Your Body Is Not a Performance: Feminine Embodiment, Movement & Self-Trust

And I felt so free as soon as I closed my eyes and I just stopped performing and I started going in and just releasing what my body was telling me to release. In the movements that it was telling me to do that were weird awkward. I don't know if someone would see me like doing that probably they would say that I was going insane but that was just me expressing. What happens when movement stops being about how you look and becomes about how you feel? In this conversation I'm joined by Catty Pazawski, founder of She-Motion who are a rich exploration of feminine embodiments, body-led movement, self-expression and the freedom that comes when women stop performing their bodies and start actually inhabiting them. Catty's own movement journey began in the highly structured world of forum dance, web precision, appearance, competition and following the rules were everything. Later through pole dance and bodyman work and her own personal practice, she began to discover a completely different relationship with movement, one that was less about choreography and more about listening to what the body actually wanted to do. We talk about why so many women believe they can't dance. Our movement can form a meditation and what can happen when we close our eyes, stop watching ourselves and allow the body to lead. Catty shares how She-Motion uses guided movement, free expression and grounding to help women move out of constant thinking and into opening sensation, emotion and self awareness. We also explore why taking up more space physically can mirror the deeper work of taking up more space in life, how the pelvis can reveal places of shame and restriction, and why embodied movement is not about fixing everything at once, but about becoming more intimate with yourself. At the heart of the episode is one simple question Catty brings into her sessions. Body, how can I love you more? This is a conversation for any woman who has ever felt too awkward, too self-conscious, too in a head or convinced that movement has some look good to count. Welcome to Wildflow, the podcast for women remembering the wild wisdom of their bodies, their medicine and the way they're here to lead. I'm Charlotte Puanto, Wild Feminine Initiatrix, ordained priestess, mentor and founder of First Moon Circle School. I guide women across the thresholds where their personal medicine becomes embodied leadership. Here we have deep, juicy conversations about feminine embodiment, rights of passage, sacred business, spirituality, identity transformation, cyclical wisdom and the initiations that shape who we become. This is not about becoming anybody else, it's about remembering who you are, embodying what you know and having the courage to live and lead from there. Welcome to Wildflow and the Temple of the Wild Feminine. Catty Hazavski, welcome, love to Wildflow podcast. I'm super excited to have a chat with you today about something that I'm really passionate about and really enjoy as part of my own personal practice and my coaching practice and the temples that I hold as well and that is embodied movements and feminine embodiment particularly. So before we drop in, I just want us to start as an unusual way with a drop into our body and into a cycle check in so that we can just feel which kind of energetic season we're coming from today and I was finding so interesting to see where you're at, where I'm at and just invite all of our listeners to drop in as well. So I just like to share first and then I'll invite you inwards as well. So love. So today it's evening time for both of us, we're both recording from Australia and we are in spring just past the equinox here, which is feeling so good to me, just the light is here, it's just turned dark just as we've started recording. And for me and my body and my menstrual cycle right now, I'm around day 20, I'm not entirely sure, I haven't been keeping such a close track on exactly which day for wild but I'm always no, you know, within a couple of days or so whereabouts. And so for me, though, just feeling a shift to turn sort of around a corner into the last week of my cycle and feeling like I've been a bit more tired, but sleeping not as well. And I feel like that's just showing up a little in my body because I sort of can't really push through at this time if I'm really, really tired, that just feeling like my body is, my energy is sort of grounding, it feels like a deep exhale, like just a softening and slowing and a call to presence from the excitement and higher energy of the mid part, the first half of my cycle. So yeah, that's really where I'm at at this moment and just feeling this, yeah, this sort of softening and slowing and my cycle is tracking the moon cycle at the moment. So for a few days past the full moon that was Saturday, so for us now it's Tuesday. So feeling like my body's tracking that they're pretty closely. And so as that moon is starting to wane, so am I. And so love, I'd love to invite you to share, Katie, how you're feeling if you have a menstrual cycle where you're at there in your body or just what kind of energy awareness you have at the moment, how you just how you're feeling today. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm so honored, it's beautiful that we can talk about things like that. And there is a podcast for it, that's amazing. Mentionally wise, I am not sure because I'm not getting my period, I'm on the pill. So sometimes it just feels very hard to understand if what my body is going through is because of outside elements that were taken or is it just me in the ever-changing body and whatever it's experiencing while you know, very menopause is kicking in, you know. So I take that, I take that and I feel like I'm on around like day 20 as well. But again, I do feel the change in my mood towards the end of my cycle, definitely less patient. Yeah. Yeah, less patient. And definitely doing more of the embodied practices to just feel that I'm still grounded. Love that this is not coming out the wrong way to the people that I love, obviously. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing as well that experience for you taking the pill but also feeling where you're having that cycle that's there underneath and it's your body shifting and you're feeling very menopause there sort of underneath and there's sort of energetic shifts and changes and the mood and the practices and the need for grounding and just that curiosity of what's mine, what's in my body, what's external outside of me. And you know, that's just such beautiful wisdom because wherever we are we don't. I think we can believe that when we don't have a menstrual cycle per se because we're taking a contraceptive, for example, whilst it's shutting down our ovulation and our bleeding and we're in that sort of induced cycle is that our body inherently is still cyclical and it was still moving through the rhythms. And so I love that you're in that inquiry and that listening and that attuning to your body and that rhythm, even if it might be quieter or more subtle and you're kind of having to really discern a bit more. And so I just think that's really beautiful for anyone else who's listening who sort of feels like oh well, I can't feel my cycle, I can't feel my body, I can't feel my rhythm. And so you can might just require decolisting or different listening or a different awareness but it's there. So thank you. So body remembers, the body remembers and indefinitely can sense still the underlining of what you used to go through with your cycles and how you used to be and I feel like no matter if [BLANK_AUDIO] taking a bill or something that affects your menstrual cycle, like in the most obvious way, but like the body still remembers, so there is science in your body that can tell you what's happening. You just need to get a bit quieter and maybe just, you know, listen a little bit more to what your body is saying. Yeah, and I'm curious to whether the moon is something that you and the seasons of the earth, do you feel like whilst your body is quieter, do you feel like your sort of tracking energetically those earth and cosmic cycles and energies and, for example, like a full moon brightening and then a dark moon or the earth seasons? Is that something that you pay attention to or you just feel or has an influence on you? I think us as women in general, we are strongly connected to Mother Earth. I mean, we are creating life. We are temples of life, so I feel that as women with time, we kind of forgot that connection to Mother Earth and how much we could feel the seasons and the effect of the full moon or whatever is arising. And I think we're just modern society and how much we tied to the masculine world. We just tend to forget our inner wisdom and that natural sense that we have and how affected we can be. And some of us, I'm sure, don't even understand sometimes why their mood shifts so much. And that's part of basically embodied work as well. It's just that work to go back to your roots and just understand the power of the feminine power that is within you and how connected you are. Yeah, I hear that so much. I really agree. That's gorgeous. And I think, well, what a beautiful little segue then into our conversation about embodied practice and you were talking about your embodiment practice and how you're needing that you're calling on there a little bit more. So let's let's go into talking about that. So we've discovered that we're both feminine embodiment coaches trained with the same teacher, General Ward. But we're doing it differently. We use these tools and practices differently in different ways in our work. And so we're here to talk about your story. You've trained across many dance modalities, forms of dance. So boring, belly dance, central movement, pole dance. I'd love to start off because something you really talk about and I just feel in my bones is how our relationship with movement becomes, I think it starts off from this world where we are taught that movement is choreographed. It needs to be precise and I'm not a trained dancer in any shape or form. But I used to tell myself I can't dance because I found it hard to follow choreography. And so that story of I can't dance made me feel like I was excluded from power and a technology of my own body that wants to move. So I'd love to go and ask you about your relationship and how it's changed with movement with dance. Moving from a place where dance was performance and how you started to find your way into what we call feminine embodiment. And what that is as different to dance. Yeah, I hear you so much that limitation that people put on themselves when they hear something that involves movement and they stop you straight away and they say no, I can't dance. Don't bother, like I'm not going to dance. Or I'm, no, I'm too shy. I'm not going to move as you want me to move. They already have like so many limiting beliefs about their body and how they're supposed to move and how they don't know how to move and that's it. It's a strict rule and that prevents you from having so many joys of life, basically, that you're avoiding because you're not letting your body even the slightest chance of experiencing something that might awaken something else within you. For me, I started from a young age. I laugh when I say like as a typical Russian from a young age, your mom would always send you would send you to a ballroom dancing. That's like a very typical Russian style of like how to educate your girls because the belief is that if a girl does ballroom dancing, if you will have a good posture, she will be very graceful. She will know how to follow rules because ballroom dancing is very strict. I remember my first teacher. She was a very strict Russian. I had a very strict diet. It was, yeah, it was really full on. You have to arch your back in a certain way. You have to walk in a certain way. You have to wear very specific clothing as well. And it's all about the appearance. So it's all about how you look from the outside, how you move. It's supposed to be a very accurate movement as well. So they could tell if you're slacking. If you're too tired, they could tell. If you're not into it, they will tell you for sure. So for me, I started dance really early and I learned from a young age that you need to follow rules. So you need to follow a certain appearance. You have to look a certain way and you need to appear in a certain way. Otherwise, you're not going to win competitions and that's the main goal. So kind of from a young age, I was exposed to those rules that are pretty masculine. And as much as you look at it and you say, oh my god, those women, they look so feminine and they're like so beautiful and graceful how they do those moves. But the base of those moves are that it's very masculine. It's like following very strict rules to get to that point that you look that graceful and like gliding on stage. So yeah, it started from a young age and then I did love, like my passion was always danced. Fortunately for me, I did like it. So I didn't hate my parents for putting me in that environment. I'm not resentful. I would say this is how my love for dance started. But then I was always kind of curious because when I reached that point, when I was like already winning competitions and like feeling that massive stress on my shoulder is like, oh my god, how would be my next practice? How do I elevate this to the next stage? I kind of realized at some point that I'm sick of it. Sickles the stress. How old were you at that point? I was about 14. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I was really sick of the stress. I think I even had a little bit of eating disorder as well because putting all that stress on your body and like how to appear from the outside and how to look a certain way and to fit to those specific clothes and always always comparing yourself with other dancers around you. Yeah. I kind of felt like there is more in me. I am passionate about movement but I want to know and discover other ways of moving and see and challenge my body to see if that's a better way for me. So I moved from ballroom dancing in the end and I decided I'm going to explore other routes. My parents were not happy because I stopped going to competitions and things. Yeah, I can imagine. The child is rebelling. Yeah. He's our competition winner and now she's pushing back. That's it. She's pushing back. She's getting her voice. And for me, I was pushing hard because I went from one extreme to the other. I started studying pole dancing and I was really interested in like even like stripper-esque kind of style. So I wasn't necessarily doing the pole dance as like getting into shape or you know how there is classes that are like for pole dancing that you can just go and like you know get into shape and get a bit more mushy and like just other reasons than dance. For me, it was actually because of the sensual aspect of it. I felt that I was a late blue And it's up before and I just wanted to feel a bit more feminine. I wanted to feel a bit more sensual and I felt like those ladies are like, you know, spreading their legs and like jumping on the pole and like moving their hips like a very provocative way. I wanted to do that. I wanted to do that with a certificate though that that's okay because I'm going and doing it. So that was kind of my way to rebel in the dense world that I was in. And actually when I started doing the studying, it was really hard. It was the complete opposite of ballroom, of course. But at some point I realized that I just love moving my body like that. I love moving my hips. I love opening my hips like that. And I just really loved looking at myself and feeling that power. All the sun that felt very powerful as a woman, as a young woman. So I guess that was kind of my progress to that world. But then at some point I also realized that I don't want to perform anymore. I don't want to perform for anyone anymore. It was really like in the piphany of like, who am I? Who am I? Because like so many years I was doing that, but I was doing that to compete. And then all of a sudden it's like, I still love doing it, but like if I'm doing it just for myself, then who am I? What am I? Like this description of me is gone because I'm not this like champion of whatever I was doing. It's done. So yeah, I had a couple of years that I wasn't doing that at all. And obviously after that I went to uni and I've done other things as well. And I kind of left that hat aside. Because it was a disappointment for me because I left that it wasn't successful enough because I didn't continue. But that joy of like your body moving and the expression of yourself within how you feel when you're moving that body. I missed that for many years. And I didn't even realize how that affects me like in in in my first relationships and in my in my first serious job in the world. That I feel like if I wouldn't completely neglect that and if I would still keep that going for myself for my for my personal joy. Then I might have seen other things in my life differently in a more joyful and enlightened way because my body still wanted to move. My body still wanted to express but I have put it aside. I said no because you were unsuccessful in that. That's it. I've put that limiting belief on that. Yes. And I let around my life for a while, a while until until yeah until I met the embodied work. A friend of mine she started doing she started helping people in trauma, especially girls that come from problematic backgrounds and she used to do like gatherings where they would talk with the teenagers a little bit and then some of them like some of the gatherings she would actually do a little bit of embodied work and just release their bodies from trauma. Just like shaking their bodies a bit like allowing them to like hug themselves and like shake sides aside like little things. And I remember she told me that and she was like you know I'm not just using like how I talked to them but I also tell them sometimes like if you need a minute to just like shake or like do anything that helps you do it. I kind of looked at her and I was like right movement movement is part of life and it's it's it's there to to let you go in deeper to yourself because your body wants to move and it doesn't matter how or how it looks like it's what's within that wants to be released. And I remember one time I just closed the lights in my room I put a music that I like I had a really rough then I kind of felt like everything in my life is pointless because I wasn't really sure that I even loved my job. And I started dancing like crazy at first I was just like jumping around just like frustrated like started screaming then just huffing and puffing then all of a sudden I looked at myself in the mirror tried to do a couple of moves from what I remembered like as performance looked at myself and I was like nah nah my body doesn't want to move like that anymore. And I felt so free as soon as I closed my eyes and I just stopped performing and I started going in and just releasing what my body was telling me to release in the movements that it was telling me to do that were weird awkward I don't know if someone would see me like doing that probably they would say that I was going insane. But that was just me expressing yes from the outside but on the inside expressing and moving and letting your body lead you the way that it knows how to so instinctively and wisely to just shift all of that energy and emotion that's there and that like you said had been trapped there because you'd grown up all of those years learning that performance was the point of