Episode 36 with Jenna Ward

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (00:00)

So my first question for you today, Jenna, is what does being in your body mean to you?

Jenna Ward (she/her) (00:05)

Being in your body is an experience which I think many of us are curious about. We know that we're in our heads a lot and we hunger for this sense of being in the body more. But I know for me, it was a concept that was really difficult to navigate its way into because I was so skilled at being in my head, so expert at being led by thoughts and logic, which our

our culture really encourages us to develop. And so for me, being in my body and what that meant was something that was really challenging and difficult to navigate its way into. And I knew I was curious about it. I didn't know why exactly I wanted it, but I knew I was hungry for it. And the word that comes best to mind is actually when we're inhabiting our body more, there's a sense of life being able to ravish us.

instead of living on this more narrow or polite spectrum of sensations where we feel good and we feel sad and we have some feelings, we really widen our ability to inhabit the full color spectrum all the way into pleasure and delight and magnetism, all the way into the more tender and vulnerable dimensions of our body, our feeling body, which culturally so many of us are encouraged to.

ignore or to numb or to turn down the volume of because they're uncomfortable, they're tender, they're not seen as useful or productive states to inhabit in a capitalist society but actually so much of the beauty and the ravishment of being in my body it comes from pleasure and magnetism and joy for sure but it also comes from those moments that break your heart open in ways where you

you feel ravished and deeply entered by life. And so for me, being in my body, it is a little bit about getting out of my head, but it's much more so about developing the skill of feeling your body and entering the spectrum of sensations with a lot more sensitivity, a lot more specificity and a lot more availability to be intimate with yourself, intimate with others and really intimate with the richness of life.

so that we can be full spectrum humans.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (02:31)

Can you share a little bit more about that initial curiosity or that initial draw that you had that led you to focus on feminine embodiment as a practice and a profession?

Jenna Ward (she/her) (02:43)

Yes. So I initially trained and the first few years of my professional career, first decade of my professional career was as a clinical hospital pharmacist working on a cancer ward. And I chose that career because I wanted to care for people, but, I wanted to make good money, but I didn't really want to touch anyone or kind of like get too dirty.

And so I think I see in those career choices and in that version of myself that there was a lot of really practical decisions that weren't really connected or guided to like the deep sense of purpose that subsequently emerged. So for me, I had this curiosity and this yearning for more. I had achieved all the things, the degrees, the management.

the partner, I had like ticked all the boxes and I was really thinking like, what else is here? What more is there? If I don't want to be guided by the desire for a bigger house or a more expensive handbag or all of those things that capitalism tells us are the markers of success, none of that was really resonating with me. I've got nothing against a designer handbag, but it's like, that's not the ultimate purpose of what I really want to like achieve and experience in this life.

So I had this big question mark of like, I'm craving and yearning more and I don't know where to find it. I'm not going to find it shopping. I'm not going to find it in getting busier. Like, where am I going to feel more satiated with this yearning for this deeper yearning for more? And so that led me down a path of, thought, okay, well, maybe it's in the realm of spirituality. So it led me down a path of doing lots of different trainings in

energy medicine and different types of spiritual practices, all of which were profound. But a lot of those practices that I was encountering was still really mental, still really entering the body and teaching from a very theoretical, conceptual, dry place. And so my head got it. Yeah, I could understand these beautiful and ancient spiritual traditions, but a lot of them were still very mental and didn't satiate that curiosity and that

hunger for more, for that ravishment, for that feeling like of exultation just in the everyday. And it was about this time that I realized I had transitioned from being a hospital pharmacist to working in my own practice. It was around this time that I began to realize there's this piece around vulnerability and this piece around the body. There's something around

getting out of the busy and into the flow. And I was really so fortunate to be surrounded by some amazing women and humans who were really embodied at that time. And they invited me to sit and to let my heart open and to feel my heart more fully. And it was really interesting because I didn't know the words embodiment. I hadn't done any training in that realm. I was just interested in going deeper down through the layers of protection and knowledge.

that were existing between my head and my heart. I think a lot of us have layers of protection, layers of armoring, layers of numbness, layers of frustration, layers of tenderness. And so I sat with those layers and it was kind of snotty and messy and it took a long time because I wasn't very skilled at like how to get in here yet. The process is so much faster now, but those first few times where I was doing

feminine embodiment and not really knowing what it was, but seeing that like this, this cracks me open to feel myself and understand myself more deeply. And so that was really profound. And I feel like for a lot of women, we're so curious, we feel this curiosity and it is really challenging without a map to know how to navigate this nebulous body because

I really believe and I love, I love the statement where a universe wrapped in skin. And yet we're often not taught how to navigate that inner universe, how to come into ourselves more deeply in reproducible ways that are empowering. Cause often our bodies hold so much. I know my body was holding so much loathing and self hatred and shame and frustration and numbness.

