0:00:00.8: Recording here, recording here. And we're ready to start in 3, 2, 1, go.

0:00:23.5: Welcome to the Satisfied Woman podcast. My name is Alanna Kaivalya. This podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be the modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the hub at thesatisfiedwoman.com Welcome. I am so excited to be restarting my podcast. And as this is the very first podcast podcast in the Satisfied Woman series, I thought maybe I would take this opportunity to introduce myself a little further and discuss with you what this podcast is about, how it came to be, and hopefully what you'll be able to get out of it. I've been podcasting for a long time. In fact, I was the very first yoga teacher back in 2005 ever to have a podcast. And in that version of the podcast I actually ended up amassing over 2 million listeners. One of the things that taught me back in the early days of podcasting was how this truly levels the playing field for access to incredible knowledge and education.

0:01:38.7: Now, ever since then, I've been a huge fan of podcasts. That's what I go to when I want to learn something new, do a little more research, or just listen to my favorite subject, true Crime. So my name, as I said, is Alanna Kaivalya and I've walked a long road. I have been podcasting since 2005. I've had a few different versions of the podcast podcast. This, of course, is the most recent one and it's born out of my new work that talks about femininity and what it means to be a modern woman. My new book, the Way of the Satisfied Woman, is coming out in November of 2024 and this podcast is going to help support the work of that book and give you, my listener, an even greater resource for how to walk the way of the satisfied woman. Now, lest you think it's been an easy journey for me, it certainly hasn't. And I've come to this work through my own hardships, trials, struggles and tribulations of being a woman in this modern day life. So I thought maybe I'd give you a little bit of just an historical perspective on where I came from in the hopes that maybe you'll connect with it and see that you and I probably have some things in common.

0:02:54.8: In my history I've been in the yoga, wellness and spiritual fields for over 20 years and I Taught people worldwide. I used to lead retreats and workshops. And I created a successful online education business, View My own willpower called alannak.com now I have since sold that business and transitioned out of that industry. But through all of that time, I learned some things about what it is to be a woman and to have success and to live life on essentially the world or the patriarchy's or a man's terms. I've even authored books. I've had success based on anyone's standards. I've earned a decent amount of money in my past. I've created my own business. I made it in New York City. In fact, I lived in New York City for 16 years. That was an amazing time. I love New York City, but I often think of that place as my proving ground. I remember when I first moved to New York in 2007, thinking to myself how I had to elbow my way in and really make it in New York City. As they say, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I grew up in Denver, Colorado and left for the big city to pursue more opportunities and to really prove myself to the world.

0:04:13.1: Maybe you've felt that way too, that even in this modern times where we can sure have support from other people, there's this real intrinsic value on being able to do it yourself, do everything your own way, do it on your your own, and especially as a woman to show that you can. One of the things in my own personal history and my legacy that prior to now, I really haven't talked about very much is the fact that I grew up in a really challenging household. I had a father who was a con artist and was incredibly verbally abusive. And it became an incredible source of tension for me as a young woman. It taught me that I needed to leave that particular relationship in order to find my own value. But it also taught me that people couldn't be trusted or relied upon. And in my early 20s, in order to remove myself from that incredibly toxic environment, that terrible household, and that very challenging relationship with my father, not only did I have to get a restraining order against him, I ended up changing my last name. And it was at that time, in an effort to prove my own power and my own ability to make my own way in the world.

0:05:30.9: And my last name, as you see it now, is Kaivalya. That's actually a Sanskrit word that means the power of aloneness. And so I've lived with that aloneness and that real desire to want to do everything myself that entire time. Now, while I think it's incredibly important for every human, and especially every woman to know that she can do things on her own, her own. To know that she can do whatever she wants to in the world. And I 100% believe in that back that I've lived it. I also suffered a lot with that kind of barrier and wall around me that I can do it all myself. I don't need anyone else's help because I thought that's what I should be doing. So I lived that aloneness for a long time. I built my own business. I wrote my books. I put myself through my own education. I lived by myself in New York City. I was the one that everyone else relied. Now, that's often also something that women do, is they become the resource for everyone else, the one that everybody else comes to with their problems, the one that everybody else is supported by.

