Lessons From Athens

Ancient Athenians held women in reverence. They wrote stories about their power, their immovable strength, their capacity to love so deep that it was literally transformative. They saw women as healers and warriors, willing to go to the depths of hell and back again for the ones they loved. Women in their myths were the main characters, not simply the stage hands or at best the side kicks. You are the main character of your life. Not the person you love, your children, your friends or your career. You. And you, and only you, have the power to write the story your character gets to star in.

EXCERCISE With this in mind, journal from the prompts below.

• If you are the author of your life, what pieces of the story you’re living in this moment would you want to emphasis?

  • Is there a part of you that you want to see more of?

  • Is there something that you want to do more of?

  • Are there certain people, experiences, or places that you want to play a larger role?

• If you were the author of your life, what pieces of the story you’re living in this moment would you remove?

  • What is not in alignment with the story you want to write?

  • What/who is not serving you becoming the best version of yourself?

• Who do you want the side characters in your story to be?

  • If they aren’t in your life yet, what type of people do you want to make space for?

    • Making space can look like removing people that aren’t serving you becoming your highest self or choosing to push past your fear to allow love in.

• If someone were to read your story long after you were gone, what would you want them to read about your life?

Thinking of yourself as the most important person in your life story may feel wrong or uncomfortable, especially if you have lived your life constantly putting others before you, so use this an exercise to see what blocks may be keeping you from living a life you're fully and completely in love with. Do you experience guilt for prioritizing your growth over your partner/parents/friends comfort? Does shame for being “full of yourself” or “egotistical” come up as you state what you truly want for your life? The blocks you notice will teach you just as much as the exercise itself. Side note: I realize that there are certain situations where our obligation to another may feel like a block to us living our fullest life. However I think its important to know that in most cases those people are not actual blocks, it our ideas about how those people would respond that holds us back the most.

Embodiment & Intuition

EMBODIMENT is the process of becoming alive to the signals of our bodies. The awareness of the signals of the body can also be described as sensual recognition. Being with the full array of sensory and emotional perception allows us to savor the full human experience: body, mind, and spirit – alive, open, and integrated. INTUITION is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. By just reading those definitions you are probably already able to recognize just how important embodiment, or being in and aware of your body, is for developing your intuition. Despite popular belief, intuition is not magic, but rather a fine tuned awareness of our bodies and our senses. We are born gifted with an incredibly powerful connection to our intuition, however life circumstances can tend to take away our ability to perceive it. Traumatic experiences that overwhelm our nervous system, religious views that convince us that our flesh is bad and not to be trusted, and not being emotionally attuned to as children by our parents are all common factors that cause us to dissociate from our body's messages. While learning to sense your body can be an emotionally triggering journey, especially if you have intentionally disconnected from it for many years in order to make it through life, we all have the ability to reconnect with our bodies and regain our ability to use our intuition. Reconnection to our intuitive signals relies primarily on two factors: perceptivity and skill training. These two, combined, determine how much we are able to intuit and productively use the information that we receive. Below are some exercises to help you learn to perceive the messages your body is sending. In the next email we'll chat about the skill of attuning.

EXCERCISES How much you perceive depends largely on how relaxed your body is. The information of our bodies is always available to us, but the stimuli of modern life can dull our sensory perception. The noise and tension of a stressful life can drown out the intuitive information our body continually receives. In order to make sure you are able to turn into the messages from your body you should start by being intentional about relaxing. Then once you've done a relaxation exercise start tuning into your body.

RELAX

ENERGETIC CLEANSE

Take a moment in the shower to notice the water hitting each part of your body, starting with your toes, moving up to the tops of your feet, to your ankles, to your lower legs, and continuing up until you reach the top of your head. If while doing this you begin to notice any tension in any part of your body lean into the tension by slowly tensing the muscle even more. Squeeze and tighten as you inhale for a moment, then exhale and let go of the tension as much a you can. Notice the sensations as you relax.

Other ways to intentionally relax include taking a magnesium bath, listening to binaural beats with your eyes closed, legs-up-the-wall pose, and self massage. Remember that being intentional about relaxation is not self indulgent, it is a requirement for your physical and mental health.

PERCIEVE

AWARENESS EXERCISE

Start by finding a comfortable position, one that you can hold for 5 to 10 minutes. Set a timer for the time that you choose and simply allow your mind to notice and track the sensations in your body. The key is to stay away from processing or questioning the information cognitively. Once that happens the raw data from your body becomes skewed by doubt, projection, and our conditioning tends to gets in the way. As you track the sensation notice the texture, temperature, and any other accompanying tactile sensations.

The Importance of Tending our Feminine Energy

Feminine energy is represented by all that is formless, expansive, and magnetic.

The moon, water, and nighttime all encompass this energy.

When we have a healthy relationship with our feminine energy we are highly attuned to the more subtle and formless aspects of human consciousness, such as intuition and emotions.

However, in today’s world the dominant energy that drives us is predominantly masculine. Masculine ideals such as assertiveness, competitiveness, and a preference for facts over feelings are praised and prioritized. These characteristics are certainly not negative and there is a place for them in each of our lives, but our society’s preference for them allows them to drive us forward at a pace that feels out of sync with our natural rhythms.

In modern life many women spend much of our lives embodying our masculine energies in order to be “productive" in society and find it difficult to surrender into our feminine - leading with more of an intuitive, fluid, and gentle energy. Especially those of us with a history of trauma can have a tendency to embody our warrior archetype (masculine energy) as a protection mechanism. This leaves little space for connection to ourselves and healing to take place.

It’s more imperative than ever that we also remember to nurture, nourish, heal, and restore the feminine side of our beings. A balance between masculine and feminine energies is essential for overall health and well-being for each of us.