The Arise with Anita Podcast
Welcome to Arise with Anita—the podcast for the woman becoming who she always was.
This is a space for the ambitious, heart-led woman ready to rise in identity, income, and impact—while honoring her healing, her vision, and her divine timing.
Hosted by Anita, transformational coach and founder of the H.E.R. Method, each episode delivers real talk, powerful reframes, and embodied wisdom for the woman building her next level from the inside out.
Inside you’ll find:
→ Solo episodes that break limiting patterns & ignite identity shifts
→ Guest conversations with thought leaders, healers, and experts across mindset, manifestation, wellness, business, and legacy
→ Soul-led strategy for money, purpose, and personal power
→ Raw, unfiltered insights that remind you: you’re not too late, and you’re not alone
This isn’t just about mindset.
It’s about becoming the version of you that already has the life you’re calling in.
This is your rise. Let’s Rise—together.
The Arise with Anita Podcast
Breaking the Code: Understanding Masculine and Feminine Dynamics Featuring Alison Armstrong
What if everything you thought you knew about men and women was incomplete or entirely wrong? For over 30 years, world renowned researcher Alison Armstrong has been exploring one humble question: "How am I bringing out the worst in men, and how can I possibly bring out the best?" The answers have transformed millions of relationships worldwide.
In this profound conversation, Alison reveals the fundamental differences between masculine and feminine energies that create both harmony and friction in our relationships. Masculine energy, she explains, is about "making way" driving forward with focus and determination toward goals. Feminine energy creates space where understanding, love, and freedom can flourish. Understanding these polarities helps us recognize how we might be unconsciously sabotaging our connections.
Alison shares eye-opening insights about how wounds manifest differently in our bodies and psyches. Those in a committed, productivity-focused state experience wounds as a crushing sensation when trust and respect are violated. Those in an open, connected state feel emotional wounds as a "stack of pancakes" in the chest layered feelings that can overwhelm us when we perceive someone doesn't truly care.
Perhaps most powerfully, Alison challenges our victim narratives around parental wounds. "What if they didn't intend to hurt us? What if they were just being human?" This perspective liberates us from carrying childhood pain into adult relationships. She explains how authentic expression not trauma responses creates the foundation for genuine connection, noting that men consistently associate women's authenticity with courage.
The conversation culminates with practical wisdom: clarity about your non-negotiables, the physical embodiment of feminine power as radiance, and why women should feel empowered to initiate contact rather than waiting to be pursued. Whether you're healing from past relationship patterns or seeking to deepen your current connections, this episode offers transformative insights to help you rise into more authentic partnerships.
To dive deeper into Alison's magic:
Free Gift of Making Sense of Men: A Woman's Guide to a Lifetime of Love, Care & Attention from All Men
https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/products/makingsense.html
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Website: https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/
Start your Queens Code Journey here:
https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/products/qc-audiobook.html?ctid=C2876
Understanding Men / Women Courses:
https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/curriculum/options.html
If you felt something shift inside you today… hold that. Honor it.
This is how we rise — one choice, one voice, one brave breath at a time.
If you’re ready to go deeper, download your free ARISE Activation Workbook at www.arisewithanita.com
And if this message landed in your soul, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a woman who’s done playing small.
Because we don’t just rise alone — we rise together.
I’ll see you in the next episode. And until then… stay rising.
Welcome to the Rise With Anita podcast, the space where soul meets strategy and dreams are no longer optional. I'm your host, anita Kurdayan-Gurgis, a transformational mindset coach and founder of the Her Method. This show is for the woman who knows she's meant for more, who feels the call to rise higher but sometimes feels trapped by her old stories, patterns or circumstances. Here we don't just talk about growth, we embody it. We activate the woman inside of you who leads, who creates, who claims her next level. You'll hear a mix of soul episodes from me and interviews with soul-driven leaders, the best in their fields, who live what they teach and rise by example. Each conversation is a catalyst for your next breakthrough. You're not broken. You're breaking through. Let's go ahead and rise together.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back to they Arise with Anita podcast. I am so excited for today's guest because Alison Armstrong is more than a researcher and a speaker. She is a devoted guide in the realms of love, power and partnership. Her journey began over 30 years ago with one humble human question how am I bringing out the worst in men and how can I possibly bring out the best? That level of personal responsibility and genuine curiosity ignited a body of work that has since touched millions of lives, helping us understand not only men and women, but ourselves, our, our instincts, our hearts and the ways we disconnect or um or move toward real connection.
Speaker 2:Wisdom is the kind of that speaks to your nervous system and your soul. Our books, seminars and online programs are filled with compassionate truths, faithfully human stories, and practical tools that make us embody the sacred dance between masculine and feminine in a world that often forgets how to honor growth. He is this rare gift that makes the complex look clear and the tender hearts of us feeling seen, and today I am beyond honored to share space with her to settle in, breathe in a little deeper and open your heart, because this conversation is an invitation into more love, more understanding and more of your true self. Welcome to the extraordinary alice nernstrog.
