Episode 31
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast, a place to explore where female physiology and feminine energy dance together to shape our life experience. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, functional nutritionist and integrative health coach and I'm inviting you to journey with me through both the scientific and spiritual facets of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance and become deeply and fully nourished despite living in a society that is increasingly desperate to erase our female set-apartness. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary. And please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
You're probably thinking what the heck with this title? Tell me more, tell me more. And I have to admit that I did not even know the term anima or animus to describe this concept that I want to talk about in today's episode until a few months ago. It was a concept that kept coming up over and over and over again in my research and my work. But it wasn't something that I had a definition or a name to put to the phenomenon until I came across it in Carl Jung's research. And we'll get into that. But it's both inspired by a book that I read, called “The Feminine and Fairytales“ by Marie Louise von Franz, and the show Sex in the City. So if you're like, wow, those, those topics couldn't seem more different. I promise you, they actually do come together.
Sometimes when I'm researching or I'm just, you know, honestly, sometimes I'm just bopping along. And a lot of people ask me how I research and sometimes I'm not actively researching, I actually very rarely take a masculine approach to research anymore and say, Okay, I need to go out and find information on this topic. The cool thing is, is once you lay a really nice foundation to your understanding of physiology, then everything that you've already learned just starts to animate and kind of fall into place. And so you can kind of follow your interest and your observations and desires, and usually come across vital information that fits into your puzzle pieces and adds a new layer of depth to your work without even trying. I really have a very open receptivity approach to my research and just kind of inviting God to teach me what I need to learn. And it's so funny how that stuff just kind of all falls together.
Sex and the City and the Myth of Empowerment
But I was reading this book, and “The Feminine and Fairytales“ is a part of the Young Foundation’s reading list. So I've been working my way through this reading list. And then I was also rewatching Sex in the City because one of my friends said, she was watching it. And I was like, I haven’t watched that show in a long time. And I remember it being scandalous when I watched it the first time. And I wanted to kind of rewatch it from an adult woman perspective for research purposes. So it has been very fun and entertaining and like, it's honestly very cringy for me to watch. But it's also so fascinating that it was something that shaped so many women's ideas about femininity and womanhood in the late 90s, early 2000s. And me personally, I don't know if this is true for you, but I always am fascinated by this kind of stuff. Like I remember being just enraptured by cosmopolitan magazines and like all these magazines at the checkout line and grocery stores, like I remember being a young girl, and my mom would be like, Look away, Look away, you know, don't look at that stuff or whatever. And I would just be like, enraptured and, and just kind of like, try to sneakily look at the titles of these articles.
I remember thinking, when I am old enough, like, I'm going to read these magazines, not because I thought it was like the height of sophistication or something. But because I was so interested and hungry for anything having to do with the feminine experience. Like I have always just been morbidly fascinated with this stuff. And maybe it's my experience with growing up in a very almost sheltered and narrow worldview situation that kind of insulated me from being manipulated, or maybe even brainwashed by this type of media before I was able to kind of develop my own sense of self. But it makes for an interesting experience like watching this stuff back as a woman who has matured and has gained some wisdom and has some insight about success and fulfillment and femininity.
And I find Sex in the City both fascinating and almost horrifying. It's like, this is the media that women were consuming in the late 90s, early 2000s. And it's so weird because I've heard so many people talk about sex in the city, what are we even when it was first coming out, and I was a young girl at the time, like a young tween and I remember hearing about how it was so empowering. And as I've been watching it back this idea of like, you know, women having sex like men, and acting emotionally stunted and being alone, and constantly having to go through guy after guy after guy after guy after guy can never be alone. And having this very masculine, kind of penetrative, like, go out and get it type approach to sex. It is so painful to watch, because this is not empowerment. And the fact that this was even portrayed as empowering at any point in time, is so injurious to women, it injures us, it injures us as a species, and as a whole sex.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's entertaining as hell. And there are some funny points. And it's enjoyable to watch for sure. But I mean, sometimes just the way that they portray men as buffoons, like every single man is a buffoon, and every woman who wants to settle down and enjoy her life, and slow down and get out of the city is just like a brainwashed weakling that has gone to the dark side. And this idea of like a woman who is very much in her masculine and can take care of herself and never need anybody, and can just have sex with no emotion or feeling like that is the most power you could ever have. Or I put quotations around this, but like “have sex like a man,” or this idea that if you're not having sex, like a man, you kind of flippantly move from relationship to relationship relationship. Sure you care, but not that much. It's all transactional, it's all about what you get out of it, and you're over it pretty quickly. There's never an expansion or a depth of feelings. Once it gets old, you just kind of move on to the next thing, once you can't get anything out of it, you've squeezed it dry and you move on. It's all manipulation. And it's all transaction, which are both masculine or Yang energies. And we have been trained so discreetly to not really understand the difference between what is feminine or truly Yin and what is masculine or truly Yang, we sometimes get Yin energy confused with Yang energy, because it's subtly put into media in so many different ways. And so that really leads us to this idea of animus or anima, for a dive into what those are.
