How to claim your own power
Fasten your seatbelts for a smooth and gentle ride (which can still be scary): We're moving into the solar plexus chakra as we continue the Love your WHOLE self 2024 chakra journey...
In the coming weeks, you'll be learning more about how you can step into and stay in your power.
How to feel safe enough to be yourself.
How to work with that fear of exile (however unconscious it may be, it keeps a lot of people playing smaller as we're wired to fit in for survival).
How to use the power you have to work for social justice.
And of course, how to work with your gut, the enteric nervous system and the other parts of the body most associated with the solar plexus chakra - the stomach and lower torso area.
Remember to ground yourself and keep doing what feels GOOD
As we begin the journey this week, remembering all you've learned with the work you've already done (or can go back to) on the base chakra (to support safety and security, grounding to reach higher) and sacral chakra (about moving towards pleasure and trusting in yourself and in life) just notice what comes up for you as you even THINK about power.
Potted history of my own (ongoing) personal journey with power
I attended a V-Day Women and Power conference in NYC when I first started my practice in 2004.
I’d handed my notice in months earlier and flew out from London on my first day as my own boss.
This was all pre my introduction to social media. The V-Day site (inspired by Ensler’s journey performing The Vagina Monologues and hearing so many survivors’ stories she felt she had to DO something or quit performing so she set up V-Day to fund grassroots organisations working around the world to end violence against women and girls) had saved my life.
A couple years earlier, a series of intrusive hospital tests pre endometriosis diagnosis and surgery and learning to live life sober meant I was a walking emotional wound for a long time.
Between the intrusive tests, my new to me, wonderfully pain relieving but hideously sob inducing yoga practice - I was NOWHERE NEAR embodied back then but my body was coaching me to learn - and learning to meditate doing the crystal therapy training (the first therapy I trained in), I was being flooded and triggered with fragments of long repressed memories.
These were from my early childhood and then, later, from my drinky days as a teenager, passing out unconscious on a regular basis because I had so little regard for myself or my safety and simply didn’t know how to navigate life and feeling it all.
Attending this conference (staying at a YMCA where I could SWIM each day and getting up early to walk across Manhattan to the hotel where the conference was and do a yoga class before it started and then go to Harlem for a concert after it) was a highlight and each day, I grew more empowered and brave.
I psyched myself up to ask and actually got a place on my first ever press conference as a brand new freelance journalist and it was with V (formerly known as Eve Ensler), Jane Fonda, Sally Field and amazing activists from around the world.
I got to MEET Gloria Steinem but she'd had to leave before the press conference.
Looking back, I can’t believe I went freelance as a journalist with no contacts or experience since uni while setting up my coaching and complementary therapy practice (before I trained as a counsellor and supervisor).
Back then, the coaching and my new yoga practice meant that there were times when I DID feel empowered but if I wasn’t actively coaching or yogaing myself, my default mode was pure self-loathing.
Training as a psychosynthesis counsellor and trauma therapist and all the therapy, coaching, supervision and personal development work I’ve done has helped.
And all the shadow work, subpersonality work, parts work: OWNING the scared, anxious, traumatised, fearful, vulnerable AND powerful, ambitions, creative and joyful parts of myself has also helped.
And this weekend, 20 years later, as I've been stepping into my own power more and more, I'll be attending my first therapy conference as the Editor-in-Chief of the Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy.
Younger Me would have been anxious but I understand that that is a completely normal way to feel and know enough now to help me keep grounding. I actually (right now) feel pretty relaxed about the whole thing! And it’s always delightful to see my IACP colleagues. The conference’s theme is on decolonising therapy so that’ll be incredible.
AND, am aware that I have a London/Essex/etc accent in Ireland and the horrors of the British Empire and 800 years of oppression…
This teeny clip gives some insight into all the guilt I grew up feeling knowing that living in the part of the world I just happened to be born in had ABUSED power and I had a better life than so many because of it.
It’s taken an ENORMOUS amount of work for me to recognise that the more we all step INTO our power, the more we can create a more just, equal, inclusive and peaceful world for EVERYONE
Amping up from pedal power to vroom vroom motor car - yikesy and AMAZING
I've also been massively conscious of my own relationship with power as I've learned to drive and gone from someone so terrified of the power of the machine (little Skoda CityGo I call Beatrice Lobster) I was scared to turn the key in the ignition to someone who now embodies safe driving and control.
Cycling has always scared me (if you knew the roads I have to cycle to get in and out of town you’d understand) but my inner martyr has been more ok with the idea of me being kersplatted than I ever could be at the idea of me harming anyone else.
I now understand that my being as safe and observant a driver as possible is linked to the ongoing work I'm doing with my own solar plexus chakra and I'll be sharing more of that with the Embodied Wellbeing community too.
And then, in what feels like a teeny tiny power grab, there was this morning's yoga practice. I had an epiphany in the pool yesterday (at time of writing) that with my shoulder the way it is, my physiotherapy is my current yoga practice. To let go of my sorrow at not being able to do a Proper Practice which hurts my shoulder and knees too much. This morning's practice was a delight! I felt icky and off and didn't want to get onto the mat at ALL but reminded myself that I have the power, in any given moment, to DO the thing that will (or even may) help me feel better. It's up to me to do it.
And up to YOU. What is that thing in your life right now?
When can you do it?
You might also want to grab a pen and jot down the names of the people and situations that spring to mind when you think about power.
Noticing how you FEEL about the first people who sprang to mind will give you some insight into how you feel about power. How you might be scared of it corrupting you and unconsciously or even consciously pushing it away.
Who on your list is someone you ADMIRE?
Who are you SCARED of? Or of becoming like?
When you let yourself imagine yourself owning your own power, in service of others and the world at large, what does that look like and feel like?
Let me know!
You have the power to choose where you focus your attention
Something that ALWAYS helps me feel more empowered (these past few weeks have been powered by endless listening of Beyoncé's new album) is listening to inspiring podcasts, watching biopics, or reading memoirs or interviews with people. My hope is that others will be as inspired by some of the guests on my own podcast as I continue to be.
This week's podcast episode is with powerhouse Marilyn Devonish, a speaker and trainer, multiskilled therapist and coach. I hope listening or watching it and other episodes will empower you in your own life and work.
If you haven't already (and want to), please share it, rate, review, comment and subscribe.
And let me know how you're getting on!
For full members of the Embodied Wellbeing community, you’ll get your self paced self care practices by Tuesday night AND I’d love to hear from you about your IDEAL day to receive these each week… Am experimenting…
Let me know how you're getting on, who your power inspirations are and what you're going to do to empower yourself this week.
with love,