me in these spaces.

Candice Wu 8:48
So I made a lot of career and life choices on my own. And, well, looking back, there were a few mentors here and there. But I really needed someone close to me. So the feeling was that it was quite scary to do this all by myself. And as I looked at all the decisions I made, I felt quite proud of myself, I felt like I made those decisions and I did Okay. So that was very healing, feeling into that side of things, what I had done right, and what I've stepped into. Even though I didn't have what I needed. And looking back, I remember not feeling fear at all. I just did it. I just plowed through. And that's the kind of plowing through overriding, moving forward, that is part of my survival mode, where I just keep going and I don't feel the fear because it's actually not safe to feel the fear.

Candice Wu 9:51
So it makes a lot of sense to me that I'm feeling that fear right now. Because in the past, I couldn't feel it. And where in other situations prior to having done so much healing work, I might have identified with that fear and just applied it to my now situation and kind of gotten in a slump of depression, which is very reminiscent of the past.

Candice Wu 10:17
This experience of just pinpointing who's talking, and giving that part of myself what it needs. This part of me needed to feel like she wasn't alone anymore. So I let her know that I was always going to be there for her, and that she's no longer alone. And I, being an older, wiser, more resourced part of myself, the future self, the future, Candice. And that felt quite comforting to this part of me as I imagined and connected with my inner teenager. And she just needed to have that update and to be reminded of all the way that she did it right. And to feel through the fear and the aloneness. And to be reminded that that's not exactly the way it is now.

Candice Wu 11:14
So the fear passed and a lot of grief move through, it's almost all the way through. But at this point, it doesn't require much tending to, it's just making its way through my body. And it can feel things in my body kind of recalibrating. There was a big shift of sensation in my body, heat, warmth. And now there's just a more open space, I feel clearer. I feel like my breath is deeper again. And there are just some different movements happening inside, energetically.

Candice Wu 12:01
So what I'm describing to you is the process of connecting with some vague fear I had asking myself who is this tuning into the part of me that needs something. Giving myself what this part needs and building that relationship even further with my younger self. And then the physical and energetic emotional changes that happen as a part of the healing process. And coming out on that other side feeling even more grounded in myself. And knowing myself even more. It's quite a gift to be able to honor a younger part of myself, that didn't get what she needed. And to know that pain that I experienced, in a fuller and deeper way, just gives me so much more depth to myself now.

Candice Wu 12:50
So let's dive into parts work and explore this together.

Candice Wu 12:54
Parts work comes from and connects with as well as overlaps with many different traditions. It can be used in so many different ways. There's IFS which is internal family systems, which is looking at who is this internal inner family that is engaging with one another? What are the many different parts of me that create this inside family? That is my psyche.

Candice Wu 13:24
There's also voice dialogue which has resonated with me very much and it's similar to IFS, where we're looking at what are the parts of me? Which part of me is speaking or leading the way? And, how do I become aware of these parts and their dynamics so that I'm so aware that I can choose and be intentional about which part of me is leading?

Candice Wu 13:51
Other people call it parts work very basically, or soul-work and working with pieces of the soul. Shamanism works with that in particular. And whatever it is called, the method of working with it might be a little bit different, or the different clinician or healer working with it has a different spin on it. And the way that I like to work with it is to bring in the body, of course, the embodiment piece of how is it to experience this part of yourself? Whether you're stepping into that one part, or you're communicating with that one part? What's the felt sense? How are the emotions? What's happening, what wants to happen in the body? How is the body holding this experience? And how can we bring healing, what's needed? So it's really about opening the heart and the body, and allowing the healing to come from a heart space, from a place of love and basic emotional needs, which is what I find a lot of our inner wounds need.

Candice Wu 14:57
We have many different parts of ourselves that are talking and coming into play at different times. These are subpersonalities, part of our subconscious, some are more in our awareness, and other parts. And it's not that we have dissociative identity disorder, or some people in the past might have called it multiple personality. It doesn't signify that you have a disorder or a pathology, if you are noticing the many parts of you. It's actually an incredible thing that can help you find clarity about yourself, and also bring healing to the parts of you that may have gotten stuck in time, or stuck in a certain place of development, or soul parts that have gotten stuck in different lives.

Candice Wu 15:44
It's quite a resource to notice that my inner critic is really strong. And it just comes online when whenever I'm approaching a new situation. Or if I'm going to have a fun experience, my inner critic tells me that I shouldn't, and how I'm such a bad person for even wanting that. So it's helpful for us to notice what ways we're talking to ourselves. And very specifically, what part of ourselves is doing that talking. Because then, as we get to know that one part of us, that voice that comes in every time this or that happens, then we can bring some healing to that one part. Because it's certainly not all of you to be able to notice the complexities of who we are, the parts of ourselves that are coming in, the parts of ourselves that get hidden or don't get a chance to voice or speak up or stand up.

Candice Wu 16:44
The many different emotions that we may have at one time. All of that shows the complexity and the beauty of us as human and also is incredibly empowering. Because you're not just one thing at one time, you're many things. And it gives that awareness so that you can choose who you want to be, and heal the parts of you and embrace more of yourself, you can understand that your inner critic was some part of you that had to learn how to be really harsh, because someone else on the outside was harsh, or it was protecting you in a certain way. And so instead of just trying to kill that voice inside, trying to change the words that you say to yourself, which is sometimes helpful. If it's not, what do you do, and this is one solution. If it's not helpful to just change the words, then let's look at why those words are so strongly there.

Candice Wu 17:43
So when we have parts of ourselves that are extremely rigid or strongly there, and very, I don't know, perhaps causing sabotage or pain inside, tension, then that might be a clue to us that there's been some wounding that this part of us, that who we are inside wants us to look at so we can heal.

Candice Wu 18:11
So if you've seen the movie Inside Out, that's sort of a primer to the inner world. I feel that our inner world is much more complex than just defining it by different emotions. In Inside Out, there was a girl and you could see her inner parts working. And those inner parts included sadness, joy, anger, etc. And what I find is more of that these different parts of ourselves, all have a variety of emotions, some may feel more anxious than others, or we may track down and get to know a certain part of ourselves by the fact that the fear comes up.

Candice Wu 18:56
And so what is a part of us that has that fear. So it's not just defined by emotions to delineate our inner parts. The personality of each of our parts can elicit a variety of emotions. So think about a situation where you seem to get triggered in the same way or the same thing repeats itself and you get reactive, and somehow, you deal with it the same way or you reacted the same way. That part of you may be a certain aspect of your inner self. And if we explore what that part of you desires, what the agenda of this part of you is, what the wounds are, how they're feeling right now, what they need, we can really open up a whole world of a part of you, that can be reclaimed, and embraced and healed.

Candice Wu 19:57
If it's needing healing or incorporated into your daily life, if that's empowering, or maybe another part of you can support this part of you that's hurting.

Candice Wu 20:10
So for me, one of the easiest ways to work with my inner parts is to see what age this part of me is. And first of all, is it me? Or is it someone else and energy of someone else, or the voice of someone else?

Candice Wu 20:27
If it is me, and it has a distinct age or a sense of an age, just checking to see if there's some impression of how old or young this part is, can really give a lot of information.

Candice Wu 20:39
As I was talking about my teenage self, that teenage self is extremely different from my two-year-old self, who needs a lot more regulation, support, love. And a two-year-old self developmentally is going through a completely different experience. Well, I guess that's arguable, than a teenager. But if you know anything about developmental psychology or child development, we know that two-year-olds want to assert themselves in a very strong way. They want to know Yes and No, they want to be able to speak, and move, and feel free. But also they want what they want when they want it and can feel very upset if they're not getting what they want and what they need.

Candice Wu 21:28
And so I guess that isn't very different from teenagers but it comes with a different flavor. And it comes from a different developmental place because if that two-year-old gets supported in a way that's empathetic, attuned, loving, yet clear in terms of boundaries, then my teenage self might have been way better off.

Candice Wu 21:51
So all this to say that the different inner child parts of us might have a different set of experiences, given what age we are, and what happened around that age, what life was like at that time, and what we needed and didn't get or what we experienced. And not just the challenging things, but the joyful things, what was it good things in life at each time period. Other inner parts might be past life parts, our inner critic, the part of us that just gets so mean to ourselves, as I mentioned earlier, the protector, the part of us that wants to protect us from any harm, whether that's emotional, spiritual, or physical, or dominant, or submissive parts, the wise parts of us, the inner divine or inner sage, higher self.

Candice Wu 22:45
The parts of us that are like a teacher or coach, if that's a part of you that shows up in your life. If you have a career and you have different skills that you're using that career, perhaps that's a part of yourself that comes through the leader in you. Also, there's a part of us that is our mother, or is our father or some other ancestor or friend, that we experience the energy of this person through us. And we have an aspect of ourselves that is like that person or can tune into the energy of that person, yet that aspect is part of us as well.

Candice Wu 23:26
So when we say that everyone is a mirror of ourselves, this really sheds light on how that is exactly. So if we're talking to the mother in you, specifically, or your own mother, if you close your eyes and picture your mother and talk to her, there may be an experience of how she might respond to you, talk to you, feel towards you, and how you might feel towards her. And in a lot of ways we work with family constellations in that way by visualizing. But we can also tune into our ideal parents, our ideal father, our ideal ancestry in terms of the soul of them, the love in them, or some part of a person that you'd really like to experience to support you.

Candice Wu 24:21
Sometimes when I work with a part of me, it turns out to be that it feels like it's a blob of energy, or it's some creature of some sort or an animal. So it's helpful to be completely curious and open about what a certain part of you may look like, or be like, so that you can learn more about it and see how to interact with it, how it can be best incorporated and integrated into your psyche.

Candice Wu 24:54
We can't exactly get rid of parts of us. Sometimes parts are ready to leave or release and that usually is best done without force or resistance, but in really, truly seeing what that part needs to be released. Or if it's ready to go, if there's anything it needs before it goes. So that it's a true release, and not just a pushing away of an aspect of yourself. And what I find is that when we push a part of ourselves down or away, that part can feel abandoned. And if you've ever felt abandoned in your life, it could be a repeat, instead of you experiencing the abandonment from outside, it then becomes an inner abandonment of an aspect of yourself that really wants to be seen, honored, and appreciated.

Candice Wu 25:51
And a lot of times we do abandon younger parts of ourselves that we had to put aside in order to survive, where we weren't able to feel through a certain pain or fear, or something that happened in the past, and push that part down or pushed that energy down maybe. And we're used to that. So we can still leave some of our inner parts abandoned or dismissed, were be reading them or for the plethora of ways that we were treated when we were younger. So you can see how the outer world and the inner world all of that is an iteration or repetition or fractal of the same way of being that can repeat in your life. All of it stemming to a belief set that you might have, that perhaps you came in with or picked up along the way. And these parts of ourselves usually want the best for us, when we ask them. What they desire for us, it's usually in some way for us to succeed, to be protected, to be okay, to be safe. We get down to and distill to the very basic of what the purpose of how they're behaving us.

Candice Wu 27:15
So as I said, each part of ourselves has an agenda. It has perhaps a sense of age or timeliness. It has a whole set of knowledge, perhaps even a physiology. So if we tuned into your inner critic, maybe that part is very tense.

Candice Wu 27:37
If we tune into your five-year-old self, maybe that part is very free and joyful, or perhaps it's curled up in a ball and needing a lot of attention.

Candice Wu 27:48
So the body can carry the shape of that energy if we tuned specifically to one part. So what's just so fun to do is explore the inner workings of how all of these different parts of you engage, how do they talk to one another? Different parts might communicate differently with other parts, and differently with other parts. Do some parts push another part down? Or are some parts think like teammates and work together, their partners in crime, or they really work together while they push out another part of you?

Candice Wu 28:29
Is there a part of you that protects your younger self or a part of you that chimes in when your inner critic chimes in. So a lot of times our inner critic can connect up with our achiever, the part of us that really wants to achieve a lot and do well and perhaps is driven by feeling not enough. And when that part comes online, maybe the inner critic gets a little mean about things, when things are not going right or what you're trying something for the first time or performing something, etc.

Candice Wu 29:06
Maybe the achiever also connects up with the part of you that pushes and drives you forward and does it like white knuckling it. And so perhaps those three inner critics, achiever, and pusher really become this challenging force inside and all the while the other parts of you are feeling berated and hurt and plowed over.

Candice Wu 29:33
So how is everyone inside? How is the whole team doing and who's included and who's not. And when I've experienced in myself or with my clients that every part of the system is acknowledged in some way or has its place just like in family constellations, there's a sense of peace.

Candice Wu 30:00
Everyone can be supported and utilized in a way that is helpful to the whole being. And that's similar in any team. If you think about a work team, we want everyone to feel that they're valued, supported, included, and an important part of things, no matter what their role is, whether that's down to the person cleaning the bathrooms to the head person that is the leader of the team.

Candice Wu 30:31
So our inner world is similar, we want every part of us to feel engaged in the right ways, and in the right times, and loved, and having their place.

Candice Wu 30:45
So a couple of weeks ago, I had the feeling life is so hard, like, I just woke up in the morning feeling like, I just can't do life, I just don't know. And this is not an unfamiliar feeling to me. I've worked with this feeling a lot and it's connected up with many of my younger parts. The parts of me that did have a really hard time in younger life where I had to experience a lot of things that were uncomfortable, traumatic, as well as deal with all the emotions by myself. And my main way to deal with it was to numb it out because it was way too overwhelming.

Candice Wu 31:26
But I hadn't had this feeling in a while that life is so hard. And at different times, if I'm nervous about something, it can trigger that feeling that life is so hard, but it really is just a bit of nerves around something that I'm experiencing or approaching. But, with this particular feeling, again, I felt like okay, let's just look at what is this. And as I did, it connected up with not just my younger self, but also a younger part of my grandpa.

Candice Wu 32:03
My paternal grandpa was adopted when he was around five years old. And this story that as I've heard it from one person in my family was that he was given away for money. And this is of course not talked about in my family. And so because it was probably such a painful and maybe shameful experience. Well later, I found out that my great grandmother had passed away, his mother. And that my great grandfather had probably been overwhelmed. It didn't know what to do. And perhaps didn't have enough money. I don't know what happened to my grandpa's siblings, but my grandpa was given to someone else, in exchange for money. And then eventually my great grandmother that I knew in my life, that was the adopted Great Grandma was the one that took him in.

Candice Wu 32:54
So as I opened up, the feeling of life is so hard and felt into it. I also asked myself, what's the context for this? Is this me? Is this my younger self? And partially felt like yes, and partially felt like, it's not all mine. And that's exactly right, because what came up was the energy of my grandpa, the feelings that he couldn't hold, that life is so hard, terrifying, dreadful perhaps, scary and upsetting.

Candice Wu 33:27
All of those feelings, as well as of grief and loss and pain. I don't think he could very much hold for himself, given all that happened, and how I'm holding it now. And as I imagined my grandpa, in that experience, and just felt into some compassion for what he may have experienced, it was releasing in me. And not only that my younger self didn't have to hold the pain of my grandpa, and my great grandparents, but also the repeated feelings in me that life is so hard, the same feelings that I went through when I was younger.

Candice Wu 34:09
So I want to talk briefly about how we can use parts work in relationships. It's extremely helpful, when you're triggered in an intimate relationship or a family relationship, when there's an upset between you or a conflict, it's really helpful for me, at least to be able to notice what part of me got triggered, and perhaps, open up what part of the other person got triggered. And if they can speak the same language, then even better, because it's like, oh, yeah, my six-year-old self is talking to your 15-year-old self. Hmm, don't think we're going to solve any problems here this way and no wonder we're both reactive in our specific ways. Or maybe someone's younger self, child self is talking to my child self, who turned into a parent early on, and knows how to be a mother, which is an interesting paradox being both child and mother.

Candice Wu 35:10
But that's the part that gets activated in me sometimes when I'm in relationship. If someone else is really needing someone and wanting someone to guide their way. Sometimes that part of me the younger part that wants to please them so that I can get love turns into a motherly figure, to take care of the other person, so that I can get what I need, and the other person get what they need.

Candice Wu 35:38
And so I don't really like to lead from these parts. I don't really like to be in an intimate relationship with those parts of guiding the way and interacting the most. It's not really fun to be someone's mother, when you're not. So you might take a little look at your own relationships, and where there's some conflict or where there's any place where you get activated or upset or anxious.

Candice Wu 36:09
And check out what part of you is having that response. And then, if you slow it down, even more, what part of you, or what parts of you come online afterward, lot of times a younger part of us gets activated, especially in relationship, or especially in experiences where there's authority in relationship, like a boss or supervisor. Or when we're in groups. And if our child part gets activated, then perhaps another part of us comes online to protect that part from having to be felt. So if the child part gets activated with some hurt, maybe it happens so quickly that the critic in us comes and says, nope, you can't feel that. We don't have feelings like that. You're not allowed to feel that. And maybe not quite so literally, but swoops in and does something to distract or is mean to you so that you can move forward or beats you up a little and says, you just have to plow through or whatever it is. And then maybe another part says, oh, well, maybe we don't have to be so hard on ourselves. And all these different voices start to tangle up.

Candice Wu 37:32
One easy way to spot different parts of you getting conflicted or having a conversation, is when you are making a decision that you're not so sure about, that you have some ambivalence about. And there are two sides to the story or many things to consider. And yet, one part of you really wants this and another part of you says no, I don't think so because of X, Y, and Z. And then you kind of just go back and forth in your head and it all gets mixed up and you can't really make a decision because both the pros and the cons and the pros from either side of the story seem worthy. And where do you go from here?

Candice Wu 38:16
And sometimes it's just so overwhelming that perhaps our nervous system just shuts down a bit and we get paralyzed. We don't know how to make that choice. And so maybe we don't make a choice. Or we just get stuck in that internal chatter and argument back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. Considering what we should do. Should we do this? Should we not? We shouldn't? Yes, we should. Yes, we should know. And it just goes back and forth.

Candice Wu 38:44
We found that if you sort out those voices, well, who's the one saying that it's a good idea. And why? And we interview them a bit, get to know their full story, what that parts thoughts are, and all the reasons why they think it's a good or bad idea and hear this side out. In fact, you can even sit in two chairs or three chairs, however many parts you're sensing, and sit in one chair and talk from that part, then move to another and have a rebuttal, etc, and just duke it out. But here each part out.

Candice Wu 39:24
That's called the empty chair technique actually. And that's something that's often done in Gestalt therapy, or other psychodynamic therapies even. And, that's where parts work overlaps, we can see that many traditions are using this and a lot of different ways.

Candice Wu 39:42
Really fun thing to do if you do, set out two chairs for two different parts of you that are arguing back and forth, is that when you sit in one side, and let that side habit say, don't just talk, but allow it to come from within, allow it to come from the feeling of it, and feel the depth of what's going on in your body. Notice how the body is held. Notice if there's an emotion, or a way the body feels, or has sensation in some place. Or maybe there's tension in one area or a couple, just see what it is to be like in the body from this one part, which is how I'd like to use voice dialogue or dialoguing with a part.

Candice Wu 40:29
I often talk to that part of my clients. So I asked, can I speak to the inner protector in you? And I asked them to move to a different place in the room and however that part wants to show up, is quite interesting. Maybe they're on the ground lying down and eyes closed, which for a protector that can be a challenging way to protect someone. And maybe that person feels very vulnerable and unprotected in themselves, unsafe.

Candice Wu 41:02
I've seen a protector show up standing and hovering over another part with fists at their hips and elbows sticking out like with a strong pose. And looking down on the other part with some disgust or disdain.

Candice Wu 41:23
So we can see from our physiology, when a part shows up or when we step into a part, what the dynamic is going on inside. And it really illuminates this inner dynamic, so that you can have more awareness. And what I find is, the more awareness we have about the different parts of us and how they're interacting, the more we just acknowledge it, see it, feel it, honor it, honor where it came from, or how this pattern started and be gentle with it.

Candice Wu 42:03
The more that we have distance from it, we're able to have flexibility then because we see more. And we're not so limited by that part because we have more awareness, it's released some of its hold, its power, and grip on us. And we have new flexibility to shift into a different part of us because we see more, we see how we've been. And when that happens when that awareness happens, it just gradually loses its rigidity. And we de-identify even more or some healing happens.

Candice Wu 42:45
So the most powerful thing that's happened with some of this work is that people feel wow, I understand myself. And now I can choose with more intention, what part of myself I want to be. And I know how to take care of these other parts of me. And I don't have to depend on my parents the way I used to, I can give love to my inner child or I can heal the parts of me that have been wounded from a past relationship, even though that relationship is long and dead.

Candice Wu 43:23
So it's a beautiful thing. I love it, it's so much fun, and for especially people who want to analyze everything and want to talk everything through, this moving into a different place and speaking from that voice, or sitting and picturing and visualizing, what part is talking and connecting with that part as if it's a separate part. That has been incredibly helpful to build not only awareness, but also to help shift and heal the nervous system so that there's a new baseline of relaxation and safety inside.

Candice Wu 44:03
We can find parts of ourselves that have been hidden away, abandoned, shut down, or even killed. And so those parts, when they come back alive, can make us feel even fuller. We can find parts of ourselves that are incredibly joyful and are essential to who we are. And when those parts are shut up or abandoned, we don't feel like ourselves.

Candice Wu 44:33
We feel quite stifled or lost. We use that word a lot, he feels lost. And perhaps that's a part of you that's lost, who's lost? What part of you is lost?

Candice Wu 44:47
And as I spoke about my story with my great grandparents and my grandpa, holding the energy of my grandpa, a lot of times, it can be a part of ourselves that has felt lost or whatever feeling we're feeling. But it also can link up with someone in our ancestry whose story was never told, whose story was lost, or whose life was lost.

Candice Wu 45:13
And it can even connect up with past life. If that's a part of your understanding or resonates with you, then it might be helpful to feel into, is this part of a past life? Or is it part of this life? What part of me is this?

Candice Wu 45:29
So a fun activity that you can do with yourself is to just take any scenario that you notice you have been activated or reactive. And to start to slow it down, picture the whole conversation again, or the interaction and just see what part of me is turned on there, what part of me was reacting. And you can even play it all out again and notice how it feels in your body and start to ask with gentleness and with the sort of listening heart space rather than an analyzing space. We don't want to keep it all in the head and the mind. We want to bring it down to an experiential place where it involves the whole body is that's where the transformation happens. That's where the depth of emotion can be felt and released. And that's where things can really shift inside.

Candice Wu 46:32
So asking yourself out of a scenario, who was that or what parts were that, and you can name them anything you want to. I use certain names during this podcast, and IFS and voice dialogue. There are different titles for more common parts like our inner critic or protector, the inner child, our wounded child, the magical child, our dominant part.

