You are a woman who craves to be able to hold herself through the fullest expression of your own feminine heart. You don’t want to make yourself less available to be held by your beloved, but rather, you’d like to cultivate the sovereignty to do it yourself, so you can attend to their nervous system in moments when they can’t hold it all.

In this practice that John led with Erin Kinney and Ali Kegley Kole for the 2020 Embodied Women's Relationship Immersion, you will bring masculine structure & awareness to feminine feeling & energy. You will specifically learn what masculine practice should look like in a feminine body, and bring both the sacred masculine and sacred feminine together in divine union through your body. This will open the pathway to embodying your fullness while honoring the nervous systems of those you care about most.

If you want to be able to hold your own sacred feminine expression through the cultivation of your own sacred masculine, start with this 50-minute practice.

Prior to your practice, prepare a comfortable and private practice space, such as a mat, rug or sheepskin, that will allow you to relax and move your body freely with your eyes closed. Also prior to your practice, prepare a 50-minute playlist and set aside an uninterrupted period of time in which you can stay in practice the entire time. You will be guided to begin your music at the beginning of the recording, and then you will start seated on the floor.

Below are the songs used during the live practice if you would like to follow along with the playlist:

Bloom by Aether
How to be Invisible by Thrupence
Happy by Owen Phillips
Love Dub by Akal Dub
Dhan Baba Naanak by Simrit
Silent Track by Mike Vargas (1 minute)
Keep the Streets Empty for Me by Fever Ray
Devil's Game by Truth
I Will Wait by Julia Harriman
Si Tu Veux by Mumford & Sons, Baaba Maal, The Very Best & Beatenberg

Begin by closing your eyes and allowing yourself to fully arrive in this moment. Then open your eyes and begin your music as guided.

Close your eyes again and bring awareness to your breath. Give yourself full permission to turn your focus inward. Notice the quality of your breath and allow its natural rhythm to fill your body.

Then find what feels good in this moment. Slow down so that you can really listen to what feels good and nourishing to you—not what you think is supposed to feel good, or what feels good to someone else. Maybe you're even surprised by what feels good. See if you can bring a little more breath to amplify that which already feels good.

Then begin to notice what delights you. Notice the texture and sensation of delight and allow delight to lead you. How would delight move through you? Does delight have a sound? A breath? A posture?

Then notice what the sense of joy and celebration feels like—the feeling of being swept in a moment, as if your favorite song comes on and you can't sit still. Happiness for no reason. How do pure joy and celebration move through you? Give yourself full permission to go there. If your body were a pure transmission of joy, how might you transmit it out into the world?

What if you were to fully become something that delights you, like a starry night or an ocean wave? Let it activate your body and fill every cell. Allow this pure love light to move through you.

What feels good now? What is the texture and pace of the breath of that which is moving through you? Try moving in a different way or a different part of your body than you have yet. What sound haven't you made yet? Where does this sound originate in your body?

If you lose what feels good, it's okay. Take another breath and find what feels nourishing in this new moment.

After about 20 minutes, wherever you are in your movement, find your feet on the earth and make your way to standing. Continue to stay with what feels good and nourishing in your body. Then find some stillness.

Now bring your feet underneath your hips and facing forward, like on train tracks. Let your legs be heavy, like they could sink into the earth. Bring your hips straight over your legs. Ground through your legs, pressing down through the muscles of your thighs and calves. Maybe even use your ribs to press your feet down into the earth even more. You can be moving subtly in a sway or pulse that feels good in your body. You don't have to lose any of the pleasure, relaxation or joy you just cultivated.

Breathing from this place, become aware of how your breath and the earth are connected. Feel the energy of the earth move up through the soles of your feet, the insides of your legs, and up through the center column of your body. You are adding ground and structure to the energy that you just cultivated. Let this posture be a structure where you can feel that pulse move subtly through your body as you also feel the earth grounding and holding you beneath it.

Close your mouth, press your tongue gently on the roof of your mouth, and see if you can drop your breath further down into your belly. As you inhale, make your belly wide in all directions, so that the breath fills your belly, the sides of your abdomen, and your lower back and kidneys.

Let yourself get heavy. Connect to gravity and the solidness beneath you while allowing what feels good internally to stay alive. See if it can feel good to be heavy and full with breath. Deep practice is about keeping both alive. The feeling. And the structure. The awareness of pleasure. And the awareness of structure.

