Candice Wu 0:00

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

Candice Wu 0:40

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

Candice Wu 0:54

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

Candice Wu 1:14

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

Candice Wu 1:46

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

Candice Wu 2:43

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

Candice Wu 3:07

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

Candice Wu 3:25

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

Candice Wu 3:46

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

Candice Wu 4:08

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

Candice Wu 4:39

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

Candice Wu 6:10

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

Candice Wu 6:37

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

Candice Wu 7:12

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

Candice Wu 7:36

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

Candice Wu 8:55

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

Candice Wu 10:11

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

Candice Wu 10:55

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

Candice Wu 12:00

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

Candice Wu 13:23

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

Candice Wu 14:33

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

Candice Wu 16:01

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

Candice Wu 17:09

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

Candice Wu 17:36

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

Candice Wu 17:53

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

Candice Wu 18:39

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

Candice Wu 19:03

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

Candice Wu 20:26

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

Candice Wu 20:48

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

Candice Wu 21:01

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

Candice Wu 21:34

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

Candice Wu 22:35

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

Candice Wu 23:50

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

Candice Wu 24:38

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

Candice Wu 25:36

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

Candice Wu 26:53

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

Candice Wu 27:09

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

Candice Wu 27:28

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

So let’s jump in.

Tune in With Me About Love

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

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

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

The Energy of Love

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

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

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

Let’s Begin

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

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

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

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

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

Feel here. You’re here right now.

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

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

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

Just begin to notice how your body feels now.

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

Open Your Sense of Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Back to Earth

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

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

Just feel your presence here.

End

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

Let’s Practice Being in Loving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding in the Body

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

Thanks for joining me today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My First Time

Let’s jump into today’s experience.

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

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

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

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

Let’s Begin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue to notice and notice.

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

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

Closing

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

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

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

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

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

End

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

Loving Kindness

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

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

Let’s Begin

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

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

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

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

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

Notice any reactions that come up with that question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Receive

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

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

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

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

Give and Receive to Self

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

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

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

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

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

Closing

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

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

End

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

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

Candice Wu 0:00
This episode is about love and beauty, particularly about our soul's desire to find love and know love, to know what love is and what it isn't, to sort out all the things that have been tangled up with loving, so that we can experience a true and pure form of love, attention, and witness in this life.

Candice Wu 0:25
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 1:00
This episode is sponsored by the dream classes that I offer on Skillshare. These classes are something that arose from my love for dreaming. Whether I wake up from a dream, where I feel, I must remember this dream, wow, something happened here. Even if I don't understand it, or if I wake up and I feel like that was such a boring, mundane dream, I was just doing normal daily life stuff.

Candice Wu 1:30
Whether it's one or the other, I almost always experienced a very deep healing and connection with myself when I actually explore those dreams. When I go a little bit more into the experience of that dream, even if it's one tiny piece, then I feel like I've recovered another aspect of myself. I feel a new wisdom or a new energy that's alive in me that I can feel in my daily life. I can feel it right now, I can feel it in the next step I take. And this is what inspires the classes that I'm offering on Skillshare about dreaming. There are two classes right now, and the third one coming up very quickly. And these classes are about how to support your nervous system in your body, your physiology, and being able to better remember your dreams and to find more safety and grounding inside your being so that your dream worlds can flourish and really come alive, so that you can remember those things that you're dreaming, and glean that wisdom that I'm speaking about.

Candice Wu 2:41
When I find myself more activated, more like wired and the nervous system is a little bit out of balance or I feel ungrounded, or I feel distressed like things are building up or something happened a few days ago that I haven't really processed. If I'm not feeling grounded in myself, sometimes that affects my sleep, or it just affects my ability to remember what my dreams are. If it's affecting my sleep, I often feel that I can't get into a deep breath state where my dreams or my REM sleep is happening and my dreams are happening. And in other cases, I don't feel like writing my dreams down because I feel so exhausted.

Candice Wu 3:23
So, these exercises I've created and gathered up from all of my experiences, I put together in these Skillshare classes here. You can find those at CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1, or CandiceWu.com/dreamphysiology. If you click on the show notes, you can find the link that all connects you up with two free months of Skillshare premium membership where you can receive the classes for free and get access to all sorts of other tutorials and teachers as well.

Candice Wu 4:01
Hello, and welcome back to the Embody Podcast. It's wonderful to have you here. I have this lovely topic today about love. And I've been mulling this over four weeks. It's such a challenging topic, and yet it's also completely simple. This episode was inspired by a listener's question from two weeks ago, the episode about toxic ancestors. The question that she asked was, “Can you receive love and strength from ancestors or relatives still alive if they're mentally sick, toxic or unhealthy?” And our follow up question had to do with, “What if love is mixed up with abuse? What if we have learned that abuse comes with love?” And that really inspired this conversation that was already going on in me about love and what can be mixed up with love that begins to attract unhealthy relationships to each other and to ourselves in our daily life as an adult.

Candice Wu 5:09
And before we jump in, I just want to talk a little bit about beauty and awe. And for me lately, connecting with a sense of beauty, what I find beautiful and unveiling beauty, the awe in moments or music or the experience of something has just made me feel so in love. So in love with myself, so in love with the world around me. And it's those moments of beauty, of connection with beauty, that feels like it opens up a part of my own beauty, a part of my own inner, inner love for myself that is truly who I am. What I find beautiful and I'm reminded did of myself, I'm reminded of the love that I am the beauty that I am. And something that transcends the daily stuff of life and the things that can bug me down or trigger me even, but to recover a sense of myself through things that are beautiful.

Candice Wu 6:24
So, for me lately, it's been doing ballet, this teacher I have just reminds me, I guess she has the energy of finding beauty and every moment. She's a beautiful ballerina. And she always says, “This is yummy, make it yummy!” And I just love that because she does feel that the juicy, yumminess and every moment. And when she gives a look to the side, even with one small, arm movement that seems insignificant in ballet. She looks over and her eyelashes go up and her gaze turns and I just feel like, “Oh, I'm just in love with that, that movement.” And so, I'm adapting and adopting that into my life. So, ballet is truly bringing out this sense of beauty and letting my body move with that beauty and align with that awe is so fun. And I've loved listening to classical music. For some reason, I like just plugging in my headphones and having it only in my ears. And lately I've been listening on repeat to the song, I'm not gonna say this right? By Josu Gallastegui, and I'll put it in the show notes and link that for you, but it's called Plie (Larghetto), and it's just gorgeous. It's the song I warm up to in ballet in my classes, and I'm still not sick of it. It's been weeks, maybe months. But the last week it's been on high repeat.

Candice Wu 8:11
So, I'm also finding more and more presence, and allowing myself to notice in moments, just what is beautiful. And what is pleasurable, how I'm connecting with someone and where the joy is in that. And unveiling in each moment what's here already that's, that's just romantic and sensual and sweet.

Candice Wu 8:40
So with that, I guess it's a great way to start the topic about love. But I want to ask you, what is beautiful for you? what draws you in and brings you a sense of awe? What brings you to a sense of your own beauty and your own self, your own energy? Have there been any moments where you have felt that sense of beauty or sensuality or romance that's beyond just a romantic love experience, but one that really connects you to your whole being in your vulnerability, and a deeper experience of self?

Candice Wu 9:36
When I was really, really thick in my healing work, especially at the beginning, I would say about 10 years ago, I just couldn't really feel into a sense of beauty, I didn't feel safe enough. And I do realize that at this point, I'm feeling much more inner freedom and inner safety, much more ability, and capacity to handle almost any feelings that I experience and have worked through so much of my traumatic experiences that they feel. They don't feel like they're tugging me all the time and they actually daily don't feel like they're talking me at all in some ways. And it's taken just a lot of work to get here. But I wish I would have tuned into this sense of beauty. Before, through Somatic experiencing the work of Peter Levine and other trauma workers, tuning into pleasure and tuning into safety, belonging, sensuality or something that feels good, can truly help the healing process because it reminds you of your safety now. It reminds you of that sense of self and beauty that, that is you, that is part of you and is you. And so it can be I hope all of the painful feelings move along. I don't know if I would have been able to just do that on my own. And to tune into that either I would not quite be in the feeling or be able to hold the feeling for even more than like a second or something. And I think I was just much more drawn to the painful experiences because I knew I needed to heal them and I needed them to be different.

Candice Wu 11:29
So, just wanted to mention that because if you're experiencing a lot of heavy experiences right now, or you're working through your trauma, I encourage you to get support, number one, but also to tune into beauty and pleasurable moments so that your nervous system, your body, your soul can feel reminded of who you truly are, the love that's already inside of you. And the beauty that wants to be seen right now in the present moment, as a way to support the healing and to even advance and accelerate the healing.

Candice Wu 12:06
There are a few blog posts that I've written on pleasure and sensuality, and tuning into that, and I'll link those in the show notes. And now let's jump into the topic of love.

Candice Wu 12:22
It's no wonder that love is such a hard thing for people to describe. Because it's my belief that it has turned very complicated, we have been quite confused about what love is and what love isn't. There are plenty of people trying to describe love and parse it out into the different types of love. The Greeks did it with eight different kinds of love, which I'll talk about briefly later. We want to define it all the time, we want to know what it is we want to be able to feel it. We're not sure when we feel it and when we don't. We think we're feeling it, but are we really? And so this whole conversation is part of what I want to talk about today. And like I said, I've been mulling this over for quite some time. And I think that that's part of the reason I've been trying to sort out how I can put this into words, because can you really describe it in words? I think not quite. It's definitely an embodied experience.

Candice Wu 13:27
And so how do we bring a level of communication of around love to words, which is part of the first thing that's coming to mind right now is that love is a full experience in the whole body. It's not just words. And because it's an embodied experience, it can be clouded with all sorts of experiences that included trauma, or hurt or wounding or betrayal within our relationships, within the experience of our body, while we're in relation to another person, or community.

Candice Wu 14:08
But let's back it up for a moment. I do believe that we are all here to love. We're all here to learn how to love and learn what love is, and what it isn't. And we yearn for the experience of love. And for me, it is who we are. I also hesitate to fail that in a way because I can't presume for everybody that that's why they're here. And we again describe love completely differently. So, what is love? What do I mean by that, and I want to offer my opinions and my thoughts. But I want to create conversation and open up exploration for each other, for you, and to invite you to have this exploration with yourself, to find what it is for you, if you're interested in it. To look at it in the way that feels like it resonates with you.

