| I’ve been geeking out a lot lately on Her-story (rather than history: His-story), and the deliberate ways that feminine energy has been suppressed, vilified and erased. As I learn more about the Divine Feminine and begin to connect more and more deeply to my own feminine nature, I am feeling so much more alive, more powerful, more ME! I’ll be talking more about some of the elements of the Divine Feminine in the coming weeks, and I’m going to start by talking about E-motions, our energy-in-motion. Our emotions are one of the key ways we connect to our life force energy (and hence one of the reasons patriarchy wants us to be cut off from them!). Our emotions aren’t “good” or “bad”, they are simply energy in motion. Our life force energy moving through our bodies. It can take a variety of forms – anger, sadness, grief, laughter, joy, elation – it’s all energy. Not good or bad. Simply energy moving through us. Where we get into trouble is when this energy doesn’t have a way to flow through us and creates dis-ease in the body. In my experience, allowing myself to express my emotions – my energy in motion – has been a key way I’ve been reconnecting to my life force energy. Like many women, I used to try to suppress my anger. Nice girls don’t get angry, right?!?! What a load of crap! Anger is a natural human emotion – often as a result of an over activated “fight” response from our nervous system because we’re over-giving, not expressing and honouring our own boundaries or in some way giving our power away. As I’ve progressed through my healing journey and have been reclaiming my power more often, I don’t get as angry. I am able to catch myself sooner – noticing the aggress-energy arising and a) doing something to help it move through my body and b) looking at where I am giving my power away, then making new, more aligned choices. Before I had kids, my favourite two ways to move aggress-energy through my body were a) beating the crap out of my bed which usually involved a LOT of swearing or b) taking a damp tea towel and slapping it against the leg of the dining room table where it would make an awesome cracking noise as it the tea towel hit the wood, and again a LOT of swearing! When my daughter was younger, I didn’t want to scare her with the loud noises, so I would often have to scream and swear into a pillow with our bedroom door closed so the noises were muffled. It wasn’t quite as good, but still did the trick. What about you? How do you move aggress-energy through your body? Are you able to find safe ways of allowing yourself to express some of the anger you’re feeling? Do you judge yourself for feeling angry or are you able to see it as an expression of your life force energy? For the past 6 years, my tears have been one of the primary ways I’ve been reconnecting with my life force energy, and I’ve come to love my tears as a gateway to my aliveness! For the first few years of my healing journey through burnout and a rough menopause transition, I cried A LOT!!! I had a box of kleenex in every room of the house and was going through them at an alarming rate! I would watch “sappy” movies just so I could let the tears flow. I would curl up in my bed with the teddy bear my daughter made me and allow the waves of heaving sobs to flow through. And one of my favourite ways to move the energy would be to go out for a walk around the golf course near our home with sunglasses on, and as I moved my body, outside in nature, the tap would turn on and the tears would flow. It felt so healing. So cathartic. Although I don’t cry nearly as much as I used to, I am still a very sensitive person. I feel things very deeply, and my body continues to use tears as a primary way to move energy. One of the big things that’s changed, though, is that I now LOVE my tears. I welcome them. I honour them. I am grateful for them, as they help me feel so alive! As I mentioned earlier, emotions aren’t positive or negative, they’re just energy in motion, and as I’ve supported myself in fully expressing my life force energy when it shows up through either anger or through tears, it’s created increased capacity to feel ALL of my emotions, including joy, laughter, elation, excitement. When we suppress our anger and/or our sadness, grief or any other emotion we’ve been taught is “negative”, we also suppress all the “positive” energy as well. Our capacity to feel the fullness and aliveness of life is directly related to our body’s capacity to allow energy to flow. As I’ve reconnected with my life force energy, I can feel the energy of my inner child rising up within me. This beautiful energy of a 6-9 year old child, where life is about creating, playing, having fun and is full of magic and miracles. She’s meeting with the wisdom of the woman who’s been on the planet for 55 years and has been through a lot. Together, they are an amazing combination, and one that I wouldn’t have been able to access without allowing myself to open up to my life force energy through emotional expression. How about you? How do you relate to your E-motions? Your energy in motion? Are you able to see it as your life force energy moving through you or do you notice that you hold yourself back because you’ve been taught that anger is bad or tears are a sign of weakness? What would it look like to challenge those thoughts and to give yourself permission to allow your life force energy to begin to move through you? To begin a “conversation” with your body about how it would like to express itself? Similar to last week, I’ve recorded a short “podcast” voice message for you. This is one of the ways I’ve been practicing allowing my life force energy to move through me – from my heart to yours. I hope you enjoy it. Sending you so much love sister, Until next week, Shana * I understand that these newsletters and audio messages offered by Dr. Shana Johnston are designed to help me tap into my own inner wisdom and find my own answers. I understand the information presented by Dr. Johnston is based on a combination of her personal experience and current medical knowledge in a constantly evolving field where a variety of different opinions exist. I understand that the ideas and information presented should not act as a substitute for the individualized advice of my qualified and licensed healthcare practitioner. In reading/listening to the material presented, I agree to accept full responsibility for my interpretation of any content I consume, and thereby release Dr. Shana Johnston from any liability related to the information and ideas presented in any of her offerings. |