How to Find True Happiness and Worth as a Woman in this World

October 28, 2022
Posted by lana

Photo: Levi Guzman via unsplash

Photos of young, naked women peppered the pages of my father’s newspapers. It was a serious newspaper (non-English) speaking to matters of politics and foreign policy and, yet.

Here were these photos too.

There were never any naked men in there. Just women.

I had already begun to internalize messages of being less than boys – my father outright told us such things.

These pictures, with the general conditioning of the culture-at-large had me believing that my value lay in how attractive and sexy I looked – to men – with as few clothes on as possible.

I felt a strange cocktail emotions relating to my body and my gender – disgust, anger, resentment, inferiority. I felt trapped. I felt at war with myself even if I probably couldn’t articulate it as such at the time.

One way in which this manifested itself very strongly in incredibly painful periods. Every month, a torture (until I was able to heal it).

The world we live in now is not quite the same as the one I grew up in. There are far better and more positive messages towards respecting and cherishing women and the feminine. We have more of a voice and the means to speak our truth and have it be heard.

Still, it’s not quite good enough. Misogyny is so pervasive it’s the air we breathe, most of us can barely distinguish.

It’s just normal or the way it’s always been. Sigh.

Even for women, we’ve internalized so much misogyny it’s a lifetime to extract and separate from it all.

So if you find difficulty in finding joy and your true purpose in your life, especially as a woman, you are not alone!

And the practice of finding joy and pleasure and purpose in being a woman is a lifelong one of discovery.

Below are my suggestion on where to start re-discovering your joy, purpose, power, and pleasure in being a woman. It’s based on decades of my own practice and in working with hundreds of women.

It may seem simple but I truly believe to begin these steps will liberate us. Start with one and I would suggest it be this first one:

Dance & Move Your Body. In Private. Just You.

When was the last time you danced? Or, more importantly, moved your body to music? If you can’t remember, or it’s been a really long time, you’re not alone.

And this needs to be remedied.

The discernment between dancing and moving your body to music is important for some of us to understand.

Sometimes we dance and we think it has to contain certain choreographed movements or look a certain way (like polished or sexy or ‘good’ in whatever way). This can be fun and challenging in interesting ways – nothing wrong with it.

However when we slow down and become present to our body with our attention and our breath, we can allow our body to move in the manner it wants and needs to move. I would still call this dancing but it’s not choreographed, it doesn’t necessarily look good. It can look chaotic and strange.

This is why it’s important to dance and move alone with no one watching. With safety and freedom to truly feel (and even discover!) yourself and move in all sorts of weird and unusual ways.

Pay attention to your hips and pelvic area. Chances are these are tight.

Pay attention to your jaw as you’re paying attention to moving your hips and pelvic area. Chances are this area is tight too. What will it take to relax all these parts at once? How can you move? How are you being moved?

What feels good can be your guide. Be prepared to have different feelings come up. Welcome them. Use the feelings to guide you in how you want to move. Bonus points for letting sounds out too.

Move the body. In private. Just you. Move in weird and different and unusual ways. Breathe. Breathe.

Pick your favourite music. Then pick music you don’t know or don’t particularly like. Try out different things is what I’m saying.

Do this every day! Yes, every day. Even just 5 minutes.

A stiff body breaks down. A body that moves is a body that lives, is a body that can respond and flow with the inevitable and unpredictable.

Of course, not every body can move in the same way.

There is a starting point for everyone. It doesn’t need to be the same. We start with where we are.

Where and how can you start today with movement and dance?

Dance with Others

When I was a young woman, one of my greatest joys and thrills in life was going clubbing. Music on full blast and dancing with people, flirting with strangers, being out with my friends was the thrill of finally being an adult.

But somehow, I got it into my head that once I reached a certain age and once I was married, going out dancing was supposed to stop. Like it was a flighty thing appropriate for young people only.

I’m not sure where I got, and why I had, that idea in my head. But those years where I stopped dancing were some of the most miserable in my life.

Whatever age you are, get yourself out to where people are dancing and dance. Find the safe spaces for this.

If you have ecstatic dance happening near you, please try that out. It’s dance as meditation. Dance for expansion. Dance for the sake of pleasure and as the name implies, ecstasy. No one else is looking at you, they’re dancing ecstatically themselves. If it’s done right, it’s a safe and supportive space where the new parts of ourselves we are uncovering can begin to emerge.

Dance and move with other people. Allow your self-discovery and emergence to continue in the presence of others.

We don’t fully heal alone.

Befriend and Spend Time with Women Who Love, Nourish, and Uplift You

And minimize the time with those who do the opposite (even if they say and do ‘love’ you).

