Lisa Marie Rankin:

In this episode, I'm speaking with author and tantrika, Michaella Bohm. She is the author of The Wild Woman's Way and teaches and counsels internationally as an expert in intimacy and relationships. Michaella combines her training in psychology and extensive clinical counseling experience with her in-depth training in the yogic arts. Her work has recently been featured in Gwyneth Paltrow's Netflix show, Sex, Love, and Goop. This is such a juicy conversation. We talk about a woman's experience with beauty, sex, and sensuality as she ages. I know you're gonna love it. Let's dive in.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Mikaela Bohm, and she is the author of the old woman's way and just a modern day tantrika. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So thank you, Mikaela, for being here.

Michaela Boehm:

Thank you for having me.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So, Mikaela, we've, read your book, the wild woman's way, in my community, and we're gonna be reading it again in my mystery school as well too. And many of the women in my community are very much drawn to the wild woman archetype. And what I particularly like about your approach is that it's not just a cerebral thinking. It's not just, like, thinking about the archetype, it's really embodying the archetype. I like to think the archetypes don't just live in our brains, but they live in our bodies. What is your thought about why are so many women, especially today, drawn to the wild woman archetype?

Michaela Boehm:

Well, I'm glad women are drawn to the wild woman's archetype because it is one of the quintessential archetypes that when we understand it and when we can embody it, and it is all about the embodiment, it really is a game changer. It's a real, real game changer. And so I think it's important to say for people who don't know about the wild woman archetype, that of course, the wild woman archetype is not fangs and claws and madness and foaming at the mouth. Some people think that, and some people enact that the wild and wild woman is of course connected to nature and not domesticated, also not devoid of the cycles and seasons of life. And so why I think a lot of people are so drawn to the archetype and why I wrote the book in the first place is I think that we know instinctively that without the wisdom of our body, which is represented by the wild woman, we are not whole. And particularly, things that are most important to us, typically. Right? Not to say that we don't want careers and being in our head and having a good mind and kicking ass and taking names later. I love all of those things with a passion, but also the things that are important to us, which is relationship, pleasure, intuition, our personal power, our ability to set boundaries, our ability to vibe with other people, so to speak, all of that sits in the body.

Michaela Boehm:

And the wild woman's archetype is essentially the archetype that benders or brings out the native intelligence of our body. So the way I've been working with it I've been working with this archetype since I was 16. I'm now 57, so you get the idea. That particular engagement is the engagement with our cycles. It's the engagement with internal and external rhythms. Right? Circadian rhythms, biorhythms, rhythms of our hormones, you know, all of those kind of things. And when we understand these, then the more, let's say, mythical or spiritual or practical aspects follow suit. So it's a really, useful archetype for our times.

Michaela Boehm:

And I think a lot of us nowadays understand what happens when we are divorced from our body and divorced from the wisdom of our body.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. Oh, thank you for that beautiful explanation. And I really think of the wild woman archetype as the primal divine feminine. Like you said, very much connected to the rhythms of her own body, the cycles of the seasons, whether and even, like, the circadian rhythm. And I also think of it as, like, that creative and sensual part. And one of the reasons that I was really excited to talk to you is women in my community, I would say, many of them are 40 plus and many fifties, sixties, and seventies. And I think sometimes when we talk about sensuality, sometimes women, as they get through postmenopause, they can feel less connected to that aspect of themselves. So I would love to hear from you as it pertains to the wild woman archetype and maybe even beyond.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

What is a woman's experience with sensuality as she ages?

Michaela Boehm:

Good question and the topic of my next book so that since I'm now in that state, right, I'm now postmenopausal, so it's it's quite an adventure, I'd say. I've learned a lot in the perimenopausal years. And now I'm over that hump. It's a whole other ballgame. I think sensuality and with that sexuality, it doesn't matter if somebody has a partner or not, is some that is we can cultivate it. Doesn't go away, not till we die, essentially. But there is a whole lot of stigma and a whole lot of, let's say, false beliefs and messaging we get about essentially the kitchen being closed as they used to call it and that going away and all the stories about how when you, are made a portal, everything dries up and that's horrible. And mind you, that is all true enough, but that's not all there is.