Speaker 3:I am so honored wow, I'm honored, I think. I think that's the best introduction that you created. Right, we didn't write that. That's the best introduction I think I've ever had.
Speaker 2:Thank you and I know that this is just going to be magic for our listeners. So I always kind of start off our conversations off the bat with what is bringing you joy in this moment.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, I would have to say my family. And then my family is in my well, they're all together. So there's the men in my life, right, there's my boyfriend, there's my late husband, who's still in my life and he's up to so much mischief, and the which my late husband keeps hanging out with my year and a half old grandson which might sound weird, but it's pretty common Climbing Okay, good it's. Oh my gosh, and my son and I are planning a trip to Japan that I'm so excited about, and this may sound weird, but as I was getting your email with the new link, I saw a. There was an email that my donkey, who we had returned to the rescue from which I got him 10 years ago, has just been adopted by a family in Aspen, colorado. He's off to another part of his happy life, and he was a, he was a.
Speaker 3:Donkeys are the masculine of the equine world. They're extremely logical. You, you can't scare them into doing anything. It has to make sense to them or they won't do it. And so Samwise is a really important part of my life for a long time, and now he's got a new life, and that gives me joy in this moment. I found it out right when I went to get your link.
Speaker 2:I have loved this. I am so happy to hear how you really enmeshed. It's not only like family and integration, but you're also talking about kind of like the outer world of once people pass on Yep.
Speaker 3:It's been a great feature for the last six years. It was a big surprise and it keeps bringing something really cool. It's affected me a lot.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful because it shows that our love doesn't end right on this plane.
Speaker 3:Not at all, not at all, not at all. The these, these, these shells, they wear out right, we're not gone. No one ever leaves the universe peeing.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited this conversation is. I can already tell it's gonna be amazing so what do you want to do next? Okay, so I have what I call kind of the her method, which is heal and body rise, and so our questions are kind of going to be geared towards that. Okay, we're off with heal and it. What would you say are common wounds you see in the masculine and feminine these days, and do they unconsciously play out in our modern relationships?
Speaker 3:oh my gosh. Well, the second question. First, unconsciously and consciously, there are so many, sadly, there are so many behaviors in both men and women that both men and women justify by our wounds. Well, you can't talk to me like that because you know what happened to me and you know I can't take someone being that direct. Or like, well, you know my mother, so you know you can't do that with me, like there's all these. We call it one of the benefits.
Speaker 3:One of the benefits of wounds is that people use them in lieu of boundaries instead of saying no, you can't be that way with me. It's, you know, you can't be that way with me because this terrible thing happened, right, and instead of just stop, I understand why you that you just can't do it around me. So make up your mind. You wonder you got it. Or you want to be around me Straight up, and so that's the. So yes, unconsciously, absolutely we have. I mean, if we tried to list the conclusions we have about ourselves, which we have people do in our Extreme Freedom course, what's true about me? What's true about Allison? What's true about Allie? Like all the nicknames, and then all this just dumpster diving right, all enough that we don't even know is deciding for us. Right? It comes to the surface and then it could be released. So, consciously, unconsciously, wounds definitely, there are similarities in the kind of wounds that I've seen in men and women and there are also really big differences. Which way do you want me to?
Speaker 2:go first. I don't know which way. I mean I guess let's start on the differences, just because I feel like we can always find our commonalities. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, the commonalities are simple. We're wounded by not being seen, Not being seen, not being heard, not being honored, and one of the biggest difference that I see part of it is male and female, as in affected by gender hormones, and part of it is what you would refer to as masculine and feminine, or or tony would. That's how he teaches my work. I I have moved on, because those terms have a lot of baggage and it doesn't. It sticks it too much right. It like locks it in instead of okay.
Speaker 3:If you're in a committed state of mind, you're focused on productivity and destinations and goals, and, and what you need is to be trusted and respected, and we're wounded by people doing things that we perceive as being the opposite of that, that they don't trust us and they don't respect us. And even men have said if you don't trust me, you don't know who I am and therefore you couldn't possibly respect me, but we don't even know what they need to be trusted for. Like we don't engage in a conversation. What do you need to be trusted for? Or it's awful for you, right? Whereas and we'll be that too, whether you're a man or a woman if we're in a committed state of mind. Trust and respect, productivity, get her done. They all come together in a package. And then, on the other hand, if we're in an open, connected state of mind, right, because that productive state of mind screens out everything considered irrelevant to the destination of the goal, so it's not connecting. You can connect over what's being focused on, which is something I've been teaching people for years. Instead of trying to get your son to stop playing a video game, connect over the video game. Don't try to take him away from what's built to stimulate the brain, that testosterone made for him. Connect through it, right. But if we're in an open state of mind which, as you would know from engaging in my work, estrogen creates something as awareness work. Estrogen creates Duffy's awareness.
