Episode 181: Feminine Energy Beyond The Clichés
Whenever you hear someone talk about feminine energy, what do you picture?
Often the way the feminine is depicted can be so…wispy.
Scenes like a woman in a sheer flowing dress, her back arched dramatically, sea spray flying up behind her, pervade social media.
And don’t get me wrong, I love a little sea spray, high drama, cue up the wind photo shoot.
But even as someone whose mission is to uplift and celebrate the feminine in all beings, I cringe and go "ugh" at these images. Daily.
I feel they can flatten something vast, and gatekeep something sacred, by shrinking it into a single, marketable aesthetic.
This week on the podcast, we’re taking a fresh look at feminine energy: beyond some of the clichés.
You'll discover gems on:
A refreshing way to understand feminine energy that feels like yours, not someone else’s idea of it
Stories and examples that help you recognize how it shows up in your real, everyday moments
An invitation to trust the parts of you that have been pathologized: your sensitivity, your longing, your cycles...and experience them as powerful, not problematic.
If your soul is calling to discover a more attainable, approachable, embodied experience of this energy, this episode is for you.
With love and resplendence,
Mary
LINKS FROM THE SHOW:
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INTRODUCTION
Hello beautiful, and welcome to the Come to Your Senses podcast. I'm your host, award-winning certified feminine embodiment coach, licensed esthetician, and enthusiastic foster dog mama to animals across the land, Mary Lofgren.
Here, we explore how to bring more richness, radiance, peace, and pleasure to our lives, homes, and hearts through the joy of beauty, the wisdom of the body, the warmth of connection, and the splendor of the senses.
I'm so glad you're here. Pull up a pouf, and let's dive in.
THE FEMININE BEYOND THE CLICHÉS
Hello gorgeous beings, and welcome to today's episode, which is all about cultivating and really understanding on a deeper level this multidimensional energy we call the feminine.
I would say the number one thing that draws people to my work is a desire to inhabit and embody more of this energy. I get emails often from people of all gender identities who come to this podcast to dip a copper cup into the well of this feminine sparkle and drink it to sustain themselves all week long.
And that said, when I hear the language, “I want to be more in my feminine,” my initial response is often… hmm. Not toward my clients, but in the world at large and on social media.
It’s funny because my mission and vision is that the feminine is for all of us—making this energy more integrated in our lives and more widely spread across our governments, our policies, and our respect for each other.
And yet, there is this portrayal of the feminine that is often just a woman—a cisgender woman—in a wispy dress with her back arched and long flowing hair, sea spray rising up behind her.
To me, that’s a capitalist representation of this energy that only shows one tiny pixel of what it means to be in, and to be intimate with, these energies as they express from within ourselves.
POLARITIES AND THE NATURAL WORLD
So today’s episode is about dropping some of the imagery of what it looks like to be in our feminine and sourcing more from an internal state of what it feels like.
What the hell are we talking about when we say “be in our feminine”? And how is that different from inhabiting these traits we call masculine?
I say “traits we call,” rather than traits that are, because it’s problematic to assign qualities of gender to these energies that present in every human being.
With those chewy, delicious treats lined up on today’s banquet tray, let’s dive in.
We’ll begin with some of the polarities that often signify these energies.
Frankly, even the notion of polarity here is problematic. And yet it’s very natural and understandable that the mind wants to see things in the context of opposites to help categorize information.
These qualities—masculine traits like drive, action, competition, assertion, and feminine traits like receptivity, fluidity, locality, bonding, and co-regulation—show up in all of us.
And the way they express is fluid and ever-changing.
COSTCO AND THE SPA
For example, you might be pushing a cart down the aisles of Costco, checking off your list, moving fast, navigating the potential threat of a shopping cart coming at you.
That’s a very different experience than being at a spa, surrounded by the sound of ocean waves, tantalized by the aroma of geranium, sandalwood, and rose as lavender steam softens your skin.
NATURE METAPHORS
I love to start with metaphors in nature because nature is a beautiful representation of these energies at play—without binaries.