Candice Wu 15:12
So what I found with myself and with working with my clients, as well as studying Family Constellations, and Somatic Experiencing, and other types of embodied healing and growth work, is that one way to describe love is that it's pure attention and witness. One that can sit with and be with what's exactly here and vulnerable and real in the moment. One that feels genuine and authentic, unmasked, and bare. One that's raw to the core and connected with the heart and the soul. This to me is love. It's where your attention is truly located, where it's directed. That is love.

Candice Wu 16:18
In family constellations, I often see and other facilitators discuss this as well, that where someone's attention is, is where the flow of love is going. And if you think about or imagine your entire family system behind you standing in order, with your parents behind you and other caretakers, if there were any others, your biological parents, if you have adoptive parents or other people. But if you have your parents, your grandparents and everyone standing behind you, your siblings if you have any next to you. And if everyone's standing in order, with their attention and their presence, their fullness towards you, and everyone behind them with their fullness, moving forward and directed forward.

Candice Wu 17:19
It's like a big triangle people behind you, then you might feel completely full of love, resource, strength, stability, rootedness and grounded grounding, coming through to you. The flow of love is just directly coming forward. And then that love can come through you into your life into who you love, into who loves you into what you love, and what loves you back. And it's when the direction of somebody's attention goes somewhere else, that a piece of ourselves is broken in a way or we want that direction of attention towards us, we need it. And so it's when someone's direction of attention behind us like our mother is facing somewhere because they need to pay attention there, there's something that happened there like a loss or hurt, that part of them is still with because it's not complete, then we feel that impact.

Candice Wu 18:29
And that's what's there for the mother, and that's what's there for the child. So, this example is just one, one experience, one image of where our attention goes is where the love is and where the love wants to be seen and recovered. And we can direct that towards the daily life of who we are. Where our attention goes is where our love is going.

Candice Wu 18:57
Yet still, with this conversation, I'm not quite sure defining what love is, but getting closer to this sense that love is attention. Because everything in this existence is here for us to experience, is here for us to love in terms of to be able to experience it, to be able to hold it within our expansive awareness. And the things that we are not able to hold our soul, the universe that comes through us, wants us to be able to, wants us to be able to look where there's pain, wants us to be able to look where there's joy, wants us to be able to expand so much we're able to feel all of it. And with all of it, with that ability to feel all of it, we actually gain freedom, freedom to choose where we place our attention, because when we avoid something that we don't want to experience, we're actually held hostage by that. We resist it and part of our energy, part of our attention, part of our love goes to avoid it, to resist it, to have nothing to do with it, it's like you're sticking your hand down and pushing it away. And you walk around trying to not look that way and trying to push this experience or emotion to the side, then not all of you is present for the things you are actually wanting to experience or consciously wanting to experience, rather.

Candice Wu 20:28
So, the deepest parts of who we are, want us to be able to experience everything. And that's a full, very full form of love at a spiritual level, at a human being level as well. So, on the podcast, we talk a lot about self-love, loving yourself, being able to be with yourself, and hold yourself with loving, with compassion, with understanding, and to fill up the places in you that have wanted something, have needed something with all that you've needed. And fill those places those wounds in you with love to pour love into the places of disconnection and where our hearts have been broken.

Candice Wu 21:19
And what I find as we do that is that our capacity to receive love in the present moment, to receive experiences where we feel loved, and to love other people, to feel true relationship with what's going on around us and within us. That grows bigger when we heal up those spaces in ourselves. When we heal the belief sets that we have about love, we sort out what love is and what isn't. So, if you just reflect on yourself, are you experiencing places where you continue to struggle or you attract relationships that feel wounding or hurtful, or you feel fear and constant anxiety about your safety or being judged?

Candice Wu 22:15
The experience of love, we learn that through relationship. When we first come into the being of this life, we have it through energy and touch, we're in the womb of our mother. We have it through sound, the sound of her voice, their voice or father's voice, other voices around us and the emotions that are felt around us, what is acceptable and what is not. And as we're born into a human body, we need touch to help us regulate and we need touch to be able to sense where our body is, where we are here, and to sense our safety, to be able to create the building blocks, to feeling in this experience of humaneness.

Candice Wu 23:06
And, so, that attention that's needed that direction of energy, that is the first experience of love, and touch. That is the first experience of love all within those first, and early years.

Candice Wu 23:23
And this all sounds ideal if we haven't had the kind of attention that's full from people who have a full capacity to be in the present moment with all that is within a human baby experience. All the tears all, this all the fear, all the laughter, and the giggles. Just this juicy, full, vulnerable and unhampered experience. If the adults in our lives weren't able to hold all of those things with love, hold all of those with witness and attention, then we start to feel like parts of us are unable to show up in this world. We also start to learn that in order to be loved, we need to do certain things or not do certain things, or we need to be certain ways or not be certain ways.

Candice Wu 24:16
Carl Rogers, a psychologist who works with unconditional love talks about conditions of worth. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. What conditions did you need to put on yourself or were put on you or what were perceived for you to feel worthy, for you to be loved, for you to belong? So, as you can see, we're not quite talking about romantic love here.

Candice Wu 24:48
I mentioned earlier that the Greeks separated love into eight different types of love. And some of those include an erotic love or familial love, a long-standing and enduring love, a playful love, agape of the love of the soul, which is unconditional, spiritual and bigger than ourselves. Also, love of family and child storge. I'm not naming them all right now. And I'll link an article from lonerwolf.com that I found that was quite interesting on this, that described these eight types of love.

Candice Wu 25:26
Some people also round it to four types of love. I'll also link an article that I saw about that. But I'm not going to go into these descriptors, because what I am really talking about here is that unconditional, spiritual, universal and cosmic kind of love that is simple, pure, and clean. That is the love of attention and witness.

Candice Wu 25:53
That is the ability to be present. And see someone, see yourself with what's truly there. And I can most closely relate that to agape is what I've, as far as what I've read and seen. That's not what I'm well versed in, but to speak of a universal love. That's where I'm coming from today.

Candice Wu 26:22
So, that kind of universal love can be applied to any experience. You can experience a sexual experience and just love how that feels. And as you can even feel how in speaking it has like a flatness to that dimension. But you can feel a deeper connection with the sensuality of it, with the person you're with or people you're with. You can feel a connection to your own body, and feel a very deep presence with what is happening and what you're experiencing in the moment. That's the kind of love that underlies our experiences.

Candice Wu 26:59
So, when I say I love sushi, I just love sushi, I love sushi. There's a different quality to how I'm saying that. And that it almost feels deeper and deeper and deeper each time, I changed levels. But there's an aspect of finding the true beauty in something, the deep presence, and some people call it mindfulness, the being with the experience with all the senses, that encompasses this beautiful, deep love. And yet the spiritual kind of love, the universal love transcends all of that. It holds everything.

Candice Wu 27:47
So, back to why it is that we've confused love. When we're young, we have learned that there are certain ways we needed to be in order to receive love, in order to have attention, in order to feel like we belong.

Candice Wu 28:05
And so, the question of, is the love that we're experiencing is what we're experiencing, out of need our freedom is a question that I like to hold with myself is love a free choice or is it not? Because our early experiences are often bound with fear or survival mode or need.

Candice Wu 28:24
An example of what I mean is that early on, I did not experience crying very much. And in fact, if you ask my mom, she'll tell this story about how my aunt, I lived with my aunt for about a month, my family lived with her. And she said I was such a good baby, I never cried. And when I think about that, I don't think that not crying was part of my personality. I have to ask myself, why? And when I hear stuff like that, I asked why, or what, what could have made that become necessary in order to receive love. And for me, it was incredibly necessary to be happy, and to not have uncomfortable feelings, and to not let it all hang out but to hold it all in, so that I could receive attention and love. I experienced early on that if I had feelings of anger, sadness, and grief, if they were even a little bit or too big, that I wouldn't receive any attention for that, I would perhaps get invalidated and dismissed, maybe even abandoned.

Candice Wu 29:41
So, some of those experiences, I imagine were perceived. And there were other experiences that I do know to be real for me, that if I had certain emotions, or if I let my caregivers know, I was not happy with him or I was angry or I was hurt, that I would be called selfish or I would not be given the kind of presence that I needed to be able to digest that feeling and to be able to move through it. So, I kept it in and not crying, smiling all the time. being helpful and hiding away was what I learned early on how to love.

Candice Wu 30:26
So, on a deep level, I was loving my family by keeping silent. And I learned that loving meant to always be happy. And loving meant to not speak up about what I felt if it had to do with the person that's in front of me but to pretend everything was okay. So, my sense of love and loving got all tangled up with ways of being that, were actually very different attractive to me, and then later grew up to attract relationships, that ultimately gave me the same experience. And where I felt like I needed to act the same way with and if I started to share how I felt, truly, if I was upset with a situation or something felt unpleasant, the other person would react really harshly. Because I had found a match with that, that drew in this experience again, I hadn't quite resolved what loving was. And so, I attracted other people that also believed that I should keep that inside. And I shouldn't share that and it was too uncomfortable to hear all these feelings.

Candice Wu 31:49
So, in the same way, love can mix with not having boundaries, or having walls in between you. Love can mix with food. And that food is the way to love people. But we don't really know how to be present with people.

Candice Wu 32:08
Love can mix with abuse, where you must accept abuse because this is the way we know how to love each other. This is the way we know how to give attention to one another. And we don't know other ways, or this is one of the ways. It can also be manipulation, where there's a twisting of truth or a coercing or control of another person in order to relate to them. And to keep them there. And this can be the way you know how to be with people. It can connect with dependency or codependency, where you need the other person and you find relationships where you need each other, where you depend on one another in ways that are actually ways that you can depend on yourself, but haven't learned yet or feel that this is the feeling that you have with love, that you are always going to take care of that person's emotions all the time. And you're going to be there every time they, they asked you to be in a very deeply merged way where you can't handle it by yourself. But then you also feel like this is how a loving relationship is, right?

Candice Wu 33:31
Or Loving can mix with concepts or ways of being around respect. For example, in my upbringing, being Chinese-American, I learned this Chinese traditional way of being of treating our elders with respect. I think it's a beautiful concept. It's a beautiful thing to do to honor your elders and to see their wisdom and to see their presence is important. However, this kind of “respect” in my family equated to always accepting how an elder treats you even if it's abusive, hurtful, or wounding. So, it meant you don't have boundaries for yourself, you don't tell them that you don't like what they've said or done. You don't tell them how you feel unless it feels happy, or appreciative, grateful, or loving, loving in terms of “I love what you said, thank you.” And so if you have any distasteful feeling or anger, hurt, discomfort or confusion, or a boundary like you didn't like it, you didn't want them to do X, Y or Z, you're meant to keep that to yourself. And it would be again selfish to share that. And so, loving meant to always stay silent and quiet if you had anything uncomfortable.

