Michele Christensen 0:02
Welcome to Sex.Love.Power, the podcast that teaches powerful women how to get fully met, handled, deeply partnered with and totally turned on in their relationships. I'm your host, Michele Lisenbury Christensen. We're gonna use brain science intersectional feminism, research base relationship skills, and ancient erotic wisdom practices to create the love and sex you really want. Let's go!
Michele Christensen 0:33
One day in 2004, I found myself in my parked car, crying with my face on the steering wheel. And I was just at my limit. I was 31 years old. I had a successful career, I was self employed as a leadership and business coach. And from the outside, I looked really successful. But I didn't have kids yet, and I had no idea how I was going to be able to handle having a family on top of running a business. And I wasn't making as much money as I wanted to make, even though I was making more than most of the coaches around me. And I just knew there had to be a better way. I was just exhausted, I spread so thin, so stressed out and putting so much pressure on myself.
Michele Christensen 1:32
And I called my friend Sarah. As we talked about it, she could relate to that, spread then feeling. And she said there's got to be something we're missing, there's got to be something we can tap into as women that we're not tapping into. And that conversation began a process of downloading is really how it felt like, we received a framework that over the following years, became the framework on which we built popular corporate trainings, keynotes for major corporations, and executive leadership development programs. That took us all over the place with some of the biggest name companies like Boeing and Philips and Microsoft. I love that work, and it came out of a recognition that we had cut ourselves off from a big part of our power.
Michele Christensen 2:36
So today, I want to talk to you about the 12 Elements of Power, that framework because it's more relevant now than ever, for us as women, for us as feminists, who don't want to think about power in an essentialist sense, don't want to think about the notion, don't want to think about men as being one way and women as being another, and there being, we don't want to think that there are particular qualities that we don't have access to because that hasn't been our lived experience. What we know is that we are powerful, that we have within us for instance, both the capacity to be self reliant and the capacity to be connected. Those are two of the elements of power. And all of the elements come in pairs like that, because what we recognize is that our power lives as a dynamic, it's a continuum, It's a seesaw. And all of the imbalances that make life stressful and painful, come from being too strong in one side of the pair, and neglecting or pushing down the other element.
Michele Christensen 3:50
So years after we created this framework, in studying with my mentor, Terry Real, introduced to me the notion of psychological patriarchy. And I realized that it connected deeply to what we had discovered with the 12 elements, which is that all of us these are human capacities, all of us have all 12 elements in us, we can access them if we will. And the more we use any given element, the stronger it becomes.
Michele Christensen 4:19
Now if we use it without using its counterpart, it becomes a liability and becomes distorted and imbalanced and causes side effects. So for instance, if we are over driving. Driving is one of the elements of power and receiving is its counterpart. If all we know how to do to get results is create them ourselves, pushing, making to do lists, taking action, all those things are obviously good to be able to do. But if we don't know also how to receive how to delegate and let someone else do something, how to let ideas in and how to refill our own tank. We've been doing doing doing, if we don't know how to drop back into being, and let ourselves receive, our doing can only be so effective. And it will have a toxic quality to it after a certain point. Many of us have experienced this and called it burnout. So driving and receiving have to work together. And we have to learn how to use the right tool for the job at any given moment, and be able to flow back and forth between driving and receiving, making things happen and letting things be, just as we need to flow back and forth between self reliance and connection, being able to stand on our own two feet, and speak truth to power, set limits with other people.
Michele Christensen 5:44
Connection, on the other hand, is the ability to let ourselves be influenced the ability to feel other people, the ability to know who we are through our relationships, not just through our own independence. So, with each pair of elements, we become more and more whole, as we master those skills.
Michele Christensen 6:05
What Terry talked about in psychological patriarchy was the recognition that patriarchal culture takes the full range of human experience of human capacity and divides it into and labels half of it as lesser and half of it as greater. And then quite artificially, it put a name on that half that it elevates, and called that masculine male, intrinsically the domain of men. And it labeled the other half female or feminine is intrinsically the domain of women. Now, this begs the question Is everybody male or female, and I would say, and sciences showing us that is not the case, there are over 300 differences, just in genitalia, between strictly what is textbook, male genitalia and female genitalia.
Michele Christensen 7:03
There are lots of ways to be that don't really match either of those, the variety in human beings, and especially when we then incorporate other aspects of gender identity, how we know who we are? The variety is tremendous. So, you know, a binary notion of gender is erroneous. But for sure, on top of that, a binary notion of power is ridiculous. The truth is that although, old beliefs about what women were supposed to be. Described a person whose life was circumscribed by the home, who passed from childhood and being the property of her father, into adulthood and being the property of her husband. That's no longer how women live. So, women embody all the elements of power as they move through the world, through their careers, through independent living, and even as they do, marry and have children, and all that power still comes to bear.
