The Modern Woman's Guide to Aging with Power | Dr. Amanda Hanson | The Mindvalley Podcast | Ep #65

I asked my husband the other night at dinner, I'm like, do you and your guy friends or your brothers talk about feeling empowered? And he said, absolutely never. This idea of empowerment, I feel like, is a passive form of asking for permission to have a little bit of power as a woman. Dr. Amanda Hanson, the midlife muse and clinical psychologist. Dr. Amanda Hanson. The superhighway for power for women is their sensuality. If we are so disconnected from our sensuality because. Because it's been shamed out of us, you won't be able to connect to your deepest roots of power.

A top psychologist and author.

We've all had mothers, but so very few of us were properly mothered. Every time a woman shines, it inspires another woman to shine and go bigger, because every woman's greatness shows me that I get to claim that too.

So I am so happy to invite the embodiment of empowerment in a woman. A top psychologist and author, Dr. Amanda Hansen. Please give it up for her. So, Amanda, I found Amanda on Instagram a couple years ago, and she talks about things that I didn't want to admit to. I'm like, wow, this woman has, you know, some courage to say things that I've been wanting to say, but I didn't have the courage. So, Amanda, your work made me understand that I have not found empowerment within. So I was seeking empowerment on the outside.

Yes.

I figured out that I've been eating to feel empowered, grocery shopping to feel empowered, getting into relationships to feel empowered. I was sleeping to avoid the lack of empowerment. So I understood that everything I'm doing is from that place of lack of empowerment. So I went on a. I went on a detox for empowerment, which means I'm detoxing from everything that feeds an external source for empowerment in hopes that I can find it within. So how do you define empowerment?

Well, that's a great question. First, I would love to say, I don't in my world, even use the word empowerment. I would really like to disengage from that word. I asked my husband the other night at dinner, I'm like, honey, tell me, have you ever been on a search for empowerment to feel empowered? Do you and your guy friends or your brothers talk about feeling empowered? And he said, absolutely never. If I want power, I just create the power inside of myself. And so this idea of empowerment, I feel like, is a passive form of asking for permission to have a little bit of power as a woman. And I think that that comes from a patriarchal society where power has often been over others. And as women, I'd like to say that I think we just want power over our choices, over our body, over our opinions, over our feelings, over our agency. We want power. I want power in my wealth and my finances. I want power to move safely in this world as a woman. So, yes, I want power. I don't want to be empowered. So I feel very strongly in the work that I do with women about creating that internal sense of power. And I also think as women, we have been raised most often by mothers who were raised by mothers themselves who came from that society where we didn't ever know that that could be inside of us. It was. If you get married to the right person, then you will. You will establish power.

Oh, Mommy, Mommy. Did you hear that? Sorry, my mom is in the audience. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry about that.

If you.

You know, the patriarchal checklist, you get the husband, you get the house, the kids, you get a certain lifestyle, then you will feel power. Most of my clients are wildly successful on the outside looking in. They have everything, but they are terribly, painfully lost inside because they sourced outside of themselves for everything, never within themselves. So actually, the superhighway for. For power for women is their sensuality. Sensuality is the superhighway to power. And so if we are so disconnected from our sensuality because it's been shamed out of us, I can assure you, you won't be able to connect to your deepest root of power.

Wait, when? Okay, I have a question from the audience, and I want an authentic answer. When she just mentioned the power of sensuality in a woman, how many of you felt a little.

This little contraction?

I did.

Okay, that's it.

Okay.

I like it.

Okay.

Four, five. Okay, you can just do this. You don't want to say it's okay, but that's just. Just bringing that to your attention, how much shame we carry about our sensuality versus power.

