Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 0:00
PH, if it comes as a shock to you that it's already December, well, I think you're not alone. This year has flown by, and before we roll too deep into the holidays, I wanted to show up for you with some support around not over giving this December and giving you some tips and tools to opt out, because, as I like to remind you, the feminine phrase is no, not Yes. Welcome to the satisfied woman podcast. I'm your host. 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 a modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the hub at the satisfied woman.com and if you haven't visited thesatisfiedwoman.com yet, make sure that you click on over there, because I've got a three part feminine reset series waiting just for you. It's right on the homepage. You can't miss it. And the whole point of this three part session is to start giving you the tools you need in order to recalibrate your nervous system and embrace your femininity. Because if you've been in a state of burnout for even a moment. That's far too long. So let's back that up. Get yourself reset, and you can find it all there at the satisfied woman.com so make sure you go check that out. Now, look, if you've listened to any of my podcasts, you've heard me talk about how 80% of women would describe themselves as feeling burnt out. You heard me talk about how it is in our cultural dynamic to encourage women to over give to give themselves away, and in doing so, they actually devalue themselves as women. This is not new news, and this is part of our social and cultural dynamic that it's just inbuilt into this world that we're all living in. None of us designed it. No one's really to blame. It's just been so part of our collective consciousness that people have not questioned it quite yet, but that's what you and I are doing here on the satisfied woman podcast and over at the satisfiedwoman.com because let me tell you something, women are waking up, and I have the great privilege of working with women, both individually, in groups and in My membership, who are looking around and realizing this world was not designed with us in mind, but luckily, we exist in a time where we have more power, agency and choice than we ever have before. So it's time to exercise it and start really deciding for ourselves what actually creates satisfaction in our lives. So this is a testy time, December. No matter what culture you come from or what holiday you celebrate, the end of the year is jam packed with stressors, triggers, obligations, resentments, expectations, you name it now, regardless of culture, maybe religious background, spiritual orientation. What I do want to turn your attention to quickly before I get into some skills and strategies for opting out over the holidays, is the fact that this time of year, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere, is a time where the days are getting darker, and then on around the 21st of December, we hit this Solstice day, and this is the shortest day of the year again, for us here in the northern hemisphere, for you lucky folks down under, is your longest day of the year. So you'll be talking about this or thinking about this in six months. But on this shortest day of the year for those of us here in the North, what we're psychologically going through is this collapse into darkness. We're finding ways reasons our bodies are pre programmed to be more introspective. Now that can be a really positive thing for us as women, in fact, because we live with cycles. Our bodies are so attuned to nature, we're likely feeling it very powerfully. And I want to turn your attention to that, because part of the work we do with the satisfied woman is attuning to our own body, our own rhythms, our own nature, our own intuition, our desires, what we actually need from our lives and what we're actually getting. So at a time of year where life, the universe, even the weather, is telling us to relax, go inward. Tend to yourself, be introspective. Oddly, most. Times this holiday season is calling us in completely the opposite direction. Go outward over give host parties, go to parties. Look your best, decorate. Make sure you have the best decorated house on the block. It's really antithetical to the energetics of the season. So here we are just looking at this with eyes open, glasses on, if you're like me, recalibrating our energy to be more in tune with what our bodies have been in alignment with since time immemorial. Women run by cycles, by rhythm. We are calibrated to nature, the moon. So the psychological reality of Nature giving us coldness and darkness, it has an effect. So let that be some wild woman permission giving for you to accept and unapologetically lean into any feeling you have around this time of year of kind of drawing inward, tending to extra self care, releasing what no longer serves you. Because in this season of over giving it might be time to opt out. Now we've got a lot of cultural conditioning around this season, because holiday burnout is real. No matter who you are, no matter how you identify, we're all falling prey to the pressures of what happens over this season, whether it's just holiday parties, whether it's family obligations, whether it's that huge gift list you need to tend to, whether it's the hosting, the cooking, you name it. Now let me reframe, because we often have a cultural image in mind, and I can pull it up in my mind right now, I hope that you can too, of the hostess at Thanksgiving. My mind calls up a classic, perhaps 1950s 1960s image of a housewife who's doing all the heavy lifting, cooking, hosting, cleaning, dirty work, in her heels, her corseted dress with the crinoline underneath to make a poof out her tightly coiffed hair, and she's leaning over the oven, of course, pulling out a perfectly cooked turkey. So if that's kind of the classic stereotypical image of the hostess over the holidays. Let's just take that apart. Because I think if we were to ask that particular stereotypical