consciousfeminine - Sarah Poet

If you want to heal your relationship, go beyond polarity.

Improving masculine and feminine polarity in a relationship is one piece of the puzzle. It’s important, but I personally don’t think that it alone will re-harmonize a Union between two people.

Lately, in my couples coaching practice, I’ve been thinking about how masculine / feminine polarity isn’t enough to truly heal a relationship.

And that is why I don’t just teach polarity!

I know many couples – maybe you – who want to re-polarize their relationship to healthy feminine & masculine dynamics. This is understandable, needed, and fantastic.

Our culture didn’t socialize us to be attuned to conscious feminine and masculine. Our culture had gender roles that were so skewed and far from conscious feminine and masculine that we now have to re-learn what these even mean to us, and then we are able to begin to interpret what they mean in relationships.

As men and women, we picked up certain characteristics of gender that simply weren’t conscious.

For example, a woman who may think that in order to have everything under control learns to climb a career ladder and earn all of her own money, which is a masculine energetic. Then, in relationship, she finds that she has a difficult time polarizing into the feminine energetic with her masculine partner. She may exhibit characteristics (personality habits) that try to control all the details of the relationship in order to keep her emotionally safe (or give her that illusion of safety.) She may have a difficult time letting a man take the lead, even if she so desperately wants to relinquish control.

And what about him?

He may yearn deeply for a woman to trust him, but if he’s honest with himself, he may actually have a hard time trusting himself. He may ask himself, “If she surrendered to me, would I know what to do? Will she stay?” He may very much want to play a traditionally masculine role of provision and protection, but he may have a difficult time actually standing in a powerful energetic in order to do this.

So is polarity enough?

I can teach her how to embody more of a feminine polarity in the energetic, and him a more masculine polarity in the relationship, so that they can feel and enjoy what healthier expressions of feminine and masculine feel like. This can be fun.

And, I do this for couples, within a larger framework. Couples come to me in part because they desire to experience polarity (even if they don’t know that this is what they subconsciously want), but if I only taught that, I’d be doing a disservice.

Why?

Because polarity play alone would be like a couple acting out parts in a play without authentic, embodied shift in how they live their lives. Polarity play can bolster confidence such that one thinks they’ve made a huge change, but then the subconscious material sneaks back in and sabotages a couple’s true connection again.

Because it is what is under her self-protective armoring and tendency to try to control that also needs to be worked with, and it is what is under his incessant need to please without actually feeling powerful that is what needs to be worked with.

And you know where these originated? In the primary relationships with mother and father. (A little less sexy than polarity play, I know.)

“Polarity play” is play, but truly healing masculine and feminine is sincere work that happens in the body/soma, mind, and heart, and in consideration of healing the Mother & Father Wounds.

We have to go to the root of where the societal gender roles messed with us and undo that, let your partner witness you honestly, and heal together.

Did you know that you can hold the space for this transformation to happen within your partner without emotionally laboring for them or shrinking into a smaller version of yourself??? You can.

I personally don’t go into a lot of stories in my couples coaching work, meaning I don’t go into the stories of the past traumas. Rather, I am adept at identifying patterns in behavior and energetics, that link to the root. It’s more efficient than talk therapy, though it can be done in conjunction with therapy.

The roots of the patterns can be worked with in the present moment through Conscious Relating techniques, and I am using that term to point to the set of embodied practices that I have developed for couples to practice together.

These are trauma-informed practices, which means that I have taken what I have learned and experienced through trauma therapies and combined that with partner touch, breath awareness, and mindfulness. If you’re interested in it, I can add energy healing to that space that creates a true breakthrough.

Combined with my coaching, we identify the place of trauma or resistance that is held in the space between a couple, and we work together to heal it through presence, breath, energetics, and a bit of magic. 😉

Re-polarizing masculine and feminine is one piece of the puzzle. It’s important, but I personally don’t think that it alone will re-harmonize a Union between two people.

