The Everyday Mystic

Flow vs. Force Dynamics: How to Yield From the Body w/ Amanda Helen

• Corissa Saint Laurent • Episode 87

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We live in a culture that worships the mind. We strategize, analyze, and optimize, often treating our bodies as mere vehicles for our brains. But Amanda Helen, a somatic expert and founder of Science & Magic, argues that this disconnection is the root of burnout.

In this episode, Amanda joins Corissa to discuss the practical mechanics of Feminine Embodiment. Far from being just softness or gender roles, she defines feminine energy as the ability to be "animated in the body"...to yield like a river rather than rigidify like a dam.

Drawing from her background in neuroscience and her recent initiation into motherhood, Amanda breaks down how to care for the nervous system of a high achiever. They explore the science of self-touch (Abhyanga) and why scratching your own head might be the most underrated productivity hack available.

In this episode, we cover:

  • The Biology of Surrender: How Amanda’s experience of childbirth taught her that the body has an intelligence far superior to the will.
  • Feminine vs. Masculine Energy: Moving beyond gender to understand the energetic poles: the masculine as the "witness/container" and the feminine as the "animated life force."
  • Nervous System Care: Why you can't embody your power if your body is stuck in survival mode, and how to signal safety to your amygdala.
  • Somatic Practices: Practical tools for leaders, including dry brushing, oil massage, and the use of a lacrosse ball to release trapped emotional energy.
  • Living Deliciously: Why engaging the five senses isn't an indulgence…it's a neurological reset button.

Notable Quotes:

  • "Feminine energy yields like a river flowing through a riverbed. The river is the feminine, the riverbed is the masculine." — Amanda Helen
  • "We're not going to yield in our minds... if we don't feel safe." — Amanda Helen
  • "Stress gives you superhuman powers... without that activation, you wouldn't move away from the thing that doesn't serve you." — Amanda Helen

Resources & Links:

Connect with Corissa:

If this conversation awoke or inspired something in you, please consider leaving us a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review to help us reach more people. 

Thanks for tuning in!

Corissa Saint Laurent

What's up, beautiful souls? I'm excited to welcome back my first returning guest. So you can hear my conversation with her in episode six, where we talk more about her, her background, and her spiritual path and journey. Amanda Helen specializes in nervous system care, feminine embodiment, and helping high achievers work in a more sustainable way. Her work includes private consulting, digital courses, a virtual membership platform, and a popular meditation album, which I love, called Neurosound, which you can listen to and download directly from her website. In essence, she uses science and magic to live deliciously and help others do the same. In this conversation, we talk specifically about feminine energy embodiment and what the differences are between what some people may think as feminine and masculine, and speaking about it from an energetic perspective. We get deep on the subject of living in the body, living with our senses, being more attentive to ourselves as a spirit, having this human experience, and remembering that the human experience can't be denied, that this human experience is exactly what we came down here for. And to live deliciously, in her definition, is to live fully in that human experience, in touch with the body, in touch with our mind, integrated in all of our being. And in this conversation, we're going to talk about that process, as well as, of course, amazing tips for you to take away to more deeply embody your feminine essence. You're listening to The Everyday Mystic, where we share advice and stories grounded in the practical and supercharged by the spiritual. I'm your host, Carissa St. Laurent, and I'm on a mission to demystify the mystical and transform your everyday life into one of greater meaning, higher purpose, and true joy. If you're ready to tap into your inner wisdom and the energy of all that is, you're in the right place, and we're so happy you're here. Let's get this party started. Hi, Amanda. It's so wonderful to have you back on The Everyday Mystic. Thanks so much for joining us.

Amanda Helen

It is an honor to be back. Thank you for having me. I love talking with you and discussing ideas with you about spirituality and being human.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Yeah, the the that intersection, the spirituality and humanness is, I think, one of the reasons why I connected with you so deeply because you have this embodied practice, right? It's not just, okay, we're we are spiritual beings and we're gonna go blast off into the spirit world and kind of live out there floating above the earth. Um, you have a very embodied sensibility and practice and understanding of how spirit works in in our lives. And it comes through being embodied in it, right? Being grounded in in that. And so let's we're gonna dive into talking about today specifically about how we embody the feminine and that particular energy, because I know that's been a big part of your work and a huge part of how you contribute to this conversation in the world. For anybody who did not listen and tune into Amanda's uh prior episode with me, you can go back, I'll link it in the show notes. You can go back and learn more about Amanda, who she is, what she does. You can go to all of her sites and check out her amazing YouTube channel as well. But today we're gonna dive deep and talk about feminine energy. And you, since we last spoke, you've done one of the most, I guess, classic feminine rituals of having had a baby and gone through that whole process since we last spoke.

