Balancing Masculine and Feminine Energy for a Healthy Body

Slowing down used to feel unsafe to me. 

In this episode, I'm breaking down how to balance your masculine and feminine energy without losing your edge. 

We talk about what these energies actually are (hint: it's not about gender), the pendulum swing between them, how being stuck in your masculine wrecks your digestion, the art of receiving, and simple breath-based tools to come back to center. 

If you're a high-achieving individual navigating burnout, this one's for you, Fire Fam. 💛

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Hello, hello, Firefam. Welcome back to another episode of the Fuel the Fire podcast. This week, the topic I want to get into is centered around shifting from your masculine into your feminine, or vice versa. Coming into a place of balance between your masculine and feminine energy has been such a key to making this transition that I have made from being someone that was just always going in burnout, rushing, doing all the things, super high achiever, to someone who was able to move into a space to be a little more flowy, soft, feminine while still achieving and feeling really balanced and successful in my life. If I'm being honest, what stopped me or held me back for the longest time was that fear of slowing down. As a woman in this day and age, it is so common that many of us operate predominantly in our masculine energy, even though it's not as natural to us as it might be to actually have more of that feminine energy integrated. But it's a response that we have. So slowing down actually feels unsafe when we get really used to operating in this space of masculine energy. So what I mean by that, and I'll get into it today, but just as a general opener, being in that masculine flow and doing a lot of things, it really doesn't have anything to do with your gender. It's just about the energy behind it. So when I was in this state, I was just like always needing to do more, accomplish more, achieve more. And I was doing it from this place of pushing really hard and ignoring what I was feeling. I didn't know what I was feeling. I didn't check in with myself. I didn't have verbiage or language to put to the experience that I was living in. I just didn't take the time to slow down in that way. I was always someone that was very into personal development. What that looked like then is different than what it looks like now. Then it was very focused on what can I accomplish? What more can I do? Can I create stillness in my body or breathe in a way or do things that makes me feel superhuman? But the emotional experience of that all was still tucked away. I was really just focused on quieting my mind, doing it for as little time as possible, and then moving on with my day so that I could get more done. Now my practices look a little bit more expanded, a little more embodied, and encompass more than just quietness for five minutes. Okay. Even though I think that's great, don't get me wrong, if five minutes is all you can give yourself now, that is beautiful. Hopefully, there is more ways to integrate the balance of masculine and feminine, which you'll have more clarity on as we go through today's topic. The first thing I want to do is explain what this all means and like what energy is. I know to some people I might have lost you before you even clicked on the episode because it can feel a little woo-woo, so to speak, but there's very much science to a lot of these experiences, although I'm gonna bring in a lot of Eastern science, eastern practices into this explanation. So prana is your life force energy. Anyone that has taken yoga is familiar with this because oftentimes it is brought up. Our breath is our connection to our life force energy, which exists in our subtle body. This goes beyond your consciousness and the physical experience of the body. It is something beyond that. It's not something that you can actually see with your physical eyes. Essentially, this energy creates emotion. And emotion, as I've said before, can manifest in many different ways, including diseases. If we're not processing and releasing and moving through emotions, our body can store it, and this can create chronic pains, tensions, and even disease. So it is really important to address the energetic element to the life that we're experiencing. This energy, our prana, can be shifted from moment to moment. So it's not like you're stuck in one energetic disposition and you're there forever. It can be just as simple as taking a deep breath and you shift your energy and reconnect to your life force. If we're stuck in this place where we were just long-term ignoring our emotions and our physical body, our spiritual body, our energetic body, it can take a lot more time to get into a centered, grounded, regulated place. However, you just have to commit to those practices and do it more often. Eventually, it becomes very natural, just like anything. When you're riding a bike, you have to think a lot about it in the beginning. How do I balance? Where are my hands? What am I doing? Where are my feet? Where are my eyes? Eventually, you just hop on and it just happens and you don't have to think about it. It's very much like that. Just getting in the flow, and you'll naturally notice and shift yourself without having to put as much conscious thought into it. I want to break down masculine versus feminine energy a little bit more. Like I said in the beginning, these are not gender specific. Everyone has a different ratio of how much masculine energy and feminine energy that they naturally carry. All males, all females, all those that are um don't identify even with a gender, still, or you still need to be, or you still are in a space. Sorry, I kind of like lost my words there for a second as I was trying to dig deep into my brain for the proper terminology. Um, but again, it's not gender-specific and everyone is a different ratio. These ratios can also shift. There are times where you'll be more in your masculine, times where you'll be more in your