Candice Wu 47:04
You might use archetypes like “warrior”. You might have your own name for parts. I love that because it gives you ownership of exactly what that part wants to be called, if it wants to be called anything. And recognizing that inner part of you is very unique to you. It is like your own fingerprint. So nobody else can tell you exactly what that part is. But sometimes it is quite helpful to hear someone else say, well, that part sounds like it's your inner critic.

Candice Wu 47:40
And when we're so used to just all these different voices in our mind, these thoughts happening, it can feel really cluttered. And if someone else that gets to know you or comes in with this awareness of parts, they can say, oh, that part sounds like a different part. It doesn't have the same thing flavor or tone as that anxious part of you that was just speaking. This part's crying, what part is that? That sounds different from the part that has a stern voice.

Candice Wu 48:13
And then you can take that in and go oh, right, that feels like a totally different part. And another fun thing you can do with this is you can map out your inner self.

Candice Wu 48:25
I love taking post-it notes and just taking one part of yourself to a post-it note. So writing down like my five-year-old self, because a lot happened when I was five. And that part seems to be really sucking time or wants a lot of support, or shows up a lot. And also carries my joys. Okay, but one post-it note is my five-year-old self, and then another as the artist in me, and just certain name parts of yourself that seem to come into your life.

Candice Wu 49:01
And then name parts of yourself that you want to lead more often, energies that you'd like to hold and be in your life, like your higher self or your inner wisdom, your inner being, the essence of you, a dancer in you, the lover, the romantic. What parts of you do you want to show up more often, and write those down in the post-it too.

Candice Wu 49:35
And as you lay them out on like a giant piece of paper or a wall, I love using the wall, or even a desk. Then you can start to just intuitively place them how they relate to each other. As they said maybe the inner critic and the achiever part of you are comrades and they just work together all the time. They're inseparable. And they're super far away from the younger self, or maybe the younger so hides behind them.

Candice Wu 50:05
And so where are all these parts, if you could give them a visual location, map them out, dimensionally even like if there are layers, or if they're just in different parts of this space. Give them a visual so that you can start to see the inner workings of yourself and to go further than that.

Candice Wu 50:26
If you start to ask yourself, oh, what would the coach say to my younger self? Or, what if my younger self stood over here instead, next to that wise, inner sage. And how would that feel?

Candice Wu 50:43
Though getting some flexibility in the system so that you can use all the resources you have, so that you can use the many parts of you to support other parts of you that need support. This is how we look at or how we understand the idea that we have everything within us that we need to heal. That we have all the power within us. It's just about accessing all these parts of us at the right time.

Candice Wu 51:11
You might ask yourself, what part of me do I want to show up in my relationship with my partner or with my boss, or with my mother. You might even map out the parts of you that are your grandmother, like the grandmother in me. And maybe that relates to your specific grandmother because your grandmother reminds you of a pure love or generosity or something.

Candice Wu 51:42
And that can be an aspect of yourself that you start to cultivate. So we have that inner reflection of the outer people in our life that can give us a feeling sense and energy of a part of ourselves. You can also design new parts, if you didn't have a certain type of parent that you really needed when you were younger, maybe you're a sensitive person and you needed someone who was completely attuned and present to that. And so you can design an ideal parent, and create this inner parent that can love your younger self. Or maybe that is your adult self already.

Candice Wu 52:27
So we can play with this in so many ways. And as I said, it's really helpful to do this with somebody that can support you in understanding the different parts of you can ask curious questions and give you new curiosity and new awareness. And also bring in gentleness, tenderness, and love to the mix so that you can begin to love all the parts of you.

Candice Wu 52:54
Since there's so much you can do with this, in the following days, I'm going to share to really experiential, one with dialoguing with a part of yourself by sensing into them visualizing that part, talking with that part, and learning more about that part, that question of who's talking and what is their agenda, what do they need. So perhaps we can bring healing to this part, or tap into some wisdom that's already waiting for you to unleash and unlock. And that would be a dialoguing from who you are now sensing into imagining another part of you.

Candice Wu 53:35
And then the second one is going to be fun, and really interesting, because I'm going to dialogue with a part of you. So I'll ask you in this experience to step into a different part of you, and I'll talk to you as if we're right here together. But of course, we're not. And so you'll just be responding from your side of things when you listen. And I'll just invite you to experience this part. Talk to me from this part, and then step back into your whole self.

Candice Wu 54:18
So if you've done some family constellations work with me or through the podcast, this might already sound quite familiar. And it is, it's not really all that different. Because we have access to the energy and the knowledge of different parts of ourselves as well as different parts of others. It is one in the same. It is our intuitive sense and what comes through us and allowing what's already there to be seen, felt, and understood.

Candice Wu 54:49
And I also hope to be doing a couple more of these experiences around parts. So look out for those in the months to come. Starting out with these two.

Candice Wu 55:01
So we're at the end here, it's cold and snowy here where I am in Germany, and I'm just ready to cuddle up into a blanket and have some tea, do a little bit of arrest and hibernate. That's kind of what I've been wanting to do as they said a lot of crazy dreams are happening and so much as coming to the surface to heal. Even though I did say in the beginning of the podcast that not much is happening on the surface. Well, I think it was just turning and now it's really coming through to the surface.

Candice Wu 55:39
Because this morning, I woke up to finish the second half of this podcast. And a lot of grief was moving through from what I started to tell you about yesterday at the beginning of this podcast.

Candice Wu 55:51
So as we conclude this podcast, let's just take a moment together and feel your being feel your presence here. Along with me, just take a couple of breaths. Notice where you are. You don't often take the time to do that, to just notice our surroundings and to take pleasure in what we're seeing around us.

Candice Wu 56:20
We're to close your eyes and feel inward. And just notice your own body here and notice your breath. That you are alive right now, the most simple thing. And just thank yourself for listening in today and developing yourself, having fun with yourself, healing, loving yourself.

Candice Wu 56:56
And as we go today, just want to thank you for being here. It's really lovely to hear from you when you email me and share with me what's going on for you. I love hearing from people I already know and connect with or who are my clients. And also I love hearing from new people. It's just delightful to hear or to receive a message from someone I don't even know who says I've been listening to your podcast and found these things helpful or wasn't so sure about what you said there, what do you mean. Feel free to do that, feel free to share or ask questions and to give me any ideas about what you want to hear about coming up.

Candice Wu 57:41
We have just a short time until the new year next week. I'll be talking about some of my end of the year thoughts and how I conclude the year out, cycle of life and death, aligning with death. I love that. So happy holidays if you're celebrating and stay warm out there if it's cold where you are.

Candice Wu 58:08
And if you're listening in and you want to stay connected with me to listen to more podcasts, healing, experiential, or other offerings that I have, check out my website at CandiceWu.com/Embody where you can sign up for the newsletter that will inform you of all these things. You can also connect in on Facebook. Search Embody Community and you'll find us. That's where I post 5 to 10-minute videos around self-love, tips, and meditations.

Candice Wu 58:41
And as I mentioned the dream course earlier, check that out on Skillshare. You can find it at CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1, the number one.

Candice Wu 58:53
Thanks again and see you all next week on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This episode is a healing experiential around dialoguing with a part of yourself. You can find the full podcast around Parts work at CandiceWu.com/parts.

So this week, we’ve been talking about tuning into the many parts of you for empowerment, healing, tapping into your wisdom, and to help you make decisions and find clarity in life.

If you have had inner chatter, where you just can’t quite make a decision, and you go back and forth, or you have certain triggers that keep on happening, and they repeat itself, it might be helpful to check out who’s talking, what part of me is engaged here, or reacting.

This healing experiential will help you do that.

So I’m not going to talk too much here, you can listen to the full podcast around this at CandiceWu.com/parts. It’s around Parts work, voice dialogue, connecting with the parts of you.

So here, we’re just going to jump in pretty quickly and dialogue with one part of yourself.

Let’s Jump In!

The most ideal way to do this is to do it in a private and safe space. If you like to do things on the train or the subway as you go, in transit, that’s fine, too, it might just be a little distracting, unless you’re really good at tuning everything else out.

So wherever you are, find a comfortable place, feel free to get some water, get a blanket or cozy pillow and you can sit or lie down whatever is most comfortable and safe for you.

I invite you to close your eyes, if that feels comfortable for you or look down.

Just take a moment to release your attention from the outside world. Let go of any attention on work, stressors, life, relationships, anything that’s weighing on you. And also just release your attention on the future, any worries, your laundry list of to do’s.

Letting go and turning all of that attention towards yourself, with love, with gentleness, with compassion. And if you don’t know those emotions or energies, if they’re not easy, just imagine what it would feel like to be able to feel love towards yourself, gentleness, compassion.

Invite a Part Of You Forward

Now we’re going to invite one part of yourself to come forward so that you can connect with that part and have a conversation just like you would talk with a friend.

To see inside of your heart, what part of you you’d like to talk to, connect with?

You might sense into what part of you you’d like to cultivate, grow into or lead the way. For example, your inner wisdom, your higher self, your adult self, the artist in you, the enthusiast, the wise inner sage, whatever part of you that.

This part of you may or may not have a name, but just sensing into the part of you that you want to step into, the empowered part.

The other thing you can do is connect with a part of you that you’d like to understand more, maybe that’s a part of you that reacts in conversation with your mother or in a relationship that you have.

Maybe it’s a part of you that keeps on chiming in when you have to make certain decisions. Sometimes you don’t know who’s talking exactly, but you have this sense of, “Oh, the part of me that gets really angry when ”x“ happens.” Or, the part of me that tells me I shouldn’t follow my gut. The part of me that starts crying when someone gives me a certain look.

So you don’t have to pinpoint the name of the part of you but just the part of you that has any little clue that leads to this part.

So the clues might be a sensation that you feel, like, maybe your fists tighten up. It might be an emotion that happens, or words that you say, words in your mind, thoughts. So take a moment to connect up with any words, sensations, an energy or a feeling sense of a part of you that you’d like to understand or connect with here.

If you need more time, feel free to stop the podcast here and take some moments to look at what part of you you’re curious about, what parts of you become activated, or what parts of you do you feel you want to empower. And if you’re ready, let’s continue on.

Who Is this Part? Getting To Know This Part

And as you close your eyes or look down, sort of feel into that clue towards the part of you that you’d like to dialogue with here and call forth this part of you that has this feeling or words with a part of you that you can name, that you’d like to talk with.

If you’re not sure about who this part is, you might ask, “Who’s talking? What are you or who are you?”

And just connect with this part, see this part and acknowledge just exactly how this part shows up.

Notice if it looks like a part of you or someone else, a creature, color, shape, figure, be open to however this part of you shows up and is.

And as you look upon this part of you, ask it, “What’s your story? What would you like me to know right now?”

And listen without any filter, without any judgment, from a space of the heart, not where you’re analyzing or thinking about the response but just asking and listening. “What is your story or what would you like me to know right now?”

Just see what comes into you. What feeling? Image? Thoughts?

Usually, these are just a flash of a thought or a sense of something and it can happen pretty quickly versus the analyzing mind trying to think it through and walk it step by step.

This doesn’t really have that kind of logic, because it’s wisdom that’s trying to surface to you.

You might ask this part, “What do you desire for me? What is your wish for me?”

If this was a reactive part, or hurt part, a part of you that’s feeling something, ask them about it. “What makes you feel this way or what’s happening right now?”

And as you listen, acknowledge anything this part is sharing with you in whatever way it’s showing you and let it be free to express in all the different ways that can. You might ask this part, “When do you show up?” And listen to anything it says. “And how did you learn this way of being that you are? Where did you learn or who did you learn from, if anyone?”

You might ask, “Is there anything you need from me right now?” And be open to anything it shares with you and if it tells you something that needs from outside of you, see if you can imagine that for this part of you or go deeper, and see if there’s something underlying that emotionally that this part of you wants to have.

“And is there anything you need to feel free or safe? And what can support you in thriving?”

Feel free to ask, “Do you have any other messages for me?”

And now also, feel free to ask anything else that you would like to know, would like support with, would like to understand, give this part of you the space to tell you exactly in their own way.

And now thank this part for showing up and surround this part with love, and release your attention on this part of you or this part and just come back to your sense of yourself, your being here and now, your body, feel your breath, just as it is right now.

Coming Back to All Of You

Start to give a little movement to your body or deepen your breath. Stretch if you’d like to and when you open the eyes or gaze upward, just do so gradually letting yourself arrive back in the space of here and now.

And as you feel yourself present here, feel that you are yourself and reflect back on the experience of this. What part were you talking with? What did you learn?

Just notice how you feel at the moment as you gaze upon this part of you that you’re talking with, where do you embody this part of yourself? How do you feel now?

And you might take some more time, or repeat the exercise to connect on another day or to give yourself more time with this part of you, see what wisdom you discover as this evolves.

And now that you’ve connected with this part of you, it’s my guess that this may continue to grow or open up for you.

If this was challenging for you or hard to do, hard to see or visualize a part of you, that’s okay.

If you practice it again, if you have that curiosity, it might become easier. Or, I recommend practicing the second experiential where I invite you to stand in a part of yourself and that can really be a game-changer because you can really feel in your body differently and hone in on just this part of you, isolate it so that you can really get to know it.

Continue to Observe

So just observe as the day goes on, and the week goes on, just what happens with this part of you, if you’re able to connect with it differently, or feel differently in the scenarios that you’re in, that this part of you can be brought forward or received back a little bit.

If it was a younger part, you may not want your younger part to lead when you’re in your career and job.

You may want some more empowered part of you or resource part of you to step in, so be gentle with yourself and curious and compassionate and just allow this to be more of the discovery for you, more play and understanding of yourself.

Perhaps it’s painful and brings up some emotions, just allow those to continue moving and if you ever need support, feel free to reach out to me. I’d be happy to work with you or give you some resources on what can support you the most.

Thanks so much for tuning in today and check out the second experiential if this was interesting for you or if you’d like a different spin on things. Take care and I’ll leave you with a little music to end.

Introduction to Voice Dialogue

We are going to have some fun today. This episode is a healing experiential, where I walk you through to dialogue with a part of yourself, where I speak with as part of you, and you can respond from your end wherever you are in the world.

So today’s healing experiential is voice dialogue. It’s going to be an exercise where I invite you to step into one single part of yourself.

I will ask questions through this guided experience and support you in discovering, understanding, and seeing a part of yourself and the dimension of this one part of you.

It’s different from the healing experiential, that we did the other day where you dialogue yourself with a part of yourself.

This is where I dialogue with a part of you. You can find the full podcast on Parts work at CandiceWu.com/parts. And also the first healing experiential is there too.

I will Dialogue with a Part of You

So we’re going to jump in and I recommend doing this in a space that’s private so you can just fully let go and tune into this.

Find a space where you’re comfortable and just let yourself be natural.

Let yourself close your eyes if you like or look down and just shake out your body, move your body, shake your arms, shake your legs, breathe deeply, release out your mouth. Just shake off the day so far.

Release anything that’s weighing on you at the moment.

And as you settle into your body, feel your belly, be aware of your hips, notice your legs, your knees, and your feet.

Bring your hands to your heart or palms together just to connect with yourself. Notice how you’re feeling at the moment, how your body is.

And as you go deeper with yourself, connect in with a part of yourself that you’d like to explore, understand, step into.

Who Would You Like To Explore?

Just like the first experiential in this series, it can be a part of you that you’d like to cultivate and find empowerment in, bring into your life, could be an ideal parent, it could be your best friend, because there are parts of your best friend you really admire.

It could be the part of you that’s the warrior or the goddess in you, could be the leader in you, the empowered part of yourself, higher self, captain, whatever it is, it doesn’t have to have a name.

Or, it could be a part of yourself that you struggle with and you’d like to understand or find healing with.

Maybe that’s a younger self. Maybe that’s your teenage self, or the part of you that gets angry with your partner, or the part of you that feel stubborn, anxious.

The part of you that has negative thoughts about yourself or criticism, or that reacts when you’re in the car and flip someone off.

Whatever part that is, just tune into the part of you you’d like to explore.

See if you’re willing to explore this part, and that part is also willing to come forward. And you might know if that’s a yes, because you feel called to it. It might feel uncomfortable, or you might get nervous but you feel like you want to. If it’s a no, it might feel like your body shutting down, you’re just not wanting this. Or, there’s a lot of restriction in you, a tightness that says, “I don’t I don’t think this is the right thing for me right now.”

Just trust yourself. You need to pause here and check-in with yourself, go ahead.

Overwhelmed?

Anytime if you feel overwhelmed, or you need to take a break, be sure to step back into your full self and say your name to yourself even, feel your body and look at your surroundings and take a break.

You can feel free to pause the podcast, you can jump back in later if you want or try again later. Or, maybe it’s not the right time for you.

Follow your own boundaries and what your body needs through this experience.

Step Into This Part

So if you’re ready to tune into this part of you and step into it, I invite you now to open your eyes if they’re closed and move to a different space in the room or wherever you’re at, and embody.

Become as if you could just become this one part of you, become this part of you. Let this part of you show up however it wants to show up, perhaps it’s lying down, standing up in a certain way, maybe it’s seated in a certain position, moving in the corner, under a blanket, however it wants to show up.

Take a moment to feel into your body here and what it’s like to be in just this part of you and even look upon your whole self from this place where you are now.

Picture your whole self where you were standing or seated before and notice what it’s like to look at your whole self from here as this one part of you.

Notice if you feel any warmth or coldness towards yourself, if there’s a connection or not. Notice how your body is.

And I’m going to talk to you as if you’re just this one part of your whole self and you can feel free to respond in your head or out loud especially if in the privacy of your own space. You can just say the words out loud and let them be heard by yourself.

You might even talk about your whole self in the third person, so that you can really feel the separation, the distinction of you, yourself, in this place. This one part of you, separate from your whole self, from the aware ego in you, the aware self.

Hello to This Part Of You

So, I will begin to dialogue with you now.

How are you doing from this place?

How do you feel?

Are there any messages you have for your whole self right now? Anything you want your whole self to know?

Why do you think your whole self wanted to connect with you today?

What gifts do you bring to yourself and your whole self?

What is it that you feed her?

What are the times that you show up the most in your whole self’s life?

What is your purpose in your whole self’s life? What are you here for?

Is there anything you need or any way that your whole self can support you?

And what do you wish for yourself? What do you truly want for your whole self?

And is there anything else you want to tell me or tell your whole self?

Closing and Gratitude

Thank you for showing up and thank you for sharing. And if there’s anything you want to tell your whole self, want you to do that, and picture yourself telling your whole self, and them hearing you.

Or if there’s anything you want, another part of you, to tell you or support you in, feel free to picture that now.

Before we transition, take another moment to feel into your body and notice your emotions. Notice what’s happening inside, where you’re drawn to be or how you’re drawn to move.

If there are any words, or any story that’s coming from your body, your emotions, your heart, feel free to share that.

Take an inner snapshot of what you feel, what it’s like to be in your body right here. Take a couple of deep breaths. Take it off if you want to and allow yourself to come back to the place where you started as your whole self.

Coming Back to Your Whole Self

And now I’m talking to you, your whole self, not just the one part of you that we talked with earlier. And as you arrive back at your whole self, state your name to yourself, say, “I am..” and say your name.

Take a moment and just touch every part of your body, from head to toe whether that’s with a light touch or firm touch, just allow your body, your nervous system to land back here, simply be felt.

Notice your surroundings. Notice your feet and look towards the part of you that we spoke with and that you spoke from. Imagine that part of you they are now. Imagine the position that your body was in there.

Notice all of what this part of you shared, all its desires, fears, needs, purpose. How they feel towards you and how you feel towards them.

And notice what it’s like to look upon this part of you now. Notice what feels different in your body and what may feel the same.

Is there any different space in your chest or different sensation in your body, an emotion you’re feeling now, an awareness or clarity you have? Are there things you’re still curious about or wondering? Are there things unresolved? New things discovered.

If there’s anything left hanging open, you can feel free to go back to this experience and repeat it or go to the first healing experiential on dialoguing with this part of you, or you can just simply look upon this part of you, picture them and ask them right now.

If there’s something that you want to know more about anything that’s left hanging, if you need to say it.

If this part of you wanted you to say something to them, maybe encourage them or share love, your love for them or forgive them, do that now and just see what it’s like to be on the other side.

Ending

And when you’re ready, just let go of it all, feel your breath again, and just simply feel the aliveness of your body, the presence of yourself here in this space that you’re at, look around you and get in touch with the things that look pleasurable around you.

Thank yourself for being here and thank the part of you that we spoke with, for showing up.

You just dialogued from a part of yourself, a part of your inner self that you either wanted to learn more about or empower yourself with or find healing in and just recognize this as very deep work.

Be gentle and curious, compassionate about whatever showing up now, and what continues to unfold for you.

If you’re wanting any support, I would encourage you to reach out to me. I’d be happy to give you referrals or to work with you personally. And I recommend that, if this is interesting to you at all to work with someone that understands parts, because it can just open up so much internally and in your life, having someone else see from the outside what’s going on and ask just the right questions or shine a light in a certain space in you can be such a sacred and empowering experience as well as healing.

Thanks for tuning in today and being willing to experience this. Again, you can listen to the full podcast at CandiceWu.com/parts.

And that’s where you’ll also find the first healing experiential which I recommend for you too. And I look forward to hearing from you if you have any reactions, thoughts, curiosities, etc.

And I’ll leave you with just a little music today to soothe your spirit and give you a chance to just unwind after doing such a deep exercise. Wishing that you feel love for yourself as you go through the day and always.

Candice Wu 0:00

This is an experiential to transcend time in order to support yourself in the present day with your past and future self-traveling on a prism, journeying through time to find resources as well as to see what kind of support your future self can bring you into the present day. I also talk about some upcoming topics for the year that I’m interested in sharing with you that are going to be on the podcast throughout this coming these coming months as well as a quick update about how I’m doing.

Candice Wu 0:37

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 1:12

Before we jump into the episode, I want to mention that The Ally with Death Audio Experiential that’s been on sale since December of last year is on sale through today, midnight, central time in the USA. You can buy it from anywhere in the world, but it just ends at midnight central time.

Candice Wu 1:33

This experiential is to support you in propelling yourself into the new year with integration and clarity, with a sense of curiosity and playfulness, and coming back to alignment with yourself, letting anything that’s built up through last year or the years of your life, anything that’s been triggering or ways that you’ve talked to yourself, situations that you’re just over, belief sets that have been weighing you down or feeling painful, to let these truly resolve and heal through a process of clearing the space and letting your body digest and compost what wants to transmute to give you fertile ground for this next segment of your life.

