86: Finding Your Centre So You Can Actually Move Forward in Your Business with Jenna Ward, Feminine Embodiment Coach

What if work doesn’t actually start at your computer, but somewhere else entirely? In this conversation, we explore what it means to find the centre of yourself before you sit down to work, and how that changes the way you make decisions, navigate the ebbs and flows of business, and show up in your work.

If you’ve ever sat down at your laptop because *that’s what you do when you work,* even when there’s nothing you actually need to do, or found yourself procrastinating, overthinking, or waking up in the middle of the night with everything spinning in your head, you’re in the right place.

In this episode, I speak with Jenna Ward, founder of the School of Embodied Arts and the teacher I trained with for my Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification. We explore how embodiment, vulnerability, sensitivity, and the feminine can change the way you make decisions, navigate business ebbs and flows, hold your centre, and bring more of your true self into your work.

We talk about:

• Why embodiment is not about being perfect, but about becoming more willing to feel, notice, and be sincere with yourself
• How vulnerability and sensitivity help you access deeper body wisdom and make more aligned decisions
• Why “work doesn’t start at your computer” and what it means to begin your work from your body instead
• The difference between “I don’t feel like doing it” and using how you want to feel as the fuel for aligned action
• How business dips, winter seasons, and ebbs can reveal what needs to shift instead of meaning you are failing
• Why your particular frequency, values, and lived self are the magic sauce in a transformational business

Links and Resources mentioned:

Free Self Coaching Tool: https://jennaward.co/self/
Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification: https://jennaward.co

Keywords: feminine embodiment coaching, spiritual business owners, embodied business, nervous system and business, feminine business, embodiment practices, somatic self coaching, Jenna Ward, feminine embodiment certification, business ebbs and flows

🔥Get this free somatic audio + worksheet to untangle your business challenges so you can take clear next steps with ease ▶️ https://tertiariegler.com/embodied-expansion-practice/

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📌Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.  It does not constitute therapy, medical advice or business coaching.

Transcript

Tertia: Hi there, you are listening to Feminine Embodiment for Spiritual Business Owners. I'm your host, Tertia Riegler, and I have a very special episode lined up for you today. I very rarely interview people on my podcast, most of my episodes are solo episodes, but today I am so delighted to bring you an interview that I did with a teacher and a mentor and a woman who I deeply, deeply admire. 

My special guest today is Jenna Ward, she is the founder of the School of Embodied Art, and that is the school through which I did my Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification. We had such a rich conversation about bringing embodiment and the feminine into the way in which we run our businesses, how do we find the centre of ourselves so that we can make good decisions and navigate some of the ebbs and flows that happen to us automatically as business owners, and I do believe that you are absolutely going to love today's episode, so enjoy. I'm so thrilled to have Jenna Ward joining us today on the podcast.

Jenna is one of my teachers that has had such a huge impact on my life and on my career, and we're going to dive into that a little bit more in terms of the things that her body of work can bring to both our lives and our careers, and let me first tell you a little bit about Jenna. She is a feminine embodiment coach and embodiment teacher living between Australia and Holland. Jenna works with hundreds of coaches and women to deepen their feminine gifts, inhabit their bodies more fully, and coach in embodied ways. 

Jenna has worked with women across five continents, partnering with them to discover the endless depth, beauty, and wisdom of their body's knowing. In 2017, Jenna founded the School of Embodied Arts, an international training organisation and community devoted to cultivating the skills of living and coaching in body-honouring feminine ways. So Jenna, I am so thrilled. Welcome on my podcast.

Jenna:  Thank you so much for having me, and I'm so happy to join your audience today. 

Tertia: Yes, I believe that the wisdom that you can bring to our podcast today is going to be so, so valuable to them. 

Jenna: I'll try. 

Tertia: So I met Jenna about two, no, it's longer than that. 2020, my goodness, six years ago.


Six years ago, I met Jenna, and I am actually a graduate of the School of Embodied Arts. I did my feminine embodiment coaching certification through Jenna, and the body of work that you have created, Jenna, has just brought so much depth and richness and a level of beauty and intensity and magnificence and extravagance that was missing to me before. And this wasn't my first coaching certification that I did. 

I actually have done one, I think, about eight years prior to that. I did another coaching certification. So I've been experienced in the arts of coaching. 

