3 Essential Daily Practices to Connect with Your Feminine Energy
Source: @Benshen.co
I feel like it’s only since I entered my 30s that I have developed an interest in, and appreciation for, connecting with my feminine energy and living from my body as well as my head. While we all carry both feminine and masculine energy in us, masculine energy has traditionally been the more valued and encouraged of the two. We are taught to identify with logic over intuition, thoughts over feelings, and doing over being, all which if taken too far can leave us feeling numb, disconnected from ourselves and even sick.
So how do we connect back to our feminine energy — that sacred other half of us — that has been neglected for too long?
First we have to understand what it looks like for us. For me, nurturing and connecting to my feminine energy means:
being attuned with my body and noticing the signals it gives me (i.e. the body’s intelligence)
feeling grounded in myself and my own needs and desires, rather than reflexively people pleasing
feeling connected to my sensuality and pleasure
taking care of my health, particularly my hormonal health
allowing for emotions to be expressed and move through me, rather denying or rationalising them
slowing down and appreciating small pleasures throughout the day
The following practices are ones I highly recommend if you are wanting to nurture and connect more with your healthy feminine energy. They only take 5-10 minutes each to do (or longer if you have time and want ) yet they are potent.
The practices I’m sharing will not only help you feel more soothed, radiant and grounded as you move through your day, but they are an investment in your long term emotional, physical and sexual health as a woman. To truly feel the benefits, I recommended doing these practices daily or at least 3-4 times per week. You will be lit up both on the inside and outside!
Womb Massage
Our womb is the seat of our feminine power. It’s where life is created and our creative energy resides. Yet it’s also where so much suppressed energy is stored, such as unprocessed emotions we carry from past negative life experiences.
A womb massage involves massaging your belly area with either slow, intuitive movements (whatever feels right for you) or a specific sequence of movements.
Doing womb massages has massive energetic and physical benefits. On an energetic level, our womb space is connected to the sacral chakra, the chakra associated with feelings, pleasure, intuition and creativity. When this chakra is unbalanced we may find it hard to receive, to attune to our needs or to maintain good boundaries with others. We may be stuck in perpetual people pleasing mode.
Massaging our bellies helps to shift stuck and stagnant energy that is held there and to open us up to more self-trust and attunement.
On a physical level, our wombs are directly connected to our hormonal and reproductive health. By bringing blood flow and warmth to the belly area through massage, we allow the lymphatic system to work optimally. With regular massage, we may notice the pain and cramping we feel around our periods lessen or completely disappear (this has been my experience!)
The nervous system feels the benefits too as our vagus nerve (the main part of our parasympathetic nervous system) is stimulated through the practice of womb massage. You will notice that even just gently resting your (warm) hands on your lower belly and breathing into it creates an instant feeling of safety and soothing.
We can also add a breast massage as a part of our womb massage practice (or as its own practice).
Massaging our breasts helps with lymphatic drainage (removing toxins from the breast tissue). This improves circulation and reduces the breast tenderness we feel before/during our period. Energetically, a breast massage can increase feelings of self-love and acceptance as our breasts are connected to our heart chakra. Rather than sourcing our worth from the outside, the practice of breast massage can help us to source it directly from within.
Movement
Have you ever had one of those moments where you are stressing out looking for your phone only to realise you’ve been holding it in your hand the entire time? Moments like this illustrate how utterly disconnected we can be from our own bodies. It’s usually easier for us to identify a thought we’re having in our head then it is to identify a sensation we’re feeling in our body (unless we are in pain!)
The constant screen time we have in modern life only heightens this disconnect we feel with our bodies, leading us to become overstimulated and burnt out.
Being able to tune into and feel what’s going on on a somatic-level is so important. It allows us to read our bodies’ signals more quickly (and therefore more better choices), to feel deeper levels of pleasure and vitality, and to stay rooted in ourselves. If we want to be more tapped into our feminine energy, then we need to able to move our energy from our mental plane - where it resides for much of our day - to the physical plane. And the easiest way to do this is through movement.
We can do slow stretches that focus on our spine, hips and pelvis such as cat/cow pose, the yogi squat/malasana and child’s pose. Stretching reawakens our body, bringing flow to our whole system, while movements that specifically focuses on our lower body helps to ground us and take us out of the head.
Dance is also incredibly powerful for embodiment. Freeflow, intuitive dance where we are not focused on how we look, but instead just following the lead of our body can leave us feeling joyful, powerful and absolutely magnetic. Allowing ourselves to move intuitively and freely can help unravel the inhibitions and stiffness we feel in our bodies, shifting stagnant energy, and filling us with a sense of confidence that emanates out of us.
Breathwork
Breathwork is another amazing practice that helps to still the thinking mind and open up our feminine flow. While some breathwork practices can be very activating and create stress in the body, such as those that involve involve quick, forceful breaths or long breath holds, we can also practice a softer, more feminine style of breathwork.
One of my favourite practices is to simply rest my hands on my lower belly and/or heart and to take slow, deep breaths, occasionally sighing on the exhale. Audibly sighing on the exhale brings us deeper into our parasympathetic state, invoking a feeling of safety and grounding from within. While placing our hands on our body enhances this soothing feeling (we know there is a natural connection between our hands and heart as our hands are joined with our heart when we begin growing in the womb).
Connecting with our breath connects us to our body and creates inner flow. If our breathing is shallow and restrictive then our ability to feel and move through our emotions will be restricted. But if our breathing is full and relaxed, then we can move through our emotions with much more ease.
Our breath is always mirroring what we’re feeling inside, but it’s also influencing what we’re feeling and setting our overall emotional state.
This isn’t to say you have to ‘breathe perfectly’ as this just creates another expectation we have to meet, instead what’s more important is to bring your awareness to your breath throughout the day and whenever you notice you’re holding your breath or breathing shallow, take a deep, cleansing breath and feel the immediate lightness that follows.
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I hope these practices will inspire you to cultivate a deeper connection with yourself in your day-to-day and lead to more magic, embodiment and flow.
—Kat