Episode 18 | Feminine Energy Gets A Bad Wrap, Let's Talk About It

Welcome To The Womanhood Podcast.

In this weeks’ episode, we’re discussing Feminine Energy. We'll be exploring how the societal and cultural views have shaped the way we perceive our Femininity and how we embody being a woman. 

I end with #2 Core Somatic Cues and a mini practice to embody this Womanhood Wisdom and integrate it into your life for lasting effect.

RESOURCES: 

💞 Sisterhood Group On WhatsApp (Application Form): https://ywz8buru.forms.app/sisterhood-chat-application-form 

🌙 Moon Medicine Masterclass (Link To Access): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/resources-education 

🌟 Book An Energy Session With Me (Info Link): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/one-on-one-consults 

🌟 Book An Energy Session With Me (Buy Link): https://buy.stripe.com/cNifZg8lz2Mp3JodjY5EY08 

📚 Feminine Reclamation & Body Talk Mini Guidebooks (Link To Access): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/shop 

⚒️ Revival Of Masculine Masterclass (Link To Access): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/resources-education 

🎧 An Interview Episode (from 2023) About Masculine & Feminine Energy: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mb8QlQMs5J2cepOKYRRlr?si=2ad342f49ecf45b8 

Connect With Me:

IG 📲 @somatic.body

Website 🌐 https://www.somaticbody.com.au 

Book an Embodiment Session 🔮📞 A free chat with me: https://www.somaticbody.com.au/book 

With Love, Shannon

🔻 Somatic & Energetic Integration Specialist for Women,

🔻 Creatress of the Feminine Harmony™ Program and the SomaCycle™ Method.

🔻 Feminine Systems Educator | Reclamation Guide | Ritual Facilitator

🔻 Foundress of Somatic Body™ - a space devoted to helping women reconnect to their feminine bodies.

00:50 Introduction: What This Episode Is Covering

03:15 What Is ‘Feminine Energy’ Really?