Three Definitions of the Feminine
So a little backstory on these terms before I dive into like, what they are and why they're meaningful, and why you should even care is that I have been watching this kind of trend of really three distinct groups of what is portrayed as “femininity.” I've touched on this a little bit in a past episode, but I want to touch on it again, because it's really easy to fall prey to these three groups. And the first group is kind of the like, boss babe, I guess we can say or independent. And a lot of these like how to support your divine feminine pages, like there's a lot of videos on YouTube and on Tik Tok, and on a lot of different social media platforms. And it's very much in like how to support your feminine energy so this happens to get his attention or to get what you want out of life. So there's this like, boss babe type of feminine, and then there's that more like New Age feminine, which is that kind of wild, whimsical, maybe sexual, hypersexual, you know, dancing naked on social, doing these like gyrating motions, that type of femininity. And then we have this kind of older femininity that's making a comeback and the kind of, I guess, if we want to call it the Trad wife movement, I don't want to call it the stay at home mom movement because I don't want guys to mistake me and think that I'm pooh-poohing any of these, but what I am bringing up is that there are kind of three distinct groups that are portrayed as feminine. And that includes this kind of old, kind of more like homemaker, subservience, submissive, traditionally minded, traditionally focused, family-centered woman.
I'm gonna separate them into three categories. And so as I've observed that most feminine teachings or teachings on divine femininity tend to fall into these three categories. It's just been hard to unsee. And it's led me to really just think about the phenomenon and really like to marinate on it, because none of them, none of the categories rub me the right way. And a lot of times, other women have sent me direct messages and comments and things like that telling me that they don't resonate with any of those three groups either. And so it leaves them thinking like, well, maybe I'm just not meant to be that feminine, or maybe I am not that feminine, or even worse, in my book, it just kind of turns them off from even exploring it any further because it doesn't resonate or align in any way at all.
And then some of you have already noticed that all three of these states are very masculine or a Yang energy, meaning that that hyper independent boss, babe that's always trying to transactionally make herself feminine, so that something else will occur, well, that alone puts her in a masculine energy. Once you turn the feminine into a list of to dos, you're inherently kind of, not in your feminine, or when you're acting wild and free and dynamic and, and dancing and being overtly sexual, you know, all of these things are also Yang and masculine and energy, right? Anything that goes out to achieve attention and has to put itself out there is in fact, Yang energy. And then even that third, which we don't necessarily think of like a Trad wife, or that third category as inherently masculine, but a lot of times it is it's, well, if I do this, this, this, and this, you know, God wants me to do this, my husband wants me to do this, then therefore, I will get this in return, there is a level of, I must do this, this, this, this, this, and also manipulate the people around me. And what they think of me by manipulating myself, there's a lot of kind of smoke and mirrors and manipulation there. And again, all of that is very Yang, or masculine energy. Bottom line is all of these categories are these groups of faux femininity, if we want to call it that, are really the opposite of what being in your feminine energy looks like, which is containership. Or being able to hold space for all energy, whatever comes your way.
