Beyond Gender Stereotypes: Dance Of The Masculine & Feminine

41:21

41:21

Beyond Gender Stereotypes: Dance Of The Masculine & Feminine

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5

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talks

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Meditation

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Everyone

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Let's chat about the amazing balance and dance of masculine and feminine polarities - within us and with others. We will contrast this with the challenging and sometimes damaging limitations of gender stereotypes, which are radically different! Masculine and feminine are universal polarities, whereas gender stereotypes are products of the patriarchy. Let's explore the similarities, the differences, and how they can dance together!

Masculine Feminine Balance Gender Stereotypes Emotional Connection Patriarchy Inner Balance Vulnerability Intimate Relationships Yin Yang Left Brain Right Brain Balance Tantra Healing Spiritual Communities Emotional Intelligence Patriarchy Impact Yin Yang Principle Tantra Ecstasy Healing Past Trauma

Meet your Teacher

Toronto, ON, Canada

Meet your Teacher

Toronto, ON, Canada

Transcript

So today we're talking about the dance of the masculine and feminine versus the rigidity of gender stereotypes. And this is really important because human beings are designed to connect. You know when they say that we're social creatures it doesn't just mean that oh well we should get along with each other or whatever. It actually means that as human beings we thrive with connection, With emotional connection, With physical connection, And even just the proximity of others around us. There's something about this that's inherently important for our wholeness to happen. You know can we live in isolation? Sure. But then we end up becoming a portion of ourselves. We don't get to be all of who we are unless we actually are interacting with others. So my favorite way of looking at this is through the masculine feminine dynamic. The masculine feminine dynamic is not male-female. These are universal polarities. Unfortunately the language is masculine and feminine but the reality is is it was a universal polarity first and then it kind of got brought into our world that masculine meant manly and feminine meant demure and something else. But the true and so for anyone like me who loves to teach about the masculine feminine, I wish I could use yin and yang but it's not actually yin and yang. I wish I could use other terms but no matter what terms we use I mean I could use fliff and fluff if we wanted but it truly is masculine and feminine and I think it's it's even more interesting knowing that society has the masculine feminine the gender stereotypes so messed up. So I wonder if there's a reason that we need to use these words to help correct what's happened in the patriarchy. So the reason I want to chat about this today is I want to actually look at what the masculine feminine is in that beautiful dance that leads to merging and connection and love and support and nourishment and all that and what are the gender stereotypes that very often get in the way and I don't mean they get in the way for people who don't know. I mean they get in the way for me. They get in the way for everybody I think in my experience. Like for example I have a habit especially with men not with women so much but I have a habit with men if I'm playing a game let's say I'm playing Scrabble or I'm playing something like that I might just let them win or if I'm really slaughtering them I may slow down a little just so that they still feel like a man and that's terrible and I exercise a lot of discipline not to do it but I swear there is something deep in my epigenetic history the experiences of my mother my grandmother that whatever you do just keep the man happy and you won't be kicked out on your butt or you won't be abused or you won't be whatever because I watch myself it's like my wisdom self my witness mind observes me doing it and it isn't that I don't do things that are sort of gender stereotypically male. I mean I have a degree in mathematics I was a computer programmer it's not that I haven't lived in quote a man's world I have and yet these whispers haunt me these gender stereotypes these patterns of the patriarchy of the domination of the submission of all of that it still whispers in my consciousness and I see it in other people's relationships all the time. You know one of the beautiful masculine feminine dynamics for example is protector and vulnerable right that there's a natural response to want to protect the vulnerable it could be wanting to protect protect a vulnerable wetland it could be wanting to protect a child it could be wanting to protect someone who's walking out in front of a bus and you suddenly grab them and you pull them back there's a bond that happens as you then merge with this person to bring them safety and in relationships what this looks like is when you're having a conversation a healing conversation a difficult conversation and one person is ending up opening their hearts and being very vulnerable in a very scary way and in order to create the bond in order to actually have you guys together in this one person's in this open vulnerability and the other person acts as a protector of your heart in that moment something rises inside of you and says I hold you it's okay to be vulnerable I will protect you from all that could hurt you I am safe this creates an incredible bond but because of the gender stereotypes men and not just men but anybody of any gender who highly identifies with the masculine side of this polarity so there are a lot of women out there who in relationship love being in the masculine like they actually fit the male gender stereotype much more than than others so anybody who sort of feels their heart and soul loving the masculine polarity will very often have a very hard time opening up in vulnerability why