Episode 124 The Sacred Dance Of The Divine Masculine & Feminine: Interview with Vanessa Grace

Chris McDonald: In this episode, we explore the profound interplay between divine, masculine and feminine, as well as what these powerful energies are and what their significance is in our lives. I invite you on a transformative journey into the depths of our collective human experience. Here we go. This is Holistic Counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence.

I'm your host, Chris McDonald, licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast. The dance between the divine, masculine and feminine energies is a timeless phenomenon that transcends cultural boundaries spanning across myths, religions, and spiritual traditions. Throughout history, these energies represent the fundamental aspects of our being reflecting the universal balance of life itself.

In this episode, we'll delve into the essence of the divine, masculine and feminine. Explore how these energies manifest within ourselves, our clients, our relationships, and the world around us. Today's guest is our guide through this. Her name is Vanessa Grace. She is helping women steep in their innate divine feminine.

She is a radiance coach and licensed social worker who transformed through the fires of becoming unco dependent. And having a spiritual awakening. Vanessa joins mental health, spiritual practices, and life aspirations to help women create the lives they really want for themselves. Welcome to the podcast,

Vanessa Grace: Vanessa.

Hello. Thank you for having me.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, I'm so glad you're here. So I wanted to jump right in and. See what first interested you in wanting to help other women?

Vanessa Grace: Well, I had actually been working with teenagers for a really long time and was just noticing that I was having more of a passion for working with women, and I think it's because of my own inner evolution that I was having and my own inner changes that I was having.

I was working on myself a lot around my own co-dependency and was seeing how much I was noticing that around me and other women. And I wanted to share that knowledge and that transformational power with those other women. And so just I was changing into how who I was passionate about working with was changing.

So

Chris McDonald: how would you define the divine, feminine and masculine energies?

Vanessa Grace: So this is actually kind of a big framework to introduce to people, a big people, a big no. Well, it's a big thing to describe because it's a new way of thinking. Our society, like westernized culture doesn't really think about it in this way.

And divine masculine and divine feminine are more like energies rather than related to a person's gender. Cuz like everybody can have a combination of masculine and feminine in sight of them, and they're not really about. Oh, that is a trait that a woman has. It's more like that is a way of being that either a person can be or any of the multiplicity of genders.

So imagine in your mind a piece of paper that's divided into four and then a. One half of it is all masculine and one half of it is all feminine. Okay? And the top two squares are the divine parts, and the bottom two squares are the wounded parts. Ooh. Because there's actually divine masculine. Divine feminine.

And then underneath them are wounded, masculine and wounded feminine. So feminine. I'm making a drawing right now. I know everyone. Make everyone get a piece of, make a drawing listeners. So the quadrants are divine masculine, and then underneath it is wounded masculine. And then the other quadrant on the other side is divine feminine.

And underneath it is wounded feminine. Right? And so the masculine, if it gets what it needs, Operates in a divine way and the feminine, if it gets what it needs, operates in a divine way. But if the core need isn't met, then they can revert into their wounded aspects. And their wounded aspects are actually a ton of things that people end up having relational problems with.

And go to mental health counseling four. So if you. Begin to understand divine masculine and divine feminine. You can begin to see if your clients are in their wounded masculine or they're wounded feminine, and then you can lean into how to help them better. Because you have this additional framework.

The client doesn't even need to understand this concept for you to be able to lean into this a little bit more and help them with it because you can orient yourself in this new way. So it's really fascinating. When you begin to know these things, and there's a lot of resources out there. So listening to this podcast today can just be the beginning of your knowing about this framework.

So the divine masculine or the masculine, its core need is to be respected and the core need of the feminine is to be cherished. And so, If the feminine isn't cherished, then she can sink into things like codependency, disordered eating, drama. You know, the drama triangle. We're like constantly inserting yourself into other people's stuff.

You get pulled into stirring the pot, right? Stirring the pot, going into those TV shows that are like just a bunch of dramas on television all the time, and you're always sucked into it. So even. As a person who you know is a cisgendered male, you could be pulled into all of those drama TV shows, but in that moment you're actually like kind of craving to connect with the wounded feminine, even though you express as cisgender male.