Candice Wu 2:23

It’s great for the new year and you can use it anytime once you order it. The mp3 is yours, it’s a download it’s yours forever and you can use it anytime that you’d like. I love doing it at certain times of seasonal changes or moon cycles or once a year at least so that I can just clear out what is ready to go or end, ready to shift and bring a ritual that sets me forward into vitality. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/death, and once again the sale ends today, January 6th, 2020. If you’ve missed the sale, please feel free to just go for it anyway, it’s a great offer because you do get to keep this forever.

Candice Wu 3:10

And so you know, all the proceeds go back into the podcast, all the experiential tools that are free, all the meditations, the guests, all of that is fueled by The Ally with Death Experiential as well as the other offers that I have, and just your generous support for those of you who have just decided to give some money back. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Candice Wu 3:36

Happy New Year. It’s 2020, welcome back, it’s great to have you here with me today. Now that it is the new year, it would be a great time to use this experiential of transcending time to support yourself right now, to bring more loving to yourself, to just bring this agreement with yourself that gives you your own full support. Just a few updates with me of December was a lot of anger and grief moving through my body, and over the last six months, a couple of astrologers had told me that a lot of planetary transits would be happening near and with Venus. I’m not an expert myself, but it made sense when they shared it with me, and what that has brought is a lot of rage, a lot of anger through my body, a lot of grief. It really reminded me of some of the forest fires that were happening in different parts of the world that was like a spiritual fire clearing out stuff in my body and getting every last bit and while there’s pain with that, I also felt the clearing happen around solstice of December coming into this new year.

Candice Wu 5:02

Where are you? Are you in tune with your astrology? Is that helpful for you? And what have you been moving through? More and more as I’ve built a stronger relationship with astrology and connection with it, I’ve noticed how, just how true it is, but more so, how it can really help me just to stay equanimous, to stay neutral and witness through what I’m going through, just like it’s all part of it. So, basically just gives me a lot more non-resistance to what I’m feeling and just knowing that it’s all moving me in the direction of myself. So, I wish that for you. I hope that whatever you’re going through, that as you’re moving through it, maybe if you can just say to yourself, “Okay, this is part of it. This is part of it.” Then what happens? How can you be with yourself and be in that alignment with what is right now, what’s happening right now? But with this greater awareness that you will move through it or that you can reach out for support to get through it.

Candice Wu 6:19

I recently, in December also did a constellation workshop with a group of healers and therapists, and we just dropped so deeply, instantly into what they were working with, and it was so great. I felt just really connected with the work, and facilitating constellations is such a powerful process for me. I feel incredibly present and seeing aware open eyes, and it did combine that with some self-forgiveness, with belief sets that were coming up for people through the constellation, through the ancestry, through how they may have perceived something or someone in the ancestry had received something, and where sometimes that can either get distorted or misplaced, where we’re holding something that someone in our lineage really experienced, and we can give it back to its original context.

Candice Wu 7:24

So, that was wonderful, and as I’ve come into this new year, I feel that pleasure is a huge focus of my experience ever since I traveled to Thailand, gosh, to over two years ago now, when I first set out, and actually the podcast was born a couple of months later. So, I first set out in 2017 November. The podcast was born in February 2018, and here we’re entering into 2020. Ever since I left for Thailand and landed there, I felt that pleasure and enjoyment, simplicity, the feeling of purposelessness, just in getting me off the hook for the things that I felt so pressured inside about. That has been where I attune myself and align myself to.

Candice Wu 8:26

So, the alignment of pleasure, aligning myself to pleasure as the guidepost for where I’m headed, what I’m doing, what I want to invest my energy in, in noticing experiences, even that feel unpleasurable, noticing where there is some pleasure or neutrality in it, finding pleasure in uncomfortable situations and feelings. That’s all been my compass pleasure. And in December, I had a sexology session with someone who’s a student of sexology session and it was incredible. It was like an erotic massage, but it held the space for exploring my sensuality and physical pleasure in ways that are supported for healing and growth rather than just experiencing like a one and done experience, it was more of a building and exploratory session.

Candice Wu 9:36

Alignment with pleasure really helps me be safe in my body in a lot of ways to feel a new level of safety. Even just noticing what’s around me that looks pleasurable and allowing my body to integrate, seeing that thing in my space or outside or noticing wherever I find a pleasure sensation in my experience like drinking a cup of tea and feeling that or noticing how it feels to connect with a loved one and really taking it in while it’s happening, knowing that I’m safe, inviting more pleasure into my life for my body, embracing it and feeling the right to pleasure. All of that has supported me in being in my body and really enjoying it.

Candice Wu 10:32

So, this year, as we set forth into another year of the podcast, we’re over a hundred episodes now and coming up on our two-year birthday, two years in February. We want to invite a lot of pleasure into this process and a lot of topics on pleasure. So, BDSM, sexuality, where the genitals and other pleasure centers are waking up. Pussy, polyamory, ethical non-monogamy, other sources of sensuality, the experience of embodied autonomy, and sovereignty, and then other topics that I’ve been interested in and are going to bring forward, I’m going to bring forward this year are race and spirituality as well as some hot topics, money and abundance and our relationship with money and abundance, and who knows what else will come forward? We’ll see, because when I do open to pleasure, it’s like magic happens. I can’t even fathom it before it happens, but when it does, it just feels connected to using pleasure as my compass. And I don’t mean just like the topical pleasures and the simple ones that I mentioned, but deeper ones, too. Deeper pleasures of what feels truly right to me and align to me, in my soul in my bones.

Candice Wu 12:07

So, as the new year begins, I wish that for you, too. I wish you all experience pleasure and find more and more experiences that you can experience pleasure in, no matter what it is, and noticing what that opens up in your life if it does.

Candice Wu 12:36

So, let’s jump into our topic today and our experiential. I love the idea of transcending time, using the space where time isn’t a limit, and we can move easily back into time as we know it or forward into time as we know it, but the soul doesn’t really know time, and we’ve often heard that past, present and future is one in the same or it’s all happening at one time. It’s all complete in this moment, and that may be hard to conceptualize. I know it is for me sometimes, but I do feel we have some access to who we are going to be, who we’re becoming, and what may be in the future. We do have psychic abilities or intuitive abilities that can tell us something that’s different from the now, that’s forward from now, and we do have the ability to be with things in the past no matter what amount of time has passed, sometimes things cling to us. Sometimes, experiences are not yet resolved and the soul doesn’t know time.

Candice Wu 13:56

Some people say time heals and I don’t believe that’s necessarily true. Time can help in some cases where we need a little time to process, we need time to go forward, especially where our healing process is already moving towards integration. Time can support us, but saying time as the only factor, time heals, I don’t necessarily believe that because time can amplify and layer and accumulate experiences that are painful over and over each other, especially in places of our psyche, that we didn’t have enough resource or that call for more support or that are so scary that we didn’t want to go back or we resist it for some reason. And in those cases, I don’t believe time heals at all. It just leaves something dormant or latent in us or active from the backdoor where things happen that we really do not like and we keep getting in the same situation. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you might know my take on that, that all of that is to support us in knowing ourselves more deeply in bringing us back to our safe, creative, flowing, abundant self.

Candice Wu 15:27

So, with this experiential, we’re working with our past self, only the parts that for the moment that can bring us a sense of safety and resource, and we’re working with our future self to bring support and a distanced perspective that can allow us to move with more space in the now. We can give a sense of agreement to our present-day selves, agreeing with how life is right now, and that compels us and moves us forward. So, it doesn’t mean we have to stay where we are. Agreeing with what’s happening is a full embracing and acknowledgment of what we feel and what’s happening, and that lets us be integrated and digest through what’s here so we can move forward. That’s loving ourselves through experience of the moment and appreciating the journey. And if you don’t appreciate, that’s okay. You know, noticing how you’re experiencing it. There’s no need to appreciate your journey, but we do know that acknowledging it can truly be healing and integrative.

Candice Wu 16:54

So, that’s enough of me talking. Let’s jump into the experience. I invite you to just tune into yourself and draw all of your awareness towards yourself here, all the parts of you, any parts of you in the past your thoughts or mind remaining and experiences. Invite those parts of you back to the now and into your body. Invite any part of you that’s in the future, thinking about your plans or what’s coming to sync up with your present-day self.

Candice Wu 17:40

And as you breathe, feel your spine. Feel free to give a little movement if you’d like. Stretch, if you need, just getting into the body and feeling what’s happening inside, imagining what’s happening inside, as if you could see the whole inner landscape.

Candice Wu 18:06

And feel free to sit in a comfortable position or stand however you’d like to be. You can even lie down, and I invite you now to travel on a prism, on a rainbow that comes from the prism through time and just journey into the past. Let yourself land at a time you felt okay, where you felt like yourself, affirmed in who you are or time that was pleasurable.

Candice Wu 18:52

When you land here, notice that experience. See all of the details of that experience, and it can be a simple thing, simple moment or it could be a significant or meaningful moment, it doesn’t matter. Notice what happens in your body right now as you make contact with this time in the past. Let yourself marinate into that experience as if it’s happening now.

Candice Wu 19:44

Notice your breath if there’s a deeper breath or a shift. Feel your heart, any tension around it, if that changes your emotions. Notice your senses, notice your ability to see and if there’s a different kind of clarity as you look around.

Candice Wu 20:13

Sense any shifts in your body or the ability to be more in your body. And also, notice if other emotions come up that may be wanting to move through, and from here, you can travel on that rainbow again and go to another time in the past where you felt okay or like yourself, and if you’d like to do that, feel free to pause here with the recording and take a little more time there. You can do that as many times as you want. Just going to other moments where you felt okay, where you felt pleasure, tiny little moments or big ones. And when you’re ready to jump back into this experience with us or if you’re ready now, we’ll move on to the next step.

Candice Wu 21:16

So, take an inner snapshot of what’s happening here. As you feel into where you felt like yourself or felt, okay, and take that feeling with you in your body as you hop back on that rainbow and go the other direction, and move back towards the present. Let the rainbow just take you on this ride as you travel into the future, and it doesn’t matter how far into the future you go. It doesn’t matter if you know what your future self will be or look like. Just let yourself be taken there.

Candice Wu 22:07

When you land in a spot in the future, notice how it is to be in your body here, imagining that you are your future self, and if this is challenging or not possible right now, not accessible, I’d invite you to hop on another rainbow, the double rainbow that’s right there near you. Hop on that other rainbow and distance yourself from yourself and be someone else. Be someone kind and loving, and compassionate, and that could be a person, animal or spiritual figure or any being known or unknown to you. So, it could be a total stranger.

Candice Wu 23:07

Whichever part you’re in, your future self or another being, notice how it feels here. Notice what there is to see around you in the future without any pressure or expectation or filter. Then take a look at your present-day self. Notice how are you. How is your present-day self? How are you feeling and what’s happening in your life?

Candice Wu 24:05

Acknowledge any feelings, any experiences that your present-day self is having without trying to change them. Just look at your present-day self with presence.

Candice Wu 24:35

What advice, support or wisdom do you have for your present-day self? And feel free to say those things to your present-day self now. Are there any words that your present a self needs to hear or any words to soothe or bring resolve to your present-day self? Any affection or touch that your present a self would need? And check to see if there’s anything else that you want to tell your present-day self or let them know. And when you are ready, hop back on your rainbow and journey back to the present.

Candice Wu 26:00

As you arrive there in your periphery, see your past self, the parts of you that you touched into or you felt okay or felt like yourself and your future self or that being that was kind and loving on the double rainbow, and notice how you feel now in your body, now in this place of the present.

Candice Wu 26:38

Give yourself a little moment to land here, back into your body, and just let go of the rainbow, let go of the past and future, just being right here right now. And if your eyes were closed at all, feel free to open them at your pace and look around your space. Touch your body to give it the sense that you’re here right now with yourself.

Candice Wu 27:18

Notice how your body feels now, how your emotions are, your energy state. Feel free to focus on any part of your feeling sense, your experience in your body that feels supportive, helpful, calming, empowering, any, anything that feels pleasant or even neutral, and I invite you to take that energy with you into your day, into your week, into your year. Feel free to visit your past self or your future self whenever you need any more wisdom or insight, perspective or that reminder to your nervous system and body that you can feel okay, that you can build upon that.

Candice Wu 28:32

And as you begin to transition, feel free to move your body even more if you need. Take a couple of cleansing deep breaths if you’d like to release all of that as you step forward into your day, and I’m so glad that we’re here together practicing this. I love traveling through time and using time in ways that seem to trick your logical mind that wants to run on time. And so, I invite you later in this season to check out other experientials that will offer that journey or transcend time or build upon our relationship to time.

Candice Wu 29:21

Thanks so much for joining me today, and just wishing you a lovely New Year. I hope that you take your sweet time. If you’re interested in a couple of podcasts that have already been out around time, there’s Take Your Sweet Time with Kremena Yordanova, a guest of mine who’s from Bulgaria, and is in Amsterdam, and that’s at CandiceWu.com/kremena. She brings this lovely sense of taking our sweet time to be ourselves and to let the world of our lives unfold.

Candice Wu 30:07

And there’s also a podcast episode 34 around loving yourself, how to love yourself by letting the past be over. There are a couple of experientials there, three of them actually, taking inventory on what stuck in time in your life and your soul, and psyche, in your ancestry or past life, closing a relationship that haunts you or seems to still be entangled with your energy or your emotional state and completing a chapter in the past through an embodied healing process. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/pastisover.

Candice Wu 30:55

Be sure to check out The Ally with Death Experiential if you are still interested, and if you’d like to stay informed about my book that will be coming out around our relationship with money and abundance, and healing that relationship or if you’d like self-love notes and updates about the podcast, experientials, you can sign up for my newsletter that comes out once or twice a month at CandiceWu.com/embody. And just as a quick reminder, all of the experientials and meditations are searchable on this lovely database at CandiceWu.com/meditations.

Candice Wu 31:40

Thank you so much for joining me today, and it’s so wonderful to have you here in the New Year, 2020. I hope it’s a lovely one for you where you come to know yourself more deeply and love yourself through that journey.

Candice Wu 31:54

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00

This is an experiential that can support you in standing behind yourself. It combines constellations, Somatic Experiencing and embodiment with your inner parts, and all those that support you, to bring you into the new year with more of yourself.

Candice Wu 0:23

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 0:57

If you’d like to jump right to the experiential itself without a little bit of the intro and a story from me, you can just click through in the show notes and the markers jump to the part of “let’s begin”.

Candice Wu 1:12

If you have some sort of podcast app, usually if you click forward, it’ll jump to different chapters and you can find that portion of “let’s begin”.

Candice Wu 1:22

Wow, this was the first time that I have had hiccups before I wanted to record a podcast and I just had this thought that I’m so lucky that I haven’t had hiccups when I’ve had a guest and had to deal with that experience, I’m sure it would be fine in some way or I don’t know, I do one of those tricks that gets rid of hiccups but none of — I just kind of let that happen today without trying to make it stop and I get hiccups for like 15 minutes which is really rare for me. And so, my stomach is a little sore like I’ve done a workout but I’m here and I’m so happy that you’re here too. This is the week before New Year’s of 2020 and I thought that it would be lovely to do something that can bring you into the new year with more of yourself with a fullness and a state of being of self-support.

Candice Wu 2:28

It’s great if you are doing resolutions or tuning into theme words for this next coming year like words that you want to focus on, energies you want to focus on, instead of a new year’s resolution you can try this or in addition to it and if you’re someone that wants to do something like a cleansing and shifting the energies, integrating what energies have been in this year, looking through the year and reviewing it last year when it was 2018 shifting into 2019, I did an episode called Ending and Beginning the New Year with Grace with cleansing, impermanence, and integration.

Candice Wu 3:15

So, it was an episode of touching into each month of that last year and letting the body digest and release and acknowledge the experience of that month, so that you can let that all digest and metabolize through as much as possible at least, to have some space for coming into the new year.

Candice Wu 3:40

If you’re interested in that, I really had lots of good feedback from people that that was helpful. You can find the episode at CandiceWu.com/ep53. Along with that, the Ally with Death audio experiential is now on sale until January 6, 2020. This audio is about 75 minutes and it guides you through with my voice and really lovely, moody, and supportive as well as provocative music by Larry St. Germain on his hand pan. And it is a simulation of death so that you can really face and clear out what is vital to your life force, what your soul wants to cleanse out and complete and digest so that you have lots of space to be in the new year with vitality and coming back to your playfulness, whatever deadweight is in your system, in your energetic system or in your psyche. This is the chance to be in a process that can support you in moving that all through and providing yourself with a lot of love, self-forgiveness and envisioning with your whole inner wisdom on board. If you’re interested in that, you can find it at CandiceWu.com/death. And again, it’s on sale until January 6, 2020.

Candice Wu 5:12

And before we jump into the experiential, I want to talk about some of the inspiration for this.

Candice Wu 5:19

A couple of people in my life has been talking about the gallbladder and blockage in their gallbladder, for whatever reason they’re aware of it or they had gone to a holistic doctor of some sort that had given them that information. And they were asking me about my sense of it.

Candice Wu 5:39

So, the gallbladder energy has been coming up and the gallbladder and the liver are like sister energies. The meridians of the gallbladder and liver cycle together, the gallbladder on the outer side of the body and the liver on the inner side, and to be very nonspecific in general at the moment, and in Ayurveda, the liver and gallbladder related to the Akasha Mahābhūta, the element of the Akash, that’s the physical space that something occupies.

Candice Wu 6:12

And recently, actually, Susan Lipshutz was on the podcast talking about Akashic Records and the Akashic Realm. So, it’s really a lovely sequel to that, that we’re here now talking about the liver and gallbladder which connect with the Akash. It’s the physical space something occupies, it’s the wood element in Chinese medicine. This energy in our body does create the physical body as we know it and how it feels where the blockage intention is, the shape of our physical body. It’s that blueprint underneath, much like the chakras, but this relating to the meridians and it’s about occupying our space, as we are with what we desire and need.

Candice Wu 6:59

The liver energy is the energy of creation and desire and it is connected with the reproductive center, what we desire, what we birth, what we want to birth or feel in relation to the world and others, that we take up our space and we have a right to that space, and we’re able to protect that space. So the gallbladder channel running down the side of the body down the IT band, all the way to the pinky toe. Really, if you think about putting your foot down, that if you’re able to put your foot down when you need to, that is the power of protecting your energy, standing up for what’s right for you. And sometimes that’s really firmly or strongly and sometimes that’s subtly but the ability to do so to have your boundaries and feel the right to do that, feel the worldliness to have what you need and protect your own space and energy in a way that feels right for you, to support yourself in a way that’s right for you, to not tolerate things that don’t feel right to you, that’s all the energy of gallbladder in standing up and asserting, and also making decisions that support you.

Candice Wu 8:25

If our creative energy or what we desire and what we need is thwarted, if it gets disrupted or violated, then anger comes forward. Some people wouldn’t call this anger and it’s not quite necessary to call it anger. There are varying degrees on that spectrum of what that means. My Somatic Experiencing teacher trainer, one of them, Maggie Klein calls it “red energy”, and when something is violated or thwarted, that hurts us or gets in the way of what we want or need, or is not what we want to need, then that red energy comes up in our bodies to stand up for what we need, to put a boundary up or to say no, to put our foot down.

Candice Wu 9:23

If that energy doesn’t get to be used, if we are taught that we’re not allowed to have what we need, or we’re not allowed to stand up for ourselves, perhaps that we’re not allowed to be angry, or say no, or to have what we need, then that energy gets blocked up and the liver and the gallbladder get blocked when that energy doesn’t get to cycle and digest through and be used. That leads to blockages in the energetic system of liver and gallbladder and of course, other systems in the body. And we’re in nervous system understanding, the polyvagus nerve, sensing this kind of threat to the body, will connect with the other organs in the body shutting certain systems down. And so we have an effect in the whole body in different spaces, in different ways and that can create a level of nervous system overwhelm. When we feel overwhelmed in our nervous system and the nervous system says too much, then we can go into a free state or tonic immobility, if we want to be more scientific. In that state, says that, it was too much for our body to handle and we can go into depression.

Candice Wu 10:49

So we can talk at length about the details of polyvagal theory or the different energies, of the different meridians, all these different thematic experiences of the human body and psyche and yet, this experience of whatever your body is having, whatever’s going on in your body and how you experience yourself and relate to yourself is very personal and unique.

Candice Wu 11:19

And the way that I like to discover what’s happening is not so much knowing these facts and principles of different organ systems or how the body functions, although that really does help a great deal just to have that openness and knowing and all the different tools that can come out of it. But I do like to use the tool of asking my body and letting my intuition and knowing come forward and cultivating that intuition.

Candice Wu 11:54

If you’ve been listening to the podcast, or if you want to jump onto the website and search for these specific angles of looking at this process, I do talk about Somatic Experiencing. I do talk about Family Constellations and how the body can manifest something that the lineage or past life has not yet resolved or integrated.

Candice Wu 12:22

And sometimes, I talk about the meridians, or Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. So there are places from which all of this knowledge can come from. And I also share how to talk with the body. There was an episode called Conversations with the Body and you can find that at CandiceWu.com/conversationswiththebody that can guide you in that conversation.

Candice Wu 12:50

And a couple of months ago, when I was working with my feelings around the Hong Kong protests and what was happening there, and I saw how people were standing up for each other, I felt my gums receding on the second to last molars at the bottom. And, receding gumline is something that I’ve been dealing with on and off throughout my life. And when I noticed it this time, I felt Okay, I’m ready to heal another level of this and strengthen my gums. How do I do that?

Candice Wu 13:26

So I talked with my gums and listened and just felt into what it was going to show me and it took a little time, in this time, I got the message, stand up for yourself more, we can’t take it anymore. And as I felt a standing up for myself and what that would mean I felt into that in my body, the feeling of it, I could feel my gums standing stronger and firmly around my teeth, teeth being very connected with the kidneys and our strength of will, the bone. And so it was clear to me that if I were to stand stronger for myself around who I am and what I need to the next level, then these little spaces of my gums might find a new way. There might be more energy there to create the physical expression of that standing up for myself in my gums.

Candice Wu 14:32

So I practice that a lot and worked with bringing my energy to stand up for myself more and of course work with more Somatic Experiencing practices of working through fight responses and that putting my foot down and being able to have stronger boundaries, clearer ones, finding different ways to communicate that then I had before another round of it, and my gums feel great right now. Let’s see, let’s check. There’s a tiny bit of sensitivity in some spots but overall, it’s a lot stronger. And I feel that that’s reflecting what’s going on in my life, that there are these little spots that are still asking for me to stand up and I’m working on it and it’s in that process.

