The Healing Power of Embodied Feminine Leadership | Klementina Karol | Ep. 26

Is feminine leadership the key to our future?

When it comes to co-creating a more sustainable and just future, it’s clear we need to do something different. We know that business as usual is broken, but what exactly are we transitioning into? What does the leadership of the future look like?

This is exactly what Klementina Karol and I explore in this episode of Living Leaders. Making the transition from conventional business practices to a more feminine, cyclical and regenerative version of business and lifestyle can be scary at first (not to mention our conditioning keeps us fearful of making such a change), but the results and rewards on the other side are nothing short of magic.

In this episode:

• The connection between purpose and pleasure
• Becoming more embodied in our leadership and decision making
• Healing our collective shadows and traumas to heal the current paradigm of work
• The raw truth and reality of transitioning away from traditional business practices
• Transforming our relationship to the masculine to discover the power of feminine leadership

Tune in as we uncover the immense potential of intuitive, heart-centered leadership. Discover how to tap into the wisdom of the feminine, integrate the shadow, and lead with compassion. Together, we can co-create a future that works for all.

About Klementina Karol

Klementina is a transformational coach, working at the forefront of sustainable transformation within and without, for the regeneration of our planet and its people. 

She helps guide influential leaders to transmute conditionings and fears, so that they may lead as their most authentic, empowered, intuitive selves. Clients often comment that Klementina is precise with identifying and helping clear inner blocks and limitations. She’s served hundreds of clients to do this. 

Klementina is the founder of EPIC Humans Collective and has experience as a Sustainability Consultant & Executive Coach. 

Schedule 30 minutes with Klementina: 

https://calendly.com/klementina 

Connect with Klementina:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/klementinakarol 

https://www.instagram.com/klementinakarol/ 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:01

Hey leaders, welcome back to another week of the Living Leaders podcast. Today I have with me Clementina Carroll, who is honestly one of the coolest, wisest humans that I have come across, and I've had the pleasure of working directly with her as her client for the past eight to nine months. She has been helping me to dive deep into the shadows of my being, really looking at the patterns that I have been operating my life and my business from, and are those patterns that I want to keep or am I ready to evolve? We've gotten into some really juicy territory when it comes to childhood trauma and the beliefs that I picked up from the adults in my life or the society that I was brought up in the ways that I've internalized all of that. She has this really magical way. She is so gifted at identifying these patterns in a way that feels safe to approach, in a way that feels like it's coming from love and not fixing. She has been working with high impactors and amazing humans from around the world who are seeking to have high impact in sustainability, in social impact. She's really showing up to help guide those who are ready to step into the full potential of their leadership and leave behind the wounds or the trauma that might be ready to be healed. I know that she has certainly invited me into a completely different relationship with myself, and I believe that by the end of this episode, you too might also begin to develop a completely different relationship to leadership and yourself.

Speaker 1: 2:45

In today's episode we get into some amazing topics from the connection between pleasure and purpose, the actual pleasure that we can derive from having an embodied leadership practice. We get into the power and really the necessity of conscious feminine leadership practice. For our current global context, it is so important that we learn how to pause, how to connect with our intuition, how to listen to our bodies and not just run our organizations from our minds. We look at some of the most common collective traumas that Clementina has been seeing among her clients, including how those traumas might show up as patterns or even coping mechanisms in our adult lives. We get into the pattern, for example, of working hard and this story that we've bought into, that we must work hard in order to be successful, in order to get the love that we need, and we also both vulnerably share what it's been like to transition from a more conventional model for leadership and transition into a more feminine based approach to leadership and running our companies. What are the results we've seen from that? What has been challenging about that? We really open up about our experiences in making this transition and in healing ourselves in our own leadership practice so that we can really show up to the purpose that calls us most.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Again, I just feel so honored that I even get to introduce you to Clementina Carroll. Even just being in her presence and listening to the way that she describes these current challenges that we face is medicine. So with that introduction you're probably chomping at the bit to hear what Clementina has to say. So I won't stand in your way any longer. Let's get right into today's episode.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Clementina, I am showing up with so much deep, deep gratitude in my heart for you today and beyond, really over the moon, over the full moon today that we have this conversation and share some space for the listeners who maybe don't know this, clementina and I have quite a background together because we've actually been working together at least eight or nine months at this point, where Clementina has been an amazing healing leadership coach for me and has really helped me to dive into some of the shadows in my own patterning, really looking at the blueprint of my gifts but also all that blocks me and all of the ways that I was getting in my own way, and we've done some remarkable healing work together that has quite literally shifted every relationship in my life but, most importantly perhaps, my relationship to myself and all of the inner parts, the inner child, the inner micromanager.

Speaker 1: 5:54

It has just been such a journey and so I just wanted to share that context with listeners, because we've had such powerful experiences together and I know we're going to get into a lot of these themes today as we explore the evolving definition of leadership and how to show up as the healed and fully expressed versions of ourselves in our leadership practice. Incredibly grateful for this conversation and for you being here, clementina, and I want to start by just inviting you to share a bit from your heart of anything relevant in your background that you feel called to share with listeners, and what is really activating you these days, what is most alive for you and how your gifts are wanting to show up in the world.