That might be a little bit like too out there and too complicated right now. So, I'm also orienting myself as I describe this to you cuz there's like so much, and I'm picking what I wanna say. So there's that framework and knowing if a person is in their wounded masculine or their wounded feminine. But if you're in your divine feminine, what that's supposed to be like is you are expressing radiance, meaning your heart chakra is open and you're feeling radiant.

And it's almost like we don't even need to describe radiance. Because we can sense when a person is being radiant, they're like glowing. They're happy. They're confident with themselves and in divine feminine. That confidence is also expressed as flowing, not needing to be super organized with how our society often expects things to happen, which is linear and sequential.

That's more of the divine masculine. The divine feminine when she's operating at her optimum is actually taking inspired action. There's a lot of relaxing and chilling and doing playful things that are really fun hobbies or that make her very happy, and then getting an inspired moment. And then she takes quick action and then it comes to fruition quickly because it's like she took divine inspired action.

So that's like a shortcut. Where the masculine likes, likes to work in this linear way. When you are in your divine feminine, working in a linear way feels like death. You feel like you're dying on the vine. So we're asking all these women who are likely in their divine feminine, you know, that's usually their core essence is feminine.

It doesn't have to be, but it's often. So we're asking all these women to live in a society that's based on masculine, to go in a linear model. And then never giving them space to be in their divine feminine because culture doesn't support that. Like do that on your own time. Never be in your divine feminine at work.

If you're gonna produce something, if you're gonna be a professional, be linear. And so then all these women are like, you know what, I'm really burnt out because they're not being allowed to live their own truth. And if they live their own truth, well they might not get to keep their job because their boss wouldn't understand it and think they're wasting their time.

Cuz production is what's valued. Yes. Accomplishment, right? Accomplishment and production is what valued. So is that that's

Chris McDonald: more masculine, is what you're saying?

Vanessa Grace: Yes. And that is divine Masculine loves being on their edge. They love like pushing themselves to the limit and almost like being on like the razor's edge of something.

They loved going in this real clear linear path. Like running is really, really masculine. Because you're just going. But dance is more feminine because it's more fluid. But again, a person who expresses their gender as female can go running, but in that moment, they're doing something that's masculine. But that's okay because people need both of them.

And the people who are not on the gender binary. Really already understand this because they've already worked through our binary cultures, you know, forcing this one gender or the other on them. So they already understand all of this. They've already worked through a lot of this understanding that everyone else is still trying to catch up with.

And so they're, if anyone is listening who's not on the binary gender spectrum, they're always like, yeah, I get this. This is what I live, this is how I'm feeling this day. But people who experience themselves as one gender, Have a hard time relating to the fluidity of flipping back and forth between both of them in a more accepting way that's more, um, not being freaked out about being the other sometimes.

So the divine masculine and the divine feminine actually work together. It's not that one is better than the other. It's that you have like a homeostasis state and you need to go rest. In your homeostasis state, but

Chris McDonald: is the homeostasis is that I know that our bodies do that physically, so energetically is there a

Vanessa Grace: homeostasis?

I'm just using that term to mean if your main energy is feminine or if your main energy is masculine, but you're never allowed to be in that one, you'll burn out. And so homeostasis, I'm just using that term to mean like you need to be allowed to be in your divine masculine and come rest and do life that way.

If you are core essence divine masculine, but if you're always forced to be in flow, you are gonna burn out as a divine masculine core essence person. So then, you know, I had you made that chart of what the four were, and then kind of on the top it would be like a person would just make a tick mark. Uh, you know what their core essence is?

Is their core essence masculine is their core essence feminine for themselves, and then they know. Like I can live in both of these ways, but I need to make sure I have a little bit of extra of the one that I am. If I live in a way that's super feminine, but I'm corees essence masculine, I need to make sure that I build into my life things that are masculine.

What is the problem? If you're imbalanced? Well, then you move into being in the wounded. The wounded, okay. Yeah. Then you move into being in the wounded. And I already kind of described the wounded feminine, and I honestly don't know as much about the wounded masculine, but think about like the worst parts of the patriarchy.

Um, I guess like that could be toxic masculinity or feeling like you're not allowed to share your emotions and it's being driven to do things, but it's almost like the ego is more important than the experience of being driven. And so the drive is almost more about appearance, rather the enjoyment of.

