Pleasure Principle Archives - Candice Wu

Pleasure Filter — EP176

Candice Wu — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 15:00:08 +0000

Enjoying pleasure in your life requires flexing the muscle of basking in a good feeling. Jump into this episode where I talk about this and how what we appreciate in an embodied form appreciates.

Please use the player below to listen or download this episode. To make it easier for you to get new episodes on your phone, you can also subscribe for new episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and other platforms.

Sponsored By

Are you craving touch!?

This episode is sponsored by the Online Touch Workshops : Touch in the Time of Physical Distancing.

Supportive self touch can deepen your capacity to navigate all that you feel, your pleasure, and ability to heal trauma and be in your body. It can soothe, bring ease, and peace.

I am offering a 2-Part Somatic and Energetic Healing Touch series that gives you 9 basic and simple tools, with how to direct your awareness to enhance your own presence and self-support. Part 2 gives you ways to use your wall to release and complete anger, frustration, and fight responses, as well as strengthen your boundaries and feel that you are supported – that someone’s got your back – and that’s you!

Find both online workshops here where you can tune in at your leisure. For a limited time they are pay what you can/want at a sliding scale.

Support The Embody Podcast with a small donation! I appreciate you receiving my sharing and if you would like to give back and nourish the Podcast, you can make a one-time donation @candice-wu-2 on Venmo (just put a subject line indicating it is a donation) or go to my website for other options at CandiceWu.com/support.

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
01:05 Opening
02:22 House Update
04:36 Body Update
06:01 Music & Life Update
07:09 Thank you to all my Listeners
07:48 Checking in with natural movement
09:10 My Touch Course
09:53 Having a Joy Filter
13:56 Feeling Joy More of the Time
15:58 Completing Past Pain to find more Joy
19:10 Flexing the Joy Muscle
21:12 Seeing Beauty all around us
22:35 Outro

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by Ella Christenson on Unsplash

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Make Life Yummy — EP175

Candice Wu — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 15:00:08 +0000

Bring in the yum! Inspiration for a beautiful, juicy, delicious, pleasurable day to day life. You GET to feel this good.

Sponsored By

Show Notes

0:00 Intro
3:39 Bring in the Yummy
7:36 What Might Yummy Be for You?
11:08 Conclusion

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by Tj Kolesnik on Unsplash

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A{Live} Now: A Direct Experience of Magic: Wisdom from a Dream — EP155

Candice Wu — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 14:00:08 +0000

A dream gave me the chills and I wanted to share it with you!

I woke up from this dream feeling a DIRECT EXPERIENCE OF MAGIC. It showed me how I was making obstacles for myself between me and joy itself — you know — feeling like I had to earn a badge of honor or earn my own worthiness… earn joy.

This dream brought me healing and a clear picture of how I could go straight to pleasure and joy. Out of the dream came a poem — one that might stir your own awareness of going straight for what you desire: living directly in your worthiness and in joy.

Sponsored By

To learn more about Dreamwork from an embodied approach, check out Candice’s Dreamwork Classes on Skillshare. Receive a free 14 day premium trial with this link.

Links and Resources

Dreamwork Courses online: Prepare your Physiology for Dreamwork Remembering and Recording Your Dreams

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
01:22 How I work with Dreams
03:23 The Dream That Came to Me
06:15 Go straight for the Magic
11:42 It is already Inside
15:54 Questions you can ask yourself
17:53 My Dream Classes on Skillshare
19:16 My Poem

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

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You Are Pleasure — Worthy And Your Pleasure Lifts Others — EP141

Candice Wu — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 15:00:08 +0000

You are sooo worthy of pleasure! In every area of your life.

Pleasure can be tangled up with so much – our worthiness, betrayal of others if we have pleasure, whether we are selfish or self-centered, responsibility, and indulgence.

In this episode, I talk about all this including how being in YOUR pleasure brings more to yourself and others, as well as how we can untangle the soul’s desire to love by not having and allow a deeper way to love – by having and being in your worth. This can connect straight to your bonds to your ancestry and humanity itself. This episode is also a reminder that you are deeply free, and a discussion about what we actually say to others when we decline or deprive our own pleasure.