Speaker 2: 6:42

Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. It really warms my heart and, as also we did with the grounding and took a few breaths before we pressed record, I felt like the safety and the connection. So it's beautiful to be here with you and there's so much safety because we know each other so well and we have done that the deep work together. So thank you for that and having me on your podcast, and it is really aligned. To you know, from the first day that we met on LinkedIn, things were very aligned. We were like, oh wow, you're doing that and you're doing that and like, totally, it's been so aligned because both of us are in sustainability and consciousness and evolving humanity in a hard light way. So they're very aligned.

Speaker 2: 7:31

And what I want to share? A few things that have been on my mind recently and I think they're also related to my experience. I'll just do like a few touch points on my kind of like history. I come from the corporate world where I used to work in multiple roles. It was an interesting development because I learned so much. I value so much that experience. Yet I remember that moment when I was like running for the train once and my heart was just pumping so fast and I was just like putting myself always into this like stress kind of like situations you know, always like really busy as a badge of honor, always achieving as a badge of honor, always trying to prove my worth, I would say as well. So that culture of business and stress has been a little bit alive in me these days because I'm really focusing and writing about feminine leadership and why we need to actually get into the body, because actually I realized years after that my body was not designed for this lifestyle of like always being busy, achieving and having this kind of, let's say, bosses in the hierarchy who will like push you really like. I remember my last position on business development. So I was working in for like one of the biggest corporates in the world in business development and that was so stressful and so demanding and so much not aligned to my values actually in terms of how the leadership was, I see, in that specific position. So years after now, I'm still healing my nervous system and I'm still coming out of those stress responses in my body because they've been so ingrained in my body. So that's just one of the instances I feel that shape me and help me transform because I realized this is not worth it If I have a heart attack at the age of 30, it is really not worth it.

Speaker 2: 9:30

What happened after I started? Really, I wanted to be in the field of sustainability and I had already been doing a lot of work on the side on that in that industry. So I started working on a Unenvironment Initiative for coral reefs conservation and you know, part of me like, even though I felt I am doing difference in the world, something didn't feel fully right, something didn't feel fully embodied, or I also had this anxiety about how we're going to make it as humanity. Interestingly so, yeah, that's when I moved from Brussels to the Philippines and then actually I moved to Bali, and that's when I met one person who also changed my life.

Speaker 2: 10:10

And so when I met Benjamin from Neural Together, he was researching around our collective traumas, fears and beliefs which are at the root cause of the collective unsustainability, and so, having had that experience and actually then continued working with him, it was really interesting because I actually started looking at myself on a much deeper level than I had before, so actually looked at my traumas and I was like for the first time I realized, oh, I actually didn't have a normal childhood. I mean I had the normal childhood but it wasn't like that. I have no trauma. We all have trauma. Trauma is actually how we respond to things, like our bodily response to whatever like it can be, just like being in supermarket and my mother getting lost from my mother and then feeling abandoned and scared, and that creates kind of like this response. So a lot of these things we might not even remember. So anyway, diving into my traumas and beliefs beyond anything I've experienced before, like these collective beliefs we have about who we are, our inherent worth and what we actually inherently believe about humanity, etc.

Speaker 2: 11:21

So that was a really, really interesting experience that shaped me further into realizing actually, if I want to work on sustainability, I better work on the root cause, and the root cause seems to be in our inside. What do we have inside and how do we relate to others in the outside world? So that's when I started actually creating more, started creating actually more from my own self. I think it was this kind of like connection between my that actually I am worthy from the inside. It's almost like now that I connected and reflect on it and that kind of haunted me also to create more and more as a creator myself, which I had never really had.

Speaker 2: 12:02

I had seen myself before as, but I was like no, I cannot be an entrepreneur, I cannot do that, I cannot make that. That's for other people. So it was always like for other people and not for me. That's when I also created my first business and then my second business and then I kind of narrowed niche, you could say, into kind of helping people with their overcoming their inner limitations, shadows, seers of leaves and all these things that limit us from actually expanding into our full potential, into our light, which I think is so important to evolve humanity in the right direction. So that's a little bit about the background and a few moments that shake me, but I'll go into more, I guess, later as we share further Incredible, wow.

Speaker 1: 12:49

I just want to point out something that you said that I've actually never heard before, and that is that the root cause of so many of our sustainability related issues is us right. It is our patterning, our broken parts who feel like they're not enough, and I, just as you were saying that, I thought gosh. I mean, isn't that exactly what consumerism and capitalism is built on in some way, or at least the predatory version of capitalism that we've seen in the more recent decades? We're now sold a story that we're not good in a lot of the marketing and a lot of the messaging that we receive from such a young age.

Speaker 1: 13:32

And when you shared the example of abandonment in the supermarket even something as simple as that, and that feeling of abandonment or that feeling of not being wanted, in my case, I know that's something that we worked on a lot together in our sessions of just feeling as a child that wasn't 100% wanted by my father in particular, and that led to a really interesting relationship, really difficult relationship, with the masculine and with the masculine hyperproductive version of work as well, and so I appreciate how you brought that in too, because I've had those similar experiences of commuting into Boston and going up the stairs from the train station and just feeling like I was a cog in the machine, I was this drone, if you will, of sameness, just walking up the stairs with the flood of people who were doing the same thing on autopilot, and that was a moment for me too, where I was like there has to be something else, there has to be.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I can't actually, in good consciousness, go on. If I will, some part of me will die, my light will dim. So, yes, we're so aligned in many ways and we know this, but the journey into entrepreneurship came out for that for me as well.