Being on the path. And so really I think about the wounded masculine is just like the parts of the way men are asked to live, that like sequester their true self and they aren't allowed to showcase any weakness. So if you're like never allowed to express a problem that you're having, well that's still gonna be a problem for a guy.

It's gonna erupt somewhere. Yeah, it usually erupts out in anger or like attacking something else, and that's a big generalization, but if there's a guy experiencing a lot of that kind of behavior, he's probably in his wounded masculine. So then I would ask, okay, so. Where is he not being respected in his life right now?

But also, was he never respected as a child? Did he not experience respect as a child? So when a person isn't getting their needs met, they're gonna revert to one of the wounded. A lot of people with the core essence of feminine are in their wounded feminine, but because of our culture, then they put on a mask of the wounded masculine.

So you can have like multiple layers of all of this happening.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, I'm just trying to think about that. Yeah, so they would mask it. For what society expect.

Vanessa Grace: Right? So they're, they're, they weren't cherished. Or they're not feeling cherished now and taken care of, so then they're feeling like a wounded little girl.

But a wounded little girl doesn't do well in the world as an adult woman or as an adult non-binary person. And so it's better to survive in our culture, in your wounded masculine in a lot of ways. But there's a lot of people in therapy who are in their wounded feminine who are seeking to be cherished, and that's where all of these relationship problems come in.

Being engaged in relationships that are unhealthy. And we're all like, why are you in this relationship right now? It's so awful for you. But were they ever really cherished as a child? Did they ever really understand what it was like to be cherished? Was that cup ever filled? I guess cuz

Chris McDonald: is it,

Vanessa Grace: is that all they know?

Right. And we have a lot of psychological theories that already described that, but have, do we, how often do we talk about being cherished? Yeah. We don't, do we. We don't, and I think there's some conversation about respecting the masculine, but I think it's a pretty niche conversation. So

Chris McDonald: it sounds like there's, you gotta find some balance, like you said, the homeostasis with all this and, and it starts, I'm guessing with self-awareness too.

Where am I on this? As far as the divine and, and as far as the feminine and masculine, and what do I need to bring more

Vanessa Grace: into my life? And I wouldn't say the the goal is to not be 50% masculine and 50% feminine. The goal is to be the balance that is right for you, for your core essence, and to be living whatever the other percentages, the amount that you need for your life, and then giving yourself as much of your core.

As you need. Can you tell

Chris McDonald: me what core essence, what that means for, for my listeners too? That may be

Vanessa Grace: Yes. Yes. Wondering, yes. That means divine masculine or divine feminine. It's the one that is almost like running your energy system. It's how you feel filled up. It's how you feel happy. It's how you feel alive.

It's how you feel inspired. It's almost like it's your life force. And if you're cut off from that light force, you like die on the vine. So it's very much my perception of this. It's very much an energy thing, uh, like universal energy. So was that a clear enough answer? Yeah, yeah. Because I feel like sometimes this topic is so esoteric, it's like hard it is to nail down exactly what it means.

So to give everyone, uh, like a little bit of a tidbit of like, how to figure out what your core essence is. I'm gonna reference just from my memory now. So there's, there's a person that I learned a lot of this from. It was my coach named Ryan Yako, and he has a lot of information out there about divine masculine and divine feminine.

And so this is actually a quiz that he created that I'm just like remembering parts of it. So it's not mine, it's, it's his quiz. So if you. If you were to open one of your desk drawers and it's full of stuff that's feminine because the feminine wants to be full, and if you were to open your desk drawer and there's hardly anything in there, and it's super organized, but there's not a lot that's masculine because the masculine wants to be empty.

The masculine wants to be emptied out. So like the end of the day, if you just wanna come home and like vegetate in front of the TV or a video game, you just wanna empty out your brain. And that's why there's a lot of people out there who just des desire, they're des desiring. Yeah, they're desiring to.

You know, not have anyone be asking them anything. They're like, I just wanna be done with all of the things I have to decide, because they want to be empty of something being needed from them. But then the challenge of being in your masculine is that also there's a lot of like leadership qualities involved in it because the feminine wants to like lay back and rest.

And so there's a polarity, so they're being pulled together and so the feminine wants. To relax and have the masculine make decisions, not to give up power because the feminine definitely has a lot of power, but the masculine also is leading not to lead in a way that leaves the feminine behind, but in a way that brings her alongside him.