I've worked with women since starting my own business like 20 years ago. But really, the embodiment aspect and the deep feminine, which I really got to know through your body of work, completely put my whole life, my relationships, and the way that I show up in my work on a completely different trajectory. And so I'm really curious. 

You were my teacher, and all of the things that I didn't know about what is this that I'm feeling, and how can I give expression to that? And how can I find more of myself in this world in a way that's not like self-sacrificing, but I can bring the best of me and love being in that space? So I learned how to do that through your body of work. But I'm curious, who taught you how to do that? Like, how did you get on this path? 

Jenna: Thank you so much for sharing your experience in that. I feel a little heart pop as I just received those words about your experience. 

I don't do really anything special, because I don't have anything totally figured out. I'm a work in progress myself. But there are a few really useful, I guess they're skills and qualities that I discovered, and that I was taught. 

I don't believe anyone creates in a vacuum. I think we're building on a lot of ancient cultural and spiritual and devotional ways of being when we come back to the body, and when we want to be more embodied and more connected to the feminine. We're always building on what's come before. 

But there were a few essential skills that I know for me, looking back, were just total game changers in how I made decisions, showed up in a room and set standards for myself in my life. And so it started for me, I was a clinical hospital pharmacist, about like as dry and scientific as you can get. And I became really unwell, really sick. 

And I went looking for different alternative modalities that might be able to resolve this churning dissatisfaction that was presenting as this nausea that I only ever had Monday to Friday while going to my job. And I searched, I probably trained and studied in eight or more different modalities. I flew to different continents, I did everything from like the really spiritual to the super woo woo. 

And all of it was just so analytical and clinical, and none of it really met that yearning that I had. I didn't know what the yearning was, but I just knew there had to be more to life than this. Like there had to be more.

Somebody show me where the ravishment is. And so as I learned all those modalities, I transitioned into working as a practitioner with many of those modalities. But still the itch wasn't totally satisfied and scratched. 

And so I just began exploring with my own clients in my own coaching practise and on my own body. And I was really grateful to have a handful of close women who were just very embodied, very comfortable in their own body. And that wasn't a word that we were using at that time. 

It wasn't nearly as popular as it is now. But what they demonstrated to me was the power of vulnerability and the power of sensitivity to your internal world. And so these are almost two of the key skills that I really believe sit at the heart of feminine embodiment, any type of embodiment, and any type of moving through the world as your most sincere self. 

The willingness to be vulnerable, the willingness to be sensitive and notice what do you actually feel? What do you really think? What's the deeper wisdom that your body really knows? And so as this was woven more into my own coaching practise, my own personal life, things went off like fireworks. I was like, this is the ravishment. Here is the more. 

Not a lot had changed externally, but I was walking into a room, not settling in relationships, making choices about career that actually just brought me much more fully to life. And so I was able to move towards, I was able to discern what my values are, to unpack the way I had been conditioned to dismantle that scaffolding from within my body and show up just more and more as me. And I'm like, I got to know myself along the way. 

There's lots of things I didn't really know about myself, but this journey showed me. And so my body of work, as you've referred to, is the systemization or the structure for that journey, both for yourself and also the journey to actually take a client on that. And I didn't really have a plan to launch a coaching school. 

I was just, I was coaching with my own clients and it wasn't until a colleague said, Hey Jenna, I've seen a few of your clients. Like, what are you doing with them there? That sounds so interesting. Can you please teach me how to do that? Oh, I'm not sure if I can, let me have a go. 

And here we are coming up on a decade later. So I'm still a student of it, but that's how we got here. 

Tertia: Oh, fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. And I think so many things there that I want to unpack in terms of still being a student. I think that's one thing that I really admire about your work and also something that I've learned from you seeing that is that we are always just learning. 

There's no way in being perfect in this and actually like giving yourself permission to not be perfect. I think it is so difficult, especially as a woman who struggles with perfection, we get told just don't be so perfect. Don't be so hard on yourself. 

But that's all, it all happens on the level of the mind, right? You need to like take those patterns out in your body and you need to have someone to model that to you. Like you were saying earlier also about there were these women that modelled to you how to be embodied because this is not something that we can learn by reading about it or by watching a video. Do you know what I mean? 

Jenna: The correlation there is because if you're not perfect, if you don't get something perfectly correct or absolutely right, then there's a risk that you get it wrong.

