Listen on iTunes | Listen on Spotify | Subscribe to the Podcast
While the embodied & feminine arts have called to me for a loooong time. It took me a while to figure out how to weave them into the way I work.
The subtle hyper-masculine, head-first way of operating is so easy to slip into when I’ve got shit to do.
I’m still excavating and rewiring the ways I dishonor my body & attempt to be productive in disembodied ways (despite knowing that it’s far less fun AND less effective).
No matter what your career, work, profession, study, or pursuit… we can all work in more embodied ways.
Today on the podcast I’m sharing some of the keyframes & THE key tool I use to help me weave embodiment into my doing. It’s a game changer for how creative, alive & GOOD I feel as I get shit done.
Before we dive in it’s useful to know that the 3 pearls we’re exploring today all stem from one common philosophy:
Your body is the only instrument you have to play.
Whatever it is you’re desiring to birth. Whether it’s a passion, creativity, aspect of yourself, business, venture, or offering – for it to come fully into the world in the most embodied, resonant way, you’re whole being and ALL your gifts need to be involved (not just your head & the practical steps).
If you need to make decisions, bring forth an aspect of creativity, or want to cultivate magnetism in what you’re birthing… you’re WHOLE BODY (not just your head) is a key ingredient in the equation.
So how can we finely tune & take care of this phenomenal ‘instrument’, to make sure it plays most harmoniously?
In this episode, we’re exploring:
- 3 pearls for working in more embodied ways
- The Embodied Planner Jenna uses to plan her week (it’s a game changer)
- How we can hack our body for inspiration, not productivity
- How my menstrual cycle influences my work planning
- What my work week looks like & the conditions I need for creative inspiration
- Magnetism & how to weave the principles of receptivity into our somatic orientation
Get The Full 9 Part Series
This is the 6th installment of our 9-part series. Here’s what else we have planned:
- Ep1 – Passion, Purpose & Career
- Ep2 – Tolerating The Job (while we make a career change)
- Ep3 – Accidental Entrepreneurship. When following your passions means having a business
- Ep4 – Am I making the right move? The Career Change Stories of 3 Women
- Ep5 – Safety, Money & Starting Up a new career
- Ep6 – What Coaching Is Not… Mentoring -vs- Facilitation -vs- Coaching
- Ep7 – Return on Investment (in yourself)
- Ep8 – Career Change Stories: 4 Coaches Share Their Experience
- Ep9 – Embodied Ways of Working & Feminine Leadership in our career
This series is perfect for the woman who’s quietly seeking a career change, actively navigating the chaos of change, or just wants to become a more interesting person in the way you relate to your work.
To catch all the episodes & have them delivered to your inbox week, pop your details in here:
Resources
- Pursuing Your Passions Limited Podcast Series – sign up for all 9 episodes here →
- The Embodied Planner – download your free copy here
- Feminine Embodiment Coaching – an emotional embodiment & vulnerability-based professional training for coaches
- Primal Feminine Flow – Embodied At Home Movement Practice
- School of Embodied Arts
- Leave a podcast review on iTunes here
- Thought or reflection to share? Leave a comment on Instagram here
Transcript
(This transcript is generated by AI so might not be perfect)
Speaker 1 (00:01):
How can we work in more embodied ways? Welcome to episode nine of the Pursuing Your Passions podcast series with me, Jenna Ward. Throughout this series, we’ve been looking at how we can pursue our passions and perhaps change careers or transition into work that feels more aligned with the deep essence of who we are. And in this final installment in the podcast series, we’re chatting about embodied ways of working and how we can bring the principles of embodiment to doing our passions, whether that’s a business, a venture, a study, a conversation of, I have no idea where I’m going, where am I going to go next with my work? All of these different situations can use the three pearls that we’re exploring today so that we can bring more embodiment and more of the inspired feminine principles of embodiment, devotional feminine, and magnetism into the way we work and the way we do. This is a really juicy insight into a lot of the principles that I use every day in the way that I work as a feminine embodiment coach, as a business owner, and I really hope that you enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
A warm welcome. I’m your host, Jenna Ward, and I’m living, creating and broadcasting to you from the Sunshine Coast in Australia, the traditional and beautiful lands of the Gubby Gubby people. I am a feminine embodiment coach, a teacher. I’m also a mother and a lover of chocolate and chai, and I write, coach and teach in the art of embodiment for women, both personally and professionally, for those who want to deepen their skills in the somatic arts and come home to their feeling, sensing and magnetically alive body. The School of Embodied Arts podcast is a place where we explore these themes. You can listen in to explore the art of embodied living as a woman, as a practitioner, or simply as a human who desires inspiration and resources for full spectrum living. So let’s dive in
Speaker 1 (02:19):
No matter what career or passion you’re working in, whether you are studying or running your own small business, figuring out what makes you an interesting person or pursuing your passion in another way, it’s possible for all of us to work in embodied ways. This has taken me a while to figure out, because although I’ve always felt a calling and had a natural disposition towards embodiment and devotion towards the feminine, a lot of the embodied, more feminized ways of working are very countercultural. And so it has taken me and it’s an ongoing practice to excavate and illuminate unconscious, hyper capitalistic, hyper-masculine, disembodied ways of working so that I can really optimize. We can think about this as like embodiment, hacking, really optimize my body for its best performance, its best passions. Today I wanted to share with you three pearls, which are both practices and tips for how I weave embodiment into the way that I work and I do.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