image, if we could bring that character to life, if she's having fun, if she's in her joy, if she's in her creativity, if she feels well rested, if she feels nourished by these activities, my guess is she might smile and grit through her teeth and give a polite yes to all those questions because she's so indoctrinated into her over giving and her giving herself away is a symbol of her worth that she doesn't know how to issue her sacred No. But what those stereotypical kind of holiday hostessing ideas are, is actually a masculine pattern, a coping strategy, and it's not even a high healthy masculine. It's a distorted masculine that women, for a very long time have worn like armor in order to be useful and included. Now, I know that sounds maybe reductive, because what I what I don't want to do is put anybody off to the holidays. I am not a Grinch. In fact, I love Christmas. My birthday falls in December, and I have always loved this time of year. I love the lights. I love the sparkles, I love the parties, I love the gifts. I love everything about this time of year, I truly do,

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 9:09
but I don't love anything that overburdens the feminine. And I believe there's a way to enjoy this holiday season and really deepen our experience of what this season means to us, no matter what background we come from, even if it is just this introspective idea of really connecting with what's important to you, what's most valuable to you, where You may choose to offer your energy or be generous, as opposed to where you may be obligated, forced or coerced into over giving. So remember, a lot of the work that I like to do here with you on the podcast is permission giving, just someone out here a voice saying, I hear. You girl, and I do I see you. I see you, sister. I talk about these things because the women I talk to every week are talking to me about these things. So this masculine, this unhealthy, distorted, masculine armor that we don, this managing, or even micromanaging the holidays, the over planning of vacations or outings or guests coming over the controlling of every element of this particular month, the anticipation, which really escalates into anxiety for a lot of us, the performing, acting like we have, the energy for all of this when it's possible that we don't even in a month like this where, yes, it gets busy, and absolutely there are probably things we want to attend to or attend. I want to remind you of the feminine principles, the clarity of your energetic container and what feminine energy really thrives on, which is this magnetism, this receptivity, this calling in of support, this sense of ease. And of course, your greatest superpower, your intuition. So even before I continue to tell you and give you some tools as to how to opt out, because I know we're leaning into that, think right now about what your calendar for this month looks like. Maybe you don't have it set yet. Maybe it's been pre planned for the last 10 years. Who knows? What are you doing this month out of obligation, versus what you're doing out of desire, and I mean true desire. Take a mental scan of this month and consider what it is that you've already perhaps said yes to or are maybe edging toward a yes that's either out of obligation or desire. And I'll let you guess which of those energies is truly rooted in the feminine. You didn't guess it's not obligation. Obligation is yet another distorted masculine Okay, masculine qualities and feminine qualities. They're both equally important, and they have neutrality to them. They can become distorted, both of them, masculine and feminine, which is where we contract or collapse or control an energy into its kind of unhealthy spectrum. So if we think about obligation, obligation is an unhealthy expression of a true sense of honor or duty. And honor and duty are some of the highest healthy masculine qualities around not that we as women can't have honor and duty. Of course we can, but it will be from our masculine energy that that comes from because remember, all humans have both feminine and masculine, so obligation is just a slightly older step brother to resentment. As soon as we feel obligated to do something, we're already contracting. We're already collapsing, we're already draining. And Sister, trust me when I say you cannot afford to be drained any further. And I say that with clarity and also compassion, because I'm I'm in front of women every day, who have been so drained that their self care doesn't even work anymore. It's more like a self rescue that their relationships have cracked to the point of disrepair because they have forgotten to put themselves into the relationship at all. Forget about putting themselves first. They disappear, they shrink, they they're exhausted. So we don't want to do anything out of obligation, really. And in fact, the recipient of an obligation is going to feel that when it's not coming from a sense of honor or generosity or desire, the recipient of your obligation is getting a tainted interaction. This doesn't foster connection, which is what the feminine thrives on. All right, so let's get to one of the things that's going to be incredibly helpful for you, not just here in this season, but really for the rest of your life. And it's probably the foundational thing that I teach women. So you may have heard this before on the podcast. It always bears repeating, because part of the work here. And the satisfied woman is not just me telling you once and you learning it and hearing it in theory, because that's just content. We don't need more content. What we want is to make it concrete. So the women that I work with in my membership or in my one on one coaching or in my groups, they know this material too, but they get that additional support as a buffer against collapse, because I can tell you to honor your intuition and issue your sacred note all day long, but when you do it and the world protests, that's when good hearted women like us, who don't know how to