And that's vulnerable. It's vulnerable to not know the answer, to not have the question, you know, of course there's some settings in life where that's not an acceptable outcome. I don't want an emergency department doctor reaching over the top of me being like, gee, I'm sorry, I've unpacked my perfectionism and I'm just not sure what to do with you here.

You know, there's some settings where we need to have really high standards, but that's not most of life. Most of us are not walking around in such high stakes situations. But if we are willing to not be perfect, then there is an inherent emotional exposure or risk in that, which means we might be like, if I put this into context, I had a difficult conversation to have with a friend. 

I had been avoiding having that conversation for so long because I wasn't sure how to word it. I didn't want to upset this person. I didn't want to be seen as judging.

All the stories. And it's like, I can either just avoid having that conversation or I can do it imperfectly. I can risk that emotional exposure. 

I can be willing to lean into that vulnerability. And that's the only actual path towards deeper intimacy. But there's not a lot of people, situations or workplaces where that level of vulnerability is actually safe for women, for people of different identities to display. 

And that's a cultural norm. So not only do we have this hyper-personalisation of the perfection as a way to stay safe, we also have this cultural context where it's really difficult to choose the opposite, because it means, in the example with my friend, I feel safe enough with my friend to be vulnerable. But if the stakes are higher, if the situation is different, if I'm not sure if I'll still be welcomed and belonged to the group when I make that mistake, it makes it a lot more challenging to choose vulnerability. 

And at the same time, like vulnerability is just innately human. Like we only have to watch small children who are, you know, their full range of emotions and experiences, and they're not worried about vulnerability. But as adults, we are socialised in a context where it is not seen as acceptable.

And that will be different based on our identities and our social locations. So as a result of that, and this is what I see so much Tertia, like so many women who are wanting to rediscover their feminine, come back to their bodies. It's not because there's some personal defect that you've got, like, there's nothing quote, unquote, wrong with you. 

It's the culture, we're in an epidemic of disembodiment, where it's not safe to be vulnerable. And it's seen as problematic, hysterical and unprofessional, if you are a sensitive feeling human. Yeah. 

And that all of that, all of that is obviously problematic, because like, look where we are, as a humanity. 

Tertia: That's something that I, that I often think about, because, I mean, we've, we've spoken about this before. Both of us hold privileges. 

And whenever we start, or rather, whenever I start thinking about what are the ways in which we can be more vulnerable and can show up more true to who we are, then I always think, but what about those people who are in situations where that is not an option for them? And where that might be fraught with danger, in whatever way, shape or form it is. And I always come back to when we come into contact within ourselves with what you call the currents of aliveness that are within us. This, to me, this becomes like an anchor. 

And then it makes, and I don't want to simplify this, this is how I see it. The external situations that we find ourselves in, then, when we have this anchor, and this source within ourselves, it gives us an additional bit of strength. So externally, things might not change. 

But as you said, internally, we start making different decisions, we start making different choices, we start maybe speaking to ourselves in a different way. And all of those kinds of things stack up to start giving us a level of depth and satisfaction and sovereign agency, where before we might not have had access to even touching it. 

Jenna: I would totally agree. 

Because we find that sense of security in the external, in the room around us, and who's in that room with us. But there is one of the key sources of security, safety, stability, which is an ideal prerequisite for doing life, you're going to be more of yourself if you feel safe to do so. The third dimension that we find that security and safety, and this is not a new age spiritual concept, this is nervous system science, like this is demonstrated. 

But the third dimension is how we neurocept or how we actually feel inside our body. And so when we can cultivate that sensitivity, that connection to you described it as that inner pillar, when we can deepen our connection to that security from within, it gives us such huge fuel and resource and stability to stand on to make some choices that might be different to how you've done the first few decades of life, or a few more than a few. 

Tertia: Yeah, exactly.  I worked in corporate for eight years. And I was very much living from my head, very organised, structured, hitting all the goals, nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's fine. 

Absolutely not. I had this perfect plan of when I was going to start my own business. And I had like a huge financial runway to support me so that energetically, I won't be stressed out. 

And on day one of my own business, after I have left my job, at eight o'clock, I went and I sat down in front of my laptop. And that was just, there was nothing that I had to do at eight o'clock. But this was just this conditioning of when you work, these are the actions that you have to take.

And one of the things you told us, you have the sign above your desk. 

