So I have just arrived back from the Living Tantra Retreat with the amazing Chantelle Raven and the Embodied Awakening Academy. I have so many different concepts I want to share with you, but today I want to talk about Masculine and Feminine Energies. What they are, why it is important we have a healthy balance of both, and how to use them to create sexual chemistry and a healthy dynamic of polarity within a relationship. You can see more about Chantelle at her website here: https://embodiedawakeningacademy.com Or her Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/embodiedeawakeningacademy
So I have just arrived back from the Living Tantra Retreat with the amazing Chantelle Raven and the Embodied Awakening Academy. I have so many different concepts I want to share with you, but today I want to talk about Masculine and Feminine Energies. What they are, why it is important we have a healthy balance of both, and how to use them to create sexual chemistry and a healthy dynamic of polarity within a relationship. ย
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You can see more about Chantelle at her website here: https://embodiedawakeningacademy.com
Or her Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/embodiedeawakeningacademy
Hello, it's Donna Joy Usher. ย
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Welcome to this 61st episode of the Living through Heart Podcast. ย
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I've got something really exciting to talk about today. ย
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I want to talk about masculine and feminine energies. ย
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And it's something I've alluded to quite a few times in podcasts and videos and things that I've done where I've talked about masculine-feminine energies, but I haven't actually done a whole episode on it yet. ย
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And I just want to say that if you are particularly triggered by the word masculine energy or feminine energy, then just switch it out in your head for Yin and Yang. ย
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Yin-Yang energy, because this is really what we're talking about here. ย
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And when we call masculine energy, masculine energy, we're not we're not just say referring to men, we're referring to a type of energy as opposed to a very different type of energy, which we're calling the feminine energy. ย
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And it's just words that we're using to describe it. ย
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And basically, the two different types of energies that we can have within our body are like a very doing focused, motivated energy, sort of single point, task orientated, competitive, getting stuff done. ย
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And then we've got the creative, the flow, the dreamer, the intuitive, ย the one who comes up with the ideas that then needs to be done. ย
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And so the doing single focus pointed, you know, motivated energy is what I'm referring to I talk to masculine energy, that masculine energy, and that that flow, that creativity, that spontaneity, that intuition, this is the feminine energy. ย
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And we both have, we all have both, right, we all have both of these energies within us. ย
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We have this ability to be creative, we have this ability to be intuitive, to be spontaneous. ย
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We all have this ability within us, it's just whether or not we are fully expressing it in our lives. ย
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And that obviously comes from our belief systems, how we learned to stay safe, you know, our woundings, our patterning when our caretakers taught us about them how to be and quite often our masculine and feminine energies are modeled on the energy of the primary caretakers when we were growing up. ย
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And it can be it doesn't have to be, for instance, our masculine energy doesn't have to come from a man. So if you were brought up by single mom, you would be been modeling your what masculine energy on her masculine energy. ย
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Or maybe you had an you know, maybe she had a brother or your uncle or some of that you might be modeling on that.
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So until we become aware of what these kind of energies are, and how they're playing in our lives, we're quite often run by one particular energy. ย
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And unfortunately, you know, in our society and our culture, it's normally the masculine. And if you think about spontaneity and creativity, and maybe not so much now, but definitely when I was coming through school, you know, four decades ago, that sort of behavior was not encouraged. ย
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And instead, what was encouraged was hard work. ย
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And doing well. ย
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And we were encouraged to study hard, do well in exams, sports, it was all like very competitive, being the best, everything was about being the best and studying hard. ย
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And basically being validated through accomplishments. ย
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And sure, there was art there, you know, that would support more of a feminine nature and drama. ย
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But I know, at my school, they were not. ย
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They were not very big parts of life, and we weren't all encouraged to be in them, it was just like something you did on site, if you want to go into that way. ย
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So for me, definitely, I was definitely encouraged into my masculine, into that doing, into the seeking validation, by being the best, by competing and winning and, you know, being rewarded for that in my, in my home situation, especially by my father, if I won something, or if I beat the boys who always said to me, my girl, beat the boys, that was a point of pride for him. ย
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And so I would go out of my way to do it to make him proud. ย
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And so I was lovable, and to stay safe within that environment was I had to be the best and beat the boys. ย
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And really what got set up in me was pattern of really working very hard, not allowing myself a lot of freedom and a lot of not doing and I became very competitive, and especially competitive against women. ย
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Because you know, I had to be the best.