weather that disappointment or those missed expectations, go right back to saying yes when they mean no, we can't do this alone. So your sacred no that comes from your intuition is probably the first and most important connection that you need to make with your feminine essence, which is powerfully intuitive and deeply emotive, and that is at the core of feminine decision making. I work with women who you know have donned the mask of the masculine so long that they tend to overthink and rationalize out of what their body knows to be true, what their intuition knows to be true. This is not uncommon. There's no you know, it's they're not doing anything wrong. It's a hugely protective mechanism, because our culture, our world, cherishes or honors, rather, esteems logic and reason over and above intuition and emotional depth. It doesn't make it right. It doesn't make logic and reason better. In fact, your intuition is going to lead you to some of the greatest truths you will ever come to know. And in fact, the intuition, the feminine intuition has led the world to some of the greatest truths that it will ever know. You know, I look I know that this isn't a historical reference after having said something just like that, but I'm re watching that show, homeland. It's great. It just came out on Netflix again, and I hadn't seen it in a few years. I thought, You know what? All right, I've seen it. It'll be great to put on the background while I'm sending my emails and checking in with my my coaching clients. And I'm stunned now, years later, watching in a second time how truly the premise, the crux of the entire show, which was a hit on Showtime for what five, six years, centers around whether or not Carrie's intuition is believed. Carrie is the main character, if you haven't seen the show, and big things, world events hinge on her following her intuition and the people around her trusting her intuition. Now, as we know, a woman's intuition is always right. We may not understand it right away. We may not know it right then, but in the end, it's always right. If you've ever discovered a betrayal because of your intuition, if you've ever found a present or a surprise because of your intuition. If you've ever understood or known something about your body that's going on because of your intuition, you know how important it is. And the first connection to your intuition is this sacred, no, remember, the phrase of the feminine is no. The phrase of the masculine is yes. We need to have this dichotomy, this incredible push pull, this symbiosis between these polar energies in order for the world to keep turning right, they're inbuilt within us. They just explain the things in our psyche and our existence that really otherwise would only be one sided and therefore truly unexplained and perhaps unexplored.

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 19:07
So when your body issues, your no and you know what I'm talking about, okay, if you haven't done this work with me before, definitely sign up for that feminine reset session, that three part series at the satisfied woman.com it's there. I walk you through it. You can also listen to podcast number 25 I go through it there as well. So I won't go over the practice in depth. But I think even if you've never heard me talk about it, if you're listening, you know what I mean, you have it already when your body feels tight, when someone says, Hey, can you do this for me? Can you stay extra time? Can you commit to this one more commitment? Can you bend over backwards one more time for me, and you get that collapsing feeling in your chest or in your belly, or the tightness in your throat or the heaviness or that kind of shock sensation where the blood pulls out of your extremity. Is that is your intuitive No. And every time you say yes, when your body says no, you're affirming nervous system dysregulation, and it will start to feel normal that you're constantly anxiety, that you're constantly burnt out, that you're constantly resenting others, feeling obligated, tired, exhausted, overworked, undervalued. It all stops when we stop abandoning ourselves, when you feel that, no, I'm going to give you permission right now. I don't care what the request of you is when you feel that no you issue it, issue it, you will be better for it, and ultimately, those around you will be as well. It's a tool to help regulate your nervous system, to recalibrate you around honoring your own needs, because if you don't honor your own needs, the world won't either. If we don't teach those around us where our boundaries are, they will just step all over them. No is how you create your boundaries. No is how you repair your feminine vessel? No is how you create a strong enough feminine vessel that you get to receive all that you deserve in this life. Your intuition is your internal truth that culturally assigned guilt that you might feel over possibly disappointing. Someone is just external programming your guilt, your feminine guilt over possibly disappointing. Someone is external programming. You don't need it. It's not real. It's not yours to tend to their expectations. Stay with yours. Issue your No So, for example, this holiday season and again, beyond if you're listening to this podcast in February, this is still relevant for you. Holiday specific, sacred nos are things like declining an event. Maybe it's your work party, maybe it's a neighbor party. Maybe it's something that boy, you know what just isn't really up your alley a holiday specific No, is not hosting, not hosting. Now, look, I know some of y'all really get down with your hosting, and you are the hostesses with the mostess, and I want all of that for you, if that truly is a place of joy. So I'm not saying don't host, but if it feels exhausting, if you're already overwhelmed, if you've done it every year for the past 249 years, and everyone just expects you to and you really don't love it, this is your year. If the overwhelm of gift giving is just too much, or your cash strapped and the