Michaela Boehm:

And there's many things you can do to mitigate these things so that the dryness doesn't happen so that the lack of libido is picked up by other things. But we don't know that. Right? We're not taught that. There's either medical interventions or good old grin and bear and get through it, and it will be better on the other side. We can all be Crohn's together. And I think there's another way. When you ask me, how do you cultivate your sensuality? I think, sensuality starts with beauty. So I just, before we started recording, commented on your beautiful background.

Michaela Boehm:

Right? And you have a beautiful display back there, and I'm doing my very best to surround myself with all that I cherish and that I find beautiful because beauty is what leads into sensuality and the way this goes. And beauty not not our appearance even though how we dress ourselves or how we feel is also important. There's all kinds of mind fields, but the our surroundings are essentially what triggers and informs and tickles out the sensuality. And so even if we don't feel particularly sexy or sexual or even sensual, beauty, is the gateway into that, the on ramp. Because beauty, particularly if you know what you're doing, engages all senses, and the senses are the origin of sensuality. Right? The most people forget that all sensuality means is that your 5 senses are alive. And we can always make our 5 senses alive because they're always there. They are always alive.

Michaela Boehm:

It's just where do we put our attention? We tend to be very fixated on our main sense gate which is sight and we sometimes neglect the other senses but at any given moment in time you can have all 5 senses engaged in your life. And then with that, you are already central. And then you just have to take that a bit further into your inner experience, and there's a lot available. I also wanna say, before I shut up for a moment here No. It's going. That, sensuality, sexuality, pleasure, all of those kind of things are a muscle. Right? They are like a muscle, a proverbial muscle, meaning they have to be practiced and there is a use it or lose it, particularly when you're no longer supported by your endocrine system as vibrantly as we are in our twenties. Right? But I work with women in their twenties who have low libido and low sensuality because, of course, it has to do with how much time you spend in your head and how much time you spend stressed and how much trauma you have and how much overwhelm there is in your life which directly cuts down on sensory awareness and aliveness.

Michaela Boehm:

And so beauty is the way in and then from there you'll have to develop a self pleasure practice, whatever that means. Doesn't mean you have to masturbate necessarily if that's too creepy for you or whatever. Some people are very weirded out when they're assigned

Lisa Marie Rankin:

a

Michaela Boehm:

pleasure practice. But your pleasure practice could be sitting down, having a cup of tea, watching the sunset every evening or cup or a drink if that's your thing. The pleasure practice could be massaging your feet and hands every evening before you go to bed. It could be wearing a silky nightgown instead of your utilitarian cotton one. It could be all kinds of things that you can do to tickle a sense or several senses. And with that, you practice sensual aliveness, and over time, that really accumulates into something very useful at any age and at any relationship status, and I think that's very important.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I'm thrilled to hear that you are writing a book on this subject as well, so I can't wait to dive into that. And I turned 49 this summer, so this is also a topic that is very near and dear to my heart personally. And I love how you say the in is beauty. And to carry on through that, the aesthetics of beauty now, personally, I think older women are very beautiful, but we also live in a culture that just values youth to an extreme. And there's so much about you must stay young at all costs. So it's almost putting women in this position to be forever the maiden where I feel like then we also lose some of our power if we're always trying to stay young.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Do you have any thoughts on that about how women can almost reclaim their beauty and and appreciate it through all phases of life.

Michaela Boehm:

Yes. Once again, that's the book I'm writing because I think it's so important. Right? And there is there is such disservice done, of course, by social media. We all know that. Right? I mean, there's no ifs, whens, and buts. But I think it's important to understand that the reason we are obsessed with the maiden archetype, so to speak, and obsessed with looking young is not only external. Right? I think there is a lot of that, of course, right, social media and what's presented to us and how we should look. And I was joking.

Michaela Boehm:

I did a talk yesterday for somewhat some of this program. And I was saying that when I grew up, when I was in my early twenties, I did not have the body type that was in, so to speak. Right? I should have been, essentially at my prime in the Kim Kardashian years because my ass certainly did not conform to my use beauty standards. Right? Nowadays, there is a very specific way you're supposed to look. And if you don't look like that, then that's a problem. But that was the case also when I grew up, and it was just within a social media where that was you were hit over the head with it every 20 seconds. Right? So beauty standards and the way we're supposed to look, of course, is way worse than it's been. The other thing that, of course, we have now that we've never had I just thought about this yesterday.