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And I was also supportive of women. So sometimes we can have these layers of different things happening at once. ย
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So on one hand, I can be very supportive of women and very encouraging a woman. ย
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On the other hand, a part of me is competing with them. ย
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And you know, thoughts popping in, and ego things and wanting to be prettier or wanting to be skinnier or wanting to be better or wanting to be the leader or, you know, stuff that was there that I've worked really, really hard to dissolve, because it's one thing to recognize that they're there and to hate that thought for popping into your head, and to, to observe it when it's there and choose not to act on it. ย
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But it's another thing just to not to have those thoughts. ย
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And that's when we start to do the really deep work and we dissolve, what is there at the very bottom, that's creating what we see on the surface. And then things start to really shift and change. ย
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So for me, I was in my masculine, don't get me wrong, I was also you know, doing feminine stuff, like, you know, if you think about my writing, that's very creative, and very intuitive, a lot of my writing was, a lot of my writing was planned. ย
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And the books were planned out from where to go very masculine way. ย
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But then some books just happened. ย
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Some books, they just came through me, like channeling the information. ย
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And I feel like I didn't write them so much. ย
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When I read them, I get caught up in the story that I actually wrote. ย
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But it's like, I'm reading somebody else's story, because it came through me and that's intuition. ย
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But even within that writing books, I was very masculine in my approach to it, where I would make myself do and I had to write so many 1000 words a day, and I had to have a book finished by this time that I had to do, the editor had to do this and very masculine, just forcing this feminine energy to perform in a very masculine way. ย
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Which is probably why I haven't written for a little while yet. ย
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Yet, for a little while now, right? ย
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I have, I've got a trilogy, concept planned out, I've got amazing covers designed, I've even got, I think, 23,000 words of the first book written but I'm not writing at the moment. ย
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And I can come up with all these reasons for why I'm not writing and a lot of them to do with very logical reasons for like, you know, Amazon's algorithm change. ย
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Now I actually don't make any money from my books, I've got 10 books published, I make maybe if I'm lucky, 100 bucks a month, right? ย
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It actually costs me money to publish a book now. ย
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And yes, I am running Amazon ads, and I am doing all that stuff now. ย
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But the organic stuff is no longer really there within Amazon. ย
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And that was a beautiful thing. ย
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You know, within Amazon, you used to get rewarded for for, you know, for good books, quality reviews, you know, good covers, by organic show, and now you don't, now it's all about the paid side of it, right? ย
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Kind of like they've gone from this feminine, like, you know, flow into this masculine, you know, hard, like, you've just got to pay, right, to get your books out there. ย
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So I can use all of those logical reasons for why I'm not writing but really at the heart of it, the reason I'm not writing is because I had taken the joy out of the writing process by approaching it from a masculine point of view. ย
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And so, for me, the journey over the last, you know, well, few years, really, but it's definitely the last year has been journeying into my feminine energy and allowing her and allowing parts of me that I had put into my shadow to come forth. ย
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And to realize the real strength and power in the feminine energy, and through language. ย
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And a lot of the ways and I mean, there's far more people out there that can go into this in far more depth than I can, I just kind of like feel it on intuitive level and notice certain things, but there's a lot of people out there who could give you a very big discourse on how women have been, you know, the feminine energy has as portrayed through society and culture as being a weakening and you know, things like don't cry, you know, don't be a big girl, things like that, like, it's kind of like the words and you know, the way parts of our genitalia are used as like, you know, you're used to p*$$y and things like that, right. ย
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And yeah, I don't know, if you can see my books, I've actually got books there about this very thing behind me that I'm still still making my way through. ย
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But basically, in general, there's this very unconscious belief system that is built into us that the masculine way of being strong and powerful, and the feminine way of being is very weak and powerless. And that's not true at all. ย
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You know, being in our feminine power is a strength, I mean, we grow, can grow, can give birth can can actually create a new being in our bodies. ย
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And there's nothing more powerful than that in the entire world, than being able to do that without needing, you know, test tubes. ย
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I mean, don't get me wrong, I know that some women do need it, I'm not taking away from their power within that. ย
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It's amazing that science can support women who do need this. ย
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But we can do it, like we all have the ability, women have this ability to create life and their bodies.
