(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting hollowness beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle
(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the
(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the
(02:07) [Music] path I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pole dancer or honorary member of the Disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and
(02:44) your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production welcome to Reclamation radio I am Kelly Brogan and today I would love to talk about 10 spiritual lessons that I have learned from pole dancing which is based on an essay I wrote by the same
(03:26) title so let’s get into it back in 2016 I attracted manifested co-created a large scale attack on my character and my platform and it was actually triggered by a home birth article that I wrote which if you know about how essential birth Reclamation is to one’s and one’s family’s empowerment it makes sense that this would have been you know the m on the powder cake so there were you know death threats it was actually a lot of so-called feminist outfits that were upset with what I was insinuating a
(04:12) woman could do any woman could do and a lot of these are Pharma subsidized and funded whether they know it or not and there was an entire campaign devoted to me calling me an ableist and specifically I remember a website called The Ugly ableism of Kelly Brogan MD and I had never heard that word and when I looked it up out of curiosity I found it to be quite fitting as most judgments and criticisms are you know in my experience I have been the subject of a lot of let’s call it constructive feedback from the public
(04:50) sector and I can’t remember you know if there have even been any instances where what has been claimed hasn’t had a kernel of truth especially if it you know bothers me to any extent and we’ll get into that you know the the mirror of judgment so I found this to be rather fitting and it was a villain crown that I was happy to wear actually ableism which implies that anybody can do anything that they believe that they can and that they have the Deep desire to achieve I imagine that I chose this belief and I chose to live into this
(05:29) belief especially in my practice where I watched for 10 years women walk out of the identity that they had participated in constructing of themselves as broken sick chronically ill and damaged and walk into the Reclamation of their gifts of their body of their feminine energy and you know to shed their relationship to medications and to diagnoses I watched and I ultimately went on to publish many of these cases that are totally Dogma defying that should not exist that conventional medicine has no explanation for and of
(06:07) course then I attracted a mentor Dr Nicholas Gonzalez who helped to really crystallize this reality for me you know in his 27-year practice he helped to facilitated to put into remission all manner of incurable quote unquote illnesses from neurod degenerative conditions to stage four terminal cancers and he delighted in the fact that these were seemingly anomalous and one after another after another came out of his practice and ultimately went on to be published so it can be done it is possible especially if you believe that
(06:47) it can be and you have the mindset foundationally that supports that expansion of your reality that supports the Miracles that would otherwise not fit in the current Paradigm that you’re operating from so I think that I adopted this belief system because it really feels good and the victim Consciousness that I have been committed to transforming for the past I don’t know 15 or so years of my life really is predicated on statements and beliefs that begin with I can’t and I have to so when we say I can’t it can
(07:24) be true right if you can true you can’t you can’t make more money you can’t maintain the relationship you can’t possibly have a more fitting partner you can’t be more sexy you can’t be more sensual you can’t wear that right and the can’ts can serve to keep us constricted and restricted contained in a familiar small safe reality because the subconscious relationship that we have to expansion and growth especially into territories that would require some degree of identity diffusion and
(07:58) identity elasticity you know that’s been tagged as a dangerous Endeavor for good reason you know from our childhood experiences so we ultimately end up being our own prison guards and that is one of the major plot twists of the Reclamation path is that victim Consciousness can be transformed whenever it is that we defy our own small constructs so what pole dancing represents to me is a huge huge I can for myself on so many different levels and I’d love to share them in a more organized fashion because otherwise I’ll
(08:39) just ramble forever you know beginning with what was the sort of trigger what was the full Chrome what was the point in my life that really laid down fertile soil for this growth and for this expansion so when I chose to leave my second marriage in 2021 there were parts of me that literally were annihilated with grief and anguish and fear and Devastation and the recovery process honestly in many ways is ongoing however in the early months of that window of my life there was an opportunity for Alchemy and that