You can apply these to all kinds of industries and careers, whether you’re studying, you can apply this to hobbies, you can really apply this to every facet of your life. But it’s most apt at thinking about careers and working our passions. And there’s one core principle that sits at the heart of these three pearls, and it is this, your body is the only instrument that you have to play. It’s the only tool that you have to actualize your creativity and your passions through. It’s the only vehicle that you can actualize yourself into becoming. So if we have this one body and this one body is the only instrument that we have to play, it’s really important that we take care of this instrument, that we tune it and oil it and attend to it as if it was a real high performance, specialized piece of equipment.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
A lot of ways of working treat our body as just a taxi for our mind. But I feel that if we are really actualizing ourselves and our passions into the world, that requires a lot more than just our thinking. It requires all of us, our essence, our spark, our creativity, our decision-making abilities, our full soul. And so we need all of us, this whole body, this whole instrument online and finally tuned and ready to play and perform at a really high standard. So these principles or these pearls around working in embodiment ways, they’re not ways to hack your body and get more out of it. They’re not ways to trick or force your body into greater productivity. Instead, they’re ways for you to be and inhabit more of yourself and all of the full spectrum of gifts that come with being you in the way that you show up to do.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Let’s dive in. Pearl number one is a question. And the question is, what does it take for you to optimize the conditions for your passions to come forward? So when you’re actualizing your passions, you will be required to sit in creative contemplation, sit in creative expression, think about the bigger zoomed out picture plan, and bring more of your gifts into the way that you are doing your work. It’s going to require more of you than being a little worker robot in short, and this is a much more feminine, more creative, often more inspired state. And so how can we shift towards a greater inspired state? This is very unique for everyone. It looks very different for everyone. I have a really great friend for her to move into this more feminine, creative inspired state. She has to get a lot of yang energy going in her body.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
She drinks the coffee lifts, some heavy shit, goes to the gym and then is like, okay, I’m alive and connected to the universe. Let me create, I’m very different. Oh my gosh, if you give me a coffee or make me do heavy physical exercise, it’s going to take me really out of my body. So instead, I prefer to sit with my candles and my Oracle cards and do some embodied movement practice and contemplate the feels of my body. There’s no right or wrong in this. There’s no right or wrong way for you to move into a greater state of optimizing the conditions that support you to feel inspired. I need to be inspired to do my best work because although there’s components of my passions whereby I can just be a little worker, robot and just tick the things off my to-do list, more of what I’m doing more of the time are these feminine creative jobs for me.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
They’re jobs like cultivating magnetism in what I sell. Creative writing. I mean recording this blog, for example. Well, this is a podcast, not a blog for one. But before I sat down to record this, I’m recording it in the morning because I know my energy and creativity is sharpest in the morning. I haven’t opened my emails or any other apps on my computer because they’re just going to suck me down that robot hole of doing. I sat with one of my current kind of really anchoring music tracks and just did a short embodiment practice before I started recording. So for me, these kinds of jobs where I’m writing and conceiving concepts and really doing the inspired action of my work, this requires me to think about what am I going to, what are the conditions that help this body instrument to feel inspired?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Some other examples from my life more widely, although right now I’m pregnant, generally speaking, I try not to do any high demand or one-on-one client work on day one of my cycle. So the first day of my bleed outside of this period of time because I find I’m most exhausted and I want to rest on day one of my bleed. I also sometimes block out either a whole morning or a whole day, sometimes a whole short retreat to work on a specific project so that I’m not having to change tabs in my head. And all of these little tips and tricks and hacks have come about as a result of really interrogating what brings my body to its most inspired state. And how can I configure my body instrument for that most inspired state? I don’t feel that it’s useful to sit around and wait for inspiration to hit because that does not happen in my life if I’m just waiting for the idea for a podcast or something to express on or something to write about.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
