This is the eighth in a series, WomanKind on reclaiming the feminine.
The body heals when I feel. Where does the pain reside, what does it need, what is love wanting to say to this place of discomfort, contraction, pain? How is the body teaching me to receive it? It’s a unique voice in all of us.
I am giving the power of my body over to woman mystery and woman medicine; to trust the wisdom of my body to know best.
Creating a beloved relationship with the body goes against the grain. Our culture teaches us through myth and storytelling that a woman’s body and the emotions that dwell there are not to be trusted; to be denied, suppressed, shamed, scorned, feared, objectified, controlled and forced into slavery through cultural distortions of the feminine and masculine.
With a youth obsessed culture, in an aging population we try to fix every little flaw or niggle, rather than see the symptom as a solution, a messenger with important news. We shoot the messenger instead.
At no time is this more apparent than menopause when we need our unwavering love and devotion to all of ourselves; our hot flushes, dry vaginas, loose papery skin, varicose veins, life scars, our wobbly, floppy bits. Menopause offers the perfect opportunity to tell the story differently and rewrite the myths; to find a way to celebrate being woman, an aging woman.
As I age, belonging to the body is more about exploring inner feminine landscapes: stillness, reflection, receptivity, gentleness, wisdom. Less about muscular, masculine, mind work and doing. Less about knowing where I’m going and more about surrendering and belonging to the greater body of Gaia, the Great Mother.
My body is a valley, a vessel, a container of memories, a well, a stream, a mountain. a place to come home to.
(The body is not)… a place we leave in order to soar to the spirit…the body is the rocket launcher. In its nose capsule, the soul looks out of the window into the mysterious starry night and is dazzled.
Clarissa Pinkloa Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves
We can understand the body as a series of doors, thresholds, and transitions through which we can enter and are alchemised, metabolised, and transformed.
My body is the memory keeper of everything that has ever happened to me. Long held trauma and emotions stored in cells, muscles and sinews are progressively noted and released through the work that reconnects: body work, breath work, soul work.
On some days, though the doors are locked and bolted to the intuition of the body, I kneel on the threshold when every fibre of my being wants to run, repelled by the pain of existence. I stay. I am learning not to push, raise fits, force or break down the door. In the unknowing liminal space I have to stay with my feelings, my embodied experience and in the words of Matt Licata, “find gold not in a wound that’s already healed, but gold in a wound that’s weeping.”
Access to the anteroom of the heart is granted through loving kindness and gentle coaxing of the body: simply holding myself and breathing into the crunchy spaces, meditation, movement like Qigong, essential oils, hot baths, time in nature. The feminine arts of womb hara massage, belly dance, Yin or Shakti yoga, and womb steaming can allow the door to open and to fall in love with the view all over again.
As our bodies beckon us over the threshold, and start to talk with a clearer voice we feel embodied and emboldened. We naturally choose foods that support energy uplift and reduce toxic burden. We choose daily, lunar and seasonal routines that nurture our nervous system. We choose better company to be around, find our tribe, support systems and partners. Listening and responding to our unique body allows us to fully embrace “this one wild and precious life.”
And in these times, our body has become bio-political.
When we choose to belong to our sovereign body – like the movement #thankyoubodyrally – we protect our bodies from being manipulated, legislated against and a possession of the state. We take loving responsibility and share our healing journey with others. Our good health, no our vibrant health, is a radical act of resistance to the status quo, resilience to disease, our greatest weapon. Our immune system is ours to challenge and strengthen with foods, plant medicine, energy medicine. No disease can be our health destiny.
The work that reconnects and heals the feminine belongs collectively to all woman, and sharing the journey creates sweet sisterhood. We co-regulate our nervous systems together in an intoxicating soup of oxytocin, the bonding hormone. This is women’s work; we are not meant to heal and transform all on our own.
We also journey in communion with a larger presence – God, spirit, the great mystery, source – that holds and tends our scars and wounds a testament to a life that’s risky and uncomfortable but deeply lived. It’s an excavation into deep, muddy waters; nourishing, holy, scary, solitary work.
It goes bone deep to reconnect the body that bleeds without dying, makes love, creates music, sings and dances, raises a racket, speaks up about injustice, gives birth and feeds babies, the soul that becomes Maga, mage-like and wise to the mysteries of womancraft when the bleeding has stopped. This is the work that rewrites myths and shapes stories that place woman in the centre of all things.
Blessings on the journey x
Please check in with the directory of spirited health practitioners that is being updated all the time. I can heartily recommend them as guides in the work that reconnects the feminine.