What comes up for you when you hear “feminine” or “masculine”? Words are powerful. The frequency they hold and the concepts they convey are everything. They literally create our existence into form.

In my work, I’ve created a new way of thinking about and feeling into the concepts of “masculine and feminine” to free us of the pre-loaded meaning and help us to feel them on a deeper level for embodied sovereignty and inner union. This is how we begin to heal Feminine Shame.

The Truth of Who We Are

Let’s set a foundation for this little talk today by laying out what I know to be truth: we are divine and human, flesh and spirit, finite and infinite, limited and limitless. We are all of these things and none of these things. We are the people we think we are and we are not them at all.

Many of us are so caught in dualities that we cannot fathom a third option – or a fourth, fifth, sixth… We don’t see ourselves as divine or we resent our humanity. We may tend towards being ultra-spiritual and have our heads in the clouds at the expense of our physical bodies and the physical experience of life, or we are so attached to the physical we fear or forget about the rest.

We are in our bodies, but we are not our bodies. We are wearing them for a while we are here at Earth School. Part of the point of being at Earth School is to learn to hold all of us and to merge polarities – Heaven and Earth, masculine and feminine, human and spirit.

Spiral + Triangle Concepts

Spiral and Triangle are concepts I created to help us go beyond the use of “feminine” and “masculine.”  Because those terms are widely used and tend to mean subtly different things to different people, I wanted to create concepts that still captured what I believe “feminine” and “masculine” are trying to capture at their core, without the loaded connotations that “feminine” and “masculine” bring into a conversation.

Think beyond gender, beyond sexual identification, sexual orientation, and anything having to do with that for a moment, I’d like for you to think about “feminine” and “masculine” in deeper senses.

They are polarities, they are the opposite ends of the spectrum of creation. They contain the necessary substrate for creation, and everything is in a fluid dance along this spectrum: action and rest; lunar and solar; sleep and awake; quiet and sound.

The Spiral Principle, just to help us understand, could be thought of as the feminine and The Triangle Principle could be thought of as the masculine. The Spiral Principle is all that is transient, shifting, passive, and cyclical, like the moon. The Triangle Principle is all that is fixed, structured, active, and linear, like the sun.

Healing Feminine Shame Through New, Broader Perspectives

Understanding these concepts within ourselves is the first step towards sustainable evolution. My soul’s purpose is to heal the collective Spiral energy and Feminine Shame through remembering our natural essence.

The danger lies in only recognizing the binaries and failing to see a whole way of existing in the middle that is dynamic. There is also danger in trying to label everything as either/or and when we begin to paint one way as better or worse than another.

We’ve been taught to celebrate structure, outward expression, productivity, and action; to view it as safe, while anything that is transient, passive, and changeable is deemed unsafe and something of which to be wary, which breeds toxic feminine or spiral shaming. Check out this article and podcast on Feminine Shame for more on identifying, confronting, and healing it. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Feminine Shame

What is Feminine Shame?

What is Feminine Shame:
Have you ever felt out of step with the world, simply for embracing the natural ebbs and flows within yourself? At InnerSpark, we define “Feminine Shame” as a deeply ingrained resistance towards that which is cyclical, fluid, nurturing, intuitive, or emotional. It’s the uneasy feeling that arises from being cyclical, intuitive, or in tune with seasonal rhythms in a world that often values linear progress and constants. This disconnect is what distances many from their true essence, their InnerSpark, causing them to feel adrift, overwhelmed, and detached from the comforting rhythms of nature. It’s feeling ashamed of our innate, tender nature in a world that parades “normal” over “natural.”
 
Rooted in centuries-old beliefs, Feminine Shame drives that whispering ghost of “not enough.” It convinces us we’re wrong, unworthy, flawed at our very core. We’ve been conditioned to see our natural state as abnormal, which distances us from our true selves. This tug-of-war between the natural and the “normal” drains us—physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, spiritually—leading to widespread dis-ease. It’s high time we ask: isn’t it time to bridge that gap? To finally come home to ourselves? That’s where The InnerSpark Method is your guide.

Why Does Feminine Shame Exist?

Why Does Feminine Shame Exist:
From our early years, society hands us a blueprint of how to “fit in.” This blueprint often discounts the beauty of nature’s spirals – the inherent fluctuations and cycles that we, as beings of this Earth, naturally resonate with. When these intrinsic rhythms, intuitions, and emotions are labeled as irregular or inconsistent, it creates a landscape where Feminine Shame finds fertile ground, urging us to adopt the “standard” instead of cherishing our unique spirally essence.

Who Does Feminine Shame Impact?