Speaker 3:Biologically, we naturally have an open state of mind, which occurs as being distracted. But it's also what has, like kids thinking that mom has eyes in the back of her head Because we can't not be awake. There's so much input, so we get overwhelmed and we also can't talk fast enough to communicate everything we perceive. Yeah, and we'll. And so it will tend to have what we would say our feelings hurt, you hurt my feelings, and that's when somebody says something or does something. That, how we interpret it is, they wouldn't have said or done that if they really loved us, if they really cared about us and respected, will get thrown in there. But usually it's love and care like we talk about in the Queen's Carouden, so we end up with these.
Speaker 3:Physically it's different too, anita. We'll end up with what feels like somebody punched us or stabbed us in the chest, and I call it the pancake, that we have a stack of pancakes right here, a ton of feelings located in one place and layered so sadness and joy and happiness and hurt. It's the stack of pancakes right here. And I remember a man said why do women make their feelings the center of everything? And I was like we don't. They are in the center of everything already, which is, you know, side note, why I think we need to make sure that we're clearing all that stuff out, because I think it merits us physically.
Speaker 3:Breast cancer, because it's right, right there with the dendrites, and so that's where we'll have our injury, that's where we'll feel it, whereas most men there's the term crestfallen, which this is the crest, so they'll like, they'll get shorter, their wounds will have them like curl over themselves. In other words they use. This crushed when a woman that he cares about doesn't trust him for something he believes he deserves to be trusted for. Crushed, just like. So, all this part of his body is where that happens.
Speaker 2:I never really thought about how it actually physically manifests, which is ironic because everything has a physical consequence but you don't necessarily think about. Well, what does it actually look like in the day-to-day? So, kind of to reverse and go into a different aspect of this question what would you say is the difference predominantly between masculine and feminine energies?
Speaker 3:Can I say bad words, or do you want it to be clinical or Bad words? Are between ane and an aude, the difference between a vagina and an erection. So, whether exhibited by a male or female human being, masculine energy is make way. Here I am make make way, we're getting this done. It's very, it's driving, it's forceful. It doesn't really pay attention to what's being impacted. It's so destination oriented, it doesn't pay attention to that. Whereas feminine you could think of like a vagina, feminine energy makes space. So if you think, for example, about compassion, right, compassion is actually a space like a womb. Even In the space of compassion, love arises, understanding arises even peacefulness arises, freedom arises, like that space of that feeling.
Speaker 3:It's not an emotion, it's a feeling which I think is important to distinguish. It's not an emotion, it's a feeling which I think is important to distinguish. And it's like a garden that's been all these nutrients have put in and then these things pop up like babies in rips. I mean, you actually said it in the introduction. I try to make things simple. I try to make things memorable, visual and we can even check ourselves like am I coming at this? Do I feel like you know? I'm barging into the room and I'm coming at this conversation?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna get somebody to do something and that can be effective in a lot of contexts. There's a, you know, there's a building on fire and you got to get people out the door. You want masculine energy to do that appreciation and love and safety, like emotional safety and communication, people coughing up what's true for them. You got to bring the other energy and recently I was at something called the Big Tent and it's a summit for the future of what's known as men's work and it was by invitation only and it was amazing to be there with men of all ages. Right, there were men in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, who were engaged in their own process of balancing, of the desire to own and balance both, which I think really is the work for all of us. Neither one of them is right, neither one of them is wrong. It's all about for what purpose, to what end.
Speaker 2:I think, simply put, a lot of times we try to be one or the other and it's really being a dance flowing from one to the other as we operate in our day-to-day lives. Is that it, yep?
Speaker 3:Yeah, almost like what I saw right then in my head was actually doing it. It's like the wave comes in and then the wave retreats and makes space Right so energetically. The sailboats behind me would have a good time with that.
Speaker 2:I love this conversation so much I want to win. Females who tend to find me are usually like me in the sense that I've did a lot of healing around the masculine wound. So, in your perspective, what is the easiest or not easiest, but what is the best way to start the journey of healing your wounds with the masculine energy?
Speaker 3:Wow. Well, I'm big on people starting where they're at, so I wouldn't prescribe trying to get to someplace else to start. So whatever someone is present to Like I didn't know. When I saw in 1991, when my colleague was called a frog farmer as in turning princes into frogs, and she rejected it outright and my life flashed before me and I saw that I not only that I was bringing out the worst in men, but I was so happy to see that I was, because until then that's just who men were Like they're scary, they're jerks, I'll use a polite word. They can't be trusted, they don't care about what you need or they're actively withholding it. They're not safe, not safe, not safe, and they abuse power.
