Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 0:00
PH, one of the best things we can do to make sure everyone is on the same page is to define our terms. I'm going to take a little time in this particular podcast to define terms that are very important to both the feminine and masculine energies of the psyche. Feminine and masculine are opposite and opposing energies, and they both want different things, the masculine desires to be respected and the feminine desires to be cherished. And somewhere in the middle of both of those things, everyone desires for their boundaries to be held. So I'll give a few working definitions today that will allow for you to not only more successfully navigate your intimate partnerships between masculine and feminine, but also, and even perhaps more importantly, the intimate partnership you have between your own internal masculine and feminine, 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 if you've enjoyed my podcast so far, and if you end up enjoying this one, I do hope that you'll go to the satisfied woman.com and take a look at some of the things that I offer there. Because while this content and these concepts are powerful, the real conversation and transformation happens when we bring this work into our everyday life. So we've got to make these concepts concrete. We've got to turn the talk into transformation, and we do that over at the satisfied woman.com I've got a free three part reset session for you, which is a great place to start, but you're going to dive deeper when you join the rooted membership with me, which is where we turn these conversations and concepts into practice that you can actually use in your day to day life that's going to transform your energy, reduce your burnout, reduce your stress, and improve your relationships. So make sure you join me over there and see all that we've got going on. So I wrote this book, The Way of the satisfied woman, and I do lead this membership, and I also speak with one on one coaching clients, and one of the overarching themes that seems to come up is questions around these ideas of cherish and respect. So one of the biggest challenges is actually around the word respect, because we use it in a lot of different contexts. We use it for a lot of different reasons, and it seems to be the most in demand thing of other people that many of us desire. So I want to really ground us and this work in some clear definitions and concepts so that we have an understanding of how and why these psychological energies function, what exactly they need, and how we can elevate and honor them in the best ways possible. This is not only going to be of extraordinary help in our interpersonal relationships, but it's going to make a tremendous difference in how we as feminine women carry our femininity forward in everyday life. So one of the continual things that I run into in working with women is this respect notion. And I want to give you a bit of an example. So when women ask for respect, what they're actually often asking for is their boundaries to be honored. I hear things like, well, he doesn't respect me, or that's not respectful. And I find the challenge or the resistance even arises as I ask the key question. Okay, so the key question is the first question I'll ask anybody to determine whether that person is on the feminine or the masculine primary polarity. Now remember, we are all very dynamic human beings. We all have masculine and feminine within us, we all have the ability to navigate one or the other, but we as individuals tend to lean toward one polarity, so much more than another, or we desire to. And one of the big challenges that we have in this modern culture is its emphasis. Focus on masculine qualities. So a lot of women who would normally lean or desire to lean into the feminine polarity have, just as a coping mechanism or as a protective force, donned a lot of masculine qualities. I call it donning the mask of the masculine in order to essentially armor up for the world and to embody the things that the world says is most valuable. Success, leadership, logic, reason, drive, ambition, critical thinking, you know, forward motion, doing it yourself, independence. Now look again, every human is capable of all of these things. And a lot of these qualities are astoundingly great. I love all of them, but not all of the time. And if we are a feminine woman, we actually want to be able to relax and soften the emphasis on those qualities in favor of feminine qualities that are just as astoundingly awesome, but that have historically been maybe dismissed or devalued in our culture. That doesn't mean they're not valuable or that they should be dismissed. It just means that we have a bit of a perception, sometimes even we as women, that they're not going to be as prized or valued, maybe in our own eyes or in the eyes of those around us, qualities like our intuition, our emotional depth, our creativity, pleasure, joy, receptivity, abundance, magnetism, our inherent ability to wield the life force. I mean, these are pretty big, bold and brilliant things, our truth telling, our truth seeking, our inquisitive nature, the constant questioning the ideas that come outside of the box, this rhythm and flow that is inherently feminine. So you can see there is a wonderful juxtaposition between these two energies. And really, when these two psychological energies are