because it's seen as weak it's seen as being out of control it's seen as you know something you poo poo and only weak people do that but all of that comes from the gender stereotype of the patriarchy it's not real it's completely fabricated and not only does it get in the way of your intimate connections with everybody I don't mean just romantic relationships I mean friendships I mean relationships with parents and children siblings friends everybody but also inside we never get to experience our true vulnerability which is where we heal from trauma it's where we actually meet ourselves and so we end up sort of walking around like these shells of a person because we're so busy putting up this male masculine gender stereotype we're actually empty inside because we have no inner balance so I'm gonna back up a little so let's talk about the masculine feminine universal principles so in spiritual communities in a lot of communities we talk a lot about the oneness the omnipotent God that Brahman which is all things this universal energy all around us this is what you might call say the dimension of oneness that you are all things you know all things we are all one all those wonderful things and then there is a dimension of duality where I am NOT all things I am Katrina I am a 56 year old woman who lives in Ontario Canada and I live on Wellesley Street and this is this is where I am I live in this time-space continuum in this limited body with this limited mind with limited power this is me this is duality and this is all of us right now getting to hang out together in order for us to split there is also a mechanism that allows allows us to stay connected and this is the masculine feminine energies just imagine us like we're androgynous don't think about gender sex nothing like that just imagine us as being androgynous separate beings and we're going along and we could just stay as our own whole Yin-Yang symbol being completely independent wandering around the world doing our thing but then what if you have an apple orchard and you have all kinds of apples and you see someone and you think would you like some apples and the other person says I don't have any apples I'd love to have some apples at this point there is a chance of connection and the connection is that this person will give apples to this person and now they have a relationship or even right off the bat as soon as one person spoke and said would you like some apples they were speaking and the other person was listening so that is a dynamic of connection the person speaking is what we would call masculine the person listening is the feminine this is what connects us if nobody's listening there's nothing to connect with so even if a person is there but they've got headphones on or they're not really you can talk all you want but there's no connection you actually require a listener to create connection this is the masculine feminine so similarly what if one androgynous being wanted to give the other androgynous being a massage and the other androgynous being is like oh that would feel awesome my muscles are really sore so the giver comes over and starts to give a massage to the other now if the other person is sort of not really wanting the massage or they're sort of fighting and they're staying really tight there's not really much connection it's almost like the person giving is kind of like pushing it's really not easy but what if the person receiving the massage fully receives the massage what if they fully relax and every time the giver touches them their body goes ah an amazing connection forms because one person is able to give completely and the other person is able to receive completely these are the dynamics of the masculine feminine you know inside of us we also have polarities like this and sometimes the word polarity is hard because we often think about polarity as being opposing forces not opposite we actually think of them as opposing like angry like we are we have polarized and now we are just you know kind of that kind of thing but that's not what we're talking about we're talking about two complementary opposites within us outside of us that make make all the connections in life creates all the dancing creates all the joys so for example inside of our mind we have this left brain and right brain so some say that the left brain is our mathematical side our masculine side the Sun energy clarity order structure and the right side of the brain is the feminine it's the its process its flow its intuition you know now in between the map the the right and left brain is something called the corpus callosum this huge bridge of nerves that essentially are the communication bridge between the left and right brain do you know who the happiest people are in the world people whose left and right brain love to dance together right where you have some crazy intuitive idea you're like oh my gosh that's such a great idea and the left brain says let me do a spreadsheet on that we're gonna make this happen and the intuition side says really like you oh well then I also have these other great ideas and your masculine side says done I'm enjoying this challenge let's make sure let's call some friends in let's do it and inside of you is this blissful space where you get to create and respond and and do all these wonderful things because your masculine and feminine supports each other your logical mind loves your intuitive mind and your intuitive mind loves the clarity of your logical mind you love the intuitive inspiration and your masculine side loves going to manifest it you know and if you need something then your masculine side gives that to you and you are in this perpetual beautiful inner symbiotic dance all the time this is the ecstasy of Tantra this is the ecstasy of the spiritual path where we are completely whole inside and not whole in a static way but whole in a perpetual moving dancing way but along came this very curious patriarchal energy and I don't mean men men being bad I mean the strange patriarchal