Most of us carry deep wounding we’ve experienced from the behaviours or words of other women and we’re yearning for re-connection, trust, safety, and the love of female friends.

A good place to start could be to spend some time contemplating and even journaling on the women in your life right now who love and uplift you and those who do not. (And sidenote: if someone falls into some middle category between the two, slot them in the ‘do not uplift’ you category).

Make a commitment to surround yourself as much as you can with the positive, loving, affirming women. Create and attend gatherings. Make friend dates. Do errands together. Find your like-minded people and agree to support each other in the manifestation and creations of your life.

I think ‘Sex & the City’ is so iconic and enduring in part because of the strength and constancy of the friendships of the 4 women. This is something we need and want in our own lives. The thing is, we must be proactive in creating it. I think this is the mistake a lot of us make. If doesn’t really just happen, we have to make it happen.

It’s such a gift to have even one such friend, and honey, not uncommon, if you’re feeling you have no one. If this is you, you might like to think back to someone at some point in your life. Perhaps a kind, thoughtful teacher or an auntie, or someone who was kind, loving, and generous towards you. Someone who really saw you for you and loved you.

Remember how that felt and feel the gratitude of having had this person. Remember how they made you feel- comforted, special, loved, etc. Come back to this feeling, and the memory of this person often, as you go out and explore different ways of making new friends.

I’ve heard the lament that it gets harder to make friends as you grow older. I dispute that. I’ve made more friends, with ever deeper connections, in the past 10 years of my life than ever before. I fully expect this to continue.

Some of the places where I’ve found these friend soulmates: work, self-development workshops, trainings, women’s circles, in cafes, at parties, concerts.

We need the presence of people, and especially women, to reflect our beauty and light back to us. People who we can trust and have the best wishes in their heart for us. And like sunshine, we will always need this even as one day we begin to believe that yes, we are beautiful and wonderful.

Create or Make Things that Bring You Pleasure

(and that don’t need to serve any other purpose!)

This can be just about anything! We are creative beings. I know I’m not alone in drifting away from doing things I love as I grew older (like in my aforementioned dancing story). Is this you too? Is there something you loved doing and creating, that brought you pleasure and made you lose all sense of time? Are you still doing it? Time to start!

We need generative, creative experiences.

When we make something with our hands and bodies, we are in some important way blessed with beautiful evidence of our wonderful existence.

Some women want to create babies. Some women do not.

But I believe we all have a drive and desire to make something. To see and hold something of ourselves beyond ourselves.

I love cooking food especially for others. I love singing and making up songs and sounds. I love writing words and creating transformative, moving experiences for others.

What do you love to make? Are you doing it regularly?

Or, what did you used to love to make that you no longer make time for? Or that maybe feels frivolous? How can you start again?

Choose You First

You may naturally find your way here after you’ve been doing the first four recommendations (dance privately, dance with others, befriend uplifting women, make stuff that makes you happy).

Chances are that you are now experiencing (or beginning to experience) what it feels like to feel good. To feel satisfied and at home with and in yourself.

Which can start you on a path toward naturally making choices that are right for you.

Not making a choice because someone else wants you to, or expects you to.

You choose for you.

One of the harmful ways we’ve been programmed to think is in ‘either/or’ terms. This has us pitted against one another as though for one person to be satisfied or happy the other one must be unhappy and dissatisfied.

Try on ‘and/both’ instead the next time you have to make a choice.

Instead of saying:

I can do ‘yyy’ OR I can do ‘zzz’ (the either/or scenario)

Try on saying:

I can do ‘yyy’ AND I can do ‘zzz’ (the and/both)

You can apply this re-frame to any decision you need to make. See how it feels to use ‘and’ instead of ‘or.’

At times, it may be that someone is going to be disappointed or frustrated or unhappy by your choice, but I say let that frustrated person not be you.

We have been conditioned forever to be accommodating of everyone’s needs before our own. The more we veer into sacrifice of our own needs, the most burnt out and unhappy we become. This, too, serves no one.