And all of those layers were really tender things that needed to be felt, that needed to be freed and moved through the body so that I could come into deeper states of contact with myself. And so it's a really tender, uncomfortable journey that often is really difficult to do alone. And I was really grateful to have the support and guidance of some dear friends during that time in that period. And so as I went through that and realized,

This is the more, this is what I'm looking for. It's snotty, but I want more of it. That was an opportunity for me to be like, okay, well, what is this? How do we do this better and quicker and more refined? And so with time, I began to find some language and some processes around feminine embodiment. And here we are over a decade later, super devoted to the modality and to the practice.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (08:30)

Could you describe and define the modality and the practice of feminine embodiment? Because before coming across your work, I'd heard that term, like just kind of loosely sprinkled places, but you've like not just sprinkled it, you've like planted the tree and like grew a forest of feminine embodiment. So could you really outline for the listener what that means?

Jenna Ward (she/her) (08:58)

Absolutely. We have grown a forest because, so I'm a feminine embodiment coach and I work and I'm the founder of the School of Embodied Arts and we've had coming up on about 900 practitioners graduate through the school. So there is a forest and I think a wave and a resurgence of people who are called to do this work.

So feminine embodiment, if we define that first separate to the coaching modality, feminine embodiment is timeless and it already exists in so many lineages and traditions. If we define the feminine as the feeling flowing quality of life, and it's a quality that for many bodies, particularly women's bodies has been undervalued and persecuted over the centuries.

We live in a system and in a time where go, go, go energy. So we're more masculine, not as a gender identity, but as a universal energy, go energy, which is more concerned with linear, logical, productive, constantly pushing forward. That's the energy of our times because we're living in late stage capitalism. And so many of us have internalized that energy, that hyper-masculine energy as a way for us to be safe and survive and get

in this world at the expense of our inner feminine. I really love to think about Mother Nature when I think about the feminine. Mother Nature is in this part of the world here, I'm in the Netherlands right now. Her sky is moody and grey but later today it might be sunny or raining or snowing or thundering or volcanoing like this full spectrum of aliveness and sensation, this full spectrum of flow.

Mother nature represents so beautifully because she is an embodiment of the feminine. And yet for many of us, these qualities of being, feeling and emotive and vulnerable and erotic are things that are not seen as welcome or productive in our culture. So they're skills that we just haven't developed. It's not that we're not feminine enough. It's that that quality within us hasn't been nurtured for many of us. It hasn't been fostered and we haven't been able to find the power in it.

And that's in some ways deliberate because the feminine is hugely powerful. And when we access this within us, we are forces of nature. We are so incredibly more powerful. So that's the feminine piece. And then there's the embodiment piece. There are a lot of different ways that you can connect with the feminine. You can connect with it in practices that don't invoke the body or that don't ask your body to actually experience it. So it could be,

storytelling or more mental concepts or more like a list of qualities that you want to achieve. But if we're doing the feminine in embodied ways, then we've got to be feeling and sensing the body breathing and moving the body. Yeah. So it's almost like we're taking that feminine concept and we're making it incarnate. We're making it alive through our flesh. so embodiment is the practice of inhabiting our body.

feeling our body and allowing what we feel in our body to be free to move. Now again, we live in times and cultures where very often that's not welcome. If we're feeling frustration or anger or arousal, a lot of the time it's not culturally appropriate or safe for us to express and show that to the world. And so for many of us, we've had to turn down the volume on our bodies, numbing our bodies.

desensitizing our bodies so that we can go, go, go and get by in a world that's largely unsafe. So feminine embodiment in short is the practice of going deeper into experiencing that feminine flow and letting it be alive in the way that you move through the world. And we've taken this timeless fundamental process and concept and we've put some really clear coaching frameworks and structures together.

which are really specific to our school for practitioners who want to coach and support their clients in transformation and growth using these principles so that they're not just skating the surface, but they're actually really going deep into the seed of power and shame and what our clients really desire. And so that's the modality that we've gone on to create using feminine embodiment we've added in coaching to create something that's

distinct and unique as one way to do embodiment work.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (13:40)