movements. And that success meant winning certificates and then when it didn't result like pole dancing in any kind of external validation or award you're like what's the point that's not what you'd learn to success and then sort of finds your way back I'm fascinated I think that's a really interesting story to find your way back. At that point and to just give yourself full permission to go fuck that I'm not doing that I'm not here to to throw shapes and and like follow movement and choreography that I've been taught and to do it the way that I you know my brain wants to hook into because I've been shown it and instead to just close your eyes and go do you know what body show me like what do you need what is there move it and even when it's ugly even when it's noisy and messy or angry or snutty or make it just looks like chaos. And I think through all of this is the way that we've really been taught like you said to to follow rules oh my god that hit me so much when he said. Or is the form of like teaching girls to follow rules and then you hit you but he yeah I was I'm not doing it anymore that rebellion but then the way that you found pole dancing with the certificate and so still like legit in a way yeah. And then to come all that way in and just to go yeah no I like that's that's real primal energy and really like our bodies primal wisdom and if our body I always think of our body as such a sacred tool like it knows how to heal like shaking like you're saying tapping or breathing or all of those things you were describing your friend teaching to children to do when we're sort of feeling trauma or energy moving through our body. All of that wisdom within and it's so interesting because I was just thinking when you were speaking about how you know we. People go to dance floors or raves or clubs yeah and they they like lower inhibitions with substances alcohol and then people can really let it out because everyone's doing it and it's like a environment where it's condoned and it's safe and it's or ish and what I'm. Yeah depending but everyone's going for it there's no rules about what it should look like but then take take away the substances or take away the club and there's so much awkwardness so true so true yeah and I know for me that I've always loved to dance and felt like I wish I. Could do it better or could look a certain way or could you know knew some steps or whatever but like such a dance floor queen but then even as girls. I remember in my like young years even then as girls we'd go out on a night out and we'd be dancing performatively like the way even the way we like move our bodies or it was like to be seductive or to be pretty or. Because you know we wanted to look a certain way or be thought of a certain way amongst our friends amongst any. Any boys who might be out or man we've got older and it's just like oh my gosh. and so for me as well, I really resonate with that. It's like finding my way out of that world and into just permission has been absolutely life-changing. I'm not lying, life-changing. - Yes, yes. - I've gone from someone who's really afraid of my full expression and my bigness and my loudness and my voice and my anger even that comes out when I'm sort of in embodied movement practices sometimes. And I, well, tears that I can't access. - Yeah. - And I need a bloody good cry and embodiment. It's not about uncaging the beast. It's about letting yourself come home and tend to what's there underneath so that it doesn't bore your life unconsciously. It's something that you're able to be in sovereignty and choice around how you move energy and how you sensitize to your feelings and your emotions and you're not afraid of them. And then if you're not afraid of them, you're not afraid of yourself. - Yeah, that's so true. - So powerful, isn't it? So I really love this. Thank you so much for sharing. And like, let's go in a little bit more than about about what it means for us to give permission, what it means when we really drop into embodiment. And it might be about the work that you do as well, the spaces that you run. But when somebody's starting off, if they're not really practiced or the idea of this feels really uncomfortable and like ill, no, no, thank you. Walk us through from your perspective and from the women that you help. What are some of the things that come up for women when they're starting to undo and do this patterning and conditioning around the way that you look or performance or expectation and that self awareness and instead to come into that trust. What's that like? What are women discover as they start trying to undo this? - I wanna start before talking about other women's experience and tell you a little bit about the difficult route that I got on when I started shoemotion, because basically shoemotion is about a meditation that is in movement. That's how I kind of describe that. And that's basically to say to women that you don't necessarily need to do meditation in the most masculine way. That is just to sit down strict and focus, right? That's in your head. You need to focus and you need to meditate. That's it. It's pretty strict and rough, right? - Totally. - And I wanna show women that they can do meditation too. - Yeah, that is pretty hard. - Yes. - Yes. And again, it's restrictions, right? You're pulling your body in a specific restriction and you're telling it not to move and just to like focus on meditating basically. And I felt like it was never working for me. I really tried like all sorts of ways of relaxation and meditations like the even watching videos on YouTube and just being jealous of people that are just like you see this monk sitting on the mountain and he's like all into his meditation probably in some other universe or whatever he's in. And I'm like, why can't I do that? Like I can't do that. When I do that, all I see is gray, I see nothing. I see desert. And when I started doing movement but basically doing the movement with closed eyes so you're not focusing about looking at yourself in the mirror, you're not focusing about how you look at that moment. It's not about performance. It's all about like what's inside of you. When you start scanning your body, but while you moving, you're allowing your body to express itself the way it wants to express itself with your eyes closed. So there is no judgment. There is no visual aspect of it. It's just the feeling. You're connecting to the feelings and the sensations and your inner wisdom inside. That tells you what to do next, right? So when I started that route, that was not called "she