So that they can both grow together in a way that they both want, but it just not making as many decisions allows the feminine to be more flowy. Yeah. Cause you can't, it's like asking someone to be in their left way brain when they wanna be in their right brain all the time. And I just got off my own topic about asking, you know, sharing about this quiz.

So another aspect of the quiz. So it was, is your drawer empty or is your drawer full? Do you love paper products and stationary? That's gonna be. More feminine. Do you wanna play video games a lot. That's gonna be more in your masculine, and now my brain is running out of more of the questions that were on this quiz.

Okay. So I apologize because, no, that's interesting. I expected myself to remember more of them. I'll bring them up later in the episode if I remember more of mine. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And if you have a link to that quiz too, we can put that in the show notes if you do. I don't think, if you don't,

Vanessa Grace: don't think that he has it.

Available electronically. And he shared it with me digitally as a P D F to use privately. I don't think I'm allowed to like distribute it. Oh, that's okay.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. But that's interesting though, to think about and, and try to comprehend all this, cause like you said, I, I'm already getting the impression that there is a lot to this and this could, this could be a whole

Vanessa Grace: seminar.

Oh yes. And just to kind of go through some lists that I have in front of me. Yeah. The divine masculine is about thinking and leadership and making decisions. The masculine loves it when things are the same all the time. When there's repetition and there's just a routine for everything, the masculine's purpose is to like penetrate into the world and give their purpose to the world.

And so the masculine needs to be living their purpose or they're gonna fall flat and not feel like they're living their life. So if there is a person who is esce essence masculine, but they're with a partner who is always taking the lead and not allowing them, they feel like they're not allowed to take the lead or be living their purpose like that gets in the way of what their partner wants.

They're gonna feel crushed. It's like they're. Their mojo is gone. So the masculine needs to be living their purpose and they, they ultimately want freedom and they grow through criticism. And if you have ever been a boss who primarily worked with like cisgendered males, but then suddenly you're working with females or people who are more on the binary, um, who have a lot more feminine energy in them, you cannot be like helping.

Those employees grow through criticism. They're gonna like cry their eyes out in front of you and be like, why are you being so mean to me? Oh my God. Like, no. Exactly. Or if you are leading a fitness class and you're like the instructor, if all of your attendees are in their feminine, you're not really gonna motivate these feminine essence people in your workout class through criticizing them.

They're never gonna wanna come back. Exactly. You know, or if you are working with a client who you believe their corees essence is probably masculine, you can probably be a little bit more straightforward with them about what the issue is that you see like, Hey, you are not making this kind of a choice.

And you could just be blunt about it. But if you choose to be blunt with a feminine essence client, They might really like, that might create a divide in your relationship with them. And so it's just interesting to think about, yeah, who wants bluntness and who wants softness in terms of how you approach them as a therapist.

That's something for,

Chris McDonald: for listeners to think about, like thinking about your

Vanessa Grace: caseload and. Also, if you're more interested in learning more about specifically the masculine side of this, there's a guy that has written several books on it and he tips a little bit into the feminine, but his name is David Data and it's not d a t A, it's like d E I T A or some unique spelling.

Um, one of his books is called The Superior Man, and even reading that book, even if you are trying to learn about the feminine. Reading that book to learn about the masculine really helps you like get a whole new worldview. So just look for the book, superior Man, and then you'll find his name and he's got several books out there on it so you can have like deeper learning about it.

So then with the feminine, the feminine grows through praise. I. Which is pretty opposite from criticism. So you wanna keep telling the feminine corees essence people what they're doing right. To encourage them to keep going. And so if you think about like the way that we raise children and the way that maybe dads are raising children, um, or the, the thing, the kind of things that a dad will say instead of a mom.

You can just kind of almost see it in your head, what, what kind of parenting is happening and then the feminine. Wants to be cherished, but they also want love. But again, the masculine wants freedom, but the feminine wants love. Those are really different things. And so a lot of marital problems could be because you're trying to give your partner what you want because you don't know they want something different.

Yes. You know, and I've talked with several women who have a hard time understanding that the masculine wants to be respected, but not really understanding what respect means, because men and women think about respect differently. If a woman is piping up to share her own opinion about a problem, but she's doing it in front of her husband.