Can you speak to the power of the feminine? Because as you were giving your answer, you started to kind of motion towards your body and you made like this kind of motion around your chest. And I have definitely worked with people who that is a part of our work and they genuinely don't know what that means. And then they have that experience and they're like, my goodness, I totally get it. Like it is so powerful. So I would love to hear from you.

how you would kind of explain or explore that sense of power from like an embodied language place, how you would describe it to someone and maybe also some of the blocks that get in the way of us tapping into that power.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (14:17)

my gosh, this is such a big topic. How much time do you have? We have entire theory modules exploring this at length in our coaching certification because power is, it's so complex and it's also often invisible. So it's re again, this concept that can be really difficult to move towards. I know for myself and for a lot of practitioners that I work with, we desire empowerment.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (14:19)

I'm so...

Jenna Ward (she/her) (14:44)

and we wanna support empowerment for other people, but like, what does that really mean? I think it's really useful to bring a little bit of a systemic analysis to this discussion as well, because there are different types of power. There's personal power, which exists within us, but there's also the power of the space that we're in, hidden and invisible power in...

the agreements of our cultures and our society, like an example around that might be how it's appropriate to dress.

or what looks beautiful and what doesn't. There's invisible standards. Like to get ready for this podcast today, I put on some lipstick, I put on my good shirt because this like conveys professionalism and so it gives me more power in the room as opposed to showing up in my pajamas. So there are these agreements that influence power in the space that is around us.

And this is often really linked to our identities and our social location, like the body that we walk around with in the world. I show up today on this podcast as a white woman that holds a certain identity and a certain relationship to power. So I think it's really useful to think about the idea that power is something that exists within ourselves and that we have access to, but it's hugely impacted by.

the body that we walk around with, our lived experience and the systems that we're having to navigate. Because very often these systems ask us to sacrifice contact with our personal sense of empowerment. And we can define power as the ability to influence outcomes based on the actions that we take. Yeah.

So I can show up in this room and express myself fully and be passionate and use all of my wild hand language, which in another setting might be seen as too much. If I showed up as a clinical hospital pharmacist with all of this like excitement and enthusiasm at the board meeting, the rest of the people in the room might be like, this is too much. This is unprofessional. And navigating that dynamic might mean that I need to contain myself.

contort myself, move myself to be safe in that space in ways that don't honor who I truly am deep down. And I think we all know what that's like to have to put on different masks, to have to contain what we deeply desire, what we deeply yearn for. And so if I was to define power, I would say it's the ability to know what we want and to influence

and to create conditions that enable that to flow out into the world. That's not always easy based on the systems that we live within. And so that means that for a lot of us, we have over time slowly chipped away at our access to our own power as ways to stay safe, as ways to belong, as ways to ensure our own survival. And in doing that,

we've often unconsciously eroded our own access to our power until we get to the point whereby we don't feel that we actually have the strength to influence outcomes, to make change on a personal or a collective level. And that can be really depressing and heavy and uncomfortable.

So some of the big barriers that relate to power, I think for a lot of us, we can think of these barriers not as personal failings, but as ways that we've had to navigate this world, particularly as women, if we hold that identity, to stay safe. And that's effed up. Like, that is so effed up.

that we've had to do that, that we've had to dishonor ourselves as ways to stay safe. And I wanna bring that level of awareness because I feel like if we're genuinely interested in empowerment, we can't put all the responsibility on one body. It's not that you didn't do something wrong or you should have been doing better. Often we're doing the best that we can to survive. But when we know better, we can do better.

When we understand that power is something that we can find within ourselves and it's a feeling, it's a feeling of safety and confidence and knowing what we want. It's a feeling of our ability to take that knowing from deep within and move it out into the world. And when we have access to that power, which exists within our body,

we can go on to change these systems and cultures that we live within. I see this a lot with people who are drawn to maybe be a coach. So I'll give an example here. Drawn to be a coach, they want to make really great change in the world. They want to do something beautiful and empowering, but they also have a challenge around like, who am I to do this? Imposter syndrome, confidence. And there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle that factor into that.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (19:44)

Yeah.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (20:01)

But one of the pieces of the puzzle is like, okay, well how connected to your power are you? Because if you want to genuinely create and support others to step into their power, you've got to be connected to it within yourself. And so there's a deep journey and an unraveling here of where have I forsaken my power? What are the stories of my ancestors to come on around power? How might I be able to dial up the intensity of it in my own body?