Instead, all of these – the boss babe, the overtly sexual wild feminine, the typical, I do 1000 things a day and this and this and this and this, what do you do trad wife are usually coming from a very yang energy or masculine energy, and thinking that that's going to get them what they truly desire. And so all of this thinking about this led me to realize that these three groups that we would typically think of as, “very feminine,” are not much different than feminism, which to me, is born out of a place of women, thinking that something that is masculine is inherently strong, and going to get them what they want. And therefore, femininity, aka parts of themselves, are inadequate, weak, and not going to allow them to get what they want, unless they do it that way over there. And to me, all four, are not that much different than one another. They all lead us to living outside of our feminine essence, expending more energy and wasting more energy than we have to maintaining an energetic state that is unnatural to us. And that leads us to the Animus and the Anima and understanding why all of this occurs. Why does it feel like we get it wrong every single time?
Introducing the Animus and the Anima
So if you've read the book that I mentioned before, “The Feminine and Fairytales“, which I don't necessarily recommend the read, it's not like the most amazing, brilliant book, but it's definitely a very interesting book. And if these are concepts that interest you, you might enjoy it. But the writer pretty much starts out by talking about fairy tales, because you know, the book is about breaking down certain feminine traits within fairy tales, and she kind of offers a warning to the reader reminding us that not all feminine characters within fairy tales are representations of femininity. In fact, if a fairy tale is written by a man, you can be sure that he's projecting his male anima on to the feminine character, and the feminine character might actually be a representation more of the male anima than actually the feminine experience or the feminine energy.
So what is the male anima? Well, the male anima is the unconscious feminine side of a man, whereas vice versa, the Animus is the unconscious masculine side of a woman. So a woman's Animus is the part of her, the subconscious part of her, that is masculine, and a male anima is the subconscious part of him that is feminine. Now, these are the psych terms. But in energetic spaces, you'll hear this more talked about as like the wounded masculine or the wounded feminine or the mother wound or the father wound, kind of the same thing. In my opinion, it's just the subconscious parts of ourselves that we act or behave from unconsciously or subconsciously, due to the masculine or feminine influences on our lives. So men shape women's animus and females or women shape the male anima.
And if you're like, just you're losing me, you're absolutely losing me. To put it super simply, like a perfect example of this is how mothers shape their sons' ideas of women and fathers shape their daughter's view of men. On the flip side, daughters also have a very strong ability to feed or appeal to a father's anima. And sons have a very unique, unique way of appealing or pulling on the female Animus. And this is not necessarily good nor bad. But it's important to know, it's an important concept to understand. You know, if you're asking the question, why does this matter? It's like, we have such extreme power as women to shape the masculine view, and behavior and belief systems about women just by our own behavior, how we move through life, that is what shapes the men around us, especially our sons. That's what shapes their anima.
So this leads us to the interesting concept of serving the male anima. So an example of this is neither good nor bad, but just happens is how daughters have that unique ability to kind of pull on their father's heartstrings or to kind of wrap their father around their fingers. They play into things that they subconsciously sense about their father, right, they’re subconsciously sensing the projections that their father is putting on to them. And they can sense the parts of their father, the male anima that needs to be almost portrayed for the father to trust them, give them what they want, whatever it might be, it's a means to an end. And we do this as women subconsciously, unconsciously, it's not always consciously done, although there are women that learn very quickly how to manipulate whether it be subtly or not so subtly, the male anima by fitting themselves into exactly what a man wants. But most likely, that father's anima, or that male anima has been shaped by that father's mother, or women he was exposed to in his early developmental years, and other women that he has met and had relationships with.
And so going back to feminine and masculine energy dynamics, or if it makes it easier, Yin is feminine, and Yang is masculine, yin and yang energy dynamics. If you remember, one of the main themes of season one was this kind of idea of responsibility of the feminine. How a woman's energy always goes first, before the actions, the action of the masculine that kind of explosive, wild, crazy, chaotic energy of the masculine only comes in and is given true purpose, to help in the process of bringing something very spiritual and intangible into material fruition. A perfect physical example of this is seed or sperm, right? It's there to kind of ignite or be the spark of life, so that therefore, the female body can be both a container for that life, but also an animator of that life. Women's energy always goes first. It always sets the pace and the tone, and then that's where the masculine energy comes in.