Also in front of other people, especially like coworkers of his, he might feel like he's being disrespected in that moment because she's like trying to upstage his knowledge in front of his coworkers or these other men. But really, she's just like, I happen to know more about this than you, and I'm just sharing my opinion.

What's wrong with that? Equality? Right, but in his mind, like now he's been shown to not know something, so he's actually being disrespected. Sure, you can tell me that, but maybe tell me that later or under other circumstances. And so when I learned that, I was like, say what? I've been disrespecting my husband in this way.

That's what I was thinking of my own right. Maybe not even that specific example of like saying things in front of his coworkers, cuz I'm like never with his coworkers. He doesn't have that kind of a work situation where I'm like attending parties with him or whatever. But I've definitely said things that I look back now that I know about this and I'm like, oh God, I was actually disrespecting him from the masculine perspective, but from the feminine perspective, I'm just being knowledgeable.

What's wrong with sharing knowledge? And so it like even understanding the different definitions with respect between men and women is huge. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Or again, masculine feminine, because there's all versions of gender, so the feminine needs to be seen. And if you think about how our culture does weddings, the feminine is totally on display in this insane dress, and then the masculine is in like this neutral suit or something that's generally more toned down and the feminine.

You know, often wants to adorn themselves with all of these things, and there's often this sense of love and attention, and that's not just about extrovert in introvert. I mean, an introverted feminine can love attention from small groups or from specific people. So it doesn't mean that the need for attention is always on display, but if the feminine wasn't cherished, And doesn't know how to get attention, that's healthy.

That's when it tips over into that wounded feminine part where I'm talking about there's still this need to be seen and to be cherished and to be praised. But if she's not getting it, then she's gonna start doing some desperate things to make it happen that are usually unconscious. Is

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the wounded feminine, is that, could that be like the fond response

Vanessa Grace: with trauma?

Yeah, definitely. That's a really good thing to bring up. I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm just thinking of that and thinking of myself. Yeah, well, fawning is definitely one of my trauma responses and mine tends to be freeze. Because of what would happen in my childhood. Like my dad was a yeller and then my mom would freeze, is my memory of it.

And I think I would freeze with her. But I think that my sister, I don't remember if she froze or not. I just remember like sitting next to my mom being frozen while dad's yelling about nothing because of his P T S D. But then that would also become fawning cuz now I'm trying to fix it. Yes. And all of that.

Is rooted in like people pleasing and co-dependency. And again, and I know co-dependency is the wounded feminine because of all of my own process I had to do with the co-dependency in myself. Yeah. So that was a really long answer to bringing up fawning, but I was like, oh, this is a great way to talk about the trauma response.

Yeah. So I'm just

Chris McDonald: remembering that with your client's listeners, just recognizing

Vanessa Grace: that. Another thing with the feminine, the, so the masculine likes. Uh, repetition and everything to be the same, and the feminine creates and destroys. So a little sidebar, it's not that feminine and masculine are just inside humans.

Feminine and masculine as a concept, as an energy is inside all of nature. So like if you, oh, this is another part of that quiz for Ryan. Ya, Comey comes if you enjoy, if you enjoy coffee, that's masculine because it creates energy for you to go. If you like tea, that's feminine because it's about relaxing into the moment and just being right.

Yes. So that's another thing to think about. So even coffee and tea are masculine, feminine, but also the feminine creates and destroys and destruction. When I first heard this has like a negative connotation to it, but really if you wanna build something new, you have to undo what was there before. You know, you have to like level it in some way, and sometimes that feels negative to people to like talk about destruction and like, oh, now the feminines bad because it's destroying something.

But I've undone several layers of my own business and they had to be undone to be able to do the next layer of my business that was to come. And we all do that. And so that process of like, well, I'm gonna stop doing this and end it and need to grieve it to then start something else over here. Cuz we only have so much bandwidth in our lives and so many ways that we can put our energy out there.

But then also you think about a volcano, it's creating and destroying and there's just a lot of parts of nature, like the seasons create and destroy. Just by existing as a tree, there's a lot of nature that is very feminine, how it works. And so you can kind of perceive life around you like, oh, that has the energy of masculine with it.

Oh, that has the energy of feminine with it. And I just, I personally perceive things around me that way. Not to pigeonhole everything and make it an absolute, but just to help me have a framework to understand. And of course, all of us as uh, mental health professionals have many frameworks. And theories that we look at the world through, and they don't have to be true and applicable all the time.