0:06:38.9: I found that to be quite exhausting. And I name that because maybe you feel the same way. I realized this was actually a hard way of doing things. And one of the things that I write about in my new book, the Way of the Satisfied Woman, is this idea of putting on the mask of the masculine. One of the things that the masculine polarity is is that support system for everyone else. Now, it doesn't mean that any human can't be that. But if you are a feminine woman, being in that role all of the time becomes exhausting. If the masculine is not your natural polarity, trying to hold everything together and hold the masculine for yourself as well as everyone around you becomes exhausting. Now, I got really good at it. I got great at it as a teacher, as a leader of my community, as a business owner, as a single woman living in New York on the dating scene, I felt no difficulty in navigating my life in the best way that I could. I felt this sense of armor, and I felt a real sense of power. But what I didn't feel was a sense of empowerment, and what I didn't feel was a sense of support.

0:07:53.4: And I was also really terrified of relaxing into the softness, the grace, and the serenity of being feminine. There wasn't any space for me to do that in this life that I created for myself, which, again, for all intents and purposes from the outside, looked really cool and really successful. I even ended up getting married during this time to a person that at first really seemed to be in the masculine polarity. He had a fantastic job. He lived in New York City as well. And he presented this idea that he could be a person that I could relax with and relax into. It didn't take long, though, for him to see how capable I was in that masculine polarity. And he ended up revealing his true self, which his polarity was feminine. So because his polarity was feminine, I end up once again donning the mask of the masculine and really supporting him through all of the time of our marriage. Now, that's nobody's fault. This isn't a blame game. This is just a state out loud. Again, some things that you might be experiencing as well, that when you present to the world this incredibly capable and hardened mask of the masculine, people start to expect that from you.

0:09:12.0: Now, while all of this was going on and I started to feel this discomfort within myself that I wasn't able to truly be myself, that I wasn't able to truly relax into my feminine polarity, that I didn't have a space to just be at ease, to be soft, to be creative, that I had to force my way into success with my business, that I had to armor up to walk around in the outside world, that I had to. You know, in the dating world, I don't know if you're single or not, but single in New York, there's an entire series about it, right? Sex in the City. You have to really own your masculinity in the dating world. You have to often ask people out for dates. You have to. You have to be armored, is the best way that I can describe it. Because that's what it felt like to me as I was going through this experience of living, of life, of being a married woman, being a business owner, being the support from my community and my friends living in New York, doing all of these things that I really thought I was supposed to do, that the patriarchy that our culture tells us that we should do, not asking for help, doing everything myself, I started studying more about the polarities of the masculine and feminine, and they became incredibly fascinating to me.

0:10:31.2: Now we really feel the tension of masculine and feminine in intimate relationship. It doesn't mean that it's not present in any other type of relationship. It is. It's present everywhere. And in fact, as human beings, all of us has both masculine and feminine energies within us. Regardless of gender, regardless of sexuality, regardless of how we find ourselves participating in the world. We all have both within us. It's just that one of them will be our more natural polarity. There will be one that we most often feel a pull to. And it's in intimate relationship that we're most able to find ourselves. The space, the safety the security to relax into that polarity and fully thrive in that dynamic. So it was my marriage that helped me to realize that I was once again finding myself in a place where I had to be in that masculine polarity, which is not my natural polarity. I'd become incredibly good at it, but it wasn't naturally who I was or who I wanted to be. And anytime any person inhabits a polarity that isn't theirs for too long, it becomes exhausting. It leads to burnout. For me as a teacher, it led to a lot of actually resentment towards teaching.

0:11:56.2: I didn't want to be that support for people anymore. I didn't want to keep putting myself out there and helping others in that way anymore. I didn't want to keep guiding them in that way anymore. And instead of finding the spaces and the softness and the ability to do that, because I had a place in my life to just be naturally who I was, I was always boxed into being the masculine. It became incredibly tense for me, and I got incredibly burnt out. So as one can imagine, this process of discovery, this process of study, this process of going through life as I thought I was supposed to, made me realize that there might be a different way.

0:12:38.2: So I got divorced right before the pandemic began. And once again, I was alone. And I had a year before the pandemic started, where I said to myself, you know what? I've been through this experience of marriage. It didn't work out. It taught me a lot. I was deepening my studies on masculinity and femininity through. I have a PhD in mythology and psychology. So I was going down the rabbit holes of philosophy, spirituality, psychology, reading everything I could on the masculine and feminine, studying with different people.