Michaela Boehm:

I remember when I grew up, this is the old. This is the thing people say now. Now I'm at that age where I say these things. But when I grew up, I barely ever took a photo of myself. That was a whole fricking ordeal. You had to either have somebody take photos of you or get a friend to do it or made or whatever. You didn't constantly see yourself from all angles, which I think, particularly nowadays, is very, very dangerous because your iPhone, contrary to what you think, is not telling the truth. Right? This isn't how you look.

Michaela Boehm:

And the reason we know that is that people do all these tutorials. And how do you stand? You look good. How do you stand so you don't look good? Right? And and so what you are seeing in a photo of you isn't actually what's happening. And how you need to look in real life to look good in a photo makes you very distorted looking. Right? So there's all of that stuff that goes on that we fall prey to when we consume a certain amount of flashing shiny images. So how do you deal with that personally? Well, that's a personal decision. I, for 1, am no longer doing much social media at all. I've locked myself completely out of everything except an hour a day of Instagram.

Michaela Boehm:

Where office posts stuff that we wanna post, meaning events and stuff. I I have, as of yet, not posted anything in November or or October because I, for 1, know that if I go on Instagram, I see things that upset me. No. That's just even though I unsubscribe from anything that upsets me, but there's always something else that upsets me in the sense that it draws comparison. Right? And it draws discontent, and that, of course, has to do with everything we nowadays see, being connected to us buying something. Right? If you ever really wanna read something very, very harsh, read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, h a r I. That will be an eye opener for anybody who spends too much time on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. But I'm saying all of this to say we get these messages and how we have to counteract them, particularly in older years, is that we find something else to focus on.

Michaela Boehm:

The obsession with the maiden archetype is an evolutionary obsession. And what I mean by that, it was gonna say a basic obsession, but an evolutionary obsession, it has to do with a signaling that you are fertile and available sexually as well as relationally, which, of course, has a certain lifespan. In that lifespan, there is a very high level of a competitive market for a mate. So how does a mate in the, let's say, cave days, because that's where it comes from, know that you are a good person to have a child with or marry or whatever in the cave days, probably not marriage, but bond with peer bonding and things like that for the sake of raising children and all of that. Well, you look shiny, glowy, and healthy. I do well, we should say you looked healthy. How did you look healthy? Your hair was shiny. Your skin was clear.

Michaela Boehm:

Your body had the shape that said you had enough fat on you so you could actually reproduce. And, of course, that's hip fat and breasts. When we look at how you're supposed to be shaped today, that it's essentially saying, I can bear children and feed them. The plump lips is I'm sexually ready to bear children and feed them. It's all that stuff that's super evolutionary. Of course, everybody's obsessed with that because that becomes the standard, but that's ridiculous past you wanting children and also past your childbearing age. But ridiculous in the sense that that's not something to uphold. We're so conditioned that's how we are worthy, and it takes out the real signs of health.

Michaela Boehm:

And the real signs of health, and here we come back to the wild woman, is bodily vibrancy. It's vitality. It's having available energy. It's being curious. It's being playful. It's being open to new ideas. It's being sensual. I know women in their seventies eighties.

Michaela Boehm:

They have a self pleasure practice. They're sensual. They're alive. They constantly try new things. They move about. They still many of them still work because they want to. It looks different, but it's actually much more compelling because it's not fake. That all said, how we deal with it is depends on how identified we were with the maiden archetype to begin with, some of us more than others.

Michaela Boehm:

And then, of course, horrible things happen. If you weren't identified with the maiden with the or maiden archetype when you had it, so to speak, there might be grief and they're trying to hold on to it. I noticed that women who really had it and went there, who now in their forties and fifties and sixties sixties don't put makeup on anymore and stuff like that. But it's easy to do that when you've had it. Right? If you've never had it, it's like, shit. I missed the boat. I gotta somehow now with that I'm free and I know who I am. I also want to have that.

Michaela Boehm:

It's very important not to have judgment on anybody who does anything to their body or skin or whatever. Because one of the things that's important is we don't know why, and it's not always the shallow stuff. It might have to do with suddenly having discovered that somebody that never felt sexual or sensual, or somebody never had the space to dress up, or date, or was in a marriage and now is out. Or there's many, many reasons why women try to recapture some of the maiden archetype, and many of them are not nearly as heinous as we think when we look at it and have judgment on it. It's also much easier to say that this is all not necessary when it's not happening to us. Something that I'm realizing rather rapidly. It's easy to say, oh, I'll age gracefully when there's no no signs of that yet. But when you wake up in the morning and what you see in the mirror has no correlation to how you feel inside, it's pretty shocking.