Speaker 1: 14:53

But yeah, there's so many nuggets of wisdom already in what you're saying around the root cause being out and being some of these internalized patterns.

Speaker 2: 15:02

So I just want to add it's like the misconception is that the root cause is us, in the sense that we're causing damage to the planet, but that's a belief in itself that we're destructive by nature, which is actually, in my research and believe, not true. So that's the misconception, because we can say we're destroying the planet. Is it's been something that's been sold to us as well, I feel, as an idea, because what does the person? If I believe that we're destroying the planet, what do I believe that about myself? That I'm destructive, right? So then I would destroy myself through bad food, through bad habits, through being in a job that doesn't light me up, through not being in my light, through allowing not good relationships.

Speaker 2: 15:51

So all of these things are destructive. But at the root is the inherited collective traumas and individual traumas and beliefs we acquired in childhood, so inherited from our ancestors, and the childhood stuff and the social conditioning. So that would be then at the root cause. So when we say it's us, it's our inherited and childhoods wounding actually, and not us by nature, because I think we're also very bendable. But there's something in us which is our inner light and our inner connection to source as well, which is always about creating life, and I think that's the part that we need to nourish and feed and nurture so we can actually create more life on earth, as opposed to the destruction.

Speaker 1: 16:39

So just wanted to clarify that, yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful nuance there. Thank you for clarifying that, and I want to get into what you said about the collective wounds that we have. These are multi-generational, these are ancestral. In some way we inherit these, and I'm so curious in your work of exploring the collective patterns and the collective shadow, what are some of the most prevalent or most common patterns that you've noticed in working with others on collectives and individual shadow?

Speaker 2: 17:15

I suppose yeah, I think one of the most common ones, if we don't go to the more like two of the most common ones, and the third one is a little bit more complex. It's not something that I speak to a lot, which is the third one is like around invasion, like the fear of invasion. We actually do have that a lot in our society and culture Fear of invasion, fear of scarcity and fear of rejection. So the main fears and collective traumas and wounds that come up, and so, especially with all the people I address, the fears of the wounding, of rejection and scarcity, these things are the major ones that come up for us, especially when it comes down to pursuing a more non-conventional life, which, for example, means like diving deeper in yourself. What could be discovered? For many people, this is unsafe because it could lead to oh my God, maybe I'll become that kind of hippie or like this kind of weird people that are like judged by my family and all my friends, all these crazy people who are all like liberated and free and liberated.

Speaker 1: 18:22

You know, like.

Speaker 2: 18:23

Then we like get a job. So that's the rejection, kind of like wound and trauma. Will I get a better job? Will I be able to fulfill my needs, will I still be with my partner and all these things? And so that's a big one that comes up. And then we've probably worked on it in many ways. Even for me, showing up online initially, well, sometimes like we feel like, oh, I procrastinate and I don't know what to talk about.

Speaker 2: 18:53

But actually a lot of it is associated with the fear of rejection. I was speaking to a woman the other day and she was saying, oh, I really want to do this, this is what I'm meant to be doing, this is my mission. And then I'm like what stops you now from doing it? And she's like I don't have time. And then I'm like OK, why don't I go deeper? Then what's deeper? She's like it's fear.

Speaker 2: 19:15

I fear of my content not being good enough, and from I don't know what else she said, but it was something about not good enough, and not good enough means like, oh, people will then reject it or whatever. So again it comes up there, right In really pursuing your life and expressing our soul gifts and just starting somewhere with our own journey. Like I know myself, I've done so many, I had so many instances when I put myself on the spot and I wasn't ready at all, like I really wasn't ready. And, yeah, I mean, on this journey we will definitely have moments of failure and where this fear of rejection comes up or shame might come up and all these things, and so it's not an easy path, but it's a necessary path for us to do and this healing work that we do helps a lot because what it does, like what you have done, is a lot of this like shadow work and body, body based shadow work, I would say, which is very much about embodiment and how our body reacts so we can go into situations and we can stay in a calm and present and receptive body, as opposed to tractant, because then we fully contract. So that's a little bit about the fear of rejection.

Speaker 2: 20:29

And then, of course, the scarcity wound which has our ancestors have lived in Ways where they didn't have enough food, they had to collect and accumulate and fight, and the stronger gods more so. We still have that so ingrained in our system, but our technology has gone so far and still yet we offer it with a lot of scarcity mindsets, not to say that some people really don't have, but in general that scarcity is embedded in all of us and there's almost there are very few people that I talk to that don't like the scarcity fears of not having enough money, not having enough food to survive, or because something could happen, or because they could lose their job, or because they don't want to go into their own mission because they are free of that scarcity and they're not going to have enough. So scarcity comes up big time in in this space as well.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Yeah, yeah definitely.

Speaker 1: 21:27

It's amazing to me how there is an embodied memory that seems to transcend generations as well. Sometimes I think about the work that we've been doing, and I think of it almost through the lens of epigenetics, where it feels like doing the healing work is literally changing our DNA and clearing these things out from how our body has been remembering and how it's inherited these really critical pieces of wisdom that would, in theory, help the next generation offspring to survive, and yet in our modern contact it can sometime inhibit us. We have to overcome these things, but you're right, it's certainly not the easy path. In many ways it requires a lot of bravery, a lot of self-honesty and looking in the mirror at the super hard, painful things and then really alchemizing through that. And I wanted to just voice in because I think one of the fears that came up in our sessions as well was this, and I think it's related to the rejection wound that you talked about, this idea that I was actually afraid of my own potential.

