Oana
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Uncut Feminine Podcast. I’m Oana, and I’m here as usual with my colleague Ioana. And today we’re going to talk about meditation in the feminine way. So stay tuned. And for all of you listening, for the first time, let me introduce myself. My name is Juana. I’m the founder of the website The Feminine.com. And I’m here together with Yana, my colleague, to empower women all over the world, to trust their voices, open their hearts, and embrace their womanhood completely. Feminine.com is an online platform dedicated to women all over the world. And we are here exploring the feminine universe, the feminine values, and how we can balance our current society, and our lifestyle by bringing more attention and more regard to the feminine values. I’ve been a transformational coach. And for the last seven years, out of the 14 in total that I’ve dedicated to empowering people, I’ve empowered women. And it’s a great joy and a great privilege for me to be supporting the feminine values in the conversation on a global scale. So The Feminine.com is a platform, an online platform where my body of work comes together and we share not only successful stories, but distinctions and principles, and feminine practices that can allow us women, but also men, to feel more and connect more with the feminine energy.
Oana
Sometimes we create sacred practices and we give them a modern touch. Other times, we use coaching tools to understand more in-depth how the feminine is working in our lives. And with each podcast, we try to bring the practical side of our work to our listeners. I hope this works for you and that you enjoy it and come along. Hi, Juana.
Ioana
Hi, Juana. And let me tell you, I’m so happy we’re doing this episode on meditation because I know you’re laughing because it’s like meditation is killing me. And it was so difficult for me, resisting the first five minutes of meditation until one day, I don’t know if you remember, but it was during one of your workshops when you guided us through meditation. You called Latihan. I hope I’m not mistaken. I didn’t know I didn’t associate it with meditation because I had this story about how meditation should be very strict. Looking at the candle flickering, not moving, not breathing, or doing anything. I didn’t associate that kind of meditation with the concept of meditation, but it was for me, mesmerizing. And then you came up explaining why it was mesmerizing and why for women it is more friendly and more tender to connect with meditation through this kind of moving, active meditation. So I think it’s a good start to debust this myth.
Oana
Yeah. Latihan comes from a Tantric lineage. It’s a sacred practice that Osho invented. I think it’s older than Osho but also brought it to the modern world. And basically, it’s a practice of deep surrender to the inner rhythm of the body that gets in tune with the inner rhythm and the flow of the life force energy for our readers so that they know what Latihan means is you stay in total darkness with a blindfold and you just allow your body to move, but you don’t move the body, the body moves you. And in that practice, there’s such a deep surrender and an awakening of the feminine in you. Because the feminine, like the water, is very deep and very subtle. So it runs very deep. And that’s why in a way we can’t connect to the feminine energy outside of meditation practice, because we need our awareness to get so in tune and so subtle so that we can feel access, get in tune with the rhythm of the feminine energy, the river behind, the mental noise and the tension. So yeah, Latin is a very beautiful, strong practice in which we can relax into that rhythm of the flow of the energy of the feminine meditation.
Oana
The feminine way is very different because it doesn’t have to have a structure. It’s more connected in principle. So the principle is you connect with your twin. So the feminine way of meditating is not so much a structured rigid process where you have an intention which is to clear your mind and be in stillness like a Buddha. Like Buddhist meditation, it is more about allowing the body to be in flow and expressing that flow. So meditation in a feminine way can happen through dance. Dance can become a meditation if you bring awareness and if you connect to whatever the dance wants to create in the moment and whatever your body, your voice wants to express at the moment. So if you give rise to the inner sensations, the inner emotions, that’s feminine. Awareness is the masculine part of the whole process. But it’s not a structured, rigid masculine, it’s a masculine that is in the flow because the awareness will follow the energy. The feminine is the energy, the awareness is the masculine. So you play with both of those principles. And feminine also about breath because through the breath we enter into life and receive life and the way we work in the feminine principle with the breath is not very rigid again and it doesn’t have a particular set, fixed rhythm like we do in yoga.
Oana
Most of the time you have to have 5 seconds of in-breath and 5 seconds of still breath. No, you just breathe with your belly and you allow the breath in itself to be your guide. So you create your own rhythm. And the more you trust and surrender to the breath which is felt in the body. For a woman in her womb, in her heart, in her kidneys, literally the whole of her body in a way can breathe. Then the woman just starts shifting. Sometimes when we do a sacred circle and we do a feminine practice and we start breathing, some women go up and dance, others cry, others laugh, and others stay in complete stillness. Because through the breath, the feminine energy starts to get activated and it moves you and it moves you either physically or emotionally, or spiritually. And it opens up a creation chapter in your inner being. So you tap into that and you follow whatever that stirs up at the moment, in the process. And just by bringing awareness to the breath, to the movement, to the energy flow, you are in that moment meditating. You are in the flow, you are feminine.
