Why Feel? Emotions & Embodiment for the Skeptic in You — EP59

Candice Wu 0:00

This episode includes updates about my adventures in Ireland and being with the horses about the challenging learnings I’ve had. And shifting into the topic of Why Feel Embodiment 101 for the skeptic in you. What qualities and capacities embodiment and healing requires? Why move from rationalizing to feeling and sensing, and the steps to feeling and healing as well as accessing your wisdom.

Candice Wu 0:29

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 0:42

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 1:04

This episode is sponsored by Patreon, which is a platform where you can contribute any amount to the production of this podcast as well as all the creations that I put out there. And I want to thank all of the people who have contributed on there. I could not be more touched and appreciative of all that people have contributed every single dollar just helps and goes a long way. And that energy and life force that each person contributes and brings as well goes towards the life of this podcast and all the healing experiences and meditations that I offer.

Candice Wu 1:40

There’s also a chance to get up close and personal with me. There’s a healing group that’s once a month, as well as personal meditations that you can receive based on whatever level you’re contributing. And what that entails is a personalized healing experience based on whatever it is you need in your life at that time. Each quarter, I check in with you and design something that is just for you by intuiting what might be needed and sensing into the energy of what you’re asking or where you are in your life. So you can find all that at CandiceWu.com/patreon.

Candice Wu 2:21

Hello, and welcome back to the Embody Podcast. It’s great to have you here.

Candice Wu 2:26

This morning, I am waking up in Dublin in a small Airbnb. And if you’ve been following along with my adventure in Ireland, I was on a horse farm for some time, but almost three weeks actually can’t believe I survived it. I have been learning natural horsemanship with a host family and tending to four horses. I’ve been cleaning poop out of stables, wheeling it over and dumping it across down the hill. I’ve been setting up qualifiers, cleaning all over the house, romping around in the mud, but also getting time to learn how to be a good leader with horses and assert myself in my presence more. I feel way more in my body in every moment and every word that I say.

Candice Wu 3:18

So all this in exchange for the lessons and a place to stay. And if you’ve been following along, you know that it’s been quite challenging for me there was that last podcast that I did, CandiceWu.com/hourselifeireland, and you can learn about some of the lessons that I experienced there, some of the hardships and what I’ve been dealing with.

Candice Wu 3:45

And one of the mornings it was last week, I woke up feeling just completely worn down and overwhelmed by this experience. It wasn’t one thing that specifically would trigger me or make me feel overwhelmed, it was all of the things combined, and one after the other without much of a break.

Candice Wu 4:05

And so, feeling this last week I woke up and felt, can I keep doing this? Which was an interesting signal, I read that in many ways. Am I overwhelmed? How am I doing? Or am I just getting activated and need to work through something that is presenting a challenge? Or is it both? What combination of both.

Candice Wu 4:29

And so with this worn down feeling, I walked outside to get the coal for the coal fire that morning. And suddenly it just struck me as I looked out in this beautiful landscape, it had snowed. And it was completely peaceful and quiet. And the sky was just this beautiful periwinkle color. And it completely spoke to me looking out across the mountains. They call them hills in Donegal. Because they’re not that big. But coming from Michigan in Chicago, I call them mountains.

Candice Wu 5:22

So it just radiated this feeling of safety and nourishment to me. The feeling of I’ve got your back, says the earth. And it reminded me that all is okay. And knowing what I know from Somatic Experiencing, and family constellations, feeling that for that moment and staying there longer, and breathing it in and letting myself feel into my body. What does it feel like to feel this safety again, and this beauty, let it touch my heart and into the spaces that I felt grief and dread and sadness and all sorts of other emotions.

Candice Wu 5:48

And as I did that, those emotions started to move. And what happened inside is that my nervous system started to feel safe again, it started to feel supported. And therefore able to release some of what was held on the inside, what I couldn’t move through when I didn’t feel as safe in my body.

Candice Wu 6:10

This led me to thinking that the more that we have around us and within us that we can resource, resource meaning draw in for ourselves to feel safety, love or peace, or any feeling that we want to feel, any energy that we want to cultivate within ourselves and access, the more we have within us and around us that helps us get there, then the more we are embodied and the more content and easy life is altogether, the more inner freedom we actually have. Because, the things that are outside of us can bring us even more joy and safety. And I’m even talking about things that perhaps were upsetting to you in the past or people who you’ve had conflictual relationships.

Candice Wu 7:00

At some point, they can bring you something that perhaps they were meant to teach you or some aspect that you do find that you admire about them. I didn’t use to be able to resource so much in so many things. I couldn’t really find much pleasure or enjoyment in life, even though I thought I did. But could I actually feel it through my entire body and being, no.

Candice Wu 7:26

A big resource that I have now that I didn’t have for a good quarter or more of my life is my father. He was a huge trigger to me. Our relationship was absolutely conflictual. And some of the early trauma as I’ve had relate to things that we experienced together some emotional abuse and neglect. And this is pretty much all I knew of my father.

Candice Wu 7:57

And I had to have other resources, people, experiences, support, therapy, those other resources to get through the ones I had with him. But over time that started softening and the polarity, the distance between a resource and trigger, something that would strengthen me and trigger me, all pulled into one ocean in a sense. I could feel all those emotions and my father became a huge resource to me where I can draw upon his love and see, that there is underneath all of the ways that he acts as a human. The ways that he did act, that there is a deep love way down there.

Candice Wu 8:43

And now I actually see that come through quite a bit and I can receive the gifts from him. And a lot of that work was the family constellations work is finding love and gifts where you typically only see pain or abuse or trauma. And so now I can see that part of him that helps me feel loved. And I feel supported and strong. And there are times now that I draw upon his energy, or what I attribute to his energy within me, to strengthen or give me some aspect of safety or peace inside of myself.

Candice Wu 9:25

So one introductory thought I have for you is, what brings you the sense of safety, of beauty, peace or contentment. Does feeling something in your body do that? Does looking at and touching crystals or stones do that? Or feeling your body move? Looking at a picture of a loved one or an animal or a spiritual figure, looking at the horizon or a sunny day. What brings you into the feeling of embodiment and that you can release because you feel safe again.