uneven imbalanced paradigm that we've been living in for probably at least the last 5, 000 years maybe longer where if you take this universal balance of energies in every situation the masculine suppresses the feminine in every situation this isn't just it shows up in the men of suppressing the women but it also shows up in parents suppressing the children and teachers or the education system suppressing the children it's governments suppressing monarchies suppressing logic is better than intuition a math degree is better than an arts degree right it's all this suppression of the feminine giving is better than receiving structure and logic is better than chaos and anarchy you know being the protector is the one you want to be you don't want to be the vulnerable like this is the problem is this weird patriarchal energy came in and said everything that's feminine suppress it doesn't even matter what gender you are because in order for men for example to suppress to have suppressed women for so many centuries and millennia which absolutely happened to pretend that isn't true is silly they have to deny their own feminine they have to deny their own feelings they have to have completely buried their intuition they have to have completely disassociated from their bodies and been completely living in their mind and this false stereotypical persona that they had to live they have to act like a man they have to give punishment they have to show order they have to do this no matter what and they end up having to act like sociopaths with in with the people they love or whatever else and this goes on for generations and generations and generations this is where it all goes amok and this is where the gender stereotypes are so dangerous because of course what does the gender stereotype look like well in order to be and I'm gonna say in quotes masculine because unfortunately this is the language of societies right to be masculine you are always strong you are always powerful you are full of muscles you are always the one protecting you are the one who teaches you are the wise ones you are the fighters you are angry in the foot in the face of you know and this is this constant you know like you're always marching off to war this is the masculine and so anybody who has those traits we call masculine ah he is a very masculine man ah she is a very masculine woman we use these traits and it is 100% a gender stereotype and it is a hundred percent not in balance and this is what's really important because if anyone of all genders decide that I want to be a very masculine person we are literally saying to ourselves and everyone around us then I that I choose to deny the feminine part of me and no matter how much I pretend that I like the feminine part in you I'm kidding myself because if I don't like it in me I don't like it in you or I'm uncomfortable with it in you even if some part of me likes it and this is really important and then on the flip side you have the gender stereotypical feminine right what is that well it's all the opposite and what serves the masculine gender stereotype so instead of being strong I'm weak instead of being tough I'm so gentle instead of being protective I'm always vulnerable and I'm always emotional and I'm so demure and I'm quiet and I'm a good listener and oh and and don't forget the bodies right the masculine body is muscular and strong and warrior like and the feminine body is curvy and has big breasts and long hair and you know and then men well men wear pants and women wear dresses you know did you know that the gender stereotype was so bad that even into the 20th century women were actually they were actually taken to court if they wore trousers and you in the United States look crazy how far these gender stereotypes go you know it's just it's just madness so in the same way regardless of our gender if we decide you know what I just I love being feminine I just want to be feminine all the time that's all well you know what that means that means that everybody else in your life has to be in the masculine all the time it means that everybody else has to plan everything everybody else has to take care of you everybody else has to make the decisions everybody else has to be the voice of reason everybody else because you don't want to have a masculine part I don't want to have to be logical and I don't want to have to make the decisions and I want to be spontaneous and I want it and I'm being a bit of a jerk right now but you know there's that I just want to be only feminine and it's like as soon as we set ourselves up like that one we're not being feminine we are simply abiding a gender stereotype created by the patriarchal paradigm that's it we are not being universally feminine that's not it even all the greatest stories of the gods and the goddesses they weren't predominantly one thing they were whole right you look at in the Hindu goddesses like Kali right Kali is always seen as this destructive you've ever seen a picture of Kali she's got her tongue out and she's got skulls around her neck and she's on the battlefield in her her foot is on her on Shiva you know and she's I don't know if it's Shiva but she's on her on her consort's chest and she has slayed everyone and so you would think that wow Kali even though she's a goddess pretty masculine right well the crazy thing is I have only experienced true Kali energy in my life in coming out of me a few times but it was never unconscious violence there was always insight there was always intuition there was always the knowledge that what is going on right now is wrong and it's damaging and it's very hurtful and it is only when nothing works that Kali will come out and set it right but it's in balance it isn't just some crazy woman with a sword it is a deep wise energy in all of us when enough is enough and now everything's going to change all genders have the potential of enlisting Kali to make things right but it has to be balanced with infants with insight and wisdom and presence and consciousness