Candice Wu 35:05
Loving, in this case, meant you're responsible for the well being of your elders, you're responsible for rather their emotional happiness, and you were at fault for their discomfort, that they couldn't handle any discomfort. And this is the way to love elders to respect them in this way. So, loving can be mixed with how you behave and what you share and what you don't.

Candice Wu 35:38
Loving can be you, “Always listen to me and you always obey.” Even if it hurts you. Loving can mix up with not leaving a situation or not leaving a person and staying close and going against what you need. Maybe you need distance, and you need to be away in order to love. But that was threatening in some way. And it wasn't okay to take any distance or space, or as children, we often survive and endure a lot of experiences because we have to, we have to depend on our parents, are caretakers for safety. So, sometimes we can grow up and keep that same way of being, of not leaving a hard situation and enduring it, handling it, surviving it, because we can and because we did and we know that way of loving people, we just stick with them. Even if it's painful.

Candice Wu 36:44
Loving can mix up with doing what others want of you and keeping them happy being responsible for their happiness and not choosing what's truly for you and right for you.

Candice Wu 37:00
Love and sex get very tangled up. We often think that sex is one and the same as love. Some people experienced that and some people in monogamous relationships experience that. We fear that if we have sexual interactions or feelings or fantasies towards someone else besides the one that we love, then it doesn't, it then it means we don't love them at all. And that may not be true. It may be true, but it may not be true.

Candice Wu 37:32
Some people believe that if you have sex with me, you love me, or if you don't have sex with me, you don't love me.

Candice Wu 37:42
In polyamorous relationships and philosophies, there's the idea that we can love many people. This universal sense of love. If you love someone, you can also love another person, there's room for more. And that is not necessarily monogamous or polyamorous in its view, it's just a tendency that I see that in polyamorous relationships, there's a bit more openness about that. But you can see how with that example, that the idea that we can only love one person, there's only one true love.

Candice Wu 38:21
It's a very romantic idea. And it's also very archetypal, it runs a deep thread within many of us. And we're working that out. We're trying to figure out what, what it really is. Is that really true? If you love someone else, do you really also love me? Is that even possible? Can we love more than one person? And can it be a deep love?

Candice Wu 38:44
Love can tangle up also with money, and value and worth, and when we receive money through our family or when we don't or when we receive it from somebody that can feel like they love me a lot, or if someone isn't willing to spend money on you, you might question their love for you or they're like for you even. But especially through family lines, we expect that will receive money if they have it, if our family loves us, like inheritance, and gifts.

Candice Wu 39:28
And of course, everything I'm saying is not always true. And some of these may resonate with you and some may just seem totally ridiculous. But, I want to open up these ideas so that you can think about what has loving, mixed within your life, in your soul and in your being?

Candice Wu 39:48
There's also the sense that loving equals permanency, that if you truly love somebody, you are permanently there, and you never leave, you're there forever. And if it lasts forever, then it was true love. But that's so dismissive of the fact that you feel something right here and now. And what that is, is actually fear coming in, the fear that something may be gone later, or the fear that someone leaves or that you're left alone, the fear that something changes. So, that's not actually loving, that's trying to control something so that you don't have to feel the fear.

Candice Wu 40:30
So, this brings me to that idea, back to the idea of is it out of fear, or is it out of freedom? The early experiences of loving that we've had, that are a bit dysfunctional now that do causes suffering, can and are likely out of some survival mode, some fear, some need, that if we don't do this, then we might not receive what we need to feel safe, to feel love to feel belonging. And as adults, we're able to look back and not leave those as wounds in ourselves not leave this as the way things are, but to examine it, to feel through it, and to see where we needed to do certain things to protect ourselves when you were younger to have that kind of loving and attention. And now we don't need to do that anymore. We don't need our parents or caretakers for safety. We don't need to depend on those we used to depend on. And that means we don't need to use those same strategies that are intermingled with loving, that we have thought to be the way we have to love people, the way we should love people and the way we do love people. We can clear all that up, untangle at and experience a pure love now, a kind of love that's free that doesn't express out of, I need you, and I need you to love me back. But one of clear attention, presence, and witness. One of feeling the beauty, feeling the pain if the pain is there, the upset if upsets there, the joy of being with what is here and seeing the beauty in that. That is a deeper, universal or cosmic kind of love.

Candice Wu 42:33
So, if you've come to that question, what is love for yourself? How do I love? It's a beautiful thing, it's a great beginning an opening for you to see what, what is truly loving. What feels loving in you? And is it truly full? Or is it partially compromised? Is it a bit of fear? Is it a bit of grasping or grabbing onto something, which would signify fear? Or is it free? Is it open and able to move and end, and change and flow?

Candice Wu 43:13
So, we'll leave today's episode with some inquiry and exploration questions for you. And you can feel free to journal about these, you can pause the podcast and just stay with a question and meditate on it, or take it at your pace.

Candice Wu 43:31
As you journal about these, encourage you to go at your own pace, in terms of feeling into your responses, exploring and excavating what's there. Take your time to feel into the experience of these where a lot of stuff can be brought up. And I encourage you also to share this with someone you trust, someone that can support you through healing work, whether that's a therapist, healer, or a coach, someone who can be with you through these emotions. Where the transformation is, is not just in the thinking process of this in the clarity and understanding of it, but it's also in the body. We can't have one without the other and truly integrate a new way of being. We need to transform the emotions and the energy of it inside our whole body. And that's what allows us to actually experience something different, it actually allows us to experience love, not just have a mental concept of love in our mind. So, when I asked these questions and bring these questions out for you, with you here, be sure to feel into the body and let the body show you what it feels about these topics and these ideas.

Candice Wu 44:50
So, if you want to get a notepad, or journal or computer out to explore these questions, feel free to pause the podcast here. And if you're ready to do this with me, I will start with the first question. How did you have to act for love when you were young? What did you have to do in order to receive love?

Candice Wu 45:32
And I realized I'm not giving much time here. So, this is where I invite you to pause the podcast for as long as you need. Or if you're just touching in on these questions and letting them marinate and you feel free to go on with me here.

Candice Wu 45:48
Fill in the blank. In order to belong, I had to ____. And in order to be loved, I had to____.

Candice Wu 46:17
And this next one is also fill in the blank. To be loving to others means that I need to _____.

Candice Wu 46:38
And this next question regards loyalty. Because we often feel like we need to be loyal in order to love. And so those are connected. And in order to be loyal to those I love, it meant that I needed to ___.

Candice Wu 47:08
And the next question, where do you begin to be unloving to yourself? At what moments? Or in what moments to begin to be unloving to yourself?

Candice Wu 47:39
And the next question is, what would you do if you loved yourself right now?

Candice Wu 48:02
And the next question is, what ways of being do you want to shed that are mixed with love and loving? So in other words, what ideas around loving are you ready to shed? As an example, for me, I would shed the need to be silent in order to be loved, and loving, meaning that I have to be silent. So, what ways of being are you ready or wanting to shed around what it means to love?

Candice Wu 48:54
And right now, as you explore this, just take a couple of breaths. Notice any feelings that are coming up and notice any emotions or sensations in your body. Allow what's here, allow any images to appear or present themselves to you. You can also write those down for later exploration. And take this moment to ground and just see your surroundings and recognize you are here in your adult self right now.

Candice Wu 49:49
And just a few more questions that shift the gears a bit here. What is loving to you? What is an adult way to love, what is mature and free love?

Candice Wu 50:23
And don't worry if you have the answers or not. This is all exploration that is continued and evolves.

Candice Wu 50:39
The last question I have is, what is your capacity to receive love?

Candice Wu 50:57
And this question of what is your capacity to receive love is not an easy one to answer either. It's more just a sense of your own feeling of how much you're able to receive. And that just being a gauge for yourself of exploring, receiving love in a deeper way. Healing areas where you feel like you cannot receive or it's challenging to receive.

Candice Wu 51:28
Just feeling what your senses, can you open your palms up and out and receive love from the world? Or do you feel closed? Do you feel like your arms are crossed or the reaching out is stopped or blocked? Or what's coming to you? What is coming to you? What do you receive?

Candice Wu 52:04
And as we close this journaling and exploration section, take a moment and just let it all go and place your hands on your heart, if you feel comfortable, and take this moment to feel love and gratitude for yourself. The sense of warmth towards yourself of presence without judgment, of honoring exactly how you feel in this moment, being with yourself, being able to look at yourself inward, and accept, allow.

Candice Wu 53:03
And as you're ready to release your hands, keep a model wiggle if you want or stretch, stretch any part of your body or move if you want to. Just coming back to the moment.

Candice Wu 53:27
And I hope that you take all of these questions and your responses, your reactions with compassion and curiosity. As a reminder, this is all for exploration. There's no right or wrong here, and this whole podcast itself is meant to be taken with that same sort of exploration that we're all on this journey, to explore what is love and what isn't and to find what it is for ourselves and to be clearer and more free in ourselves to love, to love without fear or to love with fear, through fear.

Candice Wu 54:11
And with that, I am reminded of a Mary Oliver poem, the Mary Oliver poem that just made me fall in love with her work. It's called “The Summer Day”, and I'm going to read it to you now as we close.

Candice Wu 54:28
The summer day, who made the world, who made the swan and the black bear, who made the grasshopper, this grasshopper, I mean. The one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, was moving her jaws back and forth, instead of up and down, who's gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now, she lives her pale forms and thoroughly washes her face. Now, she snaps her wings open and floats away. I don't exactly know what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed how to stroll through the fields, which is what I've been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Candice Wu 55:54
So, with that, I encourage you to play with your exploration and find beauty for yourself. Find what love is for yourself.

Candice Wu 56:07
Thank you so much for joining me today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you want to share them with me, feel free to reach out to me if you like to, you can email me find me at my website, CandiceWu.com and if you want to stay in touch with me through my newsletters, I send out self-love notes as well as all the updates on podcasts, events, retreats, and topics that I'm exploring, as well as updates on my travels and can sign up for that it CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 56:40
In the upcoming weeks, I hope to offer some experiences that will support you in receiving love, self-love, and embodying a feeling of love, sensing into beauty, forgiveness, and feeling what pure love is for you. So, tune in that coming up. And also, if you want to touch into the podcast that preceded this one about toxic ancestors and how to receive love and strength from ancestors that may be challenging or difficult to deal with, those who are dead and alive, you can find that episode at CandiceWu.com/EP61.