If I’m just waiting for it to hit me, who knows how long I can be waiting. But I can tell you the conditions that really support me. The conditions are go for a walk in nature and move my body, do an embodied movement practice, do some free writing for three pages using something like the artist’s way as an inspiration. These things are what prime my body instrument to get into that inspired creative channel, and that’s what my passions require of me. So this first pearl is not to tell you that you should do these things. Absolutely. If this is how your body is configured, rock on with your bad self and do them. And if your body’s not configured this way, go drink coffee and lift weights at the gym, like whatever turns your body on and gets you into that inspired channel. But I feel like that’s a very, underneath what we’re saying here is a very different way to think about doing your work because we are zooming out and looking at something that’s a much bigger picture here than just being behind a computer.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
And that brings us to Pearl number two. Pearl number two is that the good stuff, the real work never starts at your computer. Never, ever, ever, I found a photo on my phone from 2016 maybe, and it was this big sign that was sitting above my computer in my office at that time, and it said, work does not start at your computer. And I could still have that sign here in my office today because I dunno about you, but it’s just so alluring to check your emails or your socials or your whatever messaging things that you’re on. So seductive addictive to just check in with those notifications. And maybe that’s driven by a desire to connect. Maybe it’s driven by a desire to make sure that there’s no problems or nothing’s kind of blown up. Maybe it’s being alert for or hypervigilant to finding issues.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Maybe it’s just yearning to connect with other like-minded and like-hearted people. So it doesn’t have to be a good or a bad thing, although sometimes it can be. But generally speaking, work never starts at your computer and working in embodied ways, never start with a computer. I find that I really associate the idea of being behind a screen with moving forward. So this screen gives me this sense, this unconscious feeling that I’m being productive and that I’m doing good stuff, but it’s actually not behind a screen that I do my best planning, my best inspired action that I make the decisions that need to be made to actually move things forward, that I get coherent within myself. These things don’t happen behind a screen for me, and I feel like a big part of pursuing and working in our passions are about the bigger decisions, the coherency and what we’re doing.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And when we get behind a screen thinking that being there equals success, often we end up with really fragmented actions. One of the practical ways that I employ this pearl is I use a technique called the Embodied Planner. This is actually a free download, so you can grab your own copy of it and the link to grab it. I’ll pop it in the show notes, but it’s at jenna ward.co/plan. Let me just double check that while I tell it to you. Yeah, here it is. So the Embodied Planner, it’s a highly modified version of a to-do list, and for those of us who might feel like we’re drowning in tasks and admin and starting our day behind our computer, the Embodied Planner is a much more embodied version of a to-do list. You can grab it for free. Now, the way this planner works is that it has several different categories of doing.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Some of the first and initial categories are devotion and creativity. This is where we might think about how we’re going to occupy the state that we want our body to be in for our doing. I’m going to speak about that in more detail later. It’s also a time for us to contemplate what big decisions and plans we need to make. When I sit down to do my work. I don’t start with a screen at all. I start with my embodied planner, and it means that I’m often not really behind a screen doing stuff, busy stuff on a computer until if I have a whole workday, like say six or more hours until even three hours in, I might not be at a screen yet, but many of us just associate this concept of being busy and being successful with being behind a screen. And that can be a really sophisticated sabotage strategy for avoiding the true decisions and the true contemplations that we really need to make in order to move forward.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I wonder if that relates to you. This brings us to Pearl number three, and this pearl says, the state that your body is holding will impact the outcome of your actions. Let’s take a breath and let that land the state your body is holding will impact the outcome of your actions. So there was this period a little while ago where I was feeling a bit hypervigilant and stressed in my body and I would come to working my passions, open my computer, and I would be expecting and looking for a problem. I would be having this scan of where is there something not working? And that’s just one example, orientation that state that my body was in absolutely impacted the outcome of how I spend my time, how I felt, what I actually produced, which wasn’t a lot because I was being really alert and vigilant for problems.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
It’s not an ideal state and that needed to get addressed. Other examples of way, I see this playing out. I see people saying things to me like, I really want to attract a client. I’m really ready to get a client. But then deep down, they’re really not actually open and receptive to that at all. Or they’re saying, I’m ready to charge $5,000 for a client, but deep down, they’re really shaking in their boots and terrified about that figure, and these are not good or bad ways to feel or be. It doesn’t make you right or wrong, more or less embodied. It doesn’t make you deficient as a person if you experience these. I think we all experience times whereby the orientation that we’re holding in our body doesn’t match the mental outcome that we think we’re trying to create. There’s a lot of times that we’re holding stress deep down within us and yet still trying to do do, and we’re bringing all of the energy of that stress and often the lack of receptivity deep at our core to those actions, which ultimately and very often lead them to be quite futile.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