working well with one another, everybody benefits. Everybody benefits. And I don't mean one washing the other out. I don't mean one being dominant over the other. I don't mean one being more valued than the other. I mean in true partnership, where both energies get to be at their best, at their utmost, in order to not only enhance the other energy, but to be enhanced by it. Now the challenge we run into, of course, is that we're still living in a culture that skews toward valuing masculine qualities more highly. That's nobody's fault. I'm not here to place blame. I grew up in this culture too. There's a lot of great things about it, and unfortunately, some of the masculine qualities that have been overvalued are also skewed. They're obscured or they're distorted, and they're not actually great representations of the highest masculine qualities or values either. Our current culture doesn't benefit really either the healthy masculine or healthy feminine, and we're all just here. We're all just in it. There's no one to blame. No one decided to, you know, make this decision and forcing everybody to follow it. But we've all been following it for long enough we've forgotten to question it, and we've accepted it most of the time, just as normal. So the work that I do with my one on one coaching and my rooted membership and the other courses programs, my book is helping people to dismantle and rethink what they thought or assumed that they knew. Now your dad may have taught you the same thing my dad taught me about making assumptions. And if that's the case, then you know, it's probably a good idea not to so we're going to go through today some of the three foundational ideas and concepts around masculinity and femininity, not just for ourselves, but for our interpersonal relationships. Now, as you can imagine, as an author and an academic. I love to do a lot of research, and I do a lot of research, not only through my work day to day, but and you'll forgive me sometimes by watching TV.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 9:32
And I watch TV that centers around relationships, that centers around our modern culture, how people are viewing it and interpreting it. It's actually helpful for me to witness, even though, honestly, I know sometimes it's scripted and it's artificial. If it appears on TV, it's often really speaking to what is alive in the psyche of the culture that's watching it. So I've noticed in my work with individuals, but also part. Circulating in a lot of the social narratives in some of these reality TV shows, is this almost control driven desire for something that we're naming as respect. So I'm going to start with this definition, and in true academic style, I am literally going to define respect for you, as is put forth by the Oxford language dictionary. Okay, so we're going to really just get super clear on what respect is, so that we can better understand how it works for us in masculinity and femininity, and so that we can stop using it in the way that it isn't meant and really figure out what that other thing is that we often use it for. So there's two prominent definitions of respect. One is a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievements, abilities, qualities, or achievements. So that's quite a masculine idea. Achievements is this high achieving, successful notion that they've got it all dialed in. They've got their ducks in a row. They have this ascension energy. Anything that goes up or rises or achieves is very masculine in nature. So when we have a feeling of deep admiration for someone who's really achieved a lot, who's at the top of their game, they are respected. We respect sports stars who've worked hard to get to where they are. We respect cultural icons. We respect business members, we respect people who've done a lot of hard work to get where they are, and who have extraordinary achievements and abilities. Okay. Number two, do regard for the feelings wishes, rights or traditions of others. Do regard for the feelings wishes, rights or traditions of others. So in this way, we can talk about a respect for our parents. We can talk about a respect for another human being, their right to live, their right to exist, their right to have choices. There's this is a very broad stroke notion that we really, as humans on this planet have an opportunity to respect one another our choices and be free to live the life that we want. Okay, so those are just brass tacks definitions of respect. Now, one of the ways, and I'm seeing the word respect thrown out and used a lot, is that he doesn't respect me, or she doesn't respect me. And the little clincher here, and you might feel this or know this or have witnessed this yourself, is that when we say something like that, what we're really saying is this person has breached a boundary. This person thinks or acts differently than I do. This person doesn't agree with me. We often hear this term, they, she, he doesn't respect me. When someone has made a decision and the other person doesn't like it, okay, that's not disrespect. That's something else that's a disagreement. Let's think of respect as esteem, putting someone in not a pedestal, because that's a dangerous place to be, but in high regard that we have a almost a sense of trust or a sense of we look up to them, a sense of honor for them in that way we respect them. So when I talk about respect in terms