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And, and men can't do that. ย
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So the feminine power is actually a very strong power. ย
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But we also need the masculine. ย
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So the feminine power is the dreaming, the intuition, the creativity, but none of that is very grounded. ย
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It's all very, you know, maybe you know women who too, and when I say too much in the feminine, that's not the right way to say women who are very into the feminine and don't bring a lot of masculine energy, that kind of never end up getting anything done. ย
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They just flip from one thing to the other. ย
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And then always this and then networking and blah, blah and this and that and then and they don't stay focused on anything for long enough to actually achieve it or accomplish it. ย
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And it's that masculine energy that doing energy that we actually do need to do to bring in as well to actually function in life to get stuff done. ย
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So it's the blend with the two of these energies within us that we all have, men and women. ย
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So men have that creative, spontaneous, you know, intuitive, you know, beautiful softness and emotional bodies as well. ย
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But men have been taught not to go there, like that it's weak. ย
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That, you know, that, you know, emotions aren't allowed, and men have been very squashed in this culture as well. ย
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So women have been forced into the masculine, and men have been kept in the masculine and not allowed into their emotional bodies. ย
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And there's a lot of very depressed men out there, who don't feel heard, who don't feel seen, and they don't know how, how to be heard, because they're not even hearing themselves. ย
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They're not able to go in and be with what is there there's a lot of women doing this as well, right now able to go in and be with actually be honest with what is there inside of them. ย
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And so we have a culture that's, that's caught up in distraction, distraction and addictions. ย
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And you know, you might think that addictions like gambling and drugs and things like that, but in reality, addictions are a lot more subtle than that. ย
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Just something that you find yourself doing, rather than just being with yourself. ย
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You get an urge to scroll social media, rather than just sit and be still, that's an addiction. ย
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That's your brain trying to distract you from what's there inside and getting you into this thing. ย
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But you know, we have socially acceptable addictions, like watching TV, you know, scrolling social media, just always being out with people so that you're never alone. ย
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And then we have socially unacceptable addictions, where it's like hardcore alcoholism, drugs, you know, gambling, things like that, that are really frowned upon. ย
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But if we're really honest with ourselves, we all have addictions. ย
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So for me addictions, my addiction was working too hard. ย
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Never allowing myself to be with what was there. ย
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And then the other thing was eating, I used to binge eat. ย
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And you're not on a on a really bad scale, like, I wasn't binging and purging, but I would overeat, and I would, I would have this craving to go and put something into my mouth. ย
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It's almost like a pacifier. ย
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And I would work work, work, work, work, work, work. ย
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And then as soon as I broke, then it had to be eating. ย
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And then so I would work not to eat, alright, because I didn't like putting on weight and didn't like how I felt about myself when I was doing that. ย
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So I was caught in this little tug of war, working too hard, and then eating too much. ย
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And really not having a lot of peace with myself in my life and not being able to just sit still. ย
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And I used to like, you know, oh, it's only it's only four hours, so I can eat something.
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That's, that's just as bad as the person who's counting the hours that they can drink something, or have an alcoholic drink. ย
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But for some reason, going out and eating too much, and eating when we don't need to actually consume the food is socially acceptable. ย
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So we're totally honest with ourselves, we all have these addictions, we're just stopping ourselves from being in our emotional body, which is, you know, being in our feminine energy and being able to be honest with what's inside and there's a lot of people out there who are very depressed and very anxious because of this, and then they medicated.