Speaker 3:And so I was primarily interacting with men in fight mode. So, if you think of when we perceive an opportunity or we perceive a threat, we react in fight, flight or freeze. In often a sequence. My sequence is fight, and then, if that doesn't work, I freeze to figure out a new way to fight and I go back to fighting. It's not fight, freeze, fight, freeze, fight, freeze. Right, with this look on my face like everything's fine, and then, if I can't figure out a way for it to work, I finally just get the heck out of there. I flee.
Speaker 3:So how I mostly dealt with men in my 20s was was in this fight mode that the my stepdad used to say the best defense is a good offense. So I was on the offense like hand me your testicles and then we'll talk Like just cut them down from the very beginning and see who stays in the ring, not knowing what I was doing, not knowing how vulnerable men are to women, not knowing how they everything we do to try to get them to love us. We don't have to do it. They naturally love women, they naturally have an awe of women and the misogyny and the ugliness that we see that, the way they say it in men's work is wounded men you do wounding things and if we can see that. So you asked about where do you start? Where are you at right? I was sure I knew why men did what they did. The question popped into my head what if men are responding to women? And then I started checking to see and I checked with real men. Did you do that because of this? It seemed like legitimate reasons.
Speaker 3:I was always wrong In the beginning. I was always wrong, but I, you know, I would never do anything for that reason, and no self-respecting man would. What Women do things for that reason all the time. And so if someone's angry start with the anger, if someone's hurt, start with the hurt, and often, if you look in either direction you look at the hurt or you look at anger what we'll see is, if we're willing to look, we'll see that we have expectations and they didn't do what we expected them to do. And then we assigned a reason for why they didn't do it, and the reason we assigned hurt or the reason we assigned enraged us. Oh, it's the patriarch you get. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but does that really get you anywhere?
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, I'm loving this so good. In your view, our unresolved mother or father wounds show up and shape our abilities to relate to the polarity in our partnerships.
Speaker 3:Excuse me, Aye, aye, aye. Okay, I have to go way back. I mean, I'm talking way back, I'm talking primordial. So this is we have a program called Freedom from being Ordinary and after the beginning of the year, people can participate with me in it, in a journey, which is I love journeys where people watch videos and then we interact and we get to take it further than it went in the video. I always wanted to take it further than it went in the video. I always wanted to do a further thing and so, in freedom from being ordinary, we look at ordinary, what is ordinary, and so, in answer to your question, I would propose and I build a case for it in that course. But I'll just cut to the chase what if? What if?
Speaker 3:Our immune system is based on distinguishing is this me or not me? And if it's, if it decides me, it's let in, and there's all kinds of conclusions. If it's not me, it's rejected or attacked. So, like a sneeze A sneeze is a not me reaction Can you see that it's an instant rejection to something? So what happens if you think about our minds? And this isn't just human, by the way my dog does the same thing, a cat does the same thing, that trees outside my window do the same thing. That's what I mean by primordial. Everything on the planet is sorting is this me or not me, me or not me, me or not me? And then we take it from there. So if we identify, for example, with our mother, that our mother, I'm female, she's female, therefore we're alike I should be able to trust I think I can trust her to act like me, to interact like me. And then when she does it and hurt, well, my mother's imprint passed down right, my mother. I don't think there's any woman on earth my mother trusts. My mother competes with every single human with a vagina and it doesn't matter that she's 83 years old, she still competes and she still competes in the same way that she did when she was 20. And so, depending, like, depending, if I identify with my mother, I don't identify with my mother, right, then there's going to be wounds.
Speaker 3:So my, one of my highest values is honesty. It's truth and seeking truth, speaking the truth, revealing the truth, uncovering the truth, standing by the truth. Little t truth, right Like. And my mom would say she learned to lie starting at 13 years old and her default is to lie and I thought she loves me so much she won't lie to me, right? And that's again what we see. If she loved me more, she wouldn't lie to me. No, it's not personal.
Speaker 3:Lying is a human behavior. We have fight, lying, freeze, lying. What I mean? We have a thing. What I mean lie? We have a thing, called why men lie. When women lie, basically, babies lie. Even my horse used to lie to me.
Speaker 3:Lying is concealing. We get all upset that a man is concealing from us. Conceal is normal. Conceal is normal. Conceal is a default. It doesn't mean anything. So so mother-father wounds On on a free.
Speaker 3:I think they could have more energy because we give them more energy. But she's my mother, but he's my father. My father should have. When I figured out, my father was a man who had had the gorilla of alcoholism on his back since he was about 15 years old, but it didn't define who he was. I just thought my dad was an alcoholic. No, my dad is a man who has this thing and instead of interacting him alcoholic, alcoholic, alcoholic like my mother did I started interacting with him as a man, and what I learned about men completely transformed my relationship with him. I adore my father. My father adores me Completely transformed my relationship with him. I adore my father. My father adores me, and he's not the man who lived in the house with us when my mom was attacking him all the time.
