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When I first studied ‘embodiment’ there was only 1 professional training I could find on the market (it was this one). Over the years ‘embodiment’ has become a popular concept & the number of training has blossomed.
Those entering the space of professional embodiment training may feel overwhelmed by choice!
So how can you figure out the difference between them?
And which one is right for you?
In this special podcast, I’m exploring how Feminine Embodiment Coaching is different from…
- Somatic Coaching
- Embodiment Coaching
- Embodied Facilitation
- Trauma Therapy (such as Somatic Experiencing)
- Embodied Movement Practice
This podcast teases apart some of the subtle, but key, differences in perspectives and approaches between different ways of working.
Specifically, we look at:
- Do women need a different approach to embodiment?
- Why geeking out on embodiment concepts like polyvagal therapy & acute stress might feel alluring, and yet are rarely what a practitioner needs to deepen their resonance
- The KEY to embodiment (that is missing in almost every training curriculum I read)
- What’s a the heart of an embodiment training (& why multiple modalities aren’t always a good thing)
We’re not contrasting again any particular training or school, rather exploring how we perceive and see the busy constellation of the embodied arts.
Would love to hear your perspectives once you’ve tuned in – drop me a comment here.
Resources Mentioned in This Podcast
- Feminine Embodiment Coaching – an emotional embodiment & vulnerability-based professional training for coaches
- Sensual Embodied Dance Facilitator Training
- Somatic Experiencing (Trauma Therapy)
- School of Embodied Arts
- Leave a podcast review on iTunes here
- Thought or reflection to share? Leave a comment on Instagram here
Transcript
Prefer to read? Here’s the full transcript …
Jenna Ward: Hello, and a most warm welcome to season six of the School of Embodied Arts Podcast. Today, you’re here with me, Jenna Ward, for an exploration of how feminine embodiment coaching is different to other forms of coaching and embodied practices. And today, we’re going to be breaking apart some of the nuances around the difference of feminine embodiment coaching with somatic coaching, embodiment coaching, embodied facilitation, trauma therapy, and embodied movement practices. So if your newish to the embodiment space, you’re considering moving into becoming a facilitator, a trainer or a coach in this space, or you’re just really wanting to understand where all of these different opportunities fit in the constellation of the embodied arts, today’s podcast is going to be unpacking some of those very nuanced considerations. Thanks so much for joining us.
Welcome to the School of Embodied Arts Podcast. I am your hostess, Jenna Ward, feminine embodiment coach, here for our weekly explorations of living, leading, and coaching as emotionally empowered, sensually alive, and magnetic women.
On the weekend, I had a fabulous picnic under the golden afternoon sunshine with my family and a good friend’s family. And my husband asked my good friend who is a trainer and a facilitator in the embodied arts as well, but who does something quite different to me. But my husband asked her, “So what exactly do you do for work?” He knew vaguely the area that she worked in, being the embodied arts, but he was having trouble understanding the nuance or the difference between what my friend did and what I do. And this is a challenge and a question that I receive so much, “How is what you do different from this or that or this other thing,” and I can deeply understand that. When I was beginning to wade my way into the embodied arts, there were not many trainings on the market at all. In fact, there was only one training on the market.
And now, multiple years later, many years later, we see that there is just this plethora of embodied opportunities for people to dive into, to train, to study with, and to also accredit or to certify with. So teasing apart, particularly, if you’re just waiting into this space of the embodied arts, teasing apart, the similarities and differences between different schools and trainings and experiences can be really challenging. And so today on the podcast, I wanted to explore how feminine embodiment coaching is different from other types of embodied experiences, other types of coaching, and where its particular location is in the constellation of the embodied arts. And I use this analogy of a constellation because throughout this podcast, I’ll be sharing some of my perspectives, which is based on how I see the night sky. You might be standing in a different location to me, and you might see or have a different perspective.