Get more practiced at choosing you.

~~~

So this is it, the start to finding happiness, power, pleasure as a woman.

Note I said the start!

Now that you’ve read the steps go out and do them. The juice is in the action. Do these steps. Expect to encounter resistance and dance/move through it.

It’s very easy to stay in the mind about this and be critical. Like, I don’t get it. Why would any of this make the difference? The point is not to intellectualize and figure things out. Do it and see what happens inside the doing of it.

Click the image to the left for the list – feel free to print and put it up where you’ll see it.

Practice it all. Do it! Have fun with it!

And by all means, add to it!

It’s not in reading this blog that you’ll have transformed into joyful woman.

It’s in doing these things.

Now, go dance.

Transformation: We Want It & It Scares Us

May 5, 2022
Posted by lana

Transformation by Robert Lovejoy

The other week I watched my niece, 7 month-old Kat, on her belly getting set to crawl.

I had seen her and Mira (my sister) about 4 days earlier and enough time had elapsed for very visible change. Kat felt weightier, heartier, even more energetic. Watching young ones during these times of rapid development is such a gift!

It is possible to literally watch her grow.

So I did. I watched her as she squirmed on her belly. Mira said she is a minute away from crawling. And it’s true. She shimmies. She moves. She swerves. She uses her hands, her arms, her feet, her legs, her belly. She uses everything she has. She’s propelled forward by her curiosity, her interest in that colourful thing in front of her, that place she wants to get to.

Pushing, grunting, working.

A short time ago, I watched another baby a few months older who has mastered crawling and can shoot swiftly across a room before you’ve even had a chance to blink.

Consider how one’s world opens up?

I was taking all of this in while watching Kat, wondering if this was going to be the moment. Would I get to witness the moment of transformation?

This is the moment life evolves. The moment after which nothing is ever the same again.

And, while I have the privilege of watching her and knowing what is coming up, she herself doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how much more exciting and interesting life is about to get.

Watching her, and really getting into the energy and the electricity around this impending milestone, I had a new appreciation and understanding of transformation.

The nature, and the very definition, of transformation is that we CANNOT know what awaits us on the other side.

Transformation requires some blind faith, requires that we give up trying to know or control what awaits us, requires giving up the expectation of a reward or gain, requires us to continue driving forward, propelled, unconcerned with failure, innocent, untroubled by the unknown.

To just keep going with no guarantees that anything awaits us on the other side.

Lots of us get to a point where we are done. We’ve learned and mastered all there is, we think. Maybe we are complacent. Maybe resigned. Like that’s all there is, at least for us anyway. Let someone smarter/richer/stronger do the other stuff. I’m fine

I’ve been there. A lot.

Where have we given up? And why?

Are we really okay with what is so or are we in some denial about some nagging feelings of regret or anxiety that stir around just under the surface?

Do we have to wait until our present situation is so bad, so untenable, that the only choice we have is to leap. Aren’t we there yet??

Present day mystic and spiritual teacher, Caroline Myss, refers to us humans as being in a time of predicament. It isn’t that we have a lot of problems in need of solutions. We, humans, are in a time of predicament with regards to our survival on the earth.

There are no solutions to predicaments. Predicaments must call forth transformation. Transformation starts with me. And it starts with you.

The more we are willing, and we allow ourselves to be in this uncomfortable space, the more we make it possible for others to do the same.

Where is it in life that it would serve to keep plugging away, squirming, getting sweaty, being okay with the discomfort, grunting, working…without attachment or knowing what it will bring? Without any measurable, visible show of progress?

Can we be okay with failing over and over and over again? And still getting on with the work anyway without any guarantee that anything will happen.

It’s actually an electrifying and powerful place to come from.

Of course, many of us are dealing with a lot of trauma. It may be here that we need to start.

Truly consider that our collective lives on Earth depend on our willingness and capacity to transform and throw ourselves into the scary unknown.

I share these insights and experiences on transformation here because the work we do here is transformational in nature. Reclaiming our Feminine selves is powerful. It can feel scary. It is diving into the unknown. But I’ve never known anyone who would go back to the time before.

You know, before crawling.

Can We Begin To Find the Temple in the Place We Call Home

June 6, 2021
Posted by lana

Goddess of the Mountains by Laurie Crain

And why it’s vital now more than ever.