and this is where the stereotypes get us in so much trouble they absolutely get us in trouble inside of us because we're suddenly not allowed to access half of who we are and what's crazy is let's say imagine let's say imagine you visualize a circle and this circle is a yin-yang symbol right half masculine half feminine but the truth is maybe I don't feel comfortable being in my masculine in life so if I take this circle and I take the masculine side and actually cut it in half right so you know what I mean so let's say let's say the circle is a hundred cubic 100 square feet right so it's a hundred square feet if you're gonna paint it so the masculine is 50 square feet and the feminine is 50 square feet but you decide you know what I don't you know I really struggle with my masculine and I just don't even want to and I really just want to be in the feminine all the time and I don't want to try and this is all genders it's hard to be in the masculine it's hard to manifest it's hard to go out and do those things right so I'm gonna actually just decrease my masculine to 25 to half well the reality is we don't walk around with 50% feminine and 25% masculine or 50 square feet feminine and 25 square feet masculine that's not how it works we don't live in imbalance what happens is our feminine shrinks down to the 25 so now we end up being a 50 square foot circle we end up half as big and if we continue to decrease the feminine we continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller but in the opposite sense now let's imagine so let's imagine we're at that 50 and so I'm 50 square feet no I'm 25 square feet masculine 25 square foot feminine and I decide to start building my masculine and I decide to start you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna make a plan and I'm gonna try something and suddenly my masculine increases by 10 points what happens to my feminine she increases by 10 points right maybe my feminine wants to expand a little my masculine says okay I can do it I can expand they expand together like it's an illusion that even somebody who says no I'm always in the masculine I'm always in the masculine if your feminine is say only 25 points big or 25 square feet big so is your masculine it's not as big as we think the only way to expand it is by expanding both and this is where it's so important that we are really clear like to really sit down with a piece of paper and say are there gender stereotypes that are still living inside of me that are stopping me from finding wholeness it's a really important question to just sit down and say okay to say and I highly recommend this to sit down with a piece of paper and on the left side say the masculine stereotype and on the right the feminine stereotype because again this is not masculine feminine not real we have to say stereotype and what do you think what were you taught what it meant to be masculine and what still lives in your consciousness that if you saw someone you'd say wow they're really masculine or they're really feminine what is it in you that believes this is to be true and then look at the part look at both sides and say am I afraid to be that other side what is it you know what would it take for me to embrace my vulnerability what would it take for me to embrace the courage to try what would it take you know to find that inner balance and then let's extend this into romantic relationships because again as soon as we decide well I only want to be feminine what that means so I'm gonna say I don't want to have to bother with the masculine we almost if we want to be in an intimate relationship with someone we almost have to find someone who is equally unbalanced in the other direction they actually also want to only be in the masculine they don't want to listen to their feelings they don't want to do all that it's like you have to find your equivalent in the opposite direction and then have incredible codependence because you are literally trying to find your inner self in someone else and there's a high chance that they are 100% not going to do that they're gonna be in their polarity and you're gonna be in your polarity and they're actually gonna be in full separation and yet living together in this very strange balance but let's say that's not the case let's say you're two souls that genuinely want to find connection you really do you want to figure this out one of the great challenges is often strengthening our own opposite side so for example for me I've often really struggled with boundaries throughout my life I've had this understanding in my heart that I was meant to just open my heart and let everybody in everybody was welcome everybody all your troubles all your struggles everything just come on in to me I I can do it all like don't worry it's fine well the crazy thing is weirdly enough that doesn't actually work in intimate relationships because we end up having our feet stepped on all the time and then deep down we actually end up resenting the other person and it could be with children it could be with partners it could be with anybody that it's actually when I enforce a healthy masculine boundary I'm able to have I'm actually able to be more loving I'm able to be more open I'm able to be kinder because nobody's stepping on my toes and I don't have anything unconscious driving a real anger inside of me towards them similarly let's say we really struggle to express our true feelings our real vulnerable side because what if they leave or what if they laugh or what if they make fun of us or what if whatever but if we aren't actually sharing our vulnerable side are we even intimate like when you really think of what it means to be intimate with someone like it isn't just being sexual it's opening your heart to actually say this person knows all the corners of my soul this is intimacy but if we aren't connected with our feminine if we're uncomfortable with the chaos and the unknown that lives within us how can we ever share our true selves with someone and so it's just interesting