66: 4 Ways A Feminine Embodiment Practice Supports You in Everyday Life

Imagine how fantastic it would be if you had a simple yet powerful practice you can lean on in every part of life. Whether you’re faced with a tough decision, moving through the ups and downs of relationships, or simply needing to feel more grounded and steady inside yourself. 

In this conversation, I share why a feminine embodiment practice is that practice, why it matters and how it shows up in the real, practical parts of your day.  I talk about the pillars of embodiment and the four main areas where this practice becomes life-changing.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What a feminine embodiment practice really is 
• Why sensitivity can become a compass instead of feeling like “too much”
• How embodiment helps untangle an overworked nervous system so you can rest and receive
• Why aliveness dims when we live from the neck up, and how to bring it back online

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Transcript

Tertia [00:00:00]:
Imagine that you had access to a tool that could help you in all areas of your life, whether it was helping you to make a decision in some sticky situation, something that could lend more depth to your relationships, something that could support you in how you parent your kids, how you role model for them, and also something that could support you in how you lead in either your business or in your career. Well, the good news that I have to share with you today is, yes, there is such a tool. And in fact, it's not a tool as much as it is a skill and a practice. So in this episode today, I would love to explore for you why a feminine embodiment practice can be such a helpful and truly supportive solid foundation upon which you can build your life. Hi, I'm Tertia and you are listening to the Feminine Embodiment for Sensitive Woman podcast. On this show, we explore how coming home to your body opens up new ways to feel, to create, and to expand into the fullness of you. Join me to discover how to live from your truth, how to feel more sensually alive, and how to have a deeper connection with yourself and with life. As we get started, I want to define what I mean by a feminine embodiment practice so that we can be on the same page. And when I speak of a feminine embodiment practice, what I mean is a practice which is quite similar to a type of meditation, but instead of a meditation where you would just sit, stick still and you'd hardly move a muscle and you would try to empty out your mind, this is a practice, a meditation where we actually drop down into the depths of what is alive in us and we allow that to move through us. And that's literally what you do. You move what you are feeling instead of trying to make. Make everything still and quiet. When I work with my clients, this is the first practice that I teach them and it is the foundation of the work that I do. Now for those of you who are new to my work, I am a certified feminine embodiment coach. I was trained through the School of Embodied Arts with Jenna Ward, and I'm also trained in the non linear movement method by Michaela Boehm. I don't only teach this to my clients, but. But I have my own personal movement practice that I regularly practice, that I regularly do because embodiment and inhabiting yourself and coming home to your body, dropping into your truth so that you can live from that place. This is, as I mentioned earlier, this is a skill, right? So we need to continue to, to devote ourselves to it, you need to continue to practice it. And in fact, it becomes a way of life. I would be lost without my movement practice because it anchors me. It unravels some of the constrictions that I sometimes hold in my body, just as a result of living in the world and navigating decisions and making choices. And it also supports me so that I can start start making decisions that are aligned, so that I can use my internal fuel and my internal motivation to guide my actions. So in this episode today, I'd love to share with you the four main areas where having a feminine embodiment practice really plays such a big role and can help us step into the fullness of who we are. And before I forget, let me also mention to you the four pillars on which such a movement practice, such a moving meditation is built on, and the pillars that we always come back to as we move through. This is the pillar of breath, where we use our breath as an anchor to draw our awareness. Our awareness is the second pillar. And not only do we then direct our awareness to what is alive inside of us, to what it is that we are experiencing, to what it is that's unfolding in our internal world, but we then use the third pillar, which is movement. So not only being aware of what is happening inside of us, but also allowing that to move through us and from us. And the fourth pillar of embodiment is that of sound. And just as our bodies can move these feelings and emotions and sensations and knowings, we can also use our voice to move that and to learn how to speak from our truth and to move the energy into in that way. So let's dive now into the four main areas that a feminine embodiment practice can support us in. So the first one is that of sensitivity. Now, my experience as a sensitive woman is that, you know, we already feel so much, and things can feel pretty chaotic and messy inside. And so a common concern that I often hear is, I'm already feeling so much. Why would I want to feel more? And this is what I would say to you. My experience has shown me that when we begin to use a practice that employs these four