"The voice is right there, there she says distressed, pointing to her right shoulder. "And its male, this male voice shutting me down".
Tears pour down her face and her body tenses, shutting down any possibility of self love, sexual erotism and empowerment.
Not every female has a male voice as their inner critic, in fact, this is my first client that has shared this with me.
However, it certainly is not unsual to have an inner critic, coercing us into taming down our fullest expression of ourselves. We all have an inner critic, some of us louder than others. Part of reclaiming your power is the active choice on whether you take orders from the critic, or strengthen the voice of our inner cheer leader.
I ask her "I'm curious, and if there was a part of you that was more feminine, were do you feel that in your body?"
She places her hand nervously over her lower belly, and says "here, but it feels cold and dark".
Many women crave to have a greater connection to their 'feminine'.
What I love, is that whilst they may feel like they've lost or never lived embodying this mystical quality, women come for support because they inherently know that something is dormant within them. They seek out support to untame and unleash an inner quality, that feels important and very much an aspect of their birth rite.
My client appears in every way 'female and feminine' but she feels dominated by an inner masculine energy that controls her joy, her expression of pleasure and her connection to her inner feeling world. She feels 'blocked', 'shut down', 'barren','no fire', my libido is not there.
She can hear the critic so loudly and the agressive shaming this voice delivers, that as we gently invite her to breathe into her body, her fear kicks in sending her nervous system into a freeze response. It is imperative that we work together to establish safety first, as we make the wonderous journey of reconnecting her to her body, particularly to her belly and potentially over time to her genitals.
The necessary evolution of gender equality in our society, allows women to have children if they choose and a career and run businesses. Thank fully, we have more and more choices to be able to do anything as women. However, we now find that there is little energy left for pleasure, let alone desire that might lead to pleasure.
From an energetic perspective the quality of 'go', planning, goal setting, directional achievement, having a 'driven' ambition to an end point of completition; are viewed as 'masculine' qualities.
But of course every human can flex these qualities and will throughout the day require masculine qualities to get shit done.
The flipside is the energy of 'flow', traditionally viewed as feminine. Feminie qualities are considered expansive, creative, life creating, nurturing, nourishment, restorative, intuitive, beauty, chaos, non- linear.
I'm supporting women, to be able to claim their full expression as a human, whilst honouring that the unique qualities of a person with female genitals that identifies as female, is embodied with a physicality that naturally holds, alot of life force in their lower body, because our bodies are designed to create life!
The modern female is a multi tasking superhuman, running a tight ship in today's world, I know this as I'm that woman. Raising my girls, running a business, online clients, seeing clients in person, tending a home, ensuring my relationship is alive and all the other things that we do in life.
Too many women do not make time to let go of 'doing' and foster time for 'BEING '. And feeling deeply into what 'BEING' is in the moment.
WE are not valuing the importance of developing the capacity to bring our feminine intuition to life and creating time for sensuality, self care and self love to be just as important as checking our emails.
Without it. Our relationships struggle, as most likely our partners are also living most of their days ticking of tasks and living from a 'masculine' mindset. We are all energetically FULL with the banal and mundane. That is not something we at the end of the day want to fuck.
The sensual feminine self, is tuned into her natural rhythms and the seasons. She is much more available to receive, her heart and body is open. The aliveness that gets created in a woman's body, when she is expressing those feminine qualities, brings flow and pleasure to ourselves, our lives and our sex.
Embodying the femine supports us to have greater emotional availability as we allow life to flow through us, this way we still experience the challenging moments but they have somewhere to go. When we engage in sacred feminine practices and simple feminine pleasures like sitting and savouring a cup of tea, we open our bodies and hearts to feel all of life in it's fullest potential.
A softened energetic body can feel the highs and the lows. Lack of flow creates rigidity in our minds, in our hearts and in our vulva's.
Imagine life, where you get to be driven and successful and sexy and feminine. This is power. Power lies in choice.
Unfortunately we have thousands of years of conditioning around feminine power. Slut shaming is alive and well- it lives within us.
For my client, she has the voices of her mother and grandmother plaguing her innocent curiosity. Her natural sensuality.
Being embodied and sensually alive is nothing to be ashamed off. Children if they are allowed to be in their natural state, are curious and wonderous towards their bodies and the world. A child, wants to discover how their limbs run and climb, voices screech, how they can twirl and climb, their bodies are a mechanism for their unique life force to be expressed.
We are the same as adults, however we tame inner wildness and our desire and instincts to conform, to fit in, to not be too powerful.
My client asks me the question, what is sensuality? And I say the capacity to live fully in connection with your whole sense body to the pleasure of all of life.
The process of retraining the untamed feminine is to learn to listen to the signals of our bodies, feel them, and learn how to connect to them through the body.
We engage ourselves back to the feminine, through intuitive movement, the breath, and sounding out these messages. Literally giving life to our inner world. By tuning into the our senses regularly we develop a capacity to live in harmony with the life force in our outer environment. Developing what is called "interoception and exteroception'. I'm also very interested in inviting our highest sentient self to feel life through the heart, not just from the mind.
The sacred feminine is not some mystic quality that is without a partnership to our carnal selves.
There is a natural intelligence within every human, creating life in our cells, breaking down life in our cells, a cycle of ebb and flow, birth and death occuring within us every second we are alive.
When we engage in sacred practices that are designed to unleash life force, we untap our potential to re-engage with our intuitive selves. The feminine sensual self is an invitation to be penetrated by life and penetrated by the masculine. Our bodies soften, our hearts soften, our vulva's and wombs have greater life force and blood flows and we radiate.
And so, it is not surprising that as we embark on this journey into re-awakening the feminine, we might unearth some shadows, some regret for the things we never said, or for putting up with things that we're not good for us.
It is natural that as we soften our bodies and open in these practices, that we will feel things light and dark. Unravelling the kinks in our energetic hose, may come with tears, laughter and anger but it frees up an immense space for self love and ecstacy- from the word 'ex-stasis' (energy in motion).
I hold my clients to feel deep compassion for themselves throughout the process, as we can only make the best decions we can in them moment, with the best knowledge and skills that we have. I've walked this path many times and know that during these sacred practices I awaken memories that can sometimes hurt. I loosen the vault on energetic habits where those caught life moments exist, when I've stifled my truth.
So it's normal that as we journey into the depths of our most authentic self, and feeling more deeply into our truth and ourselves through the intention of curiosity and love- that we may unleash more than just pleasure.
But we free up space for pleasure and love. It feels incredible to come back home to your soft body and courageous heart
My client, lays quietly on the floor, her hand on her belly, installing the work of reconnecting to her body. She feels aliveness, tingling and warmth in her limbs and hips, she says "I feel pregnant, with a giggle, how silly I'm almost 60".
For now this is enough. The seed has been planted and from here her feminine can grow, finally re-finding its roots in fertile soil.