Candice Wu 15:32

So this experiential here today is to support you in standing up behind yourself. It’s to give your body an experience of support, where it may have been lacking or you may have been wanting more support from others or from your parents or whoever in your life, that you can give that to yourself and embody it.

Candice Wu 16:02

So if you’re ready to begin with me, feel free to find a comfortable place to be and let’s begin.

Candice Wu 16:13

I’d invite you to start by standing up and as you stand up, let your body be just as it is. Resist any temptation to stand up or push your chest out or be in any sort of power position or change your body and just be as you are.

Candice Wu 16:40

As you’re doing that, notice how your body feels and how it is, without any judgment or pressure on your body to change. We’re gathering information about what your body feels like here. Where the weight is in your feet? How strong you feel in your body? Or, where there’s any holding, curling in contraction, where there’s any expansion, openness. Does your body feel lifted or weighted? Feel if your body is leaning back or forward or there’s a movement happening inside or outside the impulse of your body and just let your body follow those impulses and movements. Be in the swaying if they’re swaying or be in stillness if there’s stillness. Also, notice your breath, where your breath reaches and where it doesn’t.

Candice Wu 18:06

And now I invite you to call forward the part of you that has strength and unconditional love. If that’s hard to do, call upon the part of you that is either the most coherent or is your inner wisdom or the part of you that knows how to support other people and encourage and love others.

Candice Wu 18:41

Notice how that part of you can be in the world, especially towards other people if you are very supportive of others.

Candice Wu 18:58

Now imagine that part of you, that is your inner wisdom or unconditional love or the part that supports others’ turn towards yourself and shine that light of love and support towards you. Notice if you can receive that love and support. You can even picture light shining from yourself to yourself. It can be any color light that feels supportive. Notice if this is easy or hard to do. Just be gentle with yourself if this is unfamiliar, or if emotions come up or experiences come up that are unexpected. And if you allow yourself to receive even more of this love and support, notice what that would feel like or how it feels in your body now.

Candice Wu 20:19

Observe what happens in your body, does it stay the same? Is there any difference or shift in how your body stands or holds itself or is, how is your breath now?

Candice Wu 20:43

Feel as many cells of your body that are able to receive this loving support, kind of love that no matter what, supports you, from head to toes to your fingers.

Candice Wu 21:14

And now invite that part of you to stand behind you and place your hands on your shoulders. If it’s hard to imagine, imagine what it would be like to be able to imagine your most supportive self standing behind you with all the love, power, and support. All the support that you need, all the support that you wish for, the feeling that light is coming through you from this part of you, shining through you, shining forward into your life, your future, where you’re looking and that you’re able to even lean on this part of you for more support when you feel doubtful or anxious, scared, if you feel uncertain. Imagine leaning towards or reaching towards this supportive part of you that catches you and hold you, that is all compassionate to your feelings.

Candice Wu 22:53

And as you look forward into your life, into all the places that you move in life and where you’re going, imagine what it would be like to picture this part of you, going with you, standing behind you through all parts of life.

Candice Wu 23:18

Notice how your body is experiencing this, what sensations, what emotions? Is your body moving or feeling any impulses or not? And just being gentle with any emotions that do come up as some difficult feelings might want to move through or be acknowledged.

Candice Wu 23:51

And if you’d like to take this one step further, picture all those that support you whether they’re people that are alive, things or animals, nature, spirits or guides, teachers, beings of light, beings from other dimensions, your inner parts, Earth, imagine anything that supports you standing behind you now. Notice how much of this you’re able to feel into and receive and if anytime this is too much or it feels overwhelming to take that much in, don’t and just take a break and know that this is a practice you can come back to and take in a little more, feel more support.

Candice Wu 24:55

You could even just imagine one support person or entity at a time rather than all. Just play with who’s back there for you now and what amount and capacity are you able to feel into their support, their love, their light, moving through you and supporting you in your life.

Candice Wu 25:35

And as you look forward into the next year, plant the seed that you can call upon your inner support to stand behind you or shine your light on you anytime, as well as calling upon any support that you’re aware of in your life to bring you more resource, bring you more strength and inner loving, to call upon that inner reflection of those outer people or parts so that enlivens in you as you move through the world.

Candice Wu 26:27

Take a moment to feel any parts of you in your body that are connected with that support and feeling any pleasure or soothing, calmness, openness from that support, no matter what other feelings are going on.

Candice Wu 26:56

Take your own time here and if you need more time to stand with your support, feel free. And whenever you’re ready, feel free to close at any time and just let your body be and continue to bring that support with you in your life. Thank yourself for practicing and invoking more in yourself, more support and just being aware of the support that you are, that you bring and that you can turn towards yourself with great love and power.

Candice Wu 27:41

I’m so glad that you’re here with me today. Thank you so much for moving through 2019 with me, or jumping into this experience now and wishing you so much love into the new year and lots of self-loving.

Candice Wu 27:59

The ability to stand behind ourselves, support ourselves, if we could do that more often, and feel the resource that is within us, especially in the dark times and times where we really need more loving, or those pockets of ourselves that don’t know how to love, if we can stand behind ourselves and take up space and step forward with who we are and what we want to need, imagine what that would be like.

Candice Wu 28:46

And I wish all that for you and more in this next coming year and today. I’m looking forward to seeing you in the new year. And thank you so much again for joining me on the Embody Podcast, until next time and into the new decade.

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 with special guest Joffre McClung, who is the author of two self-love and healing books.

Candice Wu 0:06

In this episode, we talked about our inner orphans, how to use our emotions as a navigational system to connect with our higher self to heal and to love ourselves. What is self-love and how to play?

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 1:01

Welcome back, everyone. It’s great to have you today and to welcome the special guest Joffre McClung.

Candice Wu 1:07

She used to be an actress, and she is the author of a couple of healing self-love books. One is called, The Heart of the Matter. And the other is called How Learning to Say Goodbye Taught Me How to Live.

Candice Wu 1:19

It was really fun to talk to her in this episode, where she talks about her experiences with people in her life that have had cancer, and how people in her life have mirrored her need for self-love, or showed her different parts of herself that she needed to learn in herself or to heal up in herself.

Candice Wu 1:39

She began her career as a theater actress and producer, having spent most of her adult life in New York City, where she acted and produced several Off-Broadway productions. And she was an avid student of spiritual literature and techniques since the early 80s. Because, she wanted to learn and grow herself.

Candice Wu 1:58

She taught herself filmmaking and formed, Sweet Moon Pictures production company in the 1990s. And then wrote, produced, and directed two independent films with spiritual themes and overtones. Those are called, Out of the Blue and Best Wishes.

Candice Wu 2:13

Before moving back to Texas to care for her dying mother, she worked as a senior producer and director for a media broadcast production company in New York City for over 15 years.

Candice Wu 2:23

You’ll hear in this episode about how her life took many different turns. And she landed here in her passion through writing books, talks, and creating videos to support people in loving themselves and taking the journey to empower themselves. So without further ado, here is Joffre.

Candice Wu 2:46

Okay, welcome, Joffre.

Joffre McClung 2:48

Hey!

Candice Wu 2:49

Hey, it’s so good to have you.

Joffre McClung 2:51

It’s great to be with you.

Candice Wu 2:53

I’m pumped to talk about all things, self-love.

Joffre McClung 2:58

Well, I can certainly talk about self-love for hours, so we’re in good shape.

Candice Wu 3:02

Yes. So you’ve written a couple of books. It sounds like you’re also on another, about self-love, and really digging into how to do that.

Joffre McClung 3:14

Oh, certainly. I’m actually redoing the second book, doing a new edition, so to speak, putting myself a bit more into the book.

Candice Wu 3:23

Oh, that’s fabulous.

Joffre McClung 3:25

So it’s kind of a new edition, a new book kind of?

Candice Wu 3:29

And is that for the Heart of the Matter?

Joffre McClung 3:31

Yes, it is. Which is, you know, a workbook and guide. And it gives you the meditations and the questions, ask yourself, of course, we have some dialogue in it. And I talked about different people I’ve helped along the way. But I kind of kept myself sort of generally out of it, except meditation-wise. I would say what I did in meditation. But now I’m going to go back, I’m going to put myself back intuitive of what happened in my life, why I started something, what triggered me, just, you know, give them my story. So they understand that I, too, came from a place of lack of self-love. So it’s sort of a new book. And yet, it’s really a new edition.

Candice Wu 4:06

Yeah, and I really love that, because that’s what I feel from you that you went on this journey for yourself. And that’s what these pieces, these books are pieces of the product of that, but that you really have gone through it. And it’s in your bones, it’s in your blood. Is that right?

Joffre McClung 4:24

Oh, you got that completely, perfectly!

Joffre McClung 4:27

It’s in my blood, it’s in my bones. It’s in my soul, for sure.

Candice Wu 4:30

Yeah! Well, tell me more.

Candice Wu 4:32

But first, I want to read this little piece of what you’ve written on your website about the Heart of the Matter, and maybe it’s in your book as well, I’m wondering if that connects up with what you’re saying about how you’re bringing more pieces of yourself, your story.

Candice Wu 4:46

So here’s the quote, “We’re meant to be whole. And that means healing and integrating those orphaned parts of ourselves. Believe it or not, every wound holds a forgotten gem just waiting to be rediscovered. And wounds are not only filled with unhealed pain, but also shrouds your ability to dream and create, to feel joy and excitement, to have faith and trust, to live with passion and compassion, and most importantly, to love and receive, to receive love.”

Candice Wu 5:17

I just, every part of my being agrees with that.

Joffre McClung 5:21

Oh, I’m so glad! Because it agrees with me too. Speaking from my experience —

Candice Wu 5:27

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 5:28

It, really, it came — I almost wrote that without me knowing I wrote it, to be honest with you. Sometimes I’ll sit down to write something. And it’ll just start to flow. And that is sort of one of those things that flowed out of me, because that’s what I was going through, the healing my inner orphans.

Joffre McClung 5:44

Because we all have different parts of ourselves that we’ve forgotten or shoved aside, or refused to look at, frankly, that we’re still carrying along with us in our adulthood, that are making decisions for us that we’re unaware of.

Joffre McClung 5:56

So I was in the midst of doing that, cleaning up, I would say finishing my orphan work. And when I was writing the book, I was thinking about my orphan and how I really wanted people to have the courage to look at their own orphan. And that when I wrote that, I was sort of looking back at what I had done. And realizing those orphans, the power, and the gifts, those orphans hold of ours, we go for a dream, but you’re going for a dream with maybe 15% of yourself, because the rest is shoved away kept safe with your orphan that you don’t want to, you know, deal with or your disowned. So that really came from my own experience, I have to say.

Candice Wu 6:31

That’s it. So I resonate with that. And, as you were saying that I was just thinking about the orphan parts of ourselves that are still acting. It’s like they insist on being seen. They insist on it. And our deeper self knows that we need that part. As you’re saying we have only “x” percentage of ourselves moving forward. And all these parts we’re trying to shove away that are being orphaned or disown. But there’s a deeper part of us that wants to bring it forward.

Joffre McClung 7:04

And they definitely speak up.

Candice Wu 7:06

Yeah. So tell me about that.

Joffre McClung 7:09

They want to be heard. They really, you can shut them down. You can ignore them for years, people ignore them for years, although they’re still making decisions from that place.

Candice Wu 7:17

For a long time.

Joffre McClung 7:18

Oh, yeah, for many lifetimes, but they ignore them. But the thing is that they are going to start to shout because they want to be heard. They want to be part of the whole, and you keep disowning them making them separate of the whole. So they’re going to shout, and they’re going to get louder, and louder, until you do something about it, either through drink or drugs, or you’re going to heal them, frankly, you have a choice. I, of course, decided to heal them.

Candice Wu 7:43

Yeah. And you know, it’s such an interesting thing, because they get louder and louder. And as I started to realize that, let me know how you experienced this. As I started to realize, wow, wait, I’ve hit rock bottom here. And that’s when I learned that or started to look at that, or out I had to get to this place, this pain, in this big way, to actually look at that thing that I knew was there.

Candice Wu 8:07

And so it’s like, I’m learning. Okay, why don’t I just do that before it gets to be like a catastrophe?

Joffre McClung 8:13

Because we have to learn that way in the beginning. I think every one of us who’s on this journey, just started with a dark night of the soul kind of feeling whether it’s a big one or a little one, is because something went wrong in our lives. And it didn’t work anymore, and something hurt us. And so it makes us stop. And then we look at what we’ve been shoving down.

Joffre McClung 8:30

So I don’t think you’re wrong in that. I think as we get wiser, hopefully, we look at things before they hit us in the face, and yell at us and stop us, you know, in our tracks. But I think that’s typical. That’s kind of how human beings, we feel like we can ignore it because it won’t bother us until it shouting. And then as we get hopefully, as we grow, we get wiser. And then we start to do the homework before it’s in our face.

Joffre McClung 8:55

You know, I’m there where I do it before it’s in my face doesn’t mean I’ll get a whisper. But I’ll get a little whisper. But I follow that whisper now. I don’t want it to get loud.

Candice Wu 9:04

I’m right with you. And at the same time there, my experience of the loudness if it gets to that point, feels different. Like, I don’t resist it as much. I understand it a little better. I can be with myself through it and have compassion that, that happened or what had built up for me to get to that place.

Candice Wu 9:27

But yeah, I would love to hear Joffre about one of those dark nights of the soul for you or some orphaned part of you that you’ve looked at.

Joffre McClung 9:38

Oh, I have so many I could talk about. It’s like which one do I pick?

Joffre McClung 9:43

Well, the first dark night of the soul probably is the most important dark night of the soul because this woke me up, that I needed changing and I needed to look at reality slightly differently.

Joffre McClung 9:53

And that dark night tends to happen later in life, for me it happened around 29. And that’s when I left a relationship with an ex I had and he was a wonderful man, but I left it because I knew it wasn’t right for me after nine years.

Joffre McClung 10:05

And I went dark, because suddenly I was back in my studio apartment, back in Manhattan in New York and living back in my studio after I left a beautiful brownstone, lived a lovely life with him. I was back in my little brownstone, doing my schlocky work, still doing audition work, but doing you know, schlocky work to pay the bills.

Joffre McClung 10:23

And I had a dark night because I thought this isn’t what I thought my life would be like when I was turning 30. And I suddenly realized, everything I believed was true, that I followed the rules, I went to acting school, I did my auditions, I fell in love. I did everything you’re supposed to do to have a good life. And here I was with my life falling apart, that really hit me over the head.

Joffre McClung 10:46

And then I started reading everything, every personal growth book I could read, every metaphysical book I could read, in fact, back then, this is how old I am. Back then, the metaphysical books and the spiritual books were in the occult section.

Joffre McClung 11:00

I’m not kidding, it was in the mid-early 80s, mid–80s. Really, they didn’t have a spiritual group or new age group, or whatever they call it now. Now, they just call it spiritual.

Joffre McClung 11:09

They didn’t have that. They had a kind of come in a put together within the occult groups, you had the witches over here, and then you had a few spiritual books over here.

Joffre McClung 11:17

So, I started reading spiritual books and that’s when I started to understand that we create our own reality with what we believe. That opened me up. Because I knew how I was living was no longer working. And I realized I was carrying beliefs. And then I began to do some of the work. So that was my first dark night of the soul was really, in, I’d say 29 years old, almost 30, where everything was falling apart, it woke me up to the fact that we actually do create our own reality through what we believe. And I obviously had a whole lot of negative beliefs that were ruling my life at that time.

Candice Wu 11:51

Yeah, what did you see in yourself at that time, as far as the beliefs that it sounds like they played out in your life in that way, and brought you to that place of seeing there?

Joffre McClung 12:02

Well, I had shoved them down, in all honesty.

Joffre McClung 12:06

I was doing my auditioning in New York, I was doing producing Off-Broadway plays also being in them, as well as producing them. I begin to make a few little short films. So I was, you know, doing what I loved, but not to the extent that I wanted to do it.

Joffre McClung 12:19

And that dark night, I realized underneath all the, I guess, you’d call it “bravado”, although I wasn’t particularly loud about it. But saying, “Yes, I can get this job, I’ll book this job, I’ll get this commercial, I’ll get this, you know, acting job.”

Joffre McClung 12:34

Underneath that was a feeling that I will never get that. Because underneath that, was a feeling of lack of self-love, that had come from childhood, things in my early childhood that I had made a decision that something was not quite right with me, so to speak.

Joffre McClung 12:48

Because I had certain family members who were extremely jealous and angry at me. And I took the blame for it. So I shoved all that down. But that was still ruling my life. Even though I was having the bravado saying, “I’m going to this audition, I’m going to book and -” but underneath with that feeling that I can’t have what I want. There’s something not quite right with me because I obviously piss people off and make them jealous and angry at me. So there was that level.

Joffre McClung 13:17

And there was also a level underneath that, a negative belief that I can’t have what I want. Because if I do have what I want, it’s going to make someone jealous of me and angry at me and hurt me.

Joffre McClung 13:27

So there were layers —

Candice Wu 13:28

That’s dangerous.

Joffre McClung 13:29

Oh, yeah, it was dangerous to have what I want. So there were layers. And I didn’t know all that even in the beginning. When I first started reading the books, it was just sort of opening my mind to the beliefs and how we create our own reality. That work came a bit later. But that was, I was well aware that, that was in there. I was trying to heal it in different ways. Not quite doing a great job at it. But I was well aware that, that stuff was in there. And I wanted it out of my head, frankly. And then I realized it was also in my heart. And that heart needed to be healed.

Candice Wu 14:01

Absolutely, can’t forget about the heart, because it’s holding all that pain.

Joffre McClung 14:05

Oh, definitely holds that pain. You can do all the affirmations you want. You can do all the techniques you want. But if you’re not healing the wound that’s in the heart, I think I call it in the book, “mental masturbation”, because you’re really kind of playing with your mind, which is important. You want to change your mind. But if you’re not healing, the heart is carrying the wound. You’re double lifting, so to speak.

Candice Wu 14:28

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 14:28

And you really need to go to the root of the heart, get your heart in sync, then your mind can follow. I know that’s kind of sounds weird to people. But that’s how it worked for me in all honesty.

Candice Wu 14:38

That’s what this whole entire show is about, being embodied.

Candice Wu 14:42

Being in your body and feeling through what’s here and healing those wounds. And I like what you said about double lifting, because we’re often, I think it’s a couple of things, you know, so many of us have learned to use our mind to get through something and survive something, because feeling it was too dangerous or hard or scary at the time or overwhelming.

Joffre McClung 15:06

Well, or we were too young.

Candice Wu 15:07

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 15:08

We didn’t know what to do with what we were feeling. So we kept shoving it down, or, I call it shelving it. I just shelve it. Deal with it later. And you know, you realize the years have gone by and you’ve been shelving everything.

Candice Wu 15:19

And then you’re so good at it.

Joffre McClung 15:21

Very good at it.

Joffre McClung 15:23

And actually, it does serve a purpose. Because there are times you do need to shelve something that you need when you get home. I can work, I can shelve something. And then when I get home, I can go to meditation and look at it and heal it.

Joffre McClung 15:33

So I mean, in that sense, it’s a good thing. But when we’re little, we shelved it because we don’t know what to do with it. And we also, when we’re younger, we take everything is our fault. Everything is our fault, doesn’t matter what it is, even though mentally I may have known this person is angry and jealous. And that’s them, not me. In my heart, I still believed it was me. Because there are negative beliefs that get built around what you keep experiencing.

Joffre McClung 15:59

So another negative belief it came out of that was some, you know, something was wrong with me, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have this person in my family that was so angry at me. You see how that negative belief gets played out, even though it had nothing to do with me. In all honesty, it was her issue, not mine. But I obviously agreed to play with it when it came down here.

Joffre McClung 16:19

Obviously, it needed to teach me what self-trust and self-love. So I’m grateful to this energy I was brought into. I don’t ever want to do it again, frankly. I hope I’ve learned the lesson. But I’m grateful for their lesson and the Nemesis and for what she taught me. Because it did guide me to find myself loving. I’m very firm in it now. It took me a while. But I’m very firm in it now.

Candice Wu 16:43

Yeah, I can hear that.

Candice Wu 16:45

So when you teach people through the meditations and other practices, how to heal the wound of their hearts. What do you offer? What do you suggest?

Joffre McClung 17:00

The way I started is I introduced them to their tools first, because I want them to know they can do this for themselves. I’m going to introduce them to the things, but they’re going to have to do the heavy lifting themselves. They’re going to have to go within and look within themselves.

Joffre McClung 17:13

So I introduced them to their tools, their imagination, because you’re going to use your imagination to dialogue with those inner orphans. I can’t tell you how many times I dealt dialogue with my inner orphan and learn something through that dialoguing.

Candice Wu 17:26

Oh, I did it this morning.

Joffre McClung 17:28

Exactly. You see, you obviously know what you’re doing. But you know, lot of people don’t use their imagination, except for worry. They’re good at thinking the worst-case scenario for work, for money or the relationship.

Candice Wu 17:40

Good point.

Candice Wu 17:41

You see people often using their imagination for worry, in a worrying way.

Joffre McClung 17:45

Yeah. As adults.

Joffre McClung 17:47

To daydream out the window, see if we used it well, when we were young, and then we grow up and we use it wrongly. We start using it for worrying.

Candice Wu 17:56

I see that. Worrying and creating the worst possible scenarios.

Joffre McClung 18:01

And what will I do if that does happen? That’s what we spend our imagination on.

Joffre McClung 18:06

So I introduced them to their imagination. I introduced them to their safe space, I let them use your imagination to meet their higher selves, to create this loving space, to add images to, kind of wake that part of their brain up again.

Joffre McClung 18:19

So they realize, “Oh, I do have an imagination and it can be loving to me, it doesn’t have to be the worst-case scenario.”

Joffre McClung 18:25

So I introduced them to their imagination, to their higher self, which is just the part of you that still knows it’s one with the divine and carries with it all the knowledge and power of that love, which we all have.

Joffre McClung 18:39

Some people call it their innate one. Some people call it their intuition. I don’t really care the name you call it, we all have one. But it’s the one that sees 360 degrees around, sees the forest and the trees at the same time. It’s your wise one, so to speak. And you can tune into that part of yourself in meditation, which I know you do. I have no doubt, to aid you in your journey. So I introduced them to that.

Joffre McClung 19:04

And then I introduced them to their third tool, their emotions. People are so afraid of emotions. And the thing is your emotions are part of your navigational system to move through this world. But we shove so many emotions away because we’re afraid of anger, or rage, or hurt, or fear, whatever it might be that we don’t get the lessons from those emotions.

