Feminine Genius

Feminine Genius https://liyanasilver.com/book/

Help me write my next book about divorce/breakup as a dark night of the soul ...As we step over the threshold from last...
01/09/2025

Help me write my next book about divorce/breakup as a dark night of the soul ...

As we step over the threshold from last year to the next, I want to extend my heartfelt invitation to you for an upcoming workshop,
"Divorce, A Metamorphosis."

>>> Link in comments below

This 4-week online workshop is for anyone navigating divorce, breakup, or separation — a journey that may feel like a Dark Night of the Soul.

This isn't just a workshop.

It's a transformative space to help you turn one of life's most painful experiences into one of its most profound.

As a workshop participant, you'll actively participate in shaping this work, which also informs my forthcoming book (Spring 2026), tentatively titled, "Finding Your Way Through the Dark Night of Divorce: A Radical Reclamation of Self, S3x, and Soul."

Together, we'll dive into:

* Four weekly live classes: Engage in writing prompts, body-based exercises, and open Q&A sessions.

* Between-class exploration: Experiment with tools, reflect, and share your insights with me (anonymously).

* Guided transformation: Discover how to move through this tough terrain with greater clarity, self-trust, and purpose.

Neither my new book nor this workshop is about managing the ins and outs of divorce or separation per se, but rather about seeing this massive life upheaval as one of life's most potent initiations.

Depending on how we approach and engage with a relationship rupture, it can be a radical retrieval of self, sovereignty, and a more aligned life path.

The you that goes into a Dark Night is not the same you that will jailbreak your way out.

It's who you become in The Dark that helps you emerge brilliantly.

* * *
Schedule

Thursdays
Jan 30, Feb 6, 13 & 20 2025

6pm ET / 5pm CT / 4pm MT / 3pm PT USA

90 mins
With optional additional 30 mins for Q&A
Live on Zoom

There are three flexible pricing options, from barely-anything to more-if-you're-able.

This Workshop Will Help You Lay the Foundation For:

* Trusting yourself: strengthen the connection to your inner guidance system — for right now and the rest of your life

* Reclamation: recovering parts of yourself you may have lost in the relationship — and uncovering new facets of yourself you haven't met yet

* Clarity: define what you deeply want for yourself and your life — even beyond what you've assumed is possible

* A strong center: get out from under the conditioning of people-pleasing, co-dependence & over-functioning — so you can co-create healthy, safe, delicious relationships

* Emotional skill: stay grounded and connected to yourself and your truth as you navigate emotions — especially the difficult, negative ones

* Prioritizing your joy: dignify your needs, desires, and sensual aliveness — and put them at the center of your goals and values

* Setting boundaries and protecting your energy — especially if you easily lose yourself in relationships

* Making peace with yourself: develop a loving relationship with yourself and your body — rather than battling yourself and your demons

* Soul-connection: recognize and honor your unique path, even and especially through its darkest phases — and come into greater alignment with yourself and your soul

* With guidance throughout by me, LiYana, your sure-footed guide through this uncharted territory

No matter where you are in your journey, if this workshop and material calls to you, welcome.

In a Dark Night of the Soul you enter into a massive, possibly unparalleled process of transformation and reclamation, wherein the old you gives birth to the new you.

Consider me your doula.

I look forward to workshopping with you!

Making silly faces on our last day at the beach on our yearly family vacation.We don't have a typical family configurati...
08/16/2024

Making silly faces on our last day at the beach on our yearly family vacation.

We don't have a typical family configuration. We do have evolving love, warmth, sweetness, and support.

I'm feeling grateful, blessed, tender-hearted.

(And sad, as I feel the cool hints in the air marking the end of summertime :) )

Want to know what your feelings are trying to tell you?Want to know what your emotions could say if they could speak?I'l...
07/24/2024

Want to know what your feelings are trying to tell you?

Want to know what your emotions could say if they could speak?

I'll walk you through it in a short video, Decoding The Messages of Your Emotions, Feel Better Tip #6.

>>> Find it in the comments below.

There is a saying I picked up from one of my mentors:

"The messenger cannot quit until the message has been delivered."

Each of your feelings is a messenger with a specific, potent, personal message for you.

And it won't can't mustn't quit until it delivers its message to you.

Yes, you can ignore and dissociate and numb and run and spiritually bypass the crap out of it and try to outrun-outwit-outsmart and argue and deny and refuse … but the emotion-messenger will keep trying to get your attention so it can deliver the message.

Maybe through your dreams. Body aches and pains. Accidents. Life derailments. (I know you know what I'm talking about).

Still, that feeling tries to tell you what it has to tell you.

* * *

If we want to feel better, we have to get better at feelings!