Candice Wu 10:03

I have a whole segment of resources that you can use. Healing experiences that are about how to develop that kind of strengthening and safety, how to resource a person, place, or thing into your life so that you can feel that strength. As well as how to pendulate, move in and out of challenging experience to positive experience so that you can integrate more and do it in a way that’s not overwhelming your nervous system.

Candice Wu 10:37

And you can find all that at CandiceWu.com/emotions. It was an episode I did on emotional numbness to wholeness and feeling of the experience of moving from where I’m completely frozen and can’t feel and just use my mind to get through life, to being in my wholeness and accessing and having the capacity to feel all sorts of emotions and sensations in my body.

Candice Wu 11:04

All of these exercises are inspired by Somatic Experiencing, as well as family constellations healing work, and the combination and just how I use them as well. So feel free to check those out.

Candice Wu 11:18

So this is one part of the topic today. Why would we feel our emotions when they’re challenging to feel? What is the benefit and especially to somebody that feels skeptical about feeling in the body, and the sensations in the body as well as emotions? What purpose does it serve?

Candice Wu 11:37

And with my example here, there is a bit of that, revealing itself that when we can resource something and feel into its pleasure, we can really fully taken its pleasure and feel that through our being when we are accessing the ability to feel, when we’re able to have the capacity to feel that rather than things being a mental experience. It’s a full being and body experience. But with that comes challenges because you also have other emotions that may be not as pleasurable or the pleasure may bring up unpleasant feelings. And how do we move through that, is it still worth it to have that in order to have the love, safety, beauty, contentment, peace, freedom, etc.

Candice Wu 12:29

Before we jump into the episode, I want to give you a little more information about what happened and what I chose in terms of leaving the exchange that I had agreed to, and accepting what would be the consequence of that.

Candice Wu 12:45

So I noticed how overwhelmed I was feeling. And with all those things coming at me day to day. I just couldn’t quite catch a break in terms of being triggered and activated by thing after thing. I think the interpersonal conflict with my host was one of the hardest aspects of the whole thing, because that energy sort of dominated the entire experience.

Candice Wu 13:07

And the amazing thing was, I learned how to have a much thicker skin and to be way more fiercely direct and clear about myself and what I’m feeling what I’m experiencing, as well as honest.

Candice Wu 13:23

My host is someone who will just speak the truth of what she thinks is happening, or at least how she’s feeling and what she thinks is going on. And a lot of times she comes with this sort of confidence that makes me doubt my own experience and I wonder what is the truth of what is happening.

Candice Wu 13:44

I may be used to some level of honesty and directness with people who are close to me that I’ve built that trust with. But this was a complete stranger that I really didn’t have trust for in terms of emotional safety and non-judgment. I felt quite a bit of judgment from her actually, even though her words would tell me differently that she wasn’t judging or criticizing. It was very confusing to me. But I ended up leaving.

Candice Wu 14:15

And with that feeling of I’m choosing to love myself and give myself a different experience where I can feel more ease in my learning and go through the emotional triggers in a safer space where that can move through much more easily rather than being hit up against another thing before that ends or being shamed in the process. It’s just too much for me to accept all at once.

Candice Wu 14:57

And I think that this is part of shifting our culture from overriding ourselves from pushing through, and powering through in order to be strong to one of loving ourselves and doing what’s truly right for ourselves. That is strength. That is self-love. That is respecting who you are at the moment and what you need so that you’re not doing something that is way beyond your level where it isn’t an enjoyable experience for you anymore. If it is, that’s perfectly fine and that is everyone’s choice. But really to ask yourself, how is this experience going for me? And is it the right one now? And only you have the answer to that.

Candice Wu 15:30

So the interesting thing was when I let this person know, and let the family know that I was leaving, I got called a quitter. I was told that I didn’t have any grit and just enjoyed luxury, isn’t a little bit of discomfort, a good thing.

Candice Wu 15:51

And so it really showed me that they didn’t understand where I was in my journey of loving myself. And I’ve spent a lifetime of pushing through and going through enduring hardship. It’s not the time for that at this point.

Candice Wu 16:08

So one of the hardest things about that, and about the whole experience was accepting other people having views of me that may or may not be true. And it is not just the view of me but the critical part that comes with it, at least how I perceived it here, where someone feels convinced of who you are, especially because it helps them feel better about themselves or how they’re interacting in the situation.

Candice Wu 16:40

And it leaned towards gaslighting, sometimes it was outright gaslighting, where everything that I brought to the table was turned against me or manipulated in a way that made me be the one that is constantly wrong, or the rules are changing. And now it’s this that we’re looking at. So changing the subject and changing the experience of what we’re talking about, it’s all very confusing.

Candice Wu 17:09

I get very triggered by that because my young life entailed a lot of gaslighting and manipulation. And I couldn’t quite sort that out. So as you can see, these experiences were quite triggering for me. And I did work through a lot of them with my host, and found a lot of common ground, which was fascinating. I found a lot of growth, found different ways to assert myself and work with that. And also ways to love myself aside from the interactions. But the feeling that I’m not going to argue or fight for every point to be heard from my perspective and other people to understand exactly what’s going on for me, as I see it, and letting them have their idea of me and not be bothered by that, that was something I was working on.

Candice Wu 18:04

So that’s why I’m in Dublin at the moment. I’m heading out tomorrow morning, back to Michigan and going to see my family for Chinese New Year, and enjoy some time to regroup, to process what’s still left behind here to enjoy things and to get back in touch with comforts that I enjoy and other relationships that I want to connect with.

Candice Wu 18:31

So to conclude this experience with this host, I noticed a lot of righteousness, arrogance, gaslighting, and manipulating. And when I say that I do that only to sort out the reality of what was happening, and what I can name so that I can look at my own reactions to that. So I can see, oh, that’s what that kind of experience is outside of me. That’s what’s happening at me in a way, and how am I relating to it? What am I getting triggered by? Where do I find a loss of my empowerment or assertion, and perhaps abandon myself or manipulate myself or believe the manipulations? And all that is leading up to this podcast as well.