For that, we need to look at healing on physical, emotional, mental, and energetic levels.

If you are interested in that level of “coaching,” you can learn more and book a consultation with me at https://www.sarahpoet.com/consciousrelating

If you JUST want to look at my Foundations of Conscious Relationships Course, visit and purchase here. https://www.sarahpoet.com/foundations-of-conscious-relationships

In 2023, there are FOUR ways to interact / combine the above.
1. Do the course on your own
2. Course + 4 private sessions with me (consultation required)
3. Course + 8 private sessions with me (consultation required)
4. 12-16 weeks of full-immersion private coaching with me (consultation required)

Obviously, the deeper you go into the private coaching work with me, the more positive effect we can have on your relationship.

I look forward to supporting you on this important path of becoming more conscious in love relationships,

Sarah Poet

How you can make feminine leadership more sustainable for women.

Just because women are in positions of leadership does not equate to the return of sustainable feminine leadership or respect for feminine qualities. True feminine leadership happens when we rebalance the inequitability of feminine & masculine in our actions, efforts, and energetics, and ensure the sustainability of systems, including the women themselves.

Last spring, as the new leaves were returning to the trees and the ferns were unfurling, I visited a year-one school startup to consult with the two women who were running it.

The ideas for the school were all about innovation, keeping children close to nature, and preserving the ideals of curiosity, self sovereignty, and relationship. The school was beautifully visioned and the positive response from the community had made for fast growth. And these women leaders were exhausted.

They were working incredibly long hours and the school had not yet met financial goals, which meant that it was running at a deficit. In response, to take care of the children and the vision, they worked harder. Of course they did. It’s what women visionaries do.

They were trying to get it to go, powering through, even despite not getting paid because they were paying the teachers first. And I was there as a school consultant, yes, but also a systems analyst, a women’s leadership guide, and as someone who connects land/vision/people together when there is a mission at work. In other words, I’m looking at systems, including the energetic flow in the system as a whole. Where is it leaking energy? Where is there an area that is out of integrity with the flow of the entire system of the mission?

And so I asked them, “Are you okay running this school if it requires that the school be run on feminine depletion? You are looking at creating a holistic school model, but what of your model is requiring the feminine to continue to run on depleted resources and energy?”

I heard back from them recently, a full half a year later, and the administrator told me, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not ask myself that question. It was the greatest guiding question I’ve received.”

You see, our systems have historically run on feminine depletion.

What do I mean by that? In short, I mean that in a patriarchal way of building and operating, we over-rely on masculine energetics: build, push, create, exert, make happen. And when we stay in that energetic for too long, we create an imbalance, which forces the feminine energetic to go into submission (getting what it can where it can, like 6 hours of sleep, a little exposure, or a little congratulatory high five now and again) or it’s just forgotten about altogether (which we’ve seen in our modern workplaces in the quest for more profit, more wins.)

When the feminine is depleted, we get women who over-give, women with hormonal disorders and weird health symptoms, the pushing down of things like intuition and taking time for an idea to gestate, and the unrealistic expectation that we are able to stay continually in go-mode.

But this of course doesn’t only affect women. It affects men in that they resist vulnerability or not having an answer, always wanting to maintain the image that everything is under control. And it has affected our ideas of leadership across the globe.

You can also begin to deduce from my simple examples here that it is not a gendered issue, and we’d be well served to move beyond the typical conversations of gender in the workplace and include instead these considerations of what healthy and unhealthy feminine and masculine leadership look like, and how they are expressed.

Historically, we’ve made “women’s leadership” and “feminine leadership” synonymous, and I want to state explicitly that they are not. Just because a woman is in a position of leadership does not mean that she is enacting feminine principles in the least. Even to write that, I can imagine that some readers may bristle at the word “feminine” being inserted into a conversation about leadership because the stigma is still that the feminine can’t lead for it’s “softness.”

