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, the veil is parting.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:59]:

Let's begin. Hello, beautiful souls, and welcome back to The Goddess School Podcast. So today, I want to talk about something that I have been thinking a lot about lately, both how this has manifested in my life and so many of the women in my community, my students, my coaching clients. And I think it's really important that we start to define it so we can start to overcome it. And what I wanna talk about is the concept of defeminization. Now, I'm not even sure if defeminization is a word, but it is now. So what do I mean by defeminization? I mean, the disconnection that we, as women, get from our female bodies that leads to a loss of intuition, creativity, and, really, power to direct the course of our lives and live a life that is authentic and true to what it is that we truly desire. Now I believe that feminine spirituality really begins in our body because think about it.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:07]:

Women, we have magical bodies. We can create life in our womb. We feed young with the nourishment from our breast. We bleed with the moon. Now even if you have never had children before, you are still a creative force to be reckoned with. I mean, we can look back at ancient times at all of these beautiful goddess statues, and they have these full breasts and bellies and hips. Women are the creator of the earth. We really are these beautiful forces.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:41]:

We have that shakti. Shakti is the Sanskrit word, feminine power. And yet, for many of us, we've forgotten that power. And it makes sense that we have forgotten it in a way because our culture values a more masculine way of life. So what does that mean? So a masculine way of life, we can think of it's pretty linear, it's directive, it's penetrating, and masculine way of life values reason over intuition. And we see this a lot right now. I even see it with myself and my daughters that will create pros and cons list. We will take hours, days, weeks, sometimes years to even make a decision because we're not connected with how this feels in our body and we wanna make sure we get it right.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:03:29]:

So we keep overanalyzing. And this often leads to, you might have heard, analysis paralysis where we don't do anything. We stay stuck. We get complacent with the status quo. Also, we favor progress over discovery. What does that mean? It means, like, am I getting ahead? What's the ROI, my return on investment, if I'm doing something? So rather than play and do things that we enjoy simply because we enjoy them, we we wanna know what we're gonna get in return. How is this helping me move the needle? It's funny. These are a lot of the phrases that I used when I was in the corporate world, but I think we still think about that even when it comes to personal development or spirituality.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:04:09]:

What am I gonna get out of this meditation? What am I gonna get out of this course or program? As opposed to, like, how is this going to fill my soul? How is this going to help me evolve, expand, and bloom? And we also have been taught to look at external benchmarks of success over internal markers of joy and contentment. So that's like the job title, climbing up the corporate ladder. Maybe it's the money in your bank account, or it could be the number on the scale, but it's something else to tell you that you are worthy, that you are safe, that you are on the right track. And, of course, we know that we can get all of these things, all of these things that society tells us we should want. We can do all of the things, follow this way of life. And yet, why do so many women feel anxious, depressed, uninspired, disconnected from their sexuality, from their creativity. And it's because we followed this masculine way of life, and there's nothing wrong with the masculine way of life or even men for that matter. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a woman that enjoys men more than I do, but we've become disconnected from what truly makes us unique and magical and magnetic.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:05:28]:

So that's what I want to talk about today is how we have become defeminized, and I'm gonna share 6 different ways that I see, and there's likely many, many more, and what we can do to start turning the ship around so we can create the life that we say that we really want, that we can get in touch with our desires and start to act accordingly. Now one thing I just wanted to share as well too. So we can talk about defeminization. I think that most women will recognize that there is a disconnection from their body, which I'm going to go into. But this is also a really tangible problem as well. So I wanted to give a few examples of how defeminization can show up in our lives. So in the first area, it's romantic relationships. So if you've ever been in a relationship and you feel that you are working harder at the relationship than your partner, or that you're starting to believe that all of the good men are gone, You just can't find them anywhere.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:06:36]:

One of the reasons, and this has definitely been something that I've done as well too, so anything I share is likely because I have learned it from trial and error. But one of the reasons that we failed, like, the project managers of our relationship is because we are trying to outman our men. We are trying to be the better men. And, yes, women are competent, organized, and successful. But just because you can do it all doesn't mean that you necessarily should or that it would be good for a romantic relationship. Because when we try to do all of the things that we would consider maybe more masculine qualities, we decrease the polarization in our relationship. So many relationships, and this is for heteronormative relationships to really, what I would see is, any type of relationship. The reason that there is an attraction is because there is a polarity.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:07:30]:

So there's a polarity between masculine and feminine. And what we see in many relationships today, and definitely have experienced them myself, is that everybody wants to be in the masculine because that's what we do all day long in our careers, so it's hard to shift when we are at home in our relationships. But we can't try to outman our man and then wonder why we're not being treated like a queen. And part of that, again, is going to be this disconnection we have from our body and what our bodies need. A second area is finances. Right? There's a big lack of scarcity from what I can see for a lot of women where sometimes they're even afraid to look at their, and they're often wondering if they're ever going to get ahead. And we can also think of this as being disconnected from our receptivity and creativity. Again, we've been taught in this masculine way of living that we must follow this linear path.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:08:36]:

Follow our bliss? Joseph Campbell, author, educator, mythologist, you might know him from The Power of Myth, he often talked about following your bliss. And he says when we start to follow the things that we enjoy, the little inklings or ideas that we get, doors begin to open for us. So this is also tuning in to what it is that you actually want for your life so you're not living out somebody else's script. You're not getting the job that your family wants you to get or that you're supposed to get, but you're actually connected to what turns you on and what lights you up because that's that magnetic energy that is going to help guide more your way. We also see the results of defeminization in our health. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I also have a beautiful Ayurveda program to help women optimize their health and enliven their spirits, especially during perimenopause and menopause phases. But we are seeing so many hormonal symptoms with women as far as having really tough periods, PCOS, difficulty going through perimenopause and menopause.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:09:46]:

And I really like to think of it because I think it can be easy to think my body is broken. My hormones need to be fixed. But, really, it's our lives that need to be fixed. Any symptom that our body ever expresses, whether it's hot flashes or a rash or a skin condition, is our body's way of saying we're doing something that it doesn't like. It's asking us to realign. And, generally, it's because we've gotten too far away from nature. We stay up too late or we're eating too much processed foods. So part of this is of turning around the defeminization.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:10:22]:

Maybe I should just say, refeminization is what we're trying to get to, is getting back to nature. So these are some of the ways defeminization appear in our lives. And I just wanted to share a little bit about my story before I go into the 6 ways that we have been defeminized. Now for most of my life, again, I had followed this very linear masculine path. And, you know, I was actually fairly happy. I was really good at it as well too. I'm very good at getting things done. I'm very type a personality.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:10:57]:

And yet I could see the effects that it was having on my happiness, my health, my relationships. So for a good portion of my life, my mood was often totally dependent on whether or not I received some vapid text from the man du jour. Right? Because I wanted to make sure that I was desirable. And often, the things that we are looking for from others are really the things that we need to give to ourselves. And while I ate healthy and I exercised, I probably looked fairly healthy, I was often dependent on vodka and soda as soon as I got home from work to calm my nerves, laxatives to eliminate regularly, over the counter sleeping aids to help go to bed. I was also on the birth control for a good portion of my twenties, if not all of my twenties. So I had all of these external substances that I needed to balance my internal reality or to balance my body. And when we start depending on these substances for just everyday bodily functions, there's a sense of disconnection.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:04]:

Our body is actually our gut. So, for example, if you're not eliminating regularly rather than force that through laxatives, we need to look at your diet. We need to look at stress levels. So our body actually tells us the changes that we need to make in our life, not just for our physical health, but for our overall emotional, mental, and spiritual health as well too. Our body will always direct us in that right direction. Now I started to recognize that I was very disconnected. So for the last 10 years, that has really been my mission is to reconnect with the wisdom and the power of my body, to reconnect with my feminine essence, which I like to think of as that creativity, intuition, magnetism, the part of life that makes it fun and joyful. And it really does have a halo effect.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:12:55]:

When we can tap in to that energy, to that feminine energy, we actually not only make our lives better, but those around us as well too, whether it's our family, our children, or our partners. So this is something I feel really strongly with that. We wanna make sure that we get it back. So let's talk about the 6 behaviors that block us from our feminine power, our feminine life force, our Shakti. Well, the first one is turning to numbing habits. So numbing behaviors. So we can say that could be having a couple of glasses of wine every night. It could be scrolling through Instagram all day long, checking your email, shopping online, binging on Netflix.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:13:38]:

So the numbing behaviors I like to think of are all of the habitual things we do to distract us from the things that aren't going well in our lives. Now the thing about numbing behaviors is they actually work really well. They do distract us, or we wouldn't continue to do them. It wouldn't be a problem if they didn't work. But the thing is, we don't wanna be distracted from the things that aren't going well in our lives. We actually wanna be really awake and aware because we wanna resolve them. Because, listen, we are just here for a very short time on this earthly realm, so we don't wanna be sleepwalking through life, numbing the parts that we don't like. We wanna become active co creators of our life.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:14:22]:

So I encourage you, as you start to go on this journey with me of refeminization, start to notice when are you habitually grabbing for your phone, for a drink, for or even we could say something like gossiping could be a numbing behavior. But it's the things that you do because you don't like your current reality. And just get aware of the things that you're depending on that are outside of yourself that are bringing you to a sense of ease. And then consider, what would need to be going on in your life for you not even to want it, for you not even to need to watch Netflix till 2 AM, for you not even to need to keep grabbing the phone? But, again, becoming very much awake. And I really do believe that this refeminization process is a process of awakening, of recognizing what it is that we're doing, where we're sleepwalking, what our cruxes are so we can show up fully and tap into that power. The next one is having meaningless sex. You might be like, well, what does this have to do with anything? Again, as a woman, like, your power is in your body. You are this creative life force that is to be reckoned with.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:40]:

You are the gift. You are power. Now I know we've had this big sexual revolution, and we were told that women can have sex like men. And I'm sure that some women can. And if you're one of them, that's great. And if you feel good, keep doing what you're doing. But from what I've seen in my life, from the woman that I work with, from many of my friends, women can't have sex like men. And in fact, when we do, when we try to, we tend to feel a little bit shitty.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:16:10]:

We feel disconnected from our power. We spend time wondering, is that something that I should have done? Now it's interesting. I just wanna kind of take a little bit of a detour right here just to even explain this in a somewhat more scientific sense. So in Ayurveda, there is the concept of Ojas, and we can think of our Ojas as our vitality, our resilience, our immunity. I like to think of our Ojas as like this protective semi permeable egg that we have that keeps the good things in and the bad things out. Now, according to Ayurveda, and this is kind of exciting, is that men will lose their when they orgasm, but women will actually get more when they orgasm. But here is the thing. It is only if it is with somebody that has their best interest at heart.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:17:04]:

Now if you have sex with somebody who does not have your best interest at heart, you will have depleted Ojas. And this makes so much sense, and I wish I had known it when I was in my twenties as well too. But according to Ayurveda, you are divine, and that means your body is an altar. It is a holy temple. It's sacred. So really thinking about who you want to share your energy with. Now according to tantra as well, when we have sex, we take on all of the energetic cords of our partner and everyone that they've slept with as well too. So we really do want to consider what it is that we are getting into.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:17:46]:

But, of course, I would love for you to have lots of nourishing, fulfilling sex and toe curling orgasms, but making sure that person has your best interest in mind is a way of refeminization. The third way is doing it all yourself. And I hit on this a little bit when we were talking about romantic relationships. But as many women have started to walk this more masculine path, we found out we were really, really good at it. We can juggle a bunch of things. We can have our baby on our hip while we're doing grocery shopping and responding to emails and managing a business. And that is that's great. It's great that you're confident and you can do a lot, but that doesn't mean you need to do it all.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:18:34]:

Because when we insist on doing it all or if we believe that we are doing it better, and even if you are doing it better, we block intimacy and genuine connection by not allowing others to help us. We also start to deflect any of the gifts the universe has to share. So the feminine is receptive. So sometimes we're not only doing ourselves a favor, but we're doing others a favor when we allow people to help us. So you can even practice this receptivity by if somebody gives you a compliment, instead of pushing it off, saying, this old sweater or I don't look great, I didn't sleep at all last night, just smile. Say thank you. Let people hold the door for you. Let people carry your groceries.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:18]:

But starting to open up to receptivity, to the gifts that your fellow humans have to offer you, and also the gifts the universe has to offer you. Now, the 4th way we are defeminized are ignoring the rhythms of nature. So I touched a little bit about this when I was talking about health as how this we can really start to see defeminization tangibly manifest in our lives. Now one of the good things about the modern world, I guess, is that we can pretty much do whatever we want. We have electricity, so we can stay up late. We have refrigeration, so we can eat frozen foods and strawberries in the middle of the winter. We could even keep taking the birth control so we could miss a cycle, especially if we had to go on vacation. We can kind of do whatever we want.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:20:10]:

However, nature has some divine intelligence, so why would we want to override that? In fact, when we do start to override what nature naturally wants us to do, whether it's to bleed regularly, go to bed by 10 PM, wake with the sunrise, eat fresh seasonal local foods, we start to feel it in our bodies. That's when our symptoms start to occur. That's when we also start to see a lot of hormonal symptoms as well too. We do not know more than mother nature, And yet, we still don't wanna be inconvenient. So this is also an opportunity to see where am I overriding nature, whether that's your menstrual cycle. You know, we've also been taught, like, you gotta keep doing all the things when you are menstruating. So still getting to the 8 AM meeting, still training for the marathon. But, traditionally, Ayurveda would say, these are the time that we need to slow down.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:21:08]:

We need to rest. We need to do less. We are truly like the menstruation process is a cleansing process where we're not only cleansing our karma, but we're cleansing ancestral karma, the karma of our village. So this is not a time where we go, go, go and pretend that it's not happening, but that we actually give ourselves that opportunity to rest. And it's interesting. I think that there can be some shame around menstruation. So I remember when I was working in the corporate world, it's like, get my pad or tampon, rush to the bathroom, or you don't really wanna let people know because I'm still gonna be just as effective as I always was. And then there can also be shame about going through menopause.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:21:51]:

Like, oh, like, people might find out that I can't stay young and fertile forever. And it's interesting that in our culture, there's shame around menstruation and menopause because ancient wisdom would say that this is when a woman is the wisest, is when menstruating, and postmenopause, we are most connected to our intuition. So I would like you to consider that as well because this is yet another way that we have become disconnected from our power when we align with these myths about our nature. So when we realign with the natural cycles of life, whether it's the circadian rhythm, the change of the seasons, menstrual cycle, the rite of passage, which is menopause, we remember that we're not separate from nature. We are an integral part of her. And I think I always think it's interesting because we all do this. I do this too. Say, I need to get out in nature more.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:22:49]:

And, yes, you do, but you also need to remember that you actually are nature as well. And imagine if we were to realign with all these cycles and forces. You're like having mama nature at your back. We're not going against the grain, but we are being supported by her. Now a 5th way we are disconnected from our feminine power is avoiding other women, or we could say the sister wound, having that disconnection from our sisters. Now, honestly, I used to be one of those women. So for most of my life, I would probably say I prefer the company of men. There's too much drama with women.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:23:26]:

And that's because in my earlier life, so let's say junior high and high school, I remember women being really mean. I was actually bullied quite a bit. And my freshman year, I transferred high schools. So after my freshman year, I transferred high schools because I found the women very mean, or I guess you could say they were girls at that time. And I wanted to avoid any additional trauma. And I know it's sort of ironic now is my whole mission is to help women, and I find so much joy in enlivened my Divine Feminine Mystery School, connecting with other women through workshops and goddess circles and book clubs or radiant goddess. But it wasn't always like that. And it wasn't that I necessarily disliked them.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:24:14]:

I was just nervous about them. But when we are raised to be competitive of one another, we lose sight of really what it means to be a woman and we lose sight of that beautiful network of support and inspiration that we can get from each other. And I do believe that in some ways, our society has pitted us against each other that there's almost like the zero sum game, whether it's for the job, the preschool, the partner, where there's a hierarchy that goes on. So we can start dismantling that, not by necessarily saying, culture, you need to change, but by looking at the way that we engage with the women in our lives. In fact, one of my favorite books, which is The Wild Woman's Way, which is about the wild woman archetype by Mikaela Boheem. I I don't know if I'm saying her last name correctly. But she says we learn about women from other women, and I think that is very, very true. So as we are on this journey of reclaiming this feminine essence, we need to heal the sister wound.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:25:21]:

We need to connect with each other. We're going to rise together. This is most definitely not a solo journey. And then the last one is acting like a man. And I've touched on this with a little bit with the others, but our biological sex does matter. Our physiology really does influence our psychology and our spirituality. Our breasts are very much representative of how much we give, and sometimes that's too much. Our womb can be representative of how much we hold.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:25:55]:

And, again, sometimes that is too much. But because of our physiology, we do experience the world differently than a man. And we can tune back to our body and see how we're feeling at any given time so we know what it is that we need to do. So, again, tuning in. How does this feel in my belly? How does this feel in my breast? What is it that my body is telling me about the situation? Again, that's getting out of that space. I like to think of it as that space behind the eyes and tuning back in to the wisdom of our body. And I know many of my listeners have probably likely read Women Who Run with the Wolves with me. If not, you are invited to join our ongoing guided book study.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:26:44]:

But doctor Clarissa Pinkola Estes, she has this one line where she talks about seeing through the nipples and speaking through the vulva. And we always have these great interesting conversations about what that really means, but it's about getting honest. It's about trusting our intuition, trusting what our body already knows. So when we are not tuning in to what our bodies need at any given time, of course, we will be disconnected. Of course, we will feel disenfranchised. Of course, we won't know what it is that we really want because we're not focused in the right area. Now, again, as women, we bleed. We give birth.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:27:27]:

We often tend to the dying. We are mother, maiden, and grown, often all at once. We have these very unique strengths and powers. So while you may have been told or perhaps you just inferred that you need to act like a man to get along in the world, we need to change that narrative because it's not working. We can get this power back, get our creativity, our enthusiasm back when we remember our innate powers. So those are the 6 ways that we have been defeminized and ways that we can start to counteract that. Now if you were thinking to yourself, oh my goodness. Oh my goddess.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:28:10]:

I've done all of these things. That's okay. I have 2. That's why I was able to create the list. I've gone through every single one of them, and now my work is to change that around. As poet Maya Angelou said, do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better. So that's what we will do on now. So today, consider, maybe notice when you are straying from the wisdom of your body, when you are turning to numbing behaviors, maybe when you're dismissing some women, and see what you can do to start turning that around, starting to experience the world in a new way.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:28:51]:

And there is definitely some deconditioning that is going to go along with this, and that's okay because we've been doing it for a while. We can also think this is an exciting journey. What happens when I show up differently? What happens when I prioritize my self care, when I make time for the things that light me up, when I'm not going against the grain of nature, but I'm becoming an active co creator with it. And that's really where that magic lies. So that is it for today, beautiful ones. I will look forward to continuing this discussion with you, and I look forward to connecting with you soon. Be well. Thanks for tuning in to The Goddess School podcast.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:29:38]:

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. 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, Enlivend. It's a supportive space to embody these teachings with a fantastic community of like minded women.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:30:16]:

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. Until next time, my friend.