Speaker 1: 22:37

In some ways I felt like if I truly step into my expression and I allow myself to be seen and heard, I put myself out there and go after my mission, I am somehow going to be judged by the community of people that I used to hang with and who knew me as one version of myself and would maybe judge how I was changing as a person or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1: 23:02

And so this fear of my own potential also held me back quite a bit, and to me it often felt like there was a loss happening at that same time of if I step into my own light and into my own gifts. Does that mean I can't go back? Does that mean I can't rely on the patterns, even if they're unheld, the coping mechanisms that feel safe to me, that I've developed over the years? Does it mean I can't go back to that? Do I have to step into this other version of myself? And that, in and of itself, also felt really scary and is maybe a little bit of a form of self rejection in a way, because I was keeping myself safe, even to my own detriment, and so I'm curious have you seen that piece in others, and when?

Speaker 2: 23:47

yeah, oh, yeah, so much, yeah, like, yeah, and you're right, we are kind of like. On the one hand, it's a form of self rejection and abandonment of the true self. Actually, when we realize that there's so like, there could be anger, there could be lots of other things, and that's why I think we have to be held in these containers, like what me and you have gone through, so we can have the safe space to express that whatever comes up. And sometimes it's just a message from the body that it's scary to go there. So our body is actually like contracting, it's like oh, it's not safe to do that. So our body is actually just telling us that there is a trauma, a fear, a belief there that's preventing from going there, but that and that means that we need to respect that and work with that, with the body. So it's not just about I think one of the things in our culture is about push through, just do it. We cannot do it like that, because we can retrogotize ourselves, we can recreate the beliefs, we can support the beliefs, because our body will be in such a shock doing that and I used to do that with myself quite a lot I would put myself in the spot and I would just like just do it and kind of like it helps a little, but not really in the long term which have the same fears and believe about ourselves that we're not enough, that we're not worthy and so on. So, yeah, both of these mechanisms that you explained are so spot on and I think for me it's being around the pattern of working hard.

Speaker 2: 25:17

So when I was six years old, we moved with my parents and my brother and sister from a smaller city to the capital and as we did that move, it was a new, bigger city. Of course it's the capital. It's a different kind of like accent. And I'm like at that point where I'm starting school and I remember there was a lot of fear and anxiety and because my parents simply didn't have the capacity to support me in this chain, no, emotionally they were just like a lot of the parents they feel oh, there you go, you're just gonna go to the new school. So there you go, and then the teachers will deal with it.

Speaker 2: 25:57

It's kind of like that a bit, at least from what I can remember and perceive about them and their capabilities to then I would go to the school and then a lot of what I remember is that I did feel inferior. It was maybe not immediate, but I remember feeling like sincere I'm not enough, like I'm not enough, like I'm not as good as these kids because everybody here is a child of like a lawyer or a doctor or so many intellectual like parents and like everybody has a lot of money and all these things that I would say like a little bit inferior. And so the way I started coping with that after a while and that was so clear in my grades I just became really hardworking, like first I remember first second grade I really didn't have so many good grades and my parents were gonna find with it.

Speaker 2: 26:47

They were like but then I started just performing so well. So I started actually working hard. So that was the strategy. I learned to not feel like an imposter, to not feel like I'm not enough and to have a sense of belonging and acceptance because people would accept me. They would be like oh wow, she was like having like great grades, so she's smart, so she's, and that became my strategy for life.

Speaker 2: 27:14

And so after that I worked hard in relationships, I worked hard in my setting, I worked hard in my work. I would never really even allow people to see my emotional side because that would mean that they might think that I'm not as capable of being this hard worker, achiever, whatever. So that damned a lot of my semininity pleasure, allowing myself to really enjoy life and play in life. It became a lot about our team and that's what my parents praised me. So that was, of course, three. That was how I got love. And so these days what I'm noticing and I've had this transition from like the working hard to now it's really about being in my seminary actually. So the working hard, as you might probably agree, because we see that so much in our society.

Speaker 2: 28:05

A lot of women and men a lot of people have it, no matter if you're as, whatever gender you're in or no gender. So we have it in our culture because we've learned that success comes from working hard and achieving and that's where we get our worth from oftentimes. So it's been a real shift for me to move from the working hard into now, like really being in my seminary, and that's all about embracing my feminine energy, embracing my pleasure and working guided by my intuition, as opposed to the mind like okay, I'll do a really hard work and of course, something will come up, something will work out and then be burnt out and unhappy and all these things. It's been the biggest challenge I feel in my life.

Speaker 2: 28:53

I've probably been allowed to shift that and it's been really, really hard because it has come with challenges such as oh my God, what's happening in my business? I'm going through a transition and I don't know, like where this will lead or how do I do it, how do I create in this feminine way? And there's this lack of trust in the seminary that comes up, a lot of it. I think I'm going a little bit into too much details probably here, but I'm gonna try and stop there and I'll let you guys steer back with the conversation if I went too far in that direction.