But I will tell you that when we look at some of the most innovative research and actions taking place in the field of leadership, what is happening is the re-incorporation of the feminine archetype and feminine leadership behaviors. To name a few: shared decision making, collaboration, flexible scheduling, and allowing teams extended periods of time to create. All of these are aspects of feminine leadership whether we call it that or not.

Then why name it? Why name it as feminine or masculine? I strongly believe that in doing so, we can save a lot of time with a conceptual framework that also reduces many of the unspoken and tricky issues that are chalked up to gender in the workplace. It’s not differences in gender that are most important. What is most important is whether or not leaders value and know how to lead, incorporating both feminine and masculine leadership qualities, and whether they extend that to their cultures and teams.

Going back to the two women that I was coaching, as I asked them this question, “Are you okay with this place running on feminine depletion?,” they had already had an understanding of feminine and masculine, and so when I asked it, the real and deeper issue became more clear.

In trying to do the right thing, they were exhausting themselves and also running on exhausted financial resources. We can see that such a situation is unsustainable. And it is in the reconstructing of both the finances and the activities of the school into an equitable feminine / masculine collaboration that both of these issues can be corrected.

A world that didn’t value the feminine was also the world that created a very serious deficit in environmental sustainability. The two go hand in hand and this topic could be elaborated on quite extensively. And so for today, I’ll conclude that feminine leadership, which I would encourage all leaders to embrace regardless of gender, would not allow for the depletion of the feminine energetic, the earth, the resources, or the people. Often in our quest for power and profit, these are the very things that are depleted and overlooked. Women and men, and leaders of all kinds, it’s time for true thriving to include the wellness and sustainability of the feminine and masculine in harmony.

Sarah Poet is available for consultations with leaders of any gender and maintains an eye to the energetic efficiency of systems as we create a more sustainable and equitable world. To schedule, visit www.sarahpoet.com/book.

Is feminine & masculine polarity an adequate gateway to the relationship you want?

Perhaps some aspects of common feminine / masculine polarity teachings are true, but then entire schools of thought (and businesses) are constructed around these partial and unrealized trends. They are selling you “polarity” as a gateway to Union, but I caution this.

There is a lot of information out there about feminine masculine polarity that is false and it is hurting good people. I’ll start by saying that.

Some examples of a common teaching via coaches on Facebook and the like that the masculine is completely responsible for our provision. Or that the feminine’s job is to just open and expect to receive.

Both of these very common pseudo-spiritual teachings cause good humans to contort their behavior and wonder what is wrong with them or their partners when their relationships feel stressed or are non existent.

When we put ourselves inside of false constructs, and that is what these “extreme” polarity teachings are, then our lives feel tight and we wonder why. We have thoughts that the masculine “should” behave a certain way and have it all together and that the feminine “should” behave in a perfectly polarized way and have it all together.

A relationship that is attempting to live in this style of polarity will find itself eventually very stressed out and at extremes.

So what is needed?

The answer could also eventually be described as behavior, or mindset, but first I would like to suggest we go wider still – to a new framework of consciousness.

Nearly all of what we have determined as masculine and feminine, from gender associations to pseudo-spiritual polarity games, have so-far been constructed within a false consciousness grid. This grid is a framework that holds what we believe, until we change it (it starts with you and I), and then the collective consciousness grid actually changes. This is how we change the frequencies of thought and behavior on the planet, as more and more change their relationship to the false-consciousness grid.

But we have a ways to go, because so far, the former grid was BUILT on polarity and separation – an either/or scenario.

The point to feminine and masculine is not to over-emphasize its polarity. It is to explore union. People *know* this conceptually as an idea but to desire to get to Union through Polarity is going to likely remain within the framework of either/or.

These two are not two, but one. It is a nice ideal, but trying to put feminine and masculine back together in actual Union within a separation matrix is nearly impossible.