And that’s so welcome. I don’t believe any one embodied art is better than the other. They all have a unique, distinct spot and a unique, distinct role to play. So in this podcast, we’re going to first be clarifying by what exactly we mean by feminine embodiment coaching. And then we’re going to be contrasting it against some of the other ways of working in the embodied arts. So feminine embodiment coaching, let’s break down those three words just really briefly. The first and most central one is coaching. So coaching is about having a conversation. It’s about asking questions, and it’s about using those questions to create new doorways of awareness for our clients. So coaching is not about having the answers, being right, giving advice. It is using, instead, questions as a key that can unlock or that can open new doorways of awareness for our clients.
Now, all types of coaching, whether it’s embodiment coaching, somatic coaching, mindset coaching, accountability coaching, weight loss coaching, all types of coaching uses questions because that is the device, that’s the mechanism, that’s the technique or the tool, questions. But the types of questions that you use will be dependent on the type of coaching that you’re doing. So in embodiment coaching, my perspective on embodiment coaching is that embodiment coaching is about inhabiting the body. And to me, that’s about coming home to your truest, most sincere self, inhabiting that self, being in contact with that inner self, knowing your inner state, your inner desires, your inner truth, and also letting that inner self be actualized. So it’s almost as embodiment to me is this process of going in to find our individual truth, and then letting that truth come out through the body, through the way that we hold and conduct ourselves, through our actions and our expressions, through our voice and the way that we are in our world. To me, embodiment is part of actualizing our truest self in the world.
And I see this as a practice that, in many ways, is devotional because we are devoting to that unique spark that exists within us that wants to be made manifest. And so an embodiment coach can use really powerful questions to dive into that inner body knowing, get to know it more intimately, explore what are the barriers or challenges around it, and help to support clients in bringing it forth more fully to the world. That’s how I use the word embodiment, but that is not what everyone means when they say embodiment. Many people in the embodiment realm, when they’re talking about embodying something, they’re talking about embodying in the context of. So let’s say, for example… Let’s take some examples of archetypes. Let’s say the wild woman archetype or the sensual woman archetype or the polite girl archetype. These are different facets that you may have a sense of as I speak to them.
When a lot of people use the word embodiment, they’re speaking about embodying a particular flavor, almost like putting on that dress, trying on that skin, occupying that particular archetype or role or disposition. And this can be very useful. These practices can be wonderful, but they are slightly a different way to think about embodiment versus just coming home to your truth. So for me, there’s embodiment in this pure sense, this pure form, embodiment of you. And then there’s embodying a particular disposition and trying it on for size. The way that we here at the School of Embodied Arts use embodiment is primarily the former, this embodiment of self, this truth and coming to actualize more of self. And the way that we can find that truth, the way that we come into contact with our deep desires and yearnings and fears and capacities is through coming in contact with our social media. That is our somatics, and I’ll be expanding on this in more detail later on.
But there’s another piece of our equation, which is feminine embodiment coaching. So this is another layer, if you will. Now, none of the modalities that I had mentioned at the top of this podcast, somatic coaching, embodiment coaching, embodied facilitation, trauma therapy, or embodied movement practices, very few other trainings include this word, the feminine. And it may be there, in what they do to some parts or some degrees, but it’s not as centric as it is at our school. When we speak to feminine, we are using imperfect language. Not to describe the female gender, I’m pretty sure if you’re listening along and this is not your first podcast, you’re going to be down with that. We’re not speaking about the female gender, we’re speaking about the feminine energy, we’re speaking about the human qualities of a more flowing, emotionally intelligent, centrally alive creative pulse that exists within each of us.
And there is no perfect language to describe that end of the spectrum. But to me, it can be described in Mother Nature, the feminine is really beautifully personified in Mother Nature. As I record this podcast, I’m looking out at the bush at my home in Australia. And there’s the breeze moving through the trees, and there’s motion and flow and creativity and life, and it’s bountiful and creative and expressive. That is the flow quality of the feminine. And it’s been described as Shakti, it’s been described in some ways as a more yin-type energy. I don’t wish to appropriate either of those languages, though, because when we are speaking about the feminine, we’re speaking about the quality of softness and suppleness and flow. And that’s very different to the quality or to the energy which exists in all bodies, which is the quality of the masculine.