04:58 The 1st Reason: Cultural Conditioning Of The Feminine

06:46 The 2nd Reason: Social Media Distortions

09:00 The 3rd Reason: Feeling Unsafe In The Body 

11:59 Brining It All Together: The Core Issue From A Balanced Perspective

13:48 Reconnecting To The Feminine Energy & Female Body

15:59 A Mini Practice To Invite Safety Back Into The Feminine Body

18:53 Softening Into The Flow Of Feminine Energy 

20:12 How Masculine Energy Supports Feminine Energy

21:27 The X2 Somatic Cues To Explore The Wisdom From This Episode

21:00 Finalising The Episode & Whats Next On The Womanhood Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Womanhood Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon, Somatic and Energetic Integration Specialist for Women, founder of Somatic Body and creatrice of the Soma Cycle Method and the Feminine Harmony Program. And I'm here to inspire you to reclaim your rhythms, remember your wisdom, and root into your womanhood. Each week I'll be discussing topics centered around our womanhood from a multifaceted, thematic, and energetic viewpoint, weaving together both science with spirituality and masculinity with femininity. We'll be talking cyclical natures and rhythms, intuition, instinct, ancient room wisdom, and grounded embodiment strategies. Find yourself a cozy space and let's get started. I wanted to create this episode because I feel like feminine energy has become one of the most misunderstood topics discussed within female health and wellness, like within the industry itself. And not from a practitioner perspective. As practitioners who practice in this field, we understand what feminine energy is and what it means to be truly embodied. But more I want to bring that somatic and energetic perspective, as me, the practitioner, into what I believe feminine energy is for the receivers, for the clientele, for probably most of you who are listening, what feminine energy truly does mean. Because I feel like there are so many different ways to interpret it. Some women hear it and think, I want to be softer, slower, quieter. I want to live a slow life, live off the land on a farm, for example. And others might hear it and think that it's disempowering because it's outdated or feels unsafe, like we're trying to fit into a square box in a way we should be and be more palatable and more presentable. But what if feminine energy wasn't about becoming less? What if it's about becoming more of what your body has been asking for quietly all along? One of the things that I found I experienced as a receiver, as a clientele, before I stepped into this woman wellness and feminine energy space, I felt like I had to be a certain way to be more palatable and to be more accepted as a feminine being. For example, talking softer, talking a certain way, dressing a certain way, being soft in all aspects. But that's really not what feminine energy actually is. And especially when we look at that dynamic duo of the masculine and feminine, which we all hold within us. This is the balanced perspective because we're looking at both extremes and coming back to a happy medium where we can see both sides of the story and what it is to be truly embodied in your feminine versus when we're perhaps presenting a certain way because that's the way we think we should be. So we're gonna be exploring that, and I'm just gonna be guiding you through it from what I've experienced in my own personal life as well as what I've come to witness as I've started working with women over the last four or five years. So the focus is really gonna be on feminine energy and dismantling what some people think it is when it comes to the negative perceptions of feminine energy. We're gonna redefine that topic, that statement, so that you can feel more empowered in who you are as a woman, as a female, as a feminine being. So let's get into it. So the first place I'd probably want to start is the definition of feminine energy. Because feminine energy is not a personality or a mask that you wear, it's not a performance, a certain way you think you should be perceived, and it's not about how you look or act either. Granted, when we tap into our feminine energy, we might find ourselves feeling and acting and looking a certain way, but it comes from a place of genuine expression rather than trying to perceive what we think others should think we look like when we're being more feminine, more in our feminine energy. And so really it's a state of being in the body, is what I'm getting at. It's nervous system orientation. It's a quality of energy that exists within us as much as the masculine energy exists within us. The feminine energy is the slowness, the fluidity, the receptivity, the sensuality, the intuition, and the emotional depth. And all of those characteristics that make up the feminine archetype, the female archetype, complement the masculine archetype, the male archetype of momentum, structure, protection, survival instincts, and mental clarity. And you can see how they kind of complement each other, where emotional depth complements mental clarity, where fluidity complements structure, where momentum complements slowness and stillness. And this is that dynamic duo that I'm going to circle back around to later in this episode. But at the bottom line, what feminine energy is, at least from my perspective and what I've come to learn both professionally and personally, is that the feminine energy is the part of you that already knows without you needing to think. It's the unconsciousness, the intuitive way of being before we've even brought mental clarity and structure and concepts to our awareness. It's our way of being as women. And men can tap into this in their own unique way as well. So let's talk about why feminine energy gets a bad rap. I'm going to break this down into three layers here. The first one is cultural conditioning. So women have been