And I think one of the key questions that we can ask ourselves around our power is like where, when it's safe, am I showing the world the real me versus hiding behind something or someone else? And often we need that foundation of safety, you know, so it happens in moments with friends, with family. It's like, where can I let more of the real me out into the world? Because the more that we do that, the more that we stand in ourselves.

Because we are innately powerful. That is the definition, like that is the base code of us. We are innately powerful. It's not something we need to achieve. It's something that we need to find safety and practice to let more out.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (21:18)

As you were speaking, what was going through my mind is something I oftentimes speak about with clients in regards to power, the power over, power under, and power from within, and how we can find spaces to have power within, and how when we have it within, it creates the power together. Like there's this collective sense. And that was something that really stood out to me in the work that you offer is this honoring of both the collective but also the system.

that act upon our bodies, because oftentimes in the realm of embodiment or somatics, that piece can get missed or can get lost is actually speaking about systems, how they oppress us, how they live within us, how they're invisible, how we find freedom and liberation in our body when we're sharing a collective body of the earth and this kind of nuance sometimes gets missed. And would love to hear from you if that...

what led you to include that piece in there? If it just felt like for you, like how could I not? That's how it feels like for me. Or if there was something that made you go, actually this is deeply important. This embodiment stuff over here isn't working for me and what that journey was like for you.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (22:19)

Thank

Ha ha ha.

Hmm. When I first came to embodiment work, it was deeply selfish and personal. I just wanted to feel more, be cracked open, be ravished. I was like, I want to be a human, a real alive human, not a little robot going through my life. So it was deeply personal. And as I began to get more sensitivity and more connection and more, more, more aliveness through the full spectrum of sensation through my body, the question arose.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (22:40)

Okay.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (23:03)

How did this happen? How did I get here? How did we get here? And so there was just this question of wanting to understand what happened in my body. And I was working with, I've worked with, you know, hundreds and thousands of clients of many different identities. And so I've also been observing and learning through your social location, through your identity, through that experience, when you hold that, you know.

seeing the threads of there's a common story. There's of course a very individual story, but there's a common story here. And so as we began to build the modality of feminine embodiment coaching, it felt that we couldn't ignore the collective systems of power, oppression and how they influence our bodies. Because to do so gaslights our clients, puts all the responsibility of that on them and is ultimately quite a bit of a disservice.

from a an equity centered inclusive lens of coaching which we bring. So it felt like to me a very important personal inquiry to understand and to go back through the origins of capitalism and witch hunts and systems of Western ideology that separated mind and body and to develop an analysis first for myself.

but then also to bring to our modality so that we could have a better understanding of how at all times, more often than not, our body is simply seeking safety and belonging. And many of us have developed strategies for disembodiment.

numbing our body, getting into our heads as ways to survive. I think that's hugely empowering because it doesn't make us wrong or defective personally. It shows that our personal liberation is connected to our collective liberation and that if we want a more embodied future for all humans that doesn't, know, create ecocide and that doesn't extract from Mother Nature.

Like the polycrisis that we're in collectively, to me, I see that as directly relating to the epidemic of disembodiment that we have. To me, the two are intrinsically interlinked because we can't treat each other as humanity does at this time without being hugely disembodied. Yeah.

And so the analysis for me, it's a personal passion. I identify as an intersectional feminist with a passion and a curiosity for ongoing learning in the realm of like diversity, equity and inclusion. Absolutely. These are fundamental pieces that inform the work we do in the world because it gives us power to understand where our body is located in these times.

And the story that has brought us here, to me, it's been really empowering to understand those pieces. And that's why I speak about and share those pieces as well. I think it's really important.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (26:15)

Could you share more about how our personal liberation or personal embodiment is related to or connects to collective embodiment or collective liberation? Because that is something that is like my entire passion. But I want to hear from you. People have heard it from me enough times. I would love for you to really flesh that out for the listener because it is, it can feel quite like a heady concept, although

Jenna Ward (she/her) (26:30)

Hearing you. Hearing you.

Mm-hmm.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (26:45)

It also can feel so deeply embodied when you are in connection to your body. It's like almost for me. It's so permanent, that awareness, because of the connection I have to my body. but I have had that reflection. I remember it being a heavy idea at one time.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (27:01)

Yeah, totally hearing you.