This is just another one, and I happen to choose to use it a lot for my own worldview perception, and you can use it as much or as little as works for you. You know? Yeah.

Chris McDonald: It, it just remind me too of if f s with parts work is, do we have. Like a feminine part or is this more energy,

Vanessa Grace: like you said? Ooh, that's a really good perception.

Yeah. Okay. So there could be parts of us inside of ourselves. I really think about the ages of where we get stuck in things. I think about that a lot and I don't know if that's the same thing, cuz I haven't actually. Been trained specifically in parts work, but I think I've picked it up over the years, but maybe I don't, I'm just saying I don't trust myself to say, oh, that's parts work.

But, um, if you think about your inner child, like which parts of it are in which of these four quadrants, but I would suspect they're in one of the wounded if they're still a part inside of you. Yes. Because usually they like age up and kind of integrate into you when they're healed and if they're healed.

Then they're gonna move into their natural state of divine, masculine, or feminine. I love that question cuz I've never even had that thought before. You just heard a first new thought for me.

Chris McDonald: I don't know why I just started to think of that when you're talking about the different energy. Cause I'm, cuz I'm learning more about if f s I'm not certified or anything, but I use some of, I've had some training, so I'm still trying to process it and understand it.

Mm-hmm. And learn and it comes out more. And more once you have some of this knowledge when you are working with different kinds of clients. And, and I've had a lot more inner child work that I've been working with clients on and seeing like the wounded child, especially with trauma. And I, that's, uh, that's interesting to think that, so if we try to heal that inner, I guess that you said the wounded feminine, like if they were, depending on what age they are, that that could maybe go on to be more of a healthy part of them.

And

Vanessa Grace: it is. I've never thought about. That connection before, so now I'm fascinated by it. I know. Now we gotta stop and think, right? I know. We're both just like pondering, Ooh, this is new and exciting. We're going deep today, listeners. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I'm just looking at my notes to see if there's any other, any other points that I wanna make sure I'm making.

So something that I haven't said about the divine feminine yet, is that a way. To be more in your divine feminine is to experience all your feelings. And there can be this perception of the divine feminine that there's a lot of like radiance and joy with it because joy is often associated with radiance.

But your heart can be fully open and experiencing the world, but you might feel like crap. And so it doesn't mean that you're always experiencing joy and that you have to be happy all the time. Divine feminine is. Really about feeling all the feelings and allowing them to flow through you, which is something that I already have done a lot as a former mental health therapist turned coach.

And so that's something that I've leaned into in myself, and I'm just gonna say it's real messy. It is like it takes a lot of time to feel all of my feelings. It derails me. There's a lot of crying. I cry like five times a week, even if my life is fine. Just letting it flow. And I, I cry more easily at things now.

Yeah. I mean maybe that's age related too, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's just because I've chosen to lean into my feminine more and live that lifestyle. But if you want a quick hack about how to be more in your feminine, feel your feelings. Let them, let them happen. Which could be scary. It's just making me

Chris McDonald: think.

Cause I have a lot of clients. That have so much trouble with that and everything gets repressed. They push down, push down, and, and it just comes up so much. But then I think about some of these clients, they do have more masculine energy, and I'm talking about female clients, but they have the more masculine.

So that makes sense to me now. And I never put the one and two together really

Vanessa Grace: think about that. Right. And you can potentially ponder like, okay, so maybe I can lean into some of this feminine stuff with them and talk to them about it more. And they don't need to know that's what you are bringing to them.

I mean, you can if you want to, but you don't even need to explain it to them to do work with them, to bring out the feminine more and to support that more or to make their wounded masculine feel safe. Or respected because really the wounded masculine wants to feel respected because that's what the masculine wants.

Chris McDonald: Do you ever educate clients about the All the time. Okay. Cause I wonder if the, that would be helpful because just hearing what you're saying today is really helping me to look at things a little different.

Vanessa Grace: I especially have talked with people about it and, and most of my clients are cisgendered women and I have a lot of experience working with people who are l lgbtq, but I worked with more of them.

Who were teenagers, and I've worked with less of them as adults, so I tend to have cisgendered women who are in hetero relationships. And so I will talk to them about the balance of the masculine and the feminine in the relationship and pointing out like, well, it looks like you are doing more of this, and he's doing more of this.