Speaker 1: 29:25

No, I think that's a beautiful direction to head in next, actually, because when I think about the being indoctrinated into a hypermasculine work culture that is rooted in patriarchy and hierarchical relational patterns, all of this right, that's what we know, that's what we have learned to leverage to get ahead, even if that means pushing through at the expense of our own health or our relationships and getting into that zone of burnout. And, like you said in the beginning, we're often given a badge of honor when we do that and praised even as young children of oh, that's such hard work, good job, and we get that love. And I just wanted to share that.

Speaker 1: 30:08

That transition was scary for me to, bit by bit, systematically unplugging myself from that belief system or that cultural delusion as our.

Speaker 1: 30:22

I guess two episodes ago the guests introduced this idea that we're all just in these cultural agreements and they are delusions to some extent and we get to change them right.

Speaker 1: 30:33

So we've been operating in this cultural set of agreements that we can opt in or opt out of, and when I first started really opting out, that fear of rejection showed up, that body tension that you mentioned, where I felt contracted and thought it's not safe to do business in a different way. It's not even safe to rest, because if I rest or slow down my pace of productivity, I'm not gonna get love, I'm not gonna hit my goals, I'm not gonna get the validation. That is like filling that hole of not being enough, and so for a long time my body wouldn't let me is almost how it felt. I didn't actually even know how to rest because it didn't feel safe to do business in a different way. So I'm just so curious what was that transition like for you and what were some of those symptoms that you had to overcome and how did you do it? Because I think listeners will be really interested in what that transition actually looked like.

Speaker 2: 31:33

Yeah, first, I must say I'm still in that transition because I feel like that's gonna continue for probably quite a while, because there are so many layers to that, even though I'm probably in a place of no routine, Like the hard working doesn't work anymore.

Speaker 1: 31:48

It's like it just doesn't work. Totally.

Speaker 2: 31:51

So I feel that the biggest challenge was to, like you said as well I resonate a lot with what you said was to take the time, take the space, have spaciousness. That has been a huge challenge because for me that one was like I'm always gonna optimize my time and do something and multitask and listen to something and code. You know like I'm always kind of like hyper focused on performance and getting a result from something, and so rest has been a new bowl game and the way I have gone, the way that I am tackling that is through several things. One is I'm doing still and I have been doing in the past for a lot of this kind of like shadow work and trauma work, where I go with my guide in a deep space and I just work with what's alive in my body and oftentimes I get into a space of just like the presence with myself and then something comes up from my body that can be worked through, or like just a memory comes up or, you know, a feeling comes up, a contraction comes up and I just either stay with it or dance or move or shake whatever, or just have a conversation and dialogues with my inner child and myself and the work that we've also been doing together.

Speaker 2: 33:14

It's that deep inner work where we're with a guide, and I feel that's necessary because I've rarely been able to do that with myself. So deep With a guide is always so much easier to do it, because it's very challenging to do it by ourselves. I feel so to go to the deepest layers, because they're deeper, there's always deeper. So that's one thing that I'm doing. I'm absolutely always going in words and connecting with what's alive in my body, what's coming up. As we embrace new level of leadership, new level of showing up, as we expand our capacity to receive love and money, these things will come up again. This challenge is in boundary and the body will show the signals. It's like, oh, that's like I'm not sure if I'm ready and it's like, oh, let's go dive back into the deep inner work, and I only want to call it inner work. It's such a process of being present with myself. I've had the most beautiful experiences in that process of just feeling myself and so much love and just like, yeah, it's even emotional now because I can really feel it Like I've had some of the best moments in my life in that process, because I can really feel myself a lot, my essence and my wholeness and capacity to love and openness in the heart and deep openness in the body. So that's one process and always like I feel, like it's just so important for me and that's why I also give that medicine to others. It's an integral part of my work.

Speaker 2: 34:45

The other thing that I've been doing I've been working on feminine energy, embodiment, and that goes a lot into pleasure and being in the body and receiving intuitive guidance from my intuition. So, as you know as well, that forms part of my practice. But I've been doing it a lot with other mentors. I always invest in coaching and healing and so on, and so what has that helped me with is, I find that the easiest way to get myself in a space of presence is through pleasure, actually the pleasure of maybe just sealing the sun, kissing my cheeks or the wind crossing my hair or my skin, or just touching my skin gently or just doing some kind of like embodiment practices for nervous relaxation, so just like holding the body, holding the skin and touching.

Speaker 2: 35:40

So that's been a really embodied practice that I continue coming back to daily, like, okay, how can I connect with my pleasure today? And deeper and deeper, because the feminine is all about pleasure. We are designed, our bodies are designed to receive so much pleasure and we're just not allowing that. And if we're not allowing that, of course we're going to have to work hard to get it and we're not going to get it and we're going to be like because we're going to tip into the masculine polarity and so we're never going to be fulfilled.

Speaker 2: 36:10

So this has such a benefit for our relationship, though I think in our relationships it's the first place where I see our results. It's like a lot of results in relationships. Right away it shows, but it takes. It's also a process. So pleasure. And then the other thing is like being in meditation and connecting with my intuition and asking like really precise questions and getting the guidance and then executing that.

Speaker 2: 36:34

And I was like working with my son when the contractions was like, oh my God, I'm not doing this, I'm overwhelmed, going back to the body again, starting all over again the whole cycle. But it's just a yeah, I would say it's just a consistent practice. It's not about restarting the whole cycle, it's just consistency in those practices. So we have to see a seal in those practices and rituals to open up more and more, because the body is such a beautiful tool for opening up to this relationship, which comes from the space, leading from the heart and leading from our intuition and being in our feminine and more receptive energy, as opposed to being in the hustle. So yeah, that's a few things.