Amanda Helen

Yes, it has been the journey of a lifetime. I can't think of a bigger transition that I've had or will have in my life than becoming a mother. So um, talk about the embodiment of feminine energy of hosting life in your body and birthing that life and being a vessel for life and creation to flow through. And because my work is in embodiment, I feel that I really I'm still integrating a lot. My little one's almost 18 months. And you know, I've heard that it takes two years for the brain to fully rewire after having a baby. Um so yeah, I've learned a lot about feminine energy in a different way through the embodiment of becoming a mother.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Oh, yeah. So tell us a little bit about that experience, knowing so much already about your own body. What was surprising to you? Something that really, oh, I did not see that coming as far as something that you experienced from a spiritual standpoint as you grew this being or birthed this being, or even, you know, postpartum, something you've experienced.

Amanda Helen

I think you can hear about this all the time with giving birth or new motherhood, but like it was a complete miracle in my body. I was amazed by how everything unfolded on its own time. And it was the biggest surrender of my life that peaked at the time of labor and delivery because I wasn't growing my child with my mind. I wasn't like, okay, heartbeat, time to start beating. I wasn't like, okay, lungs, time to develop. My body was doing that. And this is something we spoke about in my training in biodynamic craniosacral school of how there's an energy field around us, and there's a blueprint around us, and that when we link into that blueprint, things develop in harmony. And oftentimes our thinking or our will or ego or personality can get in the way of that blueprint. And so, my job for nine months was to nourish the vessel of my body as much as I could with foods, with supplements, with kind words, with prayer, with rest, and let this being grow within me and just trust that it was everything was developing. And I took um a birthing class called Hypnobirthing, and it was about really nervous system care. So when the baby, when my baby was birthed through me, my job was to keep myself as relaxed as possible. So with the intense sensations that were flowing through, not to grit and to like clench my jaw and grit my limbs, but to just become just become limp and just let the energy flow through me. And I think I was amazed. I mean, at the time I was in a different state of mind, but I was amazed at the intelligence of my system to move this life through my body. I really didn't do anything. And that is something that I to this day I'm like continuing to integrate and take with me into my work, my heart-centered work of like, may my body be a vessel for life to flow through. May I nourish my psyche, my spirit, my physical self, and be the highest vibrating vessel possible. But at the end of the day, like there's something that flows through me. And that's like the work that I want to bring into the world too. And this is the feminine way of like just allowing. And I really was amazed by my uterus, I guess, my womb, like to really contract on its own. I wasn't like womb, like uterus contract, it just did it. And I look back and I'm like, wow. So I have this deep respect for my system. Everyone's journey with pregnancy and labor and delivery and fertility is their own. And I want to acknowledge that. This is just mine that I'm sharing. It's not a general sweeping, you know, everyone has their own stories with this. But that's what I in my story found to be the most incredible is the intelligence of my body.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Yeah. Well, I'll counter or argue that you did do something really powerful, and that's letting go. Yes. Right. It takes a lot of effort to let go, to surrender. That was something that I didn't do as well as I could have during birth. I also went through hypnobirthing and was really in a very relaxed hypnotic state, I would say, through most of my labor. But there was a part of me that was not letting go. I was like holding on to this baby for dear life, um, holding on to it, sort of gripped with a subconscious fear that I didn't realize I was in the process of at that time. And uh definitely couldn't do that last bit of surrender, that last bit of letting go. And so that is such a massive piece of not just being able to birth, but also in life, right? This this letting go and the surrendering to allow the full flow of what is meant to come through to come through and to dance and live in your body, do what it's meant to do. So I would I would say you mastered that at least during the birthing process of that surrender and of the letting go to allow that to flow through. And doesn't surprise me because you do this in your life too, through how you you operate. And let's talk a little bit about that, about how when energies are present, what we can do with them when we embody this feminine energy, there is a certain set of characteristics that come with that, of how we then work with other energies. So when we're talking about the feminine energy, it's not just feminine characteristics, right? So let's like let's lay lay the groundwork for that of how you would characterize feminine energy. So just that listeners understand where we're coming from there first.