Michaela Boehm:

You have to develop fortitude, and you have to develop different values, and you have to develop an internal bravery to be with that. And not everybody has that. I think my next mission is to bring that in a certain way because I think no one is exempt from that.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Oh, I completely agree. It's interesting that you said in Hollywood, you see people that don't wear makeup, and I've noticed that Pamela Anderson doesn't wear makeup anymore. I think she looks more gorgeous than ever as well, but sometimes I think it's helpful when we see celebrities also starting to embrace the aging process.

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah. It is. And I think that's important. I was just talking with a friend before we got on, and I was saying that one of the things that I find very fascinating is there's a kind of a new genre of Netflix movie. You can always tell where the zeitgeist guys goes by seeing what Netflix produces because they put a lot of money in making movies nowadays. There's studio as well as a streaming service. And there's a whole there's 2 2 layers to that. 1 is older women, and in this case, we often see actresses that we saw at our prime now being pulled back in to be the that older woman who just does her thing and recover sexuality or doesn't give it up or has a new relationship.

Michaela Boehm:

I I just saw the book club, which is Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenbergen, and Jane Fonda, all rediscovering sexuality and relationship in their sixties seventies. And some of the stereotypical thing that happens, like Jane Fonda's daughters thinking she needs to live in a slip proof basement apartment in the house, because she's ancient while she's got herself a new boyfriend. Right? And the chasm of that and all of that. So there's a whole genre of movies where we see the women that we saw the epitome of Hollywood beauty now aged, exploited, but, of course, they age with a lot of help. So that's not realistic for most people. They age with CGI in these movies because I've seen some of those people in real life, and they don't look the way they look on camera. And to sign in the right direction that there's an empowerment of older women to still want sex, still want relationship, to learn how to date, of course, always funny when they online date for the first. And the other genre is older women with younger men.

Michaela Boehm:

That's the newest thing now. I just saw some Nicole Kidman movie where she's having a thing with, I think, Zac Efron, who's at least 20 years younger than him than her. But once again, the problem is while she portrays the older woman, you wouldn't know because she can't move her freaking face at all, right, at all. It's it's actually shocking because she's such a beautiful, vibrant woman. It's a sign in the right direction, meaning we get sprung from the archetype of the kitchen closes. If we lose our men, which is, by the way, why a lot of people hold on to bad relationships, You won't find one anymore. You too old. Men no longer notice you.

Michaela Boehm:

Just by the way, absolutely not true. Now I can say with great confidence that I probably get hit on now and propositioned in all kinds of ways way more than in my forties. Way more. No. So I don't think it's necessarily true, but you will have to do the things, and it's not visually, necessarily. It's energetically. It's the vibrancy of your body. It's the ability to be curious and also be a a bit silly.

Michaela Boehm:

Right? Silly not in making a fool of yourself, but not being so self conscious. You can't, like, move into a into a restaurant all sucked up and, like, tense and whatever. You have to actually be able to move your body and inhabit your body so that things are going beyond the maiden archetype.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. Makes sense. I wanted to get your thoughts on something that I've been thinking about recently is about just maybe how the sexual energy shifts. In our fertile years, as you were talking about, there's, like, almost this evolutionary mandate we have that we need to produce. So it's like this very kind of overt sexuality. But as we age, I almost like to think of it as more priestess energy where it can almost become more spiritual as an opportunity to connect us with ourselves, maybe intimacy with our partners, and even the divine. And I was wondering if you just had any thoughts on that about how maybe, like, just the sexual energy, how it alchemizes as we age.

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah. I think the good news is that if you actually lift the weight of of sensuality, meaning you do your regular reps of practice, then what's going to happen is you actually have a lot more than you had in your twenties thirties. Essential and sexual energy and also the ability to feel actually really increases with age. Libido goes off the damn cliff into nowhere, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because it means that you can source from different places. And those different places are usually a lot richer. And, internal orgasms or full body orgasms or essential aliveness typically doesn't really let loose fully till you're in your forties. It certainly doesn't stop with menopause under any circumstances. It's a use it or lose it thing, though.

