Looking For Power In All the Wrong Places: To Find Your Fierce Look To Your Heart

   about-bottomRecently I was reviewing some quoted material and found this. It speaks to what I call The BIG SHIFT.

 “Real personal safety calls for nothing less than the re-awakening of instincts that allow for early recognition of danger, the skills and strategies to diffuse and escape violence, and the ability to mobilize deep-seated primal powers to fight off attack. 

It commands a monumental shift in women’s self perceptions, the channeling of intense emotions, unlocking a power and authority women often don’t know they posses. It taps into what Soalt calls, Fierce Love and a knowing in one’s heart: What is worth fighting for? What is non-negotiable? Where do I draw that line? ” 

Self Defense From The Inside Out.

I want to be kick ass! women blurt out with gusto. Great!, I say. But understand this: Self defense is an inside-out job. Before branding ourselves toughees we need to confront our feelings of vulnerability – otherwise known as ‘the female fear’ – which quietly lurks in the background of women’s lives.

Imagine for a moment that you are under attack. That your words and best efforts at peaceful persuasions have failed, that escape is not an immediate option, that terror has seized your heart with such a mighty force that you can barely stand, think, breathe…

Now hit the pause button.

Here’s the critical question: “If under attack, where will YOU go inside yourself to mobilize the focus and presence of mind to effectively act; to unfreeze your fear, activate power and call up courage with the whole of your heart? (Not to mention contending with the effects of an adrenaline-spiked cocktail pumping through your veins which can just as easily hijack your thinking-brain as gift you with super power.)

How will you collect yourself and command your emotions to rally in formation, your subatomic self forging an iron will? And do this in a heartbeat because seconds count.

If you secretly imagined that you’d crumble or get stuck in the freeze —  and if so, I assure you: you are in VERY good company!- ditch that image, and prepare to re-imagine…What if you knew that in a pinch, you could become a dangerous dame and effectively be your own best protector and self defender? 

The Good News Answer: You can and need to be. There IS such a place, a go-to zone and a way to rapidly mobilize skill and power. The path to arousing female power is akin to arousing female desire. It taps into a complex network of feelings, a circuitry not only rooted in biology and the brain but also intimate places spanning our loins and limbs, heart and soul. It’s a primal ‘heat’  that lives far below the topsoil of our everyday ‘nice lady’ selves, our cover-girl veneer. Yet for many, the capacity to BE the aroused warrior has atrophied or become dormant, buried beneath fear or conditioning of one kind or another, subsumed by the artificial constructs of femininity and by socialization which favors women’s nurturing, do-no-harming nature. So it needs to be unearthed, reinstalled, and turned back ON. Then kept on like a pilot light’s flame which can be adjusted as needed. Because in the Moment of Truth all systems must be GO! 

What’s Been Amiss: Looking for Power in all the Wrong Places

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The biggest problem and “miss” (especially for women) in the larger martial and self defense world is that power has traditionally been influenced if not defined by men and the male mindset. That’s a mouthful I know.
What I mean is this: the male self defense paradigm has largely focused on an external constellation of power: the strong muscular body, the high-powered martial moves, the pumped and steely mindset as the primary ways and means of sourcing and delivering power, and succeeding in self defense and by extension in the ‘battle’ of life. 
 

While strength, moves and mindset are vitally important, they aren’t the whole story of power, nor necessarily the most critical components for women who typically lack the luxury of greater size and strength and often the mental or social conditioning to ‘return fire’ if they need to go physical. 

The Female Way

For most women, sourcing power and warrior spirit is INTERNAL and connected to feelings. It is as much about working “in” as working out.

It entails calling up will-power and courage from our deepest emotional reserves, descending into the basement of our being to access strength and grit. It means pulling power from terror and fury itself and bringing this fire into our fight.

In other words, for women, the directive to physically self defend doesn’t just originate in our bodies and brains or from knowing strategies in our heads or even from the fight/ flight effects of adrenaline.

 

It often arises in a completely different organ: The Heart. It arrives via the emotional and feeling body. And from a place that is both spiritual in nature AND rooted in survival instincts which must be leveraged in our defense.

Once a woman discerns where she draws that line, deciding what is not negotiable, uncompromising, and worth fighting for, this retrieval of power can happen in a heartbeat.

The Power of LOVE  

Women often discover their greatest strengths and abilities through feelings of love. Where there is love, there is ferocity which naturally arises to then protect what a woman loves or holds sacred. Be it safeguarding her boundaries, her body, her own life or the lives and sovereign dignity of her loved ones.

 

When I talk about “ferocity” I don’t mean a hate-filled emotional recklessness but rather a powerful surge of forceful, directed, maddening energy – whether it’s driven by fear, fury, love or survival. It’s a willful uninhibited force. It is the fevered taste, the already whetted appetite of a hungry lioness; it’s what allows us to punch, tear or claw our way out of darkness or an overwhelming life crisis.