Amanda Helen

The deepest way for me to feel into this is that feminine energy is the expression of life, it is the embodiment of life in physical form. It's Mother Earth. So I learn so much about feminine energy from not only being in a you know female body that I feel streams feminine energy, but also by observing earth and life. Masculine is the container that witnesses, that knows that it's alive, that sees it, that yeah, just gives life through witnessing, through consciousness. And so with feminine energy, it's this ability to be animated in the body versus holding space in the mind. And so the feminine way is to move down and out. That's how I feel. Like the energy is down and out, connecting into like the yin of the earth, and that masculine is up and out through the top of the head, and that's that yang. And we all have the this dance of these energies in our bodies and in our own it to be a healthy human, it's important to have that dance in our own lives, that we're just not fully animated in one or the other. But which one feels most native to you, most at home? And that's really your essence. And I think that some individuals can slide on a spectrum back and forth throughout their lives, and some maybe are more in like a 50-50 neutral, but the majority of us have you know a feminine essence or a masculine essence. And can we animate life through the body? So when I started my you know, my platform, my business about caring for the nervous system, about deepening connection with the body, I didn't know that that was feminine energy. I actually started to be identified by others as a feminine energy expert, and I had high-achieving women seeking out, working with me to build a connection to their body and amplify their feminine energy. So I started to incorporate that in my language because that's what I was doing was calming the body, parasympathetic nervous system, and then building relationship with body, which is life, which is the animation of life in physical form. And then through that, through being in body and expressing through movement, through dance, through the five senses, innately feminine energy is expressed, goddess energy is expressed. So much of our culture with um traditional, a lot of traditional religious paths are to transcend up and out of the body and to witness life and to kind of leave the body in a way and go into prayer and mental, mental, the mental sphere, which is beautiful. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just become more of the norm. And that's more of that masculine we're holding, we're witnessing life, we're witnessing our feelings, we're witnessing everything versus just being in it, dancing in it. And there's something so intoxicating in this beautiful way about living through your senses. And I feel very passionate about that. That's why my tagline, I mean, science and magic is a platform, but I also use the words live deliciously because it's living through the senses. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's scrumptious, it's full, it's filled with life, which is feminine. It's like the gushing waterfall or the rainforest, that ecosystem of the rainforest. So lush. That's life, that's feminine, mother nature, father sky.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Yes, and the spiritual community can be so rife with the father sky energy, the the transcendent or ascendant kind of energy, the nirvana, you know, of just leaving the sphere. And um, it's been a it's such an interesting part of my journey too, of where that used to be how I was spiritual, you know, that used to be how I spiritualized, right? It and really came to understand that oh, it's it's an experience of the those, the mixing of those energies. It's that yin and yang, it's the balance, it is the playful dance within. And the within is us, it's the vessel, we are that vessel of what allows that withinness, right? We allow that dance and that mixing. What are some of those things then that we can do, man or woman, to embody more of the feminine energy? And then what does that do for us? What does it do and allow for us in our lives to have more feminine energy? And again, listeners, we're not talking about being more feminine from you know a gender perspective, but from an energetic perspective. What does that look like? And then what do you feel like that does for us as humans and as souls in these bodies?