Ioana
I don’t know if it’s historically or culturally completely accurate, but when you were talking about dancing, images, and practices from so many cultures and ancient communities came into my mind because dance was so part of women’s circle. Meditation is so part of the masculine way of connecting with the inner voice because if we look in history, we see most meditation being associated with Nepal Tibetan societies that are more masculine and driven by the masculine principle. While dancing and moving are associated with society, it is governed by the feminine principle. Is it a way of how women tune in with their rhythms better than meditation by dancing or by moving?
Oana
Yeah, dancing and moving, chanting and reading together, and holding hands in a sacred circle is a feminine way of meditating. It’s a feminine way to connect with the Invisible, the subtle realms. And women in ancient times would go into specific caves where they would harness and nurture and cultivate feminine energy, and they would dive into their hearts, open sacred spaces through prayer. And in that portal of energy that was created through the sacred space, meditation would mean many things like holding hands and sharing their hearts, crying together, laughing together, dancing, making in the moonlight, going into the Rivers or the seaside, howling at the moon. And that was all meditation. In a way, it was a feminine way of connecting with their hearts, their warms, their inner landscape, and also the most powerful feminine powers, the Earth and the moon and through the Earth and through the moon with the cosmic feminine energies, because they are out there in the spiritual landscape, not so much in the books and not so many female teachers, but they’re present once you open up to the energy and it’s not very hard, like I always say, this joke and it’s not against the masculine, but it is one of those jokes or stories we tell in the sacred circle at the beginning for women is that takes 50 years for Buddhist Monk to get enlightened by sitting in a cable alone, not eating and feeling the pain of life.
Oana
And it takes maybe, I don’t know, 50 minutes for a woman to just put her hands on the belly, start breathing deeply with the belly, trust her intuition and get enlightened. And beyond that joke, the spiritual subtle meaning of this joke is that through meditation, the Monk, the Buddhist Monk, connects with life and death, which is a feminine cycle in her womb. By just connecting with her womb through the breath, the woman dies and gives birth every month. So she’s connected to that cycle instantly and organically. That’s why women are more spiritually connected than men, and it’s an easier process. If they just surrender to you, then they’re not afraid.
Ioana
This story I just told came into my mind a few days ago when I was having a conversation with a very good friend. He is not necessarily spiritual. He tries to meditate, but more of a way of cooling himself down, not necessarily because he’s spiritual. And he just wrote to me one day asking, I just realized that I feel so much better in the presence of women than in the presence of men. And I asked him, yeah, but why did you ask yourself, yeah, no, I didn’t. But just let me second. In five minutes he rolled back because I felt more connected in the presence of women. And it’s just, wow, what I wanna tell us is real. He was totally out of any spiritual conversation. It was his real feedback. But coming back to the circle of women, you just said, the meditation or the connection a woman experiences, is it stronger in a community of women, rather in a solitary act, totally.
Oana
Women are all about togetherness. And I think one of the ways in which women’s power and spirituality have been suppressed is by disconnecting that connection purposefully or unconsciously, and disconnecting the right of passage, of bringing the sacredness and the sacred teachings and practices from older women to younger women because there is a strength and there is a transfer of knowledge, energy, and power through the rites of passage from older women, Crown women, wise women to the younger ones. And the younger ones left alone, are left alone in the desert, unless there is an emotional warmth and a spiritual warmth that empowers you as you grow up, to trust your intuition, to connect with your instinct, to follow it no matter what. Because sometimes it talks about the future, that you are not able to see it, but you feel it ahead of time. So trusting it is just tuning into what’s going to happen. There’s nothing absurd in it. It’s absurd for the mind or for the superficial eyes. But once you look into that, older women would empower younger women to trust their voice, to trust their intuition, and they would be bringing themselves up with that verticality in their beingness as women.
Oana
So they would encounter the masculine from a conscious feminine perspective, and they wouldn’t bow or bend to the idea that they have to suppress their feminine gifts to be with a man, which is something that once instilled, creates such a lack in our relationships. And it doesn’t empower men either way. It’s a false empowerment because they’re not tapping into the feminine and they’re not receiving the feminine gifts. And I’m coming back to your friend who was saying he feels more connected with women. Women, once they understand that doing the family practice for them because they need that like water in a desert is actually understanding that this is their path of connecting with themselves. And once they establish that connection, they become a gift for other people, and other people in the presence of those women, receive that connection, receive that gift as well. So once we really come back home into the sacred space, into the sacred circle and trust, living the feminine way, we become a gift to the man next to us or men in general or our children or our families. And that’s really relevant and important.