So a few things on this, the first thing that I want to be really mindful of is not virtue signaling and saying, you know, come be embodied, come join my coaching certification and we'll make the world a better place. Like I do believe at the end of the day, that's true, but I'm also really mindful of virtue signaling and coupling all of our liberation with here, come get this product because that's what everyone does when they greenwash their companies and they virtue signal in ways that are false. And I just want to name that right.

upfront because I do genuinely believe that our personal embodiment is connected with our collective liberation, but it can verge into, it can verge into, not in this conversation, but in other conversations, spaces that virtue signal and that do so really disingenuously. So,

If we think about the culture that we live in, we live in a white supremist capitalist culture that wants us to extract from the earth. Yeah. And when we are a white able-bodied man, we've got greater access to power than if we hold another identity. That's the world we live in. That's the culture that we live in. Full stop. How are we going to change that culture? How does that culture shift? It only shifts.

when our body chooses to hold something different and take action in behaviors, in words, in ways where we spend with our dollar in ways that are different.

So I can't influence everybody on the planet, you know, and it's not my job or my desire to do that, but I can influence my body. I can influence the way I raise my children. I've got two young girls. I can influence how I spend my dollar. I can influence who my business spends its dollars with. I can influence the values and the way that I run my business. And I can create ripples of change through all of those avenues.

So I'm really mindful of thinking about, for myself personally, my business is around embodiment and it's my personal calling but also my professional passion. But it's not the only avenue that I have to create a more embodied future. As we become more sensitive and more connected to our bodies, we cannot help but see

other bodies as humans that are part of this collective family and so I've noticed across the years throughout my embodiment journey I have become much more involved in the movements that I'm really passionate about speaking up against injustices that I'm not willing to tolerate.

contributing through activism to causes that are close to my heart so that yes, I'm more sensitive in feeling in my body, yeah, but it doesn't stop there. It requires me to take that sensitivity, that feeling, that connection to the ravishment of life that I have the privilege.

and the responsibility to access and to see others around me who don't have that same privilege access to know it's my responsibility in the way that I spend my money, in the way that I spend my time, in the values that I hold and that I perpetuate in the world to do better. Because we've got ourselves into this polycrisis from the powers that be hoarding power, hoarding money, hoarding influence at the expense of many bodies.

And I can either be complicit in that or I can change culture by doing something differently. So some really simple or tangible examples of this.

For Christmas, my partner and I give each other the gift of donating to a charity organization on the Sunshine Coast where we live that helps disadvantaged youth. So we don't give a gift, we just give, we give a donation to this, to this organization. Another example, we're really mindful here in my business at the School of Embodied Arts that we don't take advantage of economic disparity by hiring people who live in a different country with a different currency conversion.

where we can take advantage by paying them total minimum wage. We don't do that. We don't exploit people in that way.

Another example from the way that I instill values, like for example, with my children, the school that I chose to send my child to was informed by, okay, where can we get a little less capitalist in the way that I educate my children around the world or that I create emotional sensitivity? And so these seem like very small, mundane kind of actions. But if more bodies in the world did this,

What kind of change would that create? What kind of future would we then have? I think we see this really so powerfully personified in the US at the moment with the way that democracy is shifting and changing there. It's having ripple impacts on the rest of the world. I'm located in Europe. They've just hugely increased their defense spending budget at the sacrifice of social endeavors.

And so we see a movement towards more defense, more aggregation of power, more centralization of power to the detriment of so many everyday bodies. I'm not interested in that. I'm not down in that, but I need to be able to also think about what practical pieces can I do that requires me to be in contact with my power.

and to be making really informed choices that represent my values, not only in me doing my little embodiment practices in the morning at home, but also in the way I spend my dollar and spend my time, because I think we all need and want a more embodied future.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (33:08)

I would love to hear from you when someone comes to your coaching program or maybe in the past when they were working with you, what it was like for you to lead someone into this type of awareness of the systems acting upon their body. Because I know from my own clinical practice, there can be, I don't want to use the word resistance, but I will, even though I don't feel like it really encapsulates what I'm intending.

But there can be this resistance or grief or kind of shock and rage that I've seen many times just go like overwhelmed, take someone out of the window of tolerance and they're like, okay, well then being in my body is like too hard. Cause like these systems are like always going to be there. And if I honor that they're actually living within me and they're inside me, then like I'm not free and I can't do this and it's too hard. And I would love to hear from you if you, A, just had that experience and B,

you support someone through that process.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (34:12)

That's a really great question. think if we just zoom out to reflect on how immense it is for us to come into contact with the unhumane ways that humanity has evolved. And like, I'm a white woman saying that. So bodies of different social identity and location are going to have their own response to that.

