Hello!
This blog is the transcript of my interview on the Authentic Birth Podcast with Magalie Serret Doula.
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Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Authentic Birth. My name is Mags and I’m happy to be with you today. Today, I’ve got the honor to have with me Amy Fournier. Hello, Amy!
Amy Fournier:
Hello Mags!
Magalie Serret Doula:
I am really happy to have Amy today here, because we are fellow podcasters. Amy has just released her podcast called Awakening Aphrodite, and she is going to support us women in finding this balance in our mind, body and spirits. Amy as been in the field of health, fitness, and self-empowerment for over three decades. She likes cutting through the fluff and helping people become completely and authentically themselves. I am so happy to have you here, Amy, and I would love you to tell us about these energy that we have inside us and how the masculine and the feminine comes together and makes us women as one person.
Amy Fournier:
I love it. Well, it’s an honor to be here. Thank you so much. This is a subject you and I are keen to be passionate about. And for me in particular, at the stage of my life, because I feel like this feminine force and energy and all these mysterious qualities we have as women are things that we’re not taught as young girls. They’re not really a part of our culture and what a shame. Who they used to be in ancient cultures years ago, these were all qualities and traits and abilities that girls and women had that were cultivated and nurtured and valued. And somewhere along the way they got lost. But needless to say, you and I are here to help that.
Amy Fournier:
Okay. The main thing with the masculine and feminine thing is… I’ll just cut to the bottom line is, I have been an entrepreneur, I’ve had my own businesses, I’ve worked very hard my whole life. And I’m an American, and a new England American person too growing up in new England, the Puritan work ethic. I grew up with very much a masculine dominant archetype in my brain of working hard and nose to the grindstone, and tough freezing cold winters, and just power through it, and do the right thing, and use your head and be sensible and be logical, and don’t think about your feelings, and all that kind of stuff.
Amy Fournier:
Now let’s get one thing crystal clear, masculine and feminine is not a value judgment. One is not good, one is not bad, one is not better than the other, one is not more desirable or honorable than the other. What people have to understand is the holistic picture, is the duality of nature of all of the world, the universal principle of polarities in that all things have a front and a back. All things have a dark and a light, all things have a masculine and feminine. They all have that duality to them.
Amy Fournier:
And for this conversation, we’re talking about the masculine essence and the feminine essence of a human being. And if we visualize the Tai Chi symbol, which a lot of people are familiar with, it’s that black and white circle that has a squiggly blind down the middle and half of it is black, and half of it is white. Within the black is a little circle of white and within the white is a little circle of black. And it’s a squiggly line down the middle, it’s not a straight vertical line, it’s a wavy line. And when you learn about the science of symbols, which speak to our subconscious, there’s a reason that that line is squiggly, and there’s a reason why one side’s black and one side is white.
Amy Fournier:
And most importantly, there’s a reason why there’s a little color of one within the other. So what that means is this Tai Chi symbol, the symbol of duality, the symbol of the masculine and feminine, is trying to teach us that within all of us is both. And within all of us, even if we are predominantly identified with more of one essence, meaning say we’re more of a feminine woman, or we’re more of a masculine woman, or a more of a feminine man, or whatever. Whatever one we identify with regardless of our gender, it’s just our essence the way we think of ourselves and the way that we act. Regardless, there’s still the seed of the opposite within us. And this is a very empowering thing, I think, because again, to have a fulfilled life, we have to be full right?
Amy Fournier:
To be fulfilled, we need to be full, meaning the whole picture. So if we’re not operating our lives in all of who we are, and being aware of our full essence, and having the discretion and wisdom to know, when is it in my best interest to be more in my feminine energy? When is it my best interest to be in my masculine energy? Then we’re not going to ever be fulfilled, Because only going to be operating from part of our potential capability. I like to tell people, there’s a reason why there’s 88 keys on a piano, and most of us are only playing with 12. So what kind of music are you going to make with 12 keys as opposed to 88 keys? So, empowerment and awareness is about being educated to know, wow, there’s so much more to me than I can tap into.