Michaela Boehm:

If you have stopped, you can start. It's not one of those things. It's like weightlifting or exercising. Any age you start is a good age. I don't know if I would call it the priestess because the priestess is still a bit removed or unattainable. I would probably more say, like, the empress, if we wanna talk about archetypes. It's a more mystical thing, meaning there's a deeper knowledge of who we are. We're not hung up on just the surface level of expression.

Michaela Boehm:

And when that happens, much more can come through. It's that loosening of the self identity that inevitably happens when you age. And the key essentially is to, allow that self identity to loosen and not try and hold on to a self identity that was not that great 10 years ago. If you can get out of your idea of how you should be, which a lot of women in their forties and fifties do, then you can actually just be who you are, and then that's quite glorious. And it's very attractive and sexy. My friend and I just talked about it, she's now in her late forties, and she gets all these young men. Yeah. We're talking mid twenties, and they really want to be with her.

Michaela Boehm:

And she goes, look, I don't necessarily want that. And they're like, no, Liam. I'm mature. I want you. And so why is that? Well, because she has a very high degree of bodily aliveness, and that's attractive. A lot of younger women don't have a high degree of bodily aliveness anymore because it's all squeezed into the head and doing computer work and stuff like that. So there is a real awakening you can have in your forties fifties sixties and beyond if you allow yourself to not constantly hearken back to how you were in your twenties thirties, which for most people isn't that great. We don't have confidence or experience in our twenties thirties.

Michaela Boehm:

We do in our forties fifties sixties.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. It's interesting. I can look back at pictures of myself when I was in my twenties, and now I can be like, oh, I was really cute. But at the time, I was just remembering, do I look good enough? Just being very insecure, being very much overly the people pleaser. So even though I don't look like I used to, I almost feel more confident and more embodied, and I think that's what you're saying is really the natural progression.

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. If you allow it to happen, and that's why you have to loosen the grip on could have been, would have been, should be, and go well beyond that. There's there's the unlimited possibility. Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

What would you say? I know that there's a few women that I have worked with before, and I hear this sometimes in my community. So for women who may be a little bit older and they're divorced and they're just like, yep. Not having sex anymore. Just feel that ship has sailed. Even though you might think that you never want to have sex with another person again, it still seems like there's a little bit of a loss if you're just going to give up that part of yourself. What what would you say to maybe that's

Michaela Boehm:

Well, I mean, here's the thing. It's a personal choice. Right? I think we need to be very, very careful that we don't cram any ideology down anybody's, so to speak, throats. Meaning, there's no right or wrong way to age or be after divorce or whatever. Just because I want certain things does not mean everybody needs to be like that or they are not good or whatever. Right? For some people, sexuality or sex, the engagement with their body is fraught with perhaps bad memories or trauma or transgressions or it was just never very important or things like that. I think it's important to say whatever somebody wants to do can be supported happily and with a lot of joy. But if you have grief or if you have unresolved things or if you feel that sadness or the loss and all of these and there's thing you kind of sit there and you go, wow.

Michaela Boehm:

I've never really had this kind of orgasm with my partner. Like you said, the ship has sailed and there's a sadness there. I would very strongly say there is so much that is available for which you do not need a partner. As a matter of fact, most things are much, much better learned by yourself without having the interpersonal thing that happens with another body and another human attached to that body or in that body. You can have unbelievable exploration and pleasure and enjoyment at any age by yourself. It it has a certain amount of experimentation and skill development involved, but why not? Why not experiment? Why not say, oh, well, I never had that. Let me get it. We still learn languages at any age or a new skill.

Michaela Boehm:

This is our body, which has pretty much almost unlimited potential. Even if you are chronically sick, there's whole parts of our body or our psyche or our brain or our nervous system that are untapped. Pleasure is vastly underutilized skill or activity. I would always say if you have any regrets or if you're curious about something or if there's something that you haven't tried and want to try, now is the time to do it. We live in a time with all the horrible stuff that social media brings and stuff. One of the things, that we can say is that it's much easier to have access to things like good sexual education, good vibrators. I mean, till 3 or 4 years ago, all you could get was stuff that desensitized you to the point where you couldn't feel anything because it was all this jackhammer style wand stuff or whatever. But nowadays, leading up to the pandemic and onwards, there is women led companies with amazing research creating amazing tools for pleasure, which is incredible.