rewarded for productivity, logic, independence, and achievement. And those characteristics aren't a bad thing when you look at them as a standalone. You know, it's good to be productive, it's good to think logically sometimes, it's good to be independent sometimes, and it's good to be an achiever, to strive for something and to have purpose. But when we are doing this in a way that is hyperactive in those states, so hyper-independent and super logical and a high achiever and highly productive. It's when we're taught to be that in a cultural norm, living in a patriarchal world of working Monday to Friday, forget about your four phases and your one cycle per month, just go by a day in, day out, Monday to Friday, nine to five weekly way of being, which is very masculine energy when we look at how men and their reproductive and their hormones work. It's a 24-hour cycle. And that's what creates that hyper-independence, that highly illogical, structured way of being when we're working for an employee and there's a certain way things have to be, a certain dress code, a certain time to show up, a certain time to check out, a certain way of presenting yourself, a code of ethics. All of that, if you're living that day in and day out, you are then taught to suppress the feminine aspects of yourself, your emotionality, your softness, your intuition. You're taught to override those qualities with those qualities of the masculine. So that's a part of the cultural conditioning. And essentially it's masculine overdrive in a feminine body. At the end of the day, this one core issue is that we've been taught to think and exist and be like a man, not to feel and express like a woman. And so that's one issue where feminine energy does get a bad rap is through cultural conditioning. Another area where I feel it gets a bad rap is through social media distortion. And so this is where practitioners and other inspirational people alike can show up and present on social media, much like myself on this podcast episode. But it's when they start to present feminine energy as being reduced to just aesthetics, passivity, being chosen, and hyper-performative softness. So that presenting what's not actually authentic and your true way of being, but how you think other people would like to perceive you and how feminine they think you should be, right? I feel like a feminine being, but do my words sound super soft and flowy and like this? Like there might be people out there who have that softness within them quite naturally. I'm not actually teasing anyone who does speak or talk or dress that way and who takes pride in how they look. I think that's a beautiful quality. But it's not me. I'm not gonna pretend that that's me. You know, so there's that social media distortion which happens with a lot of things. We could get into a lot of different ways that social media and technology can distort our reality. But when it comes to feminine energy getting a bad rap, social media is one of those areas that I feel like it gets a bad rap as well. Because it's teaching us that aesthetics alone, passivity and being soft and being chosen alone is what makes us feminine beings. But them alone is not what makes us feminine beings. And so, yes, while those qualities are good, they're good in, again, healthy amounts. It's what we were talking about with the masculine qualities in my previous point with cultural conditioning. When we're looking at social media, it's good to have those in healthy amounts. Like take pride in your aesthetics. There's a time and place to be passive, there's a time to be admired and be soft. But in excess, this is also malalignment because it's not feminine energy, it's actually performance. It starts to become a performance. As I mentioned before, we have a masculine and a feminine energy within us each as human beings, whether we're male or female. And so when we are appearing to be feminine constantly, this is a performance. You're actually denying that masculine aspect of yourself. When we are being and acting and living our day-to-days in a man's world, in a patriarchal world, then we are living in a masculine excess, masculine overdrive. And so essentially it's that imbalance of masculine and feminine energy within. And I'm going to circle back around to my third point, why I think feminine energy also gets a bad rap, is through nervous system unsafety. And I feel like this is the pivotal point out of the three points that I have gone over. Nervous system safety kind of ties that cultural conditioning and social media performance together and helps you kind of link into how we fall prey to those influences. That's through nervous system unsafety, not feeling safe in your body. And your nervous system overrides to protect yourself. And this is how it all happens. For many women, slowing down feels unsafe, softening feels vulnerable, and receiving can feel really uncomfortable. Receiving compliments, receiving attention, receiving physical touch. And so, in a way, that's rejecting feminine energy. When we receive physical touch, we're accepting sensuality, the senses, and being able to feel into them, whether it's physical touch from ourselves or another. When we are receiving attention and compliments, we are receiving a complimentary, soft, gentle energy. We are being offered or invited to take that in. And it's beautiful. But if it doesn't feel safe for us, we won't take it in. We will reject that part of us that is feminine. Not because it's wrong, but because our body hasn't learned that that's safe yet. Or it's unlearned that it's safe. And so, yes, softness can feel unsafe. Passivity, emotional vulnerability can all feel foreign and unsafe when we have been conditioned to hyperfixate on productivity, logics, and like that masculine way of being in our life. It can feel like so unfamiliar that it starts to feel unsafe. And so that's really