(09:19) required that I begin to sense and observe and develop curiosity about other parts that were also emerging and it was sort of like they were peeking out from behind the curtain asking if the coast was clear now and as you know life would have it through many different synchronicities I ended up taking what was ultimately my second pole dance class with my girlfriend Aya and the first class that I took was several years prior and it really just didn’t stick I was confused actually about why anybody would do this
(09:53) recreationally I left with like you know bruises and burns, burning sensations on my skin and I was literally unable to do any of the class it was not fun it was you know just not for me so fast forward to this specific window of time where I decided to go you know to this class and something clicked something was opened up in me and by I would say probably the 10th class I installed a poll in my home so these days I dance pretty much every day and this is I would say my primary spiritual practice my primary method and
(10:33) means of embodied emotional Alchemy and a consistent relationship with the I can’t inside of me from the physical to the psychological to the spiritual so the first lesson is 50 Shades of feminine as I call it so I like so many of the women listening I imagine have been often told you know accused of being too masculine too much in my masculine and perhaps I have an interject that agrees right and says you’re too masculine you don’t know how to be a woman you are never going to have the experiences of Womanhood that
(11:14) you long for because you’re just too hard around the edges right and as I began to explore in the same window of time I was very attracted to explore the different feminine archetypes you know the huntress the Queen the lover the sage the maiden mother the Mystic and I was reacquainted with the reality that the feminine is very Prismatic that there are so many different dimensions to the feminine and what we might malign pejoratively as masculine may actually be a dimension of the dark feminine that socioculturally we are very threatened
(11:51) by we are very uncomfortable with you know I did a whole master class on this called crazy to creatrix where I explored you know what what is this dimension of the feminine that as David data would say slays anything less than love you know who is this who is she why are women and men alike terrified you know so as I explored you know these different Prismatic dimensions of feminine energy I found that in po dance there is such a a treasure Trove of opportunity to embody those different energies so on a given day when I wake
(12:29) up I will feel into what wants to play what wants to express and you know if I’m feeling you know like I want to get in touch with a more elegant structured expression you know I might just put on a simple you know leotard kind of a thing and have bare legs and bare feet and work a lot of the energies of my ballet training into the you know spinning pool routine if I want to feel a little sassier you know I might put on heels and so many people are like why are the heels that’s so patriarchal and try it that’s what I have to say about
(13:10) that try putting on 8 inch platform heels or high high boots and feel what that does to your body’s movement I mean there’s a reason in ballet when I studied it as a teen tween we used to, right? and so the way that you dance with those kinds of platform shoes and heels is completely different you have different movement there’s different physics to it and there’s a different feeling to it when I first put on those thigh high boots I reclaimed a part of myself the exhilaration that I felt and I am not somebody if you listen to my
(13:46) introduction who has really any relationship to heels or knows how to walk in them or anything and there was something some part of me that exhaled when I first began to play in these more provocative dimensions of dress and you know with Gars and you know high cut booty shorts and all the rest so there’s also like flowy Styles where you can really begin to feel long smooth energies move through you there’s low flow there’s so many different styles and they have corresponding clothing and looks and corresponding music and
(14:22) corresponding skill sets that are required to really begin to explore these different areas and there’s so much range that it’s extraordinary to begin to appreciate when I watch women dance I could never have appreciated how much strength is required to render even the most simple movement whether it’s like a kick in high boots around the pole or whether it’s a simple climb to render that graceful that is the Paradox of the woman right that strength that fierceness coupled with that softness and that Grace and there’s so much of it
(15:04) that runs through this this practice so number two is that I was invited to explore this belief that dark is bad light is good right also known as please hide your sexuality so I am as many professionals have I have a long history of secreting my sexuality right if you ever you know so if you’re watching this on YouTube right now I am wearing pole top that is a leopard bra essentially and if you had ever you know seen me from the early days of my career in 2013 and 14 you know I would have but sometimes I was
(15:47) wearing my white coat or I certainly would have been wearing like a you know professional color and a professional amount of coverage and I never shared my body to any any extent whatsoever and I’ve been a my whole life I’ve never shared my body on the internet and not that everybody has to or should for me the secreting of my sexual and sensual dimensions and when I say sexual I don’t just mean the energy of my you know procreative drive right I’m talking in the vitalistic sense that this is my