Feel like a horse? Buffalo? Cow?I've got more Feeling Better Tips for you! They are all based on the idea that if we wan...
06/11/2024

Feel like a horse? Buffalo? Cow?

I've got more Feeling Better Tips for you!

They are all based on the idea that if we want to feel better, we've got to get better at feelings.

I'll share with you how to deal with emotional 'storms' and what 'medicine' horses, buffalo, and cows have for us that help us feel better.

>>> Watch them by following the link in the comments below.

In Feeling Better Tip #2, I share that each emotion (fear, anger, grief, etc) is made up of two components: sensation and story.

Both are important, they just require different tools and mindsets.

It's good to know how to work with the sensations of the feeling — whether it's fiery, icy, leaden, or foggy — so we don't automatically check out, numb out, or lash out.

In Feeling Better Tips #2, #3, and #4, I share a few different ways to work with the 'storm' of sensations that accompany any emotion.

I'll share with you how to not perish from feelings (it sure feels like we might, sometimes!), and also how to stay grounded in a storm of feeling, based on how cows, buffalo, and horses do it with real wind-and-rain storms.

Working with the sensations part of emotions is badass work.

It requires much courage to head into a storm of feeling, even whilst feeling we might not make it out alive from those feelings! (You will, I promise).

So, please enjoy these Feeling Better tips!

And please do me a favor as you watch them:

>> Share them with someone.

>> Comment here or message me and tell me how they are useful.

Things like that help me, well, feel better! 😍

With all the feels, LiYana

This pic is from my current dance studio from Halloween time. 'Twas meant to be funny.But all I could think of was ... ...
06/04/2024



This pic is from my current dance studio from Halloween time. 'Twas meant to be funny.

But all I could think of was ... this was my - and is still too many of our - goal weight.

When I was 17 and started boarding school for dance, I acquired myself a nasty eating disorder.

At my most skeletal, I weighed 30% less than I do now. One third of me, gone.

Skeletal was my aim and that's what I got.

It would take me the next 20 years to unentangle from that eating pattern and I'm still working through the health ramifications, almost 35 years later.

I'm nearly fully healed. But I'm not sure the nasty whispers ever go away completely, even if I'm much more able to bat them away these days, like nasty gnats.

Wherever you are on the spectrum of healing from what we all know is nonsense (but nonetheless still see and feel and hear), I'm here with you.

Your eating or thoughts or body image or self-confidence don't have to be perfect for you to be pointed in the right direction of healing and sanity.

And the next time you feel like a luscious magnificent specimen of human - just cuz you do - think of me and wink, OK?

Your devotion is more powerful than your doubts.Luminous Life Tip #10Here’s something I galvanized while writing my fir...
05/23/2024

Your devotion is more powerful than your doubts.

Luminous Life Tip #10

Here’s something I galvanized while writing my first book, 'Feminine Genius.'

🔥 Doubts aren’t an indication that something’s wrong with you; they are an intrinsic part of any creative process. 🔥

As I was writing that book, all manner of very convincing doubts would come up and taunt me.

Who was I to write this?

Hasn’t it already been said by better writers than me?

Would anyone even care?

However, instead of letting them unseat me, I chose to see those doubts as allies to my creative process, rather than impediments to it.

Doubts (or any kind of resistance, worry, fear) are tricksters.

They love us and they truly want us to succeed, but they show it in a tough-love kind of way, by turning up the heat of challenge.

My doubts wanted me to write my book for you, but they tested me — hard — in essence asking me:

🔥 Will you believe these fears or will you stay focused on what you’re making?

🔥 Will you get stopped by resistance or will you stay committed to what you’re doing?

🔥 Are you more devoted to your doubts or to what you’re creating?

So next time resistance, worry, or fear comes up for you, you know that the question to ask isn’t some version of, “are these doubts true?” but rather …

🔥 🔥 To what are you more devoted, than your doubts? 🔥 🔥

Drop an emoji or word in the comments and let me know how this lands for you!

Your body is the temple. #11 Luminous Life TipIt seems so many of us have internalized, in one way or another, the idea ...
05/20/2024

Your body is the temple.

#11 Luminous Life Tip

It seems so many of us have internalized, in one way or another, the idea that body and spirit are separate, and that actually our earthy bodies are an impediment to spirituality.

But what if each of us took seriously the invitation to reclaim our bodies as a special space in which divine encounters divine?

What if we assumed that when anyone looked at our bodies, they are gazing upon a god/dess?

What if we used the same intention when putting on clothes as we would lighting incense on an altar? What if we knew our voice — in its clarity, confusion, passion, and love — was making a joyful noise unto the heavens?

* Then we would know that the sacred isn’t just out there, it’s in us.