Sponsored By

Links and Resources

Top 100 Self Love Podcasts by Feedspot, Anuj Agarwal

Other Episodes Mentioned:

Align to Pleasure + Prajña — EP 128

When Discomfort Ripens, Calibrate Pleasure, Systemic Intergenerational Trauma EP 128

Restore Ways of Being: Carve out New Territory and Energy EP 132

Pleasure, Beauty and Capacity EP 136

Core Erotic Themes Fantasy & BDSM With Harmony — EP51

Aleta Cai & The Human Condition: Self Love, Sensuality, Permission & Submission — EP62

Roxanne Partridge: Come Back to Your Native Psychic Land – Menstrual-Sexual Empowered Embodiment From the Depths Up & Out — EP100

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
01:26 Top 100 Self Love Podcasts
02:24 Getting to Know My Pleasure
04:32 Enjoying the Little Things
07:47 There Have Been Times of Denial
08:29 Alignment With Your True Vibration
11:24 To Bein in Joy and See All Others
16:12 My King-Crab-Leg Story — Am I Allowed?
21:41 “You Are Suffering? I Am Going to Suffer Too.”
23:45 I Have Been Called Selfish!
25:36 Is Pleasure an Avoidance?
26:16 Developing More Capacity in Yourself
32:57 Let’s Connect About Pleasure
33:49 More Resources Around the Topic of Pleasure
36:08 Outro

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

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Embodiment: The Key to Gratitude Doing Its Magic — EP140

Candice Wu — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 15:00:08 +0000

The full magic of giving thanks can be supported with bringing the body into the experience: staying in the good feels longer & savoring the things you’re grateful for.

Plus bonus benefits! Vibration, appreciation & stabilization.

Embodied Gratitude supports your vibrational clarity, it allows the Beauty of your life to appreciate, and brings stability and safety to your nervous system.

In this episode, I also talk about how the pleasant can serve the integration and healing of the unpleasant, as well as how a simple mountain biking tip can help you literally and emotionally balance your head through life’s bumps and ditches.

Sponsored By

Links and Resources

Podcast Editor & Production: Chris Spiegl — Website | YouTube | Instagram

My Virtual Assistant: Mathilda Gomez — Instagram | LinkedIn

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
01:16 Shortly After US Thanksgiving
02:08 The Key to Gratitude
03:53 What Embodying Gratitude Can Give You
08:00 Pleasure, Joy, Clarity
09:03 My Gratitude For You
09:34 Shifting: When Things Need to Change
11:26 Keep Looking Forward-and-Through
15:20 Relationship Ending — What Helped Me Through It
17:59 A Mountain Bike Story: How Much Do You Look at the Ditch?
20:47 Your Direction
23:11 Outro
24:23 Supporting the Podcast
25:18 The Podcast Team

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

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Pleasure, Beauty, and Capacity — EP136

Candice Wu — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 14:00:08 +0000

Ah, pleasure and Beauty in your life…

What if more things could feel pleasurable or good?

How about feeling aligned and guided in life from inside?

What if you were so present you savored each moment, and even in discomfort, you could extract pleasure from it or experience it differently?

You can have it all. You are worthy of deep and juicy pleasure.

This episode is a primer with six ways to discover and deepen into what pleases you, whether that be simple joys, sexuality, purpose, or sensuality of any kind.

Also: Pleasure is the compass to your essential being, enhancing your capacity to feel, releasing shoulds, digesting pleasure and what might come with it, and the Ability to Respond (Response-Ability) to your Spirit.

Sponsored By

Links and Resources

EP 128 — Calibrate to Pleasure

EP 122 — Align to Pleasure

Episode on Taking, Part 1 of Taking, Receiving, & Giving

Love What You Love

Podcast Envy Interview with Andrea Klunder of Creative Imposter

Geography of Sorrow By Tim Mckee with Francis Weller

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
01:33 Brought to you by Donations
02:08 The expanse of Pleasure
04:30 Previous Episodes about Pleasure
05:46 How to Open Your sense of Pleasure
06:43 Going for What Feels Good — Learning From Horses
08:29 Basing Joy in Shoulds? Is there a truer way?
09:52 Everyone is Worthy of Pleasure and Joy ❤
10:15 Discover your Pleasure — Savor Past Moments
14:02 Unblocking Silent Rules
15:33 Digesting Pleasure — more pleasure, more everything
17:30 The Geography of Sorrow — Denying the Difficult
19:09 Will others Suffer if I Have More Joy?
21:46 Looking for Pleasure in Your Space
22:54 Extracting Good from Everyday Moments
23:48 Ask Yourself: “What would give me Pleasure now?”
24:27 Response-Ability to our Spirit
27:39 Teaching My Mom to Feel More Joy : Is Boredom a Pathway?
29:47 Feeling into my Pleasure & Joy
30:17 Outro
30:35 More Embody Podcast Episodes
30:40 And Meditations & Experientials