(16:25) the Eros that courses through and animates my body this is something that has has been in me and moving through me since I was a child and has been for every single human right so that animating energy was something that I largely hid or manipulatively exposed subconsciously right so as I began to recognize this opportunity to share and really integrate more of myself more of my personhood right so some people have like a private social media account that is personal to them and some people have one that is for their business and their
(17:00) brand and they live in this split for me that split is a trauma field right for me to curate and continue to curate dimensions of me that are acceptable or would Garner approval is what I have been doing my whole life and I’m complete with that right so I’m complete with that because I’m ready to just be me be the same me you know playing with the different energies I want to foreground wherever I go whatever I do that is the resolution of a great degree of self- betrayal that I have been engaged in the greater part for good
(17:33) reason of my adult life so as I began to share Dance videos that I was making that are were probably and are probably the greatest joy in my life you know to pick the outfit to explore a little choreography that I either learned from you know a beloved teacher or made up on my own pick the music to play with what I’m going to do with the video and how I’m going to create it and edit edit it into some little piece of art is an extraordinarily joyful experience for me and as I chose to share these I moved
(18:11) through the shame wall of doing the thing that I imagined would cost me everything right so whenever we move into the I can’t territory and we do so willfully of course there is a part that is going to say if you do this you’re going to die I’ve been trying to tell you that your whole life don’t do this right and so as I began to move into this realm I received a lot of feedback ranging from you’re a terrible dancer you have an eating disorder please stop you’re putting in danger all of those
(18:46) that you seek to help through you know your psychiatric work there’s something wrong with you you’re an MK ultr trauma slave and look at that satanic energy from your eyes what happened to you no wonder he left you this interesting narrative and you know that doesn’t belong here my children might see this I mean it just went on and on and on and I made a practice of receiving these comments which typically you know I’ve received criticism my entire career I’m a polarizing individual I just wake up and
(19:22) I be myself and I offend people right so there was nothing new about that and it’s just never ever bothered me I mean literally what people think about what I’m doing medically what my thoughts are and feelings are as an intellectual it does not phase me and this started to get to me and because this was a much deeper practice of self- Allegiance self-love and really self-exploration so as I began to you know really try these on try these statements on I did find that there were some parts of me that
(19:55) agreed with some of these statements like you’re making a mistake you’re embarrassing yourself there were other statements you know like you have eating disorder that just don’t even it’s like not even in my reality it’s not relevant and that’s fine that projection is just so clear right so to try on the criticism and really come into intimacy with the part of me that agrees is a very deep practice right so as I went deeper and deeper into the provocative material that I felt inspired to share I meant more and more
(20:29) parts of myself that had formerly judged other women as well for being hypersexual for being too attention seeking for being inappropriate for parading their wounding around by you know dressing in the wrong way or acting in the wrong way and of course that’s again if you listen to my introductory podcast you’ll see there’s just so many ways that I’ve become exactly what I’ve judged and this is a big one and I also got to know the relationship that I have to attention right so David data says
(21:07) that the feminine Only Knows itself fully when it’s seen and many of us as women are on a spectrum from please don’t look at me I must be invisible to be safe to there’s no amount of attention that will ever be too much I want more and you can have both to you can toggle between them you can find that you want and crave this attention you long to feel decloaked right you want to experience those eyes on you judging or adoring it almost doesn’t really matter and then once that happens or once you
(21:43) have an experience of that gaze it’s too much and you can’t handle it right so the relationship to attention for many of us as women is a very rich terrain to explore and to again get to know the parts that are gatekeeping both of those ends right okay so number three for the female gaze not the male so these days I definitely spend more time watching women dance scantly clad around a pole than my blue blockers could ever protect me from so there are a few things more fulfilling and inspirational to me the