expectations are too high, just say no. Give Simple Gifts, maybe your time, maybe your presence, maybe something hand me down from your closet that no longer fits. I don't know. People expect your authenticity, not your gift wrapped items, and your Authenticity will come when you honor your intuition fully. Okay, so simple way to figure this out is, does this expand me, or does this contract me? Consider some of the things that are on your plate this month, parties, events, invitations, hosting, gifts, family, expectations, dinners, whatever it is, go through just a short list. Does this expand me, or does this contract me? Any feeling of contraction, any feeling that is some version of bad that's your sacred No, anything that feels expansive, lighter will be something that you wish you a yes to. And let me tell you something the feminine will say no far more often than she says yes, that's where her mystery lies. That's where her energetic clarity resides. That's where her boundaries get drawn, and that's where her sacred, feminine vessel gets created so that she can receive all that she is meant to. So notice the tightness and say no, notice the dread or the heaviness and say no. And when you feel the openness and the softness, say yes, learn to emphasize your body's truth over social expectations. PH, so sacred, no foundational work. I want to also give you three micro boundaries. Boundaries are like a scary word these days. Boundaries are almost as pop a term anymore as all of these attachment styles, which, by the way, everyone can be any attachment style. You're not assigned one. It's a sliding scale. You may behave one way in one relationship, another way in another relationship. It can be responsive. So same thing with boundaries. Boundaries are not like layers of concrete. Boundaries are, think of them as like a the rind of an orange. They're still porous, they're still squishy. You can still move them if you need to. I mean, in fact, I think they have often said that one of the prerogatives of a woman is the ability to change her mind if it honors you, if it certs you, if it suits you, you can let it in if it doesn't that nice, healthy orange rind is there to help keep it out, but it's got to be a healthy ride. It's got to be a strong, sacred vessel. In my book, The Way of the satisfied woman, I have an entire chapter around women not being bottomless wells and comparing us and our energy and our energetic structure to a well, to a vessel that holds that life giving force that is feminine energy. Now, boundaries can be scary, because drawing them makes us feel sometimes as if we will draw people out right and part of our safety as women, and this is like, evolutionarily speaking, from the dawn of time, women have needed the protection of the tribe, particularly the masculine. Now, I know there's lots of strong women out there, and I can hear the drums being beaten, but I can protect myself. Yes, you can, sister, it will be your masculine stepping up to do so, and if that's not your natural polarity, continuing to do that forever and ever, amen for yourself always is exhausting. So we want to enlist healthy masculine people around us to help support us with some level of protection. We don't need to be protected from bears and tigers anymore, but we do need to be protected from all the BS that is still out there in the world trying to diminish, dismiss and devalue women. And when I say BS, I both mean bullshit, but I also mean belief system, the belief systems that are still in place to keep women small, to keep women over giving Okay, now boundaries don't do that. They're not layers of concrete. They're not ways to keep people out. They're ways to keep us safe. So if it feels overwhelming to draw a big, strong boundary, like I am not cooking again this year, let's try a couple of small ones, ones that aren't going to rock the boat or sink the ship, but that will at least allow you to reclaim some of your energy during this very depleting oftentimes season. Okay? Micro boundary number one is your one hour window

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 28:17
commit to staying at any event that you've said yes to for just one hour, one hour you give it one hour of your time, one hour of your energy, if you've already said yes, or if you want to say yes in your mind or on your calendar, you say yes for one hour. And if your body wants to leave after an hour out, you go. You've made your presence, you've shared your energy, you've, you know, shown up, which is a lot of life. One hour, does it, and then off you go. It takes pressure off of you, and it allows your intuition to start kicking in, so that you can listen to it and guide your next steps. Now, after if, after an hour, you're having a rocking good time, rocking around the Christmas tree or whatever, hang out and do another check in an hour later. Okay, so that's one micro boundary your one hour window. Give it one hour no more, and then be prepared to leave. I'm a big fan of the Irish goodbye, by the way. Just so you know, in case you ever invite me to a party and suddenly I'm not there. I probably gave myself that one hour window and then pieced out all right. Number two is the response delay. I know that the holidays feel busy, hectic, time, pressured, elevated, heightened and compacted, but you don't need to respond to anything immediately. So the response delay is that you create a 24 hour pause before saying yes to any holiday commitment. I mean, it just 24 hours. Nobody is going to have, you know, some catastrophic event in 24 hours, say yes. I'll get back to you tomorrow. That's gonna a. Avoid reflexive agreeing, because, look, you got a whole history of saying yes when you mean no, which has gotten you into trouble. It's depleted your energy. It's created inauthentic connection with others. It's gotten you lost self abandoned. Your needs aren't being met and on and on. So give yourself 24 hours. You know what? I'll get back to you tomorrow, and that way you've got some time to let