So if the center of you, as a woman who was made for pleasure, feels ashamed, feels shut down, feels disconnected, how can you ever walk through life sourcing your own power? So you're gonna look through relationships, outfits, homes, vacations, maybe a job, you know, other ways outside of yourself. Because we have not raised women to be powerful. You know, I have four children in their 20s. One is a daughter, and the others are sons. I have raised my daughter just like I've raised my son. But to have such agency over herself and such power in her opinions that when she speaks, she commands an entire room. And if I had not raised her to feel so confident in her voice. She would have been meek and mild, seeking outside of herself because I told her, well, the world's going to want you to be pleasing. I want you to be most honest with yourself every time you open your mouth. And then the people who align with that will come along and be in your life with you, but don't live your life to please others. And she's a fierce 21 year old woman who speaks very loudly for what she believes in, but in a beautifully feminine way.

So wow.

Yeah.

So the new generation of women, they are so much luckier because the parents have a lot more materials to get educated and understand trauma and you know, trauma healing and parenting in general. Parenting, their was no parenting map before, but I know many women and those women use men to feel empowered, use money to feel empowered, use their sensuality to feel empowered. Are those again an external source of empowerment or should we find empowerment through those three things?

I personally think those are still external because they're going outside of yourself, but your sensuality for yourself. When I teach women about sensuality practices in their own four walls for themselves, not as something I love sharing my sensuality with my husband, absolutely. But first and foremost, it's mine primarily. So learning how to be with that sensuality myself and cultivates a power that is almost in the course of this interview is unexplainable. The way I feel so powerful in my life because I source from within all of my energy I am creating inside of myself. It's how I have agency to use my voice. It's how I have agency to show up in every aspect of my life, every disagreement that I have, everything I take a stand for as an activist. And for me, I'm channeling it through all of my sensuality, even my business online. I've been a psychologist for over 25 years, just in private practice. I've been on Instagram and TikTok for just a little over two years. And it is that foundation through my sensuality. Every time that camera goes on and I channel through the divine and I speak, it is through that power within me, not because I shared sensuality with my partner or I outside of myself. Got that? It is from deep, deep within. And only once women have really worked with me long enough do they understand. I mean, otherwise all of this language in this conversation can feel very ethereal and very hard to grasp because it's not something that we've ever taught women how to do.

Speaking of which, we were talking about the fact that you decided that it's authentic to you not to dye your hair because you don't want to put chemical on your hair, but it is authentic to you to look so fashionable and wear some makeup. So I personally sat in that to see what's authentic to me because for a little while I decided to look like a nun. So I was just not wearing any makeup, like hair down. Look at me. I'm just, I don't care about how I'm looking. But I was actually suffering on the inside because I like to look extra all the time. Like, I literally, if I could, I would always. I like to dress up like this all the time. And obviously, like, my producer is not so happy with me. Now my mom is complaining. My coach couldn't believe it. Like, yeah, that's always the case. But then I was talking to you last night and you said something about how we are in our most authentic self until we are 11 years old. Yeah, tell the audience about it, please. Yeah.

The average girl is just on the cusp of beginning her period. And so up until the age of 11, she's running around with her mismatched clothing, her protruding belly in mismatched socks, crazy hair. And she believes that she can simultaneously grow up to be a unicorn trainer and an astronaut and a gymnast all at the same time because she has the belief that anything is possible. And then once she gets her period and once hormones start to kick in, and once she also recognizes that the outside world now has expectations on how she should look, how she should speak, how she should keep her legs closed, how she should present in the world, she then starts to, bit by bit, close herself off and get further and further removed from the dreams of her heart. And now she is embarrassed to tell people she wants to be a unicorn trainer. And now she learns that maybe when she goes somewhere, she should suck her stomach in. And she learns that that mismatched sock looks awful because people match their socks. So with all of the rules that she had to play by to please the outside society, our parents, our religion, our culture, the patriarchy, she gets further removed from that sensual side of herself that felt all the bigness of the world. And when you are that disconnected from yourself, you can't actually create anything magical. And so that is ultimately where I bring my clients back to through an inner maiden meditation that I have scripted and take in these women, it's so powerful. Back to that 10, 11 year old version of who they were. Because that version of you still has dreams, that version of you still knows what you want. She was the most real and authentic version of you there's ever been. So we go back, and the work that I do, we go back and we get her and we bring her into our lived experience now. And that's what you did. You went back and you saw the videos of yourself when you were little and the pictures and.

