Feminine energy is often associated with traits such as nurturing, compassion, and intuition. But in truth, feminine energy is SO much more than just these qualities! It’s a powerful force that can be harnessed by both women and men to bring greater depth, meaning, and truth to their lives.
Many women today are passionate seekers of divine feminine energy, but a lot of what’s being described as “feminine energy” in the world of personal development and spiritual growth today, is something else: Patriarchal femininity.
In this patriarchal society, femininity has come to indicate a set of societal expectations and norms that actually reinforce traditional gender roles, placing women in a subservient position to men.
It involves the idea that women should be passive, nurturing, emotional, and dependent on men for validation and protection. It’s defined by a narrow set of expectations, that are often unconsciously reinforced by other women.
It limits feminine traits to certain roles and behaviors that are ultimately harmful to women’s autonomy and agency. But on the surface, it’s made to look like the opposite is true.
To illustrate this, here’s what you’ll typically find online, around feminine energy meaning and characteristics –
Traits of Feminine Energy
- Empathy
- Sensitivity
- Intuition
- Nurturing
- Receptivity
- Softness
- Fluidity
- Healing
- Inward focus and family
- Compassion
- Patience
For contrast, here’s a list of masculine qualities and traits you’ll typically find on the internet…
Traits of Masculine Energy
- Assertiveness
- Independence
- Logical Thinking
- Competitiveness
- Leadership
- Structure
- Protection
- Linearity
Can you see the polarising nature of these lists of feminine and masculine energies!?
Despite being how we typically describe feminine and masculine energy, the spiritual concept is shallow and reductive.
Now, I’m not saying that allocating some of these traits to the feminine and some to masculine energy is somehow incorrect. Feminine energy IS sensitive, intuitive, loving, healing and compassionate. But it’s also a LOT of other things too, things that may not seem as ‘soft’ and ‘appealing’ as the ones on the list…
Awakening authentic feminine energy
Feminine energy is life force energy.
Think of Mother Nature and the huge spectrum of qualities that could describe her changing faces. She is a gentle summer breeze, and she is also a raging tornado.
She is a fluffy newborn lamb, and she is also a roaring tiger. As an expression of the divine feminine, the Great Mother doesn’t fit neatly into just one box, so why are we doing this with the feminine?
The true feminine encompasses light and dark, love and fear, beauty and ugliness. She is youth and age. She is receptivity and she is force.
So as well as the traits listed above, feminine energy ALSO encompasses qualities and expressions such as:
- Sensuality
- Pleasure
- Passion
- Devotion
- Magic
- Anger
- Fearsomness
- Transformation
- Chaos
- Decay and death
If you want to tap into feminine energy, you must awaken the whole spectrum of authentic feminine traits. It’s not enough to cultivate the more “light feminine energies”, and ignore the darker side.
Awakening the feminine is a deeply personal journey of self-exploration and self-discovery! This means you must be prepared to discover new things about yourself, whilst embracing some of the parts you may not want to.
Being in your feminine energy isn’t all about creativity and beauty (though that’s some of it). It’s also about radical self-awareness, shadow work, and ego death.
How to increase feminine energy
Increasing your feminine energy is a personal and individual process, and an ongoing journey!
Much of the real personal growth work involves stripping away the layers of conditioning that pretty much all human beings have picked over many generations of life on Earth. It’s not a quick fix.
Also read: 10 Uncomfortable Signs of Blocked Feminine Energy
For the curious, here’s a pretty comprehensive list of 20 ways you can begin to welcome this powerful frequency back into everyday life.
1. Connect to Mother Nature
The Number 1. way to increase your feminine energy is connecting with nature because nature is the home of divine feminine energy.
When you spend time making meaningful connections with wild, beautiful, natural places, the Goddess will share her medicine with you. Nature IS sacred space. Her rhythms, seasons, patterns, and cycles are the container that female energy needs to heal, transform and thrive.
2. Get embodied
Divine feminine energy lives in the body! But most humans (both men and women) have been systematically disconnected from their bodies over centuries of living under patriarchal control.
Embracing embodiment can be a simple process of finding ways to feel grounded every day. Ways to pull your attention DOWN from the mind, into your body.
- Walk barefoot outside
- Tune into your five senses
- Spend time eating, and really savor your food
- Touch your own body and get to know (and appreciate) her contours, textures, and shapes.