Candice Wu 57:28
Thanks so much for tuning in today and it's so great to have you here. I love hearing topics, questions, and feedback from my listener. So, that always inspires something new. And so if you have anything that's on your mind, anything that comes up as you're listening or things that are going on in your life, feel free to reach out and share them with me.

Candice Wu 57:52
Thank you, again, and I'll see you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 0:00
This episode is about how we can receive from ancestors or relatives that are mentally sick, toxic or unhealthy. How do we use our challenging family relationships as an opportunity for deeper self-love, and how to sort out what is love and what isn't love, sorting out the abuses and what's tangled up with love so that we can have a pure version of loving ourselves and loving others.

Candice Wu 0:31
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 0:45
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 1:06
Hello, and welcome back to the Embody Podcast. How are you doing? This is your weekly dosage of checking in with yourself if you don't do that daily, or if you don't remember to do it. But it's your chance to check in with yourself and see how you're doing. Have some compassion for yourself. Turn on the gentleness and kindness towards your heart. Yesterday, I spent the day after having a week of socializing a lot and putting my energy outward. I spent the day mending things. I had this pile of things I had stacked up on my travels as well as probably the last like two years, two or three years even like old bracelets I had broken that I love and want to keep and remake. I used to make jewelry and these are things that can do by myself, sweaters and leggings, pairs of gloves that had just broken or had a hole in them that they needed to repair and other odds and ends that just wanted attention. And so as I was doing that, I was asking myself what needs mending on the inside? What needs tending to, or attention? So as we start this podcast today, I invite you to ask yourself that, what needs mending in your life? What needs mending or repair in your heart?

Candice Wu 2:44
And check in both spiritually and emotionally as well as physically what to what does your body need? What does your heart need? What is your soul need?

Candice Wu 2:59
So, as you sense into that today, I invite you to do something about that this week and do whatever mending or nourishment your spirit or your soul needs. And offer that to yourself as a way to take care of your inner world.

Candice Wu 3:20
The pile of things that I was mending is almost complete, there are a few things that just need other materials. But that just felt so good to get that out of the way with, especially since those things had just been sitting there or constantly being a reminder to me like there's a hole in my pants. And you know, how often are we just ignoring the things that want to be tended to, and how good it feels to really look at that get that through and done with and to feel the wholeness again of what we love or what is there. And what's inside of us, the wholeness that something is attended to and taking care of.

Candice Wu 4:10
So, before we jump in further to the episode today, I want to share with you this new Dream Work class that I put on Skillshare. It is a class on how to prepare your body and your physiology to thrive in your dream life and to better remember your dreams as well as have better sleep and feel more embodied. So, this class consists of six different practices, better embodiment practices that will support your nervous system and feeling a more restful and relaxed state, feeling safer in your body, and therefore, more creativity, play an exploration in yourself so that your dream life can open up and you can remember your dreams with much more ease and have more restful sleep that gives the space for your dream life to speak itself to you to give you the images so that you can learn more about yourself and bring those energies into your life, as well as receive your own inner wisdom. I love working with dreams. I had this awesome dream last night.

Candice Wu 5:19
There are some dreams that are just so personal and enlivening and yet it's exciting to work with them and actually have them out in the open. So, I work with somebody on my dreams, as well as a lot of my friends enjoy talking about Dream Work with me. So, I will bring this dream to one of my dream friends possibly, or my dream worker. And it just, I feel like something's going to come up around that and give me even more life, I can already feel it. And that's how I love to work with dreams is to feel it in the body, what the image gives you or the experience of something that's being shown to you through your dream. And that way, it can unfold even more. And the true and specific meanings and experience can bring up more in life.

Candice Wu 6:18
So those, the exploration of Dream Work in this way will be something down the line that I offer in the dream classes. But if you want to check out the one that I'm talking about now, it's at CandiceWu.com/dreamphysiology. If you go there, you can also get the two months for free premium membership of Skillshare. And if you're signed up on my newsletter, the first 75 people that are tuning in from my newsletter will get this for free, or if you were a Patreon supporter, you'll get that class automatically for free. You'll get the link for that. You can also join Patreon and offer a contribution if you think like to, to access this as well. And that's a CandiceWu.com/Patreon. I appreciate all the support that all of you out there giving me, even if you're just listening and enjoying this, even touching one person with each podcast makes a difference for me. And it means a lot to me. If you know if somebody that's interested in Dream Work or remembering their dreams better, feel free to share this with them. If you feel inspired, I'd really appreciate it so that more people can learn about this and dive into knowing themselves better.

Candice Wu 7:36
So, a few more updates from me, I, as you know, as many of you know, I'm back in Michigan. And it's right now it's almost like a blizzard out there. It's beautiful. It's cold, but I'm so warm in my body and my heart. Because I'm just really feeling the nourishment that I'm giving myself and happy to be around family again, and take care of myself in this way.

Candice Wu 8:04
Many of you know I had this really challenging experience in Ireland while I was working with horses and staying with a host family. And instead of just saying a few, I'm glad that's over. I've been taking the pieces of what not only what I learned that was really good from the experience, but also the challenging pieces and what might still be in store for me to clear up inside of myself. It feels like a little bit of debris and residue left over from that experience that really actually just touched into some of the past experiences I've had and the triggers that I have. It's like I was going back for clean up. And actually, that's what my one of my astrologers said that between the month of December and March of this year, that it would be like I was going back into all the stuff of this life, the karma, the lessons that have already come up, and just doing a little bit of cleanup.

Candice Wu 9:07
Some of you may also be on that journey, where you're cleaning up the debris and clutter of trauma and what is stopping you from just loving yourself and being in your true expression. And if you are on that journey, or if you're beginning it, I just keep encouraging you to take the time to nourish yourself along the way and take breaks around it. Do things that feel really good to you and remind you of, remind you of who you are or make you just feel like you're loved and taken care of. And the beauty of it is that you get to do that for yourself. So, as I bounced out of being very social last week, going salsa dancing with old friends, seeing a couple of people that really wanted, that I really wanted to see that were from a long time ago. And seeing a lot of my family, I shifted gears into this feeling of retreat and mending things was step one, and then shifted into what are the things I want to do with myself. And some of those include taking a salt bath, where I'm staying, I don't have a bathtub. And so, something that I really want to do, maybe I'll go to my aunt's house and do that. But what are some things that you want to do with yourself?

Candice Wu 10:37
Would it be nice to go to the movies by yourself? Or would it be nice to journal, or listen to some music and just rest? What can feel nourishing to some part of you that really wants attention?

Candice Wu 10:51
I also want to share an experience around my own healing that is very in process and in progress. A lot of people ask me, how do you, what kind of experiences do you have? Or how do you work through X, Y, and Z? What happens if you have tension in your body? And also, since I do share some of my healing work with myself on this podcast, people often wonder or have the experience that it seems like I can get through a healing process for easily. And while that is true, that a lot of times things just open up for me easily now, it wasn't always the case. I'd get very stuck with certain emotions for a long time. And they were held in my body with a lot of tightness and pain even. And I haven't had pain in my body for quite a while, maybe two or three years now. When I eat well and when I'm digesting well, not just food wise, but energetically, I'm digesting my emotion and experiences and the things that are coming up, move through me because I give it that attention, then my body feels very clear. And I feel grounded and present.

Candice Wu 12:12
Well, while I was in Ireland, and as I, as I got home, my back started hurting, there was this pain in my lower left side, lower left back and upper right, like shoulder blade that started happening yesterday, actually. So, when this happens, I like to just let my body show me and tell me what is going on. And I have a few techniques to do so. One is just feeling and allowing, allowing movement and allowing what my body wants to do to happen and seeing what images, what emotions and thoughts come up to me and following that not lead, following that, those breadcrumbs. And another way I work with it is to ask the pain, imagine it visualize it and see it and ask the pain or the tension. What are you are what do you need? Not from an analytical place but from sensing in an intuitive place where whatever I see or hear from it. I listened to without any filter and explore it, kind of like I'm talking to a friend with a lot of compassion. And without any need to make sense of it.

Candice Wu 13:34
All this time, I wasn't getting much by asking, so I followed the lead of my body with movement. And this sharp pain in my right shoulder blade came out as anger and wanting to like stab something. So, I'm just doing the movement of that and feeling the anger and feeling this desire and need to clear the space that's just for me. And as you already have heard on this episode, that's kind of where I'm at, I'm going back more inward, to have retreat with myself and do things I need to do and want to do. And it requires clearing up some space for that. But this was deep, deeper seeded. This had to do with a younger self that needed the space to be herself and to learn about herself. And that anger, I couldn't exactly explain it all, but it is followed it, let it be felt. And when emotion comes rising up, I know I've hit a sweet spot or I'm resonating with the energy of what's lodged in me. So, that's coming through and then suddenly, I held my right foot. And it reminded me of an experience that I had in somatic experiencing training where this other training was holding my foot and I was crying. And something about that felt really right.

Candice Wu 15:08
It was an unspoken experience and need of my body for this leg to be held. And I had the words, don't let go, don't let go. Don't let go for me in that experience. And that resonated right with my present experience. And what that unfolded to was some of my younger, my younger child experience of feeling the need for someone to hold me and help me through some really hard emotions, especially a male figure. And this wasn't exactly there in my life. But also, it connected back to a piece of my grandfather's experience where he was given away when he was five years old. And the words don't let go, don't, don't leave me, don't, don't let go. That just seemed to fit right in the context of my grandpa as a five-year-old. And just imagining that experience of trauma as he was given away. The stories he's given away from money after his mother died. And his father couldn't take care of him. I don't know the rest of the story. But it seemed like he had never accepted his adoptive mother. And I know that it's connected when I feel into that and somehow that changes something in my body.

Candice Wu 16:40
And so my body started shaking, my right leg started shaking and releasing. And it's like, you know, when a faucet, that stuck gets turned on and it starts like, like just coming out a little bit. And then it starts spreading open. It's like that, like the energy that's black there in the body is trying to make its way out. And that's what the feeling was in my right leg. And it could feel some of what was in my back release. And so, there's a little more to my process, which I won't say here but what opened up through this experience was not only my experience but an ancestral experience that was still connected to me and a repeat in my life. I share this with you now also feeling this pain in my back. It's not completely gone. So, I know that there's more. But what I do experience now that I didn't win the past is that I have a lot more enjoyment along the journey of healing. I experienced this, this pain as okay, what is here for me to explore. And I don't pressure myself to make it go away as much because I do feel the trust and belief in myself, the faith that I can process through this and it will shift, it will move, it will leave, it will reveal more to me. And I've gone through that enough times to know that that's a reality for me.

