10 Top Tips to Learn How to Embrace Your Inner Feminine
My life is full of challenges lately. Life feels a little hard at times, and a friend picked me up on an uncurrent within my language and dialogue. I was constantly referring to the masculine traits of battle.
I was disconnected from my feminine. My goddess was clearly in hibernation. My friend suggested I soften into that feminine space and become more consciously mindful of my self-dialogue.
Challenge accepted, but easier said than done.
I have always felt vulnerable at the thought of softening. I had grown up perceiving it was weak to soften into my feminine.
This same friend shared a beautiful story of how masculine and feminine should be equal within. Whilst we are born of a particular sex, each of us has dual traits of both the divine god and goddess within.
My friend reminded me that the planet is comprised of both male and female. The land is represented by the masculine god, and the ocean is the opposite, the divine goddess. Neither can live without the other. They are both dependent on each other, especially at the border edges, to hold each other up. Yet they are very separately independent in their own right.
We know upon a king tide, the angry goddess waves, can erode the masculine shoreline, pulling the land beneath the surface engulfing all the oxygen. This corrosive action is likened to a woman’s wrath, destroying everything in her path until her breath is exhausted and she pauses.
And yet there are times, spaces and places, whereby the waves are gently massaging the warm sandy shoreline like a caress. It’s a dichotomy, a balance if you will.
Conversely, we know the land rises above the sea level, the towering god overlooks the waves and the ocean. The clifftops command demanding respect, especially when they cast a shadow over the sea below.
But here’s the thing. Both land and water rely on each other for survival.
My friend is very eloquent with her phraseology.
Within our Homosapien selves, neither male nor female is more powerful than the other. And yet within our own psyche, like the planet, we too have male and female aspects and traits. Without balancing the two, and knowing how to best utilise those traits we can so easily and unconsciously play favourites and become stuck.
But what happens when life pushes an imbalance of these internal forces?
We shut down access into our heart space.
The heart is that sacred space where we access our intuition and higher self language and all-knowing. The heart acts as the balance point between being grounded and accessing our cosmic wisdom.
Without free access into the heart space, we are stuck in our heads and all that excessive thinking.
When we close ourselves off to the heart space we are shutting down our ability to soften into our true self — unquestionable balance. We can’t flow with life and its opportunities based on our sex-based traits.
My friend told me a story of how the feminine is actually strong and fierce, not weak. When standing in my feminine strength:
- I do not have to fight, as the masculine would, I merely have to remain grounded in my heart space and connected to my innate wisdom.
- I do not have to battle to get a result, I merely remain connected within my ‘all-knowing’ (my connection to source if you will) to allow a result to evolve.
- I do not have to push, I have to surrender to the imbalance and return to my feminine, to achieve the release of tension from the imbalance.
My friend compared the pushing part to faecal matter. Brace yourself before reading the next bit because we laughed quite hard.
The more we push the greater the chance of hemorrhoids, yet if we perch and relax nature allows us to do our business.
We both laughed hard at that analogy.
Sitting back later the same day I pondered that statement and she is so true. There was much snoopy sniggering as I journaled, recalling our conversation.
“When we try to force sh*t out we strain our own natural design process of opening and closing to the experience of simply surrendering.”- Stacey Herrera
What might it truly cost me to surrender and soften?
This was the question I asked myself as part of the challenge of softening. After an afternoon of journaling, meditation and chanting, I jotted down some tips to support my own surrender process back to my feminine self.
Thought I’d share them with you.
1. Dance your booty off and shake your inner wild thing
When we dance, we access our primal self. We allow our body to surrender to the beat. I find dancing in an open space where I won’t collide with anything helps. I close my eyes and allow my body to express the connection to the music.
We don’t all have the luxury of space right now, so turn on the music that makes you shake your booty, makes you smile, makes you laugh, makes you remember good times.
2. Use aromatherapy essential oils
Plant therapy, or herbology, is the formation of the modern pharmacology. Our reference to plant medicine dates back to ancient Egypt! Oils have long been used for their healing and mood-boosting properties.
For further reading about Oils To Awaken Your Goddess.
3. Wear calming colours that help you soften — I pink myself silly
Colour therapy is a non-invasive and holistic treatment that brings balance and health to your mind and body. The vibrations of the colour in colour therapy class improve your mood and overall health. Colours are made up of reflected lights that hit our retinas as the wavelengths vibrate.
It is a popular go-to practice for people suffering from depression, stress, and seasonal affective disorder.
