With the current coronavirus pandemic, Amy Gallagher of Amy Gallagher Coaching believes it’s never been more important to balance your male and female traits – and explains how…
We all have masculine and feminine energies within us, regardless of our gender. We need these energies to be balanced and united for us to feel whole.
When our masculine energy is in balance, it shows up as the action-taker, the part of us that gets things done in a structured and logical fashion. The typical traits of a balanced masculine energy, sometimes referred to as the sacred masculine, are:
• Strong and protective
• Assertive
• Decisive and direct
• In touch with feelings
• Proactive
• Present
• Energised and motivated
• Logical and analytical
• Outward-focused
• Structured
• Directive
• Driven
Some of these traits will no doubt resonate with you. However, some of you may find yourself running on excessive masculine energy and this is where you start to create an imbalance in how you behave and feel. An excessive masculine energy, otherwise known as the wounded masculine, can show up as:
• Overly competitive
• Aggressive and ruthless
• Ego-led
• Detached from emotions and unable to be vulnerable
• Lacking empathy
• Selfish
• Headstrong and arrogant
• Rigid and controlling
• Pushing and striving when it’s time to rest
• Only interested in the outcome or end goal
• Angry and blaming
When I worked in the corporate world, I operated on an excessive masculine energy. I decided early on that I would only be respected and accepted if I acted like ‘one of the men’. I believed that success meant I had to be achieving and accomplishing all the time. My ‘busy-ness’ spilled over into my personal life. I had a full diary and little down time. I wasn’t tuning in to my feelings and I certainly wasn’t tuning in to my intuition enough. I had suppressed most of my feminine energy and she only came out when I was mentoring and coaching my teams.
Now I believe the whole world is operating on an excessive masculine energy. We have been conditioned to always ‘do’, to be overly focused on achievements.
When do you take time to rest? So many of you complain that you are too busy for self-care or that you feel tired, even exhausted, most days. Our bodies are screaming at us to slow down but we continue to live in this unbalanced way.
We have raised our boys to believe that real men are strong, assertive and unemotional providers. If they dare to deviate from this, they are considered effeminate or weak. And the fall-out from this is a generation of men who are disconnected from their emotions, unable to speak about how they feel and we continue to see an increase in male suicides.
Let’s look at feminine energy now and how this differs from our masculine.
Our feminine energy shows up as the wise one, the nurturer, the truth seeker. She’s the part of us that knows when to go inwards to connect to our innate wisdom. She trusts in the flow of life. She knows how to validate from within.
The traits of a balanced feminine energy are:
• Compassionate
• Wise and intuitive
• Connected with nature
• Empathic
• Inwards focused
• Expressive and sensual
• Flexible
• Able to multi-task
• Receptive
• Magnetic
When your feminine energy is wounded, this can show up as the people-pleaser, the martyr or the victim. Your behaviours are likely to look like this:
• Needy
• Co-dependent
• Low self-esteem
• Gossiping and judging others
• Resentful
• Overly sensitive
• Unable to express your needs
• Unable to put yourself first
• Unable to set clear boundaries
• Feels too much and also dims her light to ‘fit in’ with the situation
• Always saying “sorry” and struggling to say no
• Carrying shame and guilt
• Seeking validation in the outside world
I feel we have been conditioned to reject our feminine nature, our intuition, and been taught to favour our masculine, the energy of doing. If we are constantly in our ‘doing’ energy we can never fully connect to our feelings. The simple truth is we need both energies to live from a place of creating and making our visions happen. The feminine part of us is the visionary, the one who can see all possibilities. Our masculine energy is what allows us to make these possibilities become realities.
It’s interesting to witness what we are all going through right now with the coronavirus pandemic. Mother Earth is demanding us to slow down, to go within, to reconnect with ourselves and to reconnect with each other. She wants us to embrace more of our sacred feminine energy. This is a period of deep healing for all of us and a chance for us to create more balance within ourselves and the world around us.