0:13:10.0: And I thought, you know what? I'll give a year off before I jump back into a dating scene. And then the pandemic hit, and it gave me another two years for free. But the other thing that it did, because I was living in Queens in New York City at the time, it was right at the heart of where the pandemic took hold here in America. And I was in a place where the prevailing wisdom at the time was don't talk to people, stay alone, don't interact. And of course, I living alone. So I had a period of months where I actually didn't interact with another human. I spent hours disinfecting my groceries before I brought them into my home. The only time I left my apartment was to walk my little dog, Roxy, around the block. And anytime I'd see another human coming, I'd have to cross the street. So it reinforced this aloneness that I had already been feeling, this armor that I had already really put on for so many years that felt incredibly inauthentic. I didn't have this space to just release, relax, be in my creativity, be in a place of softness, to tap into emotions, to feel my intuition.

0:14:25.9: I had to protect myself from the world. And of course, one of the greatest and foremost qualities of the masculine is protection, but I had to provide that for myself the whole time. So the pandemic really knocked something loose inside of me. We could say, and again, this might not just be true for me, but also for you. And that state of aloneness that was a forced aloneness because of the conditions of the pandemic, drove home in such a poignant way how much this mask of masculinity just wasn't going to work for me anymore, how it was time to explore something different and how I really needed to understand what it meant to be a feminine woman in the modern world and how to create that for myself so that I could live my life not as a successful woman, 'cause I'd already done that, but as a satisfied woman. I realized that this is the way I needed to start living. And through all of the research and study I'd been doing on femininity and masculinity, and I'd already started teaching about it, I was realizing that there was a true need for more education around this.

0:15:41.5: What's interesting to me, as I started doing research into femininity and masculinity, and this may not be surprising to you as a listener, there is so much more support for the masculine. The masculine has its own movements. It has its own teachers, people that I respect in the movement. David Deida started the movement with the Way of the Superior man, his book. I appreciate John Wineland's work. I like the work of Traver Boehm. There are others in that genre who have men's groups, men's memberships, men's support, men's books. There's not a lot for women. And I think that's probably more of a, you know, we find that anyway in the patriarchy, don't we? There's just not a lot of support for women, for the feminine. There's not a lot of research on this because it's still devalued and it's still tremendously misunderstood. But when I started talking about this polarization of masculinity and femininity, when I started telling my Feminine woman friends about the work that I was doing, the research that I was doing, the things I was experiencing, the feeling of the mask of the masculine, the way it is to be a woman in the world.

0:16:57.0: They started listening. I could see their faces change and light up and I could almost feel and sense their relaxation and their inner knowing of, ah, yes, this idea of femininity feels good. Wouldn't it be nice to create a life of satisfaction where I'm able to relax into it? So this is why, as a result of all of these things, the last 20 to 25 years of my life, achieving success on a man's terms, that I decided it was time to start achieving satisfaction on a woman's terms and on the terms of the feminine and really highlighting and glorifying the feminine and what it means to be a feminine woman, or what it means to be a person who leans in to the feminine polarity. So one of the things that helped me do this as I was navigating this way, because remember, and again, I'm assuming that this might be true for you as well. I'd gotten really good at armoring up with the masculine. And once again, all of us as humans, we do have masculine and feminine within us. And there will be times in our life that we pull one or the other forward, depending on what it is that we need.

0:18:18.4: We might bring forth one or the other for an hour, let say to record a podcast. We might bring one or the other forth for a couple of hours if we're having an emotional moment or need to process through something. However, if we bring forth our not our natural polarity for too long, if we get stuck in it for too long, that's where we run into detriment. That's where we run into exhaustion. And that's what I want to help us prevent, especially for those of us who identify as a feminine woman. It's not easy to be a feminine woman. Maybe that's stating the obvious, but it's not. We don't have a lot of space and support and understanding for what it means to be a feminine woman, even in the face of all of the women's movements of today.