Joffre McClung 19:26

Those emotions try to talk to us and tell us something. So I introduce them to their emotions, that can take some time, sometimes, depending.

Joffre McClung 19:34

Men take longer than women, interestingly enough, they’re fine with anger. But getting to the hurt underneath the anger takes them a little bit, you know, longer time. Women are a little more adaptive going to the hurt underneath the anger.

Joffre McClung 19:46

So I introduced them to their tools, that takes a little time. And then we go into talking about what self-love is. Because we can talk about self-love. But until you define it for somebody, it just sounds sort of “whoo, whoo ish,” so to speak.

Joffre McClung 20:01

I want self-love the way I define self-love, for me. And I help them get it is that it’s the part of you that knows in your heart, because I’ve got to include the heart, that you are lovable, loving, and loved.

Joffre McClung 20:17

And then we go and we break that down further. What does lovable mean? It means you’re worthy of love, you exist — therefore, in the universe’s eyes, you are worthy of love, doesn’t matter if another person ever gives it to you, you know you are worthy of love.

Joffre McClung 20:34

Loving means that you know you are given a loving heart that is your natural state of being. You have a naturally loving heart. And how you express that loving heart is more than good enough. And loved simply means that you matter and are valued by the universe, not for what you do, not for what you will do, but because you are you. You don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to prove it. You don’t have to do anything. You simply are loved because you exist. And you are — you matter.

Joffre McClung 21:14

So we go through that and then we get to the orphans. What you and I have talked about. Because, as you well know, the orphans are key, because they will shout you down.

Candice Wu 21:27

And for good reason. You know, there’s that, as you said, this whole load of energy that’s waiting for you there and all the goodness that is like a treasure box waiting to be discovered within what we’ve closed down. But at the same time, there’s pain, there’s fear, and other emotions that are harder.

Joffre McClung 21:49

Oh, yeah. And the thing is, there is great treasure with the orphan because they hold so much of your dream, so much of your joy, so much of your power. You need it back, frankly, we’re supposed to be all that we can be. And if you’re keeping parts of yourself away, you can’t be all that you can be.

Joffre McClung 22:04

So then, I introduce them to their orphans. And each person is different. Certain orphans take longer to bring out. I had several. Now they’re all sort of the same. But I saw different images for different when I was working on different beliefs from that orphan.

Joffre McClung 22:19

Someone be hiding in a cave. The first one I met was hiding in a cave, unwashed, dirty, matted, filthy, did not want anything to do with me. Did not want to look at me. Didn’t want anything to do with me.

Joffre McClung 22:31

So it took time just to gain trust from that orphan. Then I would — after I worked with that one for a bit, I met another version of the orphan and this one was shouting me out. It called me into the woods and it shouted me down. It yelled at me, shouted at me, screamed at me, had a tantrum. It’s the one I needed to have a tantrum. Yeah.

Candice Wu 22:50

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 22:51

So I let it have a tantrum. And I listened. And I said, “That’s just horrible. I’m so sorry.” And I just listened.

Joffre McClung 22:57

So you meet your orphan. And you listen in the beginning. Sometimes if they won’t talk to you to say I’m here, going to sit here and be with you, you may do that several times. And then they may start to say something to you, or do something, or have an image for you, whatever. However your brain works, people, images, some people it’s words, you’ll know when it’s real.

Joffre McClung 23:18

And then you’ll begin to listen to them and say I want to hear what you have to say. And they’ll start to tell you, either shouting at you or one which has crawled into my lap, just crawled in my lap and boohooed. So I just held it, let it boohoo, because it needed to boohoo and be loved.

Joffre McClung 23:34

Another one needed to have a tantrum, another one needed to ignore me. So you deal with each orphan and really come from the same place. But you deal with each orphan as they need to be dealt with. It’s their time. And it teaches you how to have compassion for the different parts of yourself. Because you’re learning how to have compassion for yourself. Does that make any sense?

Candice Wu 23:56

Oh, completely? Yeah, that’s what I’m practicing almost every day at this point. You know, what I find is that there are ways that these parts of me want a certain kind of loving or acknowledgment, and being with, that usually is just what I didn’t get before. And the hardest part about that is that it sometimes, I didn’t know what was needed. But as the ball got rolling with some support from other people, my healer, many healers along the way, it just started to get easier and easier. And now, it’s like second nature. But how did you find that place for you? How did you know what was needed? How did you know how to give it to yourself?

Joffre McClung 24:46

Well, like you, I had a lot of teachers and healers and helpers along the way that would show up and give me information. So I mean, I certainly didn’t do this on my own. A lot of helpers and healers and a lot of books also. And I sort of put it all together. Because I would do one thing and it wouldn’t get me that far — or would get me so far. And then it would stop. And then I would get information from someone else. And I would add that to it. So I sort of did layers.

Joffre McClung 25:10

And then I began to say, “You know what, I can do this.” I know — because being an actor helped a lot. Because I am able to dialogue a lot easier than people who aren’t used to dialoguing. Because I would practice line. So obviously practicing lines, it’s like talking to your orphan.

Candice Wu 25:25

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 25:26

So in that sense, it came a little easier if you’re in the performing arts and somebody who’s not. And there are times I didn’t know the answer either. And those are good times. Meaning, that means you’re going to leap when you get it. When they’re tough, and you can’t seem to get the answer, and you keep hitting the same wall, that’s a good sign that you’re getting ready to leap, or you wouldn’t be hitting that wall to begin with.

Joffre McClung 25:47

That’s the way I started to see it happen. When I’d hit that wall, and I kept going back to, let’s say, a particular orphan and kept getting sort of semi answers, but not the full answer, and not knowing what I needed to give them in return to bring them back to wholeness, it would be so frustrating. And so I go deeper with them. And I would listen a little deeper, and then I would find a new level. And eventually, I began to get hit of what it was they were needing for me. And it was my higher self who really helped me the most.

Joffre McClung 26:16

“I am key. I’m working with my higher self.” Like I said, I had a healer, I had people that channel that I worked with. And a lot of good guides and teachers. But really it was my higher self.

Joffre McClung 26:28

In the meditation, I always have everyone bring their higher self into the meditation, when we’re working with anything, frankly. But definitely when you’re working with your orphan, so that you feel like they’re holding your hand as you’re holding your orphan’s hand.

Joffre McClung 26:42

So as you’re talking to your orphan, your higher self can be talking to you. So my higher self would be the one because I would be boohooing with my orphan over whatever they need to do that because you’re feeling what they’re boohooing, you’re feeling it as well. So I would feel that and then when they were done, I would turn my higher self booing in her arms. And then I would get information from her —

Candice Wu 27:04

Beautiful.

Joffre McClung 27:04

That I had not gotten earlier. So really, it was the higher self-work that really came from a channel that I had worked with, who said you’ve got a higher self that’s dying to work with you, keep working with her.

Joffre McClung 27:15

So I kept working with my higher self. And I got that really strong. And so when I started this orphan work, she was right there with me.

Joffre McClung 27:22

Some nights, I turned her and said, “I don’t know what to say to them. Because I believe everything they’re saying.”

Joffre McClung 27:27

I would literally, I feel their pain, that what they felt when they were young. And I say, “I’m sorry, but I believe what they’re saying,”

Candice Wu 27:33

Right! I’m right there. This is me right now.

Joffre McClung 27:37

It was horrible, they didn’t deserve that, I can’t help them.

Joffre McClung 27:41

And I would turn to her, what do I say? And she would give me one sentence, one word, whatever it was, was enough to calm me down. And I’d be able to offer that word to the orphan and calm them down, and then I could start the work again.

Candice Wu 27:53

Beautiful.

Joffre McClung 27:54

So that’s the best example.

Joffre McClung 27:55

So higher self, I think, is key in doing any inner work, whether it’s self-love work or creation work, because I use her for creation work as well. But your higher self is key. And again, it comes from images or words it doesn’t, it’s not going to be big dialogues. My higher self doesn’t give me a huge, you know, paragraphs of wording. But she gives me an image or a word or a look or something that says it all.

Candice Wu 28:19

Beautiful.

Joffre McClung 28:20

And I can roll with that. So really, a higher self, I’d have to say was my biggest helper, and also my teachers.

Candice Wu 28:27

What a lovely reminder.

Joffre McClung 28:28

Yeah.

Candice Wu 28:28

It’s such a good reminder of everything is within. And I do experience that.

Joffre McClung 28:34

It really is. And you need your teachers and you need your books, and your seminars and your lectures or whatever it is, because we need to be around other people who are doing what we’re doing. So that’s a good thing. And you’re always going to have the help you need. But just like you said, “Everything you really do need is already inside of you. And part of the journey is figuring out that you can find it inside of you.” And sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes it’s tough. But that’s okay. Because you start to trust that you’re going to find it and you do. And like you said, “It does get easier and easier.” at least I found that way too.

Candice Wu 29:07

Yeah, I have to. And sometimes it’s gone up and down. But then, at some point, it started to get like more smooth sailing in a way. But I’m wondering, Joffre, what frustrations or challenges or struggles have you had lately?

Joffre McClung 29:26

Well, lately, I would say the biggest struggle is I have a family member who has liver cancer. So outwardly, I’m dealing with cancer again, which I dealt with eight years of everybody around me dying.

Joffre McClung 29:39

I’m not saying that to be funny, but it was true. My mother got cancer, my best friend, like my soul sister, got cancer, my aunt and uncle died. It’s like that, eight years was literally everybody dying around me. And of course, my job in New York City all kind of left and I moved to Texas, and then I had a three-year break, and in those three years, I wrote the two books.

Joffre McClung 29:58

And I thought, “Okay, this is a new path. This is not a path I had planned on, frankly. I always thought I’d be more performing. But this is still creative. Writing is creative.”

Joffre McClung 30:08

So I thought, “Okay, this is a good thing.”

Joffre McClung 30:10

And then all of a sudden, in January, I got the word that a family member had liver cancer. And I — that sort of took me by surprise. I thought I was kind of done with the “C” word so to speak.

Joffre McClung 30:23

Outwardly, that sort of threw me but in a weird way. Because this person is also the person who mirrored for me, my need for self-love, through her jealousy and anger is sort of in a weird way, I don’t know how to say this, except to say, it’s also a bit liberating.

Joffre McClung 30:41

I know that sounds odd to people. But when that person leaves the planet, because I will at some point, leave the planet. I truly will be free. I’m free now in all honesty, but I will literally truly be free from all ties, so to speak.

Joffre McClung 31:02

So really we’ll begin a new life for me. So, I’m sort of going back and forth kind of struggling with it. And yet owning that that’s what I’m feeling, so I shouldn’t disown, that’s what I’m feeling.

Candice Wu 31:12

It’s what you’re feeling.

Joffre McClung 31:14

So that’s what I’m feeling Candice.

Candice Wu 31:16

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And do you mind me asking if that person is currently still mirroring that need?

Joffre McClung 31:26

Oh, yeah, she did that recently.

Candice Wu 31:27

Right. Like in the same way as before she did.

Joffre McClung 31:30

She has not healed a thing, to be honest. I don’t think this lifetime. I think she had her opportunities when she was younger, but it’s not going to happen. She mirrored it a couple of weeks back out of the blue, the jealous rage came at me, sort of caught me a little off guard because I wasn’t expecting it. And when I hung up, I said this kind of got on me.

Joffre McClung 31:51

So I did a quick meditation and reminded myself who this person is. Because it was so shocking. She had not done that in quite a while. Because when my mother was ill, I would not have it. Because my mother also received some of the jealousy.

Joffre McClung 32:07

So it sort of caught me off guard. So I did a quick meditation, got it off me and reminded myself who this was. And that what she said does not mean it’s true. Because anybody who deals with people who are angry or jealous, they tend to bring in other people to their conversation.

Joffre McClung 32:24

Well, I’m not just the one saying it, everybody saying it. That tends to be how they work. They like to add people to their blame of you.

Candice Wu 32:33

To back it up.

Joffre McClung 32:34

Exactly. And it’s you know, you can see that out in politics. Now, we get into politics. But you see how people bring that up? Well, they said, you know, people say, when I hear that, I think “aha” you’re saying it, no one else is saying that. You’re saying it.

Candice Wu 32:46

Right. It’s easy to fall in that trap. But you’re saying you know better?

Joffre McClung 32:50

Yeah, I do but it caught me off guard and for a moment, — oh, my God, people are saying this about me. And then I thought, first of all, these people, I don’t know them, so who cares.

Joffre McClung 33:00

And then I thought, wait a minute, I know how this energy, this bully energy works. They always bring in other people to back them up, even though they’re actually lying.

Joffre McClung 33:10

So I had to remind myself of that fact. And so I was able to forgive it. And then I said, “You know what, she’s not going to get it this life.”

Joffre McClung 33:18

I got the lesson I needed from her. So I blessed her in that sense. But her energy still has it. She still has that angry energy. We’re still talking. I’m still friendly with her. I’m going to go see her next week. I do love her. In that sense. I do not perfectly want to be around her very much. But I do love her. And I do wish her well. And I have put out my order for my next life. She’s on her own in her next life.

Joffre McClung 33:47

She’s gonna have to work on jealousy again, and I’m not working on jealousy again.

Candice Wu 33:50

Right. Like, you don’t want to be paired again, is that what you’re saying?

Joffre McClung 33:54

No, exactly. I don’t mind if we passed in the hall or something’s fine. But as far as being family members, I think I’ll skip it the next slide until she gets this jealousy thing over with.

Candice Wu 34:04

Put your order in. Yeah.

Joffre McClung 34:06

Because I’m done with it. I got my list. And I’ve learned it and I don’t need it now.

Candice Wu 34:12

Sounds like you’ve had a lifetime of learning that.

Joffre McClung 34:15

Yeah, it was intense, I have to say.

Joffre McClung 34:16

We all have something within our families, or in our childhood or friends, or teachers or something, that if you came here to wake up, you’re going to have something that happens to you.

Candice Wu 34:17

Absolutely.

Joffre McClung 34:21

Something that’s not so pretty, that’s going to get you and bring you down so that you can build yourself back up, in some form or fashion. Mine happened to be from sort of that anger, jealousy, bully energy, other people, it’s something else. Mine happened to be that, and I learned my lesson. But —

Candice Wu 34:44

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 34:44

So that’s sort of what I’m dealing with now, that it’s okay to kind of be okay, that it’s — I’m going to be free from it.

Candice Wu 34:52

Wow.

Joffre McClung 34:53

And still, bless her, you know, and still wish her well. But I will be free from it fairly shortly, I would presume.

Candice Wu 35:01

Yeah. No, I think you’re touching on something about how you can see the reality of your life, like how you can see the experiences that are happening to, there’s a relational component, there’s the care that you have for her, there’s also the other feelings that you may have.

Candice Wu 35:19

And there’s this other level of what it means to you, and what this person has represented for you and shown you. And they don’t always sound relational, like that portion doesn’t always sound relational, as you’re saying, like, it’s a little bit hard to say this, but this is, I’ll be free of —

Joffre McClung 35:39

Well, yeah —

Candice Wu 35:39

Makes complete sense on that level.

Joffre McClung 35:41

Well, it’s true. And the thing is, what’s funny is the reason I can sort of see her separate from me, you know, I can see and bless her for what she taught me is because again, in one meditation I went into, I did a meditation to understand how this person is in so much pain. Because somebody who comes from a bully or jealous or angry place, is carrying a lot of pain, even though we may not want them around us and they’ve heard us horribly, we have to intellectually know they’ve got a lot of pain to act that way.

Joffre McClung 36:09

So I went into meditation so I could better understand where she’s coming from. So I could find forgiveness for her.

Joffre McClung 36:16

I was, you know, finishing up that little matrix for myself. And I went to meditation, and I saw her as a five-year-old and what she must have felt, and how she felt so unseen and heard, unlovable. And I got to the fact she felt so unloved. And once I felt that, I was able to understand why she was so full of anger and jealousy. So I was able to forgive her for how she behaved towards me. I still don’t want it around me, I still have my boundaries. But I can understand her pain that she’s carrying.

Joffre McClung 36:49

And also that, I agreed to do this because I needed to learn to take my power back from bullies, and jealousy, and angry people. Because obviously, that was the thing I needed to work on. So there’s sort of layers in there.

Joffre McClung 37:01

But I mean, when you can go into meditation and figure out what that person, why they’re being so hateful to you and understand what kind of pain they have, it does gives you some release.

Joffre McClung 37:11

And then to realize when they do that, because I do believe in many lifetimes — I know other people may not, but I happen to — that I realized she’s going to have another chance to get it, and that’s fine, because I told her and thanked her for showing me what I needed to get. And I did a whole thing on that, thanking her.

Joffre McClung 37:27

I didn’t do it to her face, because that she would not take it well. But I thanked her for showing me what I needed to learn about self-love and that I got it. So even though she may not have succeeded at jealousy and bullying, she did succeed in teaching me what I needed to learn. So she did do that well. So I did a whole thank you meditation on that. And thank her.

Candice Wu 37:48

She gave you such a beautiful opportunity. And painful one, but beautiful.

Joffre McClung 37:53

Painful. It was ugly, to be honest with you. I don’t wish it on anybody.

Candice Wu 37:58

Yeah. And at the same time, it sounds worth it. Would you say?

Joffre McClung 38:02

Well, again, if we look at life, he’s here to teach us something, and we’re here to learn and grow, then you got to figure out there’s something here that’s good. It’s got to be something good in this bullying and jealousy, anger. So I dealt with that. And I learned self-love. So it was a good thing.

Candice Wu 38:15

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 38:16

I don’t wish it on anyone. But again, that’s how we learn, isn’t it? Down here.

Candice Wu 38:20

Yeah. So I’m curious, as a writer, and as an actress as well, what’s the title of the current chapter of your life?

Joffre McClung 38:31

That’s a good question. What’s the title of this chapter of my life?

Joffre McClung 38:37

“Begin again.”

Joffre McClung 38:40

I just got that Begin Again. Because I feel like this is a brand new life. I’ve let go of my old life. It was a good life. I did it. I did it well, but I’ve let it go, who I was, what I wanted to do, sort of the dreams of youth and Middle Ages sort of let that go. And said, “Okay, what’s this again? I’ve done my healing. I’ve done my orphan work, what is I want to do?” And now I’m doing all this spiritual writing.

Joffre McClung 39:06

So it’s sort of begin again, and it’s sort of a brand new life with new fulfilling ideas, new dreams, new hopes, kind of like starting over again, frankly. I actually have one affirmation, I do is: “I’m now in the best years of my life, and all my remaining years are my best years.” So I sort of feel like this is my new beginning. Beginning again. Yeah. I would say definitely that.

Candice Wu 39:31

That’s really exciting.

Joffre McClung 39:32

Because we do get many chances to begin again, frankly. I mean, that, anybody thinks that when you’re in your 20s, you think you’re going to live one kind of life certain time, certain kind of framing, by 30, I have this. By 40, I have this. By 50, I have this.

Joffre McClung 39:45

Well, I’ve got news for you, if you’re going to live a full life, you might as well throw that away. Because it’s not going to live up to that. It’s going to go to the right, to the left, up and down. It’s going to go all over the place as it should. And hopefully — I’m on my third life, frankly.

Joffre McClung 39:59

They call it third act, but really to third law. I have my 20s and 30s. I hit my 30s and 40s. And I had my 50s and 60s to look at.

Joffre McClung 40:07

So it’s like, we know, okay, I’m doing a whole new life. I may have another one after this. I don’t know. Can’t look forward —

Joffre McClung 40:15

Right now, I’ve got my third act going, so to speak.

Candice Wu 40:18

Yeah. You know, I so relate to that. And I feel those words to begin again, and the refreshing space of not knowing and being so, it sounds like so joyful in that. So open about what’s coming. And it took me so long to get here. And I still come across these. They’re just fewer now and less big, I think. But the expectations, I didn’t realize were there, and then I bump up against it. I’m like, “Wait, what is that? What is that big disappointment?” or, “What is that I’m fighting for? But do I really want that anymore? Is that a past part of me?”

Candice Wu 40:58

Like lately, I’ve been wondering, do I really want children? Or, was that just something of the past, you know, my 16-year-old self that decided I wanted two kids? And what part of me still wants that? Do I really want to get married? All these things.

Joffre McClung 41:14

Oh, that’s good, you’re in a good place. That’s a good place you’re in.

Joffre McClung 41:17

Because those are the questions? No, I mean that seriously. I know. —

Joffre McClung 41:22

But that’s a good thing. Because you know, as women we’re raised for, even when we’re little and younger, we’re raised with certain things, putting our heads. We’re supposed to get married, supposed to have children, supposed to have this by 40s, supposed to have this by 50s. All these ideas — and I think it’s a good thing to stop and ask yourself: do I really want that?

Joffre McClung 41:38

I kind of knew weirdly enough that when I was younger, I remember announcing to my parents when I was in high school that I was never going to get married, and I had no intention get married. And if I did get married, I would never take their names.

Joffre McClung 41:50

For some reason that —

Candice Wu 41:51

A declaration.

Joffre McClung 41:52

I would not take their damn names, is what I shouted when I was in high school.

Joffre McClung 41:56

And what’s interesting enough is, I didn’t get married. Now, I did live with someone for nine years and had a loving relationship and then I moved on. But I kind of knew that in high school. Although, I still thought in my head, “Oh, I probably will get married. I’ll probably have kids, I’ll probably do what I’m supposed to do.”

Joffre McClung 42:12

But the truth of the matter is, I kind of knew I wasn’t going to live my life the way my mother had lived her life. Something in me told me I was going to do it slightly differently. And boy, did I do it differently.

Candice Wu 42:22

Sounds like it. Yeah.

Joffre McClung 42:24

That’s a good thing to ask yourself. Do you want children? Maybe do you want to adopt children? Maybe you want to foster kids?

Candice Wu 42:30

Right.

Joffre McClung 42:30

Maybe you want to have children that you’re helping therapeutically? Yeah, who knows?

Candice Wu 42:36

Someone asked me, do I want to be a grandmother?

Candice Wu 42:38

And I was like, “Yes.” And then I was like, “Wow, I really have a dilemma here.”

Candice Wu 42:44

Well, I’m not sure if I want kids, but I want to be a grandmother.

Joffre McClung 42:47

But you can be a grandmother to children without having to have kids, you can find a way. You may find through your therapeutic, you may find a group of kids that need some help. You may find kids who —

Candice Wu 42:59

This is so true.