If you want to think of it in more tangible terms, I like to look at Yin as both the blank page and then the spaces between the words. So it's the container or the blank page for energy. But it's also going to add context and complexity to the words on the page, right? Yang energy is just all of the letters and the words, no spaces in between the words, no place to put the words. But Yin energy is what's going to come in and be a place for those words to go, and also go in and add spaces and context to those words. And this was really confusing for me to grasp or understand at first, because if you've grown up in a very typical kind of Protestant-centered or Christian centered idea of women, there's been kind of an intentional removal of any feminine figure within those spaces. Everything is inherently very masculine, very fatherly, patriarchal, there's not a lot of context for what femininity is, and very regularly, you're just hearing that women are helpers, women are helpers. Women are helpers. Women are helpers. You're a subservient helper, a helpmeet. You know, what the heck does this mean? That makes no sense. It does not serve women at all.
And what you'll hopefully recognize by the end of this episode is that it also actually harms men as well, because basic energetics shows us that Yang can come from Yin but Yin also comes from Yin. It's very difficult for yin to come from Yang, this idea that all of this like random energy, just as floating around like, again, going back to the letters on the page are just floating around. And from that, you have a space to put the letters and the context or the spaces between the letters. That's ridiculous, right? You take a blank page first, a container or field if you want to look at it as a field, or a house, and then you fill it with energy. And then you have to animate that energy or add context and depth and expansion and integration to that energy, that energy now becomes more animated, it becomes full of life, it becomes a house, becomes a home, a field becomes a lush garden. It's not denying the part that the masculine plays a very important framework, structure builder, frame builder, seeder, it's not denying that the masculine has power, but it's also not denying the feminine its power. And once we understand these dynamics, it's very easy to understand that once you destroy women, men and children are destroyed in the process, because women set the pace. And we did a really interesting overview of this concept in Episode 10 and 11. “Hungry for Nurture” was part one and "Hungry for Presense” was part two, I believe, and that's back in in season one.
But this is a little bit more of a deep dive. We shape the male anima, the feminine parts of a man, the sensitive, soft receiving, container field, home of energy, the parts of a man that make him feel safe and received. And then those men go on to shape the female animus of their daughter and give them that stable framework backbone, wild free energy, that part of a woman that is wild, free, a little bit defiant, and also safe. She feels safe, something has her back. There's a competence there. I can really speak to this concept personally having a really incredible father and just having really incredible men in my life, you know, having an incredible father, which led to having an incredible brother, and then also having an incredible husband. They all have shaped the masculine part of me, and shaped not only my view of God, right, because it is their constant reflections of his generosity and loyalty. And when you are caught in the magnanimous gaze of really healthy masculinity, it gives you a confidence and a stability, almost on a biological level, that cannot be replicated. Being able to drop into the true safety that comes from masculine provision backing you absolutely is going to shape the parts of you that believe that you can keep yourself safe and protected, and give you that masculine provision that is required.
Changing Dynamics Inside and Out
Because we're not just talking about relationships, we're talking about the feminine parts of ourselves and the masculine parts of ourselves and making peace with both and strengthening both. And so if we want the Yang to change, if we want our relationship with our masculine energy to change, or our relationship with the men in our life to change, we have to go back to the hard truths of energetics and the fact that Yang pours from Yin, the reason that women are having such a hard time with masculine energy, and they're either stuck in masculine energy relying on masculine energy, or they are in their masculine energy, because their husband or their male partner is in his feminine or passive energy. The hard truth is, and this does not excuse his behaviors, right? This is not excused personal responsibility. But the hard energetic truth is that Yang is always responding to Yin. And so the masculine is always behaving in response to the feminine.
And this happens on a personal level, when we're talking about the yin and yang within ourselves. This happens on a relational level when we're talking about relationship dynamics. And then this also happens on a societal level as a whole, when we're talking about the kind of projections of men and women and masculine and feminine within society as a whole. So it's on multiple layers. But keep in mind, and we've touched on this, that the feminine wants to live in devotion, right, wants to live in devotion to something. And at the end of the day, really what she should be devoted to is maintaining a vortex of well being, maintaining a safe container to hold energy, because that's going to lead to her being filled up and pouring out onto everyone around her, which will include her family, right? Like when mama ain't happy, nobody's happy. The opposite is true. Like when mom is happy, the home is peaceful. Everybody's happy, everyone's filled. It's that power of nurture, that power of presence.