0:19:11.0: Most of the women's movements have actually been written or are set to the bar of a man's terms. Success is based on a man's terms. What we think we should do or how we should be in the world is often based on what men or the patriarchy have told us. It's time for something a little bit different. So one of the things we can do is realize what the qualities of the feminine are. Now again, there's. There's not a. It's not a good or a bad. The feminine or the masculine are not good or bad. They simply are. And they have qualities. Each can be distorted, each can be used not in a healthy way. Each can be, you know, we lock ourselves into one or the other for too long, burn ourselves out. When they're expressed fully, completely, in a way that feels natural, in a way that feels easeful, then we have a healthy expression of one or the other, whichever polarity we are on or whichever polarity we happen to be expressing at the time.

0:20:15.6: So I want to talk about the qualities of the feminine, maybe even versus the masculine, because they are in opposition to each other, they are in complement to each other. They are in polarity with one another. There is a tension of opposites here that in themselves balances each other out. They're both within us again, which makes us a whole and complete human. And when we are in relationship with another, it also helps to balance us in relationship again, regardless of how that looks with orientation or gender.

0:20:43.2: So let's start with nourishing versus nurturing. And I love this one to start with. Because people often assign nurturing as a quality of the feminine. We think of our mothers as being nurturing. Nurturing is actually a quality of masculinity. If we look up the definition of nurturing, it is to foster growth, it is to foster forward movement education, it is to foster something good, to bring forth something. And that's really the masculine's job, is to foster growth and education in those around us, to make sure that we're directing and guiding those around us, especially when it comes to children or people who need support. Women are often placed into this role as primary caregivers of children. But it's a masculine trait. The complementary trait for the feminine is nourishing to feed, to support from the inside out. And the feminine actually needs to be nourished. We feel most feminine when we are at a state of relaxation. When I think of nourishment, I don't just think of eating incredible food that makes you feel completely satisfied or satiated. I think of being in a state of relaxation. For some that may be a spa or a hot springs, or for some that may be a massage.

0:22:04.8: For some that may be a glass of wine on the couch. For some that may be laying out in the desert or on the beach or sailing in a boat. Whatever it is that makes you feel most alive. That generates the quality of life within you. That makes you feel like your cells are just shining and brimming over with life energy. That's true nourishment. And it is this welling up quality from within that is nourishment. Whereas nurturing is an empowerment from without, from outside. Where we are given direction, we're given education, we're given guidance. So the feminine is to nourish and the masculine is to nurture. Another opposite that we have to highlight. What the feminine is, is communion and collaboration versus competition. When we think of what it means to be successful in the world. And remember, I played this game of success for a very long time, and you might be playing it too. That's an incredibly masculine game to play. Success means stepping over others. It's a hierarchical process of achieving something over and above everyone else. That's not how the feminine does things. The feminine feels not success, but satisfaction when she is able to commune and collaborate with those around her, when everyone has a sense of participating and, let's say, winning in an environment.

0:23:32.8: So in the business world, typically that kind of behavior is not valued. When we get into a boardroom, we want somebody at the head of the table to tell us what to do and to make decisions. Whereas the feminine in a boardroom would be more like at a round table, asking for input and direction from everybody, making sure that whatever the decision is, it actually has the benefit or the highest good of all involved. So the feminine is communion and collaboration, whereas the masculine is competition. And there's nothing wrong with a little bit of healthy competition. Again, the challenge is when we get locked into that and we feel like that's the only way to be, it's not. We have another option. We also have intuition as feminine women and emotion. And I contend, after all my research and now having written the book, that emotion and intuition are the most powerful qualities of the feminine. Now, again, I know I've stated this a couple of times, but I can't drive it home enough. Every human has both masculine and feminine. So even the most masculine people are going to have emotions and intuition. They may not rely on them as much as those who identify as the feminine, but they still have them and they can call upon them when needed.

0:25:01.0: But for those of us who identify as feminine woman, this is our greatest strength. And what's interesting, and actually, perhaps not, this is the thing that becomes most vilified in our culture, in our dominant culture, it's the thing that is most misunderstood. And even as a woman. I remember for so long trying to repress my intuition and stamp down my emotions because they are either terrifying to those around me or even terrifying to myself. If I can't logic my way through something, how is anybody going to take me seriously, especially as a business owner? Trying to make decisions based on my intuition was almost always second guessed, either by myself or by my team, when in reality it is the intuition and emotions of the feminine that is its greatest strength. Our intuition comes from something inside of us, and I like to point to the movement and the new science of epigenetics for this. I had a very powerful relationship as a young woman with my grandmother. I wish this for everybody, only because this was one of my most sacred relationships in my lifetime. And I think about all of the things that she went through as a woman in her time.