So not the male gender, but the masculine energy, a more penetrating, directive go, moving forward with purpose and direction, more linear, more straight, more logical. And we live in a time, we live in a society that values the masculine much more heavily. And this is relevant because for many of us to come back into our bodies, we are unraveling unhealthy masculine systems, and we are reforging, rediscovering ways that we can be more in our feminine flow. And I see this is a huge cause of disembodiment, this overmasculine, underfeminine, this overgo and underflow. This is the times we live in. The majority of the reason that most of us can’t innately feel our bodies and the truth of our bodies, the wisdom, the beauty of our bodies is because the feminine qualities have been devalued, demeaned, dissented, and we have, all of us, become unskilled in contacting our feminine selves.
So for me, when we are doing embodiment practices, our big part of that is coming back to the emotional vulnerability and richness of the feminine. And that’s one of the reasons that we center feminine in our feminine embodiment coaching, but it’s not the only reason. I feel that personally, I identify as a feminist, and I also bring this feminist lens to the feminine word that we have in our title. So when we are thinking, again, of the culture of the soup that all of our bodies are located in, we live in a time whereby particularly, for me as a woman, there are ways that I have been socialized and indoctrinated and taught to be as a woman in the world.
And I’m sure you can relate that there’s certain ideals or standards that we as women feel that we have to live up to, whether it’s around our degree of professionalism or how we are as a woman or as a wife or how our body should look or our level of multitasking. Depending on where we are, we all have these different narratives of how we are meant to be in order to be enough in the world. And that burden, that weight, that set of expectations is different to men, to people of non-binary origins, and it is particular and it is unique to us as women. So when I think about feminine embodiment coaching, all of the women that I work with identify as women, and we also… The majority of participants in our training, probably 90%, work exclusively with women because there is a certain perspective that lenses into the complexity of coming home to our truth, which is particularly and beautifully held by a woman who’s also been on that similar path.
I understand the challenges, the possibilities, the demands, the expectations on my labor as a natural resource, the expectations on how I should look. I understand all of these demands, and I understand how those demands can make it really difficult for me to be in my body and be in contact with my truth and my desires. And that’s not to say that somebody of a different gender identity couldn’t have compassion for this disposition or this lot in life. I feel very confident they could, but we do have to appreciate that we’ve all been having an experience that is unique to the social location that we live in. And so when we speak about feminine embodiment coaching, we’re also speaking from the lens of how is it unique or different for women to be in their bodies because I got a heads up for people who think it’s the same as for people of other genders.
It’s not, it is not the same journey or trajectory for us to find our way home into our bodies. And people who think that women should be able to do it just the same of men or don’t need any different consideration, which I have heard secondhand from other professionals in the space, makes me all kinds of hot and bothered because for centuries, women have literally been subjugated, and the innate qualities of the feminine within us have been displaced, demonized, persecuted, ridiculed, and labeled. Even in today’s society, if we were to bring our more emotive or sensitive or intuitive selves, we would be called unprofessional to this day. I don’t believe that those inherently feminine qualities, which exist within all people but with women in particular, have been persecuted and prejudiced against allowing to flourish because there’s an additional load for women to reclaim those things.
So there’s me getting a little bit on my soapbox. But that’s what we are really speaking about when we’re speaking about feminine embodiment coaching, and that is very different to other types of embodiment coaching and facilitation in the embodied arts constellation. So let’s speak about a few specific comparisons now, feminine embodiment coaching compared to embodiment coaching. So feminine embodiment coaching is a very close cousin to embodiment coaching. Embodiment coaching, as we’ve said just before, it’s about using our internal felt sense, so what we are feeling, not only what we are thinking. Our thoughts are part of our internal senses. And many of us over-identify with our thoughts because we are all really strong in our thinking muscle and our thinking mind. Many of us have turned down the volume and the sensitivity on our bodies to the point whereby we don’t hear the wisdom that’s bubbling up within our bodies, even though it’s equally as important and valuable as what we think.
