I am pleased to highly recommend Arjuna Ardagh’s book “Better Than Sex” The Art Of Awakening Coaching. The following are excerpts from his book in regards to the masculine and feminine practice of Awakening. David Welch CEO of AWAKEN
Arjuna Ardagh: We think we know a lot about the feminine and masculine practice already, from traditions that go back thousands of years. But really we only know the masculine expression of these things.
About twelve years ago, I met a woman who had a natural affinity for conscious feminine practice. She was a deep practitioner, and she had come to recognize that she had been over-influenced by masculine traditions. She had a commitment to discovering practices that were suited to bringing forth a feminine embodiment of awakening. Once I got to know her, I was so enamored that I asked her to marry me. Please let me introduce you to my wife, Chameli Ardagh. She can tell you better than I can what feminine practice means:
Chameli Ardagh: Feminine practice is in the body. It is embodied. It is an exploration of embodied spirituality. It is an exploring of spirit and a relationship to spirit as form, as it appears as form. It embraces our humanity. It embraces all of our challenges and glories of our humanness. It is not a journey, or a reaching away from all of this. It is a deep dive into the body, into feelings, into form, into relationship. And through that, touching and confronting the essence, or the inside of the inside, of experience.
Many women experience relief and a sense of homecoming when they discover what we can call the feminine practices; because what they have learned to associate with spirituality often feels very restrictive for a woman. A lot of traditions teach us that we need to overcome our feelings. Family and relationships, which are often very central in a woman’s life, are looked upon as distractions to spiritual awakening or maturity. Our models of spiritual maturity do not look like most women, or behave like most women. It is a constant comparison and falling short, which has been a crime against women for so long.
In the meeting of feminine spirituality, there is a tremendous freedom to be mirrored by other women and by female archetypes of spiritual maturity, where we discover that spiritual maturity has as many faces as the stars in the sky. It is so rich and multifaceted. It gives women this kind of opportunity and assignment of not trying to fit into a ready- made mold, but to tap into how spirit takes form so radically fresh and spontaneously through each one of us.
With the emergence of feminine spirituality, we discover new tools and practices to embody that. We have been trained to rely on and live in the mental realm, and it has caused a tremendous imbalance and disembodiment. That disassociation from the body has caused a sense of split and separation: the core of all of our suffering. So the first step towards embodying feminine spirituality is to get in touch with the body again: to learn to feel the body, to fully inhabit the body, and also to fully experience feelings and sensations in the body.
There is a practice we call “Feel, Kiss, Flow,” which is a beautiful way to train or retrain yourself to stay present with a feeling, while the feeling is actually taking place, instead of immediately running to the mental realm.
The first step is to feel. When you have a feeling or experience, feel it, notice it as a sensation in the body. You bring your awareness into the body and you notice it as a sensation. If you are bored, there might be thoughts about wanting to change the situation; but what does boredom feel like in the body? Notice how it feels as a sensation. If you are sad, what does that feel like?
Then you bring your breath to the sensation, as if you are kissing it with your breath from the inside. You breathe towards the sensation, wherever that is, not to make it go away, but to give it more space to be as it is. When the feeling has space, it will flow. Feelings are energy, and energy is always moving and shifting; it cannot stay still. It is the story about the feeling that gets stuck.
That is the practice. Feel, kiss, flow. Feel as a sensation in the body, kiss it with the breath from the inside, giving it space to flow.
Arjuna: The Most Fundamental Distinction
That which is revealed to anyone in a moment of true awakening is always the same. It is limitless consciousness, with no color, or texture, or shape; with no sound to it, with no past or future. It is empty of content, but absolutely full of love, full of presence. Obviously, that has no nationality, no culture bias, no gender. But as soon as that limitless consciousness begins to be lived, it is expressed through a human form. An Indian or a Texan, a Hindu or a Buddhist, will each express this awakening differently in their lives.
Energies not Bodies
Before we go on, I want to make an important distinction in language. The words “male” and “female” describe attributes of a physical body. But I am using the words “masculine” and “feminine” to describe differences in energy. Instinctively, we know the difference.
The masculine energy in all of us thrives on setting goals, moving towards them, and achieving them, particularly within preset time limits. Our contemporary business world runs like that, because it was created by men. Whenever a man sets up realistic goals for himself and achieves them, he releases dopamine into his brain, allowing him to feel a sense of fulfillment, and to rest in himself. But also masculine energy includes being focused, being centered, and being present. The conscious masculine in all of us is essentially about dropping into the center.
One of the marks of feminine energy is the capacity to fully feel. The feminine, in all of us, enjoys color and texture and sensation. It is not goal-oriented, but loves to linger in sensations and feelings in the present moment. The feminine is naturally inclined towards expressing adoration and devotion. You could do this by completely loving and adoring your children, or your partner, but you could equally do it by expressing devotion to a statue or a deity. It does not really matter, because it is not the object that is so important as the capacity to feel and express deep, irrational, unconditional devotion through your body.
Here is the important thing: both men and women have both masculine and feminine energy in some kind of a balance. If you look at this in biochemical terms, on average men have about thirty times more testosterone in their blood than women do. Some have more, some have less. Women do still have some, but much less. On the other hand, they have much more oxytocin and estrogen. One aspect of Awakening Coaching is to recognize and respect the natural balance of masculine and feminine energy for each person and then to support that person to use practices to restore and live that balance.
There are many practices that Awakening coaches work with to cultivate conscious masculine and feminine energy,