A perfect example is client attraction. If you’re saying out to the world, I’m ready for four clients, but deep down you don’t feel secure in your pricing or you don’t feel deep in your conviction of receptivity around your willingness to receive that, then it’s not going to compute. This is a principle that we can draw from the practice of feminine magnetism, which I love and I teach, and I regularly need to keep being a student of a magnetism. The principle of magnetism says that if you are holding your desire within you and yet your body is not actively open and receptive to that desire, then that somatic orientation will impact the effectiveness of your actions. And this is where it’s really necessary for us to drop in and consider what is the state of my body, of my being of this one instrument that I have to play as I show up and do my passion? What is my body holding?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
So take a moment if there’s a particular thing that you need to do today or that you are wanting to call in or that you’re wanting to create or actualize or that you’re wanting to move forward with. And as you move towards doing that task, I think it’s really useful to check in with yourself and ask, what orientation am I holding towards that? Do I feel like an elevated yes, I’m so ready to welcome this in. I am seducing this desire towards me in all that I do to, or is your body instrument orientating towards a quiet no. So your head thinks that you’re doing all the right things and your head’s going to get busy behind its computer, but your heart is all twisted up and not really sure and not really feeling fully convinced and maybe even deep down is closer to a hard no.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
When we are working in embodied ways, we have to consider not only the actions that we’re taking, but the orientation of our body in our doing. And so this third pearl invites you to contemplate what is the state of my body. This then circles perfectly to our first pearl, which was thinking about, well, what are the conditions that are going to optimize how I am, how I’m attuning to my instrument and how I’m being today? I know that if I’m showing up stressed, just ready to jump on my computer first thing, then I haven’t done any of these three pearls. I’m starting work with my computer. I’m not configuring myself for inspiration. I’m not considering the orientation of my body. So always, always before I step into some doing, if I want to bring a more embodied way of working to my day, I don’t start with my computer.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
I think about what inspired action I need to take, how I can configure my body for that inspired action and how I can orientate who I’m being to be more of a yes. And you know, a yes and a no. They’re not binary things. But even if I can just shift myself to feel five or 25% more receptive and in a state of pleasure and expansion for the thing that I’m wanting to do, whether I’m wanting to record this podcast or write an essay for something that I’m studying or tackle a new training that’s moving me towards my passions, or just even have a conversation with someone about, oh my God, I don’t want to do this old job anymore, but what else am I going to do instead, all of these three pearls can be applied to all of those situations so that we can work in more embodied ways.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
This brings us to the close of our Pursuing Your Passions podcast series with me, Jenna Ward, and our School of Embodied Arts. It’s been such a ride taking this deep dive into career and career transitions, and I have received a number of comments and Instagram posts and beautiful emails with people telling me, I’ve listened to this whole series. This is really landing. I feel like you’re talking to me directly. Are you talking to me directly? So I’m really just so thrilled that this has been supportive and that this season has perhaps inspired you to keep moving forward with pursuing your passions. We’ve got a wonderful series on everyday embodiment starting really soon here at the next season of the podcast. But for now, if you’ve enjoyed this season, if you’ve enjoyed today or any of the episode from our Pursuing Your Passion series, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Maybe it’s on Instagram, maybe listen to us on Spotify or somewhere else. It really helps other people to find the podcast, and I personally get a bit of a kick just knowing that there are humans out there who are truly joining us for these conversations. So please do go ahead and leave us a review. I would be so grateful and in advance sending you sprinkles, and thanks for that. And that’s a wrap. Until next time. Well,
Speaker 1 (24:03):
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, the most sincere way you can share your thanks and celebrate the conversations that we’ve been having is to leave us a review wherever it is that you listen to your podcast, drop us some stars on Spotify, a comment on iTunes. I would be so grateful if you would share the love as it really helps others to find these important conversations. And also, I get a little bit of a sweet sparkle in my heart when I read those reviews. For more information around feminine embodiment coaching and the School of Embodied Arts, you can always find us@jennaor.co. And as we wrap our podcast for today, I’m going to leave you with some words from some of our past graduates from the coaching certification who can share in their own words what the experience, the training, and the outcomes were like. So I hope you enjoy hearing from some of our past graduates.
