... to embrace the feminine

Immersing myself in the concept of my new website, ‘Embodying Change’, I’ve been reflecting on when the holistic, embodied experience first caught my interest. I’ve been aware for many years of the limitations of talking therapy … as someone who is naturally intellectual, I’ve always had a tendency to intellectualise things and try to understand everything via words with my rational, conscious mind. I realised though that this wasn’t always effective in understanding myself or trying to bring about personal change. I then discovered the importance of bypassing the intellectual level (the ego) and accessing the unconscious via creative ways of exploring and working … which has proved hugely beneficial for me.


And what this reflection has brought to mind for me is a workshop I participated in a number of years ago … it was a weekend workshop facilitate by Natalie Rogers (daughter of Carl Rogers, the ‘founder’ of Person Centred Therapy) based on her ‘Creative Connection’ process of therapy.

Across the weekend, we engaged in a variety of creative ways of connecting with our Selves, our bodies, and thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories, and our unconscious. Natalie facilitated us in using dance, drama, our voices, guided visualisations, story-telling, metaphor and the use of various art methods (drawing, painting, collage, sculpture) to explore the issues arising for us across those 3 days.


For me again, it was the power, or knowing insistence of my unconscious which amazed me. Someone I loved dearly had very recently died and consciously I’d expected to find myself accessing and illustrating those very present and raw feelings … however, my unconscious had other plans …

As each exercise led into the next one, I realised that the things I was creating in art form and accessing via my bodily expression were all about my sense of self as a woman … and more specifically, my sense of self as a women within my own female body. Prior to this weekend, and as a woman with a history of eating distress, this was something I hadn’t fully appreciated; to begin to access this acceptance and appreciation was hugely significant and symbolic for me.

Many people living with eating disorders live at a distance from their bodies. They become disconnected and aren’t able to easily access their embodied experience. The body becomes a separate thing, an object, to hate or to change or sculpt into a more acceptable (for the individual) shape or size.

Towards the end of the weekend, Natalie facilitated a sculpture creating exercise with clay. Using guided visualisation, we were invited to work with a piece of clay, moulding and sculpting it into whatever shape or form was right for us. This was all done with our eyes closed, so we could engage fully with the clay in our hands, fully experience it and allow our unconscious to guide us in our creation.

As we paused in the exercise and were invited to open our eyes, I was surprised to recognise the distinct shape of a womb, fallopian tubes and ovaries. With my eyes close, I’d had no conscious idea as to what I was creating. And of course, the sculpture fitted completely with the rest of the things I’d produced earlier in the weekend.

We were then invited to re-engage with our sculpture. I’m not sure now, but I think this part of the exercise was done with music playing in the background. As I worked in a trance-like state, I was amazed to watch my hands re-sculpt my creation slightly and work it into more of a heart shape with outstretched arms.


The final sculpture was, for me, very emotive. Not only did it seem an inevitable conclusion to the weekend’s exploration, but it also symbolised a significant state of self-acceptance for me, and of my body as a female body with all the privilege and magnificence that affords me. The (my) heart reaching out with arms open wide to embrace the feminine …

It was also yet another confirmation of my continued movement away from my earlier eating disorder. For many years (both before and during my eating disorder), a lot of my self-hatred and un-ease had been directed at my stomach, which, in my mind, was never flat enough. For many women, a rounded stomach is natural … a female stomach has to house the feminine reproductive system, the start of life. A female stomach naturally has a covering of body fat.

And I find it now so sad that many women fail to recognise this, especially those with eating disorders or body image concerns. For many women, their stomach remains a source of self-hatred … when really is should be a focus of self-love and a celebration of all that is feminine.

So not only was that weekend filled with huge personal significance for me and the privilege of working with Natalie Rogers, it also reinforced for me, the power of working in ways other than the verbal. Taking away words, bypassing my intellectual / conscious mind allowed me to access learnings I wasn’t aware were ready to be offered and integrated. And because those learnings came from my unconscious and were experienced and processed in non-verbal ways, through the engagement of my whole body in the exercises … those learnings were experienced in a very profound and embodied manner … in ways too profound and deep for me to express fully in words here …