Detoxifying Masculinity

In this meditation, I explore the concept of toxic masculinity as a societal predicament and influence that affects us all. I offer some guided visualization and imagination exercises to connect with our bodies, innate essence, and the ways we may have been influenced by assumptions, expectations, and ideals surrounding masculinity and gender. This meditation is for all genders and gender expressions.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for listening.

This is Renee and this is a somatic meditation.

Somatic meditation is a style of meditation that works through the body and the felt sense.

And generally I use a lot of imagination and exploration through guided visualization or suggestive imagery.

Sometimes I invite you to use touch.

You can move around,

You can make sounds.

I really want you to be in your body.

There's a lot of styles of meditation that are encouraging of a sense of stillness and expansiveness that is kind of a noticing of presence or a cessation of thoughts.

And those kinds of meditation are so helpful and amazing.

And there's this other kind of meditation which I call somatic meditation which I think eventually ends up in a place that is quite expansive and potentially beyond thought.

But the route that we would take to get there is very different.

And instead of finding stillness in the body we might explore movement or very deep presence with sensation.

And for those who maybe have trouble sitting still or engaging with more classic styles of meditation,

Somatic meditation might be a nice way to build a practice.

But also through these practices we can directly move towards certain ideas and work them out through our meditation.

And that's the aim for today's meditation.

And of course you've probably read the title and today's meditation is definitely an exploration.

And it's coming at a time when the words toxic masculinity have really entered mainstream awareness.

And you might have used them maybe plenty of times.

You might have a lot of experience with whatever it is that you identify as toxic masculinity.

I think if you've even clicked on this meditation there's some desire to explore it as an idea and also detox.

And before I get into the meditation I want to take a moment and just let you know where I'm coming from so you can decide if this is a good meditation for you.

When I think of toxic masculinity I don't think of gender really or sex.

This is not an idea or a concept to me that is only about male identifying people or people with penises.

Toxic masculinity I think has been a momentum and something that has developed since patriarchal religions.

It is a culture.

It's deeply ingrained in many cultures.

I think most cultures throughout the world that there's an idea of male supremacy.

And in this idea of male supremacy there is an emphasis on male bodied or male presenting people being particular ways.

And those ways are generally more assertive or aggressive or perhaps even violent.

Masculinity and warriorship have long been associated with each other.

There's also a lot of emphasis on being right or having an answer or being a leader.

And of course throughout the world we see the majority of people assuming leadership positions are men and that is not so helpful all the time.

I think it's quite unhelpful for a lot of reasons that we would probably all agree just needing there to be more representation and diversity in leadership.

But on personal levels,

Any body,

Any being,

Has the capacity for leadership and being right and having an answer and violence and aggression and assertion.

And any body has the capacity and need to also experience tenderness and vulnerability and relationship and not knowing.

So toxic masculinity is something that I think really affects us all.

It affects men and women and trans people and non-binary people and everyone in a body.

And it really affects our planet.

The way that masculine ideals of leadership and strength and aggression and violence have permeated and formed our cultures have bred cultures that are quite aggressive and tend to exploit people and other cultures and the planet.

So when I'm talking about detoxing masculinity,

I'm really coming from a place that wants to honor that all beings are sharing in this suffering and that we may have very different experiences of how these ideas and concepts have been embodied,

But it's still something that we're all sharing.

So that's my stance.

And if that rubs up against something for you that you feel like,

That's not the approach you want to take with it,

I won't know if you stop the recording and walk away.

And if you have a reaction to it that you feel like,

That creates some curiosity for you,

Then I invite you to stay.

And if you hear it and you think,

Yes,

That's great,

I agree,

Then we'll just get going.

So to begin the meditation,

I invite you to find comfort.

And comfort can be any shape.

You can sit,

You can stand,

You can lie down,

You can move around.

Throughout the meditation,

I'll ask you to connect with your body and you can connect with your body through sight or through breath or through touch.

But you may also want to be in a place where you feel comfortable to touch your own body,

Where you feel comfortable to move around,

And where you feel comfortable to make some sounds.

When I work with somatic meditation,

I often find things that need to be expressed.