Ferocity is that BIG bolus of juice, of toughness that enables us to swim upstream and fight uphill aided by defiance, a certain gnash in the teeth, and a singular focus to see our way through to the other side.

In context of self defense its purpose is to preserve life and dignity — not to ‘teach him a lesson or make ’em pay.’ It is not rooted in revenge.

The thing about ferocity is that it not only boosts physical strength, but dissolves inhibitions, hosing out obstacles and rallying the will. So it’s a superpower akin to what has traditionally been termed “killer instinct’ — a phrase that still chafes against women’s empathetic nature and sense of connected-ness, including my own. (Yes, even I, plucky brave-hearted leader, have a hard time spitting out the term “killer instinct” and I much prefer “ferocity” and “dangerousness.”)

In the end, perhaps ferocity isn’t just an attitude but a destination. A go-to place and primordial state of being that is au naturalle and organic like the ferocity of childbirth. For women, this ‘state’ needs to become second nature, a second soul-home.

Get Your Mojo Pumping and Back Online 

Although many can teach tactics and tools, Soalt believes that only a female can bring other women into this ‘primal zone’ within themselves. The courage and skills to safeguard boundaries and summon one’s might in the face of fear is best — and most directly–transmitted and realized through a female role model….”

Below are my essential four components and means to realizing this potential, to clearing the path, reinstalling your power, deflating your fear, working with your emotions, and arriving at that sweet spot, where the outermost layers of fear burn off to reveal something far more fearsome. It’s Womanly. It’s Primal. Read on……”

Survival like romance must capture our hearts.

http://www.dr-ruthless.com/methods-philosophy.php

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Got F? Lionize Yourself with Fierce Love.

Love is Fierce. (And self defense is fierce love.)

Lionize yourself. Be the Courage. 

That’s the focus of this post and my spanking new blog aptly titled: Find Your Fierce. In many respects it is the heart and blood-pulse of physical self defense. I mean when nothing else will do but counterattack.

Lionize. It’s rarely discussed. Doubtful that you’ll hear this in any women’s self defense manual– except mine. And you’ll hear it a lot because it houses my F slogans:

Ferocity. Fierce. Female. Fear Into Fire.

Ferocity is an attitude. A force. It not only fills you with determination and strength, but the hidden gift of Ferocity is this: it dissolves inhibition and rallies the will to fight.

For a female (typically smaller with less mass and muscle) this isn’t just some New Age empowerment soundbite- this isn’t faux ferocity— but a vital tool in the arsenal. A weapon that can to be sharpened, cultivated and worn on the inside, which is in itself a deterrent.

Learning to mobilize ferocity in the face of what may otherwise be stultifying FEAR is part of the process of becoming an effective self-defender.

Ferocity is a gift that keeps on giving. Nestled in ferocity lies another primal powerhouse: KILLER INSTINCT. It’s an ugly term I know. I’m in this 26 years and it took me years to come to grips with this word–because it grates against my being– and not couch it in the more palatable language of “Survival Instinct” which it’s connected to. But Killer Instinct is a particular emanation and expression of survival. It’s what allows us to engage and to wield the tools of violence and direct it purposefully in the service of survival. In the service of protecting and preserving life – defending that which we hold sacred.

I’m not advocating this for the purpose of destruction- of course not. (For the record, I escort spiders out of the house prayerfully cupped in hand while uttering benedictions of good wishes under my breath. I’m THAT girl.) Here are the two reasons why I urge women to leverage their killer instinct for self defense.

  1. Because it can fund and drive your fight, allowing you to “bring it” HARD and FAST, delivering an extra dose of AGGRESSIVE whammy powered by the spirit of entering. (In other words: save your pretty ass!) 
  2. Because it can help you assassinate your very own fear. KILLER INSTINCT cuts both ways. There may be times when killing your fear becomes necessary. So that you can, in warrior parlance, take up the spear or do what might otherwise be unfathomable. (“You want me to bash what?”)

There is in every woman this deep-seated domain of ferocity- something of the cave, the primitive exists in us all-– but it’s often buried below fear or conditioning. It needs to be called out of hiding and lured to the fore so that it can be freely tapped, focused and (judiciously) wielded. So that it can embolden our hearts. Once your killer instinct is realized and switched ON, it’s a potential game changer. And there’s this:

For years we lauded our F Spot. (Va va voom!) We now know it’s way more than a mere spot. (HA!) I’m guessing you’ve been there, released that. Now it’s time to release another va-va-voom: The F-Spot. More than a spot. It’s a network housing the means, ways and locales within to free YOUR FIERCE. But before you can coax it out of hiding, release it in full, you must first answer these intimate questions: What is worth fighting for? What is non-negotiable? What do YOU hold sacred? Where do you draw the line? 

The answers to these questions will define your boundaries and arouse Your Fierce.

Make no mistake: It’s a power that’s as spiritual as primal. It’s part of our wholesome female package. The fighting Eros of Life.

Welcome to my new blog.  With more “F’s” to come…