What if Everyone is We/They?
Parts Work #5: The Gifts of Masculine and Feminine Energies, plus a 5-minute practice for strength and receptivity
It’s Flourishing Friday. What are you creating? Today, we explore the nuanced gender energies that express the full spectrum of your authentic creative voice. Today’s 5-minute embodiment practice (jump below) invites you to connect with these energies in your body. Want to express what matters most to you? Please subscribe. Thank you, Brave Creative!
How Do You Gender?
At the right party, I’ll say, “I’m 78.5% masculine energy in a female body.” I enjoy tapping into both of these spirits, within a full spectrum of expression.
This is NOT about sexual reproductive equipment, sex hormones, or transexuals. Although some strongly uphold the physical binary of two genders, cultural creatives enjoy busting paradigms and dualities. We stretch Either/Or into Both/And.
On the Left Coast, we/they pronouns, gender variants, and non-binary language are becoming normalized. In a culturally divided Patriarchy, the gender conversation heats up fast, and it can burn. I wish I had a magic balm for this.
As creatives, can we embrace both gender energies as aspects of being fully human? Ancient traditions and modern psychology support the idea that we embody a balance of both. This awareness helps you create from a more fully conscious place.
1. The concept of feminine and masculine energies, or Yin-Yang, emerged around 1000 BC.
Yin and yang are complementary forces that form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts. Yin energy is ‘dark, passive and receptive' while 'yang' is light, active and expansive. Everything has both yin and yang aspects (for instance, shadow cannot exist without light).1 In traditional Chinese medicine, one's health is directly related to the balance between yin and yang qualities within them.
2. Indigenous Wisdom: Two-Spirit and Third Gender
Long ago, indigenous peoples around the world created honored roles for gender-fluid folk, to tap their unique strengths as healers and artists. The Mahu2 or third gender, are traditional beloved healers in Hawaii and throughout Polynesia. Today, many are reclaiming their Two-Spirit power back from colonized repression.
“I'm very much ‘male’ presenting in physical appearance when you look at me, but inside of me is a Mother, and a maternal energy, and for me, that's the intersection where my Two-Spirit identity lives,” Enos says. “As it's been taught to me, as Two-Spirits we were and still are balance keepers. The in-betweens that maintain and keep all things moving forward.” — Tony Enos, (he/him), Cherokee3
3. 100 years ago, Carl Jung proposed the concepts of anima and animus
Anima means soul. It represents the feminine aspects that reside within the male psyche, while Animus (spirit) is the masculine side within the female psyche. When balanced or harmonized, these vital forces create a whole, or individuated, person.
The Feminine aspect encompasses qualities like emotion, intuition, and sensitivity. The Masculine aspect embodies traits such as rationality, assertiveness, and logic. The anima/animus is the image-making capacity which we use to draw inspirational, creative and intuitive images from the inner world. 4
Finding the Divine Feminine and Masculine Within
For 2000-ish years, the earthy Feminine has been devalued, repressed, and bullied, while the Masculine principles of action and logic ruled with an iron fist. Many of us born female learned to put on our shoulder pads and man up, so we could survive. We’ve also inherited toxic ways of expressing ourselves.
My dad wanted a son who’d become an athlete like him. Sorry, Dad. I’m a sensitive artist type. However, I carry your fierce ambition in my bones. As a multi-passionate creator, I am all in, driven to succeed by my own measure and standards of excellence. This is masculine energy: highly directed, highly focused, even workaholic.
As a teenager reading the Tao Te Ching, the language for Yin/Feminine bugged me. Dark? Passive? Receptive? I didn’t want to be led, like a cow. Really?! I began exploring the Divine Feminine in the early 90s, a heart-opening process to find the softer, yielding presence that exists in both sexes. My male partner embodies more naturally feminine traits: he’s very nurturing, gentle, and intuitive.
My Soul is feminine, laid back, not striving. She adores the present moment. She’s connected to the natural world of beauty and the richness of sensory experience. She helps me stay in touch with qualities of trust and love, not just making things happen.
How do the Divine Masculine and Feminine help us create?
As you embrace both energies within, your options expand.
Enlarge your perspective. To tap the experience of the ‘other’ grows your understanding. E.g. I don’t ‘get’ guns, and I abhor violence in entertainment. But I came to appreciate my partner’s attraction to stories with the protective warrior archetype.
Which qualities motivate you? Sometimes you want to charge ahead and get things DONE. Other times, your work may benefit from drifting in a dream state, receiving images and intuition that inform the heart of your project. Notice how your body feels engaging with each.
Who inspires you? What’s their style? More M or F? How do they express? Prince was a slight, gender-bending artist with androgynous qualities. AND his monster guitar skill was legendary amongst masculine rock-n-rollers.
Notice how you feel. Does grinding on a deadline and checking off lists please you? Or do you light up free-writing or working with images that inspire you?
May you enjoy the full 360-degree range of expression, and everything in between!
How can I feel both powerful AND receptive?
Today’s 5-minute practice is about sourcing both of these energies in your body. In this ‘Live from the Loo’ video, my alter-ego Queen Poopicina 💩 shares the ‘Holy Sh*t’ version of this tool (with a ‘crappy’ accent and a spontaneous Gospel-style song.)
Spine & Bowl (Open & Strong)
BREATHE deeply. CONSIDER a challenge in your life. Do you need more strength to face it? More openness? Or perhaps some of both?
IMAGINE your next inhale moving up your spine. FEEL your back supporting you, holding you up.
NOTICE your posture. Find a good alignment as you soften shoulders and jaw.
ENVISION your pelvic bowl as an empty space, a place of potential. EXHALE and imagine this energetic space opening up, ready to receive new insights.
CONTINUE to inhale up your spine for strength, then exhale to awaken your pelvic bowl and make space for listening, with your gut.
REFLECT when done: “My body feels ...”
Make it Real: Balance your energies
EXPLORE: Write or share how Spine & Bowl feels.
CREATE: Practice walking or working while aware of your Spine & Bowl. Teach a friend to do it.
MANIFEST: Next time you’re facing a difficult conversation or task, prepare first by breathing with Spine & Bowl. Do you feel more ready?
Thanks for tapping your strength and receptive qualities. This 5-min. practice is from my deck of self-care tools, “HeartsQuest: Creative Tools to Navigate Change,” at HeartsQuest.com/store. Thanks for clicking the heart, and sharing a comment.
JOY of the WEEK: Soul Journaling at high tide
If you’re called to create something that matters and to share your true voice, it’s vulnerable. When my Monkeys of Fear (anxiety, procrastination, etc.) show up, it’s a signal. To soften, breathe, listen, and lean into what matters. I use these tools to bring myself back home.
Befriending my Monkeys allows me to create work that’s appeared in Time Magazine, feature films, TV, newspapers, YA fantasy novels, on stages and festivals on the West Coast, and in bathrooms across the USA (“Holy Sh*t! 52 Self-care Tools for People who Poo.”) More at HeartsQuest.com. Thank you for subscribing, darlin’. You got this. More to come!
“In Hawaiian culture, Mahu refers to someone with a male and female spirit and a mixture of gender traits.” NBC New, July 2022
‘What Does It Mean to Be Two-Spirit? Five Indigiqueer people explain what the umbrella term means to them.’ Quispe López, Them.us, November 2023
“The Archetypes of the Anima and Animus,” Applied Jungian Studies
To journal by the water is 😎👍🌟🙃
This is so insightful. ❤️ feminine power is way beyond the masculine, they work hand in hand. Tap and balance the presence of both in your world. 🙏