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Big Medicine ~ Womb Energy

I had someone ask me just recently what I meant when I talked about or referred to big medicine or small medicine. Just what did and does that mean?

Good question.

So, I want to clarify what I mean when I talk about these terms which I do, both here and in my classes, and in the doing so, I want to tell the story of how this farm came to be, the story of how we became rooted here and how this connects to my personal medicine. But that part of the story will come later.

Big medicine to me is a dance of three things in relation to green healing.

First, is your personal power, or what I like to call your womb energy. Your womb is the sacred space within you from where all things are born. I had a woman in class once, childless and happy about it, who told me she always balked at the term womb energy, didn't even like the feeling it gave her, as if she were no more than her womb, from which she believed nothing really flowed from anyway. It wasn't until I explained it to her as the place and source of her creative energy and flow that she really got what I was talking about.

Our womb energy, or personal power, is about our passion for life. You are either growing and flowing it, or it's waning, and growing it takes commitment. This is a commitment to yourself, but in turn it is also commitment to the green world around you.

Now, how we manifest our passion for life, our purpose and how we give it meaning is as different as each woman is herself. A woman with healthy and vibrant womb energy glows and radiates with knowing. Though it may be hard to put your finger on it, or define it in words, the bottom line to a woman with personal power is that she makes time for what nourishes her. Be that belly dance class, time spent in the wild, more truthful interactions.....she is a woman who is actively engaged in feeding her passion. I feel invigorated around these women, I love to share space with them.

I also see women whose womb energy is so low and leaky they almost do not even take up their own physical space. Women who are constantly apologizing for themselves, women afraid to voice their opinions, women who put the needs of others constantly before their own to the point their creative flow is all but stopped up. I see women in pain, chronically unhappy, and deeply unsatisfied. I see women so ashamed of their bodies, so fearful and disempowered of our womanly rites of power and passage, be they birth, menopause, lactation, moontime or death they will give their power away to the first white coat they see.

So, how do you know if your womb energy is full?

Ask yourself!

Do you feel you are living with purpose, meaning, and authenticity? Do you feel passion? Are you manifesting the life you desire? Are you actively engaged in a physical way to the wonder of the world around you? If you have purpose do you make space to manifest that purpose? Or bring it out of your head and into created reality? Do you celebrate the blood mysteries? Your body as whole/holy? Are you making time to let your creative juices flow? To be energized?

If not, there are things you can do to build your womb energy. First and foremost, you have to get out of your own way.

Being in your own way can take on many different forms. But the underlying cause is always the same. You. This gives you power though, because you can always change yourself, and really there is no better time than right now, in this moment, today.

Many women know what they should be doing to nourish themselves more, to make space for their creative outlets, to give themselves the time to explore their passions. And yet........they don't. They have an idea of what nourishing food means to them. But they don't take the time to prepare it. They have an idea about the nourishing people they want to be around, yet they don't make the time or space to get together. They have an idea about nourishing the physicality of their bodies and engaging all of their senses but yet.......they always find excuses and promises to do it "tomorrow".

They blame their spouses, they blame their mothers, they blame their job, they blame their children. They look everywhere they can for reasons not to nourish themselves, and they numb themselves out with addiction, and distraction, until days and days tick by, and then years pass.

Or it can manifest itself in little lies. You can be your own worst enemy of building your womb energy by perpetuating inauthenticity. First told to others. Saying yes when you mean no. Telling lies to others to make them feel better at the expense of our own feelings. Not speaking your mind when your heart desperately needs it. Being different people to different people, lying to create a better truth for them, though each time you create a more pleasing truth for them, your own truth leaks out the back door. Then believing your own lies yourself. You have said them so many times they become your truth. This leads to deep insecurity, and degrades our authenticity, wears on our integrity and seeps away our personal power.

The first step if this happens to be your own particular brand of being in your own way is to make time to do nothing. In space to do nothing but just to sit, somewhere outside preferably, you make way for that tiny voice, your authentic voice, to be heard.

And this is what I call getting out of your own way. I know this path intimately because I've walked every painstaking inch of it. I've grown from active self destruction, and numbing myself to apathy and disengagement. I've moved from silence and stuffing my emotions to raw pain and anger. And the first thing I had to do to grow my personal power was love myself enough to nourish myself.

When no one else was looking, just for me, because I am worth it.

I gave myself permission to say no, and I started saying it as often as yes. I stopped telling people what I knew they wanted to hear and started telling them what I felt. I gave myself permission to speak my mind and let the chips fall where they may. I started making time for the friendships that I felt nourished me and pruned the ones that didn't. I made the time to cook my greens, eat my yogurt and brew my infusion. I listened to my intuition instead of suppressing it. I paid attention to my sexual desires. I took the time to leave the dishes in the sink to slip out into the wild and breathe and be. I opened myself up to the green world around me and put the time in. I took on responsibility. I faced death with my eyes wide open. I took time to play- with myself, the children, and my goats. And as I did, I became more fully alive, more fully present, more *here*.

I felt my womb energy and personal power grow. And as this happened, my medicine grew. Just like that, it really did.

I became a better mother, teacher, lover, and friend. Whatever energy was stuck in me started flowing, and I started radiating with purpose and meaning and I started to hear my voice and my calling. It was there all along, I just had to get out of my own way and open and tend the space for it to grow.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am no beacon of womb energy, blinding all with my light and power (lol), moving through my days with unparalleled energy and enthusiasm..........I often struggle with these concepts, I often feel my womb energy waning, and its something I am constantly aware of and working on. I need to tend me. And I need to do it often as my needs change and evolve. I struggle to stay present, rooted in the moment and not just in my head.

But I've learned to *engage* the energy, not ignore, numb or dismiss it. And I do this by constantly checking in with myself. By getting out of my own way, and setting time aside to nourish my creativity, to give myself freedom to express myself without thought to how I may or may not be perceived. I make way for myself to express my whole range of emotions knowing that I can only grow by expanding and including rather than "rising above", repressing, or pushing something aside. This is the way and path of the Wise Woman, the woman of power.

When we spend time nourishing and growing our womb energy, something amazing happens, and our medicine, our ability to heal, our ability to connect with the green world, the plants, the animals, it flows from us and starts to nourish, to "green" if you will, all that surrounds us. And as our healing energy benefits all that is around us, through this we can recognize our deep connection to everything and our place in the world. We become rooted in our power. Our power to love, heal, and change. Our power to remain flexible, vibrant and truly alive.

This is one of the three key components to big medicine as I express it.