Candice Wu 19:23

Why be integrated and why sense what’s there, because, for me, that means I can find and access another place in myself when I have someone act this way towards me. Where I can move through it in a way that feels really good for me. Where I can respond differently or choose and have freedom with how I respond rather than just react and engage in that enactment to that Tango of this and that cycling over and over.

Candice Wu 19:58

I also felt aware that I didn’t want to develop more resistance towards people who have those qualities. Because compassion is really seeing where that is me, where I have those qualities as well or how I relate to the other side of the coin of those qualities. And finding the understanding for perhaps why we would need that emotion, energy or a way of being, and walking away with respect and love versus walking away out of a reaction of anger. And that reaction of anger for me just knowing that I will inevitably find that experience again, if I do that. Not to say we shouldn’t have anger, if it’s there, it’s there. That just means there’s something to work with. But if I can work with it inside of myself, or in the relationship to the point where I find that ability to respect this person and not reject them, I feel much better about myself and I feel much stronger and myself.

Candice Wu 21:06

I also recognize this takes years, it’s taken me at least 10 years to work through some of the really challenging abuse that I received and experienced in my young life and to notice myself in another engagement with someone that is very similar just shows me there was more to work on. And right now I feel that there’s still a bit more I feel some anger towards this person. And recognizing that there are bits of this that I still want to clear up.

Candice Wu 21:39

With that, let’s jump into this topic a little deeper. Why do we need emotions? Why should we even get into our felt sense our body experience? What does that even do? And those questions really come from an analytical perspective.

Candice Wu 21:58

The place where we just see that thinking and processing with our mind mentally is the only way to solve a problem or to work with something, or to realize what’s happening in the moment. If we are outright rejecting an emotional and felt sense, embodied experience, then I would suggest that, that actually is a coping.

Candice Wu 22:21

It’s our body saying what we feel inside is way too much, or out of control and unknown. And therefore I’m going to send my energy up to the brain, that inflammation, that felt sense brings heat and emotion, then that energy goes up to the brain up to the top of our body to process and to control it in some way that we can rely on the rational mind, we can rely on that, right? If we think this through enough, we will get something out of it, we will be able to survive this. At least that’s what it was for me.

Candice Wu 23:00

Growing up, I didn’t have any other support and emotional regulation, to be able to move through my emotions. These emotions were tough ones. They were of terror and huge loss and grief, way bigger than one small person could feel through and there. And so I had to put those away and go up to my mind where that was still accessible. And I could say to myself, if I do this, then this happens. And if I don’t do this, this happens. And I could protect myself that way.

Candice Wu 23:38

So I believe that this chasm between the mind and body, the mind and emotions. And I’m speaking of the mind in terms of our mental thoughts only because at a deeper level, the mind encompasses the emotions. It encompasses the nervous system and the reactive response in the whole being. But what we think of the mind is this mental thought process and analyzing there’s a chasm, there’s a gap, often, and we can see this where people say, Okay, I need affirmation to help me believe x, y, & z about myself. And as much as I say, these affirmations like I feel enough, or I am strong, I don’t really feel I’m enough, I don’t really feel strong. But I can try to say this over and over to myself and hope that this, this will get me somewhere.

Candice Wu 24:38

I’m not saying that affirmations don’t work at all in their bullshit on some level they are. But on another level, if they can touch into your being, if your body is prepared to move through the emotions that don’t align with that, if it can move the energies that are not aligning with I am enough, then you have transformation. Then you have the integration of that belief and you start to feel I am enough, not just think, I am enough, right? I am enough. Let me try to get evidence for that. I’m enough, because of X, Y, and Z. When you truly feel enough, or strong or beautiful or empowered, whatever it is that you want to believe about yourself, we don’t need evidence to prove it to ourselves. We just feel it.

Candice Wu 25:32

And that’s part of why being in our body, being in our emotions, being able to have the capacity to feel through things is important, because we want to feel that. Just like when I was saying about resourcing that scene that I was looking out at the mountainscape and the snow, to be able to feel the enjoyment, not just think, oh, wow, that’s nice. I think I’m enjoying this, well do you know you’re enjoying it? And so being in our felt sense helps us do that.

Candice Wu 26:08

I’m just laughing to myself at the moment, because we are talking about this. And that’s all through a mental process. That’s a conversation of words. It’s not an experience where you’re actually feeling unless you’re tuning into that yourself on your end.

Candice Wu 26:26

So I encourage you to do that as you move through this podcast if you’re listening to the rest of it. Or if you relisten to some pieces, feel how this affects your body, feel what emotions come up, as I talked about certain things or what images and memories come up to you.

Candice Wu 26:45

And later in this podcast, I’ll talk about the 101 of feeling in the body and the menu of things you can tune into that are happening inside, just so you know what’s on the menu and that you can spot things when they come up. Because that’s one of the things that really I struggled with is well, how do I know what’s going on, I like being completely analytical for a good chunk of my time. In life, I just had no idea what I was even looking for.

Candice Wu 27:14

So I’ll go through that later in the episode. But I just encourage you now to witness and to take everything as information and to have a compassionate curiosity of what’s happening inside as we talk about this.

Candice Wu 27:33

So sometimes I hear from people, when I’m in my emotions, when I’m in my body, I only feel worse. Or that the mind is the only way of knowing and this agrees with society, we have a very strong lean towards the mind, the mental thought process being the only way of knowing something, research and proof, and evidence. And that’s a very pointed, manifested way of knowing. And there are all sorts of other ways of knowing.

Candice Wu 28:10

We can know something through our sense we can know something through our body, through how we feel. That’s information to help us with our next step in life or what we’re looking at. When we have our instincts, we can protect ourselves, we can choose something that feels joyful to us because we know how joy feels.

Candice Wu 28:34

And I recognize that if we’re using rationalizing as a survival tool, we typically don’t realize we’re doing so. And there is a rational explanation for why we’re rationally thinking about everything. I’ve certainly used that.

Candice Wu 28:51

It’s like if you challenge someone on how they feel, if they’re feeling something, they have the explanation for why they’re doing what they’re doing rather than just feeling through what’s happening or the ability to.