of masculinity specifically, and this is going to be just FYI, here is my disclaimer. There is the def, the dictionary's definition of respect, and then there's how we'll use it, in terms of these psychological energies in order to create harmony between the two. Okay, so when I say things like the masculine most desires to be respected, here's what I mean. The masculine desires to be respected for amazing decisions and choices. That also means that those decisions and choices need to be respectable and masculine. Decisions and choices and direction and leadership and guidance are respectable when they take into account the highest needs of those around them, and if it's in relationship, very specifically, the highest needs of the person they're in relationship with, or the relationship itself, if an individual on the masculine polarity is simply making decisions that only benefit that individual and. When they say this other person disrespects me because they don't agree. Number one, that is a disagreement. And number two, that particular decision isn't respectable because it's individual. It's personal and not for the greater good. Okay, so there's respected. Now when I say that the feminine wants to be cherished, I experience many women saying, But wait, that feels like a submissive experience. And I don't mean submissive has a lot of connotations too. I mean submission in terms of less than demoralized, devalued underneath being stepped on or squashed. Okay, so we hear this word cherish and we think in order to be cherished or cherishable, that we have to really be Placid, not speak up. I pH, you know, I talk to a lot of women, and we are chatty, we love to speak up, and that is a huge quality of who we are. So that's not what cherished is. To be cherished is to be honored for our superpowers as feminine women, which I always say. You've heard me say it many times in the podcast. I write about it in the book, we talk about it in the rooted membership that to be cherished is to be honored for your greatest superpowers, which are your intuition and your emotional depth. These are things that have for a very long time been overlooked, devalued, dismissed, degraded. We, even as feminine women, have dismissed and devalued our intuition and emotional depth. And it makes sense, okay, if you consider the cultural context, it makes sense when logic and reason are so much more prized than intuition and emotional depth. It feels safer to prize logic and reason when respect and leadership and decision making are so much more prized than being cherished and honored for our emotional depth and intuition. It makes sense that we would protect ourselves by centering that as well, but what it does is reinforces the narrative even within us, that our intuition and emotional depth are not valuable. It reinforces the notion that femininity is not nearly as good as some of the other stuff that masculinity has going on. Let's elevate them both into equal status with different qualities, different, almost agendas, different, you know, emphasizes emphases in life. That's fine. Differences are to be celebrated. Differentials are not a differential values or places one above another to the detriment of the other. Okay, we don't want differentials. Differences are fine and even within us, even within our own psyche, knowing, honoring, understanding those differences is going to be critical, especially, especially for the woman who desires to walk the way of satisfaction, who desires to be a fully satisfied woman. On all levels, we have to really position our own femininity and honor it first and foremost, so that we know what that's like, so that we understand the power of it and it, in effect, helps those around us to see its value, also to honor it. We get to witness and see who rises in to support our femininity, to cherish it, and then we also find out who really can't. And this is super valuable information. So to be cherished as the feminine is to be honored for our emotional depth and our intuition and never left alone in our pain or discomfort until a solution can be found,
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 19:28
and that solution is going to feel good to us. It's not just the solution that is written on a piece of paper because it makes sense on paper. It's a solution that feels good, that honors our embodied feeling experience as women, and that is different than that logical, high minded reasoning that is so prized by the masculine. Again, one is not better, one is not worse, and one. There is a an extraordinary rise in anxiety and depression in women, especially post pandemic. And one of the things I see a lot in the women that I work with is overthinking, second guessing, and that's a true, true source of anxiety. And what that is, in the context of these psychological energies of masculinity and femininity, is a masculine over functioning, a distorted over functioning of your own internal masculine trying to suppress and get rid of and ignore your very precious internal feminine. Okay, so now, why is this important? Okay, why have I spent so much time really getting clear on being cherished for the feminine and being respected for the masculine? Because when I ask people the key question to find out which polarity they're actually on. The answer matters, so I'm gonna ask it to you now, to your podcast listener, and you can ask this of