The problem is that most women have been convinced that femininity is actually morphing themselves into what the male anima wants, or men's idea of what femininity is. They're shaping themselves into what they think a man deeply desires, whether that be, again, subconscious or conscious. It's almost like becoming a shapeshifter. And then, in addition, they have been convinced that they need to live in devotion to everybody else, so to speak subserviently to their husband and their children and their family or whatever it might be. They have to live in devotion to everything else but themselves, and that this is true femininity. And then of course, because this feels so uncomfortable and awful and chaotic, and it doesn't feel good to shape shift into what everybody else wants you to be, it's suffocating. You of course respond by going to the other end of the pendulum or we as a female collective, have swung all the way to the other end where we say, you know, we're going to kind of take on this yang energy, this overtly sexual energy, this like, I'm gonna go out and create what I want. I don't need a man, like men are stupid, men are useless. And because we're unaware of it, we actually start to morph into the female animus or the masculine part of ourselves that we think is protection, that we think is provision. However wounded it is, however unhealthy it is, it doesn't matter, we start to associate masculinity with strength and true power. And we start to, whether it be again subconscious unconscious, we start to believe that being feminine is weak, and therefore we start to operate from an unhealthy animus or the masculine parts of ourselves. Do you see how each side of the pendulum is just as equally damaging?
And so from a lot of feedback that have gotten from you guys, especially in regards to your relationship dynamics, like how do I live in my feminine when my husband is in that very passive kind of feminine role? And I'm stuck in the very Yang masculine role. And I know you guys are always looking for the tangibles, like can you make this information more tangible, and in so many ways, I am working on the tangible aspects of it, how to kind of weave the hormones and the nervous system and the digestive system and weave this all together into actionable health based steps. And I have a masterclass coming out very quickly right around the corner, and a micro course, which will be very affordably priced coming in around the corner as well. I've been working very hard on this for you, it's part of the reason why I'm talking about this topic today.
What to Do Now
There's some different layers to it, it starts with becoming aware of your own energetic leaks, it then goes on to begin to really build a safe and stable container to receive energy, and practice receiving energy and staying in a state of open receptivity, which I know can sound very vague. So you know, breaking that down into tangible forms, and then also just restoring a very physical safety within the system in the body so that your physical body can feel safe enough for you to start opening up on a more energetic or spiritual level. But if you're kind of struggling with like, I feel so stuck in my masculine and you're in a relationship. Keep in mind that a lot of men nowadays have very unhealthy male Animas because we are a product of multiple generations of women, as I talked about in those episodes, I mentioned earlier, the you know, “Hungry for Nurture,” and “Hungry for Presence,” where women and women’s sense of self, and the mother has been really removed from the home the most powerful parts of motherhood, and that mother archetype and energy have been removed from the home. And so men have been growing up in environments that have been putting them into a different energetic state, probably since they were little boys.
You know, if you think of men who had very masculine or controlling mothers who, in one way, baby them, right, it was like they turned them into man children, really, that couldn't do anything, because it was not out of babying them is actually out of a need to white knuckle grip and control them so much so that they always remained their little baby, weak and helpless, right? Because the mother probably had an unhealthy animus within her, an unhealthy idea of the masculine, and she was projecting it onto her son. And so keeping in mind that the masculine is always going to morph to the feminine needs, regardless of if those needs hurt the masculine or not, you're going to see that a very masculine and controlling mother that does not understand true masculinity and the value of letting them be wild and free, turns a man into a very passive, feminine man that's really stuck in his Yin energy is going to be very stagnant, not very ambitious, it's going to have low testosterone, right, because his wild and free nature, those parts of themselves have been choked to death by an unhealthy woman figure, you know, mother figure.
Or, you know, you think about the mothers that have a very poor relationship with their spouse or a void in their heart, like the typical bully mom, who force their sons into emotional surrogates, almost like surrogate husbands, and makes their anima too big where they, because they're developing these little children and these little men are developing, the mother forces herself to become the whole world and the male animal becomes too big and plays too big of a part within the male psyche. These are like the eternal mama's boys, right, who always want every woman to be exactly like their mother. And if they're not like their mother, they never measure up because mother is the center of the whole world and that's a very primal wound because that wound has really taught a man from a young age that his mother is the center of his universe. And it chokes out the intimate relationship and the love that he could have with another woman, because she has already filled that role. Or like on a more extreme level, like if you've ever listened to true crime, and you like listen to some of these serial killers, and the things that some of these serial killers that kill women, the things that they make these women do, or the ways that they kill them, there's a specific reason why they're doing that. And I think that's probably a more extreme expression of a very wounded male anima, who, you know, that mother completely, almost broke that man's psyche, and now, his behaviors and impulsive behavior from that place. And that's a very extreme example.