(22:22) feeling that I have in my body when I watch a woman dance and honestly at any level although of course I enjoy and appreciate these you know masterful goddesses I also appreciate and enjoy women who are at my level or just starting out because I Delight in what I imagine and project onto their experience I I know what it it takes to connect with the courage to begin to explore this level of embodiment and I also know how healing it can be to feel seen and appreciated by other women I remember one of the first times that I
(23:03) went to a class and I recognized that I couldn’t wear sweatpants to this class which is what I would normally wear to dance largely because I have a lifelong storage of shame in my legs and so I don’t almost ever wear shorts and so I would normally wear sweatpants to a dance class or even a Tor class or whatever and when I recognize I can’t wear leggings and I can’t run my same shame program there that I would elsewhere and I began to wear you know high cut bikini bottoms and there was so many moments in class where I would feel
(23:39) so exposed and feel like the other women were being made uncomfortable by my exposure which is interesting because that was a lot of what has been reflected on the socials but when I would feel like not only accepted and approved of by these other women in the class but then when I would you know get an inversion or do the thing and they would all all you know cheer and clap and we would do that for each other so immensely healing so I know that this is primarily for the female gaze I know that women are dancing and sharing this
(24:13) kind of dance for other women I know that it lights them up and I know that I have lit up other women because if I had a dollar for every woman who told me that she’s gone to a pole class because of my shared journey I might be enjoying other purchases in my life at this moment so it’s this chain of reconnection and this Collective movement of reclamation around sensual embodiment and expression and it’s really in anything goes territory that I have found extraordinarily peeling specifically of the sister woundology that I was
(24:49) carrying which is I have to small myself because of you I might alarm offend you or otherwise induce critical energy and judge if I expand too big you know if I’m too wealthy too powerful too beautiful too sexy too whatever so I will make sure that I am digestible for you and I have observed actually that as I study some of the early origins of the coupling of our sexuality with shame that and specifically through Alexander Len’s work in his book fear of life that the women who are most upset who don’t know
(25:29) me of course so it’s just a projection field publicly with what it is that I’m sharing are likely experiencing their own arousal literally they’re likely experiencing energies in their body that they don’t feel safe feeling and I know this because I have been this person and they want me to stop because they don’t want to encounter that they don’t want to deal with it they don’t know how to deal with it and they want it to go away so they would rather live in a puritanical sterile field where they
(26:02) never have to feel their own aliveness their own arousal as inspired and this is again it’s it’s not libidinal in nature necessarily it’s not sexual attraction in the conventional sense this is Eros this is the animation that comes into aliveness when we are reminded of it by another woman another person and it’s it’s a fascinating terrain if it’s really looked at through that lens okay so number four is growth comes through structure and discipline so if you’re familiar with my signature
(26:41) program vital mind reset you know that I am a go bigger go home kind of girl I am a big believer in the masculine container that we set that for ourselves I’ve been speaking about that in previous podcasts that it’s essential for you to exercise your Power of Choice to commit to have integrity of word with yourself to follow through and if the container that you’re setting is not realistic set a different one this relationship to the masculine as structuring as space holding as witnessing allows for all sorts of
(27:20) movement and growth and expansion to begin to swirl around the same as the river banks allow the water to move that would otherwise be present so as I have begun to explore pole I mean when I started I had only ever really done aerobic dance I didn’t have a relationship to weights and conditioning and toning exercises at all and I could not lift my body weight off the floor I had never done a split even though I was you know ballerina as a younger girl I didn’t have flexibility that’s largely why I’ve never liked yoga even though
(27:59) I’ve tried to like it for so many decades and I was coming into relationship with this Sport with this movement practice that would require me to level up if I were to even taste some of the shapes that I could see all of these women moving their body into and so probably for the first time in my life I developed intrinsic motivation to become stronger and more flexible so it wasn’t outside in it wasn’t oh this is good for me this is a wellness thing so I’m going to do it it was this this hunger and knowing that the means to the
(28:37) end I was seeking were up to me to structure and create and that intrinsic motivation is it’s Unstoppable right so there was no need to interact with the parts of me that might otherwise get in the way or find this kind of growth and expansion problematic because all of my parts seemed aligned with learning you know learning what it is that I wanted to so I began to train every single day I’ve never done something like that and I came into contact with a relationship between my feminine expression through
