The feminine power of surrender.
I have a confession to make, despite the fact that I have been helping women succeed in life for more than a decade, I got my ass handed to me by my teacher during an advanced training course on embodying feminine power. The smack down was thoroughly complete, more than a little humiliating, and totally humbling.
You see, for most of my life I had no idea how to access my feminine power. Rather I relied almost exclusively on masculine power. I worked like a man in a man’s world, and I was well-respected for it. I could hang with the guys and do, do, do like the best of them! And when I got home, I kept on doing. I ran a tight ship and, and from the outside looking in, I had it all together.
But underneath the juggling act I could feel a deep bone-tiredness that threatened to swallow me whole.
I knew there had to be another way, and I made the commitment to expand my work with women to include feminine embodiment practices. I made solid progress on overcoming shadow conditioning that had made it hard for me to live fully in my body and I passionately wanted to share the lessons I was learning about my own embodiment and self-sovereignty. So when the opportunity came up to take my practice up a notch, I jumped at the chance enrolling in an advanced course with a master energy and embodiment teacher. Little did I know what was in store.
Taking her course was no small thing. The program consisted of 10 full days at a retreat center on the east coast. It meant a significant investment of time and money. But I had already learned that deep immersion work with a competent teacher was the fastest way to super-charge my growth, so I packed my bags and headed east.
Even before I left home I began to feel a kind of nervous excitement building in me. This intensified as I arrived and grew even stronger as the program began. I felt completely ungrounded and out of my body, and at the same time I had this terrible knot plaguing my solar plexus. As a women’s embodiment coach I was baffled by how hard it seemed to be for me to be at peace in my body and show up powerfully within the group. It brought up feelings of fear and anxiety and the shadow beliefs of inadequacy and unworthiness. I often found myself intimidated by my teacher, and sometimes the other students. Everyone was very nice and super professional so there was no rational reason for my response.
This raised the stakes for me as I furiously leaned in to each lesson she taught and gave my all in the exercises we undertook. By the end of the day I found myself feeling a little more embodied and had intermittent success dissolving the knot. But, as class would gather the next day it seemed I had to start all over again. It turns out that my teacher had put in place an energetic field with a very high vibration which she increased day by day. She had set the intent that, while in the course, the students would be thrown off their center for the purpose of having to work deeply with the tools she was teaching to bring us back to center.
It was brutal, and it was beautiful.
The turning point for me came on the 7th day when I used The Q Process in the middle of a sleepless night to help me get at what was under the experience I was having. As I found and released an old story and moved into the healing, a profound awareness came forward from my heart. I saw that all week I had been trying to use my masculine power to make myself get into my feminine power. That gave me a good laugh.
I knew I needed to simply surrender to what was appearing in my body, to welcome every sensation, every failed effort, every moment of struggle, and then shift my focus toward what I wanted to experience (feminine power) and away from managing what I didn’t want to experience (my masculine energy). The change in my body was instantaneous and completely palpable.
The fight ended right there and then. I was finally ready to receive every bit of love and grace my teachers, my practice, and the Universe had to offer.
It took three more days of committed practice to hold it, but by the end of the course, my skill sets had grown beyond anything I could have imagined at the start of the course. It was hard but rewarding work. And the payoff has been incredible - these are just a few of the changes which took place in me:
I feel soft and comfortable in my own skin
I feel more balanced energy and healthy vitality in my body
I have soul-sourced creativity and potent productivity with my work
I am experiencing more pleasure and delight in life
I am kinder and gentler with myself
I am in love with my body
Thanks to The Q Process I was able to recognize that my struggles at the outset of the course served me by making the content of the course super timely and relevant. The Q Process a powerful tool that I return to again and again to remind myself that what is arising is FOR me, and nothing and no one is against me…not even me!