Yes, And I watched my birthday, my fifth birthday, and I'm wearing an identical dress, like, identical hairstyle, and I'm like, that was me. I was doing that all the time, and nobody was telling me it's bad until I turned 11 or 12 years old. And suddenly, my own parents, they used to encourage me to do all of those things. But then when I became a teenager, they said, oh, my God, this is dangerous. Don't do it anymore. So it was very confusing. And this happens to a lot of girls and women, by the way. We just get so confused about, okay, how come so. And so these things were good until I was 11 and 12, and then they turned really bad after I became, you know, I stepped into my womanhood, and we have a hard time connecting with our own feminine side.

So what?

I always say that even though we do talk about patriarchy, women allowed it. Our lack of boundaries, our lack of empowerment or feeling the power allowed men to, you know, push the limits. And before we knew it, we were just, you know, not even in the picture.

So it's not right, because we believe that our only purpose was to be in service to others, that we were ornaments for other people to enjoy or to profit from. And so when we play into that game, that's exactly what happens. And so what happens is when anybody's saying to their child or their young daughter, don't dress like that, don't walk like that, don't sit like that, they're projecting all of the fear of the real world onto you. But also, you know, I've been through so many things in my life, and sometimes my husband will say, well, maybe you shouldn't say that online. Or my mom will say, well, maybe you shouldn't do that. And I say to them, always, that's your fear. That's not mine. Keep your fear to yourself. Do the work you need to do to source through it. But I will not absorb your fear for the world because I trust myself so unequivocally, I will source myself through anything that comes up. So it's about also learning not to absorb other people's fear of the world. I'm not afraid that if I have a strong opinion People may leave. I'm not afraid that. That certain people won't hire me. I'm not afraid to not be invited to interviews like this. I'm not afraid that my husband may leave me. I'm not afraid I will be authentically me. I have to answer to me first. And everything that happens thereafter will be my divine alignment of my life. I'm not going to perform and pretend to be somebody to please. What, you? To please any of you? No. I'm here to please myself first and foremost, because only then will I actually be an extension of Source in this lifetime. If I'm going around as a puppet performing, there's nothing authentic about me. And you can feel the lack of authenticity from people. It is so discouraging and disheartening how many women and men are running around performing for what they think other people want them to be because they're so damn terrified of being rejected, of not being accepted. And so we have a whole bunch of fake people running around being fake with each other. And all we want is your truth. All we want is you and your vibrancy. Because you know what actually happens when you claim, this is my outfit, this is who I am. It makes every other woman think, maybe.

I could claim that, too.

Every time a woman shines, it inspires another woman to shine and go bigger. So if you dull yourself down and try to please what you think everybody else wants you to do, you don't give me permission or the rest of us permission to go bigger. So in my world, we brag and we celebrate like crazy. Because instead of just commiserating in misery, I want to have a culture of women who learns how to not feel threatened by another woman's power. That says your power is actually a signal for me to go. So I will stand here as the lighthouse for women. I'm going to show my power over and over again. If you get triggered and you have to go away for a while, that's okay. I'll be here when you come back. But I refuse to dim my light because you maybe got a message somewhere that you had to be afraid of it. I want you to see my light, your light, any of your light, as a signal and a reminder of the glory of what you are actually supposed to be. It is not enlightening for any of you to dim yourselves. It doesn't help any of us.

I have another question, and you can just answer like this. So, again, if you don't want to be obvious, how many of you women feel like other women Other female friends are slightly jealous about your happiness.

Uh huh.

Women feel unsafe with each other. Women feel triggered by other women's success. Why?

