How can you become a whole woman? The whole you. The beautiful you. The sexy you. The sacred you.

You know how to adorn your body—you do it every day. You decorate your body with your favorite clothes, earrings and rings, fragrances, textures, and colors. You dress, slum, wear makeup or not depending on your mood, whether you’re at a meeting, having a bad hair day, working out, doing laundry, or out on the town.

You know how to adorn your outside. You may do it to look and feel attractive, appealing, and sexy. To attract others. Which is fabulous.

But there’s more to being beautiful, radiant, and sensual. A truly beautiful woman is just as beautiful on the inside.

Becoming whole is adorning all of you—body and heart, psyche and soul.

So how do you adorn your femininity? See if you find something that helps you be beautiful from within and become a whole woman in this eight-part blog series.

 

Shringar, the art of adornment

In India, shringar is women’s art of adornment. When a woman does her shringar, she enjoys and celebrates making herself as beautiful as she can be. With sixteen ways to decorate, reveal, and beautify herself from nose ring to bindi, henna to perfume, attire to armband to anklet, shringar is an art for each woman to explore and revel in her femininity, sensuality, and mystery.

Shringar is how a woman adores herself. It’s an act of self-love.

When you adorn yourself as a woman, you adorn Shakti, the Goddess, in you. Just as goddesses in temples are bathed and scented and dressed and garlanded, so too, when you adorn yourself, you sanctify yourself.

You may be trendy or comfort-seeking; wear chunky jewelry or delicate sparkles; be lavish or subtly feminine. Your outer decoration reveals how you feel about yourself, your inner life, and your femininity.

♥ How do you adorn yourself? And with what?
♥ What in you do you adore? And not?
♥ How whole do you feel as a woman?

How do other women do it?

We women are always looking to other women to mirror, reflect, and inspire our femininity.

You check out another woman’s clothes, the cut of her jacket, her shoes. How she walks and holds herself. Her sensuality, her self-esteem. How true is she to herself? Will she support you or does she only look out for herself? Does she abandon herself or is she in her feline power?

You compare yourself. You may be judgmental, even catty.

You look to learn. Is she a model for you?

Maybe you feel less than. Jealous. Neutral. Or inspired.

You always know when a woman plays herself down or lives from her fullest femininity. You know, the radiant, magnificent, compassionate, and powerful women. The ones lit up from within. Women who are completely themselves. And believe in themselves. Unabashedly and unapologetically so.

Your journey as a woman

We’re all on the same collective journey—digging ourselves out from the same old patriarchal hole.

Maybe you think that, as a woman, you’re supposed to be quiet, small, modest, and chaste. Take care of others. Sacrifice or give yourself away. That you’re supposed be the woman your mother or father or culture or spouse want you to be.

Maybe you were raised in a masculine model, where you found power by emulating a man. Self-reliant, competitive, and oh-so-individually tough. So strong that no one can ever hurt you. That to be powerful you have to out-man men.

In your journey to become a whole woman, you sift through family, cultural, and social messages of what it means to be a woman. You sort through your fears and insecurities, your defenses and apprehensions. You get to know your strengths, your vulnerabilities.

Every morning you look in the mirror, creating and uncreating and recreating your womanhood.

There isn’t one way to be a woman. But there’s only one way to be truly uniquely femininely you.

And that’s your way.

It’s a process to become a whole woman

It’s a process to stop seeking approval, being the good daughter, and taking care of others. It’s a process to soften a hard masculine way of being, to become tender, soft, and warm. It’s a process to open your broken heart to love again. And another to set boundaries.

It’s a process to own being fully sexual and gorgeous. Fabulous. Creative. Powerful. Wise.

It takes inner work. Therapy. Digging into the deep, dark stuff of who you are.

But you want to be seen. You want to be known. You want to be heard and felt.

You want to find your power. Your voice. Your unique mystery.

You want to desire and be desired. Love and be loved. Utterly.

You want to soar.

Somewhere along your own feminine journey, you discover you can only be yourself. That you can’t kowtow to anyone or make them kowtow to you. That, to be a whole woman is to be completely beautifully powerfully you.

Truly.

It’s then, when you shake your mane and swing your hips, feel passion and power in your belly, your full-throated voice, your loving beating heart, your sexual magnetism, and playful creativity that you know you’re a live woman. A live wire. Fully alive.

In body. Mind. Heart. And Soul.

The seven adornments

Over the next few weeks, this eight-part blog series adorns your femininity not with precious stones, but with the jewels of your chakras.

Pristine and powerful, these seven energy centers are aspects of femininity, which when alive and balanced, integrate to make you a whole woman:

   ♥  Body
   ♥  Sexuality
   ♥  Power
   ♥  Heart
   ♥  Voice + Creativity
   ♥  Intuition
   ♥  Connection to Spirit and your own Divine Femininity

 

Stay tuned to travel with me on the chakra caravan to whole womanhood.   

And meanwhile, adorn yourself!