what we need to work on is creating a feeling of safety when we're in that feminine aspect, that feminine way of being. If we don't feel safe being our true feminine and accepting what is actually feminine, then we're going to either one, go into that conditional cultural conditioning of being more in our masculine, we're going to like basically naturally divert that way because we're rejecting that feminine aspect and become hyper-productive, hyper-independent, super logical, and like lean less towards those qualities of emotional vulnerability, of softness, of flexibility and permeability, and of being supported. We're going to go hyper-independence. That's one way. And if we also, likewise, if we don't feel safe in that feminine, but social media is telling us feminine's the way to go. You need to be soft, you need to live off the land and just slow down your days constantly. Like again, neither are bad qualities, but if we're rejecting that feminine aspect within us, it doesn't feel safe to our bodies. And I'm not talking about on a conscious level, I mean in our unconscious ways of being in our day-to-day. If we see that feminine softness being projected on social media and like this is the way to be, then we're gonna start to perform that and fake it. You know, fake it till you make it. It's a good saying, but not when it's fake it until you don't make it and you're just pretending and you never actually learn to truly embody that way of being. We need to be able to explore that truly, to truly feel it and live it, rather than performing it. And so I feel like, yeah, that's where feminine energy has gotten a bad rap is because of it's it's been misunderstood through social media and through cultural conditioning. And we need to bring that back together, back to nervous system safety, because that's the main core issue, I believe, is that our body has felt or learned to feel unsafe truly being feminine. For some of us, being soft and passive and submissive in a sense, not actually submissive in, you know, the sexual way, but like being submissive in a sense of letting the man lead, trusting that a man can be supportive and have your back. If that doesn't feel safe, you're gonna reject that part of your feminine and not live it and be it. And so we need to heal these aspects and create that safety again. And also to create that discernment for when we can be safe, when we can emotionally be vulnerable, because it's not gonna be all the time. Just like being masculine and closed off and logical isn't gonna be all the time either. And so it's not that masculine energy is bad and feminine energy is good. It's not that we should learn to exist in our female energy, our feminine energy, wholeheartedly, day in, day out, and not have any masculinity to us. They complement one another. And this is where we come back to that dynamic, the dynamic duo of masculine and feminine within, and also when it comes to our relationship dynamics. I'm not gonna go into that in this episode today because I've already gone through an episode of relationship dynamics. And I feel like I'm gonna do another episode later down the track and go more deep dive into masculine and feminine dynamics within loving relationships, romantic relationships as well. But we're gonna digress and come back to talking about feminine energy and what it means to connect and be and exist in that state while also having reverence for the masculine energy within us as well. And this is where I feel like that bad rap that feminine energy gets can be healed, it can be reframed and rewired. So we're gonna talk about the real problem here, which is disconnection from the body, from that feminine aspect of our body. When you hear someone saying, I don't feel feminine, if you think it yourself, you you hear yourself thinking it, you know, in your head, or you've noticed that you've said that amongst other women. Oh, you look so beautiful. I love how you're dressing. I I just could never dress like that. Like I don't think I could ever wear a dress or, you know, whatever it is. That's a very, you like you have to flag that because it's a very um binary, rigid belief that it's like you believe that you can't be feminine. You know, it's actually helping you buy into that story that you cannot exist within your feminine energy. I don't feel feminine. It's like that statement in itself isn't true. If you are a female in a female body, like in terms of sex, you have feminine and masculine within you. If you are a man, a male in a male body, male sex, you have masculine energy and feminine energy that you can tap into. It's simply not true. I don't feel feminine. The issue there is that you don't feel feminine. That's that key word. You have feminine within you. And so if we can even just expand our belief from that I don't feel feminine, to I can access feminine within me. I don't feel it right now, and that's okay. I am where I am, but I can access femininity and the feminine energy. There is the potential for that, and I'm gonna reach for that potential. So when you hear yourself or someone saying, I don't feel feminine, what it often means is that I don't feel my body, my feminine body. I don't feel safe to soften, I don't feel connection to sensations and sensuality, you know, the language of the senses. And feminine energy is not something you step into and that you become, it's something that you actually return to through sensation. It's something that you can access. You have the ability to access it all the time. I truly believe that. And if you have caught yourself thinking, I don't feel feminine, I don't look feminine and I want to be, but I just I can't be, it's simply not true. You really can access it. And it's just learning to feel safe in your body, safe enough to access the feminine. And also having the patience and this and the gentleness on yourself to be able to