So every type of embodiment coaching is going to, in some way or using some similar language, come into contact with our internal felt sense, our internal feeling state as a resource for our coaching questions to penetrate further into. And while a mindset coach might be only interested in you from the neck up, an embodiment coach should be asking questions that bring greater awareness to all facets and all wisdoms within your body. That can include your mindset, but is not limited to only your mindset. But not all embodiment trainings are alike. In researching this podcast so that I could answer this question with a degree of detail, I went and I had to poke around some other embodiment coachings and trainings in the space. And what I see happening a lot in the embodiment coaching space is a lot of stuff that’s not strictly embodiment. So I see a lot of embodiment coach or trainings that are full of learning how to do yoga asanas.
Now, yoga and yoga postures and asanas, they are awesome. I have so much respect for the spiritual lineage in practice that is yoga, and it is in many ways… It can be a deeply embodied art. But moving your body into a yoga asana is not the same as having a coaching conversation using your words and directing them to your internal felt sense, so embodiment coaching is not about yoga. I also see a lot of embodiment coaching sprinkled and fill up with traditional Chinese medicine practices, different types of dance and movement practices, and all other kinds of mixed modalities in a pot. Now, I’m a fan of mixing modalities, don’t get me wrong. I am, myself, trained in multiple different modalities. But I just begin to wonder, when we have a container called embodiment coaching and, in it, all we are doing is yoga and traditional Chinese medicines and dance and movement, where is left to refine and perfect the actual skill of embodiment in coaching.
Because that, in and of itself, is a sovereign, deeply valuable skill set that in my experience takes at least six months of pure devotion to get anywhere close to a competent, confident level. So when I look at a lot of embodiment coaching in this space, I see it filled with a lot of fluff a lot of the time, and I see it not being centric to how can we let our client’s body lead, how can we support our client’s body to move into vulnerability, how can we use our coaching questions masterfully to create trauma-informed, safe spaces. Instead, I see it filled up with all this other stuff. I believe that embodiment coaching, when it is done in a pure way, when it is about coming into the wisdom of the body using powerful questions, when it is done like that, it can be so powerful.
But finally, on this point, one of the most important things that I want to highlight or that I want to center is that embodiment is a really popular word, it’s getting more and more popular by the day. And a lot of people totally geek out on the Polyvagal Theory and this acute stress responses and the fight, flight, and freeze responses in the body, and all of the technical components of how we either inhabit or disembody. And this is all very valid, I am down with all of these concepts. But what I feel missing so much from the embodiment space is actually that at the heart of embodiment, at the heart of coming home to being in our body, for every single person that I’ve ever worked with, which is thousands of people, the real mastery of the embodied arts has been centering vulnerability, the vulnerability and the risk of letting ourselves feel that which we haven’t previously felt or sense that which we haven’t wanted to open.
Embodiment has a lot of evidence and wonderful, beautiful, scientific things, and spiritual, devotional aspects that we can sink our teeth into. And I believe that theory is important, we spend a lot of time conveying the theory that underpins these practices. But the real mastery of the art, the real heart of it is our willingness as practitioners to lean into vulnerability and to support our clients to safely do the same. And I feel like that’s one of the non-negotiable components of embodiment, which I see missing from so many different embodiment trainings that I come into contact with. They might have all the fancy language and yet, at the heart of it, when I question, “Is this a practitioner or a person that I would feel safe resting into my own personal vulnerability so that I can deepen my personal mastery and, thus, support my clients to do the same,” I’m left wanting with a lot of what I see.