So what is needed is an upgrade to the consciousness matrix itself, to Unity and to the energetic frequencies that uphold unity. You have heard of Unity Consciousness. That is a different frequency, first.

This is also the frequency of love and partnership. It is the conscious and energetic movement from either/or and fear-based thinking into unified thinking and being (this is where your behavioral changes come in).

You will experience this on the subtle energetic layers of the body / mind / energy, where you stop experiencing the need for polarity or opposition, and feel more peace with the union that simply IS.

This Unity Frequency is already within and already all around you and when you stop looking for it through polarity, it may be closer than do you think.

Opportunities to reflect:

1. Where are you so interested in expressing an extreme or a polarity idea about feminine / masculine within your relationship(s) that you are missing the opportunity for peace?
2. Where do you desire harmony in your relationships and you are attempting to get there to the practice of polarity or, God forbid, domination submission?

Contemplate these questions, and if you would like to talk with me about 12 weeks of couples immersion, please learn more and schedule a consultation here.

The feminine in you holds your deepest wisdom.

The feminine has been something that we seek to reclaim – something that we seek to bring into “equal balance” with the masculine.

It is as though the feminine was always the underdog, or made to be the underdog, fighting her way back.

In a world of masculine/feminine archetypal imbalance, the feminine was secondary.

The feminine has been something that we seek to reclaim – something that we seek to bring into “equal balance” with the masculine.

It is as though the feminine was always the underdog, or made to be the underdog, fighting her way back.

Always trying to prove herself, and prove her worth.

When I talk to modern women on a personal journey of feminine / masculine reclamation, most often, their feminine re-discovery is something they are “fitting in” at the end of the day, or on weekends. They are unsure how to actually integrate it fully into their lives.

Many women – maybe you – have a “hunch” that there is more, or that you have special gifts inside of you that are waiting to emerge. (You do, no doubt.)

But how long are you going to hold that as a “hunch” and not act on it? How long are YOU going to push the feminine to the side while you continue to over-rely on your inner masculine?

I’ve said it before, but the feminine isn’t “cute.” She isn’t optional. And she isn’t secondary, just because patriarchy positioned the greatest power play this planet has ever known.
But here’s the point of today’s email: The feminine, reclaimed, is the greatest thing that will ever happen to your life.

In it contains your true wisdom, your magical gifts, your mystical sight. It contains your capacity to love (men) without the trauma of past relationships plaguing you – your heart finally open wide.

It allows you to lead with your body wisdom, unlocking pleasure potential, aligning to the truth of your own soul that it feels f*cking good to be alive.

The feminine has been repressed for thousands of years. It is awakening within you and me – in each of us – and INSIDE OF US contains the true depth of wisdom that isn’t written in books or taught in schools. You can’t get certifications for actually turning on your own innate wisdom.

The feminine = Sophianic Wisdom. And she wants to come alive through you.

I have helped women on the other side of the world become pregnant after an infertility journey. No one but my own soul taught me how to do that, but only after I fully opened to letting HER, the feminine, fully flow through me.

I have helped women who had been abused leave their partnerships and stand in energetic and financial sovereignty. I have helped women trust their inner knowing, sight, and intuition, and watched as their gifts as a mystic, healer, or seer came online.
I have built my entire business based on my soul’s hunch, my relationship with the feminine, and yes, my deep re-unification of both masculine and feminine archetypes. I CREATED MY OWN TEMPLATE. And I could not have done this if I’d left Her behind.

We are remembering our truest gifts.

We are activating our gifts – the true gifts of the feminine – by prioritizing HER.

We are bringing an ancient and new wisdom to the planet, now, when the planet needs new solutions.

I believe those solutions lie in the feminine wisdom, inside of you.
Unlock her, free her, know her, release her.

We don’t want to “rebalance” the archetypes. We want to LIVE OUT their fullest expression.

Let her teach you. Let her live through you.

