What is opening?

I define opening as an active experience that includes our ability to be receptive.

There is a masculine and feminine energetic aspect to the state of opening.

Active, holding, steady as the masculine, and open, trusting, flowing as the feminine.

Both are required.

Both are experienced when practising.

I see women being drawn towards this work first, because this is the energetic law that women initiate.

But whilst this may be true, I do not ascribe to the notion that only women open.

When I am working with my clients through an embodied lens, we are bringing attention to the emotional body, and meeting the archetypal maiden, which requires both the masculine and feminine energies, the mother and the father.

This is what creates integrity in an individual.

My clients enter my world because they sense the energetic imbalance between these energies in their lives.

But the deeper we go to meet and then slowly integrate the emotional cause, the more my clients discover that opening and being a woman requires the integration of the masculine and feminine within their systems.

It is dynamic.

And one that invites us into deep practise.

So when I ask my clients what they find most challenging about feeling emotions, the majority of them tell me that they struggle with actually feeling them and making the space to feel them.

We can talk about it to have an understanding of it, but really it comes down to practise.

Going deeper, my clients don’t just tell me they have an issue with feeling and making space for it, but the real issue is being able to feel it in the moment and not shut down or disconnect.

This is where my clients practise and become masterful at meeting it/ emotion/ life.

At holding the part of themselves that had always reacted, saying the thing they heard their mother say, that thing they regret, slamming the door, or shutting down in total anxiety and fear.

Through guidance, devotion and practise, they nurture their desire to open and then have new tools to respond.

You might think “Adrianna, what's the use in this? This pattern has been running for years, I can’t stop it”

And I’m here to show you that you can.

Not stop the emotion, but rather, you can transform your relationship to your reaction and judgement of the emotion.

You can become aware of the triggers that set the emotion off.

You can become aware of the critical and shame infused commentary that’s layered over the experience you are having instead of just having the experience.

You can become more compassionate and tender with the (archetypal) maiden part of you that is expressing her pain through the inflamed reaction.

Opening isn’t about fixing or forcing.

It's about being present, available to whatever is happening, without running away or shutting down.

It’s about practising being able to feel the deeper thing, over and over again, so that your awareness expands to the point you may have the capacity to meet it in real life, and return to connection after moments of disconnection.

When we can feel the deeper thing there is an unwavering trust and confidence that ripples out through your whole body.

Because life is like that.

She moves. Expands, contracts.

Inhales, exhales.

Always fluctuating. Forever dancing.

Life does this to awaken, inspire, delight and seduce you into your fullest expression.

And part of the invitation requires you to participate, to trust, and to open instead of close.

Can you open?

Can you stay?

And when you close, because this too is part of the dance, can you trust that you can open again?