And sometimes the expression sounds like a weird guttural noise,

And sometimes it needs to be shaking my body.

So I really want to invite you to do whatever you need to as we go through this process together.

And when you've arranged your space and found your comfort,

Then let's just begin by noticing.

And in the noticing,

First notice your surroundings.

So you might look around and see the space that you're in.

And one reminder I find very helpful for myself when I begin to meditate in any way is that usually there's not much happening.

I'll look around and I'll see a spider on the wall,

Or I see my cat sleeping.

I hear a dog barking outside.

So just notice what you notice.

The sounds,

The shapes,

The colors,

The smells.

And then let's notice our bodies.

And you can use your sight to look at your body.

You can use your touch.

And as you notice your body,

Notice if judgments come in right away or stories come in right away.

Seek to go right through them into a place of just simple greeting.

And you might say it out loud or you might think,

Hello body.

And as you connect with your body through touch,

Or through sight,

Through breath,

Through your greetings,

In whatever way is accessible for you right now,

Extend appreciation.

This is the body that has carried you throughout your life.

And it's the only body you're going to get in this life.

And so in any way that you can access right now,

Send some gratitude,

Send some appreciation.

This is your body.

And then if it's comfortable to close your eyes,

Close your eyes.

If you prefer to keep your eyes open,

Let your gaze be soft and unfocused.

And whatever it is that you see,

Let it just stream in to your eyeballs.

And then let's all relax the roots of our eyes all the way to the back of the brain.

And relax your forehead and soften your jaw and your tongue.

You might need to stretch your jaw out or stick your tongue out.

You might want to make some sounds,

Blow out your lips.

And eventually let your face go slack so there's no expression and no need to hold your mouth.

And then bring your attention into wherever you are relating with gravity.

Your feet,

Your seat,

The earthly side of your body.

And in that connection to gravity,

As much as you can soften and release.

And whatever you feel in gravity,

The floor,

The chair you're sitting on,

Your bed,

Invite the sensation to really meet your body.

So connect with what is supporting you in a relational way.

And then let's deepen our breath.

And as you deepen the breath,

Consciously relax the front wall of your abdomen.

Breathe into the front and the back of your body and breathe out into the sides.

Really fill your body up with air.

And then when you exhale,

Feel free to sigh out.

If I wasn't wearing a microphone just below my mouth,

I might make a sound.

With the sigh,

Feel free to do that.

And as you breathe and as you bring more and more attention to your breath,

Just feel your breath.

Notice the sensation and the quality of your breath.

Imagine that every other human being on earth right now is also breathing.

And that means anyone else in the space around you,

Your neighbors,

The people in your city or your town,

Someone on the opposite side of the world.

And with 9 billion people on the planet,

I bet there's at least one other person that is inhaling and exhaling exactly when you are.

And so as you breathe,

You might imagine that your breath can hold everybody else.

And what I mean by hold is there's some kind of hello,

Just like we gave our bodies a moment ago.

Oh,

You're breathing.

And you might remember that anyone who's alive or who has ever lived shared experiences with you.

That all of us who've been in bodies have been conceived in some way,

Had some variation of embryonic development and fetal growth,

And we were born somehow,

And then we've lived our lives in bodies.

And that's true for everybody.

And the nuance and the details,

Of course,

Are vastly different.

But in that simple container,

We've all experienced the development of our bodies.

We all grew from two cells into this complex billion-cell being.

Maybe there's a chance to just greet this imagination or this idea of 9 billion other bodies,

Also breathing.

And as you extend out with this idea of holding others in your breath,

Remembering also that everyone who is alive or who's ever lived experiences fear and loss and hope and deep despair and immense joy and confusion and all the feelings that you've had.

Probably everyone else has had some variation of them too.

So we live in a world that really likes to categorize and separate things.

And in fact,

That's one of the things that our human brains are the best at doing,

Is categorizing and comparing and noticing difference.

And the instinct that pretty much everybody has,

It's a biological instinct,

Is to notice difference and to separate what is like or what is unlike into different groups.

And it hasn't always been like this and it isn't like this everywhere,

But a majority of the planet at this time,

The human beings alive on the planet,

Have experienced categorization based on their genitals.