A mountain, which is solid, unshakable, and dense, is something we may associate with the masculine.
Especially in contrast to the ocean, which is fluid, deep, mysterious, tidal, and cyclical.
And yet, mountains are shaped by the ocean.
The ocean is held by the mountains.
There is silt and pebbles that cross over, working their way into sand. There is all this interconnectedness.
The moon is often associated with the feminine, due to its cyclical and reflective nature.
The sun is more steady, consistent, direct.
Yet these two are undeniably interdependent.
These are just a few ways these energies show up in nature.
TOXICITY AND IMBALANCE
We also know that an excess of these energies, or being out of balance with them, can create toxicity.
Qualities like drive, assertion, protection—traits we call masculine—can lead to a quickness to go to war.
That could be war in a military, in a relationship, or even with oneself.
An overabundance of feminine energy may result in lack of boundaries, passivity, people-pleasing, codependence, or a fuzziness as you move through life.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF FEMININE ENERGY
That brings me to the next gem, which is some of my own personal notions and experiences of how these energies show up in my life.
You may want to hold these up to the light of your own experience to see how they land for you.
One way I experience being in my feminine is when I feel in a state of curiosity rather than control.
When I feel open and fluid, like water, to an outcome.
When I feel deeply trusting and listening to what wants to unfold rather than being stuck in my agenda.
When I can really see the person in front of me, instead of seeing who I think they should be or how they should look.
DESIRE
Another way I know I’m in my feminine is when I’m aware of my own desires—not just what I think I should want, but what feels alive in my body.
Often, feminine desire is deeply suppressed.
It’s no coincidence that the origin story of the “fall of humanity,” in the Christian tradition, is about a woman’s desire.
There’s this great song called “Mother”—I’ll pop it in the show notes—and it says, “Crazy how the very first sin was a woman who ate.”
Desire is something that, when there’s unhealthy repression or an unhealthy overabundance of feminine energy, can get really turned down.
And sometimes that’s natural and seasonal.
If you’re a mother with children needing you all day long, you may be less focused on your own desires and more on protecting and nurturing.
But for feminine beings, we have such a diversity of desire.
When that source is tapped into, it is an enormous creative wellspring.
When I’m in my feminine, I’m aware of what I want in each scenario.
Part of that is because I’m not trying to control the outcome.
I’m not attached to whether those desires come true.
I’m just aware of them, expressing them, and moving in the flow of what happens next.
I think it’s important to name that being aware of our desires is a process of sinking down beneath the layers of what we’re told to want—and what we may have wanted when we were twelve, that no longer fits who we’ve become.
In midlife or later life, we can have a total evolution of desires and a total evolution of self.
Sometimes, it’s important to ask: Is this a true and current desire? Or is this what I call a ghost desire?
ASSERTIVENESS AND PRESENCE
When I am in my feminine, I feel boldly and beautifully assertive, which is very different from when I’m in that more masculine energy.
For me—and again, this is just my experience—the masculine shows up as aggression, or it has to be my way.
Sometimes a healthy expression of that is pushing back when someone is invading my boundaries.
A less healthy expression is the passive aggression of saying what I want to say without actually saying it.
Assertiveness feels like a dropped-in place of inner knowing and intuition—a freedom between my inner world and outer world.
Finally, being in my feminine energy feels like being rooted in a sense of embodied presence.
I say embodied presence because, particularly in modern mindfulness practices—which often stem from masculine, monastic lineages—presence can be thought of as a state of detachment from thought.
That is a beautiful and necessary element.
But as a feminine being, whose nervous system is oriented toward sensory experience, interconnectedness, emotional bonding, and the experience of beauty and meaning, being present in my body is essential.
Being able to take in the person in front of me, not just from a detached, “we are all one” gaze, but from a Wow, I feel like I could swim in the pool of your eyes, or I feel what you just said in the very lower part of my belly.
That sensual and sensory acuity feels very feminine to me.