Speaker 1: 37:18

Yeah, it's. I mean just hearing you describe that, you can hear the difference between what you're describing as this sacred leadership practice. That is almost. It almost feels like a form of art in some way.

Speaker 1: 37:31

But I love that you brought in the word ritual, because our culture is built on ritual and ceremony and we actually talk about this in the Harvard exec ed course that I'm on the teaching team for. We don't realize that dressing up in suits and sitting in a circle around a board table, we don't think about that as a ritual or as a ceremony, and yet it is. We're being indoctrinated into these cultures and these rituals, and so it can feel challenging at first to kind of go against the grain and start doing different practices or different rituals that can feel counterintuitive, to go against the dominant narrative or the dominant culture. And yet, to your point, when you start doing this and you stay in that practice, to be in that open state of receptivity, it really helped me realize that pleasure and purpose are so deeply connected and being in our feminine, embodied leadership, so that we can be open to even receiving our purpose and asking the questions of how can I be of most service today? What wants to flow through me today. What do the people on my team need most? How might I show up in a way that is nourishing and pleasurable to me?

Speaker 1: 38:52

I think if we're not asking these types of questions, then we'll never get that intuitive answer. So even just being in the spaciousness and the presence and the openness to receive, it's almost like getting access or opening to a whole new version, a whole new paradigm of business community relationships. All of it because we're asking different questions and we're engaging in different rituals of how we create and what inspires us into action. And I think if we're coming from that place, the set of choices we'd be making in our careers, in our purchasing norms all of that would be so different. And what you're talking about here it's building a very different world to be in this embodied feminine leadership. So I just wanted to reflect back to you how profound and multi-layered that feels to receive what you're saying of. Yeah, we're building something very different through these rituals.

Speaker 2: 39:51

Yes, I love the two. Speak about rituals. Actually, that word sometimes reminds me of you as well, because I know you love rituals as well in your life.

Speaker 2: 40:00

It's also an interesting insight for me in how you're just fatty, the ritual, the business, kind of like table, and then how we're shifting these rituals actually into okay, like first maybe you sit in a contemplative practice by yourself and maybe then you're going to a meeting or whatever that is.

Speaker 2: 40:16

They're shifting indeed and yes, I totally agree that Azure and Purpose are connected, because that's when our purpose can really show up, because our purpose is, I feel this kind of like energy that runs through us and when we feel this pleasure, it's such a conduit almost for being in our purpose, because that we can really show up as our true self, because we're all lit up, like, just if I cultivate pleasure now in my body, I'm like feeling this expensive energy and like, oh, like this is what I want to do and I got some insights and I can connect easier with my body, with nature, with the environment around me. I'm more receptive as more leading towards the feminine. So, yes, this is very aligned, I feel and pleasure. I use pleasure a lot for cultivating different things, like connecting in different ways and even connecting with intuition.

Speaker 1: 41:13

Yeah, it's huge and even, as you say, that what I see and feel in my own body and this kind of connects back to sustainability work as well. I feel like when I'm in the rat race and I'm moving at the speed of hyperspeed, right, I just go. Productive is the only way I have to get this done have to, have, to, have to and my nervous system is hijacked at that point and I'm just in a state of fight or flight and leveraging that to produce. It's like the blinders are on right, I'm focused on the immediate task ahead and I'm addicted to getting it done.

Speaker 1: 41:48

I actually have no access to long-term thinking or the receptivity required for innovative solutions and ideas. It's almost like I can't see what's even possible because I'm so hyperfixated and my body is keeping me there in the chemicals, the neurochemicals that are being transmitted. So to actually break ourselves out of that through a practice like pleasure practice or slowing down, meditating, using the breath to access our pleasure. It is the pattern interrupt in a way that shifts our state of being. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to point out that difference between short-term and long-term thinking and how, right now, if we're not leading from the feminine, we actually are losing a lot of access to the very types of vantage points and energies that are necessary for sustainability work long-term.

Speaker 2: 42:48

Yeah, yeah, it's really necessary. It is sustainability by itself, because when I can feel this receptive, feminine energy, I feel like I'm part of everything and imagine me as an ecosystem. There's openness, there's flow, there's pleasure, there's receptivity and that's the state that we can be in as humanity, and that's the state we cultivate on earth, as opposed to like this yeah, just like you said, like the rhetoric, like putting a lot of pressure on ourselves and stress, and each of us can look at ourselves and be like okay, how is my internal state, what am I really feeling? How is my body? And could this be a reflection of what we're actually doing to the earth? Because if I'm in this contracted and stressed state, I will like with stress on other things around me. So it's kind of it's like we are.

Speaker 2: 43:44

If we're sustainable, then we can live sustainably here, and that's part of it having pleasure and being inner feminine.

Speaker 2: 43:50

And the feminine in itself is so needed for the future of humanity, like the feminine receptivity, because the feminine is the one who's connected to the void through our womb or connected to the void, and we can only get the intuition at the path through that void.