explore that. If we don't have the gentleness and the patience, we're not gonna feel safe enough. We're not gonna be able to explore it because we don't feel safe enough to drop into that aspect. We need to create that safety in order to remember what is truly safe. And so we're gonna try a little practice. Let's drive this episode home. We're gonna try a little practice just to explore that core issue of not feeling safe in the feminine body. So just try slowing down your breath for a few moments, or even just noticing your breath. Just take a few moments noticing the breath in and out. Drop into the body, bring your awareness, invite it in. Even if it feels hard, even if it feels like a struggle, just sit with it. No pressure. Just be where you're at. You might like to invite one hand on your heart, the other over the top. Your hand can give you. And the semi-consciousness. We move out of the logical conscious mind and into the dream state. You access it through safety in the body. You can slowly come out of this practice as you feel is best. A rate that feels best for you. You know, it's that simple. You can soften within minutes just like that. And that's what it feels like to be in your feminine energy, truly. And again, we don't have to be in that day in, day out, just like we don't have to be in our masculine day in day out. It's it's a balance. It really is. And when I say balance, I don't mean 50-50 exactly equal every single day. It's not about that either. It's just about having that dynamic, that complementary dynamic when we're 70% in our feminine, we might have a little masculine aspect. You know, we might be doing a really beautiful ritual, but there's a certain structure to it or a time constraint to it. That's that blending of the masculine and feminine. Or we might be going to work, which we have to be on time. There's logistics, we have to dress a certain way, be in a certain aspect of our personality in order to do the work, bring in a certain mindset to do that work, but we can also bring within it a softness, a slowness, a calmness within the body. Take micro breaks to breathe, to drop in. And that would be functioning in our, say, 70% masculine and bringing in a bit of that femininity. And so it's not about being perfect 50-50 day in, day out. That's really just being masculine in a sense, because you're just structuring it and being rigid about it. It is about having that dynamic. And if we have that dynamic, then that masculine aspect of ourselves can support our feminine and create that safety for us to truly be in our feminine. If we don't create space and adhere to that space that's necessary to drop into the body through senses, through somatics, through energetics, then we're not gonna feel safe doing it. That's where that masculine comes in. We have to create boundaries and time constraints and tell people, hey, for two hours on this day every week, or for two hours just this week, I'm gonna do some time for me. Just some time for me. That's that masculine structure coming in to support the feminine. And that's that's another way we can truly be in our feminine, like another example. And so if you've really enjoyed listening to this episode and you want to continue the work, the the exploration and the journey towards connecting to your feminine energy, connecting to your senses through somatics. I have quite a few resources that I can drop below. This is like the thing I love to do. It's a it's a big part of the somatic body community. And we also have a sisterhood group chat on WhatsApp that you can join as well. I'll drop the application form below, along with the Moon Medicine Masterclass, the Feminine Reclamation Mini Guidebook. I have a body talk mini guidebook, which can help you to drop in. It's like beginner somatics mini guidebook. We have the womb medicine masterclass that's coming up in a month or two. So I'll drop that below once it's released. And we have the seven-day womb medicine mini course, which will be coming up in a couple months as well. So I'll pop all those below. I'll even put in the revival of the masculine masterclass because that talks and speaks to the masculine and feminine dynamics as well. So plenty of resources you'll have dropped below in the caption. And before we go, I'm gonna leave you with just two somatic prompts, somatic queries, as I usually do at the end of every episode. Number one being where in my life have I been performing instead of truly feeling? In other words, what's felt like performative that doesn't really feel like me? And number two, what Would it feel like to let myself soften just that 5% more today? Because again, it doesn't have to be full-on feminine. And if we're aiming to do feminine day in and day out, it's it's almost forced. And again, it becomes performative. So what would it feel like to let myself soften just that 5% more every day? And where in my life have I been performing instead of truly feeling? So if you feel like this episode resonated and you're realizing that this isn't something you can logically think your way into, but it's something that you can feel and explore through somatics and you want to do more work, this is exactly what we do inside the community. Again, I'm gonna drop the resources below. There's gonna be plenty there for you. We've got the Feminine Harmony Starter course as well. You can also book a one-on-one session with me, a free embodiment session, which is a free chat with me as well, where we'll explore a little bit of somatics. All of that's gonna be in the caption below. And then I'll see you next week where we're gonna be discussing why it is that you can't relax, even if you try. I'll see you then. As we finish this week's episode, remember that you are your own rhythm keeper. So just keep listening for that rhythm and keep coming home to you. Until next time, with love, Shannon at Somatic Body.