Well, I think there is ultimately from the motherhood wound leads into the sisterhood wound, right? And so, so many women, we've all had mothers, but so very few of us were properly mothered. And so when your very first example, your very first experience with a woman came from a mother who was wounded doing the best she could, this is not about blaming our mothers, but a woman who did the best she could and taught you that other women were possibly not to be trusted, or you learned you couldn't trust her, you get this huge message that women can't be trusted, women aren't safe. Or if you had a mother who started to feel jealous of you or your success or your happiness, you then operate with this coding inside of you that says alert, alert. Other women are not safe. I cannot trust other women, so I will. And also historically, women were competing for shelter. Women were competing for a roof over their heads. So the more beautiful woman, the woman who was able to bear more children, who seemed more fertile, there was a competition, right? Because we could not create our own finances, we weren't allowed to earn money. So, so there was, honestly, we are like, historically we carry this inside of us. And then now we have few board seats for women at tables. So there is in many ways this competition to get to the table. I like to tell women, build your own damn tables. You know, let's build our own businesses, our own wealth. That's what majority of my clients who come into my world are building their own wealth and their own businesses. But it's because we haven't learned that the more, again, the more women at the top, the more we create a change in the world. We are never going to create change when there's just a few of us sitting up there. I don't want to be at the top with just a handful of women. I want all of you with me. I want to change this narrative for every one of us. But you can't learn to feel safe around other women until you feel safe within yourself. So I can't. There's not a woman who could ever possibly threaten me because every woman's greatness shows me that I get to claim that too. Every time I feel triggered, I hear from women every single day, they feel triggered by me. And I say to them, what I would love for you to do is when you feel triggered by somebody or something, I do this for myself. Ask yourself okay, what does that person have that I so desire?

What?

Is it the love that they have? Is it the confidence in their body and their beingness? What does that person have that I want? A trigger is only an example showing you of what you want more of in your life. So use it as a chance to mine for the gold in your life.

Wow. So a woman getting triggered by the success of another woman is her understanding what she could do, but she's scared of.

Yes. Yes.

Wow.

So another question I have is every day I scroll through Instagram and I see a beauty cream that can make my cheekbones look a little more, I don't know, highlighted. And then this lip balm and then this hair thing. And I started to think how much of the products I consume are coming from a place of, oh, I want to do this so you love me more versus I actually want that product.

Joyous? Yes, please.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that you become unmovable and uninfluenceable when you again, are sourcing from within. Because the most beautiful thing I feel is again, from that sourcing, from that sensuality. There's no cream in the world that can impress me. I use a vitamin C cream from like Whole Foods. I don't even know what the name of it is. I could care less. I wear mascara and some lip gloss and that is it. I don't wear foundation. I don't spend money on creams. I don't color my hair. I don't get my nails done. For me, all of those things remove me further from my source. All of those things get me further away from the essence of who I am. They're also poisoning me. And I'm not interested in poisoning myself for the name of what? For the name of some external beauty. I don't believe that for me to even be beautiful, this, to me, is beautiful. This is my authentic, most natural self. And I want my daughter to see an example of a woman aging. I want her to see the power and the beauty of that because there's so few of those happening anymore. She said to me last week through tears, she said, mom, I think it's so sad we're losing the faces of aging women. She said, I don't even know what a 30 or 40 year old woman looks like anymore.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

And so, you know, believing that those again, getting underneath that belief, like, do you believe you need that cream to be worthy or do you believe you are buying that cream because you really, really desire? And then the next question would be, why do you Desire it.

Guys, give this one a try. The next time you want to order something online, just ask yourself, am I ordering this? Because somehow I think this is going to make me more lovable, or am I really into this product?

And if I am, why?

I think that would be a good challenge for all of us. Okay, so another question for our lovely men here. Thank you for being here. By the way, how come men don't talk about empowerment?

Because they have power.

So continue, please.

I mean, men, especially white men, are at the top of the food chain. So there's not even. My husband and I have these conversations constantly. I have a brown son, a black son, and a white son, and we just got back from a family vacation recently, and this is all we. We talk like this constantly. So for eight days, we have these kinds of conversations at the dinner table, and we talk about, what are you afraid to do at midnight? And all the guys, they're like, what do you mean? I. Nothing. And then my daughter and I talk about what we're afraid of, and then we talk about, well, we would really like the power to be able to go for a run at midnight if we wanted to, or to go lay on the beach and stare at the stars. And when we have these conversations, you learn that men hold power. They hold a sense of power within. They have safety in the world, and that we don't live with that safety every single day. My daughter can't even get in an Uber alone by herself because of her fear of what may happen. My sons would never think twice about getting in an Uber alone. So if we don't have these conversations realistically in the world, we won't be able to. The men in our lives won't be able to understand the imbalance of power. Correct.