* We could resurrect trust in our bodies.

* We could forge a deeper, newer, truer connection to the sacred.

* Know that our hungers are holy.

* Know that our bodies are innocent.

* Renew our sensual vitality.

* Respect our intuition as much as our logic.

* Trust ourselves and our bodies.

* Then we could remember that to incarnate into flesh and blood and bone isn’t a fall from grace, but rather is the embodiment of grace.

Your hunger is holyLuminous Life Tip #8I wonder if we all may be a little wary about lifting the lid of our hunger and ...
05/13/2024

Your hunger is holy

Luminous Life Tip #8

I wonder if we all may be a little wary about lifting the lid of our hunger and letting our longing loose in the world.

Aren’t our desires the very things that limit our awareness, dumb down our human potential, lead us astray, and propel us compulsively toward pleasure one moment and away from pain the next?

🔥 Not necessarily.

Heeding our hunger is not the same thing as compulsion, addiction, or unconscious consumption, though many people mistakenly confuse them.

🔥 It is not our hungers themselves that are the problem. It is the restrictions, cages, and taboos that are assigned to our hungers that cause the problems. 🔥

Steward our desires, yes.

Learn their powers, yes.

Wield those powers with care, most certainly.

But the very things we may have assumed will ruin us — our impulses, urges, longings — are actually designed to reconnect us with your life-force and holy fire.

Drop an emoji in the comments to let me know how this lands

When your 12-yo son is both emotionally astute and weirdly able to hack search function html code ...He called me over t...
05/03/2024

When your 12-yo son is both emotionally astute and weirdly able to hack search function html code ...

He called me over the other morning to show me the results of his Google search.

I SWEAR I did not put him up to this. :P

What you get is what you see #4 of 11 Habits for a Luminous LifeEspecially as girls, women, and females, we have (and ar...
04/30/2024

What you get is what you see

#4 of 11 Habits for a Luminous Life

Especially as girls, women, and females, we have (and are still) most valued for our appearance.

We have internalized the (false but insidious) idea that our very worth hinges on others finding us acceptable.

And so we get very good at appraising our appearance (in hopes of securing our value).

When we self-appraise, our eyes (and other sensing organs) have a filter over them, so to speak.

We filter for what’s bad, worthless, flawed, broken, displeasing, and wrong about us. So we know what to fix and get on with proving our value.

However, when you use a different filter, like appreciation, you filter for what’s good, valuable, delicious, delightful, and just right about you, right now, as you are.

Same you, different filter.

What you appreciate, appreciates.

What you get is what you see.

So, then, deciding to make the mindset-shift to exchange the filter of appraisal for the filter of appreciation, is a power move indeed.

It doesn’t erase the families/cultures/religions/world we live in, in which we are relentlessly appraised and generally found lacking.

But it does allow us to be rebellious and radical — to bask in our intrinsic, irrefutable beauty and worth.

It is good to feel good. #3 of 11 Habits for a Luminous LifeWe have been taught that if we feel too good, we’ll get lazy...
04/26/2024

It is good to feel good.

#3 of 11 Habits for a Luminous Life

We have been taught that if we feel too good, we’ll get lazy, be unmotivated, prove selfish.

Almost every one of my clients, when we start working on shifting their inner critic or inner bully or inner perfectionist or inner people-pleaser, gets nervous. But how will I motivate myself to DO anything? Will I still have resolve, drive, will I still get anything done?

Here’s what I know:

Plants lean toward the light.

Our bodies orient toward health and homeostasis.

Similarly, our deepest instincts urge us toward contributing goodness to the world, creating something beautiful, expressing what is ours to express.

And we’re most in touch with those instincts not when we feel like crap, but when we feel good.

And yes, that's me in the photo, in one of the places in the world I feel the most good!

Make love not war with yourself ...This is #1 of 11 Habits for a Luminous Life.This might be the one gift I’d wish for ...
04/24/2024

Make love not war with yourself ...

This is #1 of 11 Habits for a Luminous Life.

This might be the one gift I’d wish for every human, if I was limited to just one.

This habit offers you an entirely new, radical, alternative way to relate with the parts of you that you have wanted to cut into pieces and feed to the dogs.

The only way out of warring against yourself is to quit being a warrior, to stop using warrior tactics and tools, to relinquish the warrior’s mindset.

Aim instead to give yourself over — tremblingly, willingly, bravely, wholeheartedly — to being a lover. A lover of, even of, especially of, first and foremost of, yourself. Unsavory bits and all.

Instead of restricting and punishing and bullying yourself (ala the warrior), you become curious and welcoming and truthful (ala the lover).

All of which, I think, takes more strength and ferocity than being a warrior anyway.

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West Asheville, NC

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