Who Does Feminine Shame Impact:
Feminine Shame isn’t reserved for a select few. Imagine a shroud, thin but omnipresent, covering everything and everyone. Feminine Shame is that shroud. It blankets us all, an invisible veil impacting every heart. Regardless of gender or anatomy, everyone feels its presence – the nudge to prioritize society’s “shoulds” over the nurturing call of nature. It’s the tension that arises when our natural desire for a holistic, integrative life clashes with societal expectations, leaving us yearning for authentic connections, rhythms, and a return to our true nature.

How Do We Begin to Heal Feminine Shame?

How Do We Heal Feminine Shame:
The path to healing starts with recognizing the value of our innate connection to nature’s cycles. By turning towards our own challenges and deepest desires, and embracing the rhythms that have always been a part of us, we can find grounding and resilience. It’s about harmonizing with nature’s wisdom, tapping into its rhythms for guidance, and shedding the layers that keep us from living organically and authentically. Together, as a community that sees, supports, and validates each other, we transition from feeling fragmented and out of sync to dancing in harmony with life’s beautiful, ever-changing spirals.

Connecting to These Concepts

Are you connected to your Spiral Principle? We sure have the Triangle Principle down in our society. The one that honors doing, evenness, and expression over rejuvenation, fluctuation, and introspection.

Everything exists on a continuum, a never-ending spiral. Nothing is ever fixed or permanent, despite our attempts. Literally everything in your life from the micro moments to an entire life-cycle consists of a series of concentric spirals on spirals on spirals.

The rising and setting of the sun, your daily body rhythms or circadian clock, the moon phases, turning of the seasons, the menstrual cycle, our shared collective life experiences and life cycles that are way more alike than not, thanks to these matching human costumes we’re wearing… spirals on spirals on spirals.

Even the growth and change process… ever feel like you’re continuing to dance with the same wound over and over and over again? In a sense you are… they’re yours and they’re sacred and are part of your soul’s purpose in this lifetime. However, you are certainly not experiencing the “same thing;” it would be impossible. You’ve grown and changed and evolved, as have all things within and around you. You’re being met with it again in a new way, just as this autumn won’t be last autumn or next autumn, yet it’s still autumn because we need autumn and its sacred wisdom and medicine.

The big secret is this: there’s nothing wrong with you. 

You don’t need to be “fixed” or “healed” or “changed” to earn love, respect, rest, whatever. You are love, you are respect, you are rest. All of these fluctuating needs and rhythms that exist within you and your emotional body, your physical body, your mental body, all the parts of you that are constantly changing and in flux are all absolutely beautiful. And, these spirally parts that are constantly changing and in flux will continue to be that way forever more.

No matter how you fight it or try to “fix” it because you think they’re wrong… the spiral is here. Being in our spiral, makes us feel needy because it’s fluctuating and changing – what worked yesterday, may not work today; what nourished last year, may not next month. Living in a state of flow and honoring our polarities and dancing between them requires authenticity, which requires vulnerability, which requires a transmuting of shame.

THANK GODDESS! And, the medicine is to be aware of and devoted to it through honoring your triangle.

The Invitation

We must unlearn all we think we know about ourselves and about life and living wholly nourished on planet Earth. It’s time to seek within. To know thyself. Deeply. To seek within and consult our own embodied wisdom, our potent subtle energies, and Mother Earth. It’s time to know that our “purpose” is not an elusive, out-of-reach thing for which to seek. It is simply to live in accordance with our values. Our core wounds are gateways towards pleasure.

It’s time to remember and reclaim the ancient wisdom that lives in our cells, to cultivate authentic, dogma-free spirituality, to claim ourselves as sacred and divine and to be guided by cosmic flow. It’s time to live in service to something greater than ourselves, understanding and realizing the tremendous power and responsibility we have together at this time in resurrecting the awareness of the sacred spiral energies through repairing our relationship with our inner authority, structure, and devoted discipline.

It’s time to heal Feminine Shame.

Embracing Your Totality + Putting it in Practice

I know for me, it’s a daily practice of tending my human and feeding my spirit; of finding that still point within to just be and know. Working with grounded resources, like whole foods, embodiment practices, herbs, etc., as well as spiritual, intangible practices such as journeying, dream work, plant spirit medicine, etc. are crucial daily parts of my life.

Have a daily practice – it’s non-negotiable. You’re a sensitive, introverted soul. You are as spirally as it gets; it’s your superpower. This requires you to be in solid relationship with your triangle, your structure. Show up. Have the container and flow within.

Tell me about your experiences with integrating these parts of yourself. What magical experiences of remembering have you had and what has felt challenging about the process?