Michaela Boehm:

And with it, education, and there's education out there, and you don't have to be some sexy Bali tantrika popping jade eggs in and out. So you don't have to do any of that. You can find a toy, a tool, and an education that fits your style and just wildly experiment. That's really something that I would highly recommend. No matter if you're, in a partnership or by yourself or divorced or dating or whatever, being able to feed ourselves, so to speak, sexually is really what also gives us independence. It gives us sovereignty and allows us to not fall for the 1st player that comes along, who promises the things that we've never had. And so sexual self sufficiency is really making us have better choices, better boundaries, and everything. So

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. Oh, thank you. Beautiful wisdom. I have one more question I would just love to it's a little bit different than what we've been talking about, but I was listening to one of your podcast recently. I think it was a q and a, and a woman was inquiring. She was looking for love or she wanted a relationship, but she felt that was anti feminist of her to want to want a relationship. And I feel like right now in our culture, the term feminism is maybe being questioned a little bit. And I would love to hear from you.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Like, what does feminism or being a feminist mean to you?

Michaela Boehm:

Well, I mean, there's all the definitions of what a feminist is. Right? There's different people. Many, many, many different people occupy that term. Right? That term has been occupied to the point that it's no longer recognizable. It's and and it colonized, so to speak, by all kinds of dogma. So I wanna be careful and maybe not quite use that term, but talk about feminine empowerment or our ability to be a sovereign human in the world is another way of saying that, men or women alike. So a lot of these things, of course, pit men against women and all of that stuff. How I would define that is for myself and for the work I do is that you know who you are and you're able to bring who you are fully as fully as possible without, on one end, causing damage or offense, but also not causing damage and or offense to yourself for not doing it.

Michaela Boehm:

What we have to remember is that's only possible because of the women who were early wave feminists. We do need to remember that not so long ago, women weren't allowed to have bank accounts or buy a house by themselves. Vote medical trials weren't done on women. Our medications were tested on men. All kinds of shit that you wouldn't think happened till the seventies eighties even. So the women who paved the way, like Gloria Steinem, for instance, who is just incredible, they had to fight their way to equality. We are far and we're sliding backwards at the moment. We are far from being regarded equal in many dimensions, sadly.

Michaela Boehm:

But we do have many more abilities and rights and ways to claim our place in the world. And so that idea that if you want to be with a man and kind of somewhat surrender into a relationship and raise some children and stay home is selling out the sisterhood, of course, comes from the fact that the women who paved the way for us had to give up those kind of things or had to denounce those kind of things so they could enter the workforce. So they could be CEOs. So they could be investors. So they could be buy houses. So they had to essentially liberate their ability to activate their inner masculine, so to speak, so that they would be able to do the things that they wanted to do in the world. And I have such love and respect and gratitude for the women who were willing to do that. And so, of course, some of those women look at something like, let's say, trad wives, right, big phenomenon, as traitors.

Michaela Boehm:

And you know what? In in a certain way, they are. And what I mean with that is never no offense to any trad wife is if you're not fulfilling your full potential, you're a traitor to yourself. Now if you truly, truly feel that your full potential is tripping behind the guy with your 8 kids and having ice baths in the ditch of your rich husband's farm so you can compete in a pageant, this was some famous write up, then good for you. But the problem, of course, is if you're doing that for any ideological reason, then you will come to that point where you go, oh, fuck. What did I do? What did I do to myself? Never sleep properly, never get dressed, always pregnant. That's fifties traditions that weren't good back then that women fought against, and now it's being picked up for reasons that have nothing to do with individual expression. Now for some women, that's right. I have a very, very dear friend who's neither religious nor dogmatically possessed who has 8 children because she wanted 8 children.

Michaela Boehm:

And they're amazing parents and amazing kids and they're very there's no dogma. There's no Instagram. There's no anything. Right? She wanted a lot of children. He wanted a lot of children. They had a lot of children. They had the means to have a lot of children in the sense that one of them could be home and the other one would work and stuff like that. The important piece is not, are you selling out the sisterhood? The important piece is, are you selling yourself out? Right.