Amanda Helen

Um, step one for me is just bringing my consciousness into my body. In college, I was in a course called Experiential Anatomy. I loved it. We would meditate like on our liver, or we would meditate on our spine, or we would bring our awareness into our body. So, right now, perhaps we're just become aware of the heart or your bones, and you just bring your awareness there. Now, I think what happens is that many of us have nervous systems that are overly activated or feel uncomfortable when we bring our awareness into our body. There can be a lot, so that can feel out of touch or overwhelming. And this is really where I work with my clients over a course of time and understanding how their nervous system plays a role in their embodiment because to work with the nervous system to move it out of a state of survival helps so that when you bring your awareness into your body, you're not triggered, it's not overwhelming, it's not too much. It can be really helpful to have a helping hand in that. That could be somatic experiencing, it could be working with a body-centered therapist, not a mind-centered therapist, someone who's body-centered, and just kind of get if you have a nervous system that that's a bit out of balance, which many of us do because we live in a high stress. I want to say high stress. The stressors we're dealing with right now, most of us in a developed world are very different than the stressors our ancestors dealt with. They're less do or die, right? But they're more constant. So, and they're very much more internal. So it's moving the nervous system out of that state of fight or flight into a state of calm. So then this allows your body to soften, which is very feminine. Feminine energy yields like a river flowing through a riverbed. The river is the feminine, the riverbed is the masculine, it's the container that holds and directs the life of the feminine fluidity and flow. But to yield is very feminine. So we're not going to yield in our minds, in our bodies, and our energy if we don't feel safe. So nervous system care is number one. And then from that place, once we start to develop this feeling of safety in the body, in our environments, then how can we start to inhabit the senses? So when we're eating food, taste that food, relish in that food, feel the delight of the flavors on your tongue. When you hear your favorite music, like soften your inner ears and receive the sound vibrations and delight in it. So you start to bring awareness into your body and then feel into like that feminine energy, that life, that goddess energy living in you. And this does all sorts of wonderful things in our neurochemistry, too. That would be step one and two is nervous system care and then starting to animate through the senses. And this is all about deepening connection with body. And then from these things, your body will start to express your life, your feminine energy, however it wants to, maybe in the feminine characteristics. But if you hold that feminine pole, it starts to become really magnetic to the masculine pole, which is like, I want to witness this being really tasting their food or listening to this music. And so you're expressing this life flowing through the body, the spirit of the body, and then the masculine pole is like, wow, I'm holding space and witnessing this life in physical form. Nervous system care, living through the senses. Those are the first two that I would recommend.

Corissa Saint Laurent

I love that you brought up that it then will inspire your masculine energy to be more present as well. So these things don't replace each other, right? It's not, oh, we've got, we're now going to focus all on our feminine energy, and then therefore we're no longer focused on our masculine energy. I love that you shared that by focusing on the Feminine energy, it is enlivening more of the masculine energy. And that's what the honoring of all these energies really does is that when we honor and are holding and creating space to hold it all, it allows for all of it to become more magnified or augmented or alive in us. Yes. So that's beautiful. I want to go back to what you were saying about the nervous system care, because a lot of people are either in a fight, flight, or freeze mode more often than they think they are, right? So not just when they almost get hit, you know, while they're driving. Obviously, that's gonna send you into one of those modes pretty quickly, but we're in those modes more often than we think we are. So, what are some of the ways that we can recognize that we're in one of those modes, just like in our daily life while we're working or while we're living or doing anything?

Amanda Helen

Well, again, it's dropping that attention into the body. And I know this might sound elusive if you're listening. You're like, what do you mean? It's actually pretty simple in the sense where, I mean, if it helps, you can touch a different body parts. You can see like, okay, hand and heart, or my hand is on my stomach, because that lights up a part of your brain. It's called the somatosensory cortex, it's a map that moves across the top of your brain and it lights up those neural pathways. So it's energetic because you're putting your energy in your body, and then it's also got that neurological component where you're building the neural network associated with that body part. And you just start to say, interesting. Okay, my heart rate is increasing, which is a sign of stress if you have a heart rate that's beating really fast. My stomach feels in knots, so everyone's different. This is what I work with my clients on is like, what are your signs of stress? Like, how do you know that you're activated? Um, we all are in different bodies, but there are some general signs that you know the nervous system responds in certain ways. So it could be the jaw is clenched down, you're gritting, the breath is short, the hands are sweating, mind is racing, so you're just ideating the same thought over and over again, ruminating, like replaying, stuck in your head. All of these things can show that you're in a state of fight or flight. If you're moving really fast, if your focus is really narrowed, you're only looking at one thing at a time and darting your eyes from one object to another object to another object, leaning forward. All of these signs can be physiological signs to you that you are in a state of activation and that your body thinks it's in danger. And that's step one, and you just say, hello, stress. No, it's like it's not a bad thing. It's really not a bad thing. We think, I feel like stress is really shamed a lot in our society because we experience a lot of it, but it gives you superhuman powers and it helps it's energy without the without that stress, that activation, that get get up and go and get your food, that move away from this thing that doesn't serve you. Like that's the those are gifts. So it's just step one, knowing that that that's there, and then neutralizing your judgment of it.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Yeah, that's beautiful. And I I love the neutralizing energy around it and how it's it's almost like this welcoming it to the party, right? You're not shunning it, you're not closing the door on it, you're not ignoring it. You're saying, oh, welcome, welcome, thank you, right? Because it's a gift. Thank you for being here. And what can I learn from you? What do you need, right? And having like an actual relationship with this energy of the stressor, whatever that stressor might be. So in that recognition phase, you are having and opening up the door to this relationship, and then you are allowing it to show you what it needs, right? Show you why why it's there and what then you can learn from it as you learn about it, right? And actually have this relationship and communication and conversation with it. That's to me a lot of the feminine of allowing, right? And having that conversation, having that relationship. It's not that masculine energy can't have relationships, but the feminine energy tends to focus more on the maybe the deepening and the nurturing of those relationships, it seems.