And one last thing I wanted to address before we have some questions from the audience members. Finding empowerment within. Do you think it's best for a woman to find the power within before she gets married? Or often?

I mean, ideally, if she could. Before I met my husband, when I was 21, I thought I was coming from a very empowered place. Little did I know. Now, I mean, I can look back now and, like, I knew really almost nothing about nothing. But, of course, if you're in a relationship and you want to start to step into your own power, it's gonna take being with a partner who is willing for you to evolve and grow. Because sometimes we get into relationships with unspoken contracts. And when one person starts to change and the other doesn't, it could be an imbalance energetically. And maybe the relationship has walked as far as it could at that point. But in an ideal world, sure, it would be amazing to find that power. But I actually think sometimes, sometimes even being in relationships allows you to practice that muscle even more. So I don't think it's necessary that you have to find that and figure that out before you find love or your person. As long as you find a person who has growth mentality and you're gonna constantly evolve all the time together, then I think you have an opportunity for something beautiful.

I love that. And I think the last thing is every time I hear a man complain about his female partner, I always tell them there is one solution that's going to solve almost all your problems with any woman. Empower her. Because if she's empowered and she's happy with herself, either she will make you happy, will help you grow, or find a way for you guys to have a healthy dynamic, whatever that is, whether it's a friendship or a partnership, she will find a way to do what's best for both of you. So empowering women is, in fact, empowering men. So, anyways, thank you, everybody. If there are any questions that you have, we have Dr. Amanda and please. Yes, sure. How do you connect with your center?

The way I connect to my center is through my sensuality, practice, and it is a variety of things. One of those things, for example, is I have been pole dancing for over 15 years. In 15 years, I have a pole in my home. And Even in those 15 years, my husband has seen me dance on that pole four times. And I share that for a reason, because that pole, in the patriarchal world, the pole is for a woman to dance, to turn a man on. In my world, in the matriarchal world, the pole is for me to reclaim and connect with my power within me. And so it is about being in that practice and that devotion to myself. And also the sensuality is I'm in the world so alive because I use my five senses right now, in this moment. I'm nowhere else. I'm here. I'm not in what I was doing earlier today or what I'm going to be doing later this evening or tomorrow. I'm here now. Like, I see the fire, I can see the water, I can smell the amazing flowers. I can hear myself speaking right now. I can taste the flowers in my mouth from the tea I drank. So it's the most beautiful way in when you feel like you're a million miles away from yourself or you need to Reconnect. The most beautiful way in is through your five senses. What do I hear? What do I see? What do I smell? What do I taste? What do I touch? And then one hand on the heart, one hand on your womb space. You don't have to have a uterus any longer to still have a womb space. The potential of the universe lives inside of that space and always sourcing from there. Everything you need for your life. Every answer is right here. It's not up here.

Not even the heart.

I would say for me. No, every answer is here. It's here for me. Yeah. And I can connect here through hip circles, through dancing, through a variety of different movements. Not movements that in the outside world would be considered pretty or pleasing, but movements that are animalistic and raw and sounds and shaking to connect with that primal version of myself. And one of the other. The way I start every single morning is the very first thing I do before I turn my phone on, before I say hello to anyone. I go to the mirror and I stand there for three minutes and I just. My eyes to the reflection of my eyes. I have that presence every morning with myself. Because there's probably no more beautiful way to start my day than with my promise to myself. And then you are so grounded within that anything that comes at me in the world all day long, I can manage because I started with the most beautiful part of my life and that's myself, right? I can overflow to my kids and to my partner and to my clients when I have sourced from within with me first. So you're welcome. You're welcome.