Speaker 3:So we're going to be wounded by what we it to and by how personal we think it is, instead of what if it wasn't personal. What if our mothers were doing their thing? Our fathers were doing their thing? What if they didn't intend to hurt us? They didn't intend to neglect us, they didn't intend to dishonor us, they didn't intend to project things onto us that were gross to us? And how could you ever think I'm like that? What if they didn't mean to? What if they were just being human? And is this making sense? Like we can make those wounds bigger or we can go?
Speaker 3:Well, wait a second. What if there's no intent in it? What if they were just scared? And do you know what the hell they were doing? And they're doing the best they could in a circumstance where it was. I mean, my mother was 19 years old, with three children under the age of four I was 19 years old, yes and a husband who was four years older in his night stage. You know. They knew if the surf was out he wouldn't be on time to work and they accepted it because he was a brilliant mechanic. That would scare the pucky out of you. With three kids and being a kid yourself, you know All right what kids and being a kid- yourself.
Speaker 2:You know all right what. For me, this totally makes sense, because it's like we have to remember our parents, whether they've done something that you may or may not agree with. There's the means, at the end of the day, and they're on their own human journey of learning lessons as they go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when my daughter was pregnant with my first and so far only grandchild, I was interviewing grandmothers that I admired, which are my boyfriends to older sisters, and Shay said to me Allison, what it comes down to is, if you loved being a mother, you'll love being a grandmother. And I just like what was right there was. I don't think my mom ever wanted to be a mother. I don't. I don't think my mom ever chose being a mother. What, really, the one thing I wanted to get out of this life with was being a mother. It was a privilege to me to be a mother and everything I did as a mother flowed out of that. Everything she did as a mother flowed out of a different place. Not right or wrong, but wow, okay.
Speaker 2:I love this conversation so much. So how can women begin to distinguish between trauma response and authentic feminine essence when engaging with men?
Speaker 3:Wow, it feels good. This is one of my favorite things about men, okay, and have you ever read making sense of men, the book that I wrote, making sense of men? Okay, so it's. It's the research that went into finding out what are the four most attractive qualities that has a man want to have sex with a woman, versus the four most attractive qualities that have a man want to take care of her, contribute to her, protect her, make her life better, fall in love with her, want to be her mentor or her husband or her big brother. What was awesome to me and and if we can lean into this, it could change everything that the second most attractive quality is authenticity. That men crave real. They crave real. They put up with pretense, but it gives them the heebie-jeebies they're just like really, do we gotta? And when men talk about women being authentic or real, I swear I don't think I've ever heard it and we're talking hundreds of men. I don't think I've ever heard them say authentic or real about a woman without using the word courage. When a woman has the courage to be real, when she has the courage to be direct, when she has the courage to be real, when she has the courage to be direct. When she has the courage to be authentic. Doing that, she has the courage to say straight out what it is that she needs. They they think that is awesome, right, it has them feel respected. It has them feel respected, it has them feel honored. It has them be in awe of her, and a trauma response isn't authentic. A trauma response is going to be some kind of fight, flight or freeze, some kind of manipulation. We're trying to control something in a certain way to protect ourselves, which is natural, but also why it matters so much to do the work to heal and restore and release all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Extreme freedom is all about that. I don't have you done extreme freedom? Not, yet I need to, oh my gosh. Okay, when you do, feel free to use the tools in what you do because they're they're. The only credit I would take is that freedom is mine for noble quality and the truth does set you free. So now you got my top two and these, these. There's things that I logically figure out. There's things that I've studied. There's things that people said that I've been surprised and I've chased down, and then there's just the things that come through Like it feels like they're using me to force themselves into the world. This must be known and I'll watch videos of myself and I don't know what that Allison is saying and extreme freedom. That whole course is. This must be known, must be known, must be known.
Speaker 3:And even session five, there's a handout called Restoration Requires and it says each, all or many of these, all of these might need to be present in order to be restored, in order to be full and free again. And there's a whole section called giving up the benefits of being wounded or ashamed. And there's so many benefits we talked about it from the very beginning right, using them to make false boundaries, right, instead of just no, you can't do that. But there's also belonging. I mean, we have wound groups and even within the group, there's a competition for status who's the most wounded, status, who who's the most wounded? And I, yeah, so, and oh my gosh, there's why person more than yours exactly? And I mean we can, instead of having a real boundary to justify behavior, to belong and have status, to even the, to get the attention of a great story.
Speaker 3:And you might notice, in our courses, like in Understanding Sex and Intimacy, we don't let anybody ever tell a trauma story Ever, because the our brains are designed for survival, and so when someone else tells a trauma story, the brain is listening as if that happened to me and I've got to survive it, and, and, and that's why these stories, like they, create neural pathways of and and trauma is in the details, and so we don't let anybody ever give details. And, and I stopped giving details like so how did this all start, alison? I was 16 and something bad happened, and I decided that men are bigger and stronger and they'll hurt you. That. And I found out the opposite. Yes, they are bigger and stronger, and 90, at least 95% of them. What they think the point of that is so that they can protect you. That's what the bigger and stronger is for is so that they can protect us. Who do they want to protect? One man called it the three-foot rule.