feminine, and they are both important regardless of how you identify with your gender. An imbalance here can feel very draining mentally, physically, emotionally, and sexually. Understanding the principles of energetics will help you feel more aligned and find balance in your life. Okay. Now I want to break down the actual characteristics of each one so it starts to feel a little more concrete. Feminine traits tend to be being in devotion, when we are emotional, receptive, nurturing, empathetic, creative, intuitive, and open. Okay. Our masculine traits are when we are disciplined, taking action, using reasoning, stepping into leadership, survival, loyalty, power, pride. Signs that you might actually be out of balance. And so for me, I'm gonna start with too much masculine because that's where I was operating from for many, many years. I was not able to rest without any type of guilt. I had a lot of rigidity around the way I ate and my daily routine. I would push through hunger and fatigue. It didn't matter. I had a goal, I was focused, and I ignored what my body was expressing or trying to express. At that point, I was feeling numb and disconnected from my body. I was over-exercising, overdoing it, pushing hard. And I was treating my body more like a machine to manage rather than something to listen to. So when you're too deep in your masculine, you can also be aggressive. It can show up as pushing too hard with leadership, almost like a dictatorship type of vibe. These can be signs that, you know, another one, like boiling with anger. If anger is just like spewing out of us at any moment, that's another common one where we're too deep into that masculine energy in an unhealthy way. Okay, there's a healthy way to experience your masculine. This is just a sign that we're too deep into it because there are light traits and there are shadow traits to both the masculine and the feminine. So, in those shadow traits, that's when the expression sounds like what I just described. Versus those lighter traits are what I talked about earlier when I was talking about discipline, action, reasoning. These are healthy ways to be in your masculine. After this period of time where I recognize that I was too deep into my masculine, I like to call this the pendulum swing, which naturally we do. When you swing too far to one side, we tend to swing all the way over to the other side as a means of compensating and trying to find that balance. When you overextend in one direction, we tend to accidentally overextend in the opposite direction. And then when we come to a place of integration, we're meeting somewhere in the middle. And if you can see my hands, if you're watching on YouTube, a nice little balance in between the swings of the pendulum and finding a healthy way to express both sides of the equation. After this period of being way too far deep into my masculine, I went way far too deep into my feminine. And what that looked like initially, I was absolutely overwhelmed. I absolutely couldn't get myself to start anything or finish any type of project. Um, I had absolutely no boundaries. I was just super malleable and would say yes when really I needed to be saying no. I was deep into people pleasing. Um I was flooded with emotions constantly. They would just come out of me without me having any control. It was almost like, you know, a beaver builds a dam and then the dam breaks and just water is going everywhere. Like this was my emotional state. Um, and I had lots of ideas and it was really nice, but I was not having any structure around them, and they were getting nowhere. Things were just like floating around, and I was starting to feel almost lazy. I couldn't get myself to do anything. I just wanted to rest all the time, and I just felt tapped out of my prana, my life force energy. It felt like it was gone. I was like, wow, how could I be someone that did so much? And now I'm showing me, showing up as someone that can barely get herself to get out of bed, get herself up out of bed. And that was really hard for me mentally. It was like an identity crisis. I was so afraid of this version of myself because it felt like she's not going to get anywhere. I worked so hard to prove that I was capable, and now I don't want to do anything. That's where I knew I really had to start revisiting these healthy elements of the masculine again and start to integrate them. It was almost like I was so angry at myself for being so far deep in my masculine, and it created a toxic, unhealthy relationship with it. Once I recognized that that was where my issue lied, I had a lot of resentment towards embodying any of those healthy masculine traits. It took time. To be honest, I was flailing in that stage for like a year or two. And I was really starting to lose hope that I'd ever find my way out of it. And if you're into astrology, some some astrologers told me I did get like two readings, and they told me at that period of time I was like in my Saturn return. So naturally things were gonna feel pretty chaotic in my life. And I guess this happens a couple times in your life. I could be wrong. Don't quote me. But it's true. Sometimes we just go through phases of life, and I was resisting being in that stage. I was resisting it because my ego was so attached to my previous identity that I felt terrible about who I was. I questioned my worth and what I could offer to the world. If I wasn't doing, if I wasn't giving, if I wasn't helping other people, if I wasn't overperforming, if I wasn't making a lot of money, what did that mean about me? I made it mean so much. I couldn't see who I was underneath all of that, which made it very, very difficult. And this is why I think many of us hang on for too long to that identity because of the fear of who we will be without all of the accomplishments and achievement and pushing super hard and going super far and doing all of these things and serving. But the place where you come into center, it has to be something that balances the two. And that balance is what is so important. And the thing about