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So rather than going in and looking at the reason for this thing, it's like the brain hormone chemistry and balance, which it possibly is. ย
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Absolutely, that's how it's manifesting. ย
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But how did it start? ย
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What was the what's the core root moment for this manifestation now of anxiety and depression and brain hormone imbalance in our body?
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So masculine, my masculine I was working way too hard and allowing my feminine energy space and allowing her just to create for the joy of it, there always had to be like, you know, focus, you know, making money through creativity or, you know, whatever it was. ย
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So I just came back from a one week Tantra retreat, with the beautiful Chantal Raven and her amazing support crew through the Awaken Embodiment Academy and I'm studying with them as a tantra practitioner, about to finish a one year training with them and going in as a coach for another year with them. ย
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And I went down and had an amazing experience at this retreat. ย
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And one night, we had conscious sexual night, so we had to dress as our conscious sexual self. ย
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So if we were a woman, we had to dress as our masculine energy or you know, and then men dresses the female energies.
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And here's the thing, so with this dance, with our female and masculine, we need both within us but you know, you probably heard me talking about the polarity that's created by insecure attachment style. ย
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So the anxious and the avoidant and how this creates this chemistry, this polarity between two people that when they come together, it just feels so right it feels complete. ย
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Oh my god, I've got my soulmate, my Twin Flame, whatever, when really, it's just their wounding speaking to each other and they're finding within the energy of each other, that which they know how to keep safe in and much much more. ย
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So this creates an unhealthy dynamic of polarity. ย
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Now, how do we create a healthy dynamic of polarity, is through our feminine and masculine energies with each other, where we allow the man to be in his masculine, in his depths of his space holding capacity, in his doing, in his providing, and we are in our feminine more, and now this is not 100%. But it's not a 50/50 either.
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If we come together in our 50/50, masculine, feminine, which is not going to be any polarity between us and we're just going to be like brother and sister and friends. ย
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So we need to create this polarity where, where we each have more of what the other needs in their life. ย
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So for instance, in my feminine, being able to be that creativity, being able to be that spontaneous, being able to be that loving presence, that adoring presence, and being able to be intuitive, and being able to be chatty, and being able to you know, talk about things and network and you know, just being able to just be beautiful in my feminine, but then also being able within my own life, to manage stuff and get shit done, right, in my business, but then allowing in relationship, my man to actually be able to take control, and to trust him, to trust that he can. ย
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And I know if I'm in a relationship with a man that I can't trust, then I'm in a relationship with the wrong person, right? ย
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So for me to find a masculine energy that's able to hold space for me to be in my feminine, in my flow to adore me, as I am, to not try and change me, to not try and make them more like them, to not try and put all of the doing on to me as well as everything else. ย
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But to allow them to be in their masculine, it's very important, the flow of the feminine and masculine. ย
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And this creates a beautiful polarity and a sexual chemistry within two people. ย
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That's a very healthy dynamic. ย
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So anyway, there we were at the tantra retreat, and the men were dressed as women, and they look beautiful, and we're all dressed as men, and then we had to perform. We had to do a performance.
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So you had to dance to a piece of music that kind of like embodied where our masculine or feminine energy was at.
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And you know, there's this maturity of this energy, when we first discover these two energies within us, often are quite immature, because often they were immature in our caretakers, they didn't know how to be in their masculine, and they didn't know how to be in feminine, they didn't have a deep presence. ย
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They weren't able to listen, actively listen and allow expression, but they were caught up in their own woundings. ย
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So we're often quite immature in our masculine and feminine energies when we first discovered them and really the tantric way of going into self and was what I learned with my spiritual healing and even my, you know, analytical hypnotherapy processes going into self, finding these root moments in time where these wounds were created, and being able to heal those moments that allow us to mature and to grow and hold space for ourselves and not to be trying to get other people to make us happy, other people to to solve our problems, right? ย
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It's really about taking responsibility for self. ย
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So I was dressed in my masculine and we had to either, you know, dance to a piece of music that embodied where our masculine or feminine was at, we had to sing a song, or we had to read a poem, write a poem or whatever. ย
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Now I can, I can dance. That's not a challenge for me. So I decided to write a poem. ย
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And I wrote a poem from my masculine energies point of view that I want to read to you. ย
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Before I do, because when I finish this poem, I'm going to finish this recording. ย
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But I wanted to just say that the best f*cking thing I have ever seen in my entire life, that brought me so much joy was watching a group of very masculine men who were doing the work, dressed up as women, with makeup and sexy skirts and you know, sequins and wigs, dance to Bulletproof and in their joy, just letting everything go and feeling that feminine energy and just to sit there and hold space for them and witness that. ย
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I reckon that is one of the best things I've ever seen in my life. ย
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Anyway, I'm going to read you this poem. ย
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So this is written from basically my masculine's point of view. ย
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Maybe a year ago, maybe a little bit longer than that when I first realized my... really, really acknowledged my work addiction, and how it was impacting me on a deep level. ย
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I thought I had to be serious.