Jenna: Oh, work doesn't start at your computer. 

Tertia: Yes, work doesn't start at your computer.

Jenna: No, it doesn't. 

So most of my listeners are entrepreneurs. And one of the beautiful things that I learned from you and that you modelled to me was how we can bring our feminine and our embodied presence into our work. 

Because so much of the work, as we know, is it's like very strategic, very goal orientated and very much focused on linear growth. And yet there are so many aspects that fall by the wayside if we do that. And our emotions that we push by the wayside in order to achieve that strategic linear growth. 

I look at my dad who was a farmer and he was a hard worker. My whole family on both my mom and my they like hard workers, you know, and you we bring that with us. And yet there is a way that we can do it differently. 

It's softer and more open and even still successful. So that's what I like. What can you tell me about that? 

Jenna: I can tell you I wholeheartedly agree with it. 

And I feel that for so many women who are probably joining us for this conversation. Yes, we started a business because we wanted a livelihood and that involves earning money. But there was also a very likely and inspired or creative component to what we chose to do, which is the order of priorities, creative inspiration, making money in different seasons. 

One might be a little bit more or less important depending on the season and the chapter of life that you're in. But most of us started our business not because we wanted to take over the world with some kind of empire. Like we probably would have gone into bro marketing or drop shipping if that was our only goal. 

We started these businesses because they have a very important. There's something that called you here. There's a creative impulse. 

And if we don't pause to regularly check in with if that's present, how that's present, what that creative and inspired impulse wants us to do next, then it can become a very easy slippery slope to fall into the dominant culture and maybe the intergenerational habit. I also come from a farming family, which is like, how much can you produce and put out? So I am a big advocate for having systems and structures within my business. And this is one thing that you could consider that a more masculine or linear part of the of the equation. 

But that's not what drives my business. My business isn't driven by the structures, the structures, the automations, the repetitions. They're there to hold me. 

But the thing that's actually driving the show is I want to exchange fair value and have a really good livelihood. And I want to feel ease. The central desire that I have in this season of my life is I want to feel ease in my work. 

That's been different in different seasons. In some seasons, I've wanted freedom or I've wanted a lot of creative aliveness. I have a very two very young children at the moment. 

And so right now, I'm like, baby, let's just make this easy. And so when I'm sitting down to work, which does not ever start with opening my computer, it looks at it looks like checking in with ease. What could we do with more ease this week? How could we make this easier? Let's zoom out, centre this feeling.

And from there, see how the structures and frameworks and the automations and the list of things that need to be done. How does that shift and get reprioritized when I centre how I want to feel in my business first? And I realised that I have an established business. So I've been an entrepreneur for more than 10 years. 

And that means that I'm out of that startup phase where you're trying a lot. You're figuring out how do I reproducibly do this? And although we all go through chapters of evolution and change and maturation, I think those first one, two, three years are a very different point to when you're a little bit further along. But even and perhaps even more so in my first few years of business, this principle of like feeling first, how is it I want to feel? How do we centre that before we get into the doing? For me, it was just non-negotiable because it was pretty much the reason that I got into this business to begin with. 

Tertia: It's interesting that you say about how I want to feel, because that is definitely the anchor that can hold you on target. I almost want to say of what it is that you want to do. And yet I so often see, and this is something that I talk to a lot, I see how people go, I don't feel like doing it. 

And there's a completely different situation between how do I want to feel and what actions can I take? What decisions can I make? How can I take care of my energy in order to cultivate this feeling that I desire? And that that can become my fuel from which I then take action versus I don't feel like doing it. And so I'm not going to do it. Because the I don't feel I'm going to do it can be that's like nervous system stuff and junk and all kinds of fear. 

Who knows that's in the way. 

Jenna: Yeah. And that is really important to tease apart because so here's the thing, there's so many layers to this, I think, particularly for women and particularly for entrepreneurs, because we might be working in the hours between the other hours and the other roles and duties that we've got to be doing. 

So we might be kind of like titrating our business into our life, which is which I do, and I would prefer not to but season of life. Yeah. And then we've got that layer of particularly being in the startup phase of what works. 

I'm not sure is this going to work. This is a bit of an experiment. I'm trying this out.


I don't know if it's going to be the thing that I want to do or if it's going to be the right move or the right thing for me. And naturally, of course, we're going to have moments where it's too much effort. You're too tired. 