Amy Fournier:
And then I have the wisdom and the discretion to know when I want to use which one. For example, a woman that identifies with their feminine essence, feminine qualities are traditionally more of the feeling body, the intuitive body, the emotional body, the patient’s, the nurturing, the love, think of the mama bear or mother earth, and that nurturing quality. But at the same time, the feminine is fierce. She is strong, she’s powerful, because her intuition is what gives her, her confidence, because she is confident in who she is and for her own counsel to give her advice. And that comes with experience and trust, and those are feminine qualities. The feminine is also sometimes misunderstood as the weaker, but if we really think of it, picture a mama bear protecting her cubs, is that weak?
Amy Fournier:
We’ve all heard stories of the woman who gets in a car accident, God forbid, and her child is pinned under the car, and all of a sudden she gets super human strength and lifts the car off the baby. Where’s that come from? So the power of the feminine is not something to mess with. An aphrodite, which is an archetype, meaning it’s just a universal theme that all human beings subscribe to in our subconscious, it’s nothing to be afraid of that fancy word. It’s just a theme that again, it transcends all cultures in all races, it’s just a universal principle, it’s an archetype. About Aphrodite is, she was the goddess of love and beauty, true, but she was also the goddess of creativity and victory and prosperity. So, she was the goddess that all the cultures would pray to and revere to when they needed help in battle, and when they needed help with providing for food on the table, and she was a female.
Amy Fournier:
So, not something to be messed with. So, I love talking about the masculine and feminine, just to kind of go full circle with where I was going with this is that, I grew up as a predominantly masculine woman, even though I strongly identify with being a female, and I love being a female. I lived more of a masculine energy, and like I said, I forced myself to work all the time and I always tell people, if ever you think I should be doing something you’re in your masculine. Because the feminine drops down into the body and feels, feels for the answer. It doesn’t intellectualize and literally logically get to the answer. They’re both good, but when we only live from one, again, we’re not planning from 88 keys on the keyboard. So that’s kind of the idea.
Magalie Serret Doula:
Amazing. I love your description. When a woman is pregnant and she is going to go and welcome her baby, she really needs to develop her intuition and that feminine part of herself. Do you have any keys or clues of what we can do in daily life to improve that intuition part of ourselves?
Amy Fournier:
I love it. Well, I would say the first thing that comes to mind is for her to start right now, before she delivers. You start to develop that relationship with herself. And it all starts with asking the question and it doesn’t matter if you literally put it on a sticky note and put it on the refrigerator where you brush your teeth and check in with yourself. And a lot of people have an easier time closing their eyes, because it’s for some reason, that’s our primary sense right now. And if you close your eyes, it’s easier to go internal and literally ask the question, how am I feeling? It’s amazing to me how women in this day and age, I don’t know if it’s an American thing and you can tell me about that, but they are afraid to go there.
Amy Fournier:
That’s like, Ooh, no, no, no, I don’t want to think about my feelings. I’m afraid I’ll get lost and never get back or whatever. But checking in with our feelings, how am I feeling? How do I… Rather than ask, what do I think about that? I think we should ask, how do I feel about that? And if we don’t get the answer, because we haven’t been asking the question, so those muscles are very atrophied, they’re very weak. You might not get an answer. You might say, “Mags, I don’t know how I feel. I asked myself how I feel and I get crickets.”
Amy Fournier:
So, keep asking, because eventually you’re going to develop the relationship, but you can’t be surprised that you haven’t asked that in 20, 30, 40 years, and you’re not getting an answer. Be patient, keep asking and keep dropping down into your body and start the relationship with yourself. Because truly, I think of ourselves as a capital S, it’s the soul, it’s the self, with a capital S. And that is a relationship that our personality, that our everyday life outside there, self is not really tapped into. But when the self is controlling the life, then life gets easier. Life gets a lot more enjoyable, and life gets a lot more magical, that’s for sure. So I would start with asking the question, getting the relationship with your intuition by going within your body and feeling for answers.