There is so much for us to unpack here and it is deep and profound work that ultimately is so necessary. It's so necessary. And I agree with you, you mentioned the window of tolerance. It's so important to do it in ways that are bite size and small so that we can maintain a foundation of safety and not be overwhelmed by the tsunami that this really is. And so,

When I'm working with a client and in a coaching practice, coaching by very definition, for those of who are listening, is about asking powerful questions. So when I'm sitting there as a coach,

And I'm seeing that the client's dynamic is influenced by systemic factors or that systemic factors are at play. And I have that analysis, but my client might not. Yeah. They may, they may not. don't, I don't always know my client's level of like social political activism or insight, but I know that as a coach, it's my job to ask powerful questions that can create new awareness. And so if we take a really simple example, let's take the example of a woman.

who has a creative passion she wants to move forward in the world and there's just no time or energy or capacity. She keeps not being able to move it forward. If we go into a bit of an analysis around that and I ask that client, how much of the domestic labor of the family rests on your shoulders solely? And she replies, all of it. I do everything for all of our children and every single thing around the home. And I have a part-time job and I have a two-year-old.

and I have no one in my family that supports my passions to go forward. All of a sudden, it's not an issue of accountability or procrastination. We can bring an analysis around, like a feminist analysis around the invisible labor that women carry in the domestic sphere, just to begin with. And we've got a lot more insight here. So I'm not gonna pause the coaching session and tell my client that, but I'm going to invite her using questions to feel the impact of that.

so that we can appreciate the wider spectrum of what's going on here. And so that might look like asking questions like, let's take a moment just to feel into your capacity. How much energy you feel you have available? How much energy is free to flow?

into your creative projects when you're holding all of these other pieces. And so one of the strategies that I feel is most useful is to build insight through feeling first, because the analysis can come later. I'll email you a really great article on unpaid labor, or I'll recommend your book to read if you're interested in that. But let's first feel the impact, the tender, often heartbreaking impact of that.

in the body first because it is that somatic insight and that somatic awareness from a foundation of safety and what's tolerable that really begins to build new awareness in ways that are really meaningful.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (37:59)

When you're working with someone and they maybe do come in with a disembodiment because of these systemic factors, how do you kind of bring their awareness into disembodiment and how would you define living a disembodied life?

Jenna Ward (she/her) (38:15)

Hmm. This is a great question. I feel that every single client who shows up in the client seat, myself included, will have periods of time where we're in a more disembodied or more embodied place. And I personally love to think about this as a spectrum that we are on at

all times. Our ability to go deeper into that spectrum of more embodied or less embodied is going to fluctuate depending on who's in the room, where we're at and our capacity on that day. And I genuinely don't believe that being more embodied or less embodied is better or worse.

I personally want to be more embodied more of the time and I'm interested in cultivating that as a skill. But there are moments in my day where by necessity, by habit, I'm still super disembodied. It happens throughout the day. And I voice that because that's normal and human. There are really normal human times where our body will reduce our level of sensitivity to something.

so that we can get on with our day. But the key practice here and what I think coaching is really important for is that if we leave that thing that we kind of put on pause, can't deal with you now, just got to get on with it. If we leave that thing on pause forever, then we really deny the life force energy bound up in that unexpressed unwelcome to part of ourselves.

So very often when we have a client showing up to in a coaching session and they've got a particular goal and a particular desire that they're wanting to work on, if they're not already in a state of embodied flow, effortlessly and magnetically doing their thing, if they're not already, know, and so of course those are not my clients because the people who are out there like I'm doing it in total flow and not the ones that are seeking out coaching.

Without doubt, there's going to be either current or past moments where the life force that should be fueling that goal and that should be fueling that desire that the client has, that life force just isn't free to flow because it hasn't been felt, it's not in circulation and it's not available. And so a huge part of the work that we do is about

using the body somatically to support clients to just gently tolerate and open up to deeper sensitivity so we can get that life force back into circulation. So I would say every single client, myself included, who sits in the coaching seat has moments, phases, maybe lifetimes or generations, who knows, of disembodiment.