Amanda Helen

Yeah, that pole, that feminine pole is more interdependent. It's relational, it's an ecosystem, it's the rainforest. And the masculine energy is more of this independence, and neither of them are bad. Like we all have those elements in our bodies. And when we can lean into that interdependence of communicating with the body, the ecosystem, the rainforest of the body, and letting these different parts relate to each other and not judging any particular, you're not gonna judge um the moss over, you know, the monkey. It's like they're all just a piece of the rainforest, and it's all beautiful and relating to our stress and being in the body, transcending out of the body and thinking of stress as something that's in the mind and that's mental, and then you say the same story and you try to solve it from the area of the mind. I find that when you can move into sensation in the body and neutralize it and say, Okay, my heartbeat is is beating really fast right now. Okay, there's butterflies in my stomach. And then you just feel the sensations of those things, just as sensations.

Corissa Saint Laurent

You're coming into the body, which is feminine, you're having your human, you're having your down and out experience, and then you're letting everything just, and then the the masculine in you is holding space for all of it and seeing it and whether it's you mentioned the second step beside, you know, we've got nervous system maintenance and then sensory experience, you know, really feeling and sensing all of what's going on in the body. And you mentioned, you know, even touching that part. I found that that is a massive way of just immediately connecting to the sensation, the aspect of you, so that it's almost like your hand, the energy from your hand is uh is like a separate being that can make you aware of this other part of you. So we have this massive like magic or you know, the energy, and certainly from an energetic standpoint, you know, having chakra centers in our hands that can connect to both the universal energies as well as in our body. Bringing that awareness with our hands to these parts of our body are such a powerful way to connect in. And we don't often touch ourselves unless people are doing it from like a sexual standpoint, right? They like, okay, we'll touch ourselves when we want to do that. But otherwise, we're not touching ourselves and it's not as acceptable or normal to do that. So let's just talk about that sensual or just uh normalizing that touch of our bodies and and doing that in a way that's meaningful to this whole story. So, what are some of the ways we've got obviously just bringing attention to and touching ourselves in that way? What are some of the other ways that you can suggest?

Amanda Helen

I love that you're bringing this up. This has been such a huge part of my coming back home in my own body after giving birth and being a new mom. Is I have really worked in self-massage into my routine. I did it when I was pregnant a lot as far as oil massage. So this was a big part of my practice is I will take uh olive oil or sesame oil, and before I take a shower, I will rub oil all over my body after dry brushing. And I feel like it like coats my nervous system with this like delicious, fatty like coating that just holds it in a hug. And I don't, you know, I make sure to do a make a ritual of it. So I'll light a candle, I'll have beautiful music, I'll say affirmations, but I just oil up and then I go into a hot shower, and any of that excess oil will come off of my skin. And it just grounds me to like have that self-touch. And we're talking, you know, the toes, the ankles, the heels, like every part behind the ears. I think in uh Ayurveda is called abhyanga. Yeah, it's just something that I love doing. And then postpartum, I really got into breast massage to circulate the energy around my breasts and move lymph and move that heart energy. I have an amazing Qigong teacher, shout out Nicole Nardoni, and she has helped me a lot with that practice of how to, you know, relate to my breasts again after you know breastfeeding and just becoming a mother and their size changes, and it's just such a shift in my own body. So that's another way I use touch. And then sometimes I just like to scratch my head. I know it sounds interesting, but I feel like it gets the energy moving in my crown and it gets blood flowing and it feels so underrated. I think that when you know, when I scratch my head, I'm like, why don't I do this all the time? It feels so good. Like a scalp massage, like a self-scalp. It just does it take that much time to be effective in just lowering the system. And then face massage. Face massage can be really, really relaxing. We hold a lot of tension in our face, like furrowing the brow and like gritting the jaw. So taking five minutes and just massaging out the jaw around the eyes, having your favorite serum or oil, it feels luxurious. So I've used self-touch a lot in the past couple of years to move me through this transition into motherhood. And um I'm a body worker. I, you know, I stepped away from offering that as my services after I became a mother. So I don't give that anymore, but I know like that is something that I enjoyed for a while offering. And I kind of have collapsed that back into my own body at this time as I'm healing from you know, labor and delivery and birthing and all of that.