Magalie Serret Doula:
Amazing. And as you say, this comes with practice.
Amy Fournier:
Yes.
Magalie Serret Doula:
We can’t expect from one day to the other to go to, I don’t know what I’m feeling because I’ve never allowed myself to really go and see too. Yeah. I know exactly what’s happening. How does the body enter the dance with that question?
Amy Fournier:
How does our body talk to us?
Magalie Serret Doula:
Yeah.
Amy Fournier:
That’s a great, great question. And for everyone it’s different. Some people get physical sensations. Now, if I just think superficially the answer to that as a health professional, is symptoms. For example, you eat a meal an hour later, you need to take a nap, you’ve got gas, you’re bloated, you’re burping, you’re craving carbohydrates, you’re tired, you need to take a nap. You’re hungry again, you get an upset stomach. These are all symptoms. That’s one way the body communicates. Being overweight, high blood pressure. If you’re on any kind of medications, those are all symptoms that you’re dealing with. The body is telling you something is not right. And they’re not meant to be ignored or medicated, they’re meant to be understood and paid attention to so you can do something about it. So that’s one way.
Amy Fournier:
Another way is to… I think it goes back to what I said earlier about developing a relationship with yourself. It’s funny for me, I started to very much within the last few years, as I’ve gotten older and wiser, develop more relationship with myself and I developed this thing I call my inner smile. That sometimes when I get a little idea or something pops into my head, I swear to God, my body smiles from the inside out. I don’t know how else to explain it, but I get this whole uplifting of two corners of a face, my whole body almost goes up. That’s a way of my soul communicating with me. That’s a big, yes. That’s a big, yes. That’s a big, yes, we want you to do that, think that, say that, go there, whatever. So, this is something that comes by just being aware, turning on all your senses, your ears, your eyes, your smell, your feeling, your gut, all it going embodying the answer.
Amy Fournier:
So much we articulate and we intellectualize answers, this isn’t about that. This is about tapping into the animalistic nature that we all are, as half of our being is animal and spirit. Tapping into the animal nature, because so much I feel like in our lives, we’ve cut off senses. Most of us can’t smell anything, because we don’t really use that much anymore. But there’s a reason why your nose right on your mouth, and so you smell a food is rotten and you don’t eat it and die. But there’s other things as well. But how about our ears? We mostly use our eyes, but we have so many other senses and there’s many more than five. Which we’re just starting to understand that are tools for us, to get information from the universal field, from our subconscious, from the bigger conscious, from the divine conscious, if you will. And from our bigger selves, that will help us live a life that we love better.
Magalie Serret Doula:
I love it. I love this explanation. Thank you for that.
Amy Fournier:
Yay.
Magalie Serret Doula:
So what I understand is that you kind of need to slow down to be able to get in tune with what’s happening inside you. And with your body, there’s this slowing down compared to maybe these masculine force around us that want us to produce and produce and produce more and always go faster.
Amy Fournier:
I’d say right on bingo. It’s like that pause, it’s that note between the notes. It’s that beat so… And to your point of that American masculine way of producing that we lose the opportunity that comes with respecting transitions. Going from one state or place to the next, by taking a pause, to let the energy match you and catch up. This now with the whole lockdown and everything people aren’t leaving the homes as much as often, but you might have a home office. And when you leave that home office, you might make a transition from one doorway to the next. From the office to the kitchen, to the family room with the family, to your children’s room, that you honor that transition both physically energetically, emotionally, spiritually, where you’re entering a new place, a new state.