Joffre McClung 43:00

Again, you want to be a grandparent without having to actually raise children, the universe can find a way. That, I do believe. So I think you do want children, you may not want to give birth to children.

Candice Wu 43:10

No, I do. I want that part. I have a really special place for birthing and for mothers and babies. And I think it’s the — and I used to be an art teacher and do a lot of therapy with kids and families, and so I think I just kind of got, “childrened” out. A part of me has. You know, just kind of burned out on that. But the years of like to the, I don’t know, 20 — not sure about.

Candice Wu 43:41

And you know, I have so many friends right now with young babies. And so I get the joy of going in and not leaving.

Joffre McClung 43:52

There’s nothing good about leaving the children once you’ve loved them and played with them, they’re really lovely about not having to go through that, and not having to go through teenage years.

Candice Wu 44:00

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 44:00

Here are some good things. I actually, again, it’s the thing about your beliefs like I know I’ve done children, many lifetimes. So it was like this lifetime, I took a break.

Joffre McClung 44:08

I knew I needed to do my inner work. Somehow, I didn’t know that but I knew it, even if that sounds odd. I thought it was all going to be about acting. But now I look, it’s all about what I’m doing now, my whole life has been filled to this moment, although I love acting. And I still love acting. But, and I’m actually using it when I teach classes in a weird way. I’m contorted in being a performer. So in a weird way, it all comes together.

Joffre McClung 44:30

But I think, what you said about leaving, having children and being able to leave them is not a bad thing, to be honest with you. But also you might be changing who you are, who you were when you’re 20 and who you are in your 30s is different, and who you’re in your 40s is different.

Joffre McClung 44:47

And your dreams do change. Like you were saying something about beginning again. That, that was a good phrase, but — and I look and I realized, when you’ve done your homework and you’ve healed, really healed your past, and healed your orphans, and you’re coming from rooted self-love, you do get a new life and your dreams do change.

Candice Wu 45:06

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 45:06

And so you may have new dreams that you may not have even considered. Now that you’ve been healing things and moving and more into your power, you may, those dreams may be completely different. And you’re going to leave room for that, going to leave room for it to be different.

Candice Wu 45:19

That’s absolutely what I’ve experienced in my life.

Candice Wu 45:23

And someone had asked me recently, like, when did you get involved with horses? And their perception was, I’ve been with horses forever. And I think that is true on some level. But in this lifetime, I only started being with horses one year ago, and that surprise this person a great deal. Because I’ve been really in it now. And that was the gem coming out of that moment was, we can change our life at any moment. We can shift something so big. And I do feel like, that is a big shift. Shifting my life to be around horses and be with them, it’s continuing to unfold.

Candice Wu 46:02

But I would have never known that 5 years ago, 10 years ago, especially, you know, when I was, I don’t know, 15, 20 years old, deciding, trying to decide what my life would be like. But I’ve definitely found what you’re saying, as well, that each step of healing, it’s more opening, and then more comes in. Things I didn’t even know would be ever involved in my life. So that’s really cool. You have that too.

Joffre McClung 46:30

Oh, yeah. And you don’t know — that’s part of growing older and getting wiser. And not just because I say older. And I have to be careful because I know older people who have no wisdom. So I’ve got to be careful with that.

Joffre McClung 46:40

There are people who get older who leave the planet and not learned anything. But if you stay awake and as you get older, you begin to realize that life does bring you new things when you’re ready for it and you’ve done the work for it.

Joffre McClung 46:52

You were ready for the horses. And what’s funny is you probably had many lifetimes with horses.

Candice Wu 46:57

I feel that, yeah. It’s coming back.

Joffre McClung 46:59

Probably had a deep connection with horses. And so you did whatever you needed to do, to be open now to receive those horses that you didn’t even dream of when you were 15 or 16. Or, when you were 20. That’s what the universe — Like I didn’t dream of writing books. I thought I’d be on Broadway doing my thing, and maybe doing some film work and living my life. And then my life took a 180-degree turn, and I had to do something to pull myself out of that second dark night which was when everybody was dying around me. And I decided, all right, what I’m going through and I wrote the first book which was helping my friend deal with Stage IV Breast cancer, that was a 180-degree turn. And I wrote that kind of angrily to be honest with you.

Candice Wu 47:45

Emotions as navigation. There you go.

Joffre McClung 47:47

Oh, Lord have mercy! I was like, “Higher self, you want me to write about what I’m going through?”

Joffre McClung 47:51

Oh my Lord! I just want to get back to what I was doing. And I thought, well, I’ll do it. It’ll get her quiet on my back.

Candice Wu 47:57

Get this out of the way, go back to what I was going to do.

Joffre McClung 48:00

I’ll write this darn book and I’ll now wake my inner self up. And I wrote the book and that kind of got my creative juices going.

Candice Wu 48:10

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 48:11

And then when I looked at it a few months later, I thought, Okay, well, I put the word out there that I’m spiritual. Everybody, you know, I had two groups, those who knew I was spiritual and those who knew me in my career. I kind of kept them separate. And I thought, well, the words out there now, they now know —

Candice Wu 48:12

You’re out.

Joffre McClung 48:15

That I’m a spiritual person.

Candice Wu 48:17

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 48:18

About, spiritual closet, so to speak. Now, when I looked at the first book, I thought, you know what, I gotta really say, how I got to self-love.

Joffre McClung 48:35

The first book talks about when we’re in self-love, but we don’t tell people how to get to self-love. So I wrote the second book. But all this is to the point. I didn’t plan on that. This was not part of my plan. And yet, when I look back at my life, I realized, of course, it was part of my plan.

Joffre McClung 48:50

In fact, I wrote a movie with my best friend who the first book was about, and we wrote a book together in the movie.

Candice Wu 48:56

How funny.

Joffre McClung 48:58

And she always wanted to be a teacher. She was a channel and she spiritually did all the spiritual stuff together. And we were also actors together. And she wanted to be this. She wanted to do what I’m doing. Now she passed on, and I can hear her laughing going, “Yeah, I want to do what you’re doing. You’re supposed to be doing what you’re doing.”

Candice Wu 49:15

This is like I’m already out.

Joffre McClung 49:17

Yeah, I’ll do that in the next life. And I thought how weird that I did a 180-degree turn. And I’m actually doing my best friend that I put in a movie, 10 years before I knew it. So the universe is funky.

Candice Wu 49:30

Well, we are funky, right?

Candice Wu 49:32

We like to leave ourselves clues and then forget about them, or like ignore them. And then we find them later. Like, wow, right!

Joffre McClung 49:39

It’s just weird. When I wrote that in this book, The second book, and I thought, “Man that first short film I made. Oh my god. I really did it.”

Candice Wu 49:51

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 49:51

And that was just a film about you know, making creating dreams. You know, it was a little film about creating dreams.

Joffre McClung 49:56

But the universe, you may have horses now, who knows what you’re going to have in five years.

Candice Wu 50:01

I have no clue.

Candice Wu 50:03

No clue, but I have some ideas. But then, what I know is that keeps changing so much that I just don’t put too much to them, except for the ones that are like right now, and coming up.

Joffre McClung 50:13

Living in the present. I told a friend recently, he was getting off the charted, so to speak, because he was thinking, “Oh, I’m getting older, what’s going to happen when I’m old, and I only have a place till -?”

Joffre McClung 50:22

He went way down the pike. And what he didn’t have and how horrible it can be when he’s old and didn’t have any money.

Joffre McClung 50:28

I said, “First of all, you got to stop going that far down the pike.”

Joffre McClung 50:31

There’s nothing you can do that far down the pike, you’re just putting something in your head, and getting yourself all excited about it. I said, “I’ve learned now that my life keeps taking these weird angles.”

Joffre McClung 50:41

I look about maybe three months ahead. And that’s about as far as I look, just to kind of know: this is where I’m going, this is kind of what I want to create. And I don’t look much further, because it keeps me calmer. I don’t sit there and think about what am I going to be doing five years from now? Because I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Candice Wu 50:58

Yeah, I am right where you are actually, that’s exactly where I am. And it’s funny because my dad has started to realize that about me and he is the planner. And that’s where my planner, the —

Joffre McClung 51:12

I’ve got a planner.

Candice Wu 51:13

Yeah, he plans everything. And once it’s all planned out, it comes from this, like, the desire for security and stability comes from him. And lately, he’s realized, “Yeah, I don’t plan more than about two months ahead anymore.” And he’s like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Right. That is… that’s you.”

Joffre McClung 51:32

Well, that’s good news that he gets that.

Candice Wu 51:35

He gets it.

Joffre McClung 51:35

A lot of people would say, “No, you need to be planning now.”

Candice Wu 51:41

That’s what he used to say. And he’s like, “Are you sure? You know? Like, that’s not? I don’t think that’s gonna be okay.”

Candice Wu 51:46

“No, Dad, it’s okay.”

Joffre McClung 51:49

Say you taught him to see — you actually teaching him something. That’s the cool thing. —

Candice Wu 51:54

He’s seeing something different. Yeah.

Joffre McClung 51:56

Yeah. I mean saying that, “Hey, my way may work for me. But you know what, it doesn’t have to work for everyone.” So you’ve taught him something.

Candice Wu 52:02

Thank goodness!

Joffre McClung 52:02

That’s kind of cool.

Candice Wu 52:03

I mean, that’s — Yeah, that’s so intertwined with my lesson with him, because one of my lessons with him was to be in myself and trust myself and not allow his idea to be mine.

Joffre McClung 52:21

Got you!

Candice Wu 52:22

It, which was like, I experienced it as more imposed on me, in the past, out of his own care and fear.

Joffre McClung 52:29

Always out of love. I mean —

Candice Wu 52:30

Right, always, but so we’ve both come a long way.

Joffre McClung 52:35

Well, that’s pretty exciting.

Candice Wu 52:36

Yeah.

Candice Wu 52:38

So I’m going to switch gears. I recently had this dream that I lost this beloved water bottle.

Joffre McClung 52:49

Wow, okay. And you love this water bottle.

Candice Wu 52:51

On an airplane — I loved it so much. I just, I loved it so much. And I was devastated in the dream. And when I got home, after my flight, my mom said, “You know, you’re just probably better off without it. Just let it go. You’re better off without it.”

Candice Wu 53:09

And here I am in this dream, kind of like obsessing over how am I going to find the next water bottle, the better — Like, “No, this won’t do and that won’t do. I wanted that one.”

Candice Wu 53:19

And she’s like, “You’re probably better off.”

Candice Wu 53:22

And so that’s been sticking with me and I’m experiencing — getting rain.

Candice Wu 53:27

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 53:28

I love dreamwork. I love to dream.

Candice Wu 53:29

I was wondering, that’s leading to my question. I’m wondering, what have you dreamed lately that, in your night dreams?

Joffre McClung 53:37

Well, you know that your mother in that dream was your higher self most likely, you do know that?

Candice Wu 53:42

Yes. And it is my mother too. It’s both.

Joffre McClung 53:45

My mother — Yeah, exactly. My higher self when she first appeared to me, and she appeared at — looking like a beautiful version of my mother. Sort of in a half-dream state that I was doing. And then she sort of shifted out where I don’t have to see her anymore, just feel her. But yeah, that’s definitely your mother, except for your higher self saying you don’t need what you think you need. You’ve outgrown it, is what she’s really telling you.

Candice Wu 54:00

That’s right. It’s time to let go.

Joffre McClung 54:08

I used to do so much dream work. When I was started — I’ve always done dream work. Even when I was younger, I’d have dreams over and over again. And then when I started the spiritual work, I’d have really mega dreams. I call them epic dreams, one symbol after another symbol, after another symbol.

Joffre McClung 54:23

And I worked with them, you know, worked with them immensely. And all of a sudden, when my mother passed, my dream stopped. And I thought what is happening here? I’ve never not remembered my dreams. And they just stopped. And I was like, “Okay, this isn’t good.”

Joffre McClung 54:40

Because I mean, I had dreams where I had guides talk to me, my higher self talk to me. I would go to other planets. I would see symbols. I would talk to my — you know. I did a lot of homework in my dreams and my dreams just stopped.

Joffre McClung 54:51

And I remember dealing with a channel that I worked with, and she goes, “Well, you don’t need your dreams right now.”

Joffre McClung 54:58

You’re grieving, number one, and you’re doing your homework. I was doing, finishing up my homework on my orphans. I was grieving so I use the energy from my orphan work. And they went away for a while. And that was really scary for somebody — I don’t channel. I don’t do visions. I don’t see entities. I don’t do any of that stuff, but I did dreams. And I could really help people with their dreams.

Joffre McClung 55:18

So when I didn’t have my dreams, that was kind of scary. Well, I’m happy to say my dreams, they sort of come back not to the extent that they were for years. But now when they come back, there’s just a quick message. And then they drift off. Just a quick message.

Joffre McClung 55:34

I had one recently that was so cute. I was calling a kitty in. And kitties being that feminine energy, calling a kitty in, and with a kitty, was a little fox, like a baby fox. A red-faced little fox, red and white-faced, almost like a cartoon looking fox. And it was there saying hello to me. And it was so cute. And I said, “Well, all right, I guess you can come in too,” so I let it come in the house. And that was the end of the dream.

Joffre McClung 55:59

I was saying there’s so short now that used to be epic. And I thought, what in the world was that message?

Joffre McClung 56:05

So what’s this fox — other than I love animals, obviously. But I thought interesting. I thought well, the feminine is healthy. I’m letting — you know, taking care of the feminine energy. And I thought a fox is sort of like a — sort of, got that feminine energy. But it’s also got a wise energy to it. It’s got a smart energy to it. It’s got smart, wise, they — that negative is sly, but when you take the negative off and put the wise, smart, I thought okay, I must be — I’ve been asking to have my teacher awaken a bit more. Since I’m doing this, let’s awaken my inner teacher a bit more.

Joffre McClung 56:41

So I took that as a message that my inner teacher is awakening. That’s how I took the fox. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But that’s how I took it.

Candice Wu 56:48

Thank you for sharing your dream. And I also hear that begin again right here. And that this fox baby is with the kitty, which is so spiritual. And it’s this new birthing, new energy coming in. To begin again.

Joffre McClung 57:07

You’re totally right. That’s why it was a child fox. Not an old fox, but a newborn, ready to go little fox. And I thought, “Well, all right. You’re so cute, I will let you in the house. Which I’m grateful for now.

Joffre McClung 57:21

I used to have dreams when the image will scare me. I used to have a lot of snake dreams. And I was afraid of snakes. I didn’t like it. But I understood that information the snake was giving me and then eventually I began to hold the snakes in the dream, which I was really grateful for. So I was happy it was a fox and not a snake.

Candice Wu 57:38

Oh, and I have one more question for you. I love that. This is a different one. In your group of friends or in your friendships, what role do you play?

Joffre McClung 57:50

I would say caretaker/almost a little bit mentor in a weird way.

Joffre McClung 57:58

I’ve always been a caretaker, cancer and at nature. So I do take care of people, I like to put the dip up, put the chips, and put the drinks, you know. I take care of people to make sure they have what they need.

Joffre McClung 58:10

But I would say I’m also somebody, when somebody is in deep trouble, I tend to be the one they call. That’s why I say mentor. I don’t know the right word. Mature mentors the right word. But, when they’re in trauma and they have drama or trauma. I tend to be the one they call. So whatever that energy is, I tend to be that one because I stay calm.

Joffre McClung 58:33

I think having been raised around a bully. I’ve learned to stay calm in the midst of a lot of drama around me.

Candice Wu 58:39

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 58:40

So I can stay calm and help them so I’m hoping I help people. And also I’m pretty fun. I do remind people the most important energy is play.

Candice Wu 58:46

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 58:47

Big on play.

Candice Wu 58:47

I hear that in you.

Joffre McClung 58:49

Play is so important. I cannot tell you. If you can’t play, you need to look at why you can’t play because you need to add play to your life, people. It’s important.

Candice Wu 58:58

You need to have play in your life, people.

Joffre McClung 59:00

You do. You don’t have life for no reason but to play.

Candice Wu 59:04

How are you playing now?

Joffre McClung 59:06

I swim in the pool that we have in the backyard. I swim and I play in the pool. I play with animals, the kitties, I did actually have a fox a year ago. I talk the fox, I talked to the birds, to the squirrels, to the little possums, little raccoons. I dance, I put music on and dance — I love to dance so I dance.

Joffre McClung 59:29

I just like to play in it when my friends will put on music and dance and laugh. I just like to have a good time. I like to play such a euphoric energy and such a creative energy. And it’s the energy of how we create our realities, when we’re in a place of joy. So I’m trying to move them more into play. And so I can create from that place of joy versus creating to keep the pain away. I don’t need to do that anymore.

Candice Wu 59:52

Yeah. Right.

Joffre McClung 59:54

I need to play and create with joy.

Candice Wu 59:57

Now, I have one last question for you. And it connects with play and it connects with roles.

Candice Wu 1:00:03

As an actress, what roles did you play in the past, typically? And what would you do now? Or, what would you be interested in now?

Joffre McClung 1:00:13

In the past, I tended to play probably firm women, strong women. I was taller than most of the women in my class. My voice can go deeper so I play strong, firm women, which I was very comfortable with. I’m very good. You know — I like that a lot.

Joffre McClung 1:00:28

I would say now, I would add a bit more. I wouldn’t say humor but a bit more. Like, what’s the word? The word’s right there. I can’t find it. But it’s a bit more sass to it than I used to be allowed to have. Because I was always the firm one, the strong one. I always say a bit more sass. A bit more irreverent than I used to play, because I was, like I said, always the strong one, the firm one, domineering kind of woman, career woman usually cast as strong. That’s a bit sassier. I play a bit more sass, bit more fun, or irreverent.

Candice Wu 1:01:08

Yeah.

Joffre McClung 1:01:09

A bit more rebelish because that’s really what my spirit is even though out with —

Candice Wu 1:01:15

I can hear it in you.

Candice Wu 1:01:16

You definitely have “strong firm woman” in you. But this rebel, fire, sass, and fun like, it’s like busting out of you.

Joffre McClung 1:01:27

Oh good.

Candice Wu 1:01:28

Just in case you weren’t sure —

Joffre McClung 1:01:34

So I would say definitely, a rebellious, sassy kind of woman.

Candice Wu 1:01:37

A bit of swagger.

Joffre McClung 1:01:39

Oh, big swagger.

Candice Wu 1:01:40

A big swagger?

Candice Wu 1:01:42

A kind swagger, but a swagger.

Candice Wu 1:01:44

Yeah. A loving one.

Joffre McClung 1:01:47

You got it. A loving swagger.

Candice Wu 1:01:50

We’ve claimed it now loving swagger —

Joffre McClung 1:01:53

Swagger with a big laugh. Yes, that’s what I would —

Candice Wu 1:01:57

That’ll be your description on the podcast episode.

Joffre McClung 1:02:01

Okay, there you go.

Candice Wu 1:02:04

Well, thank you so much, Joffre! This is lovely. Is there anything else you want to share before we go?

Joffre McClung 1:02:10

Just if you’re interested in any of my books or if you happen to be in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I’m doing some classes. You can check it out on my website. Other than that, just keep doing your inner work. It makes a big difference, people.

Candice Wu 1:02:23

Absolutely. Thank you so much. And where can people find you Joffre?

Joffre McClung 1:02:28

You can find me at joffremclung.com. You can also just type in, itsallaboutselflove.com and it’ll take you right to my website.

Candice Wu 1:02:40

Wonderful!

Joffre McClung 1:02:42

Thank you so much for having me! You are such a doll, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you.

Candice Wu 1:02:46

Oh my gosh, I enjoyed this so much. And you are so much fun. And you provide so much wisdom. Thank you so much, Joffre. And all of the links that you shared, everything you’re sharing here will also include on the show notes. The episode is at CandiceWu.com/joffre. So all of that’s there for you. So you don’t have to go digging around as well. And I’m just so grateful you were here today. Thank you.

Joffre McClung 1:03:11

Thank you and have a great day!

Candice Wu 1:03:14

I hope you are just as energized as I am through this conversation, through learning about Joffre, her life and what she’s teaching. So many of the themes and ideas she’s talking about are the themes of the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 1:03:29

So if you’re interested in more, check her out at itsallaboutselflove.com and be sure to check out her experiential that’s coming out later this week. She’s going to offer a meditation and healing experience to support you in loving yourself.

Candice Wu 1:03:45

Be sure to check out more interviews other healing experiences, learning about embodiment and self-love on the Embody Podcast at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

Candice Wu 1:03:56

And you can stay informed about my workshops, retreats, experiences with horses and other podcast episodes through my newsletter, which goes out every two weeks. You can sign up at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 1:04:11

So just going off of the episode today, I leave you with the thoughts about where can you begin again in your life, or where is the new beginning and opening that’s already happening now.

Candice Wu 1:04:26

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

Introduction to Joffre’s Experience

Candice Wu 0:00

When you don’t take up the practice of loving all the parts of you, the orphaned parts of you, the parts that are hidden, tucked away or abandoned, may shout to wake you up. Fortunately, here, Joffre McClung shows us how to love our orphan self.

She guides you in a giant hug to your orphan self. You’ll connect with your higher and divine loving self to support you in being in a safe place while entering the cave of your orphaned self to heal any wounds, restore wholeness, love, and worthiness.

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.

Full Podcast

You’ll find a full podcast with Joffre McClung, a spiritual personal growth author, motivational speaker and common sense advocate in her episode at CandiceWu.com/joffre.

In that episode, she shows us self-love with sass, swagger, and a big laugh. She talks about her story of how she had done everything to have a good life and hit rock bottom at age 29. And about how you can embrace your nemesis to love yourself more deeply. So without further ado, here’s Joffre, with her experience of embracing your orphaned self.

Let’s Begin With Joffre

Joffre McClung 2:00

I’m going to be taking you on a meditation to your safe loving space.

We’re going to invite in your higher self and then we’re going to meet your orphaned one, the forgotten one, the one you may have shunned.

Close your eyes and let’s take three deep long breaths with long exhale out.

You continue taking long deep breaths, relaxing your body and clearing your mind of all thoughts.

And then I’m going to be counting you down some steps and when we reach level 10, you’ll be in your safe, loving space. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Relax every muscle in your body.

Seven. Eight. Going deeper.

Nine. Ten.

Safe Space

Now I want you to look around and see your safe space around you. Perhaps its nature or perhaps it’s a building or a temple. Wherever it is, it is your safe space where you can do anything. Be anything. Express anything with harm to none.

If you’re outdoors, are there trees? Is it the mountains or beach? Or even a cave, wherever you need it to be, it is your safe space.