Candice Wu 18:18
I used to feel worried and scared like what was wrong with me, and this won't go away. And that was just before I had the tools to move through an embodied healing experience that got me through to the other side. It doesn't mean it doesn't keep happening for me, where I have layers and layers of healing. But I do experience it very differently. And I have less now. So, it's a bit of hope for all of you as well that are out there, struggling or feeling a lot of challenging healing experiences coming up, that there's a different experience as you continue on and find more capacity and resilience and can even find pleasure in learning about yourself through feeling. I wasn't sure what to do this episode on. And as it was coming closer to the need for me to record this episode, I felt kind of lost, like what am I going to talk about this week? I have a lot of topics lined up in a way. But I really like to feel into what resonates right in the moment, this week, and what I'm experiencing and where things are evolving. So, because this is a living and breathing podcast, I just threw out the list and wondered what I would do. And the beautiful thing is that someone, a listener wrote to me a question and is a very important and deep question. And that's the topic for today. So, when I read you the question that this listener shared with me, which leads into this topic that I'll discuss today, as well as the experiences that will go out this week.

Candice Wu 20:10
So, this listener asked me, can you receive help from ancestors or relatives that are still alive? If these relatives are sick, toxic or unhealthy to you and your life? And she further asks, if there's a long pattern of unhealthy bonds, can we receive strength from these people? Can we receive something? Judging them is not useful and cutting relatives from our life is very painful, but sometimes is fundamentally healthy. But how can we create balance? How can we energetically create balance? So, there's a lot of components of this question. First, let's start with the topic of toxic relatives or unhealthy dynamics with ancestors or people in your family. I think we can all say that there is some relationship in our family, or in our family line that is challenging. I have only met a few people that don't find that their family life brings them a bit of challenge. So, as you listen in to this episode, well, let's open up. Do you have any relatives, whether that's your parents, your siblings, or anyone in your family line that challenges you, that you feel heartache with, or tension, or perhaps you're angry with or feel sad about?

Candice Wu 21:43
Just take a moment and notice who comes up for you?

Candice Wu 21:51
Are there people in your family line that you wish would be different?

Candice Wu 22:00
If you've cut your family out, are there people in your present life, bosses, managers, co-workers, friends, acquaintances? Are there any people in your present-day life that remind you of a family member or a dynamic in your family?

Candice Wu 22:28
I find that the inner imprint of a relationship dynamic, especially if it was an early relationship, meaning one that you had in your early life, perhaps that's with a sibling, even a friend or a parent or caretaker. The imprints of those relationships mirror elsewhere in other relationships with people, with money and abundance, with even objects and things that hold meaning, or situations. It's somewhere those dynamics get mirrored. And some psychology theories call it a social microcosm that your social world is a microcosm of your family world.

Candice Wu 23:20
So, the question is, can you receive support help or strength from the people that you feel like they're unhealthy and our family line? Or that we even call toxic? That it's so stressful and very hard to interact with them? Or perhaps they are mentally ill or create a dynamic that is very hard to interact with?

Candice Wu 23:51
From a family constellations perspective, the answer is yes. At least in my experience, and from what I've seen, but that's not always the case. But the first thought I have to this question, as far as the outer life, the real-life outer relationship is that sometimes having distance is the most loving thing. You can love someone at a distance, you can be at a distance and actually have a better relationship than you would up close. And that amount of distance just varies for each kind of relationship. Ultimately, if we are loving ourselves, and if we've healed up any wounds that are caused, or rooted in this relationship, then we may be able to see this person very clearly. And we can see what we would receive from them, what we can receive them from them and what we do receive. We can feel into what's deeper than the human experience, perhaps their soul or spirit, and feel the love that's actually way, way deep, deep, deep down. With some people, that's harder to see than others, but deep down, we are bonded with some version of pure love. And it just depends on how many layers of distortion are on top of that, distortion by the human mind and ego and pain.

Candice Wu 25:31
But when we look at the soul of let's say, our parent, or grandparent or whoever it is that we're struggling with, can we find the part of them that actually is offering us some strength or love or gift of some sort that comes forward that we can feel through them in that relationship? The answer would vary, I would think. But this is something that I've worked very hard with, with my father, my mother at some point, although now our real-life relationship is so much better and great. But there were times where I had to look for the love that was deeper than I could feel in the human form. And with my father, we are very much at a distance and can love each other now. But when we get up close for too long, sometimes old, old fit parts of us come up and we can butt heads a little bit. But when I look to him now and feel what's deeper, I can feel a lot of resource, a lot of logical smarts, a lot of financial smarts, a lot of love.

Candice Wu 27:03
I used to wish that my father was different. I used to wish that certain parts of my family were different, even beyond my father. And what I realized is when I wish that some people are different than I have expectations of them, that there is something that I depend on them to give me. And that's not to say, Oh, stop doing that, although you might tell yourself that, but it's an indicator of where my heart and my soul wants to learn a more expansive love for myself. There's a gap, of which I'm asking someone else for my own need to be filled. And that may be there because in childhood I really needed someone else to fulfill a certain kind of safety or love. I depended, and we depended on others when we're children. But if you're an adult now and you're listening into this, perhaps it's time to see if you don't already that the things that we desire from other people, especially our family members. These pieces of us that still wish, I just wish so and so would be nicer. I just wish they would do X, Y, and Z or be different. That's just an indicator of where we need to fill in the gaps for ourself. What part of us wants them to be different? What does that part of us need?

Candice Wu 28:36
And so it's about learning to relate to ourselves differently, learning about the reactions that we have, and what parts of us are perhaps stuck in time still wanting x y&z from our parents or from our siblings or from whoever it is in our family.

Candice Wu 28:55
That's not to say that our family members don't have their own issues, or that they are not certain ways, sometimes it's helpful to name that. Sometimes it's helpful to recognize where our parents or where our family members are emotionally stuck, where their fears are, or their insecurities, and to have some compassion for that. And what I mean is to be able to recognize that so that you can emotionally distance yourself a bit, and also see that you might be in that same reactive place, if you were them. But it's not to stop there and just let compassion be the end answer that can only go so far. And if that's all you need, then great.

Candice Wu 29:44
But for a lot of people, we need something more, we need to process our own reactions to our family members, we need to move through those feelings that got stuck there, too. So if we've had experiences with certain family members that have been wounding or hurtful or unsafe emotionally or physically, whether that's in the past, or up to now, we need to move through those emotions and physical experiences, as well as any meanings or belief sets that come out of that, to help ourselves move forward. We can't just always logic our way through. And for some people they can, but for most of us, it's held in the body, it's a visceral experience, especially when it pertains to a younger experience. So the second part to this listeners question was, can we cut the luggage or emotional luggage or the luggage and the relationship of the family member and me using compassion and understanding of their behaviors, I believe that recognizing where someone else is, is incredibly helpful, but not to use that as a weapon.

Candice Wu 30:56
But as a way to see more clearly give you the distance, so that you can look at your own emotional wound or what's there for you. So it requires both, it's not helpful only to just say, oh, okay, so and so is just having the experience of being a younger child, they're emotionally stuck at, I don't know, eight years old, because x y&z happened to them. That can be incredibly helpful, and it can go a long way. And it can be this indicator that this experience didn't start with them. And what I mean is, it can be a repeated ancestral experience, an intergenerational experience that has reiterated itself down the line a cycle. But feeling through any pain, feelings or sensations you have is the deeper process that can give true freedom from the luggage, so to say. The freedom that gives rise to compassion from a natural place, and having the right kind of distance or closeness that's appropriate in the real-life relationship. It gives you a sense of what's true and right for you right now and the ability to feel clarity and neutrality within the experience and do what's right for you.

Candice Wu 32:26
So, ultimately, this visceral reaction in your own body is what wants to be processed. And a lot of times that can include a body experience, or the physiology of trauma, the body experience that goes along with something that was overwhelming to the system. So, this is about you. And that's not meant to be a way to blame yourself, but a way to say, Oh, this is where my power and empowerment is and taking responsibility for what my wounds are, and where my reactions are and what that tells me about what wants to complete itself in my history. What once tending to in my heart or soul. And that's true power to shift the dependency off of the family member that we're struggling with, to shift the expectation off of them, and to turn within ourselves to heal the wound that is there.

Candice Wu 33:32
So, we go inward, and we work with the inner relationship with ourselves, and how we see the world around us how we see the people around us as part of that. That's like Shadow Work. We have projections and judgments of other people outside of us. But really, that's telling us something about ourselves, it opens up into where a wound may be for us and the way we protect yourself with that judgment.

Candice Wu 34:03
So, let's process what that is for us. Let's look at it with some compassion and gentleness. So, processing through that can mean sensing into your ancestry and noticing where the patterns existed and how you're part of that. Or to notice, where are the losses and traumas in the ancestry that perhaps you're connected with. Family constellations are one of those powerful ways that I've experienced doing this. And it's not about analyzing these losses and experiences, it's about feeling through them. And with a group experience of constellations, you can witness other people supporting you and doing that by standing and as a representative for your relatives. And seeing the dynamic play out before your very eyes. There is an episode about family constellations, just a very introductory one that I did very early on in the podcast. And it's episode five. So you can find that at CandiceWu.com/EPfive.

Candice Wu 35:17
That explains a bit of family constellations, and how that might work. But just to talk about the philosophy today, when we experience challenging relationships with our family members, these are openings to the pain of the ancestry. It likely didn't start between you and this person, or between two people that you find have a lot of tension, or anger within each other, or some sort of dynamic that you don't like to see, it probably goes farther back. And how did that come to be? What was the catalyst or the root of this issue are dynamic? And what I typically see and what constellation facilitators typically see is that somewhere along the way, the feeling of love, which is underneath everything was so big, that when something happened, it was so painful, and that painful experience didn't get integrated.