Speaker 2: 44:10

If we're not connected, we're missing the whole picture. We're working from the mind, which is like a whole. It's very limited and subjective and wants to have safety and predictability and measured like analytics, like it's logical and it's the mind is great to get us from, let's say, like Europe to the US, like we can find the whole trip, but it cannot guide really the direction. So the direction will come from the feminine intuition, through the void, and that's really where we're going to have the most breakthroughs as humanity, I believe, which don't come from the mind but come from actually so much of like our receptivity, you can call it whatever the connection to source, connection to your higher self, connection to the universe, whatever that is. So that's where I believe that the new pioneering ideas will come which will guide humans in this heart-centered direction and that's why now it's really the time to unlock this and a lot of especially feminine leaders, but of course it's always working on both polarities feminine, masculine or in general, like sati, subtle transition.

Speaker 1: 45:21

Yeah, Beautifully said, and even in hearing you paint that picture of what is possible for humanity, when we step into this type of leadership and begin to embody more feminine, it feels also very different that the fear-based leadership or the ego-driven leadership that we're so accustomed to seeing, whether it's the people that we actually work for and with or what's modeled to us in TV shows, whatever it might be that some of that behavior has been rewarded up until this point. And again it's like that stepping out of the grain into something else to show up in a new way. It might not look like the leadership that we're used to seeing at first, and yet I can only imagine the results that would come from this right Our health increasing and our well-being increasing. And I think back to those three most common wounds that you mentioned, or the most common traumas invasion, scarcity and rejection.

Speaker 1: 46:20

And I can actually see how, leading from this more feminine space where we're being kind to ourselves, we're cultivating self-love by letting ourselves feel pleasure and not avoiding that or depriving ourselves from that, and just feeling in my own body how abundant this form of leadership feels If we slow down. Sometimes it feels wow. Now that I'm in this pace, I feel like I have an abundance of time and I'm in slow state and I'm actually doing more with less energy. It feels more efficient. So these are just some of the tangible examples, at least, that I've noticed in the last year of cultivating some of these more feminine leadership practices. But I'm really curious, because we do still operate in a culture where the mind loves to understand and see the results. For those listeners who have maybe never seen this type of leadership modeled and have maybe not seen the results, the tangibility that can come from it, what are you noticing in your own life and in your business as far as the results that have come from these practices?

Speaker 2: 47:31

Yeah, I feel that the major result for me has been definitely slowing down and still continuing being in the game. So, slowing down and creating spaciousness, that's been a huge result in my life, and I must say that this is not to say personally for me, because I have a one-person business. Right now I have some support as well. My business did have a little bit of financial dip when it was really going to the major transition, so in that sense, I would say that when it comes to teams and bigger companies, it just has to be done with a lot of caution and just knowing that, okay, this is a process of learning and we can still use the mind. This is why I think it's really important to do it timely, because for me, what I did it, it was almost like it had to be done there and I wanted to go really fast. I wanted to go, I wanted now, so that's how I opted, and so in my case, it wasn't the easiest transition, but I feel that the way I help clients, for example, now, is to not do that mistake like that I've done. So, for example, what we do with a lot of my clients is we're like, okay, this is your income. This is your main income right now. How can you actually move into more feminine way of being, into more pleasure, while not jeopardizing that income and even creating more income?

Speaker 2: 49:00

So some of them, for example, have come up with extra ID that have generated more income in their life plus their other income that they're having, and some of them are still in the work that they're doing. But they're also planning to transition. But it's very little by little. It's really we're taking it step at a time. So I think it's important to start making a transition and know that it's going to take a bit of time and to still make sure that you have, like yourself, financially covered or the organization. It has to be step by step, little by little, process and then test. But I've had clients who received opened up to receiving a lot of money through this process because it's just, you need only one ID. It's like, oh, I should focus on this product and then like focusing on that product, that that's the intuition and we're saving the intuition, and then then like a lot of income coming from that.

Speaker 2: 49:55

So it can be super easy and super fast for some people, and for some people it will take a longer kind of like timeline to really transition, depending on how the setup is. I don't like like full bang transition right away, Like I think what's? I feel like a little bit like what I've done, but it was really yeah, I guess it was the time to do it because I had spaciousness in my life, so I had created the space to do that. But for my clients I oftentimes recommend a very transitioned approach.

Speaker 2: 50:28

And then it's super safe. And then you can create actually extra income and align more of your income streams to receive from sources that feel better or more aligned, and because what we're doing is we're actually increasing your level of actually we're not increasing it like a person is tapping into their own health worth, and that's when a lot of the power can come from the inside, but also then it's open to receiving new possibilities, so that creates like a really magical combination to receive more and from in bigger ways.

Speaker 1: 51:03

Amazing, yeah, and I imagine to the, I guess the boundary work that can come as part of that too. As you open to receive and you begin to understand your self worth on different levels, you start to feel like you're enough. And so over time I guess we grow out of not having boundaries or going against ourselves repeatedly. And I know from you, know from working with you in what you just said about finding the most aligned income streams and how it in this transitionary work, sometimes the thing that comes through that's the most intuitive and it keeps repeating right.

Speaker 1: 51:42

For me it was cycle sinking. I kept getting the intuitive hit. This is the thing, this is the revenue stream that's actually going to be the most effortless, bring you the most pleasure and ease, and it's going to be the most financially lucrative. And my mind rejected that for a long time. It was like how am I going to make a business off cycle sinking? I'm not even a dietitian or an expert in exercise, like what? And little by little, the more I would test that intuition and honor it in these little prototypes, the more I realized, oh my gosh, that intuition is actually right. That's true.