anyone in your world. It's a great litmus test to figure out exactly what is happening in the psyche of the person you're working with. And the question is this. It's simple. In intimate relationship, do you prefer to be respected for your decisions in leadership, or to be cherished for your intuition and your emotional depth? So in intimate relationship, do you prefer to be respected, or do you prefer to be cherished? Now most people, specifically, most women, will struggle for a moment. They will have an initial idea of what their answer is, but then they'll come out and say both, but I want both. I mean, I'd love to be cherished, but I also want to be respected. Okay, I understand. We all want everything, but to just get down to business here, I need the answer that comes up first, and I need you to choose one, because when you choose one, the one that really comes from inside you that's going to tell you which polarity you most lean toward. If your first answer is, I want to be respected, then that's your choice, and it will signal that you are on the primary polarity of the masculine. If your initial gut hit is, I really want to be cherished, and that is your signal that you're on the primary polarity of the feminine. Now of course, this is just the beginning of the work, just realizing that unpacking that is your sign and signal to move forward, to start and release any of the opposite polarity that you've been carrying too long, coming to terms with which polarity is yours. But we're going to find you're going to find more and more that women really struggle with this because of the emphasis of masculine qualities in the culture, and the fact that donning so much of these masculine qualities has created a perceived level of safety that if we can be respected for our decision making, for our Leadership, for our guidance, then we are safe. Because if we're just here to be cherished, there's an opportunity to be taken advantage of. I get it. I get it. I understand. I understand it's scary. I understand the mask of the masculine. That's why I do the work I do. But it is exhausting to don the mask of the masculine too long, especially if you are truly an embodied feminine woman. You are going to be drained. You are going to be overworked. You're going to lean into people pleasing over giving. You're going to become that statistic that I cite often, that 80% of women say that they are burnt out, that they are tired of life. If you'd like to reclaim your energy, if you'd like to reclaim your femininity, if you'd like to relax and be cherished, have your incredible intuitive and emotional depth honored, then it starts with you. It starts with us as individuals. I don't mean you. I mean to call you out. Look, I'm calling myself out too. We're all here. We all grew up with these ideas and notions and culture, and we're all in an extraordinary place, in time where we have more power and agency than we've ever had before, and it's time to exercise it. And that first really comes from understanding, okay, so respect for the masculine is all about making great decisions that benefit those around the masculine most, that are in the highest interest. Aspect of you know, if the masculine has a family, the family, if the masculine has a partnership, the partnership, those decisions become respectable. The feminine woman is cherished when she honors her emotional depth and her intuition, and those become the drivers for the direction that the masculine chooses. So I like to give this this metaphor a lot. I'm a sailor. I love sailing. And in a ship, imagine the feminine is in the cockpit, holding the tiller, feeling the ocean, feeling the wind in the sails. And I actually experienced this. So this is, this is literally how it works, okay? So when you're in the cockpit, holding the tiller, you're feeling the energy of nature, you're you can't force it right a sailboat. The whole point is that it's powered by nature. It's powered by the wind, it's powered by the waves. It's also powered by your connection to these things and that emotional, intuitive intelligence telling you it's time to tack it's time to stay, course, it's time to trim the sails. There really isn't a manual for that. There's some tips and tricks, certainly, and I took the classes, but nothing makes you a better sailor than simply being on the water and feeling the wind and paying attention, letting go of what you think you know, or the desire to just go from point A to point B, because sailing doesn't work that way. That's where the feminine gifts lie. The masculine gift lies at being in the prow of the ship, doing the work of trimming the sails, making sure that the ship stays on course, taking the direction from the intuition of the feminine in the cockpit and going great. Here's how we can go in this particular direction, even if it's not direct more quickly and easefully. So, let me ask you again, as a feminine woman, if you had the experience of feeling your intuition or your emotional depth using your incredible communication and speaking up about it, and then having those who love you respond in kind and change direction, hold course or adjust in response to that. How would that feel? Most women can't even imagine that scenario. But once we really anchor ourselves to our emotional depth and intuition, once we know that to be the truest and best place for us as feminine women to make