I’ll take it a step further and add that wearing the right colours for your skin tones helps you to achieve balance using your natural skin tones and then highlighting and accentuating your strengths.
‘Charms of Life’ discuss purple is effective when strong detoxifying of the body is needed. Its high vibration gives it the ability to purify the body. It can stimulate venous activity and is beneficial for headaches. The red-purple colour range balances the polarities of the body.
Keep it simple. When you look good, you feel good.
4. Feast on orange foods which feed the sacral chakra — sex organs
According to ‘You Queen’, orange is the colour that promotes cheerfulness and is therefore useful for lifting up the spirit and reducing depression, apathy and negativity. It stimulates creativity, relieves repressions and increases sexual desire.
Orange is also the colour of the sacral chakra (energy centre) for sexual reproductive organs, resourcefulness and social confidence. The sacral chakra is located just below the navel and where our sensuality centre is located.
Orange-coloured foods are often high in certain carotenoids (antioxidant with pigment) and other phytonutrients (phytonutrients may also enhance immunity and intercellular communication, repair DNA damage from exposure to toxins, detoxify carcinogens and alter estrogen metabolism), which also help with the reproductive system. Eat foods such as apricots, carrots, orange bell peppers, oranges and blood oranges, papaya, pumpkin and winter squash, and sweet potato.
5. Ask for hugs and surrender into the embrace
Right now during social distancing, we are skin hungry. The act of hugging induces a calming and relaxing effect because it releases oxytocin! Hugs reinforce the connection between individuals.
Oxytocin is also known as the “love drug”, which calms your entire nervous system and boosts positive emotions. This is why petting your animals is so therapeutic.
A good hug produces oxytocin which lowers your blood pressure, which especially helpful if you’re feeling anxious. It lowers your cortisol (the stress hormone), enabling a higher quality of sleep.
My research for this piece had me in stitches with some documented types of hugs, and I shall let your imagination go wild. The bear hug, polite hug, one-way hug (awkward!), intimate hug (yes please), buddy hug (can’t wait to see my posse), and the simple back hug!
6. Masturbate!
Now before the snoopy sniggering commences, we all know that gooey relaxed feeling we have after we cum. But there is actual science that promotes masturbation for health, relaxation and general well-being.
Some of the general health benefits of masturbation may include that it:
relaxes your muscles.
- helps you to fall asleep
- promotes the release of the brain’s opioid-like neurotransmitters (called endorphins), which cause feelings of physical and mental wellbeing
- reduces stress
- enhances self-esteem
Stacey Herrerra often discusses how regular orgasm softens the tension in the body and clears stagnant energy through release!
7. Book a kinesiology session to balance your masculine and feminine energies.
Kinesiology is a stress management modality which utilises muscle monitoring to identify sources of stress in the body. It’s a fantastic and non-invasive method to balance your masculine and feminine energies and the associated patterns through which you access and utilise these sexualised traits moving forward.
8. Heart chakra balance
I know myself how it feels when my heart chakra is blocked. I feel like I am stuck in my emotions. I tend to dwell on stuff from the past. I have been known to hang onto grudges or trust challenges. I can feel anxious or overly stressed. I push others away when they offer help, or worse put myself last.
I’ll be writing a blog dedicated to heart chakra soon, but for now, know that you can the following to open and nurture this chakra (energy centre).
- get into nature
- meditation with a focus on the heart and loving self
- hang with your peeps
- give yourself permission to feel and release through journalling
- be grateful for all in your life
- do yoga to open the heart
9. Chant
According to ‘Spirit Voyage’, when combining sound, breath and rhythm, the chant channels the flow of energy through the mind-body circuit. The result is an adjustment of the chemical composition of our internal states and regulating brain-hemisphere imbalances.
By balancing the nervous system, chanting regulates the chronic stress and tension that is the norm for many people in today’s hyper-stimulated lifestyle. And by balancing the endocrine system, chanting normalizes hormone production, which balances our moods and overall sense of well-being.
Try chanting OM, Om Nama Shivya, Om Mani Padme Hum to achieve the effect. Again, visit YouTube for accompaniment.
10. Meditate
We protect our heart space like a panic room, shelter ourselves from perceived hurts and pain.
‘Headspace’ discusses meditation as “we can build up areas of our brain and actually rewire it to enhance positive traits like focus and decision making and diminish the less positive ones like fear and stress. Most importantly, this means there is a possibility to change your brain for the better in a way that is long-lasting.”
In summary, these are just a few of the techniques you can utilise to surrender into your feminine self. Drop me a line of what you do to soften!