motion" yet or anything 'cause I was testing it for myself because I wasn't able to do a proper relaxation or meditation without that movement, without that sound of that music that makes me feel a certain way and makes me move a certain way. And that's the way that I can go to different places and kind of disconnect from my mind and go deeper into my body. I realized that when I've done that, it really helped me. And obviously when I've done the embodiment coaching course with Jenna, I realized that yes, you can do that one-on-one and encourage people to go into their body and kind of find that way to relax and see how you can talk about things in a safe way where your body's feeling safe. I felt like, okay, well, I can do that with movement. Like this is something that I've learned throughout my life. I can do that because I'm doing that now. I do my own meditations by going in and just allowing my body to self-express with sound, music, all of those sensations around me and just like allowing myself to express whatever is frozen in me. I realized that I can do that for other women. Maybe I can have big coaching sessions, let's call them like that because that's what I thought. I thought maybe I'll use a couple of those props that those tools that we got from the embodiment coaching course. Maybe I use some of those prompts of how to liberate yourself by talking but also putting that music in and allowing women to just close your eyes, listen to my tools, guidance, and also move your body. So the focus would be not me talking to you as to like we're trying to solve a problem. But you moving your body and you take out what you need to take out from you. Without even telling me, it doesn't even need to be said. - Yes. - It's for you to feel that, in a joy, to feel that you've released something. And when I've done my first shoe motion session, it was with a small group that was like four girls there, like for me, that was kind of like, boy, they really came to my lesson, I couldn't believe it because I was like, there is other people that probably want to move and meditate at the same time. Or like I don't even know if to call it meditation, it's just to go in, right? So I remember one of the women that was there, we've done a lot of pelvic area release that we'll probably talk about that a bit later. But she came out of the lesson and she just kind of smiled at me and she said, I don't think I've ever moved that part in me, like that. So she was actually shocked that she has that part and she can move it this way and feel in a certain way. And she was like, definitely leave your ego at home. There is no place for ego in this session. So that was another comment that I heard a lot. And yeah, girls that come in and they're like, I'm not a dancer, that's like a first, like I hear it so many times and I kind of smile and I'm like, and then sometimes say to them, I'm not a dancer too. Like I don't even tell them about me being a dancer because I don't want it to feel intimidating for them. So sometimes I can, my classes, they don't even know about my history or anything like that. I find that it's easier. And yeah, and like leaving the ego is a big thing by opening the hips and feeling the sensuality and that feminine flow that runs through your body and it also runs through your hips. And you put your mind's eye in there and you open those hips and you discover things. - Oh yeah. - Stored in that area. So yes, I had one woman in my class that came up and she was super emotional because she felt like it was an untouched taboo, very shameful part of her. - Yeah. So she wasn't sure at first like why are we doing this? This is a big no though. And then it kind of released something in her, probably something very, very frozen. - Yeah. - A lot of shame. - Yeah, I really relate to that and have witnessed that a lot too in myself, but also in others that I've guided through embodiment practices [BLANK_AUDIO] You know, like you said, it's a mirror of what you said about when you wanted to move your body a certain way and look a certain way in pole dancing when you discovered that and you owned that and you claimed that I think for as well for a lot of us. It's like our bodies need to move in a certain way for what it looks like for others for the male gaze for the gaze of parents even who want to be proud of us and you know how we're you know performing. Our pleasure our bodies we've been raised in this world to really believe that it's not for us really it's for giving pleasure for raising babies feeding babies and it's like just something we kind of exist in. And I think we obviously lock up so much within the hips within the pelvis and there's so much shame that that lives down there or can live down there. Former and wounding and our connection to our sensuality but our femininity as well and when this is something that we've been. It's been to bird or has been taken or has been had all these conditions put on it it's something that is really challenging can be really challenging for us to access into one like connect with the pelvis and like why would I why would I do that like i'm just trying to ignore that part of my body as much as I can what do you mean we're going there and then as it awakens and we start to feel because. You know on the other side of releasing tension and stagnant stored pain suffering wounding these conditions all of the density and when we start to move that that can bring up a huge amount and then if we are staying with it we can. If we're guided or if we know how to move to the other side we can awaken so much sensuality and pleasure and ease and space and and and wellness and so yeah there's a lot in there that has been. And to boost suppressed yeah yes yes I think that's also it's still an occurring thing like it's not easy for me to always gather a full class for she motion but I do understand why like I used to think at first when I just started that it was kind of like a big fail. Because if I have only four girls in my group that means that this is not a good idea and maybe it's just a good idea for me because i'm coming from a dance background and i'm familiar with like moving all the parts of my body but when I see. I get like a gathering of like three or four girls i'm like oh so it's not a good idea but then I constantly remind myself that it's not that it's not a good idea it's just that it's hard for women to get out of this masculine way of thinking and yes and there is a lot of shame hidden in the body in the in the feminine body. That we refuse sometimes to acknowledge yeah