Amy Fournier:
And again, to your point that comes with just that, it doesn’t have to be 10 minutes, because most people are like, “I don’t have 10 minutes I got stuff to do.” But you could just [inaudible 00:17:39], just acknowledge it. It just takes a split second of you opening your awareness to, okay, that is done now I’m to this and that we’ll do miracles because guess what? Your spirit comes with you. So much in life I feel like we’re doing things and we’re not embodied. We’re not all there. It’s like, when was the last time you drove somewhere, and you didn’t remember getting there. Because you weren’t really even in your body, or you were talking to somebody like, I don’t even know what I said or why I said that.
Amy Fournier:
You weren’t really fully present. You weren’t fully embodied and that just comes with wanting to have it there. And that’s why, like I said earlier, I’m a big fan of sticky notes. I got one right over there. Where is it? Right there on my mirror. I have a lot of sticky notes, because I’m always trying to strive to be the person I aspire to be to. I’ve had to do a lot of work on myself. I’ve been a train wreck in my life and that’s what’s gotten me here.
Amy Fournier:
But I feel like if you put in the effort, the universe meets you in kind. If your intentions are for good and to be better and to be part of the answer for the world and be part of sharing love and value for other people and making yourself better the day that you’re no longer here than day you were born. Then I feel the universe meets you in kind. And I’m a big, big fan of sticky notes to remind you to do that. So whenever I have things I spark to, I write myself little notes to do the things that I’m trying to do. And you know what, they worked pretty good for me, because eventually I start taking them down because I’m like, I don’t need to look at that anymore, because now that’s just kind of automatic for me. I trained myself like a dog basically.
Magalie Serret Doula:
Oh, what’s very important is you use repetition. The sticky notes allows you to repeat and repeat and repeat until they’re integrated and you function with them.
Amy Fournier:
Right on.
Magalie Serret Doula:
So that’s a great way when we want to change our habits, or to take a new one on, to put these sticky notes all around the house to remind us the messages.
Amy Fournier:
Yes. I love it. You said it much more articulately than I did. That’s at least my method, but obviously everyone has to find their own. For me, that works for me. It’s that reinforcement of reminding me, because it’s one thing to listen to your podcast and be like, “Wow, she’s got so many great ideas or I love that guest that was great.”
Amy Fournier:
And then you go back to your life, or you forget about it or whatever. It’s just a podcast you heard last week. For me, that’s a way of me, like you said, integrating it and making it part of who I am. At least until it does become part of who I am, and then I rid of the sticky note and put up a new one. But that’s also how I grow. Otherwise, for me, I would still be the person I was 20 years ago. I would never evolve, and I feel like we’re all here for our souls to evolve. We’re in school if you will of, trying to learn and grow and I’m always trying to grow and get better. So, that’s one of my methods.
Magalie Serret Doula:
Amazing. Fantastic. And then this growing process, as you said, we grow all along the way. The more in tune you are with yourself and the kind of nicer life is.
Amy Fournier:
Yes.
Magalie Serret Doula:
So I think one of the big message of what you just said is, start your journey as early as possible.
Amy Fournier:
Yeah. Yes. I love that. Yes.
Magalie Serret Doula:
So thank you for all these techniques you gave us.
Amy Fournier:
Oh, my pleasure.
Magalie Serret Doula:
And when a child comes to earth and his mum has done this work on himself, then it’s easier for the mum and for the child to find their path I think.
Amy Fournier:
Awesome. And the more self-actualized the mom is, think of how much of a headstart the baby will have. So like you said, starting with her now, even pre pregnancy is just the more equipped and more centered she is as a woman in who she is, and what her resources are and what her true power is, the more she’s in tune with that, the easier… Well, I would imagine the easier her birth would be, but certainly the easier her motherhood would be, because she’s just going to be a stronger force.
Magalie Serret Doula:
Amazing. Amy, thank you.
Amy Fournier:
Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun.
Magalie Serret Doula:
It has.
Amy Fournier:
Okay. Over and out, we’ll see you next time.
Magalie Serret Doula:
Bye.
HERE MORE GREAT CONVERSATIONS LIKE THIS ON MY SHOW: Awakening Aphrodite
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