But there are many layers in between right? Many shades of gray to this, where, you know, we have a whole generation of men or multiple generations of men where the mother was, in some way, shape or form, either not a nurturer not present, whether that be physically or emotionally, or was even abusive, emotionally beat their sons down to make themselves feel better, I think there's a lot there. And when you think about how that's going to shape the male anima, and then us women are going to try to fit into that, like shape shift into what a man could want, if we're not careful. And we do this subconsciously, unconsciously, right, going back to that little girl who wraps her father around her finger, she's not necessarily meaning to do it. But she takes cues and she starts to shape shift. And some of this is harmless, right? Like, we want to, you know, if we love a man, and he's worthy of our devotion, and our affection and our love and our life, of course, we're going to do things that make them happy, and that they enjoy, we want to be desired by them.
But there's a difference between wanting to be desired, and completely shifting and shaping yourself into something that you're not. And then waking up to it 10 years down the line and realizing I'm so unhappy and so unfulfilled, and I never learned my true purpose, because all I learned was how to shape shift myself into what a man would want. But the answer is not swinging to the other side of the pendulum and saying, Well, I'm now going to service an unhealthy animus and live in my masculine energy. And that's where I'm going to derive my power from, because it doesn't actually help anyone. You know, this, going back to Sex in the City, this sexual anarchy or the sexual revolution, if we want to call it that, and this idea that the past 60 years has been so liberating for women that we've gotten a birth control pill that pretty much poisons our body, and allows us to do “whatever we want,” with no consequences. Although the consequences are within our system, within our physical body, we have to bear the consequences of it. And more women are now in the workplace than ever, they have financial freedom, except when we actually look at the facts, so many women are getting huge student loans. And they're being encouraged to pursue careers that they don't actually really want. And then they have all this student debt to pay off. And they absolutely feel like they're living soul sucking lives.
Again, I'm not saying that's every woman, right? There are women that absolutely enjoy their career and have derived a lot of joy and balance from it. But I'm talking more as a whole from at least the conversations that I have and the women that I talk to, it seems like overarchingly women's bodies are bearing the consequences of what has happened over the past, I don't know, let's just say 100 years. Our bodies are having to bear the spiritual, emotional and physical weight of all of this. And so what I hope you take away from this episode is that femininity and masculinity are not cosplay. They're not like parts and roles that we put on and we take off and, oh, I've been playing a different role. So I'm going to put on a new costume and play this role. That's a very shallow and very transactional and manipulative way to look at it. And really at the root of it, this idea of being able to like turn on and turn off your feminine energy is not a healthy way of looking at it either because that really gives you a sense of something that you must do, or you must change it into and that's really not it.
A Vortex of Wellbeing
You know, true healthy balance, energetic equilibrium as I call, at its feminine energetic equilibrium is born out of Yin, meaning that you cannot Yang your way to Yin, you have to create a field or a container, or a safe place, a home of energy, a physical body that is safe and stable. And then what will pour from that physical place is an emotional self and a spiritual self that is open and receptive. This is the vortex of well being. Going back to the words on the page and the spaces between the page, you cannot vortex yang energy. And the reason I'm using a vortex term is in nature, vortexes restructure things constantly, right? They're constantly magnetizing and pulling things in, I think the vortex is a perfect representation of feminine energy, it's pulling energy into itself, and then it's reshaping and restructuring itself.