decisions, we follow suit, and then those around us follow suit. Okay, so how do we do that? And this is the third definition that I'm going to offer you in this podcast. Because if we want respect, if we want cherishing, we need to be clear about what those are. And when we say something like they don't respect me, and I say that I'm emphasizing that more because I hear that more. I see that more is a value. You know, we when I see people in relationships and they always talk, he doesn't respect me. Well, they don't respect this. They don't respect that. Nobody really says right now, I'd like this to change. Trust me, maybe y'all and I can get on the bandwagon here. He doesn't cherish me. You know, they didn't cherish this idea. They didn't cherish my intuition, or I don't feel cherished. I want that to become more of a dialog, but right now, many are stuck on respect, and that's fine. So when we say something like, he doesn't respect me, she doesn't respect me, they didn't respect my decision, that's not really what respect is. Remember, respect is the high regard, the deep admiration for someone who's got abilities, achievements, rights or traditions, the rights or traditions that they that they've held in esteem for a long time. So when we hear they don't respect me, she doesn't respect me, he doesn't respect me. Usually it's that they disagree. Mostly it's they've crossed a boundary. So now I want to define boundaries, and I'm really talking to the feminine woman right now, which is who this podcast is for.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 29:29
Boundaries are critical, and the crossing of boundaries is a violation in many regards. But what boundaries are not are a control mechanism. Boundaries are not designed to control others. They're not designed to force behavior in others, which is what I often see the clamoring for when we hear things like he or she or they don't respect me. Well, we want them to change their behavior. We want them to do something different. We want them to finally agree with us. We. Want them to finally step up. Look, they will or they won't. If we create the right kind of invitation, we're going to see if they rise or if they simply can't. And that all begins with you holding your boundaries. Your boundaries are the structure for your feminine vessel to remain filled with your energy, so that you are not drained, so that you do not get burnt out, so that you do not continue to over give or so that you do not continue to deny your own intuition and emotional depth. Okay, I brought my prop with me. For those of you watching on YouTube, you'll see I've got my favorite vessel with me here today. It's a beautiful vase. It slides from this gorgeous pink color to this blue. It's an unpredictable shape, and it holds so much energy. So this is what I imagine in my mind's eye, the metaphorical vessel of femininity to look like. Now maybe you have a different vase or shape that you want to imagine. You'd like to borrow mine. You're more than welcome to but this vase, this vessel, doesn't work if these boundaries are not held, if there are holes in them, if this suddenly loses its shape, if it can't hold the energy, this vase is useless. The reason this vase is precious and useful, the reason this vase has value is because of what it can contain. We are the same. We need to be able to contain and hold and value our feminine energy and to ensure that holding our boundaries becomes critical. So one of the most basic and first things I teach the women that I work with again in one on one coaching in my rooted membership is our sacred No, because the phrase of the feminine is no, the phrase of the masculine is yes. That doesn't mean we're all just naysayers as feminine women, and it doesn't mean that the masculine men are all just yes men. Okay, there's some clarity and nuance here. But no is what holds our boundaries. Because we as vessels, we receive, we accept, we call in, we magnetize, but we get to determine exactly what that is. And so no is what protects What does not serve us know is what shields our energy from being drained or dissipated or taken. Feminine energy is not just not does not designed to be taken. It's designed to be nourishing, to be gifted, to be exuded from the very pores of our bodies. So boundaries help us to do that, and when we understand and can issue our sacred no based on the feeling of our intuition, that's where boundaries get held. And if someone crosses them, there's two choices, either they adjust the behavior or the approach, or they get to me fired from our lives or dismissed. Or those boundaries are held in such a way that we protect our energy, maybe we limit our time, maybe we limit our contact, maybe we limit our communication, whatever it is, but the boundaries are not to force someone else to change. The boundaries are for you, for you to determine what is acceptable and what is not to receive. So it's not a matter of they didn't respect me, it's often a matter of they crossed a boundary, and now I don't know how to hold it, and so I'm going to blame them, and want them to change. Want them to shift. So the work that I do with women is rather that, because we look as much as I would love it. And trust me, trust me, I would love it if I had the magic tool to try and get other people to behave differently. I don't, and the reality is, is I don't, because nobody does. The