Candice Wu 36:30
So, maybe that was losing a child or losing a parent early, or even later in life. Maybe that was an illness that happened or an accident. And it was so painful to bear that the family couldn't look at it. Maybe it was war, and how terror terrible war can be. And to not talk about it, because it's hard to talk about. Those experiences that were silenced or not talked about are usually the ones that get passed down. And that can open up to a way of coping and a way of protecting that down the line down the ancestry, or in our own lives becomes dysfunctional. It feels like it's hurting us. It feels like self-sabotage. But somewhere behind that, before this became dysfunctional, was a protective, a protection that came from this dysfunction. It worked at some point to protect and to allow people to survive, and then it just continued on.

Candice Wu 37:42
So, when we have tension between family members or a challenging relationship in a family, it is that opening to the story and the soul of the ancestry, the story that wants to be acknowledged and heard and healed. These can be healed by you. With family constellations, you can do it in a group, you can do it one on one. It's something that I facilitate with people. And it's incredibly powerful and a very personal experience. You're not doing it with your family members, you're not bringing in the person you have a challenge with and working it out by talking. But we're working with the felt sense in the body, the emotions, and what didn't get to be seen. And when we do that, personally, it has a reverberating effect on the real people in our lives on people who are dead. And the ones alive because we're so unconsciously connected, energetically connected. That our wholeness will we have an aspect of ourselves that we've healed or apart we're integrating into more expansiveness and more wholeness, that affects everyone around us.

Candice Wu 39:05
So, earlier, when I talked about seeing the soul of somebody in our lives that is challenging, seeing the love that's underneath, whatever toxicity we see on the surface, that's part of constellations, because there is a deeper knowing that the spirit that's beyond the physical and human body, if we can access that we can receive gifts that are not the sick, toxic or unhealthy part. It is much harder to do that in our real life, if that person is a toxic part of our life, and depending on who they are in our life of their parents or someone else. And but if we can integrate that for ourselves that there is that part of them that we can receive love from, love being a free witness and warmth coming through, then we can build for ourselves something that is beyond that toxicity we see in human form. We can feel into that love, and not expect the human person to have to do that for us, because we have the resource to feel it within us.

Candice Wu 40:26
This may sound hard to do, I don't know how it sounds to you, it may sound like what is Candice talking about. If you have the interest to go deeper with this, it is one really powerful way to resource yourself and feel the love from within by using your image of someone you know, a relative feeling into the love in them, so that you can feel that for yourself.

Candice Wu 40:58
Another way to work with your inner world around your experience with challenging relationships and your family is to work with your inner parts. What I mean is that certain parts of you probably get activated when something happens with a family member, when something stresses you out or makes you irritated or you have a reaction.

Candice Wu 41:27
When we feel that let's look at what part of us is experiencing that reaction. Is that part of us a younger version of ourselves? Is it just an angry part of us? If we can connect with that part of ourselves, then we ourselves can give this part of us what we need in order to heal. What we need that we wish someone else in our family would do or give to us, whether that's their attention, or some acknowledgment or validation or some kind of apology or anything. We can look towards our self and give that to that wounded part of our self. I did a whole podcast on that as well and it's about Parts Work, working with the parts of ourselves and embracing all the parts. You can find that podcast at CandiceWU.com/parts. And there are experientials that go along with that to support you in healing certain parts of yourself, that may come up. And if they come up with family members, this is a perfect place to learn more about yourself.

Candice Wu 42:45
Which leads me to the last thing I want to mention today, that if we have challenging experiences with family, that gives us a very deep and powerful opportunity to look at how we love, how we love ourselves and each other because we probably learned and picked up some ways of loving that are tangled up with pain, or intermingled and paired with other things that make it complicated, make us confused about what is love.

Candice Wu 43:25
I believe that love is pure attention and witness. It's where your energy is directed, and being present with what's there and what is felt this is love. So, it can be the moment of having a connection with someone, even a stranger, the feeling that feels like you're really seeing yourself or seeing the other person, and likely both come with recognition and allowing what's truly there. Something that feels real and genuine.

Candice Wu 43:58
What I find with families and with people who have experienced some challenging early childhood experiences, or traumas, or really hard dynamics with their family members, is that love gets tied up with abuse or hurt. And we learn that loving means to stay when pain is there or to accept certain bad treatment because it shows that you love them. Love can be tied up with being silent in order to show someone else you love them, not telling them the truth of how you feel because it's uncomfortable for them, or for you. Love can be tied up with all sorts of loyalty to abuses and two things that hurt.

Candice Wu 45:04
This is the third part to this listeners question. She says my doubt is that a family system can have accepted and integrated abuses as love, loyalty to abuses as a sign of love. And it can go through ancestors that will carry on this experience, unconsciously.

Candice Wu 45:22
This is a whole other podcast that I will, that I would like to talk about very soon. But just for today, I want to just acknowledge how love can be tangled up with so much. In my own family, in order to love, I had to keep my emotions to myself. And it would be selfish if I spoke to uncomfortable emotions. And this was the way to love and respect your elders and your family members. When we have challenging relationships in our family system, when there are abuses or when there are ways that emotional wounding happens in a relationship, we often get confused about what love is, and what we have to endure in order to or what we have to accept in relationships because there is love there somewhere. But then there's this hurt that comes with it. And part of what I believe our work here as humans is to sort that out. And to learn what love truly is and what it isn't. And to learn how to truly love ourselves as we grow older.

Candice Wu 46:42
Our family issues, our challenging family relationships give us the most prime and raw and powerful, like loaded material for us to learn where we need to love ourselves more and to learn how to love ourselves. These are just giant lessons in self-love. And what I mean is that we need to learn about where our hurt was, so that we can learn a greater love than before.

Candice Wu 47:13
And when we have certain experiences in our family, that show us giant wounds, and they don't help us heal those wounds. If they do, then that's wonderful. But when they don't, we are left with this gaping hole in our heart or in our body and part of our work with ourselves is to heal those parts of ourselves up, to feel through those emotions that we need to feel through, and to give ourselves the love the attention, the validation and support that perhaps we didn't get before, which is going to give us a fuller way to be there for ourselves, to truly love and accept all of who we are. And to let those past wounds and experiences move through so that we don't identify with those parts of ourselves as who we are, but that there's this just part of this fluid experience that we had, and that give us those opportunities to learn how to love ourselves.

Candice Wu 48:32
And that loving of ourselves now helps us grow our awareness. It helps us expand and feel more of the human experience, and it shows us how to be in the body, but also how to see beyond human form. It shows us how to look into spirit, look into our souls, look into what we deeply want, and what we, what wounds we came in with it this life, what beliefs we came in with, and this feeling into and sorting out what is love and what isn't as part of what we can do for ourselves and the next generations.

Candice Wu 49:17
So, I want to mention a couple of other podcasts that you can tune into if this is an interesting topic for you. As I mentioned earlier, there's a podcast about Parts Work and that's at CandiceWu.com/parts. There's a blog post on showing your inner child, your present-day self. So, showing your younger version of yourself, your adult self so that you can bring healing and sync up the past to the present. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/healingyourinnerchild. I had a friend, Nick Warburg, come on the show and I talked about family constellations and also working with a challenging family relationship. So, you can tune into his experiential at CandiceWu.com/Nick. Also, there are a couple of experientials about healing the past and moving forward from challenging relationships and that is at CandiceWu.com/pastisover.

Candice Wu 50:27
This episode supports you in looking at what parts of you are stuck in time at completing a chapter of the past and releasing and closing a relationship. And also, as I mentioned earlier, the family constellations intro episode is that CandiceWu.com/EPfive. Stay tuned this week for three healing experientials that our family constellations inspired as well as somatically and energetically inspired, and also bring self-forgiveness. So, the first one is going to be healing the ancestry and giving the ancestry, imagining that your ancestry has what it needs in order to give to you what you need. So, seeing what was needed in the ancestry, and letting it trickle down to you. The second one is turning towards self-love when you experience a challenging family relationship or with around a family relationship that is difficult, and working with that inner child in you or the part of you that feels of reaction. The third experiential is about self-forgiveness around dependency and where you feel dependent on someone else, or co-dependent on someone else to give you what you need. And having that self-forgiveness around the judgment that comes with it.

Candice Wu 52:03
So, stay tuned to all of these and if you've subscribed to my podcast, you'll see them come out this week, and if not go to my website at CandiceWu.com/podcast and you can find those there. This is podcast 61, so you can also go to CandiceWu.com/EP61.

Candice Wu 52:24
I'm so glad you tuned in today. Let's end today with a little bit of tuning into yourself and just seeing where your heart is now.

Candice Wu 52:34
So, take a few breaths and breathe into your heart, into your body.

Candice Wu 52:45
Watch your breath, be natural.

Candice Wu 52:51
And take this moment just for you to sense into how your heart is doing right now.

Candice Wu 53:01
Notice how you feel right now after this conversation if any parts of you want attention now, or any new ideas have come into your being.

Candice Wu 53:21
And just acknowledge anything that's coming up.

Candice Wu 53:31
And I invite you to give yourself the attention you need this week, reach out for support if you need to a friend, a healer, a therapist, coach or me. I'm always happy to talk with anyone that wants to connect. And if you've never done a 20-minute free consultation with me, I invite you to do that there's no pressure to continue on or have sessions after that. It's purely a place to check in to see if there are next steps that you'd like for yourself to explore what you really desire. And if there are referrals that I can offer you or if it feels like a really good fit to work together, we can go from there.

Candice Wu 54:17
And as we conclude today, I invite you to sign up for my bi-monthly newsletter at CandiceWu.com/Embody. This is where you can get self-love tips, receive updates, get all the info about the podcasts and retreats and workshops that come up as well as the online classes. And I want to thank you so much for being here, and I wish for you that you have all the love in the world for yourself as you go through your day as you go through the week, and in your whole life to let that inspire you to be truly you as fiercely and as much as you want to in your life.

Candice Wu 55:09
Thanks so much for joining me today and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Candice Wu 55:17
So, as we shift gears here, we'll end with a little music so that you can shift into your day today or wind down.

Introduction

This healing experiential is to support you in healing the ancestry from which you came, so that you can feel more wholeness, love, freedom, and peace in your life.

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.

Challenging Family Relationships

If you want to touch into the conversation around toxic family relationships and dynamics, unhealthy ancestors, and how do we find resource strength or love from the ancestry when there are those toxic relationships, as well as conversation about love and sorting out what love is and isn’t, and how to love yourself in a deeper way, using the challenges of the family ancestry as a tool for your own healing, your own growth, and self-knowing, you can find that episode at CandiceWu.com/ep61.