pillars of embodiment, and we are very conscientious and intentional in how we direct our attention and how we move from that place, what happens is that we get to engage with the wisdom that's beneath this surface level noise, the surface level chaos. The surface level of I can't handle anymore, I can't feel anymore, it is already feeling like too much. So I Almost see it as when we begin to become more embodied, when we begin to inhabit more of ourselves, our sensitivity becomes more like an arrow. It becomes more targeted. Our access to our sensitivity, I should rather say, becomes more targeted. Where before my experience was that I was feeling so much all of the time, but it was also quite scattered, and it used to pull me in many different directions. And often I had the experience that my sensitivity would, like, twist me up on the inside, when now I'm using the sensitivity that I already have to to guide me as opposed to twist me. So when we learn how to direct this sensitivity, it allows us to unearth the wisdom that is beneath the noise. And then we can begin to use that to inform our choices, to inform the way that we move through the world, and to inform the way in which we show up not only for ourselves, but also for the other people in our lives. The second area in which a feminine embodiment practice plays a huge role is in untangling the nervous system. So again, as sensitive women, our amygdalas, which is that little part in the brain that, you know, sends off the alarm bells whenever it senses danger, your amygdala can sometimes be a little bit overactive. And what I know not only from myself, but also the countless other sensitive women that I've had the pleasure to work with before, is that we tend to be so easily activated. Our nervous systems tend to be on high alert a lot of the time. And when we are in the state of high alert, when we are in the state of bracing or shielding, it's very difficult for us to open into the more pleasurable and enjoyable experiences of life. And that's. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how we build, right? So when your nervous system is on high alert or in survival mode, all of the energy and the blood flow and the power and the focus gets directed to the state of survival. And there's not really much available, if anything at all, to allow us to thrive and rest back and receive. And so if your nervous system has the tendency to become easily aroused and easily activated, what I have found is so true for me is that it is a gift to be able to have a practice that actually takes all of those knots out of my nervous system and helps me reset in a way. I remember when I first discovered many years ago that I was a highly sensitive person, as defined by Dr. Elaine Aron. And if you are listening to this podcast and you also identify as a highly sensitive person in that way, fantastic. But I don't think that this only applies to highly sensitive woman as defined by Dr. Aron. I also believe it's all of us who are on the spectrum of feeling a lot, whether we are empaths, whether we are intuitives, we have big hearts and often life really feels very heavy. So this conversation is really for all of us then. What I wanted to say is when I first learned many years ago that I was highly sensitive, one of the first things that I tried to do was to manage my triggers. And I even made some videos about that on my YouTube channel. And since those days, I've come so far in understanding that it's not about managing, it's not about containing, it's not about preventing and protecting. Instead, it is about increasing capacity, increasing your capacity to be able to hold more, to feel more, to not fall into the default of going into high alert. The bracing kind of tension that we carry inside us and that we don't even know is there A feminine embodiment practice then truly allows us to release not only the patterns of bracing that's there, but it also increases your capacity to be able to hold more. So that in a very simplified conclusion, your amygdala doesn't get so triggered and overwhelmed and ringing the alarm bells for no real reason, as it might have done in the past. The third reason why I believe a feminine embodiment practice is, is so important for us to develop is because it gives us access to our sensual aliveness. We live in a world that really encourages us to live from the neck up. Think about how many of us have jobs where we sit behind a computer, where we have to do work that demands us to focus and plan and be strategic. And what this does is all of our energy. Because the body and the brain is wild and beautiful and it uses resources where it's needed most. So your energy is going to get sucked up into your head, your awareness is in your head, and then it's reflected outwards and away from you and everything that's beneath the neck. The other 90% of who we are goes offline. And if you could see me, you'd see how I'm waving my hands around to show just this little part of us, the little part above the neck, which we tend to make as the truth of who we are. So the modern world that we live in, that makes it so easy for us to have our awareness only in our minds. Living from the head up, as I've named it, our tendency to not want to feel, because what we can feel and what we are feeling sometimes feels like too much. And then of course, our nervous systems that can brace itself and this uptightness that can be wound up into who we are, those three things together is a recipe for numbness, right? And so when we do a feminine embodiment practice, because we're working on the nervous