And everybody is alive and feeling inside. We all have an internal universe. All of us have it. It is there to be felt. And so we just have to be a little bit mindful with which technique or which strategy are we going to support that particular client with to safely open back up to feel that universe and that life force again.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (41:31)

Thank you for again, something that I just deeply love is kind of taking the pathology away from disembodiment. One of my mind, when I did my meditation teacher training, my teacher would always talk about how we needed the mindless moments to give contrast to the mindful moments. And actually both were deeply necessary. And when I think of the nervous system in the window of tolerance, it's like we need those moments of disembodiment A to give context and also they serve a deep purpose.

there is a protective strategy in them, or it is a habit, or it's a strategy to maneuver us through society in a way that we can actually get where we need to go without taking on more of the impact of the stuff around us. But the next question I wanted to ask you, because it's something that I love, probably because I'm very much a young Ian, Carl Jung talks about life force energy. And in his kind of definition, he has this inclusion of spirituality alongside

you know, the erotic that comes from Freud and passion and sexual expression. But one thing I really noticed in your work, which is why when you said it my ears perked, was that you do include spirituality in how you frame and present embodiment. And I would love to hear if that comes from maybe the time that you spent in spiritual practices that was like deeply heady, or if there are other kind of...

tidbits or other trails that kind of led you to include it because again, like the systemic lens, spirituality isn't always included in how embodiment is presented or spoken about.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (43:10)

Hmm. Totally hearing you on this. If we think about, this is so interesting. Again, there's a whole lesson that we dive into the, like the history of this in our coaching certification, but I want to start with, okay. So when we speak about embodiment, we can very often interchange that word with the concept of somatics. So somatics and embodiment are also often seen as these interchangeable concepts.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (43:18)

you

Jenna Ward (she/her) (43:37)

Somatics as a principle and as a philosophy has been developed predominantly by white Western men pretty recently. And it's a lot more of a clinical practice looking at how we can feel and inhabit the body. And so that's why I prefer and choose the word embodiment because embodiment is like you look at a young child who's just inhabiting themselves and flowing freely with their life. And to me, embodiment is something that's timeless and that exists in so many different spiritual practices.

and spiritual philosophies across the world, across centuries. So when I use the word embodiment, which I specifically use and a little bit prefer over the concept of somatics, although in many ways they're the same things, it's because for me embodiment points to a little bit more of a devotional spiritual flavor in the way that I access the body.

If we're accessing the body as something that we can neurocept and interocept and propriocept and like get really geeked out on the nervous system theory for myself, I think that's beautiful. And I'm really interested in all that nervous system theory. And it provides great insight into why, like the science behind why this works, but it doesn't take us into the

edges, like the devotional edges, that are the wellspring of creative force that move up through us. And that really speaks if we come full circle to the feminine piece. I'm very interested in this idea that the body is a universe wrapped in skin. And if we enter into the deep currents of feeling that exist within us, we can fall through them into life experiencing itself.

coming into states which are exultant. And to me, that's a deeply spiritual place. I've done a lot of different types of spiritual practices, from meditation to breath work to energy medicine. And for many of these practices, which...

often have been developed by men over the ages and developed in ways where they weren't necessarily integrated into like a householder lens, you know, people who were going through the world, a lot of spiritual practices developed for people who who were practicing their spiritual path full time.

So for me, a lot of those practices, sitting in meditation, silencing the mind, slowing down, beautiful rich practices, but they don't necessarily help me contact a deep exalted state of devotion in the day to day.

Whereas embodiment, because I've got a body that's walking around that's moving and feeling and breathing with me in all moments of the day. If I'm using embodiment as my tool for spiritual practice, it's like my body is in moving meditation every moment of the day. And I think this is a little bit more of a feminist, like feminized style of.

thinking about spirituality as something that's here to be felt and to flow through you. So for me, there's no way to separate being in the body as a devotional act. No way to separate the two, personally. And I don't think that's common of all types of somatic work at all. I think that's a very certain flavor of somatic work.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (47:19)

know, as you were speaking, I was remembering the map I think I got on my second or third day of doing my master's in somatic studies. And it like mapped all of the areas of academic or institutionalized study of somatics and where it's gone from. And then there's this little like subsection, it was like intersectional somatics. And then it went into embodied scholarship. And that was like the feminist place. And as you were speaking, that made me really reflect

on that map and how important language is. Like the word semantics actually has a deep lineage through institutions and academia and the white male like William Reich or Winnicott and Freud that if we take on that term we're actually taking on like a set of assumptions and biases and history and people oftentimes don't know that it actually has that deep lineage and so they just it just kind of gets thrown around but it's like actually it means something and if we we

bring in the intersectional somatic things, then we are kind of flagging, okay, we're going to get into systems here, we're going to get into feminism, we're going to get into all that stuff. And hence embodied scholarship that trickles out. So I love that you so intentionally chose your language and even kind of signaled that to the listener because it's something that I'm always like, what do you mean by this? Or like, are we just using these terms back and forth because they don't actually mean the same thing. And I would love to hear from you just a little bit more.

the importance of language in the work that you do, but also just embodiment in general.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (48:59)

Embodiment and coming in to inhabit the body more deeply is something that we have to point to using language, but spoken language is a construct for our mind to make meaning of. And so I'm giving you data at this level. I'm pointing to my head here for those listening and then.