Candice Wu 29:06

So if you’re hearing yourself in any of this, I also encourage you to laugh at yourself, to have some lightness and amusement about it. There’s no judgment about any of those. And knowing that you only rationalize or use your mental capacity to get through life is a helpful thing to notice. Because then it lets you get to where you want to be or what’s next step for you. And it also helps you have information about what your experience has been like that you actually had to use this as a way to protect yourself as a way to survive. And when was that that you needed that to survive? When was it that your ancestry needed this way of being to get through life to actually live instead of die, or to move through something that was so heartbreaking? And have you inherited that way of rationalizing and thinking only mentally and dismissing emotions because they’re hard?

Candice Wu 30:09

Feeling into our emotion requires us to be able to handle the unknown. That there’s an acceptance. Something we don’t know is happening. There’s an image that keeps happening, and I don’t know in my mind what that is. And if we rely on our knowing mechanism as a mental knowing, as, Oh, I completely understand why I’m having X, Y, and Z happen, then when we approach something that we don’t know, I don’t know why I’m having this feeling, I don’t know why I have this tension in my body, then on some level, we need to be okay with or accept, or even embrace that we don’t know. And then it will reveal itself to us. And that’s part of the joy of being human is that we have all these clues inside these messages from our inner world that we are learning to interpret.

Candice Wu 31:10

And so often we say, Oh, I have this pain in my body and it’s scary. But instead of noticing the fear, we try to find what that is. And then we have a medical explanation, which is helpful in a lot of cases. And it’s one part of things. But we can quickly dismiss that as, Oh, that’s just this syndrome, or that’s just the tension I got because I and you are playing tennis and only use this arm. And so, therefore, that’s the only reason I have this injury.

Candice Wu 31:49

I would invite you to deepen into the fact or the idea that there may be more to the story. There may be more to the experience of the body expressing itself in this way. And as one of my teachers said, Jim Kulackoski, he’s my spiritual and Yoga teacher, that if there isn’t a spiritual place for disease, there won’t be a physical one. That the physical body is a manifestation of the spiritual experience, and shows you what’s going on at that subtle level.

Candice Wu 32:28

And this also reminds me of the Koshas podcast, the different levels of the physiology that you can find at CandiceWu.com/koshas. It will also be linked in the show notes.

Candice Wu 32:44

So far, we’ve talked about how healing and integration, how being in the body and feeling through what’s there, can require the ability to accept that there’s something we don’t know. It can require being in the unknown. It requires being compassionate to yourself, and perhaps even laughing at yourself, gathering information and witnessing rather than judging what’s going on. And also noticing your judgment, if there’s judgment as one layer of your experience, and the state of being you’ve held for a period of time.

Candice Wu 33:28

Healing and integration also require just one moment of noticing, and then the next and the next. And you can stop anytime.

Candice Wu 33:47

It requires the acceptance of a process within you that not everything is going to be known right away. The trust and the willingness to move through a bit of the process, and then perhaps take a break, and a bit more or even more, the ability to handle those bits of not knowing and the unknown, so that can be revealed later. But also for the sake of just being in the unknown. Period.

Candice Wu 34:20

Working with your body requires leaning into discomfort. And learning how to take a break when it overwhelms you or before it overwhelms you so that it can come with ease.

Candice Wu 34:35

I used to be someone who would just plow through all my emotions and try to do all of them at once. And I learned that that was just another way of me trying to cope. And me trying to prove myself that I was strong.

Candice Wu 34:52

When I’m rationalizing or just using my mind to move through something. I might be just trying to sort it out. Like what should I do? Is this true? Thinking about it. thinking about it.

Candice Wu 35:07

What evidence does it confirm it’s true? What evidence is it not true, which can be helpful sometimes, except for when you tailspin emotionally and you don’t see straight, the perception is different.

Candice Wu 35:22

And sometimes I feel like I’m in the same place over and over again with that aspect of myself. So when that’s happening, always going back to a breath, and how do I feel when I’m having that thought, or notice what else comes with it in the body when I’m doing this kind of thinking. And that opens up your wisdom of the whole body, the whole being to support what else is there to know about this. Where is the other knowing that my body can bring that my energy or my senses can bring? With embodiment, it’s also important to resource as I talked about earlier, in the beginning of this episode.

Candice Wu 36:05

Having things that you can tune into, imagine, or a picture that brings you a feeling of safety, love, or ease. Where then your nervous system can be reminded that you are safe right now. And I’m guessing if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably in that situation, or hopefully you are.

Candice Wu 36:31

And I also think that embodiment is greatly supported by someone who can support you in a trauma-centered way. But a way that also brings strength and helps you towards the intention that you want to have in your life. So having that loving support can make a huge difference. Because a lot of what we couldn’t feel when we were younger is that we didn’t have someone with a nervous system, and ability to regulate emotion that was present with us, tending to us, and giving us exactly what we needed.

Candice Wu 37:14

And so if you’re working with someone like a healer, therapist, or a coach, that does have that ability to do so, and with a trauma center person, they also have the ability to notice when your body is going offline, or when you’re going into dissociated state were doing anything else isn’t going to help. Processing any other emotion isn’t going to help. It’s only going to retraumatize the nervous system, and knows what to do to support you in coming back online and taking the next healing step, that is incredibly powerful.

Candice Wu 37:50

So now I also want to talk about the experience that we sometimes don’t always know what to explore or where to begin. Maybe there’s a desire to feel better, or to know yourself better to love yourself better or to have something different in your life. That may be one little inkling that you have that you may need more embodiment, or that you are ready to connect deeper with yourself.

Candice Wu 38:19

I had this with a client recently where they didn’t know what they wanted to explore, where to begin. But there was a draw, a pole that something needed to change, and a tiny whisper of something different that they want it. And sometimes there’s a pain or a lingering and awaiting of something to be tended to or to be looked at. And all this reveals itself.

Candice Wu 38:40

As we sit together, as I sit together with my clients or as I sit with myself, and there’s a going inward, I believe that each person is the source of their healing and wisdom. And with my clients, I’m the facilitator to support the loving space and the understanding, and the moving through of the many ways and messages that are given to us by your inner being.