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

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A{Live} Now: When Discomfort Ripens, Calibrate Pleasure + Systemic Intergenerational Trauma — EP128

Candice Wu — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 14:00:08 +0000

Destruction, dismantling, burning things up. A quiet clearing, despair, grieving, integration, dust settling. Looking. When it’s time to create anew and there’s space for sweet tendrils and sprouts, what do you align, anchor, or calibrate to? For me it’s pleasure in a deep and whole way, yet sweet and joyful.

In this episode, I talk about the ripening of difficult feelings in uncomfortable situations, respecting yourself and seeing the spiritual agenda, and some recent experiences that triggered some Chinese American ancestral dynamics. And that I’m home in Michigan and what I’m doing here now!

Sponsored By

Are you craving touch!?

This episode is sponsored by the Online Touch Workshops : Touch in the Time of Physical Distancing.

Supportive self-touch can deepen your capacity to navigate all that you feel, your pleasure, and the ability to heal trauma and be in your body. It can soothe, bring ease, and peace.

I am offering a 2-Part Somatic and Energetic Healing Touch series that gives you 9 basic and simple tools, with how to direct your awareness to enhance your presence and self-support. Part 2 gives you ways to use your wall to release and complete anger, frustration, and fight responses, as well as strengthen your boundaries and feel that you are supported — that someone’s got your back — and that’s you!

Find both online workshops at CandiceWu.com/touch where you can tune in at your leisure. For a limited time, they are “pay what you can/want” at a sliding scale.

Links and Resources

Reverie 1: Your Being Knows How to Be

Reverie 2: The Shape of Now

Show Notes

0:00 Intro
0:55 Opening: My Experience With My Own Reverie Episodes
2:21 Rough Past Few Weeks for a Greater Purpose
5:22 What Happened in California
8:07 How Are You Doing?
9:45 Being With the Discomfort
11:48 Giving Too Much? Where is This Feeling Coming From?
14:45 The Systemic Trauma Experience of the Now
16:04 What Should I Do?
18:57 What Do You Crave?
23:11 Restarting: About a Funny Friends Episode and Push Starting My Car
28:31 Little Things That Make Me Very Happy
31:24 Astrology — Mercury Retrograde
32:23 Invitation for You
34:09 The Touch Video Workshop
35:43 Outro

Intro Music by Nick Werber

Featured Photo by Dainis Graveris on Sexual Alpha.

The post A{Live} Now: When Discomfort Ripens, Calibrate Pleasure + Systemic Intergenerational Trauma — EP128 appeared first on Candice Wu.

Feeling Joy and All It Comes With ❤ Self – Love Note

Candice Wu — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 14:00:49 +0000

This last few weeks I’ve experienced a lot of joy! I’ve felt connections with people where I felt very present, seen, loved, and open. I met a dear friend who I believe (and so does she) that we have experienced perhaps 1–3 other lives together (yes past lives). I’ve also had several opportunities to use my skills that feel impeccably aligned.

When my capacity for joy stretches, it also stretches my capacity to feel other feelings that can be more uncomfortable or allow to the surface feelings that may be considered more unpleasant. I experience this as both expanding in my capacity to feel more and also in clearing space for more in the present. So, with joy, I’m also feeling some sadness and grief come through, and I palpably feel sensations in my body that are trying to integrate. It feels like energy is running through my body, a bit of an anxious tingly feeling, and tears wanting to release at times. Sometimes my body wants to move and other times it wants to nap or meditate in stillness.

I’m observing how much of me can receive the goodness, joy or pleasure in the moment it’s happening and in what I am experiencing. If not in the moment, then I take some time to digest it later, just like a yummy meal.