So in this guided experience, I’ll invite you to sense into, look at, and feel in your body, what happens when you invite your ancestry into the picture, which gives the unconscious imprint of what’s already happening within your inner dynamics and within your outer dynamics in your life. So we’re just sensing into what’s already there and imagining what was needed or what is needed in your family ancestry, in the line of your family, for you to feel how you want to feel. So whatever is needed for you to feel and receive more love, or the good things out of the lineage, we will work with that today.

We Are Ever Evolving

Before we begin, I want to remind all of us including myself that working with the ancestry, with what’s here today, is just one piece of things that’s here right now and each day we live, each movement forward or movement backward, each part of our lives that unfolds can unfold another piece of what wants to be healed or acknowledged that day.

So just because something shows up today, doesn’t mean that tomorrow, nothing will show up or that you’ve completed everything. It’s a continual process of healing, as many people say, healing is like peeling off layers of an onion and finding even deeper and deeper layers.

So as we begin, we honor what wants to show up today, what wants to emerge, and what wants to be seen.

Let’s Begin

So I invite you now to find a space where you can move around and I invite you to stand up and as you do, just ground yourself into your feet.

Take a couple of breaths and just let go of the day so far.

Let go of your attention on anything that’s pulling you from the outside and turn towards yourself with great power and love and attention.

Simply feeling your breath in and out.

Feel how your body stands.

Feel what feels effortless and easeful. What feels strenuous?

Notice what places in your body feel relaxed or calm, open or spacious.

Notice what places you’re holding, or there’s tension, tightness, or any other sensation you feel from the inside out.

Check-in with your heart and notice any sensations around the heart, sense any emotion in the whole body.

Notice if your body stands still, or moves in any way, just allow it to be completely natural, with whatever it wants to show up with.

Without any judgment, observe what’s happening inside, taking it all in as information and with this curiosity and openness.

Bring to Mind a Challenging Relationship

I invite you now to bring to mind a challenging family relationship that you have.

This may be a toxic dynamic, as some people like to call it or a very tough relationship, or one that brings you heartache or that you’ve cut off from.

This also may be one where you receive some good things out of the relationship, but also have some challenging aspects.

I invite you to picture this person in front of you, at whatever distance feels okay for you right now.

For some, it helps to have a visual place marker for the other person and you can use an object like a pillow, or take some shoes and set them down where their feet are, or any object that can just hold that place to represent the other person, the family member that you’d like to explore with.

And begin to notice what you see, how you see this person, how they are to you.

And notice how you’re feeling now that this person is in the picture, is in this energetic space that you’re looking at.

Feel your emotions now.

Allow anything that you’re feeling to come up and be noticed.

Feel if anything has changed inside your body, your temperature, the sensations inside.

Notice all the parts of your body and what’s going on in each part of the body.

Where do your eyes want to look or not look?

Are you feeling warmth towards this person or some other emotion or sensation?

Perceive whatever there is to perceive inside and out and notice now if your body wants to move, or if it’s in the right place, if it wants to turn around, sit down, lie down. Allow your body to move in whatever way it wants to and follow this movement.

And notice you in relation to this person in your family.

Stay with this moment and feel whatever is happening right now without trying to analyze it or think about what’s going on. Just feel, see, and sense.

Open the Need

Now I invite you to open to whatever is needed in this situation between you and this person.

Perhaps that’s another person or people as resource, maybe their parents, or your parents, caretakers or anyone else that would be loving or supportive here, animals, or perhaps it’s an energy that’s needed. The energy of love or the energy of pure witness and compassion or maybe it’s even more specific.

For example, perhaps the other person, in your sense, may need something, like someone to hug them and have their back so they can be present with you. Perhaps you need that behind you or with you. Perhaps it’s firmness and boundaries and someone to be clear, fair, and firm. Perhaps it’s someone to be strong and protective and speak up in a certain way.

Whatever is needed in this picture, for you, for the relationship or for the other person, imagine that happening right now.

Picture it happening and feel into the experience of if this were to happen, noticing how you feel, and what begins to shift, or change.

Allow any emotions to be felt. Notice what you notice.

Let what’s needed in this picture, fill up the space and allow just the right thing to be received by all that are connected to this dynamic.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure what’s needed. Just imagine, if you knew the exact right thing, just the right thing that’s needed or desired, what would that be?

Just allow your imagination, the pictures in your mind to show you, watch your breath flow, just the way it is and allow things to evolve as you reset to feeling this moment and this moment.

Tracking what’s happening now inside of yourself and in your image of what’s happening, and if there are any movements, follow those movements in your body.

Follow how your body wants to be and what it feels like and where.

Notice how the other person is in your mind’s eye in this experience.

Track what you sense, what you see, and let what’s needed, continue to fill the space and transform and change.

Whatever the dynamic is, in however it needs or wants to change, in what wants to unfold now, feel free to stay with it and continue to let things shift or move, or be felt without any pressure for things to be different, without expectation of what might show up.

And if there’s anything else that’s needed in this picture, for you, for the other person, feel free to picture that now or sense into, what would be just right? And what it would be like if you had just that right thing?

Mental Snapshot and Closing

Take a mental snapshot of what’s going on inside and in this relationship dynamic right now, sense what you see right now.

Feel free to pause the experience here if you need more time and if you’re ready to close the experience for now

Thank yourself for feeling into this challenging relationship, or giving yourself loving attention, for healing and for whatever wants to show itself.

And thank the other person for showing up here.

If it feels right, you can say out loud or in your mind to this person:

I’m so sorry. We had to do it this way.

If those words aren’t right, feel free to shift them or tweak them how it feels right.

And for some experiences and dynamics, it feels right to say:

I take responsibility for my part in this difficult relationship. And I leave you with your responsibility.

If that feels right for you, go ahead and feel into that.

When you feel ready, let yourself create a distance between you and this person that feels just right, whether that’s close or far away.

Send that gratitude to yourself and this other person again and just release your attention on this person.

Imagine that their energy is freed up back to where they belong. Feel into your own body. Feel your feet.

Notice how your body is now, just you, just your breath.

And here we’ll close this experience. Just looking around your space, on yourself come out of it and back to real-time.

Stretch or move your body in any way that feels right and send some appreciation to yourself for doing this challenging work with yourself and giving this love and attention.

Ending

Thanks so much for practicing with me today and feel free to reach out if you need any support or want to learn more about Family Constellations work or Somatic Healing and energetic healing.

And take a look at the other healing experiences related to this episode around challenging family relationships. That’s at CandiceWu.com/ep61.

There are a couple of other healing experiences to follow so stay tuned for those, and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Embody Podcast.

I’ll leave you with just a little music that you can shift gears into your life.

Thanks so much and see you again.

Introduction

This healing experiential will support you in healing the wounds of whatever comes up for you within a toxic or challenging family relationship. It uses working with the parts of you as well as somatic and energetic healing.

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.

Healing Series

This experiential is part of a series of healing experiences all connecting up with the introductory podcast around challenging relationships in the family, toxic, dynamics within a family and how to receive, how to experience love, and sort out what is love and what isn’t love within a family ancestry. You can find the full episode about this at CandiceWu.com/ep61.

So, in this healing experience, we’re going to look at what is it that is your reaction, when you’re encountering a challenging or toxic family relationship dynamic.

With whatever person that you get triggered by, meaning, whatever person you’re having reactions with or you feel upset with, angry with hurt by, within your family dynamic, and of course, you can do this with someone outside of your family, that’s fine as well, but just focusing on the family and selecting someone that you have a challenging relationship with.

And we’re going to look deeper at what part of you wants healing, what part of you is calling for a deeper healing that gives you a new kind of love from within yourself rather than expecting the person, the human outer relationship to give you what you need.

So, in this, we’re going to do some parts work, some inner child work as some people call it. Some people work with IFS, that’s Internal Family Systems, and some people work with voice dialogue, which is the language that I use often, and all of that is to look within and say, Which part of me is having this reaction, and what can I do to heal this part of me and give to this part of me what it really wants so that I can depend on myself that I can have this healing from within, and that I can feel more whole and at peace and loving of myself?

Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t necessarily get support from others. I absolutely recommend having the support you need for your healing, and it can be incredibly helpful to have somebody that is so compassionate and holding a loving space, and I hope that this healing experience gives you some experience of that so you can begin your healing process or take it to another level for yourself, but often having a real person to hold that vibration with and to co-regulate with is extremely helpful.

And if they can also guide you through this process, it can go a lot deeper, but this turning towards yourself and giving yourself what you need from within is a process of shifting your younger child dependencies on somebody in your family or in your life to yourself so that younger part of you can develop, heal, and be fulfilled from within. So, getting support for that is an excellent idea. It’s just getting different support than what your younger child would want or did want in the past.

Let’s Begin

So, if you’re ready to jump into this with me, go ahead and find a space for yourself to sit or lie down comfortably, anything that makes you feel like you’re supporting your body. And if it feels comfortable, close your eyes or look down.

And as you breathe, just notice how you’re doing at the moment, what is this experience of being in your body, right here and now.

And I invite you to surround yourself and your space, and our connection here in this experience, surrounded with love, the kind of energy that can hold any experience, any thought, emotion, impulse or image, holding it with compassion, curiosity, truth, and lightness.

And now I invite you to bring to mind a challenging family relationship that you have, and if you just choose not to do a family relationship, that’s okay, you can choose any relationship, and notice your reaction to this person or the situation that’s challenging for you.

Feel free to bring your awareness to the moment that was upsetting for you, that stands out in your mind or the kind of dynamic that brings up a reaction in you, and at any time, if this becomes overwhelming, I encourage you to take a break and pause, look around and just come out of it.

Supporting Your Body in Overwhelm

Sometimes, this work can be very overwhelming or bring up a lot of emotions, and it’s good to take those breaks and to do this in small doses so that your nervous system and your body can digest everything.

And now, as you feel into this upsetting experience or dynamic with this person, notice how your body reacts.

Notice where you feel any emotion inside. Where is that in your body?

Notice any part of your body that constricts or protects, guards or holds tension. Where’s the body armor?

Notice any part of you that feels open and released, any emotions that are moving.

Now, as you feel your inner reaction, allow any emotions to come up, just accepting and allowing what’s here, and tracking what’s happening, and if this reaction could be a separate part of you, imagine what that separate part of you would look like and one thing you can visualize is that this visceral experience and this set of reactions, visually just pulls out of your body and comes forward in front of you so that you can see it.

And as you see it or imagine it, notice how this part of you is, notice how they’re feeling.

Notice this Part of You

Notice if this is you, a part of you or your inner child, a younger version of you, and if it is how young or old is this part of you?