In conversation with a dear friend the other day, we shared some personal pandemic ruminations. He said there are some things he is in no rush to do once restrictions lift. Like drinking in a bar.

I understand that, I said. That particular activity isn’t one I indulged in often so I haven’t missed it. I’ve missed being able to throw parties and have people over; I’ve missed rummaging through thrift shops for treasures. I have missed most having a sense of freedom and being able to go somewhere and travel.

Despite not even having a budget for travel, there is still something of a ceiling on even my imagination that I have felt. The right word to describe it is probably ‘depressing’. As in this stark reality, pressing down upon me: you are trapped here, you can’t go anywhere.

Yet, to be honest now, I am not feeling in a hurry to travel.

Home has been Toronto (Tkaranto, the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit) and during this time, due to poor leadership and mismanagement, we have had one of the longest lock-downs in North America. I am fortunate and privileged in having a place to live and food to eat and still it has not been without challenges.

I have taken myself out for daily walks in my neighbourhood. I have reminded myself of my fortune and privilege in living both close to the city’s largest park and the waterfront — which has always factored into my decisions when choosing where to live. I will gladly sacrifice some comforts for nature and beauty at my doorstep.

I prepared myself mentally for a long-haul winter but the early spring, as per usual, was the challenge. Especially with no prospect of escape. Here I was walking the same old streets like a crazed mouse in a maze. Where was the reward? When, freedom?

We are still locked down being taunted with things slowly re-opening. Soon. Soon. I, like many others, like my friend, are watching places from afar opening up again. It’s unsurprising to read of flights selling out as travel resumes in some of these places. While obviously I understand this, I’ve come around to feeling disappointed about it.

What is it about our ‘homes’ — cities for most of us — that we relate to as pit stops or perhaps just ‘good enough’ that we have to escape from as soon as the ticket queue opens up?

Is it possible or desirable to begin to relate to ‘home’ differently?

Has it become clear that cities are difficult places for humans to live in happily and healthily for extended periods of time? Here in Toronto, we have seen one of the largest condominium booms in the world. On and off for the past decade, I have worked in one of the most condo-dense areas in the city. There has never been a single time in these past 10 years that at least one hasn’t been construction literally surrounding the building I work in.

(Meanwhile, the number of people pitching tents they call home in the city’s parks grows.)

I have watched and felt how these condo-dense downtown areas have become darker and shadier as more of the sun is blocked out. I have noticed how the green and open spaces have disappeared to be replaced with scraggy random token trees not given enough soil and space to grow so they die after a few, sad years.

I understand that if you live in such a dense area, you are likely experiencing more of this itch to escape. I would be too, I don’t blame you. But it highlights why it is important to look at where we are living and how our environments may support or harm us. I also understand not all of us have a lot of choice in the matter. It’s complicated.

Once upon a time not so long ago, commercial travel was expensive and it was rare. People did (and many still do based on ability) live their lives in one relative space without ever traveling very far at all in their entire lifetimes. Travel was a luxury and a privilege. It’s disappointing, though again unsurprising, that many of us want to pretend that everything was great and okay before pandemic times and that we can seamlessly go back to cheap travel and the way things were.

Pandemic times have not erased the reality of climate change and the cost of cheap travel to our environment.

So in good faith I am not in a hurry to travel. I will not be first out of the gate in booking a flight out. Part of what has been illuminated in this time for me is how important and possible it actually is to see where I live with ever new and appreciative eyes.

So we come back to how I titled this piece. How to find the temple, and the sacred holy ground in the place where we call home, where we lay roots, the place where we spend most of our lives. Ask:

Where is the holiness to be found here?
Is there more to be seen and known beneath the surface of this familiar and ‘known’ space?
What have I not opened my eyes and heart to?
Should it be that I’m never able to travel anywhere again, can I be happy and content here?
What can I create?

What I increasingly know to be true is that, while it is special and wonderful to be able to travel and experience different climates and cultures, it can be borne of a restlessness and search for meaning that will never be quenched. If I can’t be happy and fulfilled and whole in the place I call home then I will not find it by roaming elsewhere. I will, at best, distract myself for a time.