Ioana
It was very touching because it went on. And at that moment I asked him, what exactly do you feel like most? I’m not sure I use the empowering word, but it was the idea, what does a woman have to bring you so that you can feel like that? And he said I think kindness. I’m really touched by the kindness of a woman. I don’t know what that means. He didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t even matter. And speaking about kindness, women, sometimes are afraid to be kind to each other. But what can we do to come back to kindness and start to be sisters with one another if it helps us so much? As you said that in the connection with another woman, we feel more in tune with ourselves and actually empowered at the end of the day.
Oana
I think honoring the spiritual side of the feminine, it’s not about becoming friends with other women. A secret circle was a container for all women to bond with their feminine energy and cultivate and nurture the feminine energy together. It wasn’t about friendship. And the moment you understand that it’s not about becoming friends with other women who may not act friendly. And you go an octave higher and you understand that you honor and respect the flow of the feminine energy that’s moving through all women, which makes you respect the flow of the feminine energy that’s moving through you. And that’s what coming home represents or means in the sacred circle. And it’s not about kindness. Kindness is a gift you receive or you become to embody. It’s about giving up the notion that you are alone and allowing yourself to receive support, which can be very hard to do as an inner or outer movement, especially if you’ve been wounded or betrayed or lied to and had to spend all your life alone. But the moment you do that, the moment you allow that’s the moment you receive. And that’s a very important opening up in a woman’s cycle and inner awakening.
Oana
And it’s also the access to abundance, because the sacred circle is in a way, a portal for abundance, the energy of the feminine that gets cultivated when women come together is such a strong, vital energy force that all the intentions of all the women in the Sacred Circle will be manifested easily. The energy is much more than all those intentions, no matter how impossible they seem.
Ioana
I want to speak more about the manifestation, but I will come back to that question a bit later because I have a very practical question now. If I’m a woman and I really understand and want to embrace this way of connecting with or being in touch with the energy of other women, but I don’t have around me those women with whom I can practically connect, not necessarily be friends, just connect. Where do I find them?
Oana
Thefeminine.com not really. There are so many little real sacred circles out there in the world that once you come across one, just grab it. And it may not be the circle or the only circle, but it can give you access to the energy of the circle, which you can take in your life and co-create or connect with other sacred circles. So, yes, the feminine, because it’s easy and it’s meant for that.
Ioana
Yes, because it’s so funny when you just meet a friend or connect with a woman on the other side of the Earth. She wants the same thing you want, but you’re not one near each other. So we have to make it work somehow. It’s impossible because if all of us want the same thing, we have to make it work.
Oana
Well, in ancient times, the concept of the Sacred Circle was beyond time and space, and it meant beyond that lifetime. So once you stepped into the Sacred Circle, you were stepping and honoring all the brave women who, in their life on Earth have lived aligned with the heart and with their soul and with their truth. It was beyond 20, 5100 women in the Sacred Circle hauling at the moon, at that particular moon, in that particular moment in time and space. It was beyond that. And the feminine is beyond that. So it’s not relevant where you are. What’s relevant is you tuning in and aligning to the set of principles that the Feminine represents and then allowing yourself to live your life in alignment with that, because that will give you access to abundance. It will give you access to your own inner feminine landscape. And it will come through dreaming and intuition and messages and synchronicities. And other women who share the same longing will pop up on the radar. And once you start tuning in with the Sacred Circle, you will first receive, then become empowered, and then you will start to empower other women. And you’ll be able to bring that into your life, in your Church, in your family, in your community.
Ioana
At this moment. It’s starting to be funny. In the beginning, it was a bit scarier then I thought, it was a simple coincidence, but I know it’s true now because all the time we meet to work even just do some writing or some brainstorming. It’s only 2340f us. I receive a text from a man, or my boyfriend calls me or I don’t know, something happens, but it happens all the time when we are together. And at the beginning I thought it was a simple question and then he said, no, it’s really working like that. And with this, I want to go back to the manifestation process and how cultivating energy in the circle can actually contribute to manifesting our intentions. I know the question is very vague and very theoretical, but just please break it down because it’s really strong and it’s really good.
Oana
Well, as I joke in my workshops, you won’t have a problem with attracting men after you cultivate feminine energy. It will just happen. The only problem you will have is picking the right men or managing the abundance, ordering the abundance of men, requesting your presence or your energy. And it’s true, men feel very compelled and very attracted to this energy because as your friend at the beginning of the podcast was sharing, they feel nurtured and they don’t feel nurtured by the particularity of the women or their personalities. They feel nurtured by the feminine energy itself, which doesn’t want anything from them, by the way. So one of the ways in which you anchor more of the manifestation process is by letting go of control and letting go of attachment and letting go of wanting things to happen your way. Having said that, which is not easy, but it’s not easy. It’s the whole process in itself, for sure. We should dedicate a podcast only to that. How to use the feminine energy to manifest and how it was done in ancient times is that you would harness the feminine energy and you would bring and activate it and bring it into the circle by chanting, dancing, meditating, or breathing together.