teaching this, this exact lesson of masculine versus feminine energy is something I go into a lot of depth in in my program, Body and Soul Freedom. For example, you know, a really great person to go through the program is someone that was either too high or too far into their masculine or too far into their feminine. And you actually have to come into that place of balance and understand what it looks like for you specifically as an individual to find that balance because that's different for everyone. We are all different humans. There's no one right way to do it. There's no wrong way to do it. It's you finding the flow that makes sense with what is aligned for you when you are heart-centered. When you are operating from a place of being in your soul, being in your heart, and choosing your path from purpose, from fulfillment. Then you can find where that net energy naturally lies. But oftentimes we're using our brain to override that and tell ourselves, this is how we have to live, this is how I should be doing things, this is how society structures this. And that leads to this disconnection from our heart. And so when we lack that resonance with heart in mind, we become out of alignment. We start to embody more of those shadow traits of the masculine and feminine. And more things, so being in the wrong energy at the wrong time impacts it, right? So there's times where you're gonna be in your masculine, there's times where you're gonna be in your feminine. For example, tying this back to the body, when our digestion is off, so say, and I've talked about this before, if we're deeply in our masculine and we're in our sympathetic fight or flight state, and we're trying to eat something, we are not going to feel good. Our body can have indigestion, stomach pain, um, bloating, gas, discomfort, acid reflux. These are ways that our body is communicating that we're too deep into our masculine, and we need to come into our feminine. In our feminine state, this is more aligned with the parasympathetic nervous system that's the rest, digest, receive state. We need to come into that state when we're going to eat. Otherwise, we can be in that masculine energy when we're doing other activities. But when we're eating, we need to be more in our feminine, open to receiving, open to nourishment. Another reflection through food is if we are restricting, that is us actually refusing nourishment. So when we're undereating and undernourishing our body, that is being too far into the shadow of the masculine versus being present in the healthy, light elements of the feminine. And this is again another way where we tend to use our mind to override what our body is actually trying to communicate because we want to be on a diet plan or we want to push, we want to be lean, we want to lose this weight. And this disconnects us from the ability to be balanced in our masculine and feminine, which is again something I talk about with clients very often. It is so common, and this is something I've been wanting to do another episode on, is talking about how to get rid of some of these thoughts and beliefs around diet culture that are so deeply ingrained into our minds. We the way so many people talk about food and nutrition is not from a place of true nourishment. It oftentimes comes from this place of I want the quickest solution with the minimal struggle. And I think of food as like the devil and the enemy, and I'm fighting it and I'm fighting my urge to like it, and I have to resist it. And if only I could be more disciplined, I would be better off. When in reality, what the way we want to approach it is being inner feminine of how can I nourish myself? How can I optimally nourish myself? How can I listen to my body, connect to my intuition, and honor what that need is? And yes, there's a sprinkle of masculine in terms of structure in there because it's also important to know that there are things that right now our mind might not understand are not true. Diet culture is all over the media. So, for example, if I'm thinking that carbs are not good for me, it's gonna be hard for me to override that and nourish my body properly because there's going to be a fear response when I see a carb or try to eat a carb. When in reality, that element of education and logic applying what actual balanced nutrition looks like as the structure, as the foundation, and using our body, being in our feminine to know when how much is enough. When we are so busy all through our day, we can't even tap into that. And that's where sometimes we lean too far into the masculine and just rely on logic and what we think it should be, versus paying attention to our body, eating slowly, and knowing when we're adequately nourished. Just shifting from a mindset of nourishment or into nourishment from a place of restriction makes such a big difference. So I think about like how can I add more nourishment instead of what I need to take away to be healthy. That little bit, that small reframe goes a long way in your health, your wellness, mentally, physically, spiritually. These are great ways to start to shift our balance between that masculine and feminine, asking yourself these questions. There's many different ways to reflect that balance back to us. Another common one, if you are a female or male listening to this, being in the ability to receive is also something that commonly comes up. Sometimes we we can be in the frame of taking too much, but most of my listeners, I would think, are women who have a tough time receiving, receiving things like compliments, receiving rest, receiving pleasure, receiving support. We tend to reject a lot of these things. I'm gonna start with compliments. So often I hear women do this, and this is actually really interesting because I've been trying to break this myself, and I notice that it is uncomfortable, but I still try to do it. So if someone compliments me, or when I see when what I would used to do is like automatically be like thanks and say something about them automatically and not even really let their compliment