What age would you guess this part is or what age do you know this part is? If you’re unsure, just follow your guess, and you might feel some sort of resonance if you’ve guessed the right age. Don’t try to analyze it or make sense of it. Just feel how familiar this feeling feels, and to what age this feeling feels familiar to.

And ask this part of you or this part that’s having the reaction, “What do you need?” And listen or sense or see without any filter or judgment. Ask from the heart, from the space that wants and needs love and support or expression, the basic needs of our heart. “What do you need?”

Whatever this part of you says, see if you can imagine exactly what it needs, happening right now, and notice what happens as you receive that, as this part of you receives that just the right thing it needs.

You might sense into, what is this part of you wish, would have happened or what happened now?

And feel what it gives you, what it gives this part of you to have that now, if they could have that now, if you could imagine this part of you receiving just what they need or what they wish for.

Notice any emotions that are coming through especially in reaction to this challenging family relationship or dynamic, and continue to give them anything they need in relation to this challenging experience, and this challenging relationship that’s outside of you. You, your adult self, with many more resources than you had as a child, with safety and with the ability to love and care.

You know best for what your younger self needs or for what this part of you that’s reacting might need to hold this space for whatever is needed. If they need affectionate touch or supportive touch. If they need some words of validation or assurance presence, let them know you’re right here with them.

Let them know that they are safe with you, and hold the space for any emotions or reactions they have, even if they don’t like that at first.

And just stay with yourself, stay with this part of you.

Continue to feel any emotions or sensations you notice.

Continue to be in the moment of giving this part of you whatever they need from you, any sort of validation, acknowledgment or empathy of what they’re going through.

Let them experience your recognition of this.

Take A Break if Needed, Pulse Check

Feel free to stay with us for as long as you’d like to.

If you’re ready to take a break or complete the experience for right now, you can always come back later and check in on your younger self or this part of you that’s having the reaction, but for now, just go ahead and ask one more time if there’s anything else that’s needed or if they want to share anything with you.

And you can do a little pulse check to just see and gauge the shift or what’s happened here within the challenging family relationship that you originally started with so you can picture again, that situation that brought up a reaction in you or triggered you in some way, and notice how the part of you that you’ve been giving attention to.

Notice how this part of you feels now, notice how your reaction is now.

Is there any difference? Has it stayed the same?

Is there any space or different kind of awareness within you?

Closing

And now, just release it all.

Let yourself come back to your body in this moment.

Feel free to give some supportive self-touch to your body, just touching your heart or giving yourself a hug, squeezing your arms, your belly, your legs, anything that feels good and reminds your body and you that you’re here.

And let’s close with putting our palms together or palms on top of your chest and heart, a couple of deep breaths just filling yourself with gratitude and love, and we’ll close this experience today, for now.

End

And we’ll just end with a little bit of music so that you can transition into the next part of your day or just deepen into rest.

As you thank yourself for practicing, I thank you as well for joining me, and feel free to check out the other experiences related to this episode at CandiceWu.com/ep61, and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experience is to support you in self-forgiveness around any dependency or codependency relationships, whether that’s in your family or in your life.

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.

Self-Forgiveness

I first worked with self — forgiveness with a healing coach of mine, Charmayne Kilcup, and she had learned this technique from Robert Waterman, the deepest level of self-forgiveness we can give ourselves has to do with forgiving ourselves for the judgment that we have, about anything we’ve done, about any belief set that we have held that’s caused us to act in all sorts of ways, but any meaning that we’ve made that causes a suffering of any choices that we’ve made and ways of being that we are.

What I find about forgiveness around our judgments of ourselves is that it frees us up to be able to truly accept what has happened, with a great amount of love and responsibility.

It frees us to be able to accept the pain that we feel or that the beliefs that we have of ourselves so that we can see them and bring light into them, bring love into them so that they can release naturally.

What I experienced with self-forgiveness though is that when you say these words, that your body needs to be ready, feeling safe and open in order to release the energy and the emotions around it so that you can have a true shift.

If your body is very blocked or you’re overwhelmed or you’re feeling emotionally unsafe and unsupported, you may or may not know that about yourself, but maybe nothing happens when you say these words, that can mean two things — the words aren’t right, and they’re not hitting the spot or that your body is not prepared to move the feelings and energies out of your body. It’s holding on tightly or surviving in some way with a numbness or just not prepared with the channels open so that it can move.

So, I really recommend an embodied healing process to support you, and you can find a lot of different healing experientials on my podcast at CandiceWu.com/podcast. There are plenty of people that are working cinematically and energetically that can support you, and this, today, is just a taste of self-forgiveness work, and it’s in conjunction with the episode around toxic family relationships, challenging relationships, and ones where we expect or wish others to do something differently, where we have a reaction and we want something.

When we have the reaction about somebody else of judgment of them or wishing that they were different, it’s typically that we have some sort of inner reaction that is hard to manage so we put it outside of ourselves instead.

So, with self-forgiveness, it’s about going to a deeper level of spiritual responsibility where nobody else is responsible for you, your worth, your enoughness, your value, except for you. You’re already worthy and valuable. You’re already existing here, and it’s about coming to that natural knowing of this being who you are.

We build layers upon layers of distorted beliefs about ourselves, meanings of the world, ways of being that connect up with our wounding experiences, rules that we put on ourselves, rules that we put on others so that we can feel okay in the world, so that we can feel loved, lovable or we can feel understood, we can feel valuable and worthy.

A lot of those fears are just hidden underneath as belief sets that actually live through us that are almost like programs that live out in the world. So, self-forgiveness is about forgiving yourself for the judgment you have about all of these fears, beliefs, and meetings.

So, today, I want to give just a taste of that self-forgiveness work around the judgments that we hold of ourselves in our reactions and the beliefs, fears, and actions that we’ve taken. Particularly, in this case, we’re looking at family relationships, ones, where we’ve felt, are stressful for us, ones where we wish this person would be different so that we could feel okay, and sometimes we disguise this need of ours, this dependency or codependency that we have into, well, it would be better for them. So, be careful of that, and notice what relationships in your family, in your ancestry or in your life are this way for you.

So, the tricky thing with this work is that it’s very particular to you and the patterns that have come about in your life, and the belief sets that you’ve taken on or came in with or believe inside of your body, in your energy.

Your energy is a collection of these belief sets and the accumulation of the experiences that confirm it, and it’s very specific to each individual what the words will be that hit that sweet spot of what exactly is the truth of your belief set here.

So, what I offer today, will be more generic, and will give the opening for you to explore what belief sets will be hitting that sweet spot for you.

Let’s Begin

So, let’s begin by sitting in a comfortable place.

Support your body in any way with pillows underneath your hips or a blanket.

Feel free to close your eyes if you’d like to or looked down, and let yourself go inward.

Place your hands on your heart.

Just breathe into your heart, into your chest.

We’ll start this process by bringing to mind one family relationship, one person you have a challenging relationship within your family line, in your lineage.

Notice if there’s something you want or wish to have from this person.

Maybe you wish to have an apology, maybe you wish that they could see you with more attention, perhaps understand you in a very clear way, hold space for your sadness or recognize something that you wish they would recognize, sense into anything you wish from this person.

Forgiveness Statements to Experiment With

So, in these statements, feel free to say them out loud if you’d like to, I recommend that because it lets the energy move a little bit more, and also, replace the words this person, with whoever it is that you’re focusing on right now.

So, again, these words may not fit exactly right to you, you can try them out loud and breathe and see how they feel or if something comes to you that’s different, feel free to try that for yourself.

First, notice how your body’s feeling, and let the breath flow all the way down to your hips, into your legs.

Let your awareness be in your whole body.

Now, try the words:

I forgive myself for judging myself, for all the times and dimensions where I depended on this person to show me my worth.

Feel free to replace that last part with anything that fits:

• …where I depended on this person to apologize in order to feel okay.
• or …where I depended on this person to know that I existed.

The words, again, are: – I forgive myself for judging myself, for all the times and places, where I depended on this person in order to know my value. – OR …where I dependent on this person in order to be seen. – So, fill in the blanks for yourself here.

You may not know the right words right now, that’s okay. If you need to pause here and repeat, go ahead and do so.

If none of these words resonate, you can try this next statement:

• I forgive myself for judging myself, for believing that in order to belong I need this person to…
• and fill in the blank.

You can replace the words “in order to belong” with anything.

• i.e. In order to feel loved, I need this person to___
• In order to feel worthy, I need this person to___
• In order to feel good enough. I need this person to___

So, see what just strikes some emotion in you or a sense of, “Uh, that’s it.”

And I’ll repeat the words again.

• I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that in order to feel that I need this person to___
• Fill in the blanks with what feels fitting for you.

Feel free to say this out loud as I suggested or say it in your mind if you’re not comfortable.

• I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that in order to feel I need this person to___.

And take a couple of breaths after you say it.

Feel free to feel into what it is that you really wanted from them, what it is that you depend on them for?

And try the statement again, if you need to.

Breathe

The breath is really important because it allows the energy and the emotions to flow, and again, as I said earlier, if nothing’s happening, you might just check-in, see if you’re stuck, your emotions are blocked or your body’s overwhelmed or see if this, these words just don’t resonate for you, and whether it’s more about finding just the right pattern that’s here, just the right words that fit with you about what your beliefs are here that are getting triggered and what emotions are coming up, what that part of your heart really aches for from this person.

So, again, the words are:

I forgive myself for judging myself for believing that in order to feel xy&z (i.e. worthy, loved, good enough, seen, valuable, etc.), that I need this person to___ and fill in those blanks.

Release and Stretch

So, as you’re ready, just release all that and start to move your body and stretch, begin to open the eyes, and just check in with how your heart and your body is doing right now.

And again, feel free to reach out for support to anyone that would be supportive of you in this process of healing on your journey, whether that’s a coach, healer, therapist.

I would love to talk with you about this process if you’re interested in going a little deeper, and with my clients, I tend to sense these beliefs and where their energies are blocked, and the words just come to me sometimes about what just hits the spot and we collaborate together to reveal what it is that needs, but the heart wants to shine a light on. If none of these words fit for you at all, you might just try, “I forgive myself for judging myself.” And just let that be felt.

Close

So, we’ll close today with a little bit of music so that you can transition.

Let your body come out of this and back into your day.

Feel free to rest, take a breather and nourish yourself with some good sound here.

Thanks so much for practicing with me, and I look forward to connecting with you again on the Embody Podcast.