I keep at it. It isn’t always simple or easy. I step out from my house and it can feel as though there is nowhere new to go, nothing new to see. So I search. The sky is always different, the way the breeze feels on my skin. Every day brings new growth to the plants and the flowers, the trees. In the park there are so many, how could I have ever thought to know them all?

Walking this familiar maze of streets, I’ve been able to open my eyes and melt my heart into seeing the pulsating life, the ever-changing yet eternal renewal, growth, and decay of the earth. It moves me to deep reverie and a growing connection to this place.

I have seen in the Bosnian mountains shades of Oahu. There are times here in Toronto, in the park, where I’m brought back to the feeling of being in Sedona. I gaze at the vast pines, their crowns high in the distance of the sky and I sense that I’m in British Columbia.

It is all one Earth and the holiness and divinity of this place can’t but be everywhere if we allow ourselves to soften and see. We don’t have to go anywhere to find it, it is already always where we are.

As the world begins to open up, many of us will like, or expect to, jump right back into the familiar ways of living (and let’s face it, consuming) we’ve known before. This may be possible for at time but for how long? The reality is that many places in the world are still struggling to contain this virus. Nothing is assured for any of us.

Which is why it makes the most sense to cultivate this connection with ‘home,’ wherever it may be. To touch and commune with the ground underneath our feet. We don’t know what awaits around the corner. Most of us could never have conceived of enduring the situation of the past year. Anything is possible.

But to feel connected, nourished, and held exactly where you are without need to escape…that is an immense gift. It needs nothing added, nor can anything be taken away.

Will you try it today?

Welcoming Being Lost

January 14, 2021
Posted by lana

On three occasions this past week, I found myself lost in the world.

Twice in my neighbourhood and the third time a bit farther out, though still a place with which I am well acquainted.

In one, I turned a corner onto a street I had walked many times before and it appeared utterly different to me. I even stopped and muttered ‘where am I?’ My brain needed a few seconds to sort itself out, recall what we were expecting and then began to see a few of the familiar things – signs, buildings, landmarks. ‘Oh, yes. OK…I see.’

Then this experience repeated twice more within a matter of days.
knock! knock! knock!

Has this ever happened to you?

The quality to this experience for me is disorienting, even dizzying. It doesn’t last long, a handful of seconds. But in that brief time, something happens…

…a crack breaks open in the code of my life.

Personally I enjoy this kind of disorientation. It’s not unfamiliar. I welcome it as a gift.

In those seconds, I feel like a kid again; the world looms so large and mysterious and unknown before me. I feel like I have no body, I experience myself as a kind of floating nothingness. Where am I? Who am I? What’s happening?

Those seconds of disorientation offer a portal, a glimpse, into all-that-I-don’t-know. It is a potent reminder that I am just an experience, of many, in an infinite, mysterious world.

Even the most basic, elementary things I think I know – perhaps I really don’t. Perhaps there is nothing at all that should be left off the table; what can I really be sure of?

And can I be okay with not being sure of anything? Where does that leave me?

This is a breaking apart, and allowing, that’s been happening for many years. Where it is nudging me towards is more permeability, more flexibility, more curiosity, less attachment to who I might think I am and what I think I know.

I receive this as a gift.
Especially now when I think it would be good for us to question all we think we know. I think this would be a gift most especially for people who think they do question everything already. Because this is ultimately not about questioning what is outside of ourselves.

It’s questioning what is inside.
What is the realest of the real for you, and could it be false? Or something else entirely?

Are you willing to even entertain the question?

Photo by Louis Maniquet on Unsplash

2020: A Truth Story

December 27, 2020
Posted by lana

Caravaggios

There were many challenges and hardships, suffering, and loss this year. We’re still in it, of course. This doesn’t magically transform at the change of a date.

I want to offer a gift of 2020; truly, a year when people revealed who they really are.

Even as what I witnessed was often horrifying and heartbreaking, I’m grateful for truth. I’m grateful for vision.

I don’t exclude myself from this. This year I uncovered some of the nastiest, ugliest things about myself that I had been blind to, that I had denied. I searched these parts out, I sat with my grief and pain and shame. I stayed quiet, I stayed within. I tended to what was most important to me. I loved and let myself be loved.

I want to share about what I’ve all uncovered. After taking this year to be silent and listen more, I’m ready now to speak it. Even as I still am in it, uncovering bones in real time.