MASCULINE ENERGY IN MY LIFE
When we are in our masculine energy—or let me rephrase, because I’ll say this over and over:
One of the most problematic aspects of gendering these energies is assuming this is true for everyone.
Just like the mountains and the sea are interwoven, in certain scenarios, if you are used to people-pleasing and you find that mama bear energy or healthy aggression, someone might call that your healthy masculine.
But it can also be a healthy feminine rising up.
For me, the energies we call masculine present when I’m feeling strength in my body.
During the pandemic, I got really into strength training.
Before that, in response to so much unhealthy masculine energy, I had gravitated toward yoga, softness, fluidity, dance, and intuitive movement.
I couldn’t believe how much power I felt flooding back to my body when I tapped into healthy aggression—grunting while lifting a 15-pound dumbbell, doing goblet squats—and how much I loved it.
Because I’d gone so far in the direction of the feminine, cultivating my masculine helped bring me back to balance. DELICIOUS DENIAL AND STRUCTURE
Another way I notice these energies we call masculine showing up is when I’m willing to deliciously deny myself.
A big quality of feminine energy is that it is ever-expanding in a million directions.
Our desires can zing around a room like a loose BB from a BB gun.
My masculine energy says, Yes, it’s the morning, and you don’t feel like working. You have the freedom to loaf about, but you also know that doesn’t feel good or right. That feels like avoidance.
My masculine steps in to say, Let’s get you up, moving, feeling, contacting your power—and doing it in a way that’s ultimately satisfying.
It might not feel enjoyable at first, but there’s joy and power there.
The masculine, similar to that mountain containing the sea, creates structure and containment.
Finally, the masculine in me loves clarity—cutting through the noise.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore an intricate lace doily of verbal processing.
I love a glittering tapestry of detail and story.
But especially when I’m working with a client, I’ve learned there’s a lot of pleasure and power in trimming the edges and getting to the essential point.
I also get joy and delight from balancing my books and having total clarity around my finances.
I find it so helpful for the root of the tree to be grounded and wrapped, so the moving, fluid branches of my desires and ideas can know where they stand—and how far they can reach without snapping off the tree entirely.
FOLLOWING DESIRE
This brings me to the final chapter of this episode: ways you can locate an internal experience of this energy we call feminine.
The first, which I’ve already touched on, is following the ever-unspooling thread of desire.
I used to be a student and worked at Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts—a school centered around women and the art of pleasure.
One of the first things Mama Gena would have women do in an intro night was start making a desire list.
A lot of times, we resist exploring and listing our desires because it’s painful.
It’s painful to want—and to look at past desires that have been unfulfilled or disappointing.
This is something I hear often from clients.
But something I find so inspiring is that not all desires are meant to be birthed through you.
Just like an ovary contains thousands of eggs, only a handful ripen into maturity in a lifetime, and even fewer are fertilized and birthed.
That pain of desire, in my experience, only arises when we see desire as a masculinized task list—something we must achieve.
The more feminine approach is to splash your desires onto the page like finger paints, simply because it’s fun.
It’s fun to think about painting watercolors in autumn in Tuscany.
It’s fun to think about going on a date that ends in a long, lingering, heart-to-heart hug but not a kiss.
It’s fun to think about living in a home where there are always fair trade, local flowers on the dining room table.
When I start thinking, But how am I going to make that happen?—instantly, my magnetism escapes like air from a whoopee cushion.
But when I feel the pleasure of imagining, there’s an undeniable magnetism that bubbles through my body and clears a path for those things to happen—or not.
THE GYM DREAM
I used to daydream at the gym about opening my own gym.
I’d call it “Fitness Revolution,” and it would have fat-positive, body-positive imagery on the walls, Health at Every Size trainers, queer dance hits blasting—Sylvester, Whitney Houston remixes.
There would be social justice gatherings in the group fitness rooms, education on microaggressions, and community-building.
I will never create this.
Take this idea if you want—someone, please create it!
But I don’t feel called to do the work it would take to make that real.
Still, dreaming it was joyful.
Because some desires are just meant to be enjoyed for their own sake.