Michele Christensen 8:07
Those changes have come about over the last 70 years or so, maybe 80 years. And more recently than that, over the last 50 years or so. Men have come to embody more of the full range of their human capacity. But there are still challenges and that's a part of what we're going to talk about across many episodes here. There are challenges when a man is embodying the full spectrum of his power, for instance. Two of the elements of power, our fierceness and vulnerability. Culturally, it has been accepted under psychological patriarchy for a man to express anger far more than it has been accepted for a woman to express anger. What about expressing vulnerability, expressing for instance of fear, or sadness? Now, we wouldn't say theoretically, that it's not okay for men or boys to express fear or sadness now. But so often with my clients, I hear that a strong, self possessed woman who might even be comfortable with her own fear and sadness, when it comes up in her partner can be quite confronted, it can be very vulnerable feeling for her and she might not even experience it as vulnerability, she might just experience it as turnoff when her partner feels really sad, when he feels down, when he feels discouraged, when he feels afraid.
Michele Christensen 9:35
And these days with so much uncertainty, men are feeling a wide range of feelings, many of them vulnerable, and when they express it to their partners, not always supported. In fact, their partners can feel unsupported, simply by virtue of that man having those difficult emotions. So we have some ways to go with fully integrating the full range of what has been called masculine and feminine power.
Michele Christensen 10:04
What I want you to get out of this episode is just the vocabulary, that there are 12 different elements, that they're in six pairs, that we can only be as good on one side of a pair as we are on the other side. And if we're not working on like that bodybuilder that's got the big huge upper body and then little sticks skinny legs, we're totally out of balance. And to use a different muscle metaphor, give you a great big biceps, but your triceps are underdeveloped, then even your biceps won't be as strong, and you'll actually they'll get too tight because they don't have anything balancing out and pulling in the other way.
Michele Christensen 10:43
So to avoid the distortion, and to be able to embrace our partners when they're bringing in some mix of elements that might be surprising to us, we want to embody all 12 elements. So I'm going to walk you through these 12 elements of power. Just as a quick introduction. And then in the show notes, we'll talk about more resources and ways that you can connect to the 12 elements and begin to work with them.
Michele Christensen 11:09
So the first pair is about how we get what we want: This is driving and receiving. So, driving is the more yang element here. acquisitive, directive, penetrating, this is where we see what we want, and we take action to get it. And then the counterpart is receiving this is more yin, this is where we let information in, we into it, we let others give to us, we make requests, and we feel and express gratitude.
Michele Christensen 11:33
The second pair has to do with how we establish our identity. So here are the yang element is self reliance. And the Yin element is connection. Under self reliance, this is where we're independent, we focus on the task, we take risks, we make things happen, we exert control. Our capacity for connection, on the other hand, is how we cultivate relationships, we're connected to our body, to the earth, to our emotions, and to something larger than ourselves.
Michele Christensen 12:03
The third pair of elements has to do with how we relate to ourselves and others. So providing is the yang element and the yin is nurturing. Under providing we protect, we rescue, we fix, we pay for, we take action on behalf of ourselves or someone else. We make it happen. We give what's needed, we solve problems. nurturing, on the other hand, it doesn't attempt to solve the problem. It holds it. This is where we care for, we tend to, we heal, we relate, we empathize, we create a space. This pair is really big when our partner comes to us at the end of the day with something that happened that day. They might want providing but almost certainly what they want first is just nurturing.
Michele Christensen 12:52
The fourth pair of elements is how we set priorities. These are pragmatism and sensuality. And my guess is you can hear by now which one's yang and which ones yin pragmatism is the yang element here. This is functional, practical, level headed, straightforward. This wants to know what's the bottom line. Sensuality is the more yin element. And this is what does it feel like? This is our capacity for pleasure. This is where we create beautiful environments, and we activate all the senses. This is about the process and the experience.
Michele Christensen 13:26
The fifth pair of elements has to do with how we handle challenges. The yang side of this is fierceness, the yin is resilience. So in fierceness, we defend we speak out, we fight, we analyze, we plan an approach and launch a campaign. A lot of fierceness happening in the world in a really beautiful way. And a lot of fierceness is happening in a way that's destructive. And there's resilience. And this is the flavor of power that looks least like power, perhaps most powerful of all. This is how we have power when we don't have control. And indigenous people, people of color, and women know more about resilience than many other human beings who have more political or physical power, and have more controllers as a result. This resilience is the capacity to allow things to pass through us, to bend with what is so to feel pain and to hold steady in the face of it, nonetheless. Resilience allows us to be candid, and take the risks that need to be taken in order to speak truth when we're uncertain of the response. Just as is true of all the pairs of elements, you can only be so resilient without activating some fierceness, and you can only be so fierce without activating some resilience.