Speaker 3:Another method anyone within reach. They don't have to like you. They can be mad at you and they'll still be compelled to protect you. It's who they really are, and so when we're authentic, instead of like we're acting out the conclusions of our trauma and punishing them with it because they belong to the gender of the person who did that, then they have to protect themselves and that brings out the worst in them. But when we're authentic about okay, like what I say in my birth, like okay, I'm having a humonger moment and I'm like Kelly, what do you need? And a few months ago I thanked him, I said thank you for loving me, and he said you're welcome and I said thank you for loving me even when I'm difficult. That's the hard one, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he said. He said, well, when you're difficult, I love you even more, because you seem to need that. Aww, Aww but that.
Speaker 3:but he can respond because when I'm difficult, I'm owning, I'm I'm prickly, I'm gnarly, I'm trying to own as much of this as I can, right. And then he has compassion for how and men do that. He has so much compassion for watching us deal with the stuff, because they have stuff too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, oh my gosh. So, moving into the embodied phase of this, what would we say it feels like for when a woman is deeply in her feminine essence and a man is in his masculine? Can you somehow point that out somatically, if you could Listen?
Speaker 3:All right. So, hmm, for men in masculine strength, masculine power, where it shows up in their bodies is across their shoulders, their neck, their backs and their arms and their chest and so, like, like, like. When men have their arms crossed, we think that they're closed. They actually have their arms crossed because that's the easiest way to support an enormous amount of physical weight. This is where their strength is. This is where their strength is, this is where their weight is, this is where their muscles are. They're so heavy here. And when a man is empowered, you will see it. You will see it, instead of crust falling right, the crust will rise. So this place in our chest, which also is the, the location, an unconditional love, location in favor being ordinary, this is where fire, which is your spiritual sword, comes out. So, power, masculine power here, and unfortunately, for the way that we react to each other, when a man is happy, happiness and power arise together, happiness and victory arise together, and we're afraid of their power. We're afraid of their power, we're afraid of their strength. So a happy man actually most normal women will react to a happy man by attacking him. They want to take the wind out of their sails. They'll criticize them. They'll make a snarky comment, they'll roll their eyes, they'll do something to take them down because it's scary. We don't know how much men not only intend to, but strive to use their power for us. And so when we are scared of it and we take it away for us, and so when we are scared of it and we take it away, now, they have to protect themselves and they turn into their worst and it just, it just aye, aye, aye. It just keeps going. So, so yeah, physically embodied, a man in his masculine power, it's, it's gonna show up here, it's going to show up here and it's going to show up in a blaze or even a twinkle in his eye. The twinkling shows up the more as they evolve themselves which is what men's work is all about the twinkle shows up more and more Stunning. I've got to be in a room full of men like this. I'm 65 over there. Yeah, it's amazing. So that's where I came up with that.
Speaker 3:And then, for a woman, aye, aye, aye, okay. There's a simple answer. And then there's a more complex answer, but embodied. I love that. The E's for embodied, because our instincts, human and pre-human, they're embodied, they're hardwired and everything that goes with them. So if we perceive, if we're under any kind of stress, so the perception of a threat or an opportunity we're under stress only what's embodied is a viable choice. If you want to think of in terms of neuroscience, only what's embodied is an exit from the freeway or entrance to the freeway that it can choose, that there's a neural pathway, and so there's a lot of work to be done between the brain and the body to connect.
Speaker 3:And specifically for feminine forms of power is what we call it Feminine forms of power. How they occur in the body is as a feeling, and this is why I distinguish between emotions which I think are triggered instinctually, like anger, for example. Anger is an energy emotion. Somebody called emotions energy emotions. So it travels, fear travels. So one way to look at it would be the difference between fear which is going oh, I'm in a rush and dread. Dread has a location. Can you see it? Dread actually had. It's a feeling that lives in your body in a particular place, and you can feel dread Absolutely Okay Now. So this is true for everything, and this is why we work so much on what we call noble qualities.
Speaker 3:So if you think of your highest values, notice as a feeling. Where in your body is compassion, what's its location? And one of the and we do this. We do this unconsciously, like when we realize, oh gosh, be patient. Like when we realize, oh gosh, be patient. We'll unconsciously check the location in our body where we feel patience, and we can even measure how full we are with that feeling. Does this make sense? Like, oh, I don't know this much patience or how many of patience, and what I used to focus on was making sure our tanks were full. Right, all our highest values, whatever they are, make sure your tanks are full. So get the human need met that puts that feeling in your body, wherever it's located. Well, a few years ago, I started talking about overflowing. So this is where clarity comes in. Right, we have to become, we have to be clear about.