SLOWING DOWN TO SEE OTHERS
The next way to cultivate more feminine energy from the inside out has to do with relationship: slowing down to really see people.
I remember a couple of years ago doing an intro coaching session with a potential client. She was younger, and she showed up with this gorgeous martini glass filled with a mocktail, candles burning, and all these beautiful accoutrements to honor the sensual feminine.
During the session, I asked some evocative questions. My experience of feminine embodiment is very much an internalized experience of surfing the depths of what’s real, of exploring the depths of our being.
We need both. We need the sensual feminine coupe glass and the surfing the depths of our psyche.
At the end of the session, she laughed and said, “I was not expecting this. Where are the faux fur-collared bolero moments?”
What was most moving wasn’t the visuals—it was my ability to actually see her and hold space for what was alive under the surface.
One way you might bring this into your own life is, when you have someone in front of you, to say less.
Rather than keeping the conversation going like a karaoke ball, slow down.
This slowing is a kind of magical elixir you can drizzle over an interaction.
It deepens your connection and brings meaning that often isn’t there when we’re just looking at each other instead of really seeing.
APPROVING OF YOUR OWN RHYTHMS
The final way to cultivate more of this feminine energy is to approve.
Approve, approve, approve of your way of being.
In a patriarchy, so many things that are natural to the wiring of our nervous systems are considered wrong or pathological.
I was recently receiving a feminine embodiment coaching session, working on the way that before a big event, I tend to become possessed with some obsession.
The way I work is that when I’m pressed up against a deadline, my creativity cuts loose.
I’ll stay up late hours.
I was so disapproving of this: I’m messed up. I’m addicted to working. I can’t get it together.
But as I got into the deeper layers of my body, I realized—this is fun for me.
I have a fluid life where I get to work exactly how and when I want.
Some weeks, like the one where I spent the entire morning at the dentist, I have total flexibility.
Other weeks, I come alive at night.
Taking the stress out of it allowed me to just be in flow.
Because so often, what’s causing us suffering isn’t the thing itself—it’s the way we think about it.
Another example: the feminine nervous system finds safety through co-regulation and emotional expression.
I used to think that needing to process with my girlfriends after a date made me codependent or silly.
Now I understand—that’s just how my system is wired.
The fact that I didn’t want to go to college at 17 and instead went to school to be an esthetician didn’t make me unmotivated.
It was an expression of my gift: my spiritual calling to beauty.
One exercise you might try is listing three to five things you think are “wrong” with you.
Then ask: Is there actually anything wrong here?
Or is this my natural flow, my gift, the way my system is built?
VISION OF THE FEMININE FOR EVERYONE
I remember once hearing a man say, How can we have female CEOs when your energy is so unpredictable?
And I wanted to say: Do you have any idea how much your company would take off if you learned how to cycle sync?
If you learned how to work with the rhythms of the feminine nervous system, your productivity, creativity, morale, and connection would skyrocket.
One of my visions for “the feminine is for all of us” is menstrual leave as a fair labor practice, along with paid maternity leave and other benefits that would create a sense of equanimity—not just equity.
CLOSING
My friends, this brings our episode of The Feminine Beyond the Wispy to a close.
May your curiosity and embodiment of this life force express through you as you, regardless of your sex or gender.
May it be messy. May it be magnetic.
And may it be profoundly satisfying and creative to reclaim your wholeness by opening wider to your feminine energy.
If this opened new doorways of possibility and awareness for you, I’d be so honored if you shared it with a friend, left a review, and hit the subscribe button.
I’d love to spotlight one of our community members, Karilinda, who wrote:
"This podcast is a needed gem for my life. I am so blessed with your words and wisdom. I care-give for my dad and am in menopause, but I still know my sensuality and my rhythm of quiet and peace is still here. All love and light to you."
Back at you, Karilinda—so honored to have you as part of the Come to Your Senses community.
If you’d like to hear your name read on air, I’d be so grateful to connect with you in this way.
I hope you have a wonderful week full of feminine frolic, and I’ll see you in the next episode.