Oana (24:18)
And it will be like a vortex of very powerful quality energy that once you put your intention through your mind into the fire, as I say, like imagine a sacred fire in the middle of the circle. Then those intentions would catch the energy of life and things would get into motion, they would get stirred up. And then the only thing you would have to follow is from one cycle, full moon or new moon cycle to the next new moon or full moon cycle would be what happens in your inner landscape or your outer landscape and bridging the two so that you could facilitate the manifestation. So you put up an intention, and you have something in mind you want to manifest. I want to work on intimacy in my life and I’m taking a deeper dive into being intimate with all of life for the next month. And this is something I want to manifest in my life. And I go into the sacred circle and we do whatever we do. That’s in the flow that pops up at the moment. And the energy that we cultivate that night into that portal of the sacred space is put into my intention.
Oana
All of our intentions. And my role is to follow through, open up, cracking myself up in the most vulnerable, intimate ways throughout the whole month whatever wounds, trauma, or situations that occurred that are painful, I have to walk through them and I have look every day in my body. How does that feel? Because the energy has been put in motion and the intention is happening. And if I bring awareness to my body, to my emotions, to my intention, every single day, then I will be in the process of manifestation and things will happen, and things will get stirred up. But I have to walk through the fire. I have to walk through the fire. And in the next cycle, I’ll look through meditation. I’ll look into my heart, I’ll look into my body and I’ll say, okay, what have I achieved? What was I able to birth around intimacy? This and this and this. Where did I stop there? Why? I was still afraid it was too much pain. So what do I need to do? I need to work on that. That’s my next intention. And by doing that, every full moon cycle or new moon cycle, I was just being in the feminine way of manifesting, connecting to more energy and through more energy, a deeper capacity to manifest or a wider capacity to manifest.
Oana
And the ritual of meditating with the moon would just be the way in which I would bring awareness to my capacity to co-create.
Ioana
That’s why our podcast is called Uncut because we start from a subject, we just navigate the whole ocean.
Oana
Feminine ways.
Ioana
This is how it works. It’s not random. This is how it works. But just to close the circle, because the family is all about circles. Just to close the circle, we started speaking about meditation. Active meditation, the feminine way. Let’s bring a very hands-on approach and give our listeners suggestions for practice and active meditation. They can do and start sensing and feeling how it works.
Oana
A feminine practice.
Ioana
Yes, a feminine practice. A feminine way of meditating that puts you or has the capacity or gives you the opportunity to be more in tune with your feminine energy.
Oana
Well, I would recommend our listeners, if they really want to do some of our practices, to go on The Feminine.com start here, and join our newsletter because there they will find the book where they have three guided meditations, which for me are stepping stone into the feminine practice because they teach you three things. One is to connect with your heart through meditation. The second is to connect with your womb and ground yourself into the Earth through meditation, which is essential. And the third is how to navigate your emotional landscape. And they’re all feminine. They’re not a Buddhist Monk structured type of meditation or a yoga meditation technique. And you have to start with that because the Feminine way of meditating means fundamentally hearing your heart and moving from the inner girl adolescent lack of confidence in what the heart tells you to the mature, wise woman who understands that the heart is beyond romance and it’s a vehicle for truth. And then understand that nothing happens unless the heart is aligned, which will bring you peace and fulfillment, and that in order for you to manifest, you can’t do it alone. And for a woman, that means connecting with the energy of the Earth.
Oana
So whatever you need in your manifestation process has to happen through the heart in deep connection with the energy of the Earth.
Ioana
So that’s the first thing I would recommend to anybody: we’ll put the link in this podcast’s description so our listeners can find exactly the book you’re talking about.
Oana
Yes, and for the lazy readers, start with five minutes of putting your hand on your heart and breathing with your heart. And I promise you, if you actually do it with an open heart, there will be peace will descend on you. And it may be troubling at some point because it’s very new, but just keep diving. The heart brings messages, it brings emotions, it brings sensations. And just by tuning in with your heart, you’ll be able to expand your awareness to include more of life because the heart field is about an expanded level of awareness.
Ioana
The ebook you’re selling is called The Way of the Heart so it’s really aware of the heart and it’s a journey, but it’s worth every word. So no lazy listeners. Okay. Thank you, Juan. I think Debusted a myth and also brought some hands-on suggestions and practices for our listeners to enjoy until our next podcast.
Oana
Yeah, see you in the sacred circle and join our conversation further on. You can totally connect with us. We’re happy to be a vehicle for your success stories or just your stories and answer all your questions and offer whatever practices we can offer that support your womanhood join us on Instagram at The World of the Feminine also on Facebook at the same World of the Feminine and join our website, TheFeminine.com. Nice to hear and nice to be connected.