You don't want to be visible. All these things are naturally going to come up. But if this is the and this is why I think it's so important to rest back into the way that you want to feel first. 

If you've chosen a particular strategy, let's say I want to start a podcast. I mean, you and I both have podcasts, but let's just say I want to start a podcast. If you decide that's the strategy I'm going to go for. 

I've zoomed out. I've sat back. I've decided this is the thing. 

And then you get to record an episode. And the first two takes, you can't do it because it like you just freeze up. That's a different that's a different state.

(23:46 - 25:51)
So I'm a feminine embodiment coach, just like you. I constantly have to coach myself and self coach myself in my business when when I notice that I'm in states of confusion or stuckness, procrastination. Here's an example of that. 

I had to do some restructuring in my business this year, and it meant shifting some really longstanding pieces. So it was like shaking things up. And I didn't really want to do that because it was going to be challenging and it wasn't necessarily going to be popular for all of the different pillars and the people and contractors that that were involved in that. 

But it was the right move. It was the next chapter. I knew that I needed and wanted to send to ease. 

And when that kind of that big vision distilled down into little actions, I was procrastinating hard. Yeah, I was like waking up in the middle of the night with thoughts in my head around. I've got to change this thing over here. 

And it just seems so problematic and I don't know how to go about it. And so I have a responsibility to myself to find a way and a set of tools that can reproducibly like just sort that out. There are times that I work with coaches and consultants. 

I decided to work with a specific consultant to help me with this particular challenge. So I outsourced help because I was like, this is costing me money the longer that I don't do it. So I think that's a really good way to invest time and energy to speed things along. 

But then I also have a set of personal practises that I use where I'm like, I'm just I'm just not willing to stay stuck in this. Like, I don't have this work, this job, because I want to have an existential crisis on the three days a week that I go to work. You know, I want it to be easy. 

So let me learn a set of tools that work really well that I can just work it through and figure it out. Like, maybe I'm not meant to have the podcast. Maybe I just need to get through my visibility stuff.

What am I going to do? A coach, a consultant or a self-coaching practise? Like, let's just figure it out. Yeah. Sounds really easy to say it like this, but I know and I'm totally guilty of like staying in that uncomfortable stuck place, perhaps because I've been in business for long, so long. 

I just identify it for what it is. It doesn't mean the strategy is wrong. It doesn't mean you're not destined to do this. 

Doesn't even mean that there's something wrong with you. Just that some extra resourcing is required for this. So is it a coach? Is it a consultant? Is it some self-coaching? Just like do one of them for the love of the goddess.


Tertia: Absolutely. Yeah. The self-coaching is key because I can appreciate, you know, as soon as we start changing things around that have been working fine for a long time, you have to like step into a new identity. 

It's all of this unknown. It's all of the consequences, as you said, of the pillars that are no longer going to be the way that they were before and how is that going to be received? And so with all kinds of decisions that we make that impacts externally so many different people, it's very easy to be so shaky inside that we don't carry our own conviction through into the action. And what embodiment did for me, like learning that and having the practises, which I'd like you to talk about a little bit more, it's given me that strength of conviction. 

So I know on a mental level what I want to decide, but it's given me like the internal power and fuel to convincingly execute on that and to take action that's aligned. 

Jenna: If you have offensive ears, I'm going to swear a little bit in a moment. I think we'll get to this point where I just honestly don't give a fuck. It's my business.

I'm going to do it my way. This is my work. It's not for everyone. 

If it's not for you with so much love and care, see you fucking later. Like there's tonnes of other people you can go learn and study and mentor and explore with. Yeah. 

And I think that, and that's not from a place of like my stuff's better than anyone else's. I think that each of us have a particular brilliance to bring, and we're only going to be able to bring that brilliance when we're more of ourselves. So that does require really knowing yourself. 

I know that I'm a neuro spicy suburban mother of two who loves embodiment with an avoidant attachment style. I know I love chai. I know I love, I'm going to like take the easiest road in my business while having really high expectations about how profitable it should be. 

I know what my values are when I'm centering those values in the way my family chooses a holiday or the way my business decides, you know, what type of scholarships and partial scholarships we're going to offer to marginalised communities. Like I just know who the fuck I am. I know what my values are. 