That the mind is part of the body. It's not separate from embodiment also means inhabiting and going all the way into the meaning making and stories and beliefs of the mind, but not in a way whereby the mind is the final stop.

So very often as we're using language, as we're speaking about these concepts, there's two pieces of the puzzle more that we can add into it. And they are the invitation to pause and let what we're saying land so that we can point towards how does this make you feel?

That's the first piece. So we offer the language as an invitation, but we have to couple it with the soma. We have to couple it with, as you take in that concept and as you take in that word, what does it invoke within your body? And can we pause to give more weight to what is invoked so that we can hear the language of the body, which is sensation more fully.

The second kind of dimension to it is resonance. Two people can tell you the same words and if one of them is sincere and one of them is insincere, it will land deeply in your body.

There's good nervous system theory for why that is so, but I think on a more devotional level, it's because we can appreciate the energy that somebody brings, you know, our nervous system is detecting subtle cues and body language and facial expressions and da da da da da. But at a deep level, it's like the truth of something is in the feel of it. And you know, if somebody is speaking or sharing or invoking something that is deeply truthful for them.

And so the language that we use is really important when it's coupled with an invitation for that language to land in the body and hear the body. And when it's backed up by a resonance of sincerity. So that means that if I speak to power, I need to know that in my body. If I speak to vulnerability or invite my client into vulnerability, I need to know that terrain intimately in my body.

The practitioner should always be the one who practices the most. And if we're practitioners in the realm of embodiment and somatics, then we've got to know that terrain intimately and deeply and securely ourselves. So I'm, I am very intentional with the language that I use and having worked in this space for, know,

many many many years my language has evolved and improved and become more specific and nuanced over time. That happens just through practice and through mastery but often it's more than the words. It's how the words land, how we invite them to land and the resonance that they're coupled with.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (52:23)

Is there anything, my last question for you today, is there anything else that you have become more more intentional with in regards to the relationship you have with your own body? But you could also answer in guiding people into their own, into their bodies as well.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (52:45)

so many things. One of the, as a young, as a mother to young children and a business owner, and there are a lot of like many people, there are a lot of demands on my time. And as a highly ambitious person, you know, working within capitalism, I'm really often having to just very gently check in with myself.

in terms of like what's driving and what's fueling you here. Growth for growth sake is malignant. So like what's really driving? You're yearning to strive or you're yearning to expand. And so very often, one of the things that I'm contemplating or that I'm coming back to in my own body is like.

Can we check in with how you are? Can we check in with how you are? And what's actually important here? And this is a practice that I do with my kids. Slow down once a day, check in. How are you? How is your body? What is your body needing?

You need a rest, you need a cup of milk. Okay. It's easy when you're four. A little bit more complicated as an adult. And it sounds, it's so incredibly simple, but embodiment is simple. It is natural. It is our baseline. And so often it's a return from like, lessening all the other noise to just simply tune in with like, how am I? What is it that I need to be really well? And

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (54:03)

Hehehehe

Jenna Ward (she/her) (54:28)

You know, of course you can go into deeply, deliciously self-indulgent explorations there, but there's often just a very simple tending to as I go through the day. I need more water. I need five minutes away from my computer. I need an orgasm, whatever it is.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (54:47)

Thank you so much for your time today and for leaving the listener and also me with a practice of tending to. I will have all of your information in the show notes so people can find you online, they can find your school, they can read about you. Do you have anything upcoming in the next like three to six months that you would like the listener to know about?

Jenna Ward (she/her) (55:10)

We have some really rich updates happening to our coaching certification in the coming few months. So if anyone's interested in feminine embodiment coaching, you can check us out. And we'd love to chat with you about the program if you're interested in that.

Ailey Jolie (she/her) (55:27)

Beautiful, thank you so much again.

Jenna Ward (she/her) (55:30)

It's been a joy.