(29:12) this movement and my structuring masculine through the commitment of the training that was and is a very very beautiful complimentarity so number five I wrote if it’s a journey you suck until you’re a master and then you suck again so I have really only ever done especially publicly things that I’m good at things that I have natural affinity for natural you know sort of complimentarity with natural gifts to express through and when it comes to dance it’s a very important arena for me because I’m like just okay at it like
(29:49) I’m never going to be a dance teacher and I’m not horrible I’m not like really good whatever that means right there’s there’s sort of an objective range of very skilled when it comes to all forms of dance and you feel it when you watch it right so I’m in this interesting middle range and it’s very healing for me to to share something that I am like kind of just okay at and that’s why when initially you know some folks would say well you’re you’re like a really bad dancer please stop it’s hard
(30:23) to watch I was like okay I know I am and I’m like it’s fun for me so I’m going to just keep doing it okay you don’t have to look so I have had the experience with pull because there’s a ones and zeros to it either you can come into the mass head shape you can invert you can you know do this sort of grip or you can’t and you can continue to work at it you can visualize I spent a lot of time visualizing myself moving around the pole and then there is a moment where you go from you’re not able to you’re
(30:55) able which means that you were able the whole time right so it gets activated and that becomes very almost addictive probably like so many different performance related Sports because there’s like this this little hit that you get when you it’s not a little hit it’s a big hit actually when you can achieve the thing that you formerly couldn’t achieve according to your own narration and so the practice of pole ends up being this this endless ladder you can climb because there’s always more that you can learn athletically
(31:29) acrobatically bodily right and then there are also all of these ways that you can refine the basics to bring more grace to what it is that you’re expressing and able to express physically and energetically okay number six there are no accidents so before I had an understanding of this long path that I would be walking in my relationship to this movement practice I was very eager I was very very eager and I wanted to be able to do the thing and because I have an immature masculine that says you know power through force it just do it come
(32:10) on and almost shames me into you know action before I could set that more mature container that said you know I’m going to commit on these levels and I’m going to Delight in what I am able to witness myself creating in the early days I started to attempt an invert which is essentially just you know flipping your body upside down although it requires to be done safely and to look pretty it requires a lot a good amount of strength right core and upper body strength and some flexibility and I ended up injuring myself pretty pretty
(32:49) significantly I mean it could have been worse I suppose on my right ribs and I don’t think I broke them but I certainly bruised them pretty significantly and it was excruciatingly painful to breathe to move I was benched for two months and in that time I reinjured because I tried to go back too early to dancing and movement and I reinjured and I heard the pop this time not once but twice and I descended into a pretty dark place because I felt I all sorts of beliefs came in you know like I’ll lose all the progress that I’ve made so this
(33:30) like gripping kind of attached immature masculine energy and I’m losing time that I could be practicing like as if there’s some Metric external metric I’m adhering to and I’m falling off course with it right so was all of this imaginary fear and then I I really didn’t have a means of expressing myself or moving energies because dance has really been that for me so significantly and I do not believe in accident definitely in the camp more in the some of the sematic experiencing world or even the Lou hay world that
(34:04) believes that there’s um very personal significance to what we call accidents and that we become you know a match for these Unfortunate Events you know some of the sematic experiencing world would say that there is you know there are stored energies in incomplete movements from traumatic experiences in our childhood and that we actually attract accidents to those areas the significance of my right ribs given where I was in my own Journey that you know this masculine container was now exposed right so my right sided rib cage
(34:44) like the literal cage as being punitively dysfunctional struck me as poetic right because I had had a relationship to my own sensual expression that was such um that I attracted this kind of judgment from the outside in and in my significant relationships where there was you know this was not allowed right this was considered a violation a desecration this was considered shameful behavior and so now that I am free you know to do whatever the hell I want I somehow became My Own Prison guard again right my own Punisher so I created the
(35:26) conditions for me to not do this thing look at that isn’t that interesting to me that struck me as extraordinarily significant and I know that a lot of dancers have accidents right they injure their wrist I mean there’s so many injuries that can come through pole and you know you could take the Mechanical Universe view that says like you know you’re thrusting your weight around in all of these different shapes that are potentially perilous and you could fall on the ground you could hit yourself you