And people born with penises are separated into different groups than people born with vaginas.

And this is true even when we're living in a world where we're not born with a lot of sex organs,

Even when babies are born with both sex organs or some kind of other,

So combination,

And not just very clearly male reproductive system or female reproductive system.

But I believe it's one in four babies are born intersex.

A lot of people have gone through trauma with the medical system and a lot of what happens to these babies is that surgery is performed on them very young and sometimes without the parents' knowledge and oftentimes without their consent.

And of course,

Being babies,

There's no possibility of babies to give consent.

So let's just breathe into that for a second.

Maybe this is an experience you've had or you know someone who's had it.

And whether or not you have or know anyone,

See if you can extend your breath to hold the profound impact that would have on a person.

That they're born not part of one of these groups,

But that very early in their lives,

Surgery is performed on them without their consent and invasive procedures and probably drugs are given to them in order to put them in one group or the other.

And let's extend our breath to all of those people and any beings that have had that experience presently or in the past.

And as we breathe in,

We might breathe in the pain and the confusion of that experience.

And as we breathe out,

We could breathe out and imagine a world in which bodies are loved and celebrated and appreciated for the way that they are formed.

Maybe imagine brains softening and categories dissolving.

Maybe even imagine a time when intersex babies could be celebrated.

Like wow,

You have the potential for a lot of different kinds of experiences.

And so we live in this world that loves to categorize and loves to group and loves to define difference and sameness.

And in that love,

There's a generalizing or an essentializing that often happens where we go,

Oh,

This group that all shares that attribute,

They are all like this.

And maybe you've had the experience or maybe you know someone who's had the experience that they've been born into a body and their body has a particular set of reproductive organs and genitals,

But maybe they don't identify with the assigned character traits or way of being that the world around them associates to their parts.

And of course we have all heard a lot of stories at this point about people who are trans and they feel like this isn't quite the right body or maybe this is totally the right body,

But the story that society is telling me about my body and how I should express and feel my body is not at all what I want.

And what I want or how I feel actually is more similar to that other group.

And let's breathe into maybe a deep knowing of what that feels like or an imagination of how challenging and confusing and frustrating that must be to feel that one's body is somehow wrong.

And as we exhale,

Maybe we can exhale with compassion to all the beings who've ever felt like that and extend any kind of love or support that we might give and say your body is just right.

And regardless of what parts you have,

You get to dress and act and relate in whatever way you want,

Whatever way feels right for you to express yourself.

And living in a world that we do that loves to categorize and loves to group and essentialize and make big generalizations about ourselves,

That's what we do.

And we're living in a world that we do that loves to categorize and loves to group and essentialize and make big generalizations about similarities.

We might connect with our own experiences or experiences that we can relate with,

Stories that we've heard about people who are born and feel just fine with their bodies.

They identify with their sex organs,

But maybe they don't always want to be or act in the ways that their group is supposed to be or act.

And of course,

There are pretty harsh separations between the assumptions that have been put on people called male and people called female.

And I think that this is starting to change in some places,

And definitely for lots of people,

But it's still very dominant in our world that from day one,

From the earliest impressions a baby and a child would have,

That there are ideas and messages and toys and colors that support that person to act and behave and prioritize and preference the ways of being and the sexual attractions and the pastimes or the styles of communication that match what society says is appropriate for their genitals.

So little boys are taught to like dinosaurs and trucks and told that it's not okay to cry,

That they can't be vulnerable or have tenderness with other boys,

That they can only be vulnerable or have tenderness with their moms or their girlfriends,

Their wives.

And little girls are taught that they can't be warriors,

That they need to take care of others,

That they can be tender,

But not too tender.

So however you relate with gender stereotyping,

I'm absolutely certain that you've had experiences of feeling frustrated,

Of feeling confused,

Of feeling like something doesn't quite match,

Of feeling that something doesn't quite fit in,

Of feeling judged,

Compared,

Ostracized.

I'm sure you've had friends and relationships with people who've experienced these same things potentially in more extreme or harmful ways.

So let's just breathe all of that in,

All of the confusion that everybody experiences and feels,

Because there are just two categories and those two categories are so strictly defined.