0:26:23.4: She went through World War II as a prisoner in a prison camp in Germany. She was Ukrainian and she had a lot of difficulties she was separated from her family. Her village was burnt down and she came to America as a refugee 13 years after the war and started her family in Denver. And that's where I'm from. And I think about that wisdom of hers being passed down through her DNA, through my mother's DNA, to my own DNA. And when I think about my intuition, I actually hear it as her voice. Now she's no longer with us, she hasn't been for many years, but I hear it as her voice. Something that she experienced, something that she knew down to her bones coming through time in my own ancestry to speak to me now. And it doesn't have to make any sense. Intuition often doesn't make any sense. It's not logic. Logic is the domain of the masculine, and we need that too. But intuition is priceless, and it always guides us on a true north path. It always does. Now, if we get an intuitive hit, we may need to back it up with some logic or utilize some reason in order to get to the finish line on whatever that intuition is.

0:27:40.9: But what's really detrimental for the feminine is the suppression of it or the ignoring of it, because it's our greatest gift. And this is something that I will definitely be talking about much more on future podcasts. The other element of this is emotion. One of the things that women hear, and I'd be surprised if you're listening and you haven't heard this all the time, often is anytime emotions come up in a way that is maybe unexpected or in a way that is maybe inconvenient for those around us or devalued by those around us. One of the things that women are often called as crazy, we're not. Emotions are a full experience of being human. And when we have permission to emote in our full capacity, we are actually simply experiencing what it's like to be human. And emotions are valuable. They come from our unconscious mind. They give us signals about what may be right or good for us. They help us process life. Life's experiences and the suppression of emotion leads to incredible suffering for any human. This is what therapy is for. This is what a lot of psychology is used to address.

0:29:05.2: And if we were able to simply value emotions in their time and in their place, if we had, we were able to hold the space for emotions as they arise, we would learn the lessons that they hold, which is what might be good or it might be right or might be true for us. And when we follow what is good and right and true, when we're listening to our intuitions, when we're guided by our emotions, we live a life of satisfaction. And we can use reason and logic to back it up. The masculine does that. That's the masculine's job. That's what helps us stay on track and guide ourselves forward. The emotions might create a set of circumstances that point to discomfort, and then reason and logic will help to direct us away from it or resolve the issue. But both are necessary in order get to a good and right and true place for us. Now, realizing these things, after all that I had been through, trying to muscle my way through, don the mask of the masculine, get to the the top of the ladder, build my own business, achieve success, have the marriage, do whatever it is that I thought the world or the patriarchy was telling me to do, realizing the power of nourishment, communion, collaboration, emotions, intuition, that's really where my power lies as a feminine woman was revolutionary.

0:30:26.9: Leaning into that, creating the space for myself in my life to have that level of satisfaction has been a game changer. This is why I write about it and why I teach about it, and why I have realized that it's something that every woman needs to know. I hope that every woman is able to know this. I understand that we still live in a difficult time, that we still have these patriarchal values placed upon us, that we still may have the sense or the desire to achieve success, to rise ourselves up the corporate ladder, to achieve whatever it is we need to achieve, or even to don the mask of the masculine. All of these things are okay. But if there is a sense of discomfort if you do feel like there's a little bit more inside of you that is yearning to blossom, then I wish that for you, my fellow satisfied woman. I wish that you have the ability to create a life of safety, security, trust and that you are cherished by those around you in order to walk the way of the satisfied woman. This is what this podcast is designed to help you do.

0:31:37.2: I will continue to explore topics in this area. I will continue to show you what it is to be a satisfied woman and help you walk that path, if not through my book or this podcast but also through my website thesatisfiedwoman.com so thank you so much for being here with me on this journey. I appreciate you letting me pivot and begin this journey with you and I look forward to doing this together because this is a collaborative experience and I appreciate who you are and I hope to help you walk the way of the satisfied woman.