I'm not saying they're better than anyone else's. They're just mine. So a totally unexpected, but very obvious side effect of doing these embodiment practises, the sensitivity, the vulnerability is that you just know yourself, you know, your boundaries, your standards. 

And that comes from a place, again, not of ego of I'm better or got anything more sorted out. Absolutely not. I'm just like a totally regular human. 

But I do have a huge unconditional love and respect for myself and a huge inner sense of safety and willingness to just be the fuck who I am. And if that's for you and we're going to be friends, cool. And if not, how many like there's like 7 billion people on the planet. Like there's enough that we can all have enough. 

Tertia: Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I think the more we are able to bring our whole selves to our lives, to our businesses and to our relationships, the richer not only our own experience is, but also the contribution that we make into the world. 

Jenna: I actually think if your business is in the realm of something that's centred around yourself, transformation or any aspect of personal identity, like it needs to have you, your particular frequency and flavour is the magic sauce that's actually going to make everything else work.

And if you try to emulate or be some other version of yourself, I mean, you know, in two to three years, you're not going to want to have that business and you're going to have to dismantle everything that you've built because you've built something that isn't sincere to you. And so, and I do think we do that. 

I've iterated my business to make it more what is right and best for the way that my particular contribution can best flow through it. That's an ongoing process. Just like as children grow, you need to buy them bigger clothes. 

Like that's a process of maturation that is totally normal. But if only it was so easy to know yourself, know what your contribution is and to stand in that. And that's the practise of embodiment as I see it and define it. 

I think a lot of people use that word in other ways, but to me, embodiment is simply inhabiting that most sincere set point that is you. And it's a practise to get to know who that is. 

It's an ongoing practise to be that in the world. 

Terita Yeah. And earlier you spoke about the practises that you have. 

Obviously we don't just learn the skill of sensitivity and now we are sensitive. We know how to be vulnerable and there we go into the world and spread our seed. It doesn't work like that. 

It's a continuous practise because we are still living in the soup pot where we have socialisation. We have conditioning. We have all of these, I don't want to call them mind driven ways of living, but it is in a way. 

And we need to always continuously come back to ourselves. And so when you have a practise where you don't have to go to someone else to tell you, how can I come back to myself? But you can go find that internal truth and that internal anchor every time. And this is where we find our agency, the body of work that you've created and the practises that we learn there is what teaches that to us. 

And so embodiment is how we fully inhabit ourself. But something else that I want to speak to you and many of my audience members are interested in this as well is the feminine. If I look at what's on social media and what the mainstream language of what the feminine is, it jars with what my experience of that is. 

So the feminine in feminine embodiment is a big thread that goes through all of your work. And I'd love for you just to put that into context. How do we bring the feminine into our businesses that doesn't look like staring at vision boards the whole day and popping grapes and meditating on the grass 24 seven. 

Jenna: So if we define the feminine as flow and we would then define the masculine as go their words that I first heard Michaela Bowen use. And I think they beautifully personify the feminine and the masculine as a non-gendered identity. So I'm not talking about feminine as in sexual identity or gender. 

So we all of us have this feminine flow quality within us. And it is the feeling flowing cyclic aspect of life creating itself and experiencing itself. So when I sit on my deck in the morning with a cup of warm chai in my hand watching the blue eyed honey eaters dip into my bird bath and then fly back into the forest and I noticed the temperature of the breeze on my skin and I'm just soaking up through all my external senses, these smells and warmth and touch. 

And that makes me sparkle and radiant through my heart and my belly. That is an experience, a little microcosm of life experiencing itself. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go, no purpose, no linear moving forward. 

It's just aliveness. And that same aliveness could be a volcano erupting or a thunderstorm or a decaying bird carcass on the beach. All of that is just life experiencing itself. 

And so a lot of what I see around the feminine on social media in particular is the feminine is calm, the feminine as beautiful, the feminine as the height of summer in a long gauzy dress. And that is not the feminine. The feminine is summer and autumn and winter and spring. 

It is beautifully personified by Mother Nature because Mother Nature is creating and experiencing itself. And so when I think about bringing the feminine into my business there's so many ways that in my experience it has been enriching. And it's meant I've been able to stay in business and have a more profitable business for longer. 

Because if I was to centre my business around conventional masculine, linear growth, always need to have more, more, more, like that type of growth is a malignant cancerous growth. It's not possible to always be putting out more. I've been in business so long I've had two maternity leaves. 