Candice Wu 39:07

So the body sensations, the flush of a feeling, the pit in your stomach, your heart dropping, the tension, or the holding in the body, or a dream image, a thought or a flash of a sense of something, or a body movement, rigidity and stillness or wanting to reach or shrug your shoulders or move them in a certain way, all these unfold and open up to a whole world of truth and self knowing. It’s like they open up to the cosmos within. And eventually, through the more on pleasurable feelings, they open up to joy and pleasure, contentment, freedom, and peace. They are the key to a whole world of knowing yourself and loving yourself. It’s another opportunity to love yourself.

Candice Wu 40:04

So this happened recently for me when a client wasn’t sure what was going on between her and her sibling. She felt that something wasn’t quite right. And she couldn’t name what that was. But that’s all we needed to begin, a sense that this is where to look, and to explore with curiosity and feeling in.

Candice Wu 40:25

And what revealed itself was disconnection, sadness and grief and loss because of the disconnection and even deeper than that was love and the desire to feel connected.

Candice Wu 40:44

Love this thought that the tender parts of our hearts reveal itself underneath. All that our body shows us, the tender part of our hearts, meaning the part of us that desires that wants love, that wants belonging, or feels pain, the juicy part of what we feel no matter what we think about it.

Candice Wu 41:07

So this client’s story is one that I’m keeping confidential. And I’ve gotten the permission from her to share these pieces with you today. And it’s very important for me that my clients feel that confidentiality. So I won’t share any details with you. But I do want to share that we did a family constellation with stones, this was an online experience. So we can use video chats, and sensing in energetically to tune in together.

Candice Wu 41:41

And so I asked her to bring some objects that she could use to represent her siblings. And I use stones on my end to match that. And really beautiful thing was that as she placed them and as I placed mine, and they started to move, it was her one sibling and another sibling. As these people start to move in this space of this mini picture, we were intuitively something into, both of us had the same movements with the stones, and her objects on her end, they were exactly the same. And the sense of who was where and what people were feeling started to emerge and show itself to both of us synchronously.

Candice Wu 42:34

So what showed up was an old dynamic that she wanted to change, that she was always there for her sister, for her hardships, and felt like this was her role to her sister. That this is what their relationship was built on. And the question, the pain was found in, would she be valued and loved if they didn’t play out this role anymore? What would be there in its place? How painful it might be to shift this relationship into new territory and not know if the other would like to come along.

Candice Wu 43:09

And one of the things that can reveal itself, during the process of this, is a healing statement or words that can evoke the emotions of what’s true to come through, and what resolve might be needed to help the body transform those feelings and energies. So they start to align with these words.

Candice Wu 43:34

And in her constellation, the healing statements were twofold. One part to bring self-love and resource from within. So no matter what happened with the sibling that she could love herself, and disconnect from the dependency on her to bring her value. And that statement was, I begin to love and value myself differently.

Candice Wu 44:03

That was important to say I begin and to love and value herself differently because it wasn’t too far from where she was. If she said I love myself differently, or I love myself fully, that seemed to be too far from where she was actually at. So I begin to love and value myself differently, seems like an opening for her inaccessible opening.

Candice Wu 44:32

And the second statement was to support a shift in the way of loving in the relationship with her sister. And that was, I began to love you differently.

Candice Wu 44:47

And if you’re listening and you can feel something about that, that’s great. Because not everything comes with a mental explanation. But in this case, it sometimes helps also to have that, I begin to love you differently meaning loving before was to be there for all of your hardships, to be there for your beck and call. And for you to rely on me and depend on me so that I could be loved too.

Candice Wu 45:17

And if I begin to love you differently, I can love you and not be there for all your hardships. I can love you differently by enjoying time with you, by seeing you in your life or hardships or joy. It opens up the space of loving someone in a different way than you used to. And also to point out that was a way of loving.

Candice Wu 45:50

So I want to end this podcast with a couple of things.

Candice Wu 45:58

It’s not easy to feel, sometimes it’s not easy the feeling through emotions and energy is what transforms and what changes things on the inside and out. And the awareness of this is what moves it along naturally. Just being aware and noticing one moment is what helps things move.

Candice Wu 46:19

When we’re working with being in a human body and feeling emotions, we need to feel safe in our body to feel them. There are tools to do that. And I support my clients with that with Somatic Experiencing with constellations, with just feeling into strength. And there are plenty of people out there that can also be your support.

Candice Wu 46:40

So if you’re doing that, that’s fantastic. Sometimes we need a break, just recognize that. But if you’re someone who is ready to open up to that, go for it. It can change the world inside of you.

Candice Wu 46:57

So being in your body to feel your emotions is one thing, and then being able to identify them, identify what you’re feeling and feel through them, stay with it until you find the resolve or what’s needed, and allow it to be acknowledged and honored. All of that takes practice.

Candice Wu 47:18

And when the tender part of our soul comes out, we need a gentle patient, compassionate, and understanding presence to support us, whether that’s within ourselves if we haven’t already, or if we’re cultivating it, or from the outside. And so we can do it ourselves. So someone who’s done their own work, someone who has developed the capacity of their nervous system to be able to hold someone else’s discomfort with them, that they have lived experience, to hold space with someone that has and is moving through their discomfort. That’s what we need so we can build it for ourselves.

Candice Wu 48:01

So just to clarify, these are some of the steps of embodiment that I want to name today. And step one being the desire for feeling, feeling more or to move through your life with more ease, be more like yourself. A desire for anything. That’s not what you have right now, in terms of who you are.

Candice Wu 48:25

Number two is safety in the body. A relationship within or outside of you that brings you safety and the ability to cultivate that to resource yourself.

Candice Wu 48:38

Three is the ability to stay with what you’re feeling and move through it to notice and allow to know when to stop and take a break and pendulate, meaning to come back to safety and away from the challenging emotion or felt sense.

Candice Wu 49:00

Four is recognizing and identifying emotion or sensation. Feeling into the colors and the picture that comes up or the size of that emotion in your body.

Candice Wu 49:15

Five is allowing organic resolution, movement or impulse, aside from real life, but in the body now as you’re processing it and being with it, allowing that organic movement to come through, letting your body be congruent with what you feel.