But to do that, you first have to have a safe and stable vortex. You need to create a vortex of well being. And so this really does start in the physical body. If you do not have physical safety and your nervous system is just out of control, you're firing and the energy of fight, flight, collapse and freeze constantly. You're living in an energetic spirit of scarcity and lack and famine. You're constantly in a state of energetic leaks, where you're hyper reactive instead of responsive, you have absolutely no control over your energetic response. You are not consciously dropping into survival states, you're maintaining a chronic state of being stuck in a survival state. And every little thing in your life is a threat to your survival. Every little thing is a micro aggressor or a stressor. A couple episodes ago, we talked about you know, what does this mean? For me, every little thing that you're exposed to every new bit of information, every comment, every interaction with another person is like oh my gosh, what does this mean for me, there's a reactivity to it, a lack of safety to it. You're doing things because you feel forced to or like you have to where you should be doing it, rather than pouring from a place of desire and devotion and wanting to know how we begin to heal. As we start to realize that healing is not a seeking out and fixing our broken parts, right, as we talked about before, that go out and seek energy, that offense energy, that defense energy is very Yang, very masculine, it's very energetically draining to us.
We cannot heal until we begin to Mother ourselves and nurture ourselves and get ourselves to that same place of safety and stability. On the feminine side, it's about the guidance and the nurturance and the wisdom and the nourishment that we desire from our mother, we have to provide that to ourselves. And then we also need to learn to have a healthy relationship with provision and being taken care of and being provided for the trust and the surrender. And then from that place, that safe container, we can therefore pour out onto others. But if we live in devotion to everyone else but ourself, our energy is going to be flip flopped, because now we're coming from a place of do we have to extend our energy outward, when our energy should actually be spent moving it inward in a vortex-like motion and pulling everybody else into our energetic field of peace, of clarity of focus of calm of nourishment.
Healing has nothing to do with seeking out our broken parts and fixing it. Is it thyroid? Is it food sensitivities? Is it adrenal? Is it gut issues? Is it autoimmune, right? Like we can go on this vicious cycle around and around and around the merry go round symptom, whack a mole and just keep chasing it right? It's nothing more than a distraction. Healing is expansion, which to me means being able to grow, being able to not only be resilient in the face of stress, but actually expand and grow and rise to meet challenges coming out both physically more vital and stronger, but also emotionally and spiritually stronger, wiser, more vital. Healing is integration, meaning taking all the parts of ourselves and integrating them and learning about ourselves more and more exploring the depths of ourselves constantly, being diligent about continually going to the depths and the edges of where we think our edges are and then pushing beyond that as as a sense of courage, and healing is releasing and letting go of the things that don't serve us, right? Letting go, understanding that it might create space and hold space and then trusting that something better is going to come and fill that and being devoted enough to yourself to not hold on to things that are burdening you or dragging you down. Healing is those three things. And we can do all those three things once we create a safe container.
But it's very hard to expand, to integrate, and to release things as they come up without having enough physical energy or safety, a sense of safety, to face those things, and to take part in those things. So that's really what bioenergetics is about. It's having an energetic approach to the body, and focus on replenishing the body's resources and creating a deep physiological safety so that the body can get out of that protection posture, that closed off posture and really open up into a receptive container. And this is why you often hear me talk about safety and stability and eating in a way that doesn't induce survival, because these are kind of the tips of the iceberg that are going to impact our ability to receive energy and it goes so much deeper than that. But that's where we have to start because if we don't have a physical sense of safety, the rest can't really follow. If we're in that state of burnout, that soul deep, cell deep burnout, where we're just stagnating, we're conserving and hoarding energy, we're not expanding, we can't integrate, right? We're closed off to so many parts of ourselves. There's no space, there's tension, there's tightness, there's rigidity, we're holding on to everything, we can't let anything go, right. We can't poop, we can't release toxins from ourselves. We are energetically hoarding, all of these things are preventing us from true healing. And if we start to reframe what our idea of healing is, it's going to change our sense of focus and our sense of purpose when it comes to our body and health. Sure, of course, our wellness journey, of course, but also deeper our spiritual journey as well. They're all intertwined so deeply and so intimately.
Episode Links
In this episode, I mentioned:
The Feminine in Fairy Tales (C. G. Jung Foundation Books Series) by Marie-Louise Von Franz - https://www.amazon.com/Feminine-Fairy-Tales-Marie-Louise-Franz/dp/157062609X
Episode 10 - Hungry For Nurture Part 1 - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/hungry-for-nurture-part-1/id1697183569?i=1000630266498
Episode 11 - Hungry For Presence Part 2 - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/hungry-for-presence-part-2/id1697183569?i=1000630785417
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