ACTIVATE YOUR GIFTS THROUGH PRIVATE MENTORSHIP

Woman, What is your Masculine Template?

For years, I’ve been talking about the necessity as women for us to heal our relationship to the masculine. We have an old imprint of what “masculinity” means based on cultural standards, and we have to wash that clean and open our minds to what else is possible. I’m not so much interested in defining masculinity as I am inviting us into relationship with the masculine archetype.

I’ve been upgrading my masculine template lately.

While I’ve been healing my relationship to the masculine for many years, this new language of the “masculine template” recently came into my consciousness. It’s been a really helpful conceptualization and I hope that sharing it is helpful for you as well.

“Masculinity” I see as a narrative full of cultural assumptions and that’s not really my interest. Knowing the masculine archetype in both women and men and being in right relationship to it is what I am interested in.

I want to talk about the “template” that we have of the masculine, and I mean the masculine archetype. This template informs literally everything we do as women, and we don’t even realize it. Women are literally always forming their behavior based on the “template” of the masculine they hold in their consciousness.

Just this week, in a coaching call with a woman, she was able to see that her deep resistance to the concept of structure was because she subconsciously associated structure with the masculine and oppression. So – it’s happening in your subconscious literally every day, all day, that you are behaving in relation or reaction to your “masculine template” in your consciousness. I promise you.

I’ll explain further and take us deeper into this juicy, worthy, and potentially slightly uncomfortable contemplation.

As women, we have an “orientation” to masculine. We have a set of associations with men/patriarchy that are rather subconscious. We assume certain things of men and come to expect certain behaviors from men – not all of which are positive. This orientation to the masculine also includes all of the memories and imprints of wrongdoing that men have done. And, to take this to the depth that it really needs to go – we have imprints of the wrongdoings that patriarchy and religion have done, which are both associated with domination and oppression of women and the feminine.

Let’s look at some more real life examples of how the masculine template we carry influences our lives.

A woman was raised by a single mother with an abuse history who worked her butt off to secure minimal resources and basic needs. This woman formed beliefs from her childhood such as, “Men don’t show up, I’ll always be on my own, I have to work really hard but it won’t pay off.” She still carries these in her adult life and it forms and shapes the way she interacts with work, men, money, and even the extent to which she values herself.

How can you relate to that?

Another example: A woman is super talented in her work but it goes unrecognized by her male colleagues. She forms beliefs like, “Men are just in it for themselves, I have to work twice as hard to be recognized, my ideas as a woman are undervalued.” She spends her entire workday energetically responding to these perceptions. It shapes her.

Can you relate?

Last example: A woman grows up as a girl inside traditional religion and hears messages about subservience and being seen not heard. She grows up to be a good girl, silently frustrated with kowtowing to men who don’t even live in alignment to the true virtuous messages of the religion, but use it as a way to be dominant. She forms an orientation to the masculine that says, “I need to ask permission to be me. If I don’t behave I won’t be loved or provided for. I just have to keep giving myself to men and volunteer causes even though I’m not fulfilled.”

How did your relationship with this supposed “male god” influence your relationship with the masculine?

Each of these women has an orientation to the masculine.

Each of these women have so very naturally confused the behavior of men and religion for the true masculine. It’s happening everywhere, so commonly, that we don’t even question it. Entire feminist movements have been oriented toward fighting against what is conceptually in front of them – an orientation toward an oppressive masculine.

When we see the masculine as destructive, abuser, oppressor, dominator – we carry that as our masculine template. The template we then orient to. When we have the formative experiences of shadow masculine, including trauma and oppression, our psyches, our cellular structure, our bodies begin to orient to all men, all ideas of masculine, all masculine essences as oppressive. The template was formed, and then the template is what we carry out.

“Men are dangerous.”

“Men are takers.”

“I’ll have to do it all on my own.”

“I’ll have to give him sex if I want to secure my livlihood.”