(35:54) could do all twist your things and whatever you’re not strong enough to be doing it yet you need to practice more practice better and I choose to believe that there is meaning and significance and that it’s one of the ways that this practice helps us to see you know what wants to be brought into the light of awareness so number seven is that expansion is nonlinear so as I mentioned you know it’s this endless ladder which would imply that you know you you get good at a thing and then you’re ready to get
(36:25) good at the next harder thing however when you take this long View and you incorporate an understanding of injuries and accidents and also I’ll mention something really notable is that in the beginning you know you get I remember people commenting about this you know you you burn your skin your skin gets sort of like denuded I mean it’s just it’s so painful get bruises everywhere and over time that just all stops and it’s curious right like what that adaptation is maybe it’s just that you
(36:57) develop more strength so you’re holding yourself differently and you’re not relying on all of these skin based points of contact as much but it’s very interesting and so anyway it seems linear however there is an ebb and flow right so while there have been times where I literally will practice and dance for four hours in a day there have also been times where I pause right and you know days now where I I move in other ways and it’s this long loving Rel relationship that just spreads out before you where you can begin to
(37:32) understand that it’s not necessarily investment in a particular move that I can work towards something that doesn’t feel accessible to me because of flexibility and strength at a given moment I can work at it for a little while then I can let it go and then I can come back to it a week or two or a month later and somehow it’s available to me so it’s this it’s this trusting relationship it’s that receptive feminine Within container of commitment to the practice that provides all of these Unexpected Delights you know it’s
(38:06) a really fascinating trajectory okay number eight is a fear ruled mind is a liar don’t we all know it so I will share a story of one of my teachers Elizabeth who is very very skilled at observing the beginner right so I’m still a beginner and she can see you know even through the pixels of the computer she can see you know what might be modified to allow more access to a given shape or movement and there is a position a posture shape you can get into where you’re essentially upside down handsfree and I got the upside down
(38:55) part finally and when she suggested that I let go with both of my hands I said the famous phrase I can’t do that you know and sometimes it’s not available at a given moment but I I was pretty sure that I I couldn’t do it I said you know maybe maybe at some point in the future now that I know it can become available at any moment and she just said you know I can see that you’re you’re strong enough to do it so no pressure but I think you can do it and I was really taken into the realm of that
(39:28) wise knowing female gaze the same one that I know I offered my patients pretty much the chief offering I provided in my private practice was I know I know you I see you I know that you’re in there I know you can do it and that’s what you know midwives and douas offer women in the birth setting it’s that knowing gaze of a wise powerful woman that can see you better than then you can see yourself and it’s the compliment to what a partner can offer you in polarity and there’s something so special about it
(40:05) because when she said that I knew to trust her and I let go and she was right and I could do it and it was so exhilarating to recognize that I could have told myself this story again of I can’t which is also fine if I you know am in the space of protecting against I guess the one that would push too hard or power through or power over to say no not now is totally legit right it’s it’s a healthy relationship to one’s will however I was afraid I was afraid and that’s why there’s so much psychology in
(40:45) moving your body upside down that gets obviously triggered in our animal brains and I was afraid of what I don’t know I was only a few feet off the ground I could have easily caught myself and she could sense that fear and help me to alchemize it into potential and so now I I know that when I am afraid there’s a way to tend to the fear rather than to default to you know the victim belief system that says I can’t okay number nine is your way is no one else’s so as I have explored many different dancers
(41:27) and I see their Styles and you know my I’m going to get this I’m going to do it part that comes online studies at 0.25x these videos and tries to emulate them and copy them after a certain point I recognized here’s the thing about pole dance or really any form of dance it’s just your animation expressing itself it’s not a craft it’s not ballet right it’s not a craft that has a right precise execution that you either get or don’t get so as much as I could emulate these women I am not these women I am me