~~~

I want to tell you, I’ve had really bad years in my life. The first one that came to mind was 1991. Then there was 1987. 2001-2003. Oh and pretty much 2008-2016 (the dark ‘night’ of my soul, I’m afraid that’s how it went for me).

All of the above were worse for me than 2020. I want you to understand, I know pain. I’ve had lots of it. And they way I’ve learned to get through is to surrender to it.

Surrender to what? The pain.

~~~

It often pained me to see the truth about some people; people with whom I had been close. People who I had esteemed; teachers, friends, lovers. My anger has been deeply roused.

We really showed ourselves to each other. I hope more of us were looking towards ourselves too, within. If not, I think no worry. Your opportunity is still here.

When people reveal themselves, it’s a good thing to know because it’s just acknowledging what’s so. And that’s the ticket when all is said and done.

This is all …what it is.

It is what it is…and it isn’t what it isn’t.

Can you accept all things as they are right now? (without liking, without approving)

Yes, this is just what it is right now.

Breathe.

And now…let’s go do something.

Where freedom is found

October 31, 2019
Posted by lana

Some days send me a gift. Like this vision of the water at the end of the street around the corner from my home. I turned the corner and, here, suddenly it feels like I’m in California.

I gaze at the water on the horizon… I pretend it’s the ocean and I’m walking westward.

I drop myself fully in the feeling of being in California walking toward the Pacific Ocean a short distance away. I feel myself melting, relaxing.
I consider why the flavour and the feel of the west coast soothes me in ways that Toronto seems to fall short. It comes down to a feeling of freedom and so the gift of today is to show me, freedom is a state of being, internally, either available wherever I am or, in fact, not at all.

This isn’t easy for me to fully embody at most times. I need to build this muscle of knowing and feeling myself to be free.

I walk down the street, amplifying California in my cells, and make my way to the water. This was not the original plan but I didn’t know setting out of my house today that I would be visiting the west coast.

This body of water is not the ocean, we call it a great lake but with the wind being what it is today on this vividly bright, beautiful fall day, it feels like the ocean. Waves crash onto the shore. To my ears the sound is music. The mist travels on the wind and gently sprays my face. I sit on the beach for a while and I watch the seagulls too, and they are a trip.

This is what they do.

In the air, wings spread, they are carried by the wind. It is all allowing.
A slight tuck, here and there, a slight re-angling, a slight withdrawing of the wings has them slip through the wind, drop down to a landing if they would like or be carried a little differently in the sky. All of them offer this allowing and surrender to the wind.
There is not a single one attempting to fly against the wind. They don’t do it. There is no imposing of will on the direction of the wind. There is no struggle.
Just a simple allowing of being carried by the wind. I consider how I’m witnessing intelligence and wisdom here.
And also, the most free of all creatures.

how my anxiety dissipated

July 22, 2019
Posted by lana

In these past few weeks, I’ve experienced an unusual amount of anxiety sometimes bordering on despair.

I think it’s been the consumption of too much of the news and current events in our world.

Of course, we’re in some astrologically turbulent times as well (if you follow the stars maybe you can relate) and I’ve certainly been visited by lingering fragments from my past seeking some resolution and integration.

Naturally I’ve been remembering to drop into my womb space in these times. When I feel unsafe, this is what I do. However this – in womb space – is actually where I’ve noticed quite a bit of this anxiety. The place where I’m accustomed to feeling safe and flowing and peaceful, had become just the opposite.

The sensations I encountered in womb felt like a painful stretching of the tendons and muscle to the point of physical pain. At other times it has felt like sharp boulders knocking around in there – weighty, sharp, dangerous.

It’s been a terrible feeling, made worse because I was experiencing it in my ‘safe’ space. Where was there to go then? When and how would it shift?

Well, it did shift and release and it happened in group, while facilitating two Art of Feminine Presence circles on back-to-back evenings. The safe space was still a safe space (!) but in this instance, with this depth of emotion, I couldn’t access the safety by myself. I needed the presence of others doing the same thing with me.

This is a real thing for most women – the need to tend and befriend. When stressed, we need other people – though, the right people for sure! We need community, we need to be safely held and witnessed.

(It’s humbling to have to learn this again and again but I am so grateful)

How much are you holding in?

How much are you dealing with on your own hoping it will go away, just pass, or that you’ll just figure it out?

Are you stuck feeling like you should be feeling happier with all the (on the surface) good things going on in life when underneath it all something just doesn’t feel right?

And when I think about the big issues in the world right now and what the antidote is, I think it starts exactly with this: women coming together to dig deep within, listen to, and support, each other. We need spaces where an authentic expression of ourselves, new and miraculous, can open up, be cheered and supported. So that we can live this authentic expression out in the world, no matter where we are. So that something new can be born.

This type of space and community doesn’t typically just happen on its own. It needs to be created, crafted, curated, cherished. In other words, it takes something!

It takes something for me too.

