What is it, to be an Androgyne?

And I'm not talking gender identity here.

To be androgynous - energetically, psychologically - is a process of integrating opposing energies or forces within yourself. You could consider this as masculine-feminine forces or energies, but if that doesn’t land in your system, other dualities are:

yang-yin, light-dark, rational-intuitive, outer-inner, stability-chaos, giving-receiving, action-stillness ...

Typically it's been the feminine-yin-receptive that has been devalued a consequence of living under a patriarchy. To solve the problem of ensuring women are worthy, and seen 'equal' has meant women needed to mimic or meet men where they are at. To prove themselves to be as 'as good as' men.

This is not inherently wrong - to be androgynous is to develop other complementary qualities than what you possess or default to.

However for women (and men!) this has come at a huge and devastating cost. Where the quieter, slower, subtler “feminine” aspects of being are devalued and rejected, rather than included or held together with the more active “masculine” aspects.

June Carey and Ade Adesina collab 'An Offer of Love'

Fire and Air trump Earth and Water.

Doing and Thinking is better than Being and Feeling. Do we really truly belive this? Do we want to keep participating in this weird lie?

Androgyny is about de-identifying as one or the other - to do away with duality - more both-and. To heal the divide that happens between these opposing forces, you can start by acknowledging how the split lives within you, and acts through you.

What aspects or qualities do you value? over-value? de- value?

How might this guide your choices and behaviour?

You might start to notice more, how the split operates out there in the world through relationship dynamics, roles, work, the culture, politics etc.

This makes in possible to slowly, (re)honour and reintroduce what’s been rejected through discipline and focus (i.e. healthy masculine principles, healthy feminie principles).

For instance, I’ve been consciously attending to my less honoured somatic and feeling parts, as well as the meeting point between the opposites, which I’m sensing physically and energetically as the heart-space – and emotionally and psychologically as compassion and love.

A part of me cringes at the cheesiness of this, but I’m experiencing this (when I slow enough to receive it!) as deeply peaceful and a contentment within myself of mySelf.

Marion Woodman says that from here we can “see with the eye of the heart” – making it possible to “rejoice in the other [feminine or masculine] without losing our own centre"

*These ideas are anchored in the work of Marion Woodman, Maureen Murdock, Helen M Luke and of course Dr E ., and dozens of other wise women (and men) I've had the priveledge of working with, listening to, reading from, meeting, encountering, as well as clients, and from my own lived experience.