to just observe the gender stereotypes that we hold within us and ask ourselves are these getting in the way of my relationships is my need to always be strong getting in the way of any kind of vulnerable bonding is my inability to make choices and create structure in my life actually causing so much chaos everywhere around me nobody can see straight where is my where are my own limitations here based on all the strange stereotypes out there and some of these stereotypes are twisted like really twisted you know like I remember growing up and there was a teaching amongst my mom's generation that a mother raises a son so far and a wife raises him the rest of the way you talk about a harmful teaching and so like sexist and all the things it's like it was the weirdest thing it was almost like here's how you get to be a mother for the rest of your life you'll just mother everybody you'll have no boundaries you'll have no this you'll have and it's so insulting like it's weird all these gender stereotypes and everything they cause damage in relationships or it could be kind of that classic heterosexual stereotype or oh well you know women are crazy just gotta you know they're just crazy they're always changing their mind they're always this and it's like this is damaging you know you should never we should never say these kinds of things and now here's the funny rub of all of it that when we embrace the masculine feminine dynamics the true universal masculine feminine giving receiving inspiration manifestation all these wonderful things in intimate relationships it is interesting to notice which polarity you to be in which one strengthens you which one allows you to expand because when we get to do that when we get to choose like for example out in the world I'm pretty masculine most of the time you know I'm listening for intuition I write my books I teach my classes I do even you know preparing for this class I have a title I've written the description and before this class I sit down with a whiteboard I close my eyes and I ask what I'm supposed to teach today I receive it I write it on the board you know if you ever see me looking over to the side I'm looking at this board that I sketched everything out on you know so I I live in this sort of masculine feminine all the time but in an intimate relationship I have a chance to feel that beautiful bliss with another person and I get to polarize all the way into the feminine and this is very similar to dancing you know let's say all of us are in a big room and the music comes on and we pour onto the dance floor and we're all like kind of dancing in the middle of the floor doing our little Charlie Brown dance or whatever we're doing right and we're just listening to the music and we're dancing and then maybe a beautiful you know tango comes on and you look at someone you know wow I would love to tango with you and they go oh okay now in order to tango with someone you actually have to become a oneness a new whole with this person you cannot be independently dancing one person must be the leader and one person must be the follower one person is going to be the form and the other person is going to be the flair one person is going to be watching the dance floor and the other person is going to be exuding presence around the floor when we polarize in dance it's like the more the masculine leads the more the feminine is safe or the follow is safe and a bond happens and you join together and you become this great yin-yang symbol dancing around the floor together and you feel the same bliss as we do within when we're in balance and what's really funny is this is where when you're in an intimate relationship and you have this lovely polarity some of those funny little gender stereotypes start to sneak back in but they don't come in because of the patriarchy they don't come in because we believe the feminine is less than right if if I go out to the car my partner always opens the door for me and then closes it behind me he doesn't do it because I'm incapable of understanding how to open a car door he does it because he knows darn well I can do it but he wants to do it and by doing it I smile and my heart opens a little and we have a little bit of a bond and we so it's interesting that once we really deeply have our own wholeness and everybody is truly equal and thriving and then you come together and you polarize weirdly some of those stereotypes come back suddenly I might want you know he might be watching me and say wow you're so beautiful and what would I do well I'd start to kind of slink my body you know like a little like I'm walking a catwalk or something like suddenly then you get to play in it and it's a whole other world not all of the stereotypes come back but I think that's one of the reasons the stereotypes stick it's because there's a whisper of truth in them there's a whisper of something there's a whisper of the universal truth in some of them not all of them and then they get to come back and you get to play with them and it's so much fun it just creates so much bonding and joy and ecstasy it's just so lovely so going forward this is the question if you were to imagine the universal polarities of say giving and receiving do you enjoy giving as much as you enjoy receiving inside your mind are you willing to be as intuitive as you are logical or vice versa are you willing to try we all have tendencies but to find balance are we willing to access the opposite are you open to experiencing both structure and chaos or is there a block there talking and listening do you always have to be the one talking or do you always have to be the one listening or is it a pretty even balance are you able to be vulnerable are you able to protect someone else's heart when they're being vulnerable these are the questions that we have to ask ourself and to kind of see is there a stereotype standing in the way so that I can find balance within so then I can experience ecstasy and joy with other people so hope you have a great day see you