Corissa Saint Laurent

And just getting back in touch with your body as your body without the the growing being inside of you. And your body changes, like you said, the breasts change, womb area. Like my body shifted and changed in a lot of different ways, you know, through birth and then after birth, and just like getting reacquainted with it as well. And I just love that you brought up the dry brush. Go back to that for a second because that to me is like one of those secret like tools that not a lot of people use or have, but it is mind-blowing what the dry brush can do. So I have one that is a it's a Japanese-style dry brush. There's probably other ones too. It's kind of square. It's you can slip your hand, not like in it like a glove, but kind of hold onto it. It's got all these like natural, they're soft but hard. I mean, they definitely stimulate your skin. It's not just like this like um washcloth. I mean, it's like a whoo, whoo feeling. And going from outer aspects of you into the heart really tends to stimulate and bring it and like circulate and bring on this detoxification effect. Like you're bringing things back in to be like circulated. And man, that's like one of the best things that you can do before a shower. Just get this brush. There's a few different forms of it too. I think there's like the washcloth kinds as well. So if you have any like trouble reaching your back, or you want to get your back, which it can be hard to do with your arms or hands if you're not very flexible. There's those types as well that you can get that just get going on your skin. That is such an incredible aspect of the practice.

Amanda Helen

Yeah, it's enlivening and it brings me back into my body.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Yeah.

Amanda Helen

I feel my skin, I feel any stagnation. I live in Minnesota, and so the winters here can get really stagnant, is a good way to put it. I love winter, but it can start to feel like energy is just still. And so for me, a dry brush, it's like, oh, it gets the rivers of my lymph flowing again, and it feels like all of my skin cells are alive, and it brings me from that head space into my body. And then coupled with that oil, then you put the oil on top of it, it's like it's the best.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Oh, yeah. I'm adding the oil in tomorrow. I took, I typically use coconut oil or olive oil, and it's funny in the kitchen. I'll often anytime, because we that's what we cook with. So anytime there's like some extra on a spoon or anywhere, I'm always just rubbing it all over myself. Yeah, just like oiling up, oiling the pan, oiling myself. But before the shower, I love that addition. So thank you for bringing that up. And and the self-massage cannot be overlooked. I was also a bodyworker and didn't give it enough to myself until later years. And that's one thing. The abdomen for me is a major area of self-massage because it's a it's an area of stagnation for me. I hold a lot of energy in my abdomen, in my gastrointestinal tract, getting in there to do that, and it can be really uncomfortable. So that's a tip for people like touching an area that is sensitive to you and uncomfortable for you is a signal to your body that that's where you need this touch. And and you're getting to this point of like normalizing that, and well, it's like desensitizing from that discomfort, but sensitizing to the pleasure of that. And again, we're not talking about sexual pleasure here, we're talking about sensual pleasure, this pleasure of this is my body. This feels amazing to be in this body. This feels amazing to feel this part that you don't normally even know that's there. So it's like bringing that awareness to these parts of you. You mentioned the toes, the ankles. Like who is thinking about their ankles most of the day, right? But when you bring that touch to that part, it brings your awareness to it. And sometimes you can then even start to self-diagnose these things. Like until I was really doing some deep abdominal massage, and you don't need to be a you know, a trained massage therapist or body worker to do this. We all have hands. Well, most of us do, and we can all touch ourselves in these areas, like just bring awareness through that touch to an area, and then sometimes you can start to feel like, oh, oh my gosh, that like ow. I didn't even feel that this hurt until I brought my touch there, which is amazing.

Amanda Helen

Yeah, and that what all this is doing too is it's bringing your awareness in your body and exploring being in this body, because we are not just these bodies or spirits in bodies, but these bodies can be such incredible tools of having a human experience, which on a spiritual level, you may believe that we're here to have this human experience. So animating life in the body through touch is animating feminine energy.