Speaker 3:So what is my feminine self? There's at least a hundred adjectives that could describe feminine ways of being. So which of those? When you feel that way, you feel like yourself. You would describe this as myself. How Well, I'm being empowering, I'm dedicated to the truth, I feel free to express myself, I'm offering partnership, I'm practicing contentment in my spiritual practice. I'm so myself right now.
Speaker 3:But so when you put those feelings in your body, which has to do with sleep and movement and nature and time with special people and time alone. And nature and time with special people and time alone, I mean they're all really pretty plain human needs. If we get enough of them, which is also a key ingredient paying attention to enough. It doesn't have to be the ideal amount. We can end up where this is a different kind of self-care, where you're overflowing as yourselves and your particular flavor of yourself.
Speaker 3:And I've never met I've interacted with thousands of women about this I've never met two women who are exactly what they define of themselves. Would be the same qualities in the same order, because the order action matters. So that's the long, complicated answer. The short, complicated answer. The short, simple answer would be radiance.
Speaker 3:When a woman is seated in her feminine power, it's it's the it's Seated in our feminine power. It's it's the it's Home from Japan said is there a beauty that is every woman's birthright? Yes, it's called radiance. When we're in our feminine power, light and heat is coming off of us. And men are so sensitive to radiance, oh my gosh. It's like food to them, it's nutrients to them. And if they do something that causes a woman to lose her radiance. They're just like, oh no, and Dan described it once. He said I knew I'd done something because your face went flat and I should have had my went flat. What and I? How did my face go flat? And I looked in the mirror like, hmm, you lost your flat. Yeah, and like literally the cheeks, the glow, the all the form that goes with me being happy and feeling able and capable and powerful and spacious and gone, just so Radiant. Are you Radiant?
Speaker 2:I love this answer so much I'm going to try and make this really quickly. I will. I'm too.
Speaker 3:We're going to have to wrap up. Yeah, what's?
Speaker 2:going on. So let's just go in and skip to rise. In this age of evolving gender roles, how conscious, how can conscious feminine leaders call forward helping masculine without emasculating them or being in dominant state?
Speaker 3:called Own your Ultimatums, and it has everything to do with being clear about what you won't live with and you won't live without, and it applies to every context. As a mother, my not saying pick your battles really matters. And what my kids knew was that I would not live without respect Respect for me and respect for each other and I would not live without kindness. And I would not live without kindness and I would not live with meanness of any flavor. My oldest daughter calls me the most ruthless person she knows, and I would pursue kindness with ruthlessness. I would pursue kindness with ruthless, pursue respect with ruthless. I would enforce those boundaries and when we're not clear about you, could call them deal breakers, ultimatums what we won't live with or without. When we're not clear about it, and especially when we're not clear about what it costs us, the price, how high the price is. The more we get clear about the price of it, the more likely we are to be true to it, to honor our own boundary. And one of the ways that I put it is don't ask anybody else to give you what you need until you've committed to what you need. And so, like our Smart Singles program, which I just ended, the one for this year.
Speaker 3:Our Smart Singles program is all about developing the clarity of I am better off with a person who's like this and I'm better off without a person who isn't like this and just like not fudging for but he's so cute, he's so rich, he's so what my mother always wanted for me. He has such high status. He's so cute, he's so rich, he's so what my mother always wanted for me. He has such high status, he's so important. No, this is what I live with and this is what I live without.
Speaker 3:And it's part of that authenticity that men love thinking they love it when we're clear and we're consistent, that we don't sometimes say, no, you have to be that way, and other times we let them be that way. That creates confusion, and it's one of the questions in our partnership work, which is the highest level of our work. Are you contributing to clarity or confusion? And you know we even start with it in our understanding men course. Are you a trusted source? How do you become a trusted source for a man? Because facts come from trusted sources and most women aren't trusted sources because they're inconsistent. You need to feed Por favor.
Speaker 2:Very true, and yet if we had the inconsistency from men?
Speaker 3:we wouldn't tolerate it. Well, but we do. If they're really cute or we have a lot of chemistry or we're completely. We think we're dependent upon them or we're afraid of them. We put up with all kinds of things and you know, I had to come at it all these ways. And why did men treat some women some ways and other women other ways? My boyfriend at the time I said what are you looking for? This is like about eight months into studying men. I'm like what are you looking for in a relationship? What do you really want? And God bless him, he was also a friend of mine and so he told the truth. He said truthfully I want to be in a relationship where the woman is giving me everything I need while I provide nothing.
Speaker 2:So God provides, it brings him to the point.