Candice Wu 49:36

Number six would be for me having “aha” moments. Moments of clarity and insight that you can apply to your real life situation. When the body comes out of fight, flight, or freeze state, a numbness or dissociative state, when you come back in your body with the wisdom of your body accessible and safety, you have more capacity to see, to think, and to notice more possibility.

Candice Wu 50:11

So start anywhere. The analytical mind might think I don’t know where to start. Where should I start? How do I do this? And try to find the answers and the solution. But that may be exactly it. Just start by noticing what you feel when you have that thought.

Candice Wu 50:34

If you continue on that line of thinking, you may be just continuing to say I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know which is denial. Denial of what’s there beyond the thinking, knowing.

Candice Wu 50:50

So the last thing I want to share today is Feeling 101, Sensing 101. How do you get in the body?

Candice Wu 50:59

We don’t always have to be still or quiet our mind, as meditation or some myths of meditation might tell you. Quieting our mind is a result of witnessing and allowing. So what we really need is to witness and allow what’s happening, at least until we’ve healed enough and enough of that. Enough of what wants healing within us does resolve, then we find stillness, then we find quiet.

Candice Wu 51:31

However, you can find a moment of quiet in terms of stop doing the things around you, stop moving around by doing. But just bringing your attention inward and having a quiet moment with yourself, that’s a great way to start witnessing.

Candice Wu 51:51

So in this next couple of days, I actually want to offer a couple of introductory embodiment, experiences. So please join me in the healing experiences and meditations this week.

Candice Wu 52:06

One of the healing experiences will be providing you a menu of all the things that you can feel inside when you’re tuning inward.

Candice Wu 52:16

When I first started feeling inward into the body, I had no clue what I was looking for, what I should or could be feeling. So I decided to create a menu of what one could look for and sense into in the body so that you can begin to be more embodied. And if you are more embodied, you can heal what’s there inside, you can feel more grounded and centered in yourself. And you can feel more in your body, more like your present in the moment and able to have the capacity to feel through all of what’s there.

Candice Wu 52:56

The second healing experience will be a body scan tuning into the full body with Pratyahara, which is the five senses drawn inward.

Candice Wu 53:07

I’d also recommend a couple of healing experiences that are already out there on the podcast, as well as on the Sound Sleep album.

Candice Wu 53:16

The first one is resourcing safety and grounding which is Episode 24-A. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/emotions or CandiceWu.com/ep24.

Candice Wu 53:32

Resourcing safety and grounding is about tuning into something that can bring you safety and strengthening, which increases your capacity to feel anything. So when we feel into something pleasant, something life-giving or providing us love, then we turn on our body in ways that help our nervous system to feel more and to be able to go into harder feelings. Whatever feelings are existing or that you want to heal.

Candice Wu 54:03

The second one I’d recommend is also on that same episode CandiceWu.com/emotions and that’s 24-B. Episode 24-B and it’s pendulation.

Candice Wu 54:17

Pendulation is a term from Somatic Experiencing which allows you to move back and forth from two different polarities of feeling, feeling unpleasant sensation or emotion to pleasant experience, and therefore giving you more capacity to feel into both and to heal as well.

Candice Wu 54:37

And the third experiential that is also connected to that same episode 24-C, is installing an emotional switchboard which connects you with several main emotions that you can install into the body like an imprint that gives you access to it defying certain emotions, those emotions particularly so that your body can sync up your ability to sense what’s going on and then to name it.

Candice Wu 55:11

I’d also recommend checking out the healing experiential, that is self-touch and grounding. Because when we touch our body, that sensation helps us to feel more and to feel what’s going on. And also to bring the nervous system down because the body’s reminded that it has this container. That’s Episode 47-A and it’s CandiceWu.com/alignment or CandiceWu.com/ep47. And that particular one is 47-A and then 47-C is resourcing your desire which can support you and also tuning into something strengthening or something that you really want to cultivate in your life that helps you be able to feel.

Candice Wu 55:59

In the Sound Sleep album, there are a couple of very helpful grounding and embodiment experientials including a body scan, short and extended version. A Yoga Nidra practice which is yoga at sleep that helps to bring a deeper level of consciousness forward, a deeper level of relaxation and restoration. And several resourcing experiences that you can access which will also help you sleep better, but will support you in feeling more embodied. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/soundsleep.

Candice Wu 56:40

Today, I’d like to end everything with another poem by Mary Oliver, who recently passed away. This is one that pertains to this episode. And here it is.

Candice Wu 56:53

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

Candice Wu 57:11

So as we end today, I encourage you to just take a couple of breaths, notice these breaths.

Candice Wu 57:21

Notice what you might have taken in through this podcast. What might be helpful to you now? And what’s not helpful to you now?

Candice Wu 57:37

What you feel compelled or inspired to do for yourself. And what that tender part of your heart calls you to do or tells you right now.

Candice Wu 58:00

Thank you so much for being here and listening in. I encourage you to reach out for support to me or anyone you know, that feels like you can take that next step if you haven’t done so.

Candice Wu 58:16

I love doing one on one sessions with people. And I also have the embodied group call that happens once a month with a small group of two or three people. You can find all that at CandiceWu.com/patreon.

Candice Wu 58:35

And before you go, I’d like to invite you to join my bi-monthly newsletter, which gives you updates about where I am, what I’ve been tussling with, the insights that come out of that, as well as self-love tips and self-love notes, events, retreats and other things that come up.

Candice Wu 58:57

The most recent thing being the Dream Class that is on Skillshare, where if you’re inspired to learn how to remember your dreams more you can take this short class of 30 minutes that brings embodied ways to remember your dreams and how to just get with the basics of recording our dreams and harvesting them. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/dreamclass1 and for the newsletter CandiceWu.com/embody.

Candice Wu 59:32

And with that, I look forward to seeing you next time on The Embody Podcast.

Introduction

This healing experiential offers a menu of what you can feel and sense inside of yourself, so that when you’re moving towards embodiment, when you take a moment to sense inward, here’s what you can look for.

When I first started feeling inward into the body, I had no clue what I was looking for or what I should or could be feeling.

So, I decided to create a menu of what one could look for and sense into in the body, so that you can begin to be more embodied, and if you are more embodied, you can heal what’s there inside, you can feel more grounded and centered in yourself, and you can feel more in your body, more like you are present in the moment, and able to have the capacity to feel through all of what’s there.