Corissa Saint Laurent

And you can bring other tools in. I don't know if you can see, see behind me, there's a basket back there of rollers and things. So you can write, you can bring it, doesn't have to just be your hands. If you feel like your hands aren't strong enough or they can't reach, like bring in tools and they don't need to be expensive things. Like one of my husband and my favorite tool is a lacrosse ball. And it's not a massage therapy or bodywork tool, it's literally a lacrosse ball. But that thing, my God, it's like a gift from heaven, how it can get into all these places. So I had a, I don't know, maybe it was a year ago, had this period. It was, I would say like a few weeks, months so period of major panic attack, tension, tightness, all going on in the chest. It was very much an emotional trigger. It was, you know, I there were emotions bubbling up that needed to be released, and they were all getting trapped here, and I didn't know how to release them. And it it showed up as this panic attack slash muscle pain in this area. And thankfully, I knew to like to grab this lacrosse ball, and I was awake one night all night in this pain, and I just took that thing and rolled all over it. I'm like moaning and groaning, it's so painful and so yeah, I mean, just so painful, but I knew to do it, like intuitively, I knew I needed to do this, and I was rolling all over this thing and just releasing so much, releasing tears, releasing moans and groans, and there was just everything was trapped. And so those tools can also be amazing ways to get in there and to do some of the harder stuff that maybe your hand can't do. Because sometimes our mind is controlling our hand, and it won't even let us get that hard. But like the tool doesn't have quite that same sensitivity to our mind.

Amanda Helen

Yeah, for sure. I love that.

Corissa Saint Laurent

Yeah, so the feeling our bodies, feeling our and through our five senses. So it's not just we're talking a lot about touch and feeling, but obviously our five senses go beyond, right? We've got our sense of smell, our sense of sight. So those are other sensory uh abilities that most of us have to, uh aside from touch, that we can utilize and bring in to allow ourselves to connect into our bodies more. So, what are some of the ways that you do yourself or recommend to clients to utilize these other senses to connect into ourselves?

Amanda Helen

I mean, there it's everywhere. That's the thing is like can we just inhabit our lives through our senses? Because we eat food every day. So, what's it like to not eat in front of a screen? Or to just slowly eat and taste? What's it like when you're walking into work to just take a deep breath in and feel the air on your skin or the sun on your cheekbones? You know, what's it? It doesn't take any extra time. It just takes intention to live through the body. You can definitely have a practice. I have practices, you know, meditations about animating the fire. Senses so it can be a practice where you go and you do the meditation for 15 minutes and you feel the five senses, but really it's just navigating through your experience through that place. We haven't talked about the heart yet because I think the heart is a really big piece of this too. Like even as I'm speaking right now, I'm thinking about my senses, but my heart keeps coming online. And the heart is this beautiful place that I think both the highest form of masculine and feminine energy lives. I often hear about the heart being the space of feminine energy, but I actually think it's this mixing point with that, the consciousness and the life. And so when the energy dropping the awareness in the heart, even if you, you know, just are touching your heart or you just feel your heart, then the stuff starts to become more intuitive and natural. Like the brain, it's hard to think your way into some of this stuff because the brain is a different operating system. But the heart knows. So you could even say at the beginning of the day, just place your hand on your heart and say, Heart, guide me to maneuver through life with the awakening of feminine energy and the goddess energy in me. Help me to emulate feminine energy when I walk into a room. Help me to experience the world through my body. Show me the way. That's surrender, that's trust, and that's just allowing. And then part of it's the discipline of like, okay, I have this intention. I'm going to really feel this cozy blanket that I put over me and just take a minute and pause. And that's that discipline aspect. But I think if we can align to the heart, the heart just naturally brings us into a state of coherence and balance between these energies and will lead us without a lot of effort.