So one of my tips when you’re thinking about the embodied arts and considering, “Well, which training might be the best one for me,” is to really feel into, “Well, what’s your edge with embodiment? What is the facet or the coming home in your body that challenge you [inaudible] or that is triggering for you the most?” Is it the fact that, as a woman, you have a lot of unique considerations that need to be delicately unteased? If so, maybe you need a support team that have also walked a similar path. Is it the leaning back and resting into vulnerability that entices you and also a little bit terrifies you? I know that balance. And is the teaching team, is the practitioner space, is that something that you’re going to feel or that you sense will be created with a deep reverence for the vulnerability required? So that’s the first piece.
The next piece that I wanted to speak about was somatic coaching, so looking at embodiment coaching versus somatic coaching. So how is embodiment different to somatics? This is not an easy answer. And I’m not going to do it perfectly, but here’s where we’re at for today. Somatics, my understanding of somatics is that it’s a derivative of the word soma, which is a Greek word meaning body and speaking about the living organism as a whole. So thinking about the body, not only as tissues and bones but also the body in its aliveness. And this, to me, speaks a little bit to that devotional component of embodiment, where it’s acknowledging that there is a divine and unique and brilliant spark within you that wants to be actualized in the world in the way that your body moves, in the way that you talk, and the decisions that you make. So in this sense, embodiment and somatic, at the top or the surface level, to me, they seem very similar, a living organism in its wholeness, your body and the deep divinity that exists within you.
But then when we begin to tease apart this word embodiment, I understand that it was coined by Thomas Hanna. He’s credited with coining the term somatics, but his use of it was from a very different perspective. He used this word in understanding the rules of biofeedback and working with postural difficulties and chronic pain. So although it’s a word that leans towards a living organism in its wholeness, a body in its aliveness, a lot of where this word actually originated from were more clinical-type practices.
Personally, I see embodiment and somatics interchanged a lot, people use them as if they’re the same thing. And they might be, they absolutely might be. But to me, when I think about somatics and I think about embodiment, somatics to me feels a little bit more body based, a little bit from my head to my body. And you can’t see me sitting here recording my podcast, but I’m bringing the energy to my head first and then I’m moving it down into the body. To me, somatics is a little bit more from a Western clinical perspective where we are looking at understanding and optimizing the body. And that can be in a somewhat more linear or a slightly more scientific sense. On the other hand, very, very close by is embodiment.
To me, embodiment speaks to a more devotional way of coming into contact with the body. It is from the body, not from the head to the body. And in the way that I see embodiment used, it indicates a more devotional way to be with the body. But despite, to me, these slight differences in the word, somatics being slightly more scientific and optimizing in its intention, and embodiment being slightly more devotional and from the body in its intention, when we go one level deeper, the thing about somatics and embodiment is that they both have in common this concept of… The technology that they use is about somatic awareness of the internal felt sense, so that is the awareness of the data that the body is presenting. If you have a different perspective or thought about this, then I would be so happy to hear that. But I’ve spoken to a number of professionals in the space, considering what their affinity to one word or the other is, and my experience has been that people who value the vulnerability component of the body-based way of operating lean towards using the word embodiment.
So vulnerability and embodiment to me are just so deeply interwoven. And on the other hand, somatics, which is very, very close brother, I hear people who tend slightly towards a more scientific sense using that word. But there’s all kinds of shades of gray there because I, myself, am trained as a clinical hospital pharmacist and I, myself, have a very scientific brain. But if I was to put in order science or devotion like, “Which one turns me on,” I would put devotion first. I want to be more intimately ravished by life, and it’s great if we can find a peer-reviewed journal that’s also supporting that. But primarily, I believe in the innate spark of life that is here just to be lived with ravishment.
So next, let’s take a breather here because we’ve got two more to go, they’re a little bit shorter. Next, we come to how is feminine embodiment coaching different to embodied facilitation. And this one’s actually really obvious when you hear it. So I get this question a lot because there are a lot of trainings out there that will support or certify or endorse you to become an embodiment facilitator. And as with this entire podcast, I’m not referring to any one specific training, I’m referring to the general embodiment marking and the constellation of embodied arts. And I totally get this thinking, “What’s the difference between a coach and a facilitator,” because when I was first coming into my own practitionership, I didn’t necessarily have a lot of language or understanding in terms of how those things were different.