And as we breathe it in,

We might just feel those feelings.

And as you breathe it out,

You might imagine those boxes and those categories just being dissolved and exploded.

And this infinite spectrum of beingness made available to everybody.

That if someone feels that they want to be a warrior,

That they're given tools to work with their aggression and taught about gentleness.

And if someone is very tender and sensitive,

Then they're given tools to discern good boundaries and to ask for what they need.

And that everybody is allowed to be emotional and that everybody is allowed to have a good idea and be a leader.

And so whatever it is that we want to see,

We might just exhale it out and also breathe it in,

Give ourselves those messages.

And one thing that I think is detoxing masculinity is also just detoxing any kind of striation or separation that would hold masculinity as even separate from femininity.

That would define it or categorize it as a fixed thing.

And then finally,

Let's imagine all the beings who have lived their lives identifying with masculinity.

So this is a broad category and this is for sure anyone who has lived in a body that other people are reading and treating as male or masculine.

And this also includes people who might have a more internal identity as masculine and maybe their body doesn't read that way or they're not allowed to express it.

But it's more of a feeling that they have and a positioning that they know is correct for them.

So let's imagine all those people and maybe,

You know,

Certain images come to your mind like whatever.

Beefcakes and firefighters or I don't know your best trans boyfriend,

All of them.

And let's take some deep breaths and feel and acknowledge the burden of masculinity.

And I'll say some things and you might want to speak out loud your own associations and definitely at any point feel free to pause the recording or journal or take notes or write down what you're thinking.

And then finally,

Let's imagine that you're writing down what you're thinking.

For a long time,

For thousands of years,

There has been an idea of male supremacy and male dominance.

And therefore,

Anyone who's embodying masculinity is probably embodying the idea that they should be strong and that they should be assertive and maybe aggressive or dominant or violent,

That they should know how to fight,

That they should be able to win.

And for plenty of people,

This will be really exciting at times.

And for plenty of people,

This will feel terrifying at times.

And probably for most people who've experienced this,

They've also experienced fatigue,

Weakness,

Fragility,

Wanting a hug,

Desire for peace,

Without needing to understand or explain where this came from.

Let's just breathe in the suffering and the pain that has been put on so many people that has kept them from feeling like they can be soft.

And let's breathe in whatever we might imagine the experience is of having your own experiences stoked and influenced,

Potentially at the cost of your more relational or empathic instincts.

And as you breathe that in,

Let your breath continue to flow.

And as you breathe that in,

Let your breath connect to your own embodied experience and memories and sensations of violence,

Of aggression,

Of dominance and assertion,

To the ways that you have been excited,

Wounded,

Confused,

Impacted,

Assaulted.

And as we breathe out,

We might just offer a prayer for the world.

And that prayer would be that collectively we could remember the right use and expression of anger.

And anger is such an important emotion.

It lets us know when something is wrong.

And we definitely need to know that,

Especially at this time on earth.

We need to know when something feels wrong.

And anger motivates us.

It gets us to move,

To take action.

And of course violence sometimes is necessary but is most often extremely destructive.

Let's take a deep breath in of compassion for all the beings who were taught to be violent and who weren't given tools to be gentle.

And as we exhale,

We might imagine exhaling the charge,

The energetic charge that comes in when you get angry,

When you get provoked,

Reaction,

Reactivity.

We might take a deep breath in of compassion for all of the warriors.

And as we exhale,

We could extend an imagination of all of those warriors being deeply,

Deeply in the state of peace.

As I said before,

There's this another aspect or attribute of toxic masculinity is this need for the masculine beings to be right,

To have the fix,

To have the answer,

To know what to do.

What a burden.

Let's just take a couple deep breaths in compassion for ourselves for probably the majority of the time that we feel like we don't know.

We don't know what to eat,

We don't know what to wear,

We don't know what we want,

We don't know how to change,

We don't know how to be a good person.

We don't know what to do,

We don't know what to do,

We don't know what to do,

We don't know what to change,

We don't know how to resolve an argument,

We don't know how to do anything that will be effective at all.