I've taken holidays to Italy. I've had seasons of moving between continents. It has not always been possible for me to have linear up, up, up growth in my business. 

And so one of the big ways that the feminine interfaces in my work at a macro level is to really understand, honour, and plan for the natural ebbs, flows, and seasons of my work. And for those chapters to be absolutely celebrated. Because if you don't have a winter and you don't have the rains really soak the soil, there is not enough nutrients for spring to fully blossom. 

So at a macro level embracing that flowing cyclic quality of the feminine by appreciating there will be seasons where I have more capacity, less capacity, where I have more income, less income. And yes, I'm going to put structures in place so that I'm financially secure and well. It doesn't mean that I have to eat two minute, you know, noodles for that, for that month or anything like, yeah, we can put, we can still use masculine structures to put that in place. 

But at a macro level, that's one of the biggest pieces, allowing myself to look at my business through the seasons and have a lot of grace for myself. If I choose to, or if I'm forced to go into a season, that's not all exponential growth all the time. I can speak about some of the micro ways as well, but I'll pause there first. 

Tertia:  Oh, thank you for sharing that Jenna. The most juicy bit that I want to take out there is when you said that you prepare yourself for the ebbs and flows. 

And I think as a rule, when we are in business, we know that there are ebbs and flows, but you then said, and I celebrate even when I'm in the ebb, I celebrate where I am. And this is the key. We allow ourselves to be where we are and we celebrate those, not only being in summer, but even being in winter and allowing that to be, because I think so often what happens is we see our businesses do this whole up and down ebb and flow thing, and we get annoyed, angry, and judgemental at the dips and we try harder. 

Jenna: I think when there's a dip, it's often wanting to reveal something. What's here to be learnt in this? What's not working? What needs to be shifted? What's required? Like, what is this trying to, I believe we're in partnership with our work and our business. And when I say in partnership, it's like, yeah, you're the one doing all the work, but it's an entity of itself with rhythms and maturation of its own. 

It's also growing up and get to know, getting to know who it wants to be in the world. I've just recently had a little period of wintering. It might not have looked like that externally. 

Probably it did because I wasn't as consistent with my emailing as I should have been. But I knew there's a lot that I'm actually being shown and that is being revealed when I just really let myself notice what's happening here. And this is actually uncomfortable. 

It's not consistent, which is what everyone tells us. We have to be 24 seven, but I'm willing to sit in this to see what needs to shift because I trust it's conspiring in them in the next best direction for me. And I want to put that next iteration into action ASAP. 

I don't want to have to learn this lesson multiple times because I've been there, done that. And it's just like way more work.

Tertia: And I can appreciate how the, the sensitivity and the vulnerability that we cultivate through embodiment practises, for example, helps with this enquiry into what is this trying to show me? What is here? What is, what is this vulnerable or messy, uncomfortable thing that I, that I need to sit with and love and allow to be here? If we are down in the, in the valley of the, the ebb, what are some practises that, that we can use, some micro practises? 

Jenna: So I have the great privilege of living by the beach here in Australia, where I am right now. But if you have access to nature, one of my favourite practises and ways to start my work day, I'll usually do this at least once a week during my work weeks is I'll think about the question that I have. Should I make this change? Is this really for me or should I move past it? Whatever the question is, it might be something a bit existential. 

And then I go for a walk in nature and I just breathe and think about that question and just notice what I notice. What do I notice on the beach? What do I notice in nature? What do I notice and think as I walk? And I'll let my body be in motion in nature. So by being in motion, very often we'll sit behind our desk or our computer and expect the answer to come, but there's no way that the body can actually metabolise any frozen energy. 

When you're just sitting stationary behind your computer, your awareness is not in your body. Your body is not moving. You need to get your body moving with your awareness, either expanded or turned within. 

And then being in nature, I feel like is just a really great way to connect with something greater. And for me, it's a way to connect with the feminine nature is one of the strongest links that I have, particularly being in Australia, where so much of our nature is deeply uncultivated. And so it's this really wild type of nature, which I honestly believe supercharges the shit out of my creativity. 

So I'll take what I've heard described as an oracle walk in nature, just breathing that question, moving my body and just noticing what arises. And I count that as work. That is work, because when I'm in a winter season, if I'm in an ebb, there is no point in doing more and trying to produce unless I found the footing that I need. 