Remember, reconnecting to your body means connecting to your physicality, AS she is. This means without judgment, criticism, berating or denying what is real for You!
3. Embrace your sensuality
Closely connected to embodiment, sensuality is the pleasure that can be found in sensation.
Embracing sensuality by coming into contact with what we are feeling, can bring so much more feminine energy than just staying in our heads.
It’s SO simple, yet many of us are flying through life without ever stopping to “smell the roses”. We’re in desperate need of the pleasure that comes from slowing down to sense and feel our bodies, as they interact with our world.
4. Examine your conditioning around femininity
Nobody is immune to conditioning around what it is to be feminine, feel feminine, and look feminine.
Conditioning comes from culture, religion, media, schooling, family, friends… It’s those inner thoughts that tell you your female energy must manifest in a certain way, and if it doesn’t, then you’re somewhat less of a person.
It is deep, deep work to strip back to the inner feminine, so go slowly. A good place to start is likely by looking at your own shadow…
Read this next: 50 Best Journal Prompts for Healing Feminine Energy
5. Do your shadow work
Everyone has a shadow side – a part of our unconscious mind, where we put all the parts of ourselves we have rejected. This usually happens totally unconsciously, and we all do it, so there’s nothing strange or wrong with having a shadow.
Because of the conditioning that pretty much all of us have received around the acceptable expressions of masculine and feminine energies (see those lists above!) the “unacceptable” parts are placed into the shadow. For women, these traits may look like
- Anger
- Ugliness
- Manipulation
- Assertiveness
- Being disorganized
- Having needs
- … and many, many more personality traits and qualities
Often our feminine shadow traits become distorted, and end up emerging as the wounded feminine.
Next read: 20 Warning Signs of Wounded Feminine Energy
Practicing honest self-reflection and doing your shadow work, will enable you to uncover and reclaim what you find there. Shadow work is a powerful, healing, personal growth journey that can return far, far more than feminine energy alone!
New to the world of shadow?
Check out these posts:
6. Fall (back) in love with your body
Embracing your body in love and acceptance is one of the best ways to increase feminine energy in your life.
Patriarchy tells women our bodies are “too this…”, “too that…” or “too something else…”
Through modern marketing and our consumerist culture, Capitalism tells us at every turn that our bodies aren’t living up to some perfect ideal. The machine wants you to feel forever inadequate so you’ll buy the next wrinkle cream, anti-cellulite lotion, or push-up bra.
But this constant barrage creates (and reinforces) an internalized rejection of who you are, in this moment. So fight it, and aim to feel beautiful exactly as you are.
7. Develop emotional intelligence
You can radiate feminine energy by cultivating emotional intelligence. This means improving emotional awareness in yourself, and when interacting with others, leading to more authentic relationships and honest communication in daily life.
8. Slow down
The fastest solution I know of, when you’re wondering how to be in your feminine energy, is to slow down.
Feminine energy can’t be rushed. And it can’t be stopped. It exists in the here and now, which is really the infinite moment of existence.
9. Work with the Dark Feminine
The feminine has many faces. Not all of them are “love and light”. As daunting as it may be, collectively we need to embrace all of them on this journey.
The dark feminine is a hugely necessary aspect of this spectrum of femininity that more and more women are discovering. Start spending time with her.
10. Embrace your menstrual cycle
One of the simplest ways to activate the raw power of feminine energy, is to connect to your menstrual cycle. As a menstruating woman, each month your entire body moves through a sacred cycle of growth, climax, descent, and death. Your emotions, sensations, and bodily functions mirror this incredible blueprint.
So instead of stifling your feelings, numbing your pain, and dreading your blood, awaken to the creative force you carry within!
Now read: What’s the Difference Between the White and Red Moon Cycles?
11. Track the Moon
Another way to embrace cyclic living (great if you don’t have a menstrual cycle) is to track the Moon. Use a calendar or an app to track the Moon phases and signs. Note down any changes you feel, in your emotions, creative energy or physicality.
For more guidance on not just how to track the Moon, but what to actually DO with each phase and the energies it brings, download the e-book: How to Get Started with Sacred Cycles
12. Practice self-care
In all spiritual practices (and yes, activating feminine energy is spiritual work!) taking care of yourself is essential.