As I'm saying this,

I'm thinking of the word awesome and that word,

You know,

We use it a lot,

Not just casually,

But really the word itself implying awe is the state of being struck by the magnitude of something and that being struck has this feeling of humility and even a little bit of terror.

The feeling that we might have at the base of an enormous mountain or ocean,

That there's this awesome power and potential that is no match for the smallness of our bodies,

For the thinness of our skin,

For the limitations of our intelligence.

What a gift it is to feel into that awesome mystery,

To feel that we don't know,

That there's no way we could know,

There's no way we could win.

And then take some deep breaths for the experiences that you've had where you've felt like you need to know and you felt like you needed to have an answer to be right.

And as you breathe in,

Feel the pressure of that idea,

Feel the urgency of it and feel what kinds of fear might be on the other side of not knowing whether or not you're right.

And as you exhale,

Exhale into awesomeness,

Into the sense that the world is so big and complex,

There is no way you could ever know.

Right and wrong are completely subjective,

Depends upon the context,

The time,

The situation.

Relax behind your eyebrows and imagine the two hemispheres of your brain and the easeful relationship with one another.

So rarely is there any kind of easy or concise answer.

You might celebrate the yes or no questions.

Do you want ice cream after dinner,

Yes or no?

Most questions are a lot more complex and the answer is not so easy.

And let's take a couple of breaths in and hold with compassion the people who are in leadership positions.

This might be heads of companies,

Caretakers and families,

Presidents,

Congresspeople,

The people who are charged with having an answer,

With being in the right place,

With being in the right place,

The people who are charged with having an answer,

With being right.

And as we breathe in,

Let's breathe in with the memory of their humanness.

They too were formed and grew and were born and have lived life in bodies.

They too are biased and subjective and very,

Very flawed.

And as we breathe out,

Let's imagine a world that has a lot more space for question,

For process,

For not knowing.

What would it be like if schools taught us to ask questions and experiment and not know,

Rather than find answers?

And then if there are any other associations that arise for you,

Ways that masculine energy has been separated or exploited,

Molded into something that is lacking its complexity,

Not together with all of its parts,

Just breathe in those associations,

Breathe in the sensation of them,

Imagine the people who embody them or the times that they do.

And as you exhale,

It's some kind of imaginative gesture,

A prayer,

An offering in your exhale that can bring us back to wholeness.

And whatever this meditation or these imaginings have brought up for you,

Explore a little bit how you might want to relate in the future to your own thoughts and beliefs.

And as you exhale,

Let's take a moment to think about how you might want to relate to your own thoughts and beliefs.

And how you might want to relate in the future with yourself or with other people who embody or trigger these kinds of ideas and experiences.

For example,

The next time maybe you're being mansplained too,

In case you haven't heard that term,

It's a term that is used for the kind of explaining that a lot of women-identified people feel from male-identified people.

I think it comes a lot from this idea that men should know,

Have the answer,

And a probably sincere desire to be helpful.

But how it comes across a lot is patronizing or condescending.

And often the woman-identified person in question,

Or maybe the child,

Someone who is for whatever reason being explained to,

That person might have their own very good answer or explanation,

Or maybe even comparative or more wisdom or expertise in whatever area.

And so this can be a very frustrating experience if you have experienced it and can produce rage or hatred or dismissal or whatever emotion might come up.

Fatigue.

Fatigue.

Perhaps the next time this happens you might take a deep breath in of compassion,

Knowing that this person has suffered from the need to know and the need to be right,

And maybe that's the way to turn the conversation.

Or maybe that's the emotional support that you need to assert your own view or to walk away or to forgive.

I don't know if the moment that we're in in the world right now has more examples of masculine violence than we've had for however many thousands of years.

I think it's been a constant for a long time.

But the kind of violence that is making a lot of headlines right now is very extreme.

And a lot of the figures that are arising are extreme figures of toxic masculinity.

And in particular white toxic masculinity,

The white supremacist shootings and terror.

I don't know.

I imagine that you don't know what a good answer to this is or how we can come to a place of peace or if that's even possible.

But what keeps coming up for me is the pain and the rage that I think a lot of men are carrying that expresses itself through this kind of exaggerated dominance and violence.

