Have you ever brought a big juicy dream to life, only to feel a major contraction afterwards? OR have you noticed that the contractions are strong as you are bringing a dream to life?
In some cases its immediate, in others there may be a lag, but any matter what, it can be a very frustrating experience.
Photographed by @gabrielasvision at Pussy Empowered Party
Let’s call this the process of contraction and expansion. It can happen anytime, after a creative project coming to fruition, a fun sexual encounter, career goal met, dream brought to life. It can happen during the expansion itself.
The exact feeling varies. Maybe its fear, despair, grief, shame, numbness. Overall, its a contrast from the elation or excitement of experiencing a success or bringing a dream to life.
I believe it happens for a number of reasons, but the main one that I have come to realize can be summarized as upper limiting, a term coined by Gay Hendricks that is outlined in his eye opening book, “The Big Leap”. (This is a book that I’ve re-visited many times and have been recommended in spiritual spaces and business coaching spaces alike.)
To summarize, the concept of upper limiting is something that occurs when things are going well in our lives. It can have many triggers, but the more we become aware of its presence and these triggers, the more we can recognize upper limiting as it arises.
Why? On reason is that it is a result of habitual mental and emotional patterns that we have reinforced over our lifetime. Practiced ways of thinking and being that your mind, body, and spirit have grown accustomed to over the years, thus reinforcing neural pathways over time. These are ways that our brains and bodies feel at home in a certain way of being.
When we experience a meteoric or sometimes even gentle rise in our joy, positivity, pride, accomplishment these commonly reinforced ways of being attempt to stabilize once again, often sabotaging the uplifting feelings.
It can also be understood as the shadow side of the success.
For example, in this weekend’s Virtual Retreat: Brave, Badass New Year, we identified our biggest struggles and also our greatest celebrations of 2022. Afterwards, we reflected on the relationship between these two elements.
For me personally, 2022 was a year of major ACTION- I brought so many dreams to life including producing and performing in 4 Pussy Empowered Parties, leading 3 Pussy Empowered Performance 10 week classes, expanding my solo burlesque performance career, writing, recording, & performing my first song, moving out of my home in Topanga and arriving in the Caribbean commencing a period of travel I’ve always dreamed of, amongst other accomplishments. (Yes, I’m flexing!! Its a good muscle to strengthen- you should practice sometime!)
But I also want to illustrate my point, amidst all of this excitement and up-leveling, I began experiencing major anxiety reminiscent of my youth. Anxiety runs in my family and its something that I experienced on the daily growing up. I have had a long journey of learning to calm my nervous system and find true, regular grounding. This process has gifted me a more common state of calm and stability compared to how my internal realm used to feel like on the regular.
Still, at times where I push myself out of my comfort zone, when I’m triggered fear, making big life changes, when I fall off my daily rituals, when I have too much sugar or coffee, and sometimes for no identifiable reason, I experience flare ups.
This fall, I experienced an extended flare up. A contraction to all of the expansion I was experiencing as my mind, body and spirit tried to catch up with all the growth. This anxiety was an aspect of all the action that was being activated. It made sense when I became aware of this this relationship between the expansion and contraction I was experiencing simultaneously.
So, yes, often, the expansion and contraction is happening in conjunction. I like to use waves as a metaphor- that ebb and flow is something we must learn how to surf, to stabilize ourselves amidst it all. Because these waves are inevitable.I don’t foresee that we ever truly reach a point in life where we don’t experience these waves to some extent. However, we CAN get to know our patterns, strengthen the practices that help us stay centered as we continue to rise.
How do we do that? How can we best ground and support ourselves along the way? Here are my tried and true Pussy Empowered solutions to practice before, during, and after our dreams come true. These solutions can be used in the midst of a contraction flare up, and/or ideally daily as a way to continue staying present and processing along every moment of your journey.
Pussy Empowered Solutions:
1.Surrender
Affirmation: I surrender to the life of my dreams
Surrender is the foundation of my Pussy Empowered™ Framework because it anchors us into the present. And the present is where our power truly lies.
Using our senses, aka sensuality, we can access this moment and move from the chatter of our mind down into the reality of our bodies. Meeting our bodies in the moment is a way to remember that the earth’s gravity is still holding us, that our breath is still fueling us, that likely in the now moment we are safe. These practices allow our nervous system to really feel that.