More on the Podcast

You can listen to the full podcast that introduces this topic about embodiment 101 and talking to the skeptic and you about why feeling and sensing in the body why embodiment is important. You can find that at CandiceWu.com/embodiment101. Also, look out for the next healing experience/meditation, which will be a body scan and pratyahara, which is bringing the five senses inward.

Felt Sense Menu

Now, let’s get started. Go ahead and find yourself a comfortable and private space to be.

Feel free to sit on something or wrap a blanket around you, but sit up nice and tall, and feel free to play something under your hips to give yourself some back support.

If you need to take a break at any time, feel free to pause this healing experience, and just bring yourself to notice your surroundings so that you can come out of the body and take a break, especially if you feel overwhelmed or some discomfort that starts to feel unmanageable or intolerable comes along.

Whenever we go inward, we have that positive ability of distress or emotions coming up to be healed, and we may or may not feel ready to do so, and having support is absolutely helpful. So, if you do need to reach out to someone, a healer or a therapist or a friend that can really be this kind of presence and support, please do so.

So, as you start to get settled in your space, feel free to look down or to close your eyes.

And as you feel inward, I’ll take you through several menu items of what you can look for and sense into inside to get a pulse of what’s happening, to be present with your body.

So, the first thing, just start to notice the space right around you. If your eyes are closed or if they’re looking down, either way, just sense the space right around your body.

And as you bring your attention closer to your body, first, start to notice the outlines of your body, your skin, and the edge.

Notice where your body is touching another part of your body, your clothing or what you’re sitting on or leaning against, and feel the sensation of your skin touching something else or the weight of your body pressing against anything that it’s pressed against.

And now, start to notice where your body is not touching anything at all, but perhaps the air or space around you.

Now, begin to notice your breath. Feel your breath without changing it at all. Notice if it’s a smooth or choppy breath, a deep or shallow breath, easy or hard to breathe.

Let your body breathe on its own, just as it is, and notice what happens as you stay with noticing each breath in and each breath out, can feel into where the breath is touching your nostrils or mouth, the temperature of it as it goes in as well as out.

And now, begin to picture in your mind where the breath reaches in the body, how far it reaches and where it doesn’t reach, where it feels constricted or blocked.

There’s no judgment or pressure to change, we’re just gathering information with all these different menu items at this moment with the breath.

Observe Temperature and Tension

And now, check-in with your body temperature. Feel where your body is warm or hot, and sense into where your body might be cool or cold or neutral. You might even have a picture in your mind of where there is heat and coolness by seeing the colors in your body, if there’s a sense of what color each part of your body might be, according to temperature and sensation.

Notice if the inner part of your body feels different than the outer part of your body. Notice if your head feels different from your chest and core, then from your legs and your feet, then from your arms and hands.

And as you feel if you’re having thoughts, just notice those thoughts, and come back to feeling the temperature of your body and picturing it in your mind.

Now, open to tension and holding in the body. Sense into where there’s any tension, tightness, resistance or gripping in the body, where your muscles are contracted and tight, and begin to picture in your mind.

Where is it that this holding and tightness lives in the body? How big is this tension? If it’s in your shoulders, does it reach to the neck and the jaw? Is it even in the teeth and tongue? If it’s in your hip does it reach your spine or legs?

Inner Vision

Paint a picture in your mind of where you’re seeing and sensing this tension in the body, and again, there’s no judgment.

No need to criticize or change what’s happening. Your awareness alone begins the healing process for the body. As you feel how big and where the tension is, get a sense for if there’s any color or texture of that tension.

Don’t worry if you don’t see it, you might just have a sense, and check all of your body from head to face to neck, your shoulders, arms, and hands. Getting that picture in your mind of what exactly this looks like to feel any tension in the body.

Notice the chest, the belly, sides of the body and the back, again, sensing any color, texture, size, and shape of the holding you feel in the body. Notice the hips and pelvis, your legs, and your feet.

And now, notice the opposite of tension. Notice where there’s any neutral or release any expansion or relaxation in the body and the muscles.

Notice those spaces and paint that picture in your mind of where that is, if it has any color, if it has any texture, and notice what happens as you stay with it by just witnessing and tracking.

Felt Sense

Now, as you feel in the body, sense other sensations besides tension. Notice if there’s any tingliness in the muscles, in the tissues and cells of the body, even in the bone and the skin. Notice if there’s any achiness, sharp pains or dull pains.

Notice any kind of sensation that you sense inside. Don’t worry about giving it a name or anything, just sense where it is. Notice what it feels like, if it has any color, shape, size, and texture.

Notice if you feel any hollow feeling, any fiery or wobbly feeling, anything that’s inside as far as the body sensations.

Sensing Emotion

Now, shift gears to your emotions. Check inside and sense any emotion that you notice. Emotions can live anywhere in the body. Feel where any emotion lives in the body.

Sometimes, it’s hard to name our emotions, so don’t worry about that part. If there’s a sense of an emotion or feeling, just observe it, accept and allow it.

Notice your heart, and if any emotions are living in your heart, and do the same thing, sense the color, shape, texture, location of any emotions you feel.

Allowing Movement

And now, let’s shift gears to movement or non-movement in the body. Take inventory of how your body feels, whether it feels active and wants to move around, and what parts of your body wants to move, what part of your body wants to grip and get tighter or hold on, and what part of your body wants to stay still, if at all.

This is letting the body’s impulse come through, noticing what the body wants to do, if you could do anything or move in any way or stay still.

If the movement wants to come through, go ahead and do so and observe what’s happening. If your body wants to stay still, observe the stillness and that desire.

Opening Imagery

And as we shift gears again, let’s tune into any images, daydreams or pictures in our mind that we see or sense.

Be open to observing any flashes of memories, images, colors. Notice any of those images, and notice if there are none. And as you see any of those images and track them, notice how you feel in your body.

Noticing Thoughts

And now, let’s shift gears into noticing any thoughts that you’re having. Without any judgment or trying to make them stop or push them away, observe your thoughts and where your mind goes.