so yeah it is tricky and I think that I think it's it's really interesting because actually it's the source of our greatest power isn't it and I really was struck what you were saying I just go back to when you were talking about meditation as stillness and clearing the mind and that idea of ascension and actually I just I'm really struck that. That idea of ascension and Nirvana or yeah sort of escaping our bodies and and transcending to somewhere else is is the model that we've been given you know generally globally about what it means to like meditate well and be spiritual whereas actually like we are human beings I believe that the greatest spiritual path. I'd say especially for women because of the conditions that we live in and how disconnected we are from our bodies but for any one of any gender really it's it's actually coming home into the body is inhabiting the body because the body is that bridge between heaven and earth and our divinity and our humanity and the source of our power we exist in a human body and it's about building our capacity to be here on the earth. And then move and live and live really really well. So I used to really feel that too it's like my brain doesn't sit very still I have ADHD my body like okay I consider a bit more still but then I get it when it's comfortable and you know like sitting with a tall spy and it bothers me it's uncomfortable. Yeah the moment I also allowed myself to actually drop in and move in meditation was actually when my meditations went from oh I feel like I'm not getting this and nothing's happening to how I'm going places and I learnt that. That my body needs to move and that movement is the portal that actually allows me to journey to places in like three my body you know not not to leave my body as a source of like that's the goal but to have these either shamanic journeys or healing journeys or spiritual journeys or. To heal to transform to just be more in my body and in my power and to seek knowledge and wisdom and find my deepest intuition it was actually through movement in the body and something I really love doing is giving permission where. You know say I'm holding like a group circle like a temple and was you know everyone's sat I'm like please follow your body's lead do you need to move let your body move so I'm doing a one-on-one client session and it's like how does your body feel where does it live in your body what are you aware of how does your body want you to move like let's. Like play with that and be curious because that is when the shifts happen rather than feeling like there's this mindset block and I just can't get past it and I just keep hitting up against the same old thing in that listening and in that inquiry and gently following the little footsteps of that thread into what the body is revealing to you little bit by little bit by little bit at a pace that you're ready for and. That feel safe to your nervous system that is the way in and so yes I think we have so much fear around it as you're saying like it it's hard there's so much fear around it and depending on what we've experienced in this world where it's not been safe to be in our body it can be hard but actually it is the source of our greatest power and I like underlying that. Ten times yeah I hear you I mean it's if you think about it why are we stuck here all the time like why are we in our head like we have more than our head right we have more than our thoughts we have also what's on our like on our heart like what our feelings. We have our gut feeling right so that's our stomach we we we creating life so that's our health area we walking through this life right it's our legs like our whole body is living this life but we only focus on this on on on the thinking on the brain because society just trained us so much. So much so much and so let's talk a little bit more about sensuality because I think that this is something that you and I both really love to explore in this work once the safety and once we can move into that space of meeting these fears and the tensions and these places where we're like so awkward and how do I trust my body how do I be with my body. I think there's a fear of our sensuality as well and that reckoning with this we're claiming sensuality when I talk about greatest body is our greatest power sensuality is absolutely one of those to me yeah so you said you know sensuality and I completely agree sensuality is not about looking sexy I mean we've said this right it's not about posing it's not about what you look like it's not about. Appeasing a male gaze or anyone else's gaze it's not about feeling what quite sexy in ourselves as desirable to another it's about reclaiming that sensuality letting it belong to you or another woman like to yourself to herself talk to us more about what that means to you. I feel like women in general they they think that like yes you said like being sensual or even there is like some people say I all I feel like she's too girly right or she's focused on obviously the looks and the appearance and it's kind of performative right because we're trying to impress someone or. Like we are dressed in a certain way or same with dance of course like ballroom dancing. going back to that. So you are trying to keep a certain appearance and that's what gives you a certain score as well in the scoring method of competitions. So women tend to forget that their femininity starts from within. It's not about how society dictates a female, a sexy woman, should look like. It's not about being sexy to anyone and that's also where in my sessions I really insist of not having any mirrors. You're not supposed to look at yourself. I actually encourage you to close your eyes at some point. Obviously I'll give you a couple of guides of like how I want you to move in this specific segment because I want you to open up to a specific sensation in your body but then after you've learned how to do that movement and seeing me do that a couple of times and I always say like it's a recommendation. This is not something that you must do this way because we're not about giving you a score about performance. This is just for you to see it like as a little guide and try and see what your body wants to create with that type of movement and how does your body wants to move after seeing my movements and basically that's for women to kind of release that idea of like I need to be sexy right now. Does she want me to be super sexy? Does she want me to feel like I'm a stripper right now or like you know and also my sessions they don't have men. That's