Why is it so important to access your Feminine Energy?

Feminine energy has been misunderstood for the last 2000 years and here’s why. In our society we’ve learned that when we hear of or think of feminine energy that we should automatically collapse it with femininity. Femininity as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “the quality or nature of the female sex : the quality, state, or degree of being feminine or womanly,” therefore when we think of it, we likely imagine the classic damsel in distress, the homemaker in the kitchen or the sexy woman who never chips a nail, which are all stereotypes of hyper-femininity we have come to be accustomed with. In terms of adjectives, we may also think of weak, soft or girly when we think of feminine energy but the deeper I go into this work, the more it becomes blatantly clear that feminine energy is not related to femininity at all. Here is why feminine energy has been misunderstood for so long.

Femininity refers to the biological sex of the woman. Sex is a label — male or female — that you’re assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you’re born with and the chromosomes you have. Gender is much more complex: It’s a set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, thoughts and standards about the way that people should behave based on their gender. There is a conditioning we have mostly all received about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex or gender. An interesting fact about gender today is that for the first time people are declaring their own gender identities as individuals based on how they feel inside and are deciding how to express those feelings in terms of their choices in clothing, appearance, and behaviors like it hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years. This is wonderful because some people feel that their assigned sex is of the other gender from their gender identity (i.e., assigned sex is female, but gender identity is male) and for the first time in a long time, they are expressing themselves freely. Every society and culture has very different gender role expectations that can also change in the same society over time, for example, in the U.S., pink used to be considered a masculine color while blue was considered feminine.

Modern society has maintained a set of ideas about how we expect girls and women to dress in typically feminine ways which would equate to things like being polite, accommodating, and nurturing in general. So if you were a woman growing up in the U.S., this is what you aspired to. The main thing I am shedding light on in this article is that a woman being feminine accessing her femininity as described above, has nothing to do with what it means to access ones feminine energy. In addition to masculine energy, feminine energy is something that all human beings carry inside and these energies are prevalent everywhere in nature and permeate everything in our universe so it is not an energy we assign to a gender.

Something that has contributed to the confusion between femininity and feminine energy is that women by nature tend to be able to access their feminine energy more, and men by nature are generally able to access their masculine energy more but this is not a rule. Many women can be and are naturally more dominant in their masculine energy and many men can be and are more dominant in their feminine energy and that doesn’t mean anything about their sex or gender. Hyper-feminine folks exaggerate the qualities they believe to be feminine. This may include being passive, naive, sexually inexperienced, soft and flirtatious. These exaggerated gender stereotypes can make relationships between people difficult and these extreme gender stereotypes are harmful because they don’t allow people to fully express themselves and their emotions.  For example in the case of women, it’s harmful to women to feel that they are not allowed to be independent, smart or assertive and its harmful to men to feel that they are not allowed to be kind, emotional or nurturing.

In making this important distinction between feminine energy and femininity, the goal is to give people freedom. Feminine energy is demonstrated by stillness, intuition, creativity and the senses which are all qualities, which are easily accessed by and available to both men and women, not just women.

Everything in the universe is energy and you as a human being are made up of energy. You emit energy and are emitting either masculine or feminine energy at all times regardless of if you are aware of it or not. If you learn more about how energy works, you will see how we as individuals can access feminine and masculine energies without attributing them to sex or gender.

Energy is distinct from sex, gender and any role or stereotype. The formal definition of energy is that it is “the capacity or power to do work, such as the capacity to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force.” There are many different types of energy, and even more ways of categorizing them but for the sake of this article, we’ll stick with this one. At the end of the day, what it means is that it’s the capacity to cause movement. Therefore, when you access your feminine energy, you are causing a type of movement or a state within yourself.

Until now we have thought that feminine energy and femininity are the same thing and they are not. Feminine energy is a quality of energy that can be accessed by a male or female at any time. It is an energy that can be accessed by fully allowing yourself to experience the present moment, practicing the act of receiving, or moving your body in creative or non-conventional ways. When accessing your feminine energy, you can surrender. Not in the sense of acquiescing to anything but in allowing things to flow. When accessing feminine energy, one can go inward and incubate ideas, nurture concepts and contemplate next steps. So you see, feminine energy has nothing to do with gender or sex, it has to do with a state of being that one can access depending on what the environment calls for. It has nothing to do with roles or labels described above. All human beings possess feminine energy within ourselves and are able to access it if we choose and it is extremely important that we are able to access it now.

The challenge has been that through the last 2000 years, accessing this type of energy has been discouraged or reserved only for artists or to those who were considered obscure types, when all along it was an energy that anyone could access in order to empower themselves. You see, when you are able to access your feminine energy in these healthy ways, what happens is you give your masculine energy the fuel it needs to be more effective. Without it, one could experience burn out, overwhelm and overload because without feminine energy, you are essentially always on the go, never stopping to reflect and burning your candle on both ends. You are perpetually in a state of bestowing, never taking anything in. If you are not able to take anything in and accept anything for what it is, how does one expect to replenish ones self? How would your knowledge, vitality and inner nourishment be generated? Feminine energy is essential to balance masculine energy. Neither of the energies exist without the other.

The reason it’s so important to access your feminine energy right now is that it is the prime state of energy needed for reinvention, transformation and creation, which is what we will need to navigate into this new world, this new reality. By practicing accessing your feminine energy you will be able to see the big picture and connect to the emotional aspect of life as a catalyst for change and development. Not to mention, right now you will need to work with others and create community more than ever. The Great Equalizer does not believe in how much money you have, what position you hold or what ethnicity you are. Accessing your feminine energy by relating to yourself and others and by listening deeper, sharing more freely, and nurturing more willingly will give you the strength to soon take the action warranted, to lead and not only survive but thrive.