Oh wow, you have a double microphone. See, I'm so grateful to be here with you. I just recently discovered your podcast and I've listened to every one of them, some of them twice. A few in particular have been like really life altering. One of the things that I, I was really excited to, to ask you is you say things that your mother never told you because no one told her. And I have an 18 year old daughter and I'm like, I don't want to be that mother. I want to be the mother that did tell her and knew the things to say and was there for her and available and supportive and said the right things because I think sometimes because of the way that I was raised, I may have, as I listened to your podcast, I'm like, oh shit, I did not say the right thing then. You know, that was my fear and my, you know, insecurities that I was portrayed, like relating to her. So I guess my question is apart from listening to you and finding you wherever I can and relaying the things that I hear from you to her, which I have. And she's been like, oh, cool, what are some other resources that I can exploit to kind of specifically make sure that I'm having all the conversations that I can with my daughter to help her become more of power in this world?

That's such a great question. And first, I just want to applaud you for being such an intentional mother and so aware. And I think it's also beautiful, too. If you've listened to the podcast, you've heard my daughter has been on a few of the episodes, even being able to listen to them with your daughter and say, and pause and say, what do you think about that? You know, and I have made mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life in general and with my own children. I think what matters the most is that we continue going back with the most beautiful hearts and intention because we're human. And you know, my daughter, if you listen to the podcast, we had one where we shared, as a matter of fact, we were here in, in LA last year and we had a very big misunderstanding and it broke both of our hearts. And we didn't. We had to go into separate rooms for like a full day before we could find our way back. And what I ended up learning after a three hour conversation was she was harboring something that I said a year before. And I said to her, and I ended up making a reel about this, but I said, is there something I've done that I need to make right? Is there something you're holding onto that maybe I said or did with the best intention that somehow hurt you? Please tell me I want to make it right and not even to justify it. I just want to know because you've always been at the center of every decision I've ever made for the right reasons. But, honey, I'm human and I'm also a daughter and I'm also a sister, and I've also had my heart broken. And I also have doubt and insecurity and worries about certain things from my own childhood that are unhealed. And so. And she said to me on that podcast episode, mom, that day in that backyard, when you, when you talked about those things, I humanized you for the very first time. Because what happens is often our children, especially our daughters, think that we have all the answers, that we're supposed to be perfect all the time. We're not supposed to. We're flawless. And we don't make any mistakes. And now that she's humanized me, our relationship is almost. I don't have the words for how holy it is. Because she sees that being all these things as a woman is a tightrope act. And I'm doing the best I can every day. And some days that means somebody gets missed along the way. And not everybody's needs are met. But she sees me constantly putting my needs first so she can learn when she becomes. If she becomes a mother someday or a professional and a wife in all the roles to always source for herself first. And so I would say also asking her, baby girl, what do you need from me? How can I show up the best for you? Because, well, there may be a whole bunch of wonderful resources out there. She's your best resource. And sometimes it's literally just sitting in the same room together or going for a walk together, being in the car, you know, parallel. When you're sitting there and you're like, sitting in the parallel position, it's a great time to talk to them. Or sometimes I just go and lay across their beds, especially when they were that age. And I would bring up. I would ask them about some trend going on in the world as my connection to them. I would say, hey, did you hear about this thing? Something about, like, this dance people are doing? And I'd let them tell me, and that would be the opening of the door. Because if I tried to always go in and be like, how was your day? What's going on? What's bothering you? You get, like, the shutdown. So connecting on their level and letting them, you know, often feel like they're teaching me something because they're so full of wisdom. But when in doubt, ask her, what do you need from me? What can I do better as your mom? What are the things that you long for?

Ask her.

Yeah, you're welcome. Hi.

And thank you for bringing us together with this beautiful space. Continuing her question, isn't again, a space of pleasing your daughter for her as a mom again, like, divorcing herself? How can I please my father? Oh, my God, my mother didn't do to me. Isn't that that place also? I mean, is it again, taking to taking a mom to a space of I should do something for someone else again, maybe like recenter, not recentering, decentering herself from her desire, her dreams, or whatever it is?