why I always say this is for women only because I feel like you know when you go to like Pilates or yoga you will still see some men audience in there as well right like men do Pilates, men do yoga and I don't really feel that we as women can completely feel safe and release whatever we need to release with our body movement when we have men around us because it instantly becomes performative like we are aware of how we look and I want this awareness to be gone. Yeah. Fly out of the window so I try to create as much as I can in my sessions for women to feel that this sort of thinking feeling needs to be out of the window so that means no mirrors, no men, dim lights as well because like don't look at each other even like it doesn't matter like how she moves, how you want to move so when you close your eyes and you listen to me and you kind of know already what I've done and I showed you like now allow your body to interpret that to whatever he needs with his inner world to do and with sensuality I mean those moves and we're talking about opening the hips I do a lot of movements that are like squat like so if you would go let's say to Pilates they will tell you that squats right but that's very performative because you do that so you know you want to have that juicy bum after right yeah you want to have those muscles and glutes and all that and here the squats turn up performative they're just for you to open your hips and I go even lower and I don't go lower because I want you to have those pretty glutes I go lower because I want you to open your hips more I want you to go and be uncomfortable I want to meet you in the uncomfortable places and I want you to challenge yourself within your body to see where is that limitation why is it there and what needs to be addressed why can't you go lower I mean I'm not talking about physical capabilities but why can you go lower right now why can't you spread your legs what's going to happen to you if you spread your legs and what's going to happen to you if you move in the circular movement and they even laugh sometimes because I'm trying to like lighten the mood a little bit in my classes and I say come on ladies you've all done this movement before but now you're doing it for yourself you're doing it for your body you're not doing it to pleasure anyone else and go deep and see how your body wants to open and put your mind's eye right in the center so I feel like it's it's work obviously with one session it's really hard some women come out and they still feel that shame and they kind of like giggle it's like a little hidden secret of oh my god why have we done today yeah feel that yeah but hopefully they can take it with them you know well exactly and it's a practice and it's something to to to drip feed and to lean into and to you know not expect us as like you know we expect our and we are other people like the world expects our bodies to open instantly on demand you know yes in in all contexts in you know what I'm talking about and this is about saying let's take that process slowly like let's drip feed it like let's go at your own pace like inhale exhale open close expand contract like it's it's a it's a it's a becoming it's a it's an unfurling and I think that we need to reclaim that in and of itself as wisdom and as the way that it should be and when we're able to really grieve into that and fear what our body is telling us like oh um you know I want to open and then oh I want to close again and oh you know it's like what you're saying is like what's coming up for you you're not there like you know dance mistress going open open you're going yeah what's there like what's coming yes what what are you aware of what are you feeling what's coming into awareness as you're in this pose and meet that like that is the that is the healing and the the transformation as you meet what's there and that whether it's shame or judgment or thoughts or feelings that's coming up and going like yeah I can feel where that restriction is because I've needed to stay closed before for safety and so like you know there's so much wisdom in where our body reveals the places where we can open and where we need to close and I love what you've you've said before about this kind of embodied practice shows us how comfortable we are in our bodies how much our bodies can open how much we can take up space in our bodies and then like that how that actually is the same thing as how we take up space in our lives isn't it it's like it's one and the same the body is a reflection of the whole of our existence and our interaction in the world um and so I really feel like you know when we take back sensuality as the sensors as this tool that is does exist in the world and we can start to be with that in this deep away there's there's such an opportunity here to like own our body like yeah it's it's our sovereign body we have choice and agency over our body and so like let's talk about that for a moment before we come towards the end this part about how movement builds self trust yeah maybe boundaries maybe like this idea of like letting go of approval we've talked about giving ourselves permission but the way that our body is showing us how we trust ourselves and how we get to take up space in the world what do you see with this yeah um it's uh it's it's interesting because um when I um kind of like tell you in the session to go in deeper and to feel what's what's there um my main focus is not even for you to kind of solve all your problems and obviously there is so much shame and there is so much within us obviously in a 60 minute class it's not going to be solved okay we all know that but I do focus on one thing and that's also how I end my sessions with the grounding meditation where we kind of relax more and like we we're still allowed to do soft movements but it's more about kind of like relaxing breathing and the focus there is asking your body body how can I love you more and that's I feel that can be kind of uh closing topic to talk about because it's not even about like how I own my sensuality more or how I solve all my issues or how I release all my frozen tension and no it's about in the end of the day it's about self love yeah because when you love your body more when you when you love yourself more you're a happier person and you project that in your energy you project that in your aura some of the movements that we do are actually just really circular movements like we do round circles with our hands we do round circles like moving around and that's I want to explain to girls that