And that you're clashing on it because you're each not respecting and cherishing each other in the way that you both want. And then they can see how things have devolved. Normally when a relationship begins, there's a polarity happening because people are in their masculine and the feminine and then they're drawn to each other.

And that's, um, a natural state, kind of what's supposed to happen. And that's what what creates the attraction and the spark is being at the extremes of it. And so, When you're in a relationship and the feminine person has to start making more decisions and picking up more of the slack, and then you've been together for 10 or 20 years, and the feminine is doing all of this stuff and never has time to replenish themselves, then the masculine feels diminished because the feminine.

Part has become more masculine. So then he takes a step back and isn't leading as much. So now he's not as in his masculine and she's more in her wounded masculine or wounded feminine. And so the polarity has kind of like diminished and there's not as much magnetism. And so we talk about, you know, relationships.

That are really long-term, go through these changes and it can become like being a roommate. Well, when it becomes like it's being a roommate, it's because the masculine, feminine polarity has been lost. If you look at it through this perspective, through this kind of theory, so that can be recalibrated and recaptured to have the polarity again, if at least one person in the relationship works on.

Their core essence more, and that means stopping doing all the stuff that's the other polarity, which is a disruption to the relationship, but eventually it evens out. It's

Chris McDonald: almost like a dance back and forth and trying to figure out what is, how can I change both partners to change part of that, to bring in more of the other and.

Vanessa Grace: Right. So if the masculine person who has it's kind of been diminished, if they step into it more and start doing more masculine things, then it almost like sucks the masculine towards them and then the feminine starts responding different. Just like you change any behavior in a dance of the relationship, if one person changes their move, the other person has to change as well.

And the same is true in this perspective. Yeah. I can

Chris McDonald: see how this would be so helpful in couples

Vanessa Grace: counseling. It really is. And I, I don't know a lot about it from that perspective, but you do, from what you just said, um, I feel like I just said what I did know. Yeah. No, that's amazing. You might have just heard everything I know about it in terms of how, like, how to make the change in the relationship.

Cuz I feel like I'm still trying to step into my feminine. Corees essence more to create. I'm, I feel like I'm still trying to work on creating the polarity and I'm, I've made progress with it, but I don't feel like I'm there yet on my, part of it, in my own relationship. So it's like I'm a work in progress.

Well, like all of us. Yeah. But there's, there's information out there specifically on what I'm talking about that's way more in depth, that we'll have a perspective on how to help a client do that or do it with yourself. You know, make your own life experiment first to see what happens. Before you begin with clients.

Yeah. You know, whatever people wanna do. So

Chris McDonald: have you embraced, I guess, your divine

Vanessa Grace: feminine? I continue to step into it more and more. I mean, my business was focused on codependency for a long time, and just over the last two months I've switched to focusing on working with women and divine feminine and.

The four phases of the menstrual cycle, because there's actually four phases to the menstrual cycle. Um, and they each have a different purpose. And again, the masculine is the same every day and the feminine likes to flow well. The feminine actually has four distinct, uh, ways of being in a month. And guess what, they're not each a week long.

Some of them are seven days, some of them are 12 days, some of them are three days because of course it's not by a calendar weekly. So I'm more excited to talk about. Those kinds of things with people now. So I changed my business, so I've even stepped into it. Talking about divine feminine in my business more than I ever have before.

So

Chris McDonald: that's one way, I guess too, that this can, I guess, surface with, with your business. Cuz a lot of listeners do own their own practices and this may be coming up for them

Vanessa Grace: in different ways. Yeah. A great, like simple example about work is I had a coworker, therapist who is still a dear friend and she. We were talking about the schedules that we were making for ourselves for our own therapeutic businesses when we were both mental health therapists in the same practice together.

And she was showing me her calendar she was making for, for herself, for the availability. And I was like, oh, it's, that's like a lot of different changes cuz it was like, I. No two days had the same hours of availability and I didn't know anything about masculine feminine at the time. And I was like, that's a lot.

Can you handle that? That's really all over the place. And she's like, no, I love it. And I, here I was trying to have the same calendar availability every day that I was working, cuz I did have a couple days where I didn't see clients and I look back and I go, She was living her feminine essence and she didn't even know it.