If it’s the building, is it soft, smooth, or is it rough? Are there windows?

Notice what’s around your safe space. Perhaps there’s a bridge nearby or perhaps a waterfall. Perhaps a larger river making wonderful sounds near you.

What’s under your feet? Is it grass? Or perhaps it’s stone, or brick, or gravel.

What sort of light is in your safe space? Or light coming through the tops of the trees bouncing around on the ground. Perhaps there’s moonlight. Perhaps it’s bright sunshine. Perhaps there’s candles if you’re in a building, wherever you are, it’s your safe space where no harm can come to you and only loving nurturing.

Add Loving Images

Now I want you to start adding loving images to the safe space. Images that invoke a feeling of loving your heart.

If you’re outdoors, perhaps it’s a tree that branches reach down and embrace you in a giant hug. Letting you know that you’re cared for and that you are mattered.

Perhaps it’s letting light coming through the trees dancing around you. Perhaps it’s flowers popping up around your feet, lifting you gently off the ground. Perhaps you lay down on the ground and you feel it rising lower like a pregnant mother’s belly, letting you know that you’re cared for and that you’re safe.

Whatever image it is, allow it to give you a feeling of love.

Perhaps it’s a pet that licks your face or purrs against your legs.

Perhaps it’s wild animals rolling around or lying across you, gently loving you, caring for you.

Perhaps it’s light coming through the windows in your building, dancing around you. Gold, white, pink, blue, silver lights dancing all around you, letting you know that you’re cared for and you’re seen.

Make this your safe, loving space. Perhaps it’s angels. Whatever you need to feel loved and cared for, is coming into your safe space now.

Golden Orb and Divine Love

And then I want you to look off into the distance, and I want you to see a golden orb moving towards you.

It’s beautiful, golden orb and it’s getting closer and closer, and you’re actually feeling a bit excited by seeing this golden orb, knowing it’s a gift for you, that it’s for you.

And then all of a sudden, the golden orb is in front of you, as large as you are.

Now I want you to reach your hand into that golden orb and I want you to take another hand inside that orb.

I want you to gently pull that hand outward and out of the orb steps your higher self this divine part of yourself that has all the knowledge and power of the Divine Love.

This higher self that has your back, that love’s you unconditionally, just the way you are.

Perhaps you see a being in front of you or perhaps you just get a feeling of this higher self. Perhaps it’s a gentle breeze across your cheek, that when it touches your cheek, you feel love, even for just a second.

Perhaps it’s a pair of eyes that look deep into your eyes twinkling with delight and joy to be looking into your eyes.

Perhaps you feel a gentle hand on your back. Perhaps you feel arms wrapped around you giving you a warm, deep, loving hug.

However you need this higher self to present itself to you, allow them to do it in a manner that’s appropriate for you, that feels loving and safe to you.

And then I want you to allow these higher self to take your hand and to gently start to nudge you down the left path of your safe, loving space.

Now it’s a path that perhaps you’ve never gone down before or perhaps you have gone down this path, but your higher self is taking you down this path that is still part of your loving space but to a different area.

So follow your higher self down this path and notice what’s under your feet, perhaps it’s changed, perhaps it’s stones now or brick, or gravel.

Your higher self looks at you, gently squeezes your hand, letting you know, you’re going to be safe wherever they take you.

And you trust this, you keep following your higher self and you climb to the top of the hill.

Entering the Cave

And when you reach the top of the hill, you look down the other side of the hill and you notice the cave entrance.

And again, your higher self squeezes your hand letting you know you can do this, they have your back and that you will be safe and cared for. For this cave is where your orphan is living and it’s time to meet this orphan. This one that you have forgotten, or perhaps shunned, or perhaps safely put away so we will not be hurt anymore.

So your higher self leads you down the hill towards the entrance to this cave. And now you find yourself at the entrance of the cave.

Now I want you to take a moment and I want you to listen to what’s coming out at the cave.

Are there any sounds? Perhaps there’s crying coming out of the cave. Perhaps there’s shouting and screaming. Maybe there’s a gentle whimpering coming out of the cave. Or, perhaps there’s no sound at all there’s just an emptiness.

And now your higher self will guide you into the cave to meet the appropriate orphan that’s been waiting to meet you, that needs to meet you, that needs to be heard, to be listened to, being allowed to tell their story, share their pain, so that you can bring them back to wholeness through compassionate understanding, and love.

And there are many rooms in this cave and you notice all the different rooms. But your higher self has one particular room they’re taking you to.

Find Your Orphan

So you follow your higher self to this room. Now as you enter the room, maybe slightly dark, but you can still see around the room. And I want you to look around the room and find your orphan.

Perhaps it’s dirty and filthy and uncared for living in the cave, crawled into a corner staring at you. Perhaps it has its back to you. Refusing to notice you. Refusing to acknowledge you. Perhaps it’s standing in the middle of the room shouting at you. Having a tantrum, full of anger and rage at you. Perhaps it’s huddled in a little corner in a fetal position unable to move.

However you need to see this orphan, allow it to be the way it needs to be.

This is the first line of compassion, understanding you’re going to practice with this orphan is allowing it to be the way it needs to be.

So I want you to take a moment and introduce yourself to this orphan in a gentle, caring way.

Let it know that you are its future self and that you’ve lived. And that now you’re here to help it live. And to let go of the past and to be made whole again.

Let it know that it no longer needs to be in charge, that it now has you and your higher self

Let it know you’re sorry that you have forgotten it or shunned it, or tucked it away to be safe, that you just didn’t know better and that now you do.

Perhaps you can gently touch your orphan or perhaps you can’t. Perhaps an orphan runs and crawls into your lap. Perhaps the orphan refuses to look at you.

Whatever way the orphan needs to be, allow it to be and keep letting it know that you love it and you care for it, and you will be back as many times as you need to allow it to tell its story, to gain trust in you, to share its pain with you. So that you can help it to be made whole again and that you will be back.

Thank Your Orphaned and Higher Self

Thank it for allowing you to visit it and be with it. And again apologize for not having cared for before now, to offer some love to this orphan. And then allow your higher self to offer love to this orphan in the manner it needs to receive its love.

Perhaps it runs to your higher self and allows it to be hugged. Or, perhaps your higher self puts a globe around the orphan to let it know it’s protected and safe from harm. Perhaps your higher self, put angels all around it, to let it know it’s cared for and nurtured.

Allow your higher self to offer love to this orphan now.

Thank your higher self for its love. And once again, thank your orphan for allowing it to visit Remind it you will be back. And it’s safe until you return because it has been the love of your higher self.

To take your higher self’s hand, allow your higher self to help you leave the cave now, knowing your orphan is safe and cared for until you return.

So the higher self leads you back to your safe loving space now.

Receive Love

Now it’s time to allow your higher self to offer love to you in the manner that you need to receive a lot.

Perhaps it is a gentle hug or perhaps it’s a hand upon your heart, allowing your higher self to take the pain you may have picked up from your orphan out of your heart.

In whatever manner you need it, allow your higher self to offer you some love and nurturing now.

And then thank your higher self for their love and let them know you’ll be back to be with them again. So they can teach you what love should be like and what love should feel like that’s perfect for you.

And then thank yourself. Take a moment and thank yourself for taking the time to go with it and to do this work.

By being self-appreciative and having self-gratitude, helps you grow in your sense of self-love.

Transitioning

Now I’m going to be counting you out of your safe loving space, but know that you’re coming out of it with a lot more than what you came into it with and that stuff, that good stuff that the higher self put into you through their love, will be with you throughout the day.

Ten. Nine, Eight, Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Slowly open your eyes and know you began your orphan work and you will find your way back to self-love.

Have a joyful day.

Closing

Candice Wu 21:24

As you slowly make your way back to your space here today, the present moment, I hope you enjoyed this experiential with Joffre and be sure to check out her full episode at CandiceWu.com/joffre.

And feel free to connect with other healing experientials, guided meditations, and tools for self-love at CandiceWu.com/podcast.

See you next time on the Embody Podcast.

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.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 0:00

We’ve all cried and laughed, and I think that you can only do that when your spinning safe in the group that you’re showing that space with.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 0:05

I should remember — that on the plane ride home, I was just journaling, like as much as possible and trying to capture as much of the feeling and the emotions and the insights and all the stuff because I knew that once I got back to regular life, I could remember it, and I would be able to hold it even though regular life was going to happen.

Candice Wu 0:16

This episode gives you an inside look at the Soul Body Women’s Retreat of October 2018 with special guests straight from the retreat itself and gives you a little taste of what a 5-night immersion retreat can do for you.

Candice Wu 0:30

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 0:39

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 1:18

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the body podcast. It’s really great to have you here. I wanted to give you just a quick update about where I am right now. I am sitting watching the sunset on the coast of Costa del Sol, which is on the southern coast of Spain. I’m a bit outside of Marbella, between Malaga and Marbella in this little village called, Benalmádena. I have been in Spain for a few weeks, it has been a really interesting experience.

Candice Wu 1:26

I love Spain because of the character, little villages and just a small-town feel set right in the mountains and the water here. I love the food, the Tapas, and also the language which I’m still learning, Spanish. It’s tricky to communicate sometimes because they don’t know that much. I can say more than I can hear. Because people often speak really quickly for me, but I’m enjoying that learning process.

Candice Wu 2:09

It has been a bit tricky to go from place to place in search of a more long term stay. And for me, the long term is like over a month. I’d like to stay with my partner here for about six weeks, at this point, it’s coming down to five now. But finding a place here is not as easy as it was in Chiang Mai, Thailand when I was there. Here, most people want long term stays, or it’s looking at Airbnb. But I think that in some other places that more nomadic people are like, Tarifa, there will be something for us.

Candice Wu 2:57

I’ve been able to do a little bit of riding, horseback riding and that’s been wonderful. But what happened during my second ride was I wasn’t used to this very large horse and also not used to cantering. So the combination of the two, I went a little too quickly for my lesson and I ended up falling off twice, which is really interesting to fall and to know the mechanics in a sense of the nervous system, and how the nervous system might be taking it or what I might need in that experience, to help my nervous system not hold this in as traumatic and to let that whatever fear response in my body to complete so that I don’t take that with me, and until the next experience.

Candice Wu 3:48

So I spent some time working with the falls and they weren’t too bad, which is good. But at some point, I would like to work with another practitioner, a fellow practitioner or colleague or someone I can find out here to just do a little extra work with it, to make sure that that’s resolved. Because I did feel a lot of fear come up.

Candice Wu 4:11

I did work with my own healing coach, and, in not specifically somatic ways, but what came up afterward was a lot of past life trauma, actually. And some people have asked me, how do I know it’s a past life trauma? I don’t really know until I know and I had this sort of sense of why am I so terrified? Why is this bringing up so much fear? It’s like, seemed like more fear than what was warranted.

Candice Wu 4:42

But when I was working with my healer, it came up and she had asked me, do you feel like this is from a past life? And as soon as I said, Yes, like all of this emotion, just like flooded my body and move through true, which was very validating to the fact that it did seem like a past life.

Candice Wu 5:05

I’d love to talk about this experience a little more in a future podcast and working that up right now. But I just wanted to give you a little sense of what I’ve been doing here, beyond horseback riding and adjusting and trying to find a place. I’ve been still podcasting and working with my clients, one on one online, as well as just taking in the scenery here and enjoying, actually all the unexpected things that are happening, including, just this big dog walking up to me at the moment as we speak. He’s one of the dogs that live on this property. So all sorts of spontaneous and unpredictable things here do trigger me a lot and it’s just quite an adjustment. Every time I go to a new place to work with whatever comes up and to release even more attachment to the things that I am attached to.

Candice Wu 6:08

I had said it in my newsletter, I will not sacrifice the timing of working with my clients and the internet quality as I’m working with them online. And so a lot of these unexpected things seem to rub up against that and I even had a flight cancellation recently, which threw off my entire schedule by three days. And I worked around my clients to figure out the next flight. So it’s quite an adventure and ongoing learning.

Candice Wu 6:41

So aside from my adventures here and my travels, I want to share about the Soul Body Women’s Retreat, which happened a couple of weeks ago. I am just so happy to be able to share this with you. And that some of the retreat members are going to be a guest on this podcast. They have given me their feedback and it’s lovely to hear, especially given what I intended for this retreat, and what we all wanted coming into the retreat.

Candice Wu 7:10

So let’s talk about the retreat.

Candice Wu 7:14

The retreat was six days and five nights right inside Zion National Park. It was literally inside the park, set in the mountains, on private property, with a villa owned by a couple named Hank and Angie, and it was called True North villa. I love the name of the villa because the theme about it was that everyone finds their own true north and that every North that you find is true to you, which was exactly what this whole retreat was about. It was about finding yourself, being in alignment with you, and living from the space of your own mystery and magic, your own light and brilliance.

Candice Wu 7:56

So, already from the beginning, it was synchronous and just touching. And as we stepped into the villa, there were tons of drums of all kinds, crystals everywhere, like, I can’t even believe how many crystals were there, every corner of the space was touched with beauty.

Candice Wu 8:20

I chose this space very intuitively and something in me just knew when I saw the pictures of the place that this would be just right. Something about the bridging of Hopi tribe, as well as Mormons in that area in the history of Zion National Park, the bridging of consciousness and religion, the diversity of those two cultures together, brought a very special meaning to the place and it felt like an incredibly rich land. It was very red. So it brought us right to the root of our bodies where that depth and richness of land and earth in connection with the sky, in connection with our spirituality, our body, and spirit.

Candice Wu 9:10

So Soul Body was the name of the retreat and part of this theme was that we work with all the aspects of the soul, all of soul karma, or the tendencies of who we are over history, past life, as well as ancestry to complete what’s there, only what’s necessary in order for us to be truly in touch and aligned with our spirit which is clear of any soul history and desire that’s based in past experience, and is very present and creative in this moment. So this earth and sky magical place, these mountains and open-air just lent itself to the magic of the healing and transformation that each of the women wanted on this retreat.

Candice Wu 10:13

I set up this retreat in a really special way. I wanted each woman to bring their specific intentions. And I had a consultation with each one of them prior to the retreat so that they could share with me where they were in their life and what they wanted, what they struggled with, and who they wanted to be. What they desired out of the retreat. And I think that was incredibly fruitful because, by the time everyone arrived, it was as if I already had a pulse on who they were, and what they wanted. And in that way, each woman cocreated this retreat and we developed the collaboration synchronously over the time we spent together.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 10:55

You know, obviously, the fact that you had kind of a pre-session with everybody, was really awesome because it allowed everybody to, hey, I mean, for the people I don’t know you, it allows them to get comfortable with you, and allows them to ask whatever questions they might have. And I think it allows you to figure out, you know, where they’re at, and what they need.

Candice Wu 11:14

So over the course of the six days, we had time for Yoga, to support our bodies and movement. We talked about spirituality and the universe and how we manifest, how our bodies give expression to the intentions that are underneath both conscious and unconscious. We had meditation experiences right inside of the mountains and in caves. We took adventures in the leisure time where we got to go hiking or climb Angel’s landing, which is this steeper mountain that you can go up to where they say that angels land.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 11:57

I don’t know how I even came across Angel’s Landing as a hike, I was probably googling things to do in Utah. But I just had this overwhelming sense that I needed to be there. And so as you know, became slightly obsessed with, getting everyone on board, on the Angel’s Landing bus to go there. So yeah, I mean, it’s just such, for me, I think being there yesterday was confirmation that I was meant to be there. It was a spiritual experience for me, just being there in the energy of the place, just the magnificence, the beauty of the place is just breathtaking. A mind-blowing moment of camaraderie and bonding, which is a shared experience, which I think we’ll all remember for different reasons, maybe.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 12:46

But yeah, it’s amazing. And just being there was just confirmation that I knew I was meant to be there. I think some things in life, the people that you meet, or if you are called to go somewhere or, you know, experienced something, and you can’t quite put your finger on there. I think that’s just for me, it was just another evidence or another sign that sometimes you just need to trust in your, you know, your inner notches.

Candice Wu 13:14

Yeah.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 13:14

To follow that.

Candice Wu 13:15

Right.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 13:16

To follow your inner GPS, because you never know where it’s going to lead you to. And I think that I followed my inner delight, my body just fill up with joy and excitement and that was really, you know, being there at the top of Angel’s Landing, and I knew why.

Candice Wu 13:36

Some people took their leisure time to walk around the area of the villa, which had a medicine wheel, it had a labyrinth and could go to very private hikes and caves right in that area. And the deepest part of our work was spent doing Family Constellations, healing work, as well as Constellations with parts of ourselves, and dialoguing with different parts, as well as working with the body in more straightforward somatic ways to develop resilience and capacity, to feel more, to feel both joy and the challenges, the challenging emotions that are inside.

Candice Wu 14:22

And each person got a chance to have a specific time within the group and with the group interaction in a Constellation or in a certain experience that highlighted their personal healing and their desires, which gave way to some very powerful transformation for each of them in their own way. Some people came in with desires to feel more at ease in themselves and trust themselves. Some people came in wanting to work with a feeling of loneliness that they have and some deaths that had been in their lives, but the trajectory of their lives moving more towards health and what they desire and what they want.

Candice Wu 15:11

And others worked with money issues and releasing and sorting some past experiences that interfered with their daily life and stepped more into the independent power, the empowered self that they are that they know they are and which they wanted to cultivate more of.

Candice Wu 15:34

A lot of the work was deep and meaningful, but we also kept it light and played and had spontaneous times of drumming and dancing or just laughing together. And a huge part was the food that was inspired by Ayurvedic cooking by Robin Fisher. She is a massage therapist and Ayurvedic practitioner. Robin came on the trip to cook for us and to bring nourishment on many different levels, not just food levels, but supporting us in all ways and also being a part of the retreat, part of the healing and healing sessions, Yoga and meditation.

Candice Wu 16:22

She incorporated our different doshas and the needs of each of our bodies, plus the climate, the surroundings, and what we were doing in order to bring delicious meals for us, which, were just so special to eat together and eat mindfully and taste, such wonderful tastes in the midst of nourishing ourselves spiritually and physically.

Candice Wu 16:51

So some of the themes that I’m reflecting on that came up during the retreat were birthing and loving yourself, mother energy and healing, some pain and aloneness of men that came up in the healing process or shadow sides, connection and loneliness, experiences, completion, going beyond the soul karma and into spirit, into freedom and truth, money and the love that we want, the abundance that we want, releasing, sorting and selecting what we want to take with us forward, letting the fire within and outside of us transform, lightness and play.

Candice Wu 17:36

We also talked about the doshas, the different levels of our physiology, and how our beliefs take form and give expression to our energetic and physical bodies, and how we can tap into the most powerful healing inside of ourselves, to transform the outer world around us, for our lives and for the world.

Candice Wu 17:58

The whole experience to me was like creating this beautiful, magical sacred space, almost like a womb that held us in loving compassion, and in witness so that whatever needed healing could come through, and whatever transformation each person wanted, could shine into the light.

Candice Wu 18:21

Speaking of whom, we even had a chance, some of us to go to the Yoni cave, which was right around the corner from the villa. And this cave, I think, is just nicknamed, “The Yoni Cave”, is because it looks like a vagina, and even offshoots into two little side, like crevices, and those seemed like fallopian tubes. So we did a little bit of meditation inside of the Yoni cave, you can actually check out that meditation on Feminine Power and Creativity posted in the Embody Community on Facebook. It’s just a little taste of leisure time that we spent on the retreat and that’s with permission by the retreat members. So you can check that out at the Embody Community.

Candice Wu 19:11

And we looked at all of the different belief sets of who we are, that seem to be coming up for us, to reveal and to move and transcend. So after the retreat, I felt so embodied and more in myself, more like myself. And in talking with each of the retreat members, I got a variety of feedback from. I felt my acid reflux go away after two days too, I’m feeling so confident that I’m moving forward. I am so inspired to take the next step in my business. I’m revitalized and rejuvenated to take the steps I want to in my life, to other experiences, where people felt like they broke into some very deep parts of themselves that they may want some more healing with. And I think that’s all part of the process to hold space for all of those different parts of us, the inspired as well as the grieving and I’m just so glad that each of these women was able to bring themselves vulnerably and expose their hearts so that they could reach for what they wanted.

Candice Wu 20:31

So I want to give you a chance to hear their feedback, this is some of their feedback from the retreat at the end of it, as well as in the days after. So without further ado, let’s talk to some other retreat members.

Candice Wu 20:50

What have you found for yourself here, in terms of growth, what have you uncovered, and what makes it different for you?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 20:59

It’s hard to explain, articulate, but I think that just your unique blend of energy work, and just how you, just your, the true essence of the work that you do is very unique. You blend in a lot of different modalities, which for me, certainly been a learning experience as well, and a bit of an eye-opener. Saw a lot of your modalities I wasn’t even aware of, like Family Constellations. I just knew that even intuitively, that the, you know, the ancestral healing was something that perhaps, was something that I need to look at. Because, as you said, that I have done so much work on myself in terms of what I can control, you know, positive affirmations, I’m going to self-development programs, meditation, Yoga, and I just knew on a soul level that was probably something deeper, that was perhaps showing up in my life that I wasn’t even conscious of. And so, therefore, being on this retreat has really helped to really dive deeper beyond those layers in a way that’s very unique and that I can’t even describe. I’ll probably leave everyone else to go to the retreat, to experience it for themselves. And in fact, Diana, who’s on the retreat as well, you know, we were road trip buddies on the way down. And she said, I asked her, tell me a bit more about the retreat and she just said to me, You have to experience it for yourself. And so that was good for me, just to go in, move, an open mind, an open heart and experience it for yourself, because I’m sure everyone has their own experiments because everyone comes in with their own stories and their own needs for what they are looking to come out of the retreat with. And so I didn’t really want to compare, you know, just experience it, and go from there.

Candice Wu 22:28

So how have you found the Family Constellations work?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 23:02

Family Constellations is powerful. It’s amazing to know and experience that healing can happen, regardless of what is happening in the “real world” with the other players that might be involved in a family situation that my own exploration of those topics and experience of them is enough to heal. I think that’s really powerful. And again, it’s great to have such a safe space that allows me to feel vulnerable enough to really tap into a lot of those scenes, that on, maybe a more day to day basis can be really tough to look at, and tough to uncover in on earth, you know, particularly alone, and particularly without those sorts of tools and skills.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 23:57

So it’s been really powerful and quite unlike anything that I’ve experienced in, and, you know, traditional talk therapy, you said something earlier this morning about how that sort of work might be retraumatizing because you just use very verbal processes, and you kind of circled around the same stories, and nothing really changes, nothing’s transformed, and Constellation work feels transformative.