I’m holding a special 1/2 day Art of Feminine Presence Intensive in Toronto on August 10th, 2019. The early-bird special is on offer until the end of July at a very affordable $67. You may register here
(or send an e-transfer to lkevic@gmail.com and save on the eventbrite fees)

Whether you’ve participated before or whether this is your first time, this is for you. Together, in a small group setting, we will explore what it feels like to beginning tapping into, and living from, the Feminine Essence. Together, we are able to harness this energy and leave with a very special infusion of the rightness and holiness of the Feminine.

This happens every time. I hope you can join us and begin to relieve some of the discomfort, pain, anxiety of our turbulent times.

Menstrual Hygiene Day – Let it Flow

May 28, 2019
Posted by lana

Menstrual Free Bleed!

Did you know there is such a thing as ‘Menstrual Hygiene Day’?

Yep, it’s today May 28th. And my womb, bless Her, is bleeding. So I thought I might offer a little something to mark the occasion…

It’s extremely important to highlight, talk about, de-stigmatize and, yes, celebrate menstruation.

The inclusion of the word ‘hygiene’ in this instance — as in ‘Menstrual Hygiene Day’ — implies that the bleeding is unclean and/or a bio-hazard and the focus appears to be on making it clean and disease-free. None of which is actually true. The word hygiene etymologically refers to a state or, let’s even say, the art of health but most likely most of us don’t know this. It’s ceased to mean this actually.

And let me tell you, there is a lot that is unhealthy about the way we ‘manage’ our blood and our cycles.

I have well over 30 years of bleeding experience. By my calculations, in that time just over 5 years of my life have been spent bleeding!!! I’ve bled a lot is what I’m trying to say. I’ve used a lot of different products to ‘manage’ my bleeding. But, wow, right? That’s a profoundly lot of bleeding time.

I’ve used many different things to soak, sop, plug up, and collect my blood. All sorts of different pads starting with ones that were inhumanely and grossly thick that had me walking like a duck and crying in my bed in the morning before school, pads with wings, scented pads, unscented pads, tampons with applicators, tampons I stuck up my cunt with my finger, a menstrual cup made of rubber, one of silicone, reusable cloth pads of various design, old t-shirts, specially-designed period underwear.

The only thing I haven’t had a chance to try are sponges (as far as I know anyway of what’s currently available; do tell me if I’ve missed something).

It’s been a progression that tells the story of a bleeding life and how I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the bleed. What I know now took decades of discomfort, pain, and failure, I so wish I knew what I know now, back when I started.

One of the latest, ‘greatest’ things to have come out is period underwear designed to hold up to 2 tampons worth of blood. After hearing the raves, I bought a couple. I don’t love them. For me, they don’t live up to the hype and they leak on me. Even as backup.

This is the thing though that is important to consider and know: disposables — which is what many of us use — are bad for our bodies and our health. There are toxins in them. We place them against or in one of the most sensitive and absorbent parts of our bodies. They fill landmines and pollute the oceans. It’s a terrible legacy for a natural, life-giving process.

Re-usable options are unaffordable for some people, that’s a problem. Also, harder to find. If we don’t know something exists, we don’t know to look for it. Also we need people to tell us in some cases how to use them. It can be intimidating to try.
You may not believe this entirely but the experience of our periods — whether good, neutral, awful — is going to be impacted by how well-matched and served we are by our choice of menstrual products. Including even the level of pain we may feel.

And after all of this time I’ve spend bleeding, I gotta say this — whereas once tampons were an amazing discovery, I never want to use one again (and haven’t in over 15 years). I actually don’t want to insert anything in me when I’m bleeding. What I most want to do, what is most comfortable to do is to allow the bleeding. Not plug it, not stop it, not control it. Just allow it to flow.

We have a decent array of options — it wasn’t always the case for menstruating people (and still isn’t for people in many parts of the world). We’ve bled on moss and leaves, on rags, on newspapers, and sometimes… straight down our legs, just free flowing.

In the summertime, off from work without obligations and in my apartment, I’m going to say this — free bleeding holds a lot of appeal for me. So I tried it, on my heaviest bleed days (and do know, I’m a heavy bleeder).

If you are expecting me to tell you it was a free flow down my legs creating pools of blood around my apartment, well guess again. Over the course of the day, the blood never made it past my knees. It could have if I let it but when I felt it start to trickle down my thighs I just pressed them together. This had the blood smear and stay on my thighs and also created a pretty rorschach pattern on my legs, like a butterfly that I could read as my own personal oracle. So divine.

The skirt I wore (black) ended just past my knees and easily concealed the blood on my thighs allowing me to go outside. Yes! I went free-bleeding out into the world, no one the wiser. #liberation

Sitting down, a different beast. When I sat, I did so rather on my side so that I wasn’t making direct contact with my bleeding cunt to the seat. (But, ahem, If one wanted to, one could discretely carry a dedicated cushion for this very purpose. I’m serious, it doesn’t have to be big and if in black, wouldn’t show up bloody. Just toss in for the wash post-bleed with the other bled-on items..

So, that was one revelation, how incredibly contained the flow of the bleed could be. Honestly, I’ve had messier times with all of the aforementioned products than merely free-bleeding.

It actually is very easy to privately and modestly free-bleed.

