Ah, feminine. To be completely transparent, I used to hate the word. In fact, in my family, that word was synonymous with weak. Recently I asked a friend what the word “feminine” meant to her. She scrunched up her nose as if smelling something putrid and said, “delicate, dainty you know… Effeminate.”
I looked up “effeminate” on the internet – “effeminacy is the manifestation of traits in a boy or man that are more often associated with feminine nature, behavior, mannerism, style, or gender roles rather than with masculine nature, behavior, mannerisms, style or roles. It is typically used implying criticism or ridicule of this behavior.”
There it is. That last sentence, on Wikipedia no less – “it is typically used implying criticism or ridicule of this behavior.” In my family when we were kids we watched the film, To Kill a Mockingbird every summer. Near the beginning of the film Jem, Dill and Scout are sneaking up to Boo Radley’s house and Jem says to his little sister Scout, “I swear, Scout every day you’re acting more and more like a girl!” His disdain for this fact is palpable in his young man’s delivery.
Not surprising then, the last thing I wanted to be was a woman. All the qualities of what I had been conditioned to believe about being a woman were – light, dismissible, and weak: clothing that was impractical and didn’t keep you warm on cold days; high heels shoes (what?! Who invented those devices of torture?) again impractical; too much time wasted on doing hair, makeup, nails, body care, body shape, and obsessing over what you should or shouldn’t eat; caring about things like cooking, cleaning, laundry, fashion, shopping… Being feminine meant being frivolous. Soft. Ineffectual. Bottom line what I learned from the world around me was that being feminine meant not being of value. It meant a lifetime sentence to second-class citizenry.
Everything I had ever been told was to be strong and powerful. To get to the point. Take the shortest and quickest route to wherever I was going. To get things done, make sense, make a lot of money, and then I’d be happy. Little did I know that I could never find true happiness this way. On the contrary, what the above qualities offered me was a one-way street to feeling constantly empty. I didn’t realize until many years later this was because I was a feminine creature trying to use the tools of the masculine to find fulfillment.
Effeminate, and the other words we use to express more womanly qualities, are words that desperately need rescuing from a culture that has a wickedly disturbing relationship to all things feminine. Reclaiming my feminine body through movement (SFactor) flipped my world around. In the most delightful way possible, everything turned upside down. Or should I say right side up? Finally. I had a new perspective – a powerful one – and I was no longer willing to play it small.
In this blog, and anytime you see me in the future (say at the local cheese shop), know that “feminine” is a word I use to describe aspirational qualities and a certain side of a whole spectrum of energy. The same thing goes for my use of the word masculine. I don’t use these words in reference to someone’s gender or sexual preference. I use them similarly to how you might use the words, Yin and Yang, from Eastern Taoist philosophy.
They are equal, complementary opposites and we each need both to fully thrive. The thing is though, the feminine side – the yin – is outbalanced by the masculine – the yang. In all truth, our world is yang-ing out of control. We are keeling from too much masculine energy, thought, and action. We are like a ship about to capsize because we have been traveling with too much weight on our starboard side. We’re not going anywhere, in fact, we’re traveling in a never-ending circle that is getting smaller and smaller. We need to use the port side of our global ship to get us moving straight again and on into evolution. And that starts with each person on this planet digging up, dusting off, and elevating their own feminine energy.
It doesn’t matter how you came to have a feminine experience – it doesn’t matter if you were born into it, transitioned into it, or identify with it and express yourself within it. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t identify with any gender expression at all. The fact is that if you inhabit traits that are seen as classically feminine in the social sphere you will be at the effect of the social judgments surrounding it. And these judgments are so out of touch with what a feminine experience is like. They do not honor it, nor do they appreciate this beautiful and vibrant life force energy that we all have inside of us to varying degrees.
I want, more than anything, to elevate this neglected yet vital human energy – an energy that has the power to elevate the global society that we all inhabit if only we can liberate it from these shackles of judgment.
Reclaiming our feminine energy means becoming whole. But the question is: How? How do we cultivate our feminine energy?
I love David Deida’s take on feminine energy. He states that “feminine” is all that can be witnessed through the senses, and all that is nature. This means lights, sounds, smells, tastes, emotions, feelings, textures, movement, and more. Masculine is that which never changes. It is your consciousness – it is the witness of life. Or as Joseph Campbell so eloquently says, “woman is life and man is the protector of life.”
I would take an educated guess that most of us have developed whatever masculine qualities we have the ability to develop, and have, in the same breath, left our more feminine qualities to atrophy to one degree or another.
Since this is a blog about rescuing the feminine within, which in turn, will rescue the world around us, let’s dive into what it is to own your feminine. Feminine qualities are the biological and neurological attributes held more frequently in female bodies. But these are qualities that are accessible to each and every one of us no matter what gender or sexual preference or pronoun we identify with. These qualities should be developed and cultivated in each of us. And brought to a place of balance so that we can experience what it is to live in the fullest potential of Self. Let’s go on a Treasure hunt – let’s find “Feminine” together!
Here’s how you can start standing in your Feminine Power:
Go outside. Wherever you are just head out the door. You might end up in a green backyard or on the sidewalk in front of your house or in the middle of a public park. Just get outside into the air.
Now, be bold. Take a wide stance, bend your knees and reach your left hip as far out to the left as you possibly can. Circle your butt around to the back and then over to the right, and then swirl your hips front. Keep reaching and stretching and making the biggest circles you can. Let your body take up space. In fact, let it take up enormous amounts of space.
Inhale as your ass reaches back and exhale as your hips push forward. Each time you circle your hips around, try to draw larger and larger circles. Dare to be as outrageous as you can. This is the beginning of your epic body, for all the world to see. I dare you to do this every day out in public for 5-10 minutes each time. Let your neighbors gawk, let your dog look at you quizzically, let your kids make fun of you, let your friends scratch their heads. It doesn’t matter how people react. You are recharging yourself.
Start here, and next week, check back in with me in this blog or find me on social media. There’ll always be new exercises and new ways to enliven the feminine within you.