(42:05) and so the the practice over time of getting to the point where you can turn on music and have enough little moves in your bag to begin to free flow it sounds so easy like oh just move and express yourself the levels of inhibition that I had to move through to get to the point where I could for 30 seconds continuously move around the poll it probably took me n months of dedication to get to that place of really translating it into free expression right so now I understand there’s my way that I’m learning I’m learning how to
(42:42) how does Kelly Express herself as she moves around the Pole right how does her feminine flow around this masculine stasis right that’s the polarity of energies that is embodied in this this practice and it’s very liberating right to not have to be like somebody else and to know that I’m Not For Better or For Worse okay so number 10 is you are never too old so how could it be that okay I always hear Chris John Northrup in my head when I’m about to disclose my age because she does not participate in that
(43:20) field and I think for a very good reason but let’s say in midlife as I am how could it be that I find myself more flexible more strong and more athletically engaged than ever before right I thought that I was supposed to be sort of slipping slowly into the grave so it is never too old I love when I see women who are clearly you know at a more Crone phase of their life engaging in sensual dance and specifically in in dance because I know that it can be a lifelong relationship I also know that we are in the midst of a
(44:04) Zeitgeist right now and how you define you know feminine Reclamation and walking that path of sovereignty is going to be very personal and they going to be some of us who are interested in reclaiming the gifts from the cave of that otherwise maligned dark feminine realm for others it’s not the thing but for a lot of us it is the thing and I think for good reason related to how we have come to understand our sexuality our Sexual Energy and what it is to integrate that into your whole personhood so I would say you know the
(44:44) the number one spiritual teaching that has come through my experience at pole dance has been my commitment to no longer imagine that I know how another woman should live her life and that includes girls it includes my daughters I believe that the healing and restoration of the fabric of connectedness between women can only come when we recognize that it is not our job to course correct to admonish to criticize to guide to even advise other women unless they have asked for that feedback and if we stop doing that stop
(45:30) dead in our tracks telling other women how to be how to behave what they should or should be doing right which is largely what social media consists of then we are forced to focus on what it is that’s coming up inside of us thanks to another woman’s personal expression and if we feel judgment it is because a part of us that we hate is being represented in this other woman and so how do we restore that connection how do we come into loving attention and Attunement with that part of us that we have disavowed and rejected and
(46:10) projected on another woman that is how we become this mandala of so many different feminine energies so many different Expressions this Prismatic entity that is woman that is how we begin to organize ourselves in a way that will I think create the conditions for an experience of reality for an experience of wholeness for the collective that otherwise will never be available it honestly doesn’t even matter what the men of the world are doing if we don’t have this if we don’t have this commitment to each other and
(46:48) so that is one of the the lessons that has come through that has really changed my life because as somebody obviously who judges and has not always recognized that I have choice right because judgment plus choice is discernment I now on so much the the tender receiving end have come to understand wow you know I can see what that comment from another woman is about I can see what that judgment is about and I know it’s not about me right like I know it’s it’s not about me unless I make it about me I
(47:24) choose to internalize it and make it important relevant to my own life and work with it right otherwise if we commit to surrounding ourselves with women that we naturally want to celebrate that we naturally support then the women you and the women around you are all helping each other Rise and I know that a lot of the women in the professional world can feel I have a lot of colleagues who often share with me that they feel upset or concerned or threatened that other women are like biting their stuff or copying them or
(48:01) you know infringing upon their you know pedagogical territory and for whatever reason I have not had that particular wound I don’t you know copy me all you want right and that makes my world a safe place I don’t have that particular sensitivity and so when I have you know experienced women who are struggling with that and then I interact with like my poll teacher Wendy for example and friend you know and she is literally helping to support me in copying her like that’s how you know abundant she is with her own gifts and her own
(48:41) skills and energy it’s a little taste of how it could be when we resolve this sister woundology and come into a new way of being with the feminine so I hope this has been interesting I encourage you you to try a class if this is even a little bit tickling something inside of yourself if it feels like a growth Edge it may be a path to self- Reclamation that is just perfect for you the way it has been for me all right thanks for listening