And whatever that pain and that rage is,

We could trace it all the way back generations,

Ancestrally for sure.

Whatever it is or wherever it comes from,

It seems to be defined and very marked by an extreme sense of isolation and separateness.

And that is a painful experience to be separate,

To be separate from other people,

To mistrust other people,

To be separate from the world,

To feel whatever instinct it would be to attack,

Has to be rooted in some place of deep pain.

I assume if you've made it this far in the meditation that you're a person who desires peace and healing.

And I definitely don't want to be a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person who is not a person.

And I definitely don't want to perpetuate an idea that I think is very prevalent in mindfulness or yoga or kind of spiritual communities that violence is something to only counter with non-violence.

Sometimes violence must be met with violence,

And there is always the equal and opposing force and reaction.

Chances are good that if we're reacting and responding in violence and separation that will breed more of the same.

However we call in compassion for the suffering of other beings is probably a necessary practice and first step to remember that people aren't inherently violent.

They're not inherently destructive.

We've learned this and been trained in this for thousands of years but it's not the only thing that we know.

So I'd like to finish with an iteration or variation of a practice called tonglen.

You may have heard of it.

It comes from the Buddhist tradition and this is a practice of breathing in the suffering of others and breathing out compassion.

And it can be a difficult practice,

Can be a difficult meditation for a couple of reasons.

An obvious reason would be anger and why would I try to have compassion for people who are intentionally creating so much suffering.

Another obstacle would be worry or fear that if I breathe in their suffering that somehow it will stick in me,

That I'll have to carry it.

So I'd like to offer that breathing in the suffering is breathing in the knowing of suffering and as we breathe in kind of imagining the suffering of other beings we're really connecting with the ways that we've suffered and the ways that we've suffered for probably many of the same reasons.

Though maybe the circumstances were quite different,

How the things were shaped were quite different.

But the same reasons,

Feeling separated,

Feeling isolated,

Feeling scared,

Feeling like we can't express our true natures,

Feeling that our bodies are wrong,

Feeling shamed,

Etc.

So please call into your mind all the examples of toxic masculinity.

There's a lot of them or maybe there's just one in particular that you really want to work with right now and definitely this can be a person,

This can be a group of people,

This could be a building,

This could be a country,

This could be some other kind of abstract idea.

But place it in your mind and as you breathe in,

Breathe in and imagine and know that whatever it took to become this has roots in deep and immense suffering.

And as you breathe out,

Breathe out with a genuine wish for peace,

For healing,

For love.

And as you breathe in,

You can breathe in the pain that these people,

These institutions have carried but are also creating and therefore taking responsibility for in some way on a karmic level or on a soul level that as they create suffering for other beings they're accruing karma,

Kind of a stain on their spirit.

And you might breathe in knowing you two have created pain for others and it might be in a different way.

And as you breathe out,

We can breathe out with a wish for peace and empathy,

Tolerance.

As you breathe in,

Breathing in with the imagination and the knowing that things have been very twisted,

That the impulses in a vibrant being that's capable of love and creativity and healing have been twisted and molded and shaped and anchored in destruction.

And as you breathe out,

You can breathe out with a wish for resolution,

For healing.

And take a few more breaths in whatever way as you breathe in,

Just breathing in with compassion,

Letting your heart fill.

There's so much suffering that would cause someone to be violent,

To dismiss,

So much suffering below arrogance,

Even if we might think that person is dripping with privilege.

The suffering might be in obvious to us.

Maybe it's at a soul level.

Maybe it's that they have never been able to be comfortable in their body and their true expression.

Maybe it's lack of tenderness,

Connection.

And if you can breathe in that sensation and imagination,

You can probably find some place in yourself that has experienced a little flavor of that,

Something slightly similar.

And as you breathe out,

You breathe out with the wish for your own healing,

For your own wholeness,

For your own safety,

And for the healing and the wholeness and the safety of all beings,

Including these beings that represent whatever iteration of toxic masculinity you've chosen.

And some of you will be listening and the iteration is yourself,

Or some way that you have been,

Maybe in the past or maybe in the present.