Speaker 3:There is something to the point, but that was before I learned. What is it about us that gives men this profound desire to provide? They don't want to provide nothing. They want to provide so much. What is that? Because it's part of being human. We're all providers and we want to provide and we need to be received from and we need quality information, so we're not wasting our energy and resources on providing something that someone's like the bullseye. As we talk about understanding men, they want to hit the bullseye and they need information to hit the bullseye, but as long as we think they should know what we need without us having to tell them they're in trouble, they miss all the time and they quit okay, final question before we wrap up what is one piece of outdated relationship advice you believe we need to release, to rise into our partnerships today?
Speaker 3:Don't call men. We should release. Don't call men, Don't initiate. Now we definitely should not chase them, but invite. Men need to be invited because they're so sensitive to us it hurts to be rejected by us, and so when we invite them like the message I left for I didn't know he was going to end up being my husband for 26 years the message I left for Greg was thinking about you and I'm thinking we should be really good friends or something. If you think so too, you should call me. No time limit. I love Watt.
Speaker 2:Because, set for the prime, we're almost expected to leave the pressure on the guys. And it's like well, sometimes, if you're interested, you might as well make it known.
Speaker 3:Well, but interested, not like I want whoa. What did that that remind you're up, right, that's their job. What's wrong with the bras, bro? Exactly when there was a, there is a man on one of our panels. Gosh, I wish we were. We were filming in those days. So imagine, like like a ryan gosling in that movie. Where is this really classy, well-dressed guy that even his shoe was a turn on? Do you know the movie I'm talking about? I think it's this. He was beautiful, right, and he he was. He was all the things right.
Speaker 3:And he picked the question if a woman is looking at you and making eye contact with you, is there a reason why you wouldn't approach? And he picked this question. And we're thinking this guy, he would approach anybody anytime. He'd have to have so much confidence. And he said, and he read the question, and he said if she wasn't smiling? And he goes and it's not just like she's smiling at first. So if she's smiling at me and then I start to get out of my chair, is she still smiling? And then, when I take a step, is she still smiling? And then I take a step, is she still smiling? If she isn't smiling on my entire approach, oh, what a relief which, yeah, like she literally has to smile him all the way to her.
Speaker 2:Oh, ladies, careful, if you have RBF.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I got that. I wondered why people said I was intimidating, and then I caught my face in the mirror and I was just relaxed and I was really interested. So each one of us, at least you know put a little.
Speaker 2:A little bit of a something there. Okay, I'm going to do a quick rapid fire round. One word answers.
Speaker 1:Robo.
Speaker 2:What's your current mantra?
Speaker 3:It's both of you, sir.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be a bad one.
Speaker 3:I don't think my current mantra is Om, shanti, shanti, shanti Om.
Speaker 2:Love it. A book that changed your life outside of your words.
Speaker 3:Outside of my book that changed your life, outside of yours, outside of mine, a book that changed my life. Oh gosh, I'm reading a book now that I know is going to change my life and my work. It's called Fierce and Tender, healing the Deep Masculine in Men and Women. And I met him. His name is Denae Maria Sebastiani, and what a privilege. And it's all about men's work and it's a memoir of his journey. And just the introduction, just the introduction, the beginning of it. Like I wish all women could read this.
Speaker 2:So good, yeah. And then final on, what's one word that describes your current season? My current, what Season?
Speaker 3:Season, season, definitely summer. Ouch, what was your?
Speaker 2:Describes your current season. So, For example, mine is bold.
Speaker 3:Oh, I thought you meant a season word Open.
Speaker 2:I love this. It's been a pleasure having you. Lastly, where can people connect with you and just learn all the greatness?
Speaker 3:Go to alisonarmstrongcom. You can even spell it with two L's, it'll still work. Audible only has what I created 20 years ago or more, so everything I've done in the last two decades is on our website.
Speaker 2:That'd be the place to go. And is your main social? Just Instagram.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't think of it as a social platform and she can connect with you. Well, youtube, youtube, alison Armstrong videos is. We have like 60 videos now, including one that for all, whether dating or married. It's called Chemistry and Connection and it debunks the idea that chemistry is scarce and connection is scarce, and having both is impossible. And it teaches you where it comes from and how to cause more and less of whichever you want more or less of, how to cause more and less of whichever you want more or less of. If you're being controlled by having too much chemistry so you're a mini you can reduce it. It tells you exactly how to reduce chemistry for somebody who makes you stupid, or how do you increase chemistry for someone you think is such a great person?
Speaker 2:but you don't have any chemistry for them. Beautiful, well, I'm sure we will get some lovely people connecting with you. I'm so honored to have you on this episode again and for those of you watching or listening to this, please subscribe so we can continue to bring on wonderful guests like allison and until the next one.
Speaker 1:That is it for today thanks, anita thank you thank you for rising with me today. If this episode moved, you share it. Tag me at arise with anita and make sure to subscribe so you never miss a future activation and, if you feel called, leave a quick review. It helps more women find the space and rise into their power. Your next level is already waiting. Now go claim it. I'll see you in the next episode.