I have found that having a daily method to access surrender is critical when working with feelings of worthiness, enoughness, anxiety, and during times of elation. Here’s how you can incorporate surrender into your routine:
Action step:
Create a daily ritual that invokes the blissful feeling of surrender in your mind body and spirit:
Some suggestions:
Nature: Spend time in nature
Earthing: Put your feet directly on the earth
Breathe: Take deep, intentional breaths
Touch yourself: let your hands graze across your skin and get present to the sensation while reminding yourself that you are safe in your own hands.
Embodiment: Create a playlist for surrender or use this one and use it to get into your body
Resources:
1.Download my Surrender to Radiant Calm Ritual, a guided daily grounding ritual, taken from my own personal daily practice, filmed on the beach on a breathtaking beach in Puerto Rico. Download here.
2. Listen to my Pussy Empowered Podcast episode, Surrender to Being, to explore this theme more. Listen here.
3.Listen to my Pussy Empowered Playlist: Surrender to Being. Listen here
2. Alchemize
Affirmation: I love myself in this moment, just as I am.
Alchemy is a necessary tool for staying present amidst the waves of life. This is an invitation to continually digest and reflect on your experiences. It is a practice of meeting yourself exactly where you are, as you are, again and again. Embedding methods for alchemizing emotions and experiences into your everyday can help nip prolonged experiences of contraction in the bud.
Action step:
Create a daily ritual that allows you to alchemize whatever emotions or experiences are present for you:
Some suggestions:
Dance: put on music that matches the mood you’re in and dance with/through whatever comes forward. Laugh, cry, roll on the ground- whatever feels the most true. You can change the music to match your mood as you go along. Try setting an allotted time for dance daily or allow a less limited time for when you can feel a need to go deeper.
Vocal Activation: feel into your body. Where is this emotion, sensation most alive? Take a deep breath into this space and on your exhale, make sound with your voice to mirror this feeling. Do this as many times as you are called to. Try doing it for a period of 5,1 0, 20 minutes and watch how things shift
Journal: Free write without judgment. Allow your hand to move across the page and spill everything that is on your heart and mind. “If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me threatening the life it belongs to” - “2am” Anna Nalick
Resources:
1.Download this Alchemize your 2022 PLAYsheet to reflect on 2022 or for what the process of alchemy can look like. Download here.
2. Read this blog post on the Pussy Empowered element: Alchemize Your Herstory
3. Explore these Pussy Empowered PLAYlists designed for feeling and moving through different moods and states of being. Listen here..
3.CELEBRATE
Affirmation: I am so proud of myself!
Yes, celebrate! Set aside quality time to revel and bask in your accomplishments. Even the teeny tiny ones. Getting in a habit of celebrating reinforces the neural pathways in your brain associated with self love, joy, self esteem, gratitude. This is an integral part of creating/living the life of your dreams because without out it, we are simply on an endless ladder seeking accomplishment after accomplishment. When really the reason we seek to accomplish anything is because we “think we’ll feel better in the having of it” as Abraham Hicks says. Taking time to appreciate and acknowledge your wins from small to large gives you the fuel to keep going and the recognition you deserve along the way.
Action step:
Create a daily ritual that invokes the feeling of celebration.
Some suggestions:
Dance": yes, dance is a suggested step in each category because it really works, its free, powerful and it can never be too much! Try blasting this Pussy Empowered PLAYlist: Live Rapturously
Say it out loud- proclaim, brag, express appreciation out loud to let yourself hear how badass you are. It feels so good to say “I really did that shit!” and let this truth resonate in your body. This practice is amplified when you allow someone else that you trust to be able to hold your joy, to witness you.
Bask: set aside time just to bask. That means clear your to do list for part or all of a day after an expansive experience to just be. Be a body, listen to music, stare, take a bath, eat well, order in or eat out etc.
Resources:
1.Listen to this Pussy Empowered podcast episode: Live Rapturously
2. Listen to this PLAYlist to invoke rapture in your spirit. Listen here.
What to avoid:
Interacting and attempting be acknowledged & celebrated with people who tend to be debbie downers, tend to be jealous, or take joy in raining on your parade.
Overscheduling yourself or filling your day with tasks or experiences that tend to bring you down directly after an expansive experience.
Try not to be hard on yourself. That is, focus more on your wins than what could have been done better. Things could always be done better but thats not a good reason to be mean to yourself!
Numbing out with things that tend to have a negative effect on your mind, body, spirit afterwards
PS. Are you interested in 1:1 Pussy Empowered Coaching?
