When we speak of women's empowerment, as a fundamental human right, it often concerns our participation and agency in social, political and economic domains.
Achieving this is an ongoing global fight and an urgent one. But it's important to recognise that it isn't the only type of empowerment we must exercise and advocate for.
For me, empowerment has to mean more than becoming a productive citizen, useful workplace member, or a more high functioning, all-things-to-everyone member of the family.
The type of empowerment I'm interested in is one where we can identify, advocate for, and act on our wants, needs, and deepest desires - without fear, doubt, guilt nor shame.
So what might it be like to broaden the narrative around women's empowerment from the thinking, logic and strategic capacity of the brain, to the multidimensional ways of knowing through the senses of our body and the field of the whole being.
But why? And what would the benefit be?
Well, if you're anything like me, you've become really good at making logical, rational and sensible decisions.
And for a time it served you well: academically, professionally, and in life generally. Practical and sound thinking has been the go-to for moving onwards and upwards.
The flip side is that when things don't go as planned, logic kicks in, and so does rationalising and plotting actions to course-correct, perhaps even oversteer.
The mind is now in full-blown overdrive to establish the best possible solution.
For a while, my mind was OK with endless GPS peak-hour re-routing, but my body wasn't. As the first responder to triage my life in moments of crisis - the most vulnerable part of me - my body was getting a raw deal: treated like a piece of machinery that only needed three-dimensional solutions. Eventually, I got sick (both metaphorically and literally) of the body blows, and my mental capacity exhausted.
The truth is that mind-focused questions can and will only ever find mind-oriented solutions.
In my desperation to find another way to navigate and create my life, it was time to consider the whole-of-me.
When our whole self is engaged with, and honoured, in our responding to life, we come into our full power as women.
Giving permission and space to be acquainted with, and literate in the multidimensionality of our being is how we become the authority in our life.
When we pay attention to the subtle information generated through our senses, we get clues to our needs. In this way we make choices congruent with who we are, because the expert within intuitively knows the next step for your needs, desires and true soul goals, to be met.
So how do we make the body's wisdom our most reliable intelligence for decisions making?
The following guides me as I explore the fullest expression of my multidimensionality (5-D) as a woman:
Honouring emotions (states of feeling, somatic sensations, the expanse of the inner world)
Recognising, but not preferencing the contributions of the mind over all other (thoughts, beliefs, opinions)
Nurture and attendance to the limitations and needs of the body (physical tending to the bones, blood, tissue, muscles)
Curiosity and permission for the spiritual self (interchange of energy and life force, cyclical patterns, nature, intuitive and high consciousness)
Opening into the radiant capacity of the heart (pleasure, bliss, ecstasy, the power of love, the beauty of sadness)
EMBRACING our multidimensionality, and respecting its intelligence, is the highest act of self-reverence.
It is how we permit ourselves to be who (already) we are.
When we align with and respect the intelligence of the senses, we embody the full expression of our being.
Over time, as we continue to honour all ways of intimately knowing ourself, we build unshakable confidence and understanding about how to nourish, support and reveal our natural radiance.
To awaken to, and be guided by, our multidimensionality is to be in love & in coherence with our life.
From this place, there is nothing to fix, nothing to achieve. You don't need to have or be anything other than who you (already) are.
Communing and co-creating with the world in this way eventually becomes effortless. This is the style and expression of empowerment I want for myself, for you and all women.
What do you want?