But in fact, they’re totally opposite ends of the spectrum. So a coach uses questions, and they’re often working in a one-on-one sense, so that can be done in person or online. It can be done primarily in one-on-one settings, but you can translate some of the practices into group settings. But coaching, it is using talking those questions and it is using them in a way whereby the client is deciding where we’re going to go. So I, as the coach, have no agenda or expectation on where you should get to. I don’t know what’s best for you, I don’t know where we’re going to get by the end of the session. I know we’re going to have deepened and moved forward, but I’m not dictating what kind of experience you should or need to have as a coach. That’s different to a facilitator. A facilitator is guiding, very often, a group. A facilitator is saying, “We’re going to go on a journey of A and B and then C and then D together. You can all have your personal experience around that, but the group is moving through this pre-planned journey in this particular direction.”
Now, I’m not saying one is better than the other. I’m just wanting to highlight the differences between coaching, which is one on one, responding to the client’s direction and following where they want to go versus facilitation, which is often a group setting where the facilitator has decided what the program or the agenda will be and is supporting the group to have their own individual experiences as they move forward on that pre-planned journey. Both are valuable and both have their place. Personally, in terms of my business model, I love coaching because coaching creates that one-to-one container which is, in my experience, the most intimate, the deepest, and has a really healthy price point so that if you’re wanting to thrive and earn a living from your embodied practitioner work, you can really do that as a coach.
The next comparison is embodied movement practices. So there are so many amazing practitioners and different types of embodied movement practices. And again, I hear a… I am asked so frequently, for example, “How is feminine embodiment coaching different to this movement practice or that movement practice?” And it’s the same answer that I just gave, coaching is talking, it’s having a conversation. It’s one on one, it’s using questions. Movement is like moving your body like a dance class. There’s a totally different skillset that is required to, let’s say for example, lead a movement class. Think about, in your mind, a yoga class or a dance class versus having a conversation, a one-on-one conversation where the client is taking the lead. And as a coach, you are supporting their direction to help them move towards a specifically stated goal. Those are totally different skill sets, and they can both draw on the embodied arts.
But when we are thinking about embodied movement practices, like practices that might be more nonlinear or that might involve dance or sensuality or devotion, we are thinking much more along the lines of, for example, a yoga class or a dance class, which is a very different skill set of facilitation to have. I, myself, am trained in some embodied movement practices, as are many of the members of our teaching team, and I have… The friend that I was speaking about at the picnic at the top of this podcast, my friend offers sensual embodied dance, which is a form of movement practice, and she also trains facilitators. I’ll drop the link in that below this podcast, if you’re interested in it. It’s a beautiful practice and one that is so close to the heart of what I love in feminine embodiment coaching. But the technology, the techniques that we use are worlds apart. I coach, she dances, and they’re very different skill sets for a practitioner.
Okay. The final comparison that we want to speak about in just exploring is feminine embodiment coaching with trauma therapy. So coaching and therapy are not the same thing, many types of trauma therapists use embodiment or somatic practices. A great example of that is the Somatic Experiencing crew. They’re an international training organization that use embodiment principles, but specifically in a trauma-centered way. We have a number of practitioners who have done somatic experiencing, and then come and done feminine embodiment coaching. And the other way around, they’ve done coaching and then gone on to do somatic experiencing because embodiment coaching is not the same thing as trauma therapy. When we’re speaking about somebody who wants to work or explore their trauma, generally speaking, we are speaking about a person who has a degree of instability within their body, and they’re needing support to recover from a traumatic experience and find their way back to stability.
