Amplify Your Inner Feminine

Having a human body means we are always needing to integrate.  In this episode, I dive into some ways of Integrating our inner masculine (solar) and inner feminine (lunar) aspects.  While it can seem like we are always giving and turning energy outwards, a few simple techniques that can be used in daily life can change that. Listen in for a few ways to do this and watch the transformation begin to happen within you. 

Link to my YouTube channel for the visual of the 3rd technique.

Link to my book Centered: The Art of Living from Within for more techniques

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome to Centered the Podcast. I'm your host, Leslie Braverman, and I'm sharing holistic content to reconnect you to your most centered self, that place within you that is energized, knowing, and uplifted despite the chaos and demands of life. It's that place within you where you can become a portal of possibility. Today we're digging into some centering techniques. I've got these in the book, Centered, The Art of Living from Within. And I just want to highlight the importance of them. Obviously, the podcast is called Centered, so you know it's important, but let's talk about what really pulls us from outside of ourself back to inside of ourself. We know that what pulls us out is the daily demands that we have, stress, feeling like we might be in a hurry or really needing to like have more space in our schedule for transitions. Those are really helpful things to help create nice foundation for being able to have the ability to return to center when you need to. But let's talk about like how do we really get this into the body? So, recentering the body or centering the body is a really ancient set of practices. There are many ways to do it. And the techniques are all based on the same theory. And the theory is that we have two halves of the body. We have two sides of our brain. Obviously, we have a core, and we have, you know, two lungs, and we have multiple chambers of the heart, and we have multiple sets of limbs. And so everything really is structured in this bilateral fashion. And so what the ancient texts go into is how on the right side the masculine is presented. On the left side, the feminine is presented. And one of the ways that yoga looks at this is saying that the right side is the solar, and the left side is the lunar. And these are ancient Vedanta, it's Ayurveda, it's the ancient texts that talk about this. So whether you think of it as masculine on the right, feminine on the left, or solar on the left, lunar on the right, find a way to start thinking about these two halves of your body becoming whole and in the center. And this is all regardless of your gender expression. We all have the ability to integrate our two sides, our masculine and feminine. And that's what I'm going to go with going forward. So basically, the right side is your doing side. The masculine is the doer. And the left side is the receiving side, the feminine. And what I've seen in working with clients for over 20 years, and especially in our culture, because we don't have strong like villages, communities to help us, is that the right side is really over-dominant. And the left side can kind of atrophy in a way. It can happen physically, of course. Like at when we were talking with Kristen Williams about movement, I was talking about how my I'm dominant on my right hand. And when I started balancing my two sides through movement and repatterning my brain, I was able to start without thinking, catching balls flying in the air with the left hand. And that's not something I ever would have been able to do before. But that all started when I started repatterning movement. But we can repattern our integration of the masculine and feminine with simple daily awareness. And I'll include a practice at the end, but let's get into this idea of the feminine a little bit. So much in our culture right now, if you're on social media or if you're listening to podcasts and other speakers, is about creating this rising feminine. And what does that mean? It can mean a variety of things from women using their voice more to being the old stuff like being in the photo with your family. But what I really think about it is being able to receive. And this is what I've seen over the years with clients is that especially women have trouble receiving and they don't realize it. So one of the practices that I love to do is really place left hand on the heart space. So really that we're talking center of the chest because we're talking about the chakras. So the heart chakras in the center of the chest, whereas the heart is on the left side, which is an interesting note now that we're talking about the feminine as well. So right in the center of the chest, place one hand over your heart, and then you can stack your right hand and just breathing into that space is going to help integrate those two sides. And having the left hand first, getting that left side onto the body creates a kinesthetic feedback loop to really kind of amplify that effeminate. Another thing I really love to do is to just ask myself in the day, does something need doing right now, or can I rest? And what does rest really look like? And we have podcast episodes on how to maximize rest in different ways. So scheduling rest during the day is a key part of amplifying the feminine. But it's also being aware in the moments of life is how can I approach this in a softer way? How can I approach this in a more embodied way where my masculine and feminine are aligned? So the ancient practice of putting two hands together at the heart center is another way of bringing these two sides of the brain and body together. So we've got two practices already, right? Stacking the hands left one first, followed by right on the heart portal. And the other is prayer hands with the thumb touching the sternum and giving that same sense of feedback of joining the two sides. Now, this other one is really cool, and I'm gonna show it here on screen so you can check on the YouTube version of this. But none of these practices are hard, and that's the idea. The idea is that they're integrated into our life in the most simple ways, and the awareness is the piece that we're adding. So this next one is if you place your thumb and your first finger together, making the okay sign, and then just slide together the three fingers and the thumb. And then, sorry, the three fingers that are left. Then you slide the fingers that are connected in the loop so that your first fingers are pressing against each other. And again, I'm showing this on the YouTube so you can check it out. But this right this posture, this is a mudra resting in your lap, is gonna bring the two sides of the brain together in a way that doesn't happen when you put your hands in prayer or when you stack your hands in the heart center. And right now I'm just sitting with my hands in my lap, my thumb and first fingers together, and then those two fingers of the first finger pressing into each other, and the other fingers kind of laid and relaxed on top of each other. And it brings a unity in the mind, body, and auric field in a way those other postures don't. So play with these, experience what it starts to feel like to bring together balance between the left side and the right side, and then ask yourself in the day where can you create more space? Where can you receive more? And I'm gonna tell a little story right now. So I've been going through a huge surge of activity recently, and I was reflecting on this and I was like, where is the biggest energy leak in my life right now that I can fill? And for me, it tends to be in cooking because I cook my kids or prepare three meals a day. They're in charge of their own snacks, they're in charge of their breakfast when they can. But as we roll into these closing months of the school year, the intensity really builds. And I find myself having to support them more, which means I'm removing space in my day that I typically use for me. So in that, I started thinking, all right, where else can I get support? We have a new puppy. And so I just, there's no limits to what you can receive when you are really open to receive. So I just put it out there to the universe. I want help walking the dog because that's a big time suck for me right now. It's such a pleasure and it's so amazing. But when things are really stacked up, walking her multiple times a day is tough because she's a puppy and she's learning. And so that and cooking. So I identified the two areas that were most full for me right now. And instantly I received a meal from my amazing sister-in-law. I received a dinner invitation for all of us. And then I received just an ask from the kids. Can I take the can I take the puppy for a walk? And I was like, yes, yes, yes. And then a neighbor reached out and who was like, I'm starting to take care of another person's dog. Do you want me to walk your dog at the same time? Now, to be super clear, I didn't ask any of these people to do this. These are examples of gifts that I received from putting that message out there, but having done so much work on balancing my inner masculine and feminine and being able, like I really hit it hard on the receiving end because I knew that I had spent so many years giving without as much acknowledgement or awareness or ask of receiving that I had to do this. So, again, those are three techniques that we talked about today. And then there's another one in the book. It's technique six about recentering the mind, body, and auric field with another way of bringing the whole system into balance. So play with it. Let me know what starts to happen. And remember, these are time-tested ancient wisdom on how to balance life, regardless of you know, our modern stressors versus like the ancient village. Having a human body means we're constantly needing to integrate. Things are always happening, we're always new. Every day we wake up, we're new, something new is coming. Even if it seems like you're living the same life day after day, it's all new. And we all have the potential to step into that possibility. So enjoy and let me know how it goes.