system, because we working to feel our sensitivity in a way that it becomes a keeper of wisdom rather than something that is too much, and because we drawing the attention and the awareness within the body, within the 90% that's below the neck, what that does is it wakens our aliveness. So instead of defaulting to these numbing behaviors that we have because of the three conditions that I mentioned, you know, so often, we can have these numbing behaviors like reaching for what I call the four S's, So sugar or shopping or scrolling or sex. And it's quite ironic really, because we rely on these four S's to numb us, to distract us from the discomfort that we are feeling. And at the same time, we're also using it in an attempt to feel something. So if we've trained ourselves to live only in the top part in 10 or 15% of our power, what that means is that the rest of our power, our emotional, our physical and our spiritual bodies, we don't really have access to that because our bodies go offline. And when you don't have access to that, your inner light dims, right? We lose out on experiencing the fullness of life and being present to life. So by doing a practice that brings us into the body, what it also does is it brings access to more of who we are. And then the final aspect that a movement practice or a feminine embodiment practice supports us with is just with navigating life. The simple thing of navigating life and what immediately comes to mind are two of the things that are so important for us in order to live well, and that is to have healthy boundaries and to be able to make good decisions. So let's talk about boundaries. First, you have to be in your body to know how something feels, whether something feels right for you or whether something feels wrong for you or to you think about, has it ever happened to you where you've had a conversation with someone, or something happened in a meeting, and then only when you were sitting in your car driving home, when you thought about that, you realized, ooh, I don't actually like what happened there, or that wasn't how it should have gone down. Or perhaps it only happens when you speak to your friend, four or five days later, and you tell them about this experience and then you realize, oh, that doesn't feel good. My boundary has been crossed, or my boundary has been dishonored. This has happened to me. I think it's happened to so many of us, and it's simply the result of us not being in our bodies. So when we begin to come down into our bodies, when we begin to inhabit more of who we are, the response time between feeling that something isn't right and us responding and giving voice to that, the gap closes. We are able to more readily hold our boundaries and respond to our own yes or no in the present moment instead of it having to catch up with us. And then the second part to navigating your life is making decisions similar to being able to hold healthy boundaries. We need to be in our bodies to know our desires, to know what it is that we want. And again, because in this modern world, often a hyper masculine, linear world for so many of us, where we are encouraged to find the answers outside of ourselves, and where we are perhaps conditioned that someone else knows better than what we do, someone else is more, more wise than what we are, we tend to also outsource our power. And when we come back into our bodies and we know our desires and we know what we truly, truly want for ourselves, what we want for our community, what we want for our families, how we want to design our lives and live our lives, when we have insight to that, of course, it's so much easier for us to make decisions that are aligned with our own values and with our own truth. We release the dependence of looking outside of ourselves for answers. And it truly allows us to stand in our own power. In the time that I've been practicing feminine embodiment, there's something very important that I've learned and, and that I sometimes forget and I need to remind myself of. And that is that it's not a final destination to reach. There's not some point in the distance that we need to get to. Instead, living more embodied, inhabiting more of yourself. It's a way of life continually coming back to yourself is how you continue to expand. It's how we can feel more fulfilled and how we can have those internal resources available to us to take care of our own needs, to take care of the needs of those around us, and to really have the kind of life where we feel that we are contributing, that we are making a difference, and we are feeling deeply satisfied in the process of doing so. If you want a little taster of coming home to your body and tapping into the wisdom that is held there in a feminine embodiment practice. If you'd like a taste of that, then I would love to invite you to download the free guided audio that I've created. It's called Tune into your Truth. I will leave a link for you in the show notes so so that you can go and grab it. All you need to do is sign up with your email address and it will be delivered straight to your inbox and you can start practicing immediately. I'm going to wrap us up on that note. Thank you ever so much for tuning in. I do hope that something in this episode landed for you. And one final invitation and ask from my side is if you did find this episode helpful in any way, I would be so grateful to you if you could rate this podcast wherever you're listening to it and if you are listening on Apple Podcasts to also leave a short review. That's it from me today. Thanks again for tuning in and I'll speak to you in the next one.