your feminine intuition speak so that you can give the response that you actually want to give, whether that be your yes or your no. Okay, last one is for you. Well, these are all for you, but this is like for you and your self care. Number three is your closed morning ritual, or nighttime ritual. If you're a nighttime lady like I am, but for most of us, the morning is the best time because it sets you off for the rest of the day. So your closed morning ritual is to protect your first I want it to be an hour, but if you can only do 30 minutes, I will let that one slide just this time. Try to make it an hour, but protect the first time slot in the morning from any texts, emails or family demands. And if that means you get up just a little bit earlier, okay, if that means you set an alarm to hold yourself to it, okay, if that means you got to put everybody in your household on notice that this is happening fine, but it's going to help you keep yourself rooted in your own energy before you engage with others. Because once they start demanding your energy, once they start really taking it from you, in many cases, you become not powerless, but a little less able, less resilient, to withstand those energetic demands. I know what it's like again. This is you've had decades of training. There have been millennia of cultural training to deplete us, because if we're tired, if we're diminished, if we're fatigued, if our resilience is low, then it's easier for us to actually just give in and continue to overdo. Oddly, it is the strong and empowered woman that has the most energy and the most to actually give when she chooses to do it. Okay? So those are your three micro boundaries. Your one hour window. You stay anywhere for one hour and then check in the response delay. Don't say yes to anything for 24 hours. I'll get back to you tomorrow, so that you give the answer you want. And your closed morning ritual, setting aside some time in the morning just for you, so that you contain and really replenish your energy. I teach the women that I work with that I always want their energy levels at at least 80% I mean, I really want them at 100 but as soon as they hit 80% red flags got to go up. The whole world has to stop, and it's time for you to engage in what you need to to replenish yourself, because as soon as you go below 80, I find that's when that resilience wanes, that's when the helplessness and the powerlessness starts to develop, not that you're powerless and not that you're helpless, but if you don't have the energy to exert that power and that help, where are You pulling it from? You're exhausting your stores because that myth of that perfect Holiday Hostess, she is a myth. She is a myth. Look, even my grandmother, who was an extraordinary cook and was certainly, certainly, you know, constrained by societal norms around women in her time, she even wasn't the perfect Holiday Hostess, like she cooked up a storm and she wanted to have holidays at her house, because it was a way for her to get her whole family together, because we wouldn't get together. Otherwise, she loved it, and she dressed up a little bit, but she didn't wear high heels. Sometimes she burnt the turkey, but what she was doing was from her heart, it nourished her as much as it nourished her family. And if that's you, say yes, if any part of that isn't you listen, because we've inherited a lot of narrative from our foremothers, whether they willingly passed it down or not, they may not have even been happy with what they were experiencing, but they may not have had the language or the safety to speak up and protest or choose something differently. It can be uncomfortable to break family patterns, if you've been doing the same thing during the holidays for your entire life, suddenly shifting and changing course can have a bit of a shake up. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that you're free and all. Ultimately, when the dust settles and that recalibration occurs, and you've reclaimed your energy and you are able to more authentically connect with those that you love and who value you and cherish you deeply, then I believe that's when we really get into the spirit of the season, this deep reconnection with source, this idea of generosity, fellowship, kinship and family. So give yourself permission to say no, to rest, to receive. Take your morning time and create a little ritual for yourself. Maybe it's a morning bath. Maybe it's a moment of lighting a candle and doing some journaling. Maybe it's walking outside. Maybe it's taking a shavasana before the day begins. That's the yoga relaxation pose. So before you say yes out of fear or disappointment before you betray your own energy to perform holiday roles, consider, what would your sacred know open for you so that you can actually experience more joy or to be cheesy in the holiday way more Noel, this is what I want for you. This is your devotion to your feminine nature. Opting out allows you to opt into yourself. Opting out of obligations allows you to say yes to the things that really replenish you and keep you connected to those you love. So as you employ these micro boundaries, as you listen to your sacred now, as you really begin to lean in to the spirit of this season, which energetically is pulling us inward anyway, I want to know how it goes. Come reach out to me over at the satisfied woman.com, I'm easy to get a hold of. You can book a discovery call with me so that we can talk a little further about what you're holding this holiday season that may not be yours, you can download your three part free feminine reset sessions, or, even better, join me in the rooted membership where myself as well as a whole host of other incredible women, are walking their paths to satisfaction, reclaiming their joy and finding their own sacred no so that they can issue the Most Holy yes possible. I look forward to having you in my circle, and until then, take care of yourself this season, sister. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai