THE INFLEUNTIAL WOMAN

{ SHIFT+CONTROL }{ BLACK WOMEN ROC }{ A SPECIAL TRIBUTE }{ THE INFLUENTIAL WOMAN } YOU ARE ENOUGH. FEELING LOST IN A SEA OF STRESS?

BY NICOLE HEROUX WILLIAMS I PHOTOS BY NSP STUDIO BY DR PAM DENTON

Sarah has always been a fitness enthusiast, able to workout, and has used it as her therapy. For years, she would hit the gym with her girlfriends and get in a power workout. She did not have to worry about weight or body image, this was enough to keep her going and she felt amazing.

Fast forward a decade, working in a highstress environment, growing her own business, where she literally feels that the stress is crushing her. Sarah’s workouts no longer help to relieve stress – in fact, her body begins to give out under the toxic load of mental, emotional and physical stressors. She suffers from back pain, insomnia, headaches, sleepless nights and weight gain.

Sound familiar? Have you lost yourself to stress? Maybe you have given and given until there is nothing left?

The Doctors tell Sarah: “Eat better.” “Get more sleep.” etc…..

But this becomes frustration and anxiety because Sarah is trying but nothing seems to work! ❖ She eats clean but the scale does not move. ❖ She works out but no results. ❖ She goes to bed early, but wakes up exhausted. ❖ She is bloated. ❖ She is depressed. And no diet or pill helps her.

Why aren’t Sarah’s workouts dissipating or resolving her stress to a degree that her body bounces back? Sarah doesn’t understand why the workouts won’t move the scale and she is falling deeper into depression, although knowing that as an influential woman she must find a solution.

Sarah’s story is one of the many women who have benefited from Sacred O Sexuality training. She is driving and driving so hard to achieve her goals that she has dug herself into a stress loop that burns out her hormones. She needs a hormonal reset.

I developed Sacred O programs for influential women after many years of holding space while women sobbed in my office - frustrated and in pain because they had no way out from a stressed out body. Many women would show up at my doorstep desperate and traumatized by medical advice. All the things that seemed simple solutions DID NOT WORK. “Oh it’s menopause, its perimenopause, its your eating, you need to work out…walk…” Where does a woman go when this is happening? She goes down the rabbit hole, into criticism, judgment and blame. She blames herself and ends up turning the sword inwards, and her influence starts to crumble.

So I began to develop the Female Form of Leadership, a program I now call Sacred O Sexuality. Sacred O became a Coaching Program for women that teaches women how to use a fitness movement practice and workout to consciously move through stress, almost like breaking shit but better, we use breath and movement to go through the stress cycle. I guide you to engage with your toxic stress load and release it from the body, mind, and emotions. And I provide a space for being real and expressive, what I call Unleash Your Wild Side!

Through our client’s testimony we have found that Sacred O practices: Burn fat even when you are not working out. Intuitively eat delicious foods and feel satisfied while losing weight and bloat. Discover the power of energetic health derived from breathwork and movement. Balance your hormones. Reduce stress so you can thrive instead of survive. Lose weight and bloating naturally and with a lot of fun!

When I entered into this work as a fitness coach and healer, I saw this pattern of stress causing dis-ease in my clients. Women constantly reported that they suffered from fatigue, anxiety, pain, weight gain, and depression. Most of all, they lacked the ability to consciously connect with their stress to release it. They were carrying their toxic load into the gym and driving the toxins deeper into their bodies because they lacked the inner neurological technology to mindfully connect, let go, and pull in new, healthy energy. And they had no plan to get out. Nothing seemed to work. And most times they were using a cookie cutter workout that did not honor the creative life-force of the feminine body. My clients did not know how to move the feminine energy and it was all stuck in the pelvis. Workouts only complicated the aging process that had been compounded by increased stress loads.

Too much stuff had gone unprocessed in her system and was now shoved inwards as a memory bank of stress.

The American Psychological Association states that stress negatively affects “all systems of the body including the musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems.” [https://www.apa.org/topics/ stress/body] It’s no wonder that stress is often cited as the number one killer in our modern world.