It’s so common for women to carry a template of an old, wounded, shadow masculine, isn’t it? We’ve grown up in patriarchy, for thousands of years now, and so our orientation toward this immature, aggressive, dominator masculine is well formed. It is the template to which we orient our lives.

But it’s not serving us. In fact, it’s keeping women very trapped. It’s causing women to expend massive amounts of time and energy defending themselves, hustling extra hard, giving away life force energy, fighting against something, feeling as if something is being taken from them, etc.

Orienting toward an outdated template is a trap. And, it’s a choice.

Women can upgrade our template of the masculine. And we can do this whether or not we have the external evidence of it.

And we must.

When women with masculine-related trauma in this old and outdated template ask me how to heal their relationship to the masculine, the first thing I tell them is that this happens inside of their hearts.

Women habitually look outside of themselves for the examples of masculinity that they can have faith in – and when they think they’ve found that person, they put all their eggs in that basket. We enter relationships with men who we think, “This guy isn’t like the rest, he won’t hurt me.” We look for men who understand “sacred masculine” and do men’s work.

But this is not actually the way we heal our masculine template (because nine times out of ten, we’re just attracting more of the old template when we search for it in a man). We update the masculine template in our hearts, in our imaginations, in our own healing journey with the masculine and in our own contemplation.

We heal our masculine template by healing our traumas associated with the masculine, which of course can take some time and is big work. But, if you’re reading this, you’re up for that work.

Begin to ask yourself what the evolved masculine, the sacred masculine, even the masculine aspect of God looks like to you. What does your heart know and dream?
THIS is the creation of YOUR NEW masculine template! This is where YOU get to recreate the masculine that is possible and what you want to see. You get to feel it, imagine it, and then *form your behavior in relation to this new template.

Even before you have the external evidence that it exists, this is what you do.

For example, I know that the entire universe is comprised of both feminine and masculine and that there would never, ever be a Holy Father who would renounce the importance of the Holy Mother. I know that religious representation of God as a dominating force that positioned women as less-than is a total farce. Therefore, I don’t have to look for a church that understands this in order to validate my upgraded template. I can investigate what I believe and trust in my own heart. I can redefine my personal spiritual relationship with the Holy Father. In doing so, I get a new definition of that divine masculine essence, and I can orient toward that instead.

I can *choose* to orient toward the painful past template of masculine through the church or I can *choose* to orient toward a progressive and restored template of the divine masculine.

In this way, I re-imprint my own psyche and not only that, it changes the way I live. Maybe I don’t walk around as guarded or defensive anymore. Maybe I relax in how hard I push myself because I discover more trust in a benevolent provider masculine divine. (Real life example right there.)

Or, if you’ve not had good experiences in love relationships with men (maybe because you’ve been attracting from an outdated template), then you get to begin to rewrite your template of what is possible in love. You get to imagine it by developing your own relationship and reflection to the question, “What is masculine? What do I want in relation to masculine and men?” You get to dream it up, and then that dream becomes your template, and you not only orient to life from that new place and feel much better, but you also get to attract your next partner from this upgraded template.

Ask yourself what template of the masculine you are orienting to. Additional reflection questions could include:

How do I believe I will be treated by men?
How do I relate to the masculine archetype in my work?
How much do I trust I’ll be provided for vs how much do I work super hard to ensure that I meet all my own needs?
What do I believe is the definition of the divine masculine?
If I were to develop a relationship to the divine masculine, what would that look like?
In what ways do I trust or do I not trust the masculine in men or God?
What do I expect from men?

The template can always be upgraded, and in doing so, you are doing the entire world a service by re-imagining masculinity and orienting toward that upgraded template. You might not see it yet, but if you carry that template in your body, mind, psyche and orient your life and behavior toward it (instead of a victimized or wounded orientation), you will essentially birth it into being with your faith, curiosity, and the energetic template you carry.

Women, what is the masculine that you choose to relate to? Start living it. Today.