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I love that distinction. Thank you so much. I know that's been just a big topic I that I've been hearing on podcast and the conversations that we've been having in my community as well. So

Michaela Boehm:

that's Yeah. Helpful. I mean, and rightly so. Right? I mean, that, you have to make sure that it's not other people and it's not the feminists of the past because, of course, feminism also has developed. And there's some people who call themselves feminists who hate men, and then there's some people who call themselves feminists because they love men, but love women as somebody to empower. And there's all those kind of things. And so I think the important piece is who are you truly, and are you actually living into your potential truly? Right? And by the way, that can change.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. So important to use your own criteria as benchmarks, not whether you are with a particular type of feminism or not. But, yes, are you being true to yourself? What is it that you really want and how you self actualize?

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah. You need to be feminist to your own female body. Right? Feminists to your own female expression. Feminists to the to your own human expression because it goes beyond that. Right? It goes beyond the endocrine system. How do you do that particular thing? Well, there's a certain amount of self reflection and self inquiry involved, of course, and a certain amount of claiming your birthright, which is central aliveness and sexuality, but also power, like physical power, meaning vitality and intuition and playfulness and inquisitiveness and all of those kind of things that we have innately, but don't always access.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah.

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

That's so wonderful. Thank you so much. I know you have so many beautiful offerings. Would you like if people want to connect with you, learn more about you, can you just share where they can do that or anything that you may have coming up right now?

Michaela Boehm:

Yeah. Well, the the fun thing is my entire the 2025 schedule is up already. I'm already fully scheduled out till the end of 2025. So all the workshops are on the workshop page. On the website, I'm assuming you'll post the website.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Everything will be in the showdown.

Michaela Boehm:

So Yeah. On the homepage, you'll find my podcast, which is free. There's some quizzes that are free that come with courses. There's a wild woman's quiz and a flavor quiz where there's little video courses attached to them for free. There is home instruction and things like that in various places on the website. So there's a lot of free content and, of course, the podcast. And then I do, live online nonlinear sessions, which is the kind of central, as well as trauma relieving embodiment that I teach, that I developed. There is online.

Michaela Boehm:

There's always every year, I do an online course that's live and you can also listen afterwards. This year we're doing the 5 muses where it's like archetypal and embodiment exploration. And then there is retreats and intensives. I I do a few wild women's way retreats with different teams. I never teach the same workshop twice. It's always the newest material in in the US, in California, in Europe, and in Australia. And then I teach relationship workshops also in all three continents. This year, I'm doing 4 different practitioner and teacher trainings because I really want to pass on my work as I enter my later years, so to speak.

Michaela Boehm:

I have certification programs for people who want to lead women's circles. I have certification programs for the nonlinear movement method. I have one brand new one. I've never taught it for the flavor cards, which if you don't know about the flavor cards are oh, you don't know about the flavor cards? Oh, yeah. I have this whole thing of these cards. They are oracle cards, but they are actually made meant as practice cards. It's called the 55 Flavors of the Feminine Oracle and Practice Deck. And it's a set of once again, comes with a quiz with practices, and they had all the different flavors we can embody.

Michaela Boehm:

I had to stop at 55. But from young to old, all different backgrounds, all different expressions. So we become, as rich in flavors as we want to. It's like spices in cooking. You want to have lots of them available for sensual and erotic and sexual expression and kicking some ass and getting older with some grace or whatever, being an artist. It is all kinds of fun stuff. I teach a teacher training on how to use those with women in in groups as well. And then we're doing a relationship polarity attraction teacher training this summer, residential teacher training for the first time since pre pandemic as well.

Michaela Boehm:

So there's lots of you can learn my material or you can come and just enjoy yourself. This year, I've added male flavors. So there's a whole new workshop called dimensions of desire on how to attract the right mate or how to attract the right qualities in your mate. Also how to heal issues you have with external masculine or internal masculine. So there's brand new material coming as well. So there's lots and lots and lots next year.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

It sounds very full, and it sounds very fantastic. I can't wait to take a look, and I'm gonna get that deck very shortly after when we wrap up this podcast as well because that sounds amazing. So it's like you have so many beautiful offerings. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was lovely connecting with you today. And, yeah,

Michaela Boehm:

we appreciate you all of your such a pleasure, and I'm so grateful that you're working with the book, and I appreciate it so much.