Look around. Listen to the news or read it online - and ask yourself if we as a world and a society are “crushing” our stress – or is it crushing us? The answer is obvious – stress is winning. In fact, stress is affecting people at younger and younger ages. As millennials mature, they may be facing challenging health issues, according to a “Health of America” report released by Blue Cross/Blue Shield on April 24, 2019. [https://www.bcbs.com/the-health-ofamerica/reports/the-health-of-millennials] Their report showed dramatic increases in the prevalence of some health conditions,

“Sound familiar? Have you lost yourself to stress? Maybe you have given and given until there is nothing left?”

including depression, hyperactivity, Type II diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. The report stated that the health of millennials begins to take a “major decline” at age 27. Sacred O emerged in 2014 when I launched my book Love, Sex and Money: Journey to Female Empowerment. I realized there was a sacred process of connecting and breathing with movement that would reset the female body. This slowly became a coaching system of breaking old hardwired behaviors and habits holding women stuck in a body she did not want and in a life she despised. So what does Sacred O mean? Let’s break it down.

Sacred: Going beyond our current ideas of what it means to get and be fit. Sacred means slowing down and tuning into the primal energy in your body, taking time for the sacred rhythms of the feminine body. Your primal energy is your emotion release valve. The primal nervous system knows your origin. It knows you are fit and by accessing the primal feminine we experience in each workout and coaching session a release that resets stress hormones in your body. Sacred O fitness for women releases toxic energy and incorporates all aspects of being our best – physical, mental, emotional, and, yes, spiritual.

O: The cOre. The core is the center of your body that is accessed through the central nervous system where your major energy centers are located and can reset your hormones and stress level. The O also represents orgasmic sexual energy and female innate power - the cycles and rhythms of the feminine flow. The core is both the physical center of your body connected by your spinal cord and a metaphorical center where you can increase and harvest your inner strength and power. O is the energy of the cycles of a woman’s body, her natural pelvic energy, and her complete power. By working with the O we are organically resetting the rhythms of the feminine body to achieve a superpowered state. So what can you do RIGHT NOW to ditch stress and begin building your Sacred O Sexuality power?

In Sacred O we focus on the energetic core through vigorous breathwork, movement, and coaching the release of stress and old stagnant, stuck patterns that break down the body. When you focus on the feminine energetic core as you breathe and move with awareness, you break through the stress cycle to become stronger than your stressors and this naturally starts to reset your hormones. No diets, no meal plans, not even a hard core HIIT workout that breaks you...this is all done from seated and moving into standing. And although we suggest superfoods, your body will innately reach for what it wants as you open up your energetic and intuitive body.

In developing Sacred O Sexuality for Women, I discovered this one amazing and fun fact! Your breath is the most efficient pathway for you to access the stress reduction you’ve been missing this whole time. The basis of Sacred O’s fitness plan is breath. BreatheFit is the breathing practice that we use in our Fitness Coaching Program for women. As a BreatheFit coach, I direct our participants to breathe while they work out, using certain breath techniques and rhythms to achieve a higher level energy flow and stress reduction than they would through movement alone. I also help you to connect with conscious breathing – breathing with awareness and intent to achieve a desired outcome. In this case we move the feminine energy from the pelvis up! And one of the outcomes is – stress relief!

Conscious breathing will allow you to: Reset hormones naturally and restore body balance Access and release stored stress or tension and reset your power body Move through emotional, mental, or physical obstacles pay attention to your breath. And the first step to paying attention is to close your eyes. To connect with your breathing, it’s essential to remove external stimulus and begin to listen inward. When you are staring at computer or phone, eyes open, your energy is pointed outward. When your eyes are open, sensory-neuro stimulus is constant. Closing your eyes turns your energy inward toward yourself and allows you to sense your body (yes, we said it – SENSE your BODY!)

EXERCISE: Checking in with Your Breath Close your eyes. Notice your breath just the way that it is, without changing anything. Are you breathing? Are you holding your breath? Can you feel the breath move through your body? What is the rhythm of your breath? Is your breath shallow and quick? Are you breathing through your mouth or through your nose? Is your chest rising and falling, or is the movement only in your belly? Do you care about your breathing?

Think about it – you wouldn’t be alive if you weren’t breathing. You can live for weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without breathing. Breathing is your body’s natural way of building energy, releasing toxins, and letting go of stress. And you won’t believe how conscious breathing will amp up your overall fitness, health, and well-being!

There is a lot more to Sacred O and reclaiming your feminine form that you can experience on one of our amazing retreats, in session, or in classes

Dr. Pam Denton is a fitness expert, international speaker, healer, coach, and founder of Sacred O Sexuality - Coaching and Fitness. She is author of numerous books including, She Means Business and founder of the Magic Moon Retreats for women to work with the Sacred O process for resetting from stress and awakening deeper body awareness beyond stress.