Create “me time” every single day. Take a bubble bath, read a book, rest, or find your way of making sure you find balance and feel good. Always try to embrace yourself with kindness compassion, and self-love. Not only will self-care increase the natural flow of your feminine energy, but it will positively impact your overall health too.
13. Explore your sexuality
What IS sexual energy? It’s almost certainly not what you were taught at school! Sexual energy is:
- Life force
- Creativity
- Eros
It moves through everybody, and everyone has the right to express it too.
But what sexual energy actually is has been radically distorted over the centuries, and today most people see sex through a very strange lens that’s clouded in shame, suppression, embarrassment and taboo; and at the other end of the scale, pornography, abuse and much, much worse.
It’s a mess. It’s so far from the creative, erotic, sensual impulse that sex is really all about.
You can begin to awaken feminine energy by spending time exploring your own sexuality. But doing this really requires peeling back the layers of conditioning that we have all been fed since childhood. AND resisting the societal stereotypes and assumptions that are still rampant.
14. Awaken your intuition
Decision making based on rational thought and logic tends to be favored by those with dominant masculine energy. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but as a society, we need to find balance.
Intuition is that sixth sense, that inner voice that whispers the truth that you need to hear. But it’s another thing most people have forgotten about, as the connection to our deeper selves has been all but destroyed.
Re-awakening your intuition will give you BACK that direct line to the feminine side of the sacred.
15. Embrace your creativity
Everyone has a creative side.
Remember the creative power of nature? This is the frequency of the feminine. Many of the most truly feminine ones among us are also innately creative. And I’m not talking about creating a beautiful Instagram profile! True creative power is wild, untamed and unique, not stuffed into tiny squares.
16. Create ritual
Ritual is an antidote to the capitalist model.
Rituals are a way to connect back to the Earth, to ourselves and to the sacredness of life itself.
Gentle daily rituals will awaken and activate the sacred feminine because they are HER technology. They are HER methods. SO with ritual, you’ll not only reawaken her but integrate her too.
Start with a simple morning ritual, like lighting a candle in honor of the Goddess, or speaking out an affirmation as you watch the Sun rise.
Need ritual inspiration?
Check out these posts:
17. Use your voice
Women have been silenced for centuries.
This goes back to the burning times (and beyond) when women were called out as witches for not only their magic, but their daily work and practices.
So we learned not to speak. The pain and repercussions of this are still alive today, as the witch wound travels down the ancestral lines affecting modern women, even though most have NO idea why they just can’t seem to do certain things. Like:
- Speaking up when it matters
- Talking openly about their spirituality
- Voicing their hunches, intuitions, and feelings
- Putting a point across in front of others
- Defending themselves when threatened
Working with the throat chakra can help immensely. As can doing the deep ancestral healing work to uncover the root of your own witch wound stories.
18. Nurture relationships
The feminine is relational.
Feminine energy manifests through how we relate to others – other people OR beings, whether they’re rocks, trees, and flowers, or man-made buildings and structures (it has little to do with gender).
But despite our deep desire for connection, most modern folks aren’t taught how to relate in intelligent or healthy ways, which nurture our relationships.
19. Cultivate sisterhood
The sisterhood wound is another way that women have been harmed and continue to harm. Instead of seeing other women as allies, we judge them, criticize them, gossip about them, and/ or see them as our competition.
Work hard to avoid this, and instead build healthy, generous relationships with like-minded women.
20. Balance your inner masculine
Masculine and feminine energies can coexist within society, but a balance is needed.
Our culture tends to overvalue masculinity (or should that be toxic masculinity?) meaning many women who embody more “male energy” feel burned out, exhausted, and dissatisfied from trying to keep up with a system that’s not designed for our female needs.
YET we must still exist here, so abandoning any masculine or male energy just isn’t an option. But balance is.
21. Be your own best friend
(OK, here’s one extra…)
The feminine has been suppressed, rejected, distorted and shamed for centuries. One of the most powerful ways to counter this is to fully BE with yourself, in love and acceptance.
Honor your needs, and give yourself time for your internal process to unfold.
Allow the spontaneous joys of existence to rise up in you, and be felt.
Spend time getting to know your inner self, through journaling, meditation, and deep self-inquiry.
The journey to activate and embody the frequency of the feminine is a LONG one. Connecting with other like-minded women can be a real game changer, so be sure to make the cultivation of real sisterhood a priority.
What is your next step? Share it in the comments below…