On the other hand, when we’re thinking about coaching, coaching is not necessarily about resolving past trauma. Coaching is about working from a stable footing and moving your way forward into your goal and how you want to really thrive in your life. So while there can be a very small degree of overlap in the principles that might underpin these ways of working, trauma therapists are trauma centric. They’re dealing with the actual events, and that’s a whole different training and different skill set and different client base. For us, as feminine embodiment coaches, we’re trauma informed, meaning we are going to work with our stable clients, moving towards thriving, we’re going to work in ways that absolutely minimize our risk of doing harm of re-traumatizing someone, and that increase the sense of safety and resourcefulness that our clients can find within their own bodies. But we are not actively working on present or past traumas, we’re working towards our goals together.
So let’s take a beat with that. That was a lot of teasing apart. And some of this may have been totally obvious to you, and some of it might have brought up some fresh questions. There are two final words of caution that I wish to offer as we move towards concluding this comparison podcast. The first one is that not all feminine embodiment coaches are created equally. So our school offers training and certification in feminine embodiment coaching, and our graduates are called so SOEA feminine embodiment coaches, stands for School of Embodied Arts feminine embodiment coaches. These coaches have been through a detailed six to 12-month professional certification. We have made sure that their competencies and their confidence, their ethics, and their ability to hold really deep and powerful, really beautiful coaching sessions. We have verified that, but you can technically go and find many feminine embodiment coaches that haven’t trained with us or that may not have formal training in this space.
They may be excellent coaches, and they may not be. We don’t know because they haven’t been through any formal process of accreditation or of peer-to-peer mentoring, one of the processes that all of our graduates go through. So the way that you can check that you’re working with a feminine embodiment coach from our school is to make sure that they’re called an SOEA feminine embodiment coach because not all coaches are created equally. The second piece that I want to mention is that as embodiment continues to blossom and grow and expand rapidly, like any industry, there are people, often seemingly popular people, whose integrity can be questionable. Just because somebody says they’re into embodiment, it does not mean that their values are going to align with your values. It’s really trendy these days to list your organization as being culturally inclusive and ticking all the politically correct boxes. But particularly, in the space of embodiment, which is about how you are being, what you are resonating in your body, I really feel it is essential to figure out who you are learning from, get to know their work, investigate their vibe and their values.
Do make sure that it aligns with your own because it is their body and the teaching team’s body that are contributing to and that are, in part, holding the space, the container, the community, the opportunity for vulnerability that you might be leaning into as a participant in that experience. I’ll include a link to our school’s values below, but you’re going to get the best feel of that by just, as you are here, listening to the podcast, just really diving in to experience a bit of their work and just feeling if that is what is in alignment for you. Because the key thing that I want to stress at the end of all of this comparison and contrast is that there is no one best choice or one right choice. If you feel, for example, the resonance of our school and what I’ve expressed today, maybe for you, we might be the best choice, but we’re not the best choice for everyone.
If you’re not interested in deepening vulnerability, go to another embodiment coaching training. If you’re not interested in unpacking your own body’s inclinations and possibilities towards embodiment and disembodiment, if you don’t want to do that phase of personal mastery, if you just want a badge for your website, we’re not the best training for you. So ultimately, there is no one god of embodiment or goddess of embodiment, there’s just a lot of different places on the constellation. And as a practitioner in the space, you will be creating your own star, your own light in that embodied art spectrum. All we can do is feel into the resonance of it and think through, make sure we’re making an informed decision, but make sure that we feel as well, and let our body wisdom our body knowing lead us into what the right decision for us will be.
I’m going to finish this podcast in a moment with a few words from some of our past participants in the program to give you a little bit of a wider sense of some other people’s experiences of feminine embodiment coaching. And if you’d like to learn more about our training, head over to our website, it’s at jennaward.co or feminineembodimentcoaching.com, and you can learn a little bit more if you’ve loved what you’ve heard today. Thanks so much for joining us for this first episode of season six on the podcast and for joining me for this discussion today.
Let’s hear now from some of our past participants and now wildly successful coaching graduates from the Feminine Embodiment Coaching Cert program.