That's a really great question and super nuanced. I would say that I don't hear pleasing my daughter as much as I want to understand my daughter, I want to guide her and assist her the best that I can to my ability so that she has a better advantage as a woman than I may have had from my own mother. Right. Because the goal is that every one of us does right by our children. Just 1% more. Not even 10 or 15%, 1% more. So that every. The legacy begins to heal a little bit more. Never want to pass down what was given to me back to my daughter. My daughter deserves better than that. And so I don't dissenter myself by honoring my daughter. The best way I honor her is also showing her that I'm not always going to be able to meet her every whim and her every need. You know, she needed me for something today and she kept calling me. She was at the DMV and she kept calling me and calling me. Her lack of planning is not my emergency though. And I was in meetings, so I couldn't handle it. And was she disappointed? Sure. Well, maybe you'll plan better next time, right? So it's like we have to also show them that that's all right, baby, I trust you. You'll figure it out next time. You'll make sure you've got all the right documents. Right? So that is not me de centering myself. It's me staying in the meeting even though I saw the phone kept ringing, and then being able to encourage her that she'll figure it out next time. But I will never take my hand off the wheel of guiding her more instrumentally as a woman in life, because that actually is centering myself. It's one of the things that I think is the greatest gift I can leave in this world is changing the legacy from the women I came from through what I can leave through her.

This is about my own myself. Recently, I discovered that wherever I am present, I. How can I say I evolved my stomach or belly inside, you know, squeezing it subconsciously, unconsciously. But then when I tell you, revise and then I release it. And of course I go through the. I mean, the portals of lack of empowerment. All the fears that has been created in childhood reminding themselves to me. And I see that. So do you know what is the connection?

That's a great question. I think in a world where we have fixated on women having flat stomachs and being eight pack or six pack or physically flat, I think there's also an unconscious need to like, hold it in, suck it in, be tense there, be tight there. When in fact the womb space was always meant to be relaxed, even for your pelvic floor. There is so much miseducation in the industry. I was also in the natural childbirth industry for 10 years. There's so much misinformation around how our stomachs are supposed to be. You're actually a woman's womb space and her stomach is supposed to be soft, is supposed to be in that relaxed energy. And, you know, a very interesting story. It's so funny because prior to meeting me, my husband was dating a model. And it's relevant because he shared this with me after. This is a full circle moment where when he saw me for the first time in a bathing suit, I was living in Chicago and he come for the 4th of July and he said, he happened to look over and he said, I'd never seen a woman with her belly just like soft and there and out. And you just didn't even seem to know. I'm like, what are you talking about? He told me years after we were married. He's like, well, you know, I mean, I'd only dated models before and they always like sucked their stomach in everywhere they went. And they always look super svelte and tight and everything. And I said, oh, my God, I didn't even know that people did that. I didn't even have the awareness or the consciousness that women were supposed to suck their stomach in. And so he's like, but that's what attracted me that day was the day I was like, I want to marry that woman. Because you were so just in your essence and you were laughing and you were so happy and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. So I think in this patriarchal society where we think we're supposed to look like men, women, imagine what we carry inside here. Every single week, we are in a different cycle. Imagine what goes on in here. That's never meant to be tight and flat. I want my womb to have all that stuff, space to do its magic. And so when you notice the contraction, pay attention to what else you are experiencing, what else is going on. And if you loosen, if you stick your tongue out and you start to vocalize from like a guttural place and you loosen up your mouth, you will notice that this starts to loosen. Because when you were in utero, when you were just a 12 or 14 week old fetus, your vocal cords were connected to your ovaries and they still are through the vagal nerve. And so when this is tight, you can release this either through some breaths and belly breaths or through some vocalization, sticking your tongue out and shaking, you'll start to also release here. And that's why if you can connect with your sensuality, you'll feel even more powerful, because this is an area that has been used, abused, prophetized, that we are so terrified of, ashamed of, through all kinds of religion. So there's a lot. When you can heal this, you can heal your whole life.

Thank you so much.