Notice where your awareness is right now, whether it’s on your thoughts or in your body. And if your eyes are closed or open, either way, notice where your eyes are turned, in which direction or where they want to look or point.

And now, as we take in all of the ways that we can feel into the body and since inward, all of the menu items, breath, temperature, the edges of our body, our emotions, our body sensations, movement and impulse, images and thoughts.

As you open to all of that right now, and your whole body, notice anything that’s happening inside. Check-in with each part of your body and sense what’s happening, picturing in your mind anything that you sense, so you can see this entire inner landscape of your body, heart and what’s happening.

Again, noticing any colors, noticing the size and location of what you feel, any textures you sense of what you feel. Feel free to go more and more inward into your being, and notice the experience of this.

Continue Observing

Now, take your time here to stay with yourself and continue to witness observe, allow and accept what’s here.

I’ll leave you with even more quiet time together to sense into what’s here, and anytime you’re ready to come out of this practice and back to your day, back to this moment in the present, feel free to shift or move, sense your surround things, and slowly open the eyes at your body’s pace.

So, now, let’s take a little more time and you can transition when it’s right for you, and at the very end, we’ll notice some music to help you transition back into the present moment.

Thanks so much for practicing, and let’s take a little more time to feel in.

Introduction

You’re tuning into a healing experiential to support grounding, embodiment, and healing, which is a body scan that includes Pratyahara, tuning into all of the five senses and bringing those five senses inward into the body.

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.

Why Feel Episode

Thanks so much for joining me today. This episode is a healing experience a meditation, if you will, that connects with the main episode about why feel? And how do we become embodied and why? Why should we? For the skeptic in you. And that episode CandiceWu.com/embodiment101.

The previous experiential that connected with this episode as well, was a menu of all the ways you can tune into your body and your experience, what you can look for if you don’t even know where to start. Or if you just want to deepen and expand and refresh yourself in terms of how do you feel into your present experience.

Let’s Begin

So let’s jump in today.

Go ahead and find a place to either lie down or sit comfortably.

And as you sit down, feel the weight of your body down towards the ground or whatever you’re sitting on.

Look around your space and start to just sense what you see. Notice your sense of sight.

Notice any sounds in your space or outside of your space.

Notice any smells.

Be aware of any tastes that you sense or literally taste and feel where your body is touching. Whether that’s touching something you’re sitting on, your clothing, or anything else around you.

Pratyahara — Five Senses Inward

Now we’re going to take all those five senses and bring them inward that’s Pratyahara, bringing the five senses inward.

Feel free to close your eyes, or look down whichever you feel more comfortable with and shift your awareness to inside your body.

As you feel your breath, begin to notice the sound of your breath. Notice any other sounds inside your body.

Opening your sense of sight inward, begin to picture anything that’s happening on the inside. Picture it as if you could see a visual of all of what you’re experiencing in your body.

Notice where you’re seeing anything or sensing anything, such as emotions, body sensations, temperature, or images.

Notice the size and shape of what you sense inward, any tension or holding, the texture of what you feel inside, any color, if there’s color, that you sense.

Now feel the body from the inside out, your sense of touch. Feeling from inside the body, what’s happening?

What the experience of being in your body right here and now is like?

Now, notice the sense of taste, tasting anything on the inside, and that can be literal, or your sense of a feeling or sensation and how that tastes. If there are any minerals that you taste, the quality of taste.

And now the sense of smell, if the body from the inside out, how to smell, and that quality of whatever scent there is, notice that quality. It might not be a literal smell but that sense that you might be able to smell however the body is right now.

Whole Body

And as you sense all of the five senses going inward, your sense of sound, sight, taste, smell, and touch the feeling of the body from the inside out, notice your whole being, picture your whole body and energy taking all of those senses at once.

Without any effort or pushing, continue to notice what happens. What you sense. Allow yourself to just be.

And with those senses inward, notice the very top of your head, the forehead, sensing anything that’s happening there without any changing it and without judgment. Notice the temples, the eyebrows, your eyeballs, the cheekbones, and the jaws.

Notice the space between the jaws as well as the teeth and the gums and sense the tongue, and as you notice the back of the throat and the neck, create that inner picture of what’s happening inside, with your sense of sight, taste, smell, sound, and inner touch.

And do the same as we continue to feel the back of the head, back of the neck, the center of the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the elbows, the wrists, the tops of the hands, and the palms.

Notice the fingers and the space in between the fingers.

And as you bring your awareness back to the center of the body, feel the collarbones and the chest.

Notice the upper back, the spine at the upper back.

All the sides of the heart including top and bottom.

Notice the lungs and imagine you could see and sense the lungs.

Feel the rib cage from the front to the sides, to the back.

Now bring your attention to your belly. The belly button, the sides of the body, the back, and the spine. Notice the spine all the way down the low back to the tailbone. Picture the shape of the pelvis sensations that you notice, feeling the pelvis and the hips from the inside out.

Notice your sense of your legs at the thighs, any tension or holding you feel.

Sense the knees, the backs of the knees, the calves, and the shins.

Notice the ankles all the way around, the heels, the bottoms of your feet, the tops of your feet, and all of your toes, sense the space in between your toes.

And now feel the entire shape of your body, sense the body from the core of your being outward.

Checking in with your sense of sight and noticing what you see as you create that inner picture of your felt sense, what you taste, smell, and hear, feeling your entire being, your entire body at once.

Coming Back to Your Surroundings

Now slowly begin to notice your breath.

Allow yourself to deepen your breath at your pace.

Breathe into your arms and your legs.

Start to bring more awareness back to your fingers and toes, giving them a little movement and stretch or move your body in any way that feels good for you now.

Allow yourself to ease and transition back into the present moment, gradually and slowly.

And as you open the eyes, stay with your inner experience.

Stay connected with the energy going inward with all five senses. And when you feel ready, start to notice those five senses around you again. What you see, what you hear, what you smell, and taste, and anything your body can feel or touch.

End

Thank yourself for practicing and going inward with yourself.

If this was challenging for you at all, know that it takes a little bit of practice to come to ease with this and to feel through what’s going on. And if anything challenging came up, encourage you to reach out for support.

Thanks so much for practicing today and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Embody Podcast.