Candice Wu 24:27

And as I mentioned before, different women had different ideas and intentions, different desires coming into this retreat, here are some of those desires.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 24:37

I felt different, you know, before I came on the scene, that’s why I wanted to go. I had made some, like, really good changes. But now I feel like they’re much more clear. And I have a better kind of sense of who I am and what I want, and what’s important. And, you know, I just feel more empowered to, like, manifest the things that are important to me, you know, I’m on the verge of a new relationship. And I really wanted to deal with approaching that mindfully and in a way that I will lose myself and I feel, you know, that’s all kind of just happening very naturally, at the same time, like this kind of this new sort of philosophy on in, this new kind of desire of how to be and how to show up as my own individual self and maintain that. It’s very easy, it’s not like, I have to put forth the effort to be constantly like thinking about it. I think the work I did in the retreat has really helped me sort of solidify, that’s kind of my new way of being, without having to be super cognizant of that all the time, or feel like I’m trying to change myself. I feel like I’m just changed.

Candice Wu 25:07

And so what did you come in wanting?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 25:52

Yeah.

Candice Wu 25:53

And I have an idea, and I want to hear from you now.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 25:56

So I’m kind of on the cusp of, you know, a point in terms of my life, both professionally and personally. And, you know, I guess I’m looking for some extra clarity around how I navigate through that, and some blocks in the personal front. So that’s what I was looking to come into the retreat to, you know, learn some extra tools, do a lot more self-inquiry beyond what I already am aware of, you know, how to learn different methods,

Candice Wu 26:25

Yeah.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 26:27

Take things deeper as I said, be open to new techniques, and really just, you know, continue to evolve and expand myself, that’s really why I’m here. Always, one of the reasons why I go in these retreats is obviously to do Yoga because I need it right now. Work is very stressful. So there’s that piece where selfish now, you know, I want to relax, you know, come to a beautiful place like where we are now is just amazing, and enjoy that space and environment around us. But, you know, you have to engage with some like-minded souls also to expand.

Candice Wu 27:02

Absolutely. And have you, what do you feel will change for you as you move forward? And what will you take from the experience?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 27:11

Yeah, just, I guess, a new and different way of thinking. Just to add to my existing Sam toolkit

Candice Wu 27:20

Your existing what?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 27:21

Sam toolkit.

Candice Wu 27:25

I know that you’re in some transitions in your life, or possible ones are that they’re emerging with your purpose, with career, with who you are, how do you feel, or imagine that your life’s going to shift from what we’ve transformed here or on earth or tuned into?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 27:51

Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me is that regardless of the material outcomes of where I end up in my, in the next few years in my life, I’m considering a big career change and I think regardless of whether I, you know, quit the day job tomorrow and throw myself right into entrepreneur, into entrepreneurial practices, or, you know, kind of take a little bit of time to feel it out and dip my toes into it a little bit more slowly. I think that regardless of whatever I end up choosing, I know that I’ll be making that decision from a place of again, really self-love and self-respect. In the past, whenever I’ve thought about these, you know, big life decisions, there’s a lot of self-judgment that comes with that and a lot of fear and anxiety around not making the right decision and not feeling like I have enough to be successful in whatever I’m choosing. And it’s become really real for me over the last few days that I can choose and I can make anything I want to work and I really believe that for the first time, that really feels feasible and real and not just you know some mantra that I’m saying to myself over and over with empty meaning, so that’s huge for me. Yeah.

Candice Wu 29:20

That huge for anyone.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 29:21

Totally. So, I guess you could boil it down to a greater sense of competence and more energy and invigoration. I’ve also had the pleasure of, you know, meeting all sorts of really great, knowledgeable people on the retreat who have given me all sorts of really great practical advice.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 29:41

I am transitioning into practicing astrology full time, and of course, I do a lot of birth chart readings for individuals and, you know, starting to market myself for those skills. But I’ve had all sorts of people in the retreat suggests that I do things like YouTube videos and community workshops and free live readings on social media, and all sorts of cool strategies that I hadn’t considered. But now, I’m excited about and it doesn’t seem scary. It seems fun and exciting and full of possibilities.

Candice Wu 30:17

For some, the food was a very important aspect, especially Robin, who cooked for us. So let’s hear a little bit from Robin.

Candice Wu 30:28

So, I’d love to hear from you. How was it for you? And what did you, what was your intention coming in the retreat?

Robin Fisher 30:35

Yeah, thank you.

Robin Fisher 30:37

It was very interesting because I looked at it as you know, one of my first big adventures professionally. I’ve done cooking Ayurvedically the last three or four years but not at this scale. So it was definitely a challenge that I was excited to confront. But yeah, my intention was made clear when you asked what our intentions were on the first night, so that was very helpful for me to just kind of sit with, you know, yeah, why am I here just for a moment to slow down and think about it.

Robin Fisher 31:19

But yeah, in this time and place in our existence, I was, I really feel that I am drawn to nourish women and in all, that can mean mentally and physically and having the chance to kind of slowly help the women of the retreat kind of learn what it looks like, what it tastes like to eat seasonally, and holistically, was really special because once I’ve gained the, you know, the base skills of cooking, Ayurvedically, it really opened me up to, to work with my intuition and not necessarily be really strict with recipes, which I think most cooks understand that they have hit a new level when it’s not like, okay, it has to be perfect and it has to be this specific amount. And it’s more about being a part of the food and tasting, continuously tasting, feels like my essence was becoming more about food than I ever have experienced before. So that was really fun.

Candice Wu 32:42

Yeah, that’s really cool. I heard a lot of comments from the members of the retreat saying, Wow, I just loved how Robin was stirring that stew.

Candice Wu 32:55

She was like, doing it so deliciously and relaxed and it seemed like it really left an imprint on people.

Robin Fisher 33:04

Yeah, which is hilarious. Because, you know, I was just taking all of my energy to really stay focused on the task at hand. And that kind of freak out about what I had to do next for the next meal, like, you know, because I’m having a whole week of a meal. So think about it like, and just kind of play around with this fun to a certain degree. But there’s so much mental space for it. And so I really was able to sit back with my own breath work, which I also learned while I was learning Ayurvedic cooking.

Robin Fisher 33:49

Because I didn’t really do a lot of supportive breathing for most of my life. And so, knowing that breathing and body mechanics and all of the things that I learned that helps support me in massage therapy are, like, completely transferable to cooking. What energy do you bring to the room, it can be like, Oh, I have to cook for seven people all week. And it’s just like, so much work, or like, oh, what can I create here today, you know, and like, realizing that I had a certain amount of control over how I was going to experience the retreat. And it didn’t have to be something that happened to me, having body mechanics, it’s just, like, so supportive.

Robin Fisher 34:38

Just like, if you’re cutting up like a pile of vegetables, you know, multiple times a day, you know, and if you’re, like, all, like, super inward and not fully breathing, and just clenching. Like, all of that energy is going into the food as well. And I really didn’t want the anxiety that I can feel, in an unfamiliar situation to be ingested, took more focus, than I’ve ever really used to make sure that was, the nourishment and love was going into the food rather than fear and anxiety.

Candice Wu 35:21

Yeah, and it was cool what you did too was each meal, you made suggestions, or offerings that did go with each person’s dosha, or a suggestion that, if they’re feeling a little more heat, or if they’re this specific dosha, they might add in more cilantro to cool or, this, add in more of this to feel more warmed inside. So that was neat to have those choices, that information for everyone.

Robin Fisher 35:54

Yeah, I think that’s been the most helpful thing is understanding that you can make a base that’s good for everyone. And then having the sides that cool or heat or make it more oily or dry. And you can really adjust a dish for each person. And once they can understand what they need, they can do it themselves.

Candice Wu 36:23

And to give you a taste of what people tasted from the delicious meals, here are just some thoughts about how the food was incorporated into this retreat.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 36:37

Wonderful, because A, I mean, the person who created was with us, so it just kind of made it all the more sort of inclusive and knowing that we were eating and sort of this holistic, you know, based food that was coming from this place of love, it was just so good. And, you know, it was kind of, in this cold place and a lot of the food was very warm and filling and it just felt nourishing. I know that kind of was her goal was to create, like, this nourishing environment. And it really did, and it really made it because, you know, it’s also it’s a mind-body connection, right? So, imagine that you’re, you know, doing, being, you know, physically active, eating, filling your body with good, wholesome food, you know, that’s important too.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 37:26

It’s nice to have healthy, flavorful food that’s nourishing you. It’s like, now, she knew from a physical perspective but also, for me, like food is, I love food, so it’s always nourishing your soul as well. So you do a lot of deep inner work. And, you got Yoga, it’s almost like that food helps nourish that, you know, that fuel, that spiritual fuel. And I just think that, being Ayurvedic, food is very congruent with just the retreat.

Candice Wu 37:59

There are things about the retreat that just cannot be described and some of those things include the conversations and experiences that happened during the off times of the workshops, during leisure times or during dinner, and in-between spaces, the ones that were deeply profound, and integrating, and sometimes incredibly connecting. So here are some other thoughts from people about what they received on the retreat.

Candice Wu 38:30

What do you feel like you got out of it this year, you know, especially since you had all that experience last time, and you’ve grown so much from that?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 38:41

Yeah, well, the reason I wanted to go, and what I really do feel that I got out of it is that I feel like recently, I’ve made a couple of changes in my life. And sort of the way I’ve been looking at things and dealing with some kinds of stuff and specifically for me, I was kind of trying to close the doors and things of the past. And I really feel like, I got to do that in a very mindful and productive and supportive way, in a way that I could kind of come home, fresh and felt like I was ready to start kind of almost like a new chapter.

Candice Wu 39:12

Can you say more about, you know, what you were not so sure about and how it ended up being? Because I think it was a very unique experience.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 39:21

It definitely was. I mean, I think in general, a lot of Family Constellation works deals a lot with families and, you know, resolving, you know, maybe some unconscious issues you might have with your family systems. And I, that doesn’t happen to be an area of contention for me. I have, like, an amazing support system with my family and I didn’t feel like there were any specific areas I needed to address in that. And so, but you were able to really adjust it. So it was my internal family system that we focused on, which was really cool to sort of watch the different parts of myself come alive, which was really a unique spin on it that I’ve never seen, I’ve never experienced something like that, you know, either as a participant or as a center focus. And that it worked. It totally worked.

Candice Wu 40:11

Yeah, it was really cool to work on the different inner parts of you in that. And I think what also I got from what you wanted was, you wanted an empowering experience, you wanted something transformational that brought to forward and not looking backward and something to support you in feeling into this great pass that you were already launching yourself into.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 40:38

Yeah, totally. And I was a little nervous that, like, I’d have to go back and deal with the past. And I didn’t feel like that was really necessary. So I was like, how are we going to do this, but, you know, that’s what I think is so special about you, as a, you know, retreat leader, you’re so good at adjusting to the needs of each individual person on the trip and in honoring their experience and honoring their specific needs. Because obviously, I mean, we’re all different individual people going through a different individual thing, and it’s not a one size fits all model. And that, I think, is a very challenging thing to do. And you do it with so much ease and grace and respect. And it was really awesome.

Candice Wu 41:18

Okay, there’s just a little bit more. Elena, you said this, that speaking on this podcast was part of your process, or part of your growth step as well and this opportunity, and I heard you on Angel’s Landing the other day, “I have something to prove to myself.”

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 41:33

Yeah.

Candice Wu 41:34

What is this about for you?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 41:36

I think a couple of things. So, I realized yesterday on this long, intense, strenuous hike that we were doing that I was very nervous about doing beforehand, how much of my life I live. I have lived dictated by fear and that experience of climbing up this steep mountain with nothing but chain supporting us at several points, was really an exercise in coming from a place beyond fear and being able to feel it and perhaps transcend it in a way and work through it and see it as constructive and a tool for growth.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 42:14

And one thing that has always been very scary for me is speaking publicly, communicating openly and vulnerably with others and so I really wanted to challenge myself to speak on this podcast segments and really wanted to challenge myself also to speak openly and vulnerably without any sort of notes or, you know, talking points or a script. And so that’s exciting for me. And I was just saying to Candice, as we pause the audio, that wasn’t so bad. It’s nice to be able to share like this.

Candice Wu 42:48

Yeah.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 42:49

It’s fun and I feel — it’s good to be able to express and be open about that and not scared.

Candice Wu 42:57

Wow, you really overcame. I don’t know if I like the word overcome and overcame?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 43:04

Sure.

Candice Wu 43:04

Maybe that’s it for you. I don’t know. But you moved through that fear.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 43:10

Right. I’m not scared of being scared any longer. I can work with fear. It can be — perhaps I’m not in a place yet where I am able to see it as a constructive tool. But it’s not obstructive any longer.

Candice Wu 43:25

It’s not a roadblock.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 43:26

Yes. Definitely.

Candice Wu 43:28

Something different, yet to be determined.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 43:30

Something to work with.

Candice Wu 43:31

Yeah.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 43:32

Yeah, in some way.

Candice Wu 43:33

Yeah. Thank you.

Candice Wu 43:36

Oh, my gosh, yeah. How have you felt here and what has been good for you here?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 43:40

Yeah, so obviously Candice as I was telling you that I just feel that, it’s almost like this whole retreat has synchronicity written all over it. And to be honest, I was just blown away by just the space that you were drawn to, the North Star Villa?

Candice Wu 43:59

True North.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 44:00

Oh, True North. Thank you.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 44:03

You know, in Zion National park. First of all, the surrounding is just stunning, you’re surrounded by the mountains. You know, the view you wake up to every morning. And the fact that it’s surrounded by crystals, there’s just this beautiful energy about this place. So much love has gone into this environment by the owners. And that kind of warms my heart, it’s got a lot of character, a lot of love. And I think that, the love of the owners that they’ve brought into this place kind of exudes that energy, right. And so, therefore, it’s a really perfect environment for you to hold your retreat. It had everything, all the props you could have imagined, you know, drums, crystals, wind chimes, you know, a labyrinth, the, you know, a medicine wheel, it’s just, it’s almost like you had visualized your perfect retreat location and the universe delivered it to you in the middle of a national state park. It was just, pretty mind-blowing.

Candice Wu 45:09

What I found is that the space for deeper transformation can feel safe, given the right circumstances, when you feel that you’re held in a safe space, that all emotions are held in this space, and also supported, and when we acknowledge and respect everything that comes through no matter how “weird” people find it to be, which to me, nothing’s really that weird. But I really appreciated what people said about the safety of the retreat and what they felt in relation to me and others on the retreat. Here are some of those thoughts.

Candice Wu 45:47

What have you been doing on this retreat that’s been meaningful for you?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 45:51

The retreat has been a really good opportunity for me to rest, connect, and reprioritize. I’ve had a really great time meeting everyone else that’s here, really great time exploring nature and exploring the connection to nature, reintegrating with myself, and learning about all different sorts of healing modalities and energy work, and picked up a lot of really practical skills that I can bring back for my own personal use when I go back home. I really appreciate that there’s been a space that’s cultivated here, that’s really special and that’s really unique and that really can’t be replicated elsewhere, that’s really magical. But we’ve also been learning, yeah, all sorts of different skills and practices that can be used in everyday life. So a really great mix of both.

Candice Wu 46:46

But what have you found as a tool or thing that you felt like, yeah, I can really take that home with me to use in my daily life?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 46:56

Yeah, I think the biggest, single most practical skill is probably the resourcing technique that you went over with us this morning, actually.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 47:06

So I’m someone that tends to get very, you know, overwhelmed and activated in stressful situations. And I tend to go to a place of just getting stuck in negative emotions, and feeling really down on myself because of that. And I think the resourcing technique that we talked about is really cool because it’s something that you can use, regardless of where you are, regardless of what’s going on around you. And it’s something that you can really do for yourself. And I think that’s been a big theme throughout the retreats.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 47:42

It’s bigger than, than self-love, I think, which is something that gets thrown around a lot in all different sorts of practices. I would say that, really, what I’ve honed in on the past few days, has been self-respect and trust in oneself, knowing that with something like, resourcing, I don’t need to go elsewhere. I don’t need to turn to anything else or another practitioner, but that I have all the tools I need within myself, and whatever environment I’m in to nourish myself and bring myself to a better place when I’m feeling activated. So I’m really optimistic about the way that I’m going to be able to use that going forward.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 48:23

Another really big and related theme that has become really real for me over the past few days, is coming from a place of self-love and nourishment in resourcing, and taking myself to the next level at any healing, I again, would tend to use a very sort of a brace of approach and almost tried to, you know, beat a lot of different messages into myself, which, you know, is counterintuitive or counterproductive, I should say. And I think that for the first time in my life, I’m really feeling the impacts of coming from a place of nourishment and love for oneself.

Candice Wu 49:02

Oh wow.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Elena 49:04

You know, I’ve heard those words in a lot of different situations, and in a lot of different contexts. But it’s never really resonated within me. But a lot of the very body-centered exercises that we’ve done, and just, again, creating the space for reflection, and I think safe boundary-pushing has been really helpful in getting me there.

Candice Wu 49:27

Is there anything else you want to share?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 49:30

I just feel so happy and lucky and honored to get to do these types of things with you, especially because, like, you know, we do have this unique relationship. And that we have done a lot of work together in the past, and we saw each other, like, weekly, we have this sort of very traditional kind of working relationship. And then, you know, you left to go travel the world and pursue your dreams, and do all these amazing things that I didn’t know that I would get the opportunity to continue doing some of the amazing stuff that I do. And this way of doing it together and get to, you know, take a couple of days every year and get to spend time with you. And, working on some of the most meaningful pieces of the work that we’ve done together is just such a cool way to kind of honor it, and maintain the best parts of getting to work with you. So I’m just so happy that you do it. And I hope you keep doing them.

Candice Wu 50:19

Thank you. I’m so grateful that we get to do that too. It’s really cool to have that kind of, that different kind of relationship at this point. And we’ve gone through so much together, and I’ve seen you through so much of your growth. And it’s so exciting to see where you are now.

Candice Wu 50:41

What makes a retreat like this, a meaningful experience, or what makes this different for you?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Jana 50:46

Well, it is totally, it was like, five days of intense focus on it. And I just remember that on the plane ride home, I was just journaling, like, as much as possible, and trying to capture as much of like, the feeling, and the emotions and the insights and all the stuff because I knew that once I got back to regular life, like, I’d remember it, and I would hold it, but regular life what’s going to happen and I was going to get busy with work and I was going to get distracted and stresses we’re going to happen. And, you know, it was really a way to, you know, because even doing, you know, therapy or, you know, this type of work, you know, mix into your everyday life is obviously very helpful. But to kind of take this time out to specifically focus on it makes it so much more powerful. And especially again, being in this place that we were, we had, we were just in this like magical place in the desert with the mountains and crystals and drums and like it just turned into this beautiful spiritual experience that — many people don’t, I think, have an opportunity to really immerse themselves in like that. And that’s, I think the difference is very immersive, but not in an overwhelming way. And not in, you know, we have downtime, we have time to go hike, gave me a time to hang out, we have time to read. It wasn’t like, it was like, all like deep work all the time, you know, it was a nice balance and really good.

Candice Wu 52:08

Is there anything else you want to share about what has been meaningful for you, or what nuggets you’ve received or what pieces of your unearthing came up?

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 52:22

Just very humbling, that everyone is just so willing to be their authentic selves. And just to open up to the experience. I think you can only really benefit fully from the retreat if you have the courage and the willingness to open your heart and share yourself with others. Right? And so learn from each other. And I think that’s what’s, had a deeper meaning to the exercise that we’ve been doing is the fact that you have created that self-space and that safe space that everyone has felt so comfortable and invested to get in the best they can from it, you know, emotionally as well, you know, we’ve all cried and laughed. And I think that you can only do that when you’re spinning safe in the group that you’re showing that space with. And often you have a retreat leader that’s leading the retreat in a way that encourages them. So thank you.

Candice Wu 53:19

You’re welcome. And thank you so much.

Soul Body Retreat Guest — Sam 53:21

Yeah.

Candice Wu 53:23

I appreciate so much all the women who came on this retreat. I’m just so touched by the experiences that we had and the gratitude that I have for how magical the experience was, how beautiful and how healing and how open we all were with each other is just something that I will never forget.

Candice Wu 53:45

And I want to send a special thanks to Robin as well, as part of that. Her intention was to nourish women and she absolutely did that. She was wonderful and I look forward to working with her again.

Candice Wu 53:58

And I also want to give a shout out to Chris Spiegl, who is my partner, he was on the retreat as well. And in between the boundaries of our work, he was running errands or building an upside-down fire, which is a really cool thing. It’s a fire upside down. Also, he was taking the official photos for the retreats and supporting the tech behind the scenes, as well as creating the website design for the retreat all together and all of the production beforehand.

Candice Wu 54:38

I also want to thank the Earth, mother nature, and sky for holding the space, the physical space for healing, the villa itself, and the owners of the villa, Hank and Angie, all the angels, spirits and guides, as well as ancestors of each of the people that were involved in the retreats and came on the retreat for all of that was part of our work. And it gave away to the messages that each person received for themselves, and the healing that happened inside of their beings and in their bodies.

Candice Wu 55:16

I also want to give a shout out to all the people that supported in some way, whether that was sharing the retreat with a friend, a sister, a loved one, or a client or colleague, thank you so much. I appreciate all of the thoughts that you’ve sent my way about the retreat, the good energy, and the referrals. All of that made this possible, and I could not have asked for more.

Candice Wu 55:41

So as we close the podcast today, I want to offer just one more thought about retreats.

Candice Wu 55:47

A retreat is so nourishing because you can immerse yourself over time, take time for yourself — if the schedule allows for that which this retreat was specifically designed that way to integrate your experiences — to have movement and leisure time, to have deep meaningful connection and the space to go very deeply with exactly what’s happening in your life, and to be supported in embodied transformation around that and loving yourself. This retreat reminds me that immersion experiences like this have just an incredible capacity to bring so much life and enjoyment and healing.

Candice Wu 56:36

I encourage you whether it’s my retreat in the future or another retreat that catches your eye to try something like that. Because if it’s the right fit, it can be incredibly powerful.

Candice Wu 56:49

If you’d like to stay tuned to future retreats from me, whether that’s a couple’s or individual or women’s retreat, you can stay posted on my website Candicewu.com or sign up for my newsletter at CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 57:05

Wishing you well and just sending all of this peaceful, mostly peaceful, energy from Spain. Just looking out at the cityscape now, it’s dark, you’ve heard the dogs around me. I hope that wasn’t too bothersome. But this is just part of the noise set that’s here where I am. Thanks so much for joining me and I’ll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.