land. It was almost like I was uncomfortable receiving their compliment. So I had to compliment them back. And there's such a difference in just allowing yourself to receive that compliment versus rushing to say something back to them. Um, just trust that energetically, you know, you receive that compliment and you're gonna give out another one. You might be thinking something complimentary about them as well. You know, someone might say, like, oh, I like your shirt, and I'd be like, oh my God, I was just thinking how I really liked your pants. That's great. You can say that. But take a pause and be like, wow, thank you so much. That means a lot to me, and I appreciate that. And let them say you're welcome or whatever, and then you can follow up with, I was having the thought and I wanted to share it with you too, that I like your pants. Okay, right. So this is just like a silly example. But let yourself receive that compliment. Or another thing where people will give you a compliment, and the thing that we want to do is like reject it. Be like, oh, I like your hair. Be like, ew, I actually like hate my hair today. Like, you know, this comes up a lot too. We don't even want to receive the compliment. Or we're so self conscious or feeling uncomfortable that we can't even allow that to land in our body. Someone is trying to give us a gift. You know, this is what the equivalent is. If someone hands you a present and you just like smack it out of their hand, the person giving you that present would probably be kind of upset. It'd be like, I just wrapped this up for you. I thought of you, and I presented this to you, and you're going to smack it out of my hand. That hurts. So we don't think of it in that way. That actually creates disconnection between us and that person. And that's also a sign that we're disconnected from our feminine. Someone is honoring a light, someone's honoring something beautiful in us. And it is part of our journey to accept that and see the beauty in ourselves rather than rejecting it or not recognizing that. Another thing is rest. So often I see this with female clients too, where, you know, I'm going to use cleaning something as an example. They'll clean something in their kitchen a specific way. And part of this is like, okay, they need a little bit more rest. They're doing too much. They're wearing the full-time mom hat and full-time parent hat at home. And they want more support from their partner that they feel that they're not receiving in that moment. And so we take the step of saying, like, okay, let's receive some rest. Let's let our partner know that we need help. And what can we delegate? What can we, what can we give to them that they can support us with because your partner wants to support you. Okay. And what will happen is the partner, we'll just say in this example, the husband doesn't do it the way you want them to do it. So what do we do? We get mad and we say, fine, I'm just gonna do it myself. That was useless. I don't even know why I asked. Or the partner, our husband doesn't show up and do it as frequently as we would want to do it. So we get frustrated. And again, we go back into our masculine and we don't allow ourselves that rest. Or the rest can also come from the need of people pleasing, where rather than just sitting and relaxing, we feel like, okay, I need to get up and do something for them. I need to get up, I need to be active. If I'm not doing something, then I'm not worthy. If I'm not performing, I'm not busy, I'm not accomplishing enough. And again, we're taking rest away from ourselves. Pleasure is another really big one. Are you allowing your partner to actually please you? If we're not physically present in our body, and sometimes we feel self-conscious, even, it blocks us from allowing our partner to really give in the way they want to give. And again, they're offering a present. Your partner wants to please you, hopefully. You know, if you're in a healthy partnership, that is a normal element of the dynamic. Give your partner permission to do that. Let yourself receive the pleasure. Let that be pleasure sexually. Let it be pleasure from food that you're eating, let it be pleasure just from the soft feeling of a sweater that you spend a little more on than you normally do. Allow yourself to experience pleasure. And sometimes we can be so disconnected from our body that even when we're doing something pleasurable, we don't actually experience the highest experience, the highest level of that pleasure because we're not present to allow it to happen because we're stuck in our fight or flight masculine shadow element. Same thing with support. Asking for support, knowing that's okay, knowing that doesn't mean anything about you when you ask for support. You're not meant to do everything on your own. That is not how we are designed as humans. So lean into that support. So a big question to ask yourself where in your life are you deflecting being given to? Let yourself meditate on that one. Maybe take a pause and just reflect for a moment and check in with your body. So next, I want to talk a little bit about what it looks like to be really truly embodied in your feminine energy. When you're in that healthy, right relationship with your feminine energy, you're going to magnetically attract what you want. The opposite of needing force or needing to push to receive what you deserve. It looks like holding space for projects to develop at a natural pace rather than trying to force a timeline that might not be in alignment for how it's meant to come to you. It's about enjoying the process of creation independent of what the end result is. It's seeing the big picture and trusting that it comes to fruition. It's working with others and creating and being present and alive in community. It's connecting to emotional and physical life as a catalyst for change and for development. It's relating to others by listening, sharing, nurturing. To build our feminine and to come into this, we need to focus on incorporating unstructured rest, experiencing pleasure