Michele Christensen 14:51
The sixth pair of elements relates to how we think this is the final pair, and focus is the yang element. Holism is the more yin element. When we're focused, we're thinking with laser sharpness, we're articulate, we see holes, h-o-l-e, you know, poke holes in the idea. We analyze, we're linear, we think literally holism allows us to multitask, to see connections and possibilities. It allows us to hold the seeming paradox, seeming contradictory ideas together at the same time, and to think symbolically.
Michele Christensen 15:30
So that is a lightning tour through the 12 elements of power. But I wanted to take one episode just to introduce the elements, so that you can start to recognize all of these elements in yourself, and see where the tool that you've been using is both the secret to your success in the places where you're getting what you want. And it can sometimes be your downfall in the places where you're not getting what you want, or the response from other people is not what you had hoped.
Michele Christensen 16:00
So let's take this into the realm of intimacy in a particular way. At the end of the day, if theoretically, you'd like to feel closer to your partner, you'd like to get intimate, emotionally and sexually, you'd like to be able to let your guard down, but you just can't, you're not alone. And there's nothing wrong with you, you're not broken, and that is your partner. Often what it is, that we've gone too far into self reliance, not too far for what the day demanded, but we're stuck there. Because we've been so active in our self reliant power. We've been independent, we've been focused on our tasks, heads in our to do list, and it can be hard to pull out.
Michele Christensen 16:40
So we need to cultivate connection. But if we leave too fast to cultivating connection with our partner, and we can kind of smell their need and their desire, that can be overwhelming, and it can be hard to get out of that here. So one elements of power approach to that would be to recognize like, "Oh, it's just a seesaw. I'm just too far over and self reliance, to have the kind of intimacy I want right now." I'll need to move into connection, "What can I do that creates kind of on ramp to connection? Says that I'm not trying to go from zero to 60, in 3.2 seconds, and with my partner, but what could I do to connect to my body, what could I do to connect to my spirit, what could I do to just get out of my head a little bit." So a bath, or a slow walk around the block, some self pleasure, or just rubbing lotion on your hands and your arms, putting on some beautiful music. Just slowing down a little bit, recognizing and specifically intending. I need to get out of my head now and into my body, I want to move from self reliance to connection because that's the right tool for the next job I want to do here, related to connection and self reliance when it comes to the end of the day, and to connecting with our partners can be driving and receiving.
Michele Christensen 17:59
So if we've been making it happen, we've been up in our heads, and we've been being directed with ourselves and others all day. And then we want to be more in partnership, we want to receive from someone else we would love, for someone else to be in charge for once. We've got to make room for that. And so recognizing when driving mode has been our mo all day, and we need to move into receiving mode. It can feel a little vulnerable to let someone else's energy in when we've been running our own energy in such an intense way all day. In a gratitude practice is really helpful for me in this. It can really help, transition into the next part of the day. Now just recognizing our gratitude, "Oh wait. as tired as I am, and as much as I don't want more demands on me, I'm so grateful to be coming home now means something totally different than it did." For many of us, coming home from work means moving from one room of the house to another one. I've always worked at home. You know what, when it's the end of the workday, and we're shifting over and just taking a moment to be thankful that we have a partner, that they love us, and are looking forward to seeing us, that we have children that we get to take care of, that we have plenty of food, that we have a beautiful home, that we have some. Have a brief it may be or have a run out we may already feel. We've got a little bit of leisure where we're physically safe, and can let down.
Michele Christensen 19:40
So just dropping into gratitude can help expand our receptivity. And then thinking in a very deliberate way again, I welcome my partner's energy, going to loosen my grip on having things exactly the way I would do them and I'm going to let land the kind of assertiveness.
Michele Christensen 20:03
So I really want to hear how these thoughts land for you what comes up as I introduce these 12 elements? And what do you recognizing about how you operate, where you have active elements and which of these elements, you don't use nearly as much? which ones would be helpful in your work life, which ones would be helpful in your home life? I want to keep the conversation going.
Michele Christensen 20:25
We'll do more episodes based on your particular questions, challenges, stories you want to share. And I look forward to all of that and to what will unfold. So please make a comment on my Facebook page, or DM me on Instagram, or leave a message on the show page, which you can find at http://lisenbury.com.
Michele Christensen 20:48
This is episode number two. I'm master relationship coach, Michele Lisenbury Christensen, and this has been the podcast Love.Sex.Power. Thanks so much for listening. And I will see you here next week. I remember the Bruce Coburn lyric I love. "If you love love, love loves you, too." So this week, may you love love.