I have often been surprised at how joyful or good experiences can be hard to take in. They can be vulnerable and beautiful, and even unbelievable. For some, it’s even harder to take in pleasure than it is pain. I’ve definitely been there. It can be connected with our past experiences, our impressions, beliefs, or images of who we are and what we are capable of, and the world around us.

The good thing is that we can take our time to integrate a pleasant experience. Doing it a little at a time and pendulating from pleasant to unpleasant, and back and forth, can expand our embodied capacity. Our nervous system enjoys more ease when we do this gently.

Inquiry about Integrating Joy

Are there experiences you’ve had recently that have been pleasant or expansive?

If you touch back into these, what do you notice in your body or emotions?

How much of you is able to receive and be with pleasant experience in the moment it is happening?

Take Time to Digest

Like digesting a meal, a pleasant experience needs its time to run through your nervous system and body to metabolize. The beautiful thing about this is that it also expands your ability to feel more joy or pleasant feeling, as well as attunes you to noticing more when it happens.

❤ Slow down and recall a pleasant memory that you’d like to integrate.

❤ Notice the emotions, sensations, movements, breath, and anything else that happens while you hold the image the memory.

❤ Take a break when you notice unpleasant sensation and slowly dip into it a dose at a time or at the pace that feels like you can manage.

❤ Notice as the intensity of any unpleasant feeling softens and the pleasant feelings are more settled.

We are made to feel pleasure and joy! This is our guide to knowing who we are and what we love. Be gentle as you move through and tune into experiences that bring you joy and it can be supportive to have someone to share it with like a friend, healer or therapist.

Featured Photo by Chris Spiegl

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Presence and Pleasure Through Place: Orienting ❤ Self — Love Note

Candice Wu — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 14:00:49 +0000

I’m always pleasantly surprised at the simple practice of noticing my surroundings to help me ground and be present. It can sound silly to some people, but pausing to notice my surroundings and when I ask clients to do it, can make a big difference to the nervous system — the sense of what is surrounding us can support us in feeling safe or creating safety, as well as creating beauty in the environments we live in.

In Somatic Experiencing, this practice is called orienting. Like animals do when they arrive in a space, our instinctual body and nervous system benefits when we see what is around us. We are capable of making sure we are safe. Sniff around, look around, feel your presence wherever you are and as you go along. The animals show us how to be. So often we skip this process and we certainly don’t benefit from this. Our bodies demand to be acknowledged and we need our bodies in all that we do — and the body finds other ways to tell us when we’ve ignored it!

When we recognize we are here — we are alive — perhaps there is a breath or a sense of peace or being ok in this moment. Maybe there is even joy within us or beauty around us that can be our medicine. Letting our bodies orient to space and time also supports the mind in slowing down — as the energy body is reminded of downward flow or Apana in Sankskrit. Orienting also supports healing trauma and other aspects of what needs healing in us by strengthening our baseline of safety. Sometimes this also brings us more perspective in our lives — we look farther out into the distance instead of directly at what’s in front of us, giving us a longer view and reminder of the forest and not just the trees.

Take this moment to do your nervous system a favor and orient! In this exercise below, you will be guided to notice pleasurable and unpleasurable objects around you. This begins to expand your capacity for equanimity. If anything feels overwhelming, shift to noticing something that feels supportive to you.

Orienting

Pause.
Look around you. Notice the floor or ground. Notice the space you’re in or your surroundings.
Become aware of how your body feels as you notice your surroundings. Sense your emotions, body sensations, breath, energy, and movement/stillness or impulses. Allow all to be felt and noticed.
Notice 3 pleasant or supportive objects, colors, or patterns around you.
With each one, hang out a bit and feel the experience of being here and seeing this pleasant thing.
Notice 3 objects, colors, or patterns are unpleasant to look at.
With each one, hang out a bit and feel the experience of being here and seeing this unpleasant thing.
Return to something pleasant. Let your body settle even more as you focus your attention on what feels pleasant or neutral on the inside when you look at this pleasant thing.
Feel your presence. Notice your feet and legs. Your hips and belly. You’re vibrance and energy.
Repeat as you move from place to place through your day and feel free to shorten the exercise to notice one thing in each space you move to or just notice more of your surroundings than you typically would.

Experiment

See what happens in your day as you pay closer attention to orienting to your space, noticing pleasure, and sensing your presence.

Featured Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

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