Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:05]:

Welcome to The Goddess School Podcast, where Eastern wisdom meets Western mysticism. I'm your host, Lisa Marie Rankine, author, teacher, and Ayurvedic wellness coach, here to help you reclaim your feminine superpowers, and I am so glad you're here. Listen, women are magical. They are intuitive, creative, wise, and magnetic. However, in today's fast paced world, these gifts often get buried under a more masculine way of life. Together, we'll awaken those powers. In each episode, I'll take you through sacred teachings like Ayurveda, shadow work, and the mysteries of archetypes and rituals so you can live with more clarity, synchronicity, and joy in all realms of life, like relationships, health, money, and more. So let's dive in so you can make the most of your one mythic life.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:58]:

The veil is parting. Let's begin. Welcome, beautiful souls. Thank you for joining me on The Goddess School Podcast. My name is Lisa Marie Rankine, and I will be your guide. I wanna talk about that call that many women get often in midlife, and the call is to return to the feminine. You might not even recognize that's what it's doing, but it's that time when we wake up. Then maybe we ask ourselves, like, is this it, or is this really as good as it gets? And sometimes, we may tell ourselves, like, yeah, things are good enough, but there starts to be it's almost like this little fire that starts to burn, that's starting to awaken you and let you know that there is more.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:51]:

Now I believe that many of us, myself included, which I will be telling you more about in just a moment, have taken a very masculine approach to life. Part of this callback is to take a more feminine approach or what I like to say is to reclaim the feminine. Now, what does this masculine approach to life looks like? Well, often it's very directive. It's linear. It's penetrative. If I just do this, I can get this and then I will be happy. And, you know, we see this in our educational system as we progress through grades, higher education, how many degrees do we have? If we're in the corporate world, we're often going up the corporate ladder to get that next title. And we really judge our success and often even our worthiness through these external measures of success.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:45]:

However, we start to recognize of course, sometimes in midlife is when we do it, when we have some data, so we needed to go through this external process. But then we start to recognize, like, this isn't really as fun as I thought it would be. This isn't really all it's cracked up to be. I feel like something is missing. And, my friend, something is missing, and that is your connection to the feminine. It's your joy, your creativity, your intuition. It's doing the things that turn you on and light you up and not creating a life that is society acceptable or a life that you have been told to live, whether it's from your parents, from your classmates, from whatever, but starting to live aligned with how you actually and truly want to live. And that, I believe, is the journey that many of us are finding ourselves on right now.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:03:42]:

And it's not always just that easy just to flip a switch because it is. It's a journey inward. It's a journey of remembering. And sometimes, it's a journey of knocking things down, clearing the space so you can build a life that is more authentic and more aligned to you. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with masculine energy. And in fact, we need masculine energy to get along successfully in the world because that's the part of us that will be able to set boundaries, which will allow us to achieve what it is that we actually desire, be able to advocate for the things that we need, and bring our ideas out into our lives. So we definitely need a part of that. But from what I've seen in my life and from what I've seen from others is we've taken too much masculine energy on.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:04:34]:

And when we do that, and I can see this in so many women, we can do it all. Right? We're competing to be the better man with our husband and we're taking on more and more responsibility at work while we still have all of this responsibility at home and we're still doing all the things. We start to get tired. And, of course, we are. Who wouldn't get tired? We start to get anxious, depressed. We stray from our body's natural wisdom. So we become disconnected from who we truly are and what it is that we truly want and truly desire. So that is the path of feminine reclamation.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:05:10]:

So I wanted to share a little bit about my journey and how I got here. And then at the end, I also wanna tell you, really, the first step of this reclamation, how you can begin if you find that you are at that point in your life where you're feeling that call to maybe approach that second part of life a little bit differently, a little bit more creatively, a little bit more guided by your inner wisdom, by your inner desires. For most of my life, I had followed a very linear path, and it's all I knew. And, you know, I thought I was doing great. I was knocking the ball out of the park, as they would say. So I was just doing what society tells us we should do. After high school, I went to a 4 year college to get my bachelor's. Immediately upon graduating, I moved to New York City.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:05:58]:

I happened to be there during that dotcom boom, and it was a great place to be. So I was working really hard. I was making money, having fun. At about 5 years into New York City, you know, I started to feel the call to come back home, maybe have a little bit of a slower pace of life, so I moved back to Boston to get my master's. Soon, I had met my husband. We got married. We had 2 children, opened a retail store. I had job in software.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:06:27]:

So I was doing all of the things. I was really, really busy. You know, I can kind of look back thinking like, oh, I wish I wasn't quite so busy and could have enjoyed those years with my children even more. But, you know, I was creating this life for myself. But around my mid to late thirties is really when I started to get the call. It was like, hi, I kind of have the things that society tells me that I should want, and I've worked really hard, but I feel a little empty, and I feel disconnected. I started to feel like I was playing a role in a script that I didn't write, and I wasn't even sure how I actually got there. Even though I had a good job that paid well, I felt like most of my days was really spent looking at that top right corner on the computer screen wondering when it is that I would be able to leave.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:22]:

My marriage also wasn't doing very well at this time. I think part of it was I was trying to be a better man than my husband, and I was doing all of the things. I was taking on all of this masculine energy, which was not really where I wanted to be, and it was out of alignment with who I actually am. And then this also started to manifest with me looking outside of myself for ways to bring myself ease and comfort. For example, every time I would get home from work at the end of the day, when it was time to, you know, make dinner, get my children to bed, before I could do anything, I would pour myself a Tito's vodka and soda water. That was my ritual. You know, even just hearing the sound of the ice clink in the glass seemed to immediately bring my nerves at ease before I even took a sip. So I had 1 or 2 cocktails every night.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:08:15]:

I was depending on laxatives to eliminate daily over the counter sleeping medication to go to sleep. I was very much hyper focused on my appearance. And, of course, the more we focus on our appearance, the more we think something is wrong with it, and shopping a lot online. So it's like I was kind of grasping for all of these things outside of myself, one, just for normal body functions like pooping and sleeping, and others like, oh, can I create the perfect facade if I do enough skincare, if I have enough skincare products, if I have enough clothes? I think anytime we start to notice that we're reaching outside of ourselves, whether it is for a medication, whether it's for an appearance, or maybe whether it's for a man, that's a sign that we've become disconnected. So from the outside, it may have looked like everything was going great. And in fact, I think I even had people tell me that. But on the inside, I was feeling very much unaligned. I felt very disconnected to my creativity, to my passion, to my joy, and, again, to my body.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:09:21]:

This is about the time when I would say the goddess Kali had come into my life. If you are familiar with Kali, you will recognize her or know her as the Hindu goddess of transformation and breaking through the status quo. Now, Kali is not just like your regular goddess. She is no Aphrodite. In fact, she is dark blue. She's got long, messy, disheveled hair. She wears baby skeletons as earrings. She also has skulls around her neck.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:09:48]:

Her skirt is made of skulls. And she often show is shown with blood dripping from her mouth. So she's really a ferocious goddess. But Kali is the mother. She has so much love for you that she doesn't wanna see you stuck. She wants to see you live fully, expansively, authentically. So what Kali does is she breaks down outworn structures so you have the opportunity to rebuild more authentically. Often, we see Kali in breakups, divorce, financial crisis, health crisis.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:10:24]:

It's when everything that we've worked so hard for you know, often, I like to say when we've constructed ourselves this really pretty prison and we're kind of like, oh, now what? That's when Collie comes and she takes it all down. Again, sometimes this could be with a diagnosis and you realize you need to really start changing the way that you're living. It could be maybe you get laid off from your company but you actually didn't like your job that much anyways and it's encouraging you to do something new or it could be divorce. Kylie came to me through my divorce. Even though this is a really challenging time, as anybody who has gone through a divorce knows working through lawyers, figuring out custody. So it was a very, very stressful time of my life, yet it was also a rebirth. And, you know, with the feminine, we know that there is a life to life cycle to everything. You know, we see it in the seasons.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:11:18]:

We see it in our bodies. And sometimes, it's with relationships as well too. Now, I am not saying you need to go through a divorce to reclaim the feminine. In fact, I hope that you don't. But it might be something else that is triggering you to show up differently and to experience the world in a new way. So after my divorce, I started to go deeper into my spiritual practice. You know, I became a yoga teacher. I started exploring my creativity, writing more.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:11:46]:

I eventually left my job, my cushy job, which was sort of like golden handcuffs, but I took a chance. I started a blog. I wrote a book. And then I created this beautiful business of helping and coaching women to wake up and reclaim their feminine power. I started to really live aligned to the things that interest me. And the way that I started was just, I like yoga. Let me explore more. Ayurveda is really interesting.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:13]:

What if I apply these practices to my own body? As I mentioned, I've been very disconnected using laxatives or sleeping aids just for normal bodily functions. Ayurveda really provided me with that path home. And then, oh, I wanna write a blog. I wanna write about goddess wisdom and how it has impacted my life. In fact, my very first blog was on the goddess Kalli, which I will put a link in the show notes for you to read, and the influence she had on my relationship and, really, on my life. And by starting to follow these little breadcrumbs, and that's what I like to think that our desires are, is these breadcrumbs of who we're supposed to be, how we show up to the world, I started to create a life that was more authentic and more truthful than the one that I had been living. Now this may sound like a selfish journey, I should say, and maybe part of it is, but it also really changed the way that I showed up for my children. I didn't need, you know, a cocktail or 2 just to get through the night.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:13:17]:

It's like I could be myself, and there was more lightness in the house. And I also feel that I set a good example for them that we don't have to do the things like staying in a certain job when we're being called to do something else and that we can think outside of the box. And there is no destination, but it is truly a journey of discovery, of following those crumbs of what turns us on and what lights us up. Now one of the things that I really love about this journey to reclaim the feminine is that it's an opportunity to take back our power, where we are not looking for someone to come save us for, you know, for the job, the man, the money, to lose the extra £10, but we're actually just looking inward for, how do I want to experience the world? Can I experience the world with more joy, with more creativity, with more beauty? And, of course, the goddess is also strong as well too. She's your strength, your wisdom, your ability to stand in your truth, to advocate for your desires. But it's becoming an active participant and co creating the life that you really want. I know the word manifesting is sort of a big buzzword in the zeitgeist these days. I tend not to use one, because I don't really believe that we know exactly what it is that's going to make us happy as I think we can tell by the number of divorces that there are.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:14:49]:

Right? We think we want one thing, but then we discover we actually want something else. And again, that's okay. That's the journey. We're just getting to know ourselves. But what I do like to think of is cocreation. We are cocreating with the divine. We can get an idea, a desire. We follow our intuition.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:07]:

The divine comes to meet us. And we can often then create a life that is much more expansive, much more exciting than one that we could have even dreamed of on ourselves initially. And that's what this path is about, is how do we reclaim this sense of magic, synchronicity, joy, and wonder where we can find the sacred in every day, we can be spontaneous depending on what is arising, and we can make the most of this one mythic life. Throughout this podcast series, I am going to be sharing how exactly to do that, how to optimize your health through Ayurveda, and how to enliven your spirit. I like to teach based on Eastern traditions like Ayurveda and yoga and also Western mysticism, which I really consider the teachings of the famous Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, where we can go into the shadow, the unseen factors that are shaping your life, as well as rituals, archetypes. I love working with archetypes. I even wrote a whole book on archetypes called The Goddess Solution, which is about how you can apply ancient goddess wisdom to your everyday life. So if you are interested in learning more about that, there will be a link in the show notes and so much more because when we start to turn inward and we start to focus on ourselves, we're gonna see that our external circumstances start to change as well, too.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:34]:

I really do believe that we live in this holographic universe and that whatever is going on within us, we will manifest it on the outside as well, too. So that's some of the work that we'll be doing together. Now I would like to leave you with a practice with some things to think about as you embark on this journey of feminine reclamation. I shared about how, in my mid thirties, one of the ways that I knew that I was disconnected was just depending on a few cocktails to bring myself to ease, to regulate my nervous system, over the counter sleeping aids, laxatives. I want you to start tuning back into your body and how you are feeling at any given moment. When are you reaching for something outside of yourself to put your body at ease? And what does your body want? And there are some simple things that you can start doing right now just to start to tune in to your beautiful, feminine, wise, intuitive body. One is it when you have to pee, even if you're in the middle of typing an email, get up and pee. If you are thirsty, have a drink of water.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:17:48]:

Make sure you're getting up to get some sunlight on your face. When you're tired, go to sleep. So tuning in and listening to what it is that your body needs at any given moment and then providing that. So as Jordan Peterson would say, treating yourself like somebody you are responsible for helping. I believe, really, the first step in feminine reclamation is reclaiming our bodies, and this is how we start to do that. Now some would say, and I know I have many spirit seeking women here too, that the spirit is more worthy than the body because the spirit is everlasting and the body is transient. But I really encourage you, especially as we start to move towards the feminine, to understand that the spirit might be different than the body, but it's no less important. Our body is our home.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:18:36]:

It is our gateway to the spirit. It is how we experience the world, and that's the feminine. The feminine isn't something that we transcend. The feminine is how we live our life in this earthly realm, how we find the sacred in every day. Now if you think about it, as women, we're already much very in tune to this space because we have these magical bodies. Right? We can create life. We hold a baby in our womb. We can nourish our young with our breast.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:07]:

We bleed with the moon. We go through these beautiful transitions from mother to crone. So we are very magical, and our body can act as a guide. So part of this reclamation is to tune back into the body and really understanding how your body is feeling and let your body be your teacher, your guide. So, again, this week, you're gonna listen to your body. You're gonna understand what it needs at any given moment, and you're going to offer that to yourself. So let's begin the journey, sister. And remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of yourself.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:44]:

She's an aspect of your highest self. You are the goddess. So let's awaken the magic that is within you. Be well. Thanks for tuning in to The Goddess School podcast. I hope today's episode inspired you to reclaim your feminine magic. Now don't forget to subscribe to the show, and if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple. If you wanna dive deeper into divine feminine archetypes and reconnect with your power, check out my book, The Goddess Solution.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:20:15]:

It's packed with ancient goddess wisdom for the modern woman. You can find the book on Amazon, and the link is in the show notes. And if you are ready to embrace these practices alongside a global sisterhood, I invite you to join my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivined. It's a supportive space to embody these teachings with a fantastic community of like minded women. You'll find the link in the show notes. Remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of you. She's an aspect of your highest self. You are the Goddess.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:20:44]:

Until next time, my friend.