I’ve been working with many people, through bodywork, breathwork, and yoga, who struggle to connect with softness: how to slow down, listen to their bodies, and care for themselves. Their energy is directed outward at a time when their bodies are calling them inward.

This becomes especially apparent at this time of year, when work, life, and responsibilities don’t slow down – if anything, they intensify with the holiday rush, celebrations, and social commitments.

We push past what our bodies are actually asking of us.

On top of that, many of us experience guilt, shame, or a sense of missing out for not showing up in the ways we were taught we should.

January comes and we’re supposed to be ready for a new year, full of potential and drive, and yet we’re still deep in the midst of winter, and most of us are quite exhausted after whatever the year has brought.

If we look to the seasons for clues on how to nurture our organic bodies, winter tells us that new life is still dormant – it’s not ready to blossom.

This January, while the northern hemisphere remains cloaked in silver darkness, I’ll be sinking into what is often referred to as the feminine. In my last email or two, I spoke about yin energy — the more gentle, inward, introspective qualities — and how we can use this wintery time to connect with lunar rhythms and nurture ourselves in preparation for another year.

Masculine & Feminine Archetypes

You’ll likely have heard me speak about masculine and feminine energies. To be clear, this is not about men and women. These are archetypal qualities — patterns that exist within all humans, regardless of gender identity.

They are often described like this:

Archetypal “masculine” qualities
Direction, focus, clarity
Boundary-setting, protection
Action, initiation
Structure, order, meaning-making
Associated with the sun, summer, outward expression, yang

At their healthiest: presence, responsibility, grounded strength
At their most distorted: control, domination, rigidity, conquest

Archetypal “feminine” qualities
Receptivity, attunement
Connection, empathy
Cycles, change, embodiment
Creativity, birth, regeneration
Associated with the moon, autumn, inward energy, yin

At their healthiest: wisdom, care, adaptability, relational intelligence
At their most distorted: chaos, passivity, enmeshment, loss of boundaries

These distinctions are not absolute. From a non-dual perspective, what we often experience as separate — self and other, mind and body, masculine and feminine, human and nature — are conceptual distinctions, not ultimate truths. They are useful, helping us understand the layers of self and honour the many parts that make up the whole, but they are not fundamentally real.

We remember that differences exist within a deeper unity, a oneness, where boundaries are relative, not fixed. The ocean is a powerful example — you can tell waves apart, but you cannot remove one from the ocean.

In this article, I want to dive deeper into the archetypal feminine qualities, how they became under-represented, and how we can reconnect with them to bring more balance.

Why it’s important to reclaim this energy

Because we need both sides of the coin - structure and flow, action and rest, along with everything in between - to feel balanced and whole.

Much of modern life has tipped heavily toward one side. Many of us live in a culture structured around constant productivity and linear output — a 24-hour, sun-based cycle, where every day, through every season, we get up and do the same thing on repeat to earn money, provide for ourselves, live comfortably, and access all the wonderful things available to us. This is one side of the coin, and it’s important.

It allows us to meet our material needs, support ourselves, and participate in the world.

But it does not tell the full story of what it means to be human. And it has led to a burnt-out society, where running at a million miles per hour has become the norm.

This model creates a tight framework we are expected to conform to, where identity becomes deeply entwined with productivity, achievement, and financial security. Even when the body signals the need to slow down — or stop entirely — we often feel unable to listen. The fear is that if we step off the treadmill, everything will collapse.

It leaves little room for cycles like grief, illness, healing, integration, reflection, stillness, solitude, play, spontaneous creativity, spaciousness, or rest — deep rest. Many of these are feminine archetypal processes.

Over time, this disconnection becomes painful to acknowledge. It requires humility to admit that a part of us has been asking to be heard for a long time — and that we have become very skilled at ignoring it. But it tends to just get louder until we learn to listen.

So how did this imbalance arise?

It is **historical, not biological**. It is **constructed, not inevitable**—and therefore, reversible, as we’re actively seeing.

It’s a long story. To wrap it up in a nutshell, the balance tipped over a long period of time as societies began to organise around agriculture, economic expansion, private property, inheritance, and political power — and violence played a role in maintaining those systems, defending and claiming land.

Certain bodies became controlled for economic and inheritance-based ends. Care, reproduction, and domestic labour were devalued, while public power and expansion were prioritised. Religious and political institutions exploited this rhetoric for control of populations, because it served a portion of society extremely well. The patriarchy took hold.

