Sexual trauma affects survivors on many levels, including our feminine softness. I welcome you to join me in this post as we explore how to use holistic healing to explore and heal your soft feminine nature.
What is Feminine Softness?
Feminine softness is the lighter feminine energy side of our being. This is the place of vulnerability, creativity, intuition, and empathy. After sexual trauma, we may feel like this vulnerable side of us failed us or won’t protect us in the future. We may feel like we need to create an armor around us, hardening and creating more thorns than flowers.
While it’s important to also embrace our darker feminine soul to love ourselves fiercely and stand up for injustice done to us, we need the healthy balance of catch and release.
Related Post: Embodying Your Dark Feminine Energy: Healing Anger After Sexual Trauma
While we may feel more protected if we hide or deny our feminine softness, we are sacrificing some of the most beautiful parts of ourselves and what life offers.
Living life with too much protection can quickly lead to isolation and fear around closeness with others, and possibly even ourselves. I understand how complicated it can feel to determine if our fear is from becoming close with someone who is healthy for us, and if our fear is because of the warning signs and anxiety of an unhealthy person.
Unfortunately, trust isn’t something that happens immediately. It’s a slow process, each person showing subtle signs of trustworthiness. Overtime, we can deepen this trust and allow vulnerability. I welcome you to explore support options for working with trauma thought patterns directly.
We can heal our feminine softness by first working on our love and empathy for ourselves.
We can only extend love to others based on the amount we love ourselves, along with compassion, empathy, and kindness. When working with restoring softness, we can’t use a mindset that belittles or rushes us into love. It’s more of a letting go, releasing unrealistic expectations and the blame we may cast on ourselves.
This can be a difficult journey, and it may seem like cultivating more self love is just a lie we tell ourselves until we one day believe it. We don’t need to lie to ourselves, and we can use holistic methods to restore this self love in a way that feels natural and honors the unique time and pace of our journeys.
If you’re a creative soul, possibly even known to be sensitive, you may find that working with your body is a more intuitive approach to healing feminine softness.
For many sensitive souls, healing feels more natural when we can express, feel, and create our way through trauma. Sensitives may also extend empathy more easily than others, have stronger intuition, and reach higher levels of mediation more easily. I welcome you to explore more about being a sensitive survivor of sexual trauma in this blog post.
While there are many creative forms of healing, yoga is one way to express through movement. Research supports how some people respond better to movement compared to speaking directly about their experience.
This review explored how women who completed trauma sensitive (also known as trauma-informed) yoga experienced less PTSD, anxiety, and depression symptoms from intimate partner violence compared to talk therapy alone.
This isn’t to say that yoga alone is a trauma healing care plan, but it’s a supportive additional avenue to rediscover parts of ourselves and move through feelings with no need to verbalize our experience.
Related Post: Trauma-Informed Yoga: Exactly How These 6 Pillars Support Sexual Trauma Survivors
When we approach our femininity with openness and abundance, we may discover healing avenues that speak to our sensitive side. We slowly lessen the grip we have on control, perfectionism, and fear, and allow more softness, vulnerability, and compassion.
We may even notice less tension in our bodies from constantly bracing our muscles to protect ourselves, and this allows emotions to flow. With grounding and yoga techniques, these emotions have a container to process through us without overwhelming us.
Using simple, effective yoga techniques allows us to soften and gently strengthen our femininity.
I welcome you to explore the exercises and techniques below to welcome more softness, grounding, and release.
Grounding to come into the present. This technique is about noticing your body’s contact with the surface supporting you. You can also do this by placing your attention on an object if working with your body directly isn’t supportive for you at this time. Grounding eases racing thoughts and brings you into the present moment. You might explore yoga poses like child’s pose, legs up the wall pose, or trauma-informed savasana.
Heart opening yoga poses to welcome love into your heart. Poses that expose your chest and heart bring focus to your heart chakra, the energy center in our bodies that is home to love. Releasing this area soothes tension and opens us into receiving more love in our hearts. You might explore yoga poses like cobra, camel, sphinx, upward facing dog, and supported fish pose.
Breathwork. Breathwork is an ancient practice (known in yoga as pranayama). Specific techniques support calmer thoughts, a slowed heart rate, less anxiety, and an overall sense of wellbeing. I welcome you to explore breathwork to release tension and trauma this blog post.
Including additional practices that strengthen our version of feminine softness creates room for self acceptance.
Everyone has a different version of femininity. This makes us all unique and allows us to follow our intuition and do what feels right, instead of second guessing if we’re being feminine enough. Your version of femininity is unique and perfect for you.
I invite you to create an atmosphere during your holistic practices or self-care routines that welcome more softness. This could be comforting music, specific scents from candles or essential oils, and props like blankets or pillows. You might include self compassion practices during yoga classes like placing your hands on your heart or giving yourself gentle hugs.
If you ever feel unsure in your practice and self doubt washes over you, I welcome you to take a pause and maybe reflect on your current state. When exploring self-care and holistic practices, you might ask:
- How do I feel as I do this?
- Does this bring me genuine joy? Or is this something that I feel should bring me joy and isn’t?
- Is there anything I could do at this moment to make this a more comforting experience?
I welcome you to go slow as you rediscover your feminine softness. You may find yourself in judgment or doubt, and that’s okay. It happens to everyone, and there is nothing wrong with the time you take to shift into more gentleness.
Overview
Healing feminine softness after sexual trauma is one of the bravest journeys any survivor can begin. I find I need to remind myself that there is strength in softness, and embracing this is also the key to embracing love, joy, and happiness. I invite you to take all the time you need as you navigate your healing journey and know that you are worthy of reclaiming your feminine softness. Until next time, take good care.
If you’re ready to take your first steps to holistic healing after sexual trauma, learn somatic tools for navigating triggers, and gentle guidance for beginning a trauma-informed yoga practice, I invite you to learn more here.