Then allow your heart to widen and get full, like a ripe peach gets very full and juicy. Imagine that your heart could feel in 360 degrees. Reconnect to the grounding of your lower body, the breath in your belly, and the beautiful throb of pleasure within you, as you add the swelling of your heart and the capacity to feel all around you. If you had to hold space for someone who was expressing a lot of emotion right now, you would be able to do so with your heart activated, and your body strong, grounded, and full of breath.

Without losing the pulse of love and all of the feelings throbbing in your heart, feel the internal "you" that is infinite and unchanging consciousness. Maybe you even imagine an internal cosmos without beginning or end.

It's a simultaneous practice of structuring your body, filling it with breath, activating your heart, softening and widening your gaze, and feeling with your awareness that which never ends and never began—the "you" that is simply aware.

Maintaining your breath, grounding, and the tether to your infinite, eternal self, let your heart widen and spread out across the land, feeling the textures of everything around you—your house, neighborhood, city, state, and onward, out into the stars and the cosmos. Feel all of those things simultaneously—the ground beneath you, your belly full with breath, your heart active, the infinite within you, and out to the cosmos. Begin to amplify all of it. Let your full-body awareness fill the moment.

If you tense at all, find again the pulse of what feels good and let it be a part of this pose.

Then begin to bring your awareness to the physical sensations within your body—how the air feels as it enters your nostrils, the expansion of your throat with each breath, the pulse of blood flowing through your veins, the contact of your feet with the floor...

Let the parts that you can feel, begin to reveal through your body. Perhaps you rub two fingers together to fully feel the sensation of their touch. Feel the parts you may not be aware of yet—the spaces between the spaces.

Bring all of your awareness to the micro-movements and micro-openings of these spaces, like you're kissing your movement with the awareness that never changes. Feel what it's like to have the weight of consciousness internally as you move. Maybe even slow the movement down so you can feel consciousness press into it internally—the weight of infinite awareness in complete erotic union with your own body's opening, feeling, and pleasure.

As your fingers find your thigh, or your hips shake, let the movement of your curves, breath and sound be your own erotic dance with deep consciousness. It's as if your own connection to the infinite awareness is pressing into you, opening you internally—petal by petal, tendon by tendon, fiber by fiber.

Can you allow consciousness to hold the hidden parts? Not just the parts that feel good on the surface, but also the darkness, the hidden desires...

Can you feel more by knowing and trusting that each push, breath, step and sway is held, penetrated, and seen by consciousness? What could you shed and call in if you let yourself trust?

Notice if there are deep textures of emotion that want to be a part of your movement—grief, joy, sadness, longing, hope, hopelessness, despair and ecstasy. If so, let them come and let that be a part of what consciousness holds. The awareness that you bring from the infinite merged perfectly in this moment with all of the sensation that is you. Let it find the most beautiful and honest expression, shape, and sound. Let this internal erotic union of consciousness and energy that is your body amplify with sound and movement. Continue to honestly express the deepest truth in your heart, whatever that may be.

For the last few minutes of the practice, let your body open as the truth of your heart—full sensation, full movement, and full awareness—so that the universe can feel the throb that is your love, awareness, and feeling. Let all of this come together in a moment of perfect union of sacred masculine and sacred feminine—all happening, expressing, being, amplifying, filling, and opening this moment even more.

Feel, not only the internal awareness that is opening each part of your body, but also the external consciousness of the cosmos holding you in your practice. Let everything come out and be as wide as the sky, as strong as the sun, and as still as the depth of a black hole. You are all of life's existence at once while feeling consciousness wrapped around your body like a beautiful cocoon. Trust that whatever wants to move through you from this place fills the universe with the perfect nectar of you.

Begin to slow and round your movements as you find your way to standing, feeling the infinite nature of your own essence. Bring your body to the structure of grounded, full breath, heart-throbbing, clean awareness. Take the last few breaths of the practice to feel, again, the part of you that is infinite, unchanging, and still; and the part of you feeling this moment fully.

Together, they are the divine expression through your body.

Disclaimer: Although anyone may find this practice to be useful, it is made available with the understanding that we are not engaged in presenting specific medical, psychological, emotional, sexual or spiritual advice. Nor is anything in this practice intended to be a diagnosis, prescription, recommendation or cure for any specific kind of medical, psychological, emotional, sexual or spiritual problem. Each individual has unique needs and this practice cannot take these individual differences into account. Each person should engage in a program of treatment, prevention, cure, or general health only in consultation with a licensed, qualified physician, therapist or other competent professional. Any person suffering from a sexually transmitted disease or any local illness of his or her sexual organs should consult a medical doctor and a qualified instructor of sexual yoga before practicing the sexual methods described in this practice.