This led to the systemic purging of strong female roles, further invalidating female power. The witch trials focused specifically on women with influence, money, and those not under the control of men — mostly midwives, healers, and herbalists, widows with property, older women outside male control, and women who resisted authority.

Through this systemic violence, a wealth of wisdom, ancient knowledge, and feminine archetypal resonance was lost.

Furthermore, within an industrial and economic model that values only uninhibited growth and expansion, it’s easy to see why archetypally feminine qualities such as introspection, softness, and rest had no place — becoming undervalued, under-represented, and even exiled. After all, “if it can’t make you money, it’s not valuable.”

However, through the onslaught of widespread burnout, disease, and depression growing rapidly in number, we can now see that this one-sided mentality does not serve humans. We need balance. We need both strength and wisdom to create a harmonious society.

In forgetting how to care for ourselves and one another, we also forgot how to live in reciprocity with the natural world. We exploited everything we possibly could — which means we exploited ourselves.

This has largely been a journey of the ego. Now, many of us are being called back to the heart — to temper control with vulnerability, and striving with surrender.

“Strength without wisdom falls by its own weight.”
— Horace

Perhaps this imbalance was part of the learning. Perhaps we needed to experience it fully to understand, at a cellular level, that it doesn’t work for most of us — and to evolve toward a more integrated way of living, where connection can live alongside prosperity.

So here’s to balancing out the books, and the reason for this article.

We can use the seasons as guides, weaving between our own inner expressions of outward and inward movement, honouring the full spectrum of what it means to be human.

Ways to revalue the feminine this winter:

**Practice compassion** - be gentle and forgiving with yourself, avoid judgement and temper the inner critic with loving words.
**Slow down** - stay at home, reduce your schedule, practice more gentle fitness options.
**Spaciousness and time out** - take a bath, flight mode your phone, go offline
**Prioritise your health** - choose the health of your body and mind over the demands of your career
**Tap into your sensuality** -sensuality here means *felt experience*, not performance. Dance. Notice textures, warmth, taste, scent, and sound. Eat slowly. Feel water on the skin. Let pleasure be subtle and ordinary. Hug yourself.
**Honour cycles rather than consistency** -notice energy fluctuations across the day, week, or month. Allow productivity, creativity, and rest to ebb and flow rather than expecting linear output every day. Let “enough for today” be enough.
**Journaling** - I have included some journal prompts below
**Rest without earning it** - nap, daydream, or do nothing without reframing it as preparation for later output. This directly challenges over-identification with worth-through-doing.
**Honour grief and transition** - mark endings, losses, and changes, big or small. Journal, cry, speak aloud, or create a simple ritual. Trust your wisdom of completion and closing cycles.
**Slow the nervous system on purpose** - gentle practices like yin yoga, breathwork with longer exhales, restorative movement, or lying on the floor with one hand on the heart and one on the belly help shift the body out of urgency and into presence.
**Spend time in attunement with nature** -walk without headphones. Sit with a tree. Observe tides, weather, or moon phases. Nature models cyclical intelligence and teaches regulation without words.
**Creativity without a goal** - engage in art, movement, writing, or sound-making with no outcome in mind. No sharing. No monetising. Just expression for the sake of expression. This restores creativity as a life force, not a product.
**Ask the body for consent** - before saying yes, pausing, or pushing through, ask: *Does this feel like an opening or a contraction?* Let bodily feedback have authority.

Short journal prompts for feminine archetypal connection

What is my body asking for right now?
Where can I soften instead of push?
What does slowing down reveal today?
How can I slow down a bit this week?
Where am I out of rhythm with myself?
What season am I in - beginning, tending, or releasing?
What sensations are present in my body right now?
What wants to be expressed without a goal?
What kind of rest do I actually need?
Where am I overriding my inner knowing?
What feels nourishing, even if it’s inconvenient?
What happens when I allow myself to pause?
What am I ready to let go of?
What would it feel like to trust my body more?

A gentle reframe

Connecting with feminine archetypal qualities is not about becoming softer all the time, abandoning structure, or rejecting action. It’s about restoring relational intelligence, embodied wisdom, and responsiveness - so action arises from alignment rather than depletion. It’s about honouring both outward drive and inward phases. It’s about maintaining health and vitality in body and mind by asking ‘what is true for me?’ Instead of ‘what does society say is right for me?’

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With much love,

Rebecca

Yin in a Yang World - Reclaiming the Feminine & Restoring Balance