only person we can really, really shift is ourselves. But here's where the magic lies. Ladies, when we shift our own energy to affirming, elevating and centering our feminine we ensure that for ourselves, we strengthen our boundaries and we show the world around us, even if it's just our inner circle, how we desire to be treated, and they either rise up to treating us that way, or they fall away. We get to see it's like an invitation. It's like a cosmic invitation. But no one can read our minds. No one can predict the unknown. We. Have to make it known through these clear boundaries. So internally, what this means now, hopefully you stayed with me to this point, because this is the clincher here. Internally, what this means is that, ladies, I'm talking to you, we have to stop second guessing ourselves. We have to stop overthinking. We can't go down that feminine guilt spiral of self abandonment and say yes when we mean no because we anticipate someone else's discomfort or disappointment. All of those behaviors are our heavy masculine armor that we've got to take off so internally, the best thing that we can do is to honor and cherish our own feminine and put our own internal masculine in service of that to make our own internal masculine qualities. Cherish our own internal feminine, but the feminine is the Center for us. We hold our feminine in the highest regard. We esteem it the most so we don't second guess our intuition, we don't dismiss our feelings, we don't call ourselves crazy. We don't quell our voices or silence our opinions or second guess our truth. We don't overlook our desire to seek the truth when we know something is off when we have an intuitive hit, when we have an emotional response that is like us as a sailor holding the tiller, going, hang on a second. I think there's a wind shift here. And rather than our distorted internal mask going, No, there's not. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Keep going, stay the course. You're gonna lose the win. You're not gonna get to your destination, or you'll be overtaken by the win and capsize. I promise you, everything goes badly when you don't listen to your intuition. No one has ever been served ultimately by not listening to their intuition. Now there's a difference between intuition and anxiety. Intuition is that feeling, is that internal feeling, and I help, I help women connect to that inside my membership. So if that's something that's confusing for you. Come practice with me, but when you know what your intuition is saying, when you understand the cries of your emotional depth, then let your powerful masculine energy, that logic, that reason, that drive decision making, guidance, leadership, those healthy, wonderful masculine qualities that we love that also exist in you follow, first, your intuition, your emotional depth, because the thing that you cherish most about yourself is your femininity, and you as a feminine woman. Because if you can't do it for yourself, how can we ever expect anyone else to now, ladies, I know that this isn't easy. Okay, I know the world we live in. I'm not sugar coating anything, and I'm not pretending like this work isn't challenging. That's why it's critical for you to have support in this work. That's why I have the rooted membership. I have the three part feminine reset session. I do one on one coaching, because I understand we are at a flexion point as women right now. We have more power, choice and agency than we've ever had before, but we've got to wield it in the best way possible, and when we start to really center our femininity, that is going to cause a shake up.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 39:09
And we've been over giving all of our lives, and suddenly we prize our own energy, the people around us are going to go, Wait a minute, but I'm so used to you just giving yourself away, if we've just devalued ourselves, second guessed our intuition, and suddenly we start centering it, we're going to feel anxious because our nervous system has wired around that other way of being, and we need to normalize This, our femininity. And to do that, we need support, we need guidance. We need the power of sisterhood to make these ideas reality, to turn these concepts into concrete ways of being, to take this talk and make. IT transformation. That's how we concretize the work. That's how we bring it to life. Because these podcasts are great, that's where we start. But we need to do the work, and we do it together. So if this podcast stirred something in you, remember the listening isn't the transformation living it is. So you're welcome to book a clarity call with me. You can do that through my website. You're welcome to join the rooted membership, but let's make this work real together. Because when you center your femininity, when I do when we help other women do it, we make that the new normal, we release the burnout and a woman who is fully resourced in her feminine power, she is sovereign, she is satisfied, and she gives other women around her to be the same. So thank you for listening. I'll look forward to sharing more with you on the next podcast. If you haven't go back and listen to some of my previous ones, and if all else fails, make sure you come and join me in some way, shape and form on the satisfied woman.com I will look forward to seeing you there. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