And this kind of philosophy, this space to sit back kind of daydream, it's sometimes referred to as in the field of creatives and artists. This daydreaming time has been studied as a necessary requirement for high creative output. So I think as entrepreneurs, we're often doing really creative things when we're just figuring out, like, how am I going to do this? What's the next thing that needs to be done? Like, why isn't this working and how do I need to pivot? These are all times where doing less is absolutely required, but that doesn't mean we don't go to work. 

We go to work in ways that we can move our body and we can meditate on the deeper questions with a really open slate to see what might arise. So that's one of the practises that I do routinely, especially if I'm in a wintering season or a season of those ebbs. 

Tertia:  I do love how you kind of redefined what doing less means. 

And just as I was listening to you, even though I've ever since doing my feminine embodiment coaching training with you, I have brought in more feminised ways to run my own business. So a lot of these practises I do, I have something I call a co-creative walk, which is very similar to what you explain now. But even it's so interesting, even me sitting here, listening to you explaining how there is a way for us to take apart the problems that we have and find new solutions for them and really like dig our teeth into it in a way that doesn't cost like blood, sweat and tears. 

But there's a way to do it that feels more expansive and that feels more spacious and that you can make part of your work that you go for a walk and work in that way. Just listening to you doing that or speaking to that, it like excites me. I feel like a longing and a yearning that opens in me that this is possible. 

Jenna: We just need to bring it into our days, right? In order to actually say, for example, do that walk, say it's going to take 45 minutes, 60 minutes if you need to travel somewhere. You know, it needs to go into your calendar as an official work event. For me, I drop the kid here, I drop another kid there or a nanny comes or whatever. 

There's a grandma, there's an Oma, whatever. Family life is taken care of. And then a friend texts and says, do you want to have a coffee? I'd love to have a coffee, but I'm at work and on my schedule is going for a walk on the beach to contemplate this deep question because I'm like, you know, I'm in it, I'm in the winter, I'm in the ebb. 

And so if you claim this as a boundary valid work activity, who is there to say otherwise? But there is some boundary pieces because I know for me as an entrepreneur, particularly I work from home a lot. It's really easy for those lines to come become blurred around. Are you at work? Are you not? Are you available? Is this real work? And so you've really got to claim it for yourself and not let anyone encroach on it. 

And if you have a hobby, you would let people encroach on it. If you have a business and you're accountable to that being profitable and having a really great output and a fair value of exchange, then yeah, you actually do have to go to create and do your work. Yeah. 

Tertia: Jenna, I can sit the whole day and talk to you about this. We're going to have to do another session where we speak about boundaries and how we can bring those boundaries in a more feminine way. I absolutely adored having you on the podcast today. 

And I so appreciate the wisdom that you bring to the conversation. And you truly are a woman who walks your talk a hundred percent. And I'm very grateful that I can call you one of my mentors and teachers and someone that I can really look up to. 

So thank you so much for joining us here today. 

Jenna: Oh, it's been such a joy. Thank you for the honour of being able to join you for this convo. It was a treat. 

Jenna: Yes. So I would love to encourage anyone who was listening to our conversation today that if the idea of being able to learn this kind of skill that can put you in touch with yourself and that can amplify your being so that you can bring all of yourself to everything that you do is to really check out the feminine embodiment coach certification training. 

That was a mouthful. So Jenna, do you want to tell us just where people can find out more about that, if that's something that they would be interested in? 

Jenna Absolutely. Happy to share. 

We've spoken a few times about some self-coaching tools. And the first thing that I'll mention is just a free mini training and a free mini download and a resource, which is the self-coaching tool that I use. And everyone who's listening is so welcome to grab that. 

It's at my website, Jenna ward.co self. And there you can just learn this little somatic workbook and reflection. It's great. 

If you've got a problem or a challenge that you need to work through and if somatic self-coaching or coaching with others in a professional setting is something that you're interested, we offer a six month professional training. It's live, but virtual. And you can learn more about that at my website as well, which is Jenna ward.co. Thank you so much. 

Tertia: And I'm going to pop all of those links down in the show notes. And so once again, thank you so much. I loved every moment of it and I'll catch you around. Thanks, Jenna. 

Jenna: Thank you. 

Tertia: Bye.