Speaker 2: 52:21

Yeah. So that's such a beautiful example and I remember when he had it in the actions, your intuition was like, speaking about it, I mean I like, okay, focus on this product, launch it or create a freebie, and that done, just yeah, was so successful, so successful, oh my gosh. And so nailed, like really, it's so clear. So I really love that Very good example, yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:46

Yeah, that clarity I mean you're using that word clear. I'm remembering how clear it felt where, if we're in the spaciousness and we're sitting down with ourselves and we're doing the work to check in, it can feel so clear the more we do that and open to receiving these messages. And so, yeah, I mean Clementina, we've covered a lot of ground in this and I guess, as we wind down this conversation, if listeners were wanting to begin the transition and begin to do some of that deep pattern or shadow healing work, to feel safe enough to begin to transition into a more feminine way, like what would be some of those initial action steps that they could take, what resources or support might you recommend if people want to get started with this in their own lives?

Speaker 2: 53:37

Yeah, I would say just the most simple thing is being pleasure. So fine way to be in your pleasure Maybe it's like sitting outside and the trees and feeling the wind and then just for a moment taking a few breaths and with a longer exhale, and just being like that for a while and observing and finding something new, maybe each day. So that's one practice that's really embodied and super simple to do At whole practice breathing and just feeling the body and connecting and just allowing yourself to feel your body. And if you cannot do that, if you cannot connect with your body and just be in the presence and allow to feel the magic of life and just feel that pleasure, connect with your own sensuality, then maybe there's something, that there's a piece that needs to be moved a little. So people can always reach out to me as well and we can absolutely speak a little bit about the what the journey is or their ads and what they really want and need in the moment, and I can also guide them a little. So I think Nicole will also share my calendar link here, which is a link for those people who want to get a deeper understanding of where they're at and how can they actually start taking the steps. Other practices, or many any kind of embodiment practices, are really useful Testing your intuition, kind of like check, like okay, what is my intuition saying?

Speaker 2: 54:59

And kind of like doing that and noticing, oh, was this right or wrong? And sometimes people have different ways of inviting intuition. The way that I guide is a little bit different than what we're used to, so intuition needs a lot of testing first, and precisely asking questions so we can get the right answers, and then trusting it, which is where people fail most of the time, like they don't trust it and they don't execute. It's like, oh, it's not working. Again, yeah, pointing with your intuition could be interesting as looking at that with smaller choices and saying, oh, now I was guided, and sometimes I do it as simple as the simplest practice is just how does my body feel? Is it expanding or contracting? And so that can also be it's not the most precise way, but it can definitely give a lot of information as well about which direction to go to. But we store a lot in the body, so it's not the most precise, but it has definitely led me to a very positive outcome and amazing choices when I was listening to the body and my intuition.

Speaker 1: 56:00

Those are a few.

Speaker 2: 56:02

And taking a little bit of spaciousness, I would say as a feminine leader, to take a little bit of time for ourselves, going to meditation and then come back to the work and see what actually has arose from that. Maybe there is a new idea and new insight that's coming up. So taking spaciousness is important and I definitely would say doing the inner work or working with a coach and a guide, it's going to be definitely making the biggest quantumly progress that is safe and can guide people in the right ways, and so that's something that I highly recommend.

Speaker 1: 56:37

Amazing and I can certainly attest to that as someone who was the solo founder initially and often feeling like I was on an eye light with my own healing, and to have that fresh, honest mirror who is holding safe space and asking questions or guiding me through practices that are different than what I'm maybe familiar with.

Speaker 1: 57:00

Maybe I didn't even know it was possible. I was exposed to so many unique meditations and embodiment work through our time together, from speaking with my inner child and doing some of that healing work to visualizing my heart's deepest desire. There were so many things in there that even if I had researched on the internet how can I heal X, y, z wound? I don't think I would have gotten there on my own without a guide. So I totally resonate with what you're saying and appreciate this idea of de-risking the transition a bit by just getting out there and practicing and experiencing what it's like to be in our own bodies and doing those humble tests or those humble prototypes just to see what might happen, because there's no harm and no risk in that and we might just surprise ourselves the more we try that. So I appreciate the invitation that you're leaving listeners with today.

Speaker 2: 57:56

Yeah, and then just one more final thing. It doesn't have to be always like a scary transition Not everybody really wants to transition to something new but just by changing our way of being we change everything. We can change our relationships. My clients transformed their relationship, but they were to transform how they show up in the work as a leader.

Speaker 2: 58:14

And so then things change and suddenly there are in their gifts, in the place where they're working already, and so it's just by changing our way of being that we get to do that and we get to live our more aligned life, no matter if we're staying in the same job or business or if we want to transition over time with small steps.

Speaker 1: 58:37

Yeah, yeah, amazing. Wow, clementina, this has just been both such a pleasure and so purposeful to be in this conversation with you, and I can only imagine what comes of this for anyone who goes out there and tries some of the things that you're mentioning.

Speaker 1: 58:55

I'll definitely include your Calendly link in the show notes for anyone who wants to get in touch and just experience the absolute magic that you are as a guide. So I feel genuinely excited for anyone who goes on that journey with you and shares some space with you. So again, thank you for being here today and having this incredible, meaningful conversation.

Speaker 2: 59:18

Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure, such an honor, very inspiring for me too as well, and sharing a space with you is always magical. So thank you for inviting me and for everybody that's listening. Lots of love to you.