Every time I ask a group of women what they would love more of, no matter what city or country they are from, I hear the same responses:
“Rest. Support. Time for myself.”
When I ask them how they want to feel, I get similar responses:
“Spacious. Peaceful. Vital. Rested.”
And then someone adds in, “A 7 day trip to Mexico!” and everyone laughs. You know the kind of laugh that makes you exhale deeply on the inside because you so crave these things at the very core of your body and soul. But then your mind (and past experience) chimes in and tells you that it ‘ain’t gonna happen’ because of the million things you are responsible for and the million ways in which you feel disempowered to make changes in your work, family and life.
What if this year instead of craving the space, you created it?
The truth is, no one is going to give you permission to receive the space you need to feel rested, vital, peaceful, supported, insert your desired word here.
We each have to find the place within ourselves where our fierce feminine power and deep well of self-love lives to claim the space we need and then let the systems work around that, vs us sacrificing ourselves to fit into and support the systems.
The outside systems will change when we change our internal operating systems. And instead of chasing balance, sucking it up, or trying to manifest more time, we invoke our feminine wisdom and play a different game.
Here’s a few bytes of Feminine Wisdom that didn’t get included in our school or on the job training:
· Wisdom Byte #1: Stop trying to “find” or “make” time — time cannot be found because it’s not lost. Time is not something you whip up in the kitchen like a cake (that always makes me LOL). You literally cannot ‘make’ more time. Time is finite because time is a man made construct. There are 24 hours, 7 days a week and 365 days a year because some human said so.
· Wisdom Byte #2: Stop giving away your power to the structures that bind you by time — Whether it’s work, family obligations, school, or something else, it’s easy to feel like you are not in control and that you have no power to change the things that drain you. You have to be at work at this time, you have to pick up the kids at this time, etc etc. And while some of that may be true, what you give and how you show up is up to you. You have to first be willing to claim the space for yourself, and tell people what you need, before the structures that bind you will change.
· Wisdom Byte #3: Embrace and invoke your feminine super power to “Create Space.” You may not be able to change the man made construct of time, or change the time you come into work or pick up your kids, but you can absolutely create space for what you need and what needs to get done.
Below are 4 ways that you can start taking back your power to create the space you desire and need, right now. I practice all of these myself, and have taught them to many other women in my Feminine Super Power trainings. They work. But you have to do the practice or nothing shifts.
Wisdom Says: “Change your patterns, change your life.”
4 Ways to Start Creating More Space for Yourself
1. Watch Your Time Talk, and Shift it into Feminine Power Talk — Notice how often you say things like “I don’t have time. I need to find time. I am running out of time” and feel how this time talk constricts and contracts you. Shift your words to statements like “I will create space for this.” Or ask, “What’s really needed right now?” Inquiry leads to wisdom. Claiming space leads to self-loving action. One of my favorite books about this is one of those “kids books” that’s really for adults too! Recommended to me by an 11 year old: The Lost Track of Time by Paige Britt.
2. “Slow Start” Your Day at Least One Morning a Week — Instead of rushing into the day, or feeling the pressure to get to work and get moving, choose one day a week where you have a ‘slow start’. For me it’s different day every week, and it can look like sipping coffee in bed and reading for 20 minutes and then doing an oil massage before showering. It can look like putting meditation music on while still in bed and just being still. It can look like having a walk and breakfast with my good man Noah or a good friend or accepting an invitation to do something nourishing in the morning that is just about filling up that I normally would not ‘take the space’ to do.
3. Schedule Personal “Heart & Soul” Retreats now at the start of the year — These are like “personal offsites” where you unplug from the fast paced world and outside technology and tune into your Feminine Wisdom, so you can make sure that how you are making your choices are supportive and sustainable and focused on what truly matters. I take these retreats from home as one or two day weekend retreats — no cost, just space. And yes, I do take others and myself to more remote places to really unplug, like my yearly vitality and yoga retreat at Spring Equinox — but I don’t make that the only time I retreat. Multiple Wisdom traditions talk about the Solstices and Equinoxes being powerful times to slow down, unplug and turn inside. I call these “Feminine Super Power Days” and pausing at them has been a huge antidote to overwhelm and burnout and huge boost to my impact and productivity.
4. Stop the Stream of Stimulation by Claiming Your Evening “Closing Time” One of the reasons we feel so stressed without enough spaciousness is because of the constant stimulation of technology. Years ago, I choose a “closing time” for technology of 8pm — just like a store closes for business, so should we. No Facebook or Twitter. No email. No Google searching. Sure there are a few days here and there that I will burn the midnight oil as they say, but those are exceptions and noted as such. Being able to say “I am closing shop and closing my book of work for the day” creates spaciousness because it gives me a sense of completion and saying “I have done enough.”
For more Wisdom on Creating Space for Yourself, you can tune into the Feminine Power Time podcast episode “Feed the Feminine First” here. http://christinearylo.com/2016/05/feed-feminine-first/
Originally published at medium.com