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I thought I had to be strong. ย
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I thought I had to always compete, ย
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And that right was better than wrong. ย
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I thought that fun was not allowed. ย
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I thought hard work was good. ย
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I thought taking time off was weak. ย
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And that can't could never be good. ย
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But then one day, I wondered why, I was always sad. ย
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And why if all work and no play was good. ย
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Why did it feels so bad? ย
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And then I realized inside with me another part sat still. ย
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And she was lost in all my work. ย
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Her spontaneity, I'd killed. ย
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My other half, her eyes all sad. ย
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Her laughter was all gone. ย
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Her beating heart denied all life. ย
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Her opinions and feelings scorned. ย
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What's up, I said, approaching her. ย
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My curiosity was piqued. ย
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You never listen, she replied, her voice rising to a shriek. ย
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All you do is work, work work. ย
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There is never room for play. ย
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And if I want anything for me, you tell me not today. ย
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If you would only trust me, we could have so much more fun. ย
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We could dance and sing and play board games and spend time in the sun. ย
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I must admit, I was astounded. ย
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It had never occurred to me that there was another way than this,
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the way I'd always been. ย
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But what about the work? ย
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I asked. ย
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It can't always be about fun. ย
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Yes, she said, but listen up with you, the work is never done. ย
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We need to work together. ย
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So we can have a better life. ย
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And perhaps if you treat me well, I might even be your wife. ย
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I felt something unfurling, ย
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something deep inside me grew, ย
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I hope that there was a better way than this life I always knew. ย
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So now I listen to my love. ย
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I watch her as she dances, ย
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she is my new priority, ย
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I'm not taking any chances, ย
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I will cherish and adore her. ย
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So she will always know. ย
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There's nothing more important to me than allowing our union to grow. ย
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And, you know, that's really what you know, all the work I've been learning and doing is about, it's about our inner union. ย
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It's about being able to give ourselves what we need. ย
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And one of the biggest lessons for me was realizing that even within that space, I am allowed to ask others for what I need. ย
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But I shouldn't have any expectation around that. ย
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And I shouldn't make it mean anything about me if they don't want to give me what I want. ย
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And I shouldn't try and force somebody to do that. ย
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And I should always be able to either give it to myself or receive it from somebody else and not make one person in my life responsible for everything that I want to need. ย
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And in fact, most of it should be about me giving it to myself, so that when I come out into the world, it's really coming from a place of joy, and peace, and knowingness of who I am. ย
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And sharing and loving and giving and not from a place of grasping neediness, of trying to get somebody else to give me what I need. ย
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Trying to get someone else to make me happy. ย
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Trying to get someone else to make me feel safe, and loved and worthy. ย
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When in reality, if I don't already have that insight, if I'm not already giving that to myself, I can't accept it from anybody else anyway. ย
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And I'm always just trying to get more and more more, more more. ย
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And that's that neediness that's created when we're not giving it to herself. ย
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And we're giving it to ourself comes from this inner union, of being able to be really real with what's inside, to go into it. ย
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To be honest with ourselves, and to be able to sit in that, to sit in the nothingness of that and to work out who we really are. ย
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And that's a beautiful space to be in. ย
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And I hope you got something out of this and I hope you liked my poem, and I will see you next time.
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