Corissa Saint Laurent

The heart is the true guide in our lives, right? It's just the guiding light. It's so amazing. And I love what you said about embodying this in just life. Live life. These aren't difficult practices. We're talking about touching ourselves. We're talking about getting a tool or a brush and bringing awareness to our body. We're talking about looking deeply at something and just like really looking at it and taking it in. We're talking about tasting something and focusing on the actual taste, not just gobbling it down because you've got 15 minutes for lunch between now and your next meeting. Like actually just like you say, living deliciously, living and fully embracing what it means to be this alive being. And it doesn't take much effort, it doesn't take many tools, it doesn't take really a ton of things, except for, as you said, intention and focus and bringing that focus. So I think, you know, your meditations are brilliant, beautiful. I absolutely love being guided by you in those. And I think that can be a great kickoff, a catalyst for people, because if you've never done this before, yes, it can feel a little awkward. It can feel a little detached. Like if you're so in your mind and you're so type A and you're so go, go, go, which I certainly have been, I know you have been too in the past. Like we've been there, listeners. We're not just coming from this like softened, embodied, feminine place. Like we've absolutely been ruled by our masculine. And knowing that it does take some intention and effort, but then it can be so easy once you get that, knowing that it can be that sometimes you do need that little kick, that little catalyst. But I promise you, once you start to get into it, it does become very easy. But for those of you who are feeling like, okay, I need a little help, I need a little guidance. I could use a little kick in the pants uh around this, then definitely tune into Amanda's meditations. Um, she also has a beautiful course. Do you want to talk a little bit about the course and and how that invites people into this energy as well?

Amanda Helen

I'd love to. And before I talk about the course, I'm gonna send you on my YouTube channel, I have uh meditation just open to the public about connecting into the five senses. And then I also have a yoga practice that's called stretch and breathe to receive. So that's getting the body involved too. I'll send those to you, and listeners can just, it's open free to the public, they can dabble in some of this. My course, it's called, well, it's a program called Nervous System of a Goddess. And level one is called Soften, and this is my flagship course. So it's really designed to merge these topics of nervous system care and feminine energy. And some of what I was speaking about at the beginning of this conversation about how important it is to work with the nervous system for embodiment. I bring that into this course. So I offer education around the different branches of the nervous system, and I also offer yoga practices, meditations, lessons on feminine energy, and then ways to bring the learnings into everyday life. I always say, you know, my background's in neuroscience and dance, but I really offer applied neuroscience. Like, yes, we can learn about these things, but how do we apply it into our everyday living? So it's this combination of nervous system care, how to animate more feminine energy. And level one is called soften because it's designed to help us be in that yielding place. You know, bringing it back to the beginning, we're talking about birthing, like that yielding that's softening the body so life can flow through, so that we can receive our blessings, so that we can be that river that's soft and following the direction of the container of the riverbed. And level two is called glow, and this is really designed to get you into the heart, to magnetize your natural auric field, to emulate that radiance that's feminine energy that has a lot to do with, I think, heart connection and amplifying radiance through heart connection. So those are the two courses that I have right now through the program, but I plan on continuing to add on at some point. I'm moving really slowly right now as a new mom, but eventually I'll add on level three about receptivity. You know, once you soften, once you're radiant, you'll start to get a ton of invitations and openings and how to gracefully receive and feel worthy of receiving. And then level four, the plan as of now is to have that be about surrender and ultimately surrendering everything that you think that you want in order to just be in the moment. But level one is soften. That's I tell everyone who's interested in my work. It's a DIY course. You can sign up now if you want to and just move through the information on your own. On occasion, I'll host live calls just for members, and you get uh grandfathered into the grandmothered into the course. So that means if I as I add new content, you have lifetime access.

Corissa Saint Laurent

That's so beautiful. So this is a journey then that people get to enter into with you. And you know, if you don't have the means to work with Amanda one-on-one, what a beautiful invitation to work with you in this growing program that will end up having, I'm sure, even more parts than that as you dream them or as they uh land in you. Uh, I'll put all the links to all of the everything so you can find Amanda, find the links to these courses, to the free things that she's offering to you all. Thank you so much, sister, for joining us and for sharing your wisdom and your light and the beautiful insight on what it means to carry and hold feminine energy.

Amanda Helen

You're so welcome. It's always an honor to exchange with you. And, you know, I often get, I think I said this in our last conversation, but people ask me a lot to talk about just the nervous system. So it feels really nourishing to be in a on a platform and in a space where I can bring that spirit element in as well. So thank you for having me.

Corissa Saint Laurent

You're so welcome. We'll see you next time. And thank you, beautiful listeners, for tuning in today. Before you leave, head on over to the everydaymystic.org website and check out the experiences that we have to deepen your practices, to connect you more fully to your higher self and to source consciousness, to enliven and activate your soul in your life so that you can live a life with greater meaning, higher purpose, and true joy. Theeverdaymystic.org is here for you. Go check it out. And if you enjoyed this episode and enjoy this podcast, please like, comment, and share with anybody that you think would enjoy it as well. We'll see you next time.