this is just your aura you're creating that aura for you and you invite only positive but also this is where you give like your body that self love and with that self love this positive aura that's all you're gonna have and that's what you're gonna project so I feel like with with my work like in the end of it I will love women to feel a bit closer to themselves just a little closer and just like body how can I love you more and just to understand that I mean that's in body work right like we need to kind of teach others and ourselves that we are part of this universe we divine bodies and we are basically universe wrapped in skin right because we are so much inside of us we like a whole ecosystem of like rain and thunder and sunshine and like everything that we see outside we as divine creatures with that as well we're all of that so it's it's okay to sometimes feel like you're not enough it's okay to feel like you're too little you're too big you take up too much space you don't take up space like it's okay to feel all of that but in the end of it like you just need to accept that you're all of that and more so body how can I love you more with all of what's in there in the hips in your on your like in your heart so that's in body work basically that's that's what I want people to kind of understand in the end of the session that it's not about curing everything right now it's about acceptance and self love because how fuller is that my life going to be when I accept all those parts in me I couldn't agree more I that is such a beautiful way for us to come towards a close and it's it's like wrapping this conversation up in a beautiful bow because I think that's it isn't it it's not about pushing our body to get to a certain place it's not about expecting anything from it it's that simple sound simple it's not always simple simple words but the intention the act is not simple I've just listening and asking how can I love you more body not and what you think you should do or from what someone else tells you but like that beautiful tending devotional and consensual way of being with your body and listening and then offering it because you know we don't get that from other people so not that it's not about not needing to rely on anyone or being independent and separating from others but we can give ourselves what we need we can ask for what we need from others as well when we know what we need and so listening and receiving that wisdom is like such a beautiful way of encapsulating all of this conversation about really coming home to your body and trusting its wisdom knowing how your body speaks to you and letting go of every way that we have made our bodies or other people have made our bodies be in service to them or to something external or patriarchy and all of it shapes and faces and to say this is my body and I'm here in service of my body as my body is in service of me and nothing I love you more that is stunning so thank you is there anything else you'd like to leave with everybody as like anything else you'd like to just speak to before we close and share where people listening can find you and connect with you and come to your your spaces is there like a little I think that might have been it your little wisdom drop but is there anything there just to complete I have a little wisdom drop that I I remind myself that I have it that I know it it's like a little naughty secret that is kind of shared in my classes as well and I just love saying it it's like imagine when you talk to yourself and like you're within your body and you you feel what you need to feel that is happening there you just need to approach it as like the little child that needs a hug it's like go back to when you were a little kid and you just needed a hug from your loved one your mom your dad and just imagine that your body right now is that little child and you want to embrace it and give it a hug and just love it unconditionally yeah beautiful so true so and how full would you feel yeah after I love you very much thank you so much thank you Katy for sharing thank you for having me at the moment I do I do a couple of two motion sessions they are a bit scattered they're not really like in one spot but I do work a lot with a place called Stella Collective in Helenswell they're beautiful because they only host holistic events and they do encourage events that are there to help women so I kind of feel like it's a little sorority for women to kind of save space for us to kind of gather around and just try different things and just come back to ourselves to our bodies so I'm so blessed to have that place and just like to meet those to event organizers that just do so much for women and kind of dedicate their business for that and that's the Gold Coast Queensland doesn't that Australia yes yes yes so that's in that neck of the woods yeah going yes yes but yeah I'll pop your links so that everyone can find you on Instagram and your website as well and I'm just curious is there anything that you have available for anyone who lives outside the Gold Coast do you do anything online or anything that you can find my website actually has an offer that is for businesses I do feel like a lot of businesses when they organise like fun events for their employees or like even I don't know sometimes businesses like big places they do wellness events right for their employees to feel a bit more relaxed and distressed and all of that so I do specifically offer my services for companies that want to do wellness events for the women in the company so yeah I think it can resonate with so many companies where women are under stress and they don't feel hurt or you know they don't have these tools to kind of take a break from work and just go to experience something like that that is like complete opposite of the masculine you know company and what are they doing so I do offer my services for companies that want to spoil the women in their company and really allow them to distress in that way yeah amazing lucky lucky employees at the companies that that offer that to it so so needed we need more of that thank you so much love thank you so much for having me thank you my love for listening to wildflow if this conversation stirred something deep inside you share it with a sister who needs to hear it and come enter the temple of the world feminine with me at shallotponto.com for more on embodiment initiation and sacred leadership Until next time, keep honoring your body, following your path and answering the call to step fully into the magical medicine woman you are.