Ainslie Young: Hi, I’m Ainslie Young, feminine embodiment business mentor and coach based in Singapore and my work lives online at startingwitha.com. My work centers the potent combination of pleasure, purpose, power, and align productivity so women can create wildly prosperous businesses. I actually work with established coaches and entrepreneurs, combining feminist marketing and business strategies with deep feminine embodiment and energetic work. I joined the School of Embodied Arts Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification in 2018, and I absolutely adored the program. As a passionate lifelong learner, I have completed so many qualifications, including other coaching courses. But FECC, hands down, has been my favorite personal and professional experience. Every module, every group coaching session, new practice, fresh embodied exploration was just so rich and transformative for me. FECC was definitely the medicine I needed at the time, and it has really helped to shape my offerings and fuel the growth of my business.
So since completing FECC, I have been working one to three days a week, paying myself a salary. And last year, I earned over 180K AUD in revenue, and this is more than I ever earned in corporate. And although it’s wonderful to hit the six-figure mark, it’s that sense of freedom, that sense of stability and doing work that I absolutely love and brings me so much pleasure, which is priceless. I feel FECC is a great fit for anyone who is looking to expand and deepen their professional tool belt, whether it be established or new coaches, health and wellness practitioners, healers, or professionals who are wanting to adopt a more feminine way of operating in both life and work. I know many women have a passion for the feminine and embodied arts but worry they won’t be able to make their passions work.
I wholeheartedly believe that if you’re coming from a place of genuine service, you are deeply passionate about your work, and you desire to have a positive impact on the world, your success truly is inevitable. Passion is what helps you really ride the highs and the lows of business. It gives you ample fuel and motivation, it helps you move through fear and failure, and it magnetizes the right people towards you. Your passion is felt, and it is powerful. My experience with the School of Embodied Arts, this entire body of work, Jenna and her teaching team has been next level. I highly recommend FECC to anyone who is considering walking this rich, this fertile feminine path. You will not be disappointed.
Speaker 3: Hi there. I’m Jen Murphy, a feminine embodiment coach, mythologist, and anthropologist based in Ireland. I’m the creator of the Celtic School of Embodiment, my wildest, most audacious dream, a dream which I could never have brought to life without the Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification program. I joined FECC in 2020, new to coaching as an entrepreneur. I’ve now been in business for a year, and I feel I am doing the work that I am called to do in this life. My work center is on my philosophy, let your body and mythology guide you home, home to you. I help women of Celtic heritage remember who they are by knowing their mythical ancestors, knowing their body, and knowing their calling. My niche is the natural coalescence I see between our ancestral myths in Celtic mythology and our bodies as a potent brew to reclaim our sovereign power.
In Celtic mythology, the marriage of the sovereignty goddess with the king was essential for the people to thrive, the feminine and masculine expression in divine harmony. FECC brought my sovereignty goddess to life. My masculine king had gone mad, become a hyperproductive perfectionist who leaned in and burned out. Now, there’s harmony in the kingdom of my body, and I am thriving. And the women I work with thrive, too. FECC equipped me with the skills to support women, to reawaken their goddess within, to come home to their sovereign power. The elixir of the FECC program is that it emphasizes personal mastery as a core component of the curriculum, so you get to unfold into your beautiful becoming while learning how to become a stellar coach.
And what’s even more magical is that as an embodiment coach, you learn to trust the phenomenal wisdom of your client’s body. They are the agents of their own sovereign change, all you have to do is guide them home. FECC will give you the map, your client decides the destination. As my work continues to grow, I believe embodiment is what made this possible. The intuitive wisdom of my body activated, nourished, and amplified by the FECC program is what enabled me to earn a livelihood and to thrive through my work. You can find my work online at celticembodiment.com.
Jenna Ward: If you loved this episode and want to explore more like it, head over and subscribe on iTunes, or jump across to jennaward.co/podcast and we will lovingly hand deliver the best of the podcast as well as new episodes to your inbox each week.