She was just being honest with herself that she wanted a different schedule every single day and, and she loved it, but a masculine person would just die on the vine with a different availability every single day. Yeah, and I mean, if you have like three things going on in your business world, like.

That's different, but she'd love starting at eight o'clock on some days and going till seven o'clock other days, and it was just like yes to her. And so if you own your own business, why not set it up in a way that excites you, just in terms of the structure, because the structure is masculine, but then what you do within the structure, you could flow a lot.

And if you are masculine, then set it up in a way that excites you. And that might mean that it's really linear and really much the same, and that's awesome. I

Chris McDonald: could see that, that this could be, this could be a whole course, shouldn't it?

Vanessa Grace: Like, I mean, really it's feminine in, in your business. Yeah, for me, I have a really fun binder that I actually just showed you before we started recording.

That is all the cutesy things and it's a little bit like scrapbooking. Um, and it's all cutesy stuff and that's super feminine, but I use it to help me keep me organized and once a week I go through my whole calendar and I schedule all the things I need to get done that week. Um, and then guess what? 90% of the time I don't end up doing it in that order.

But I have to create a calendar and a schedule for myself of what needs to be done, and then I flow within it and it usually goes to hell by the end of the week. But some of this stuff gets done and life happens. Yeah. But so you can create a structure for yourself as a business owner that's realistic for you to then flow within if you're in a feminine.

But if you're in a masculine, you really need to create a structure and it's probably really satisfying to Exactly follow that structure exactly the way you want it to be. But then again, if you're in your divine masculine, there's part of you that is feminine, and so allow that feminine part out. You don't have to hide it.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean girly or that you're gonna get picked on by somebody, which is often the case. Sure. It just means that maybe you surrender or you have a feeling that you let out or you flow. Or you allow yourself to feel cherished, because those are all feminine things that are actually okay to experience as a cis male.

It doesn't mean you are not masculine, it means you're a whole person anyway. Yeah, no. So those are just some ideas about how you can incorporate this just into how you're running your business. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: I can see how this can impact every part of everyone's lives and can be so many ways. So, so maybe the homework for listeners is to really notice around you in relationships in your business, where is the masculine, where is the feminine, and how can I bring more of the other in and what that might look like.

That could be

Vanessa Grace: interesting, and I've just chosen to do a real deep dive on my life with this. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's a life lesson for me. Yeah,

Chris McDonald: for sure. No, thanks for all the wonderful insights today. And what's, what's the best way for listeners to find more about you and is there a good link? So I

Vanessa Grace: am, I am on Instagram pretty regularly and I have text messages that I send out three times a week that are like inspirational phrases, things about divine, feminine and masculine.

Just like meeting your goals, maybe like some co-dependency, encouragement type stuff. And that link you'll be sharing. Yes, this will be on the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. And then I also have a podcast called the Soul Amplified Podcast. Um, and the name of Michael Business is Soul Amplified. So it's soul amplified everywhere, like soul amplified on Instagram.

So that's how people can find me. I do have a website, but that was more when I was focused on co-dependency. So you can still reach me through there. But the website is all about co-dependency cuz I haven't, it switching to being a Radiance coach is so new that I haven't even bothered to update it yet.

That's okay. I'm, I'm not ready for that, but you can still find me there. Okay, good. And then I am doing a three month group circle for women online called Radiance Recipe to help women step more into their defined feminine. And I will say that women just means like anybody who has a feminine part of themselves, you don't have to be a cisgendered woman, like kind of any gendered person who feels.

Like they wanna lean into their feminine is really more what I mean with that. Well, thank you so much

Chris McDonald: for coming on the Holistic Counseling podcast today.

Vanessa Grace: Yes. This was such a delight to speak about this with you, and I'm glad to bring more information about this out into the world. Awesome.

Chris McDonald: And that wraps up another episode if you wanna join me in other holistic.

Therapists who are as excited about deepening their knowledge of holistic modalities as you are. Come on over, join my Facebook group, the Holistic Counseling and Self-Care Group. In this group, you can ask those burning questions about how to integrate your modality into sessions and any other support you need.

And the link is in the show notes. And once again, this is Chris McDonald's sending each one of you much light and love. Until next time, take care. The information in this podcast is for general educational purposes only, and is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal, financial counseling, or any other kind of professional advice.

If you need a professional, please find the right one for you.