A most vital revelation — the blood doesn’t have a smell at all. I free-bled down my thighs heavily and wetly and didn’t smell a thing. It felt so clean and pure to do this.

Lastly — there is no irritation happening when there is no block and no artificial anything touching the vulva. There is a great deal of material online in support of sleeping without underwear and giving yourself a break from toxic materials or really materials of any kind. We need air to circulate. Vulva needs to breathe.

So many of us have very serious conditions affecting our reproductive and sexual wellness. I feel very clear and strong in suggesting that a significant amount could be reduced with just allowing the womb and cunt to do its thing without imposition, however much is possible.

Perhaps there are times and places where you can start and try it out….

Like at home. At night. This is the best time anyway to take some time for yourself. Maybe it can be playful, experimental. We take things so seriously. What could open up and release if we could be playful with our period?

Are you grossed out? Ah, I hope you can get over that. Menstruation is pretty natural and this is something amazing to discover here, my words can not ever do it justice.

****

I want to acknowledge the privilege I hold in having all these options. In some parts of the world, the onset of menstruation can lead to ostracization, the end of education, even death.

In any and all ways that we can continue to talk about, de-stigmatize, and honour menstruation, it is vital that we do so. If no one else will encourage you and have your back, I will.

Happy Art of Menstrual Health Day.

As Maiden begins to take over from Crone…

March 26, 2019
Posted by lana

Anthony Delanoix via unsplash

Happy Spring!

(Though it may not feel like it for some of us…)In the language of our feminine archetypes, the Crone (winter) is transitioning to the time of Maiden (spring) here in the northern hemisphere where I’m writing from. Most people I speak to about this are happy and excited at the prospect of warmer weather, more outdoor time, and all of that.

I am that person too!
however…

Nature won’t be rushed…

And I think there is huge value in remembering this and taking it on in our own lives. Things are going to take the length of time they need to take. More often than not, I’ve discovered that rushing to make something happen works primarily to increase my stress, sap my joy, tire me out and somehow still not happen as I had hoped and anticipated.

We can’t rush the warmer weather or have it happen sooner than it will. Yet, I hear so much complaining, wishing, yearning over things so far beyond our control. Yes, the Maiden’s energies are to begin with vigour and enthusiasm. She is dynamic and can be a whirlwind. But the Crone isn’t finished with her wisdom yet, so…can we work with these energies in this liminal time to make the very best of it?

I invite you – the next time you are running late or trying to jam in a bunch of things in a limited time period (which is actually our lives, for a lot of us) – try taking a pause and a breath and eliminating the feeling and energy of ‘rush’.

Stop hurrying.

Stop rushing.

There is one thing we can be doing in any one moment – what happens if you can give that one thing your entire attention, complete what needs to be done, and move on to the next thing?

When I remember to do this – take the rush and frazzle out of my consideration and just take things one at a time – I’m usually able to complete more than I thought and I’m left feeling amazed, happy, and energized (versus zapped and tired).

This is some of the Crone’s gifts – the focusing, the slower pace, the wisdom, the presence, and the ease in what we’re doing. There can be some tension present when we wish for her to hurry and leave already as we see the Maiden standing at the doorway whose energies are so different and whose presence we’ve missed over the long months.

Can we stay present to it all as it is and rest assured that everything is well and happening in its proper time and proper way?

May seem too simple but as I was recently reminded:
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication (Leonardo da Vinci)
Happy Adventures in Springtime Transitions!

Rumbling, Eruption, Disruption

May 4, 2018
Posted by lana

‘Madame Pele’ by Rachael Ray

The lava flowing, the eruptions…the pictures and the knowledge of what is happening in this place I love from deep within my soul…is stirring. up. so. much.

This Big Island, and my experience living in lower Puna, reflects both the most beautiful and the most fierce aspects of the Feminine. There is so much richness and wisdom to be gleaned there – not from the head, purely soul, womb, heart (on offer to ALL, who are open).

Last week as I mourned the terrorist act carried out in my city targeting women, I let a lot of sounds out. At one point, without intending or planning to, my held note in a song became a scream. A really loud, wild scream, amplified quite a bit as I had been singing into a mic.

It was loud and, also, I held back.

I mean, what if the neighbours heard and called the police because they thought someone was being attacked?

Fair. And also not fair because sometimes I need to scream.

How much are you holding inside? Where are you feeling the rumbling?

What I’ve noticed today has been a strong and recurring desire to let sound out but EVERYWHERE I find myself. To sing wildly and loudly. To make noise, to stir up. A quick and easy way to get one’s self tucked away in an asylum, isn’t it.

This is Pele for me right now. Letting it all out.

She rules. She’s erupting the boiling hot from within. She is paving over what we’ve built. Detached.

It isn’t a new thing at all but given all that’s been happening in our collective reality, I offer that it would benefit us to pay attention. Truly, to see with vision, to see symbolically, to see deeper and farther. What’s on the horizon?

To the beautiful people of Puna, please stay safe. You are in my heart.

Art: ‘Madame Pele’ by Rachael Ray

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