And as you breathe in,

You're acknowledging the ways that you have created and perpetuated pain because you've been separated,

Split.

There's been some enforcement that has not allowed you to be flawed or human or fragile,

And so your expression has come out maybe too rough,

Maybe with arrogance in ways that have harmed others.

And as you breathe that in,

Acknowledge it.

Don't shy away,

Don't look away.

And as you breathe out,

Breathe out with the wish for your own healing and healing of all those whom you might have harmed.

Toxic masculinity is a thread that strongly is entwined in capitalism,

Obviously in misogyny,

In racism,

In pretty much all the isms.

It's an idea and a concept that harms us all,

And it's very easy to externalize and separate and project and place it on others.

When we refuse to see how we ourselves are implied or complicit,

We perpetuate the binary,

We perpetuate the dynamic.

These last few minutes,

If there's anything,

Any realization or insight you've gained through the meditation,

And some aha moment where you go,

That's how I was upholding that idea.

I actually don't need to have the answer,

Or I could ask for a hug,

Or it's okay for me to be tender.

And take a couple of breaths and acknowledge that for yourself,

And you might imagine what that looks like.

And imagination is very powerful,

So when we imagine something,

We start to practice it,

We start to build new neural pathways.

You might take a few breaths and imagine this maybe a little bit different way of being,

Or some kind of shift.

And of course,

Since masculinity is prioritized culturally in many ways and seen as supreme in many ways,

Women-identified people adopt this too.

And we live in a world that values competition and aggression and having the right answer.

And it doesn't matter what kind of genitals you have.

It's probably true that at some point in your life you thought that you needed to be these things.

So I think that detoxing masculinity is a practice of integrating and calling ourselves back in and back together,

Remembering our wholeness.

And also letting go of the ways of being that have been so deeply entrained culturally.

And this means letting go of gender normativity.

This means letting go of ideas and preferences around rightness and answers and leadership and violence.

This means transparency,

Talking about our feelings and tenderness,

Having empathy,

Being sweet and soft.

And this also means getting in touch with our own anger and finding the right use of our anger,

Finding the ways that we want to embody our warriors and the qualities of being that in this era have been named as masculine but are really quite human and animal and part of our biological organism to defend,

To protect,

To hunt,

To stampede.

So take a few breaths in and just breathe in your own potency,

Your own omnipotence.

That means potency in all directions.

And as you exhale you might imagine like all of the Hollywood images and all of the stories and all of the myths just turning into like a watercolor painting that's being poured with water and all the colors are dripping down and melting into one another and dissolving and dropping away.

I want to thank you for exploring this with me.

I enjoy doing meditations that reach into societal issues and politics.

I think it's important to feel into the ways that we embody concepts and this meditation is offered from a place of my own curiosity and desire to heal the ways that I've adopted toxic masculinity and have been shaped by it and the anger that I have towards men and recognizing that as a female it's a person who's lived my whole life in a body that is comparatively smaller and less strong than male bodies.

I live in a lot of fear and that has created a fair amount of anger,

Especially when I hear so many stories about sexual violence against women.

But I know that this violence does not arise in a vacuum and I don't believe that human beings actually want to hurt each other,

But that any violence that arises is coming from a place of wounding.

And as a practicing astrologer and an energy worker,

Every male client I've ever worked with has suffered quite deeply from societal standards around masculinity.

And I have a number of clients who are trans men and non-binary folks and there's a lot of confusion and suffering as well around expectations and assumptions and the ways that people are struggling to be human in their bodies and express themselves in ways that feel authentic for them.

So for anyone that's listening and this meditation has really touched you in a way that feels healing,

Thank you for letting it in.

And for anyone that's listening and you've been presented with different ideas or if this has brought up confusion or questions for yourself,

I encourage you to reach out.

And you can definitely reach out to me,

But really I'd encourage you to reach out to other people and to try and initiate conversation and get to know what it's like for people who are in bodies that are different than yours and who experience life differently.

We have all been extremely violated and oppressed by standards that have been put upon our bodies.

So let's heal.

With two hands together and a very deep bow,

Thank you for joining me in this meditation.

I wish you all the best,

Deep healing,

Health,

And happiness.

Bye for now.