without a goal, creativity where the output doesn't matter, spending time in nature, feeling an emotion all the way through, slowing down in a meal. When it comes to shifting into a healthy masculine, that looks like tenaciously pursuing what you truly want, but in a way that's not deflating or draining. It's deciding, having structure to when, where, and how a project grows, what you want that to look like. It's being aware of what the end goal is of a project. It's focusing on one thing at a time instead of trying to juggle 87 different things. It's being able to rely on yourself or another individual to achieve what you've set out to do. It's setting boundaries around emotions in order to accomplish things. Right? If we're too deep in the feminine, our emotions are everywhere. We need to process and feel in a healthy way, but not letting it bleed hours into hours and affecting our entire day. And it's being able to relate through camaraderie, entertainment, problem solving. To build more into our masculine, we need to create a container or a routine. We need to start to become more decisive with what is truly a yes and what is truly a no, and knowing what that feels like in your body. It's finishing one thing before starting another rather than leaving a bunch of things started and unfinished. It's doing strength work physically or even in a metaphorical sense. And it's also upholding our boundaries. Something that I'm not going to get into today, but if you've been really curious about this, in my Body and Soul Freedom program, which you can sign up, I'm going to link it in the show notes if you want to have a little session with me, a free complimentary one-on-one session to talk about this program and to see if it's a good fit for you. In here, I talk about the difference between discipline and devotion, which really what I feel is such a good focal point to learn the masculine versus feminine in. It's starting to really understand how this is embodied, what it feels like, the physical experience of this, so that you know what is light and what is shadow, what is masculine, what is feminine, when to be in one versus another, and what that balance looks like for you. So again, I'm gonna link it in the show notes. Check it out. Um, I love my program Body and Soul Freedom so much because it really unifies the physical and like mental and emotional and spiritual experience all into one. This is something that I've not seen anyone else do. I don't know any other dietitians offering something that combines these elements. And I'm thankfully able to do that because of the different things that I studied. So not only does this come from my dietetics background, but I also studied energetics. I'm a certified life and success coach. I have certifications in things like hypnosis and Reiki. So I truly understand the energetics of the body. And I love having both because it helps me kind of like bridge the gap between the two worlds. Because truly, whether we believe in Eastern philosophy or not, we're still experiencing it. We are humans, we are spiritual beings. We have to understand the language of the body, which no one teaches us unless you really go out of your way to learn it. But again, Western life, we're often disconnected from our intuition because that's how we have to show up to actually do and keep up with the pace of the world. And there's a lot of fear that we associate with slowing down and learning what the other side of life looks like. But I will show you a healthy, balanced way to do it so that you don't lose your edge, so that you can still accomplish more while feeling safe and happy in your reality. And before I go, I want to leave you with a couple of reframes around masculine versus feminine energy that you can contemplate after you turn off this episode. So the goal isn't more feminine, okay? I never want to say that you need more of one versus the other. Every person is different. The importance is fluidity between the two. Health oscillates, okay? Feminine is to dream, to have a vision, okay? Masculine is the execution and the completion of that. Creativity without discipline stays a fantasy, but discipline without devotion just becomes a cage. And when we think about it, it can also be sicular. So I can't, I'm I'm really tripping on this word. Cyclical versus linear cyclical. Oh my goodness. Okay, so feminine energy is cyclical, there's seasons, it aligns with our hormones, there's cycles, it ebbs and flows, and that's a natural, flowed, fluid movement. While masculine is more linear and progressive and driven. Burnout comes from demanding linear when it's meant to be cyclical, or being cyclical when we need more linear, is what is actually going to keep us feeling stuck. Both masculine and feminine have shadows. Our shadow of the masculine is that domination, control, disconnection. The shadow of our feminine is chaos, martyrdom, boundlessness, boundaryless. I'm messing up all the words. Um, but balance guards against both. Okay. Where we need to be is in right relationship with the light sides, at peace, and being able to recognize when the shadow side comes up and awareness so that we can pull ourselves out of it. Okay. So in the moment to bring yourself back into that balance, just remind yourself always coming back to your breath. That is the fastest lever. Long, slow exhales pull you back into your sympathetic nervous system so that you, I'm sorry, your parasympathetic nervous system so that you can become more grounded. And that exhale, that beautiful exhale with the inhale is going to be that energizing breath pattern that will pull you back into your masculine. Exhale slow your feminine. Inhale powerful into your masculine. Okay. Soft, gentle movements to balance your feminine, intense, powerful strength to activate the masculine. Okay. Simple, small practices that you can do at any moment to bring yourself back into balance. I hope this episode was helpful. I would love to hear your thoughts. Shoot me a message. I love you guys so much, and we'll talk again next week.