Francesca Raffa – Feminine Freedom Healer – offers a transformative journey for those who find themselves stuck, powerless, and disconnected. If you yearn for more in life, a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment, but feel trapped in the limitations of your current circumstances, Francesca will guide you towards reclaiming your power and reconnecting with your authentic self. MysticMag has the pleasure!
How did your personal journey lead you to become a Feminine Freedom Healer and what inspired you to explore energy healing modalities and feminine embodiment coaching?
From a young age I can always remember having the natural ability to connect with people at a much deeper level – now I can understand it was at the level of heart and soul. I was able to feel a shifting in energy within people individually and in rooms when something felt heavy, when something felt light, and I used to navigate my way around the world in this way.
I’d have friends and even people I’d just met always feel safe to open and share with me their deepest fears or pains and seek advice or guidance from me and without realizing I was channeling and mirroring back what they needed to know on a soul level.
Recognizing this gift but not truly understanding it, I went down a conventional route of studying counseling and psychotherapy but halfway into my studies I saw many limitations in just talk therapy alone – I saw the blocks to just working at the one level of the mind, what about body & spirit? So, I decided to not further pursue it and felt I had no further options to work within the field of therapy or helping people which spiraled me into a deep state of fear, some may even say depression – numb, lifeless, as if life was just happening to me and at the same time I was also in an emotionally abusive relationship.
I completely shut myself off from all my gifts and lived life the way I thought it was supposed to look like, did as I was supposed to do based on society’s standards and worked in a corporate environment that was heavily materialistic, overly masculine dominated and a highly competitive environment. Without realizing I had completely imprisoned myself from myself, stuck in the hamster wheel of doing, doing, doing.
I knew deep down this way of life was only temporary, but it felt like I was just waiting for an epiphany to come and save me. I did start reading a lot of self-help books which must have planted seeds in me because I reached a turning point where I had a vision of what my life would look like if I continued living it in a way that was truly not aligned with who I was at my core and the vision of this was much scarier than the fear I felt of jumping ship from it all.
It was only through my own curiosity to rediscover and explore my true self again that I was able to recognize that I had been suppressing my authentic expression all along, hidden in layers of fear, feeling like I had no choice or any way out and totally powerless.
I took the leap of faith and jumped ship, holding onto one intention and a vision of reconnecting to my own ‘Self-Expression’ which now I understand is the language of the soul. This download came through and opened my eyes and shook me to show me there was another way.
I began reconnecting with my creative expression (which from a young age I’d always naturally gravitated towards leaving school at 16 to go to art college) I attended acting and pottery classes and this led me into my desire of creating a tea company (I have always been so passionate about herbs) who knew that this was to be my gateway into the work I do today. Reconnecting with plants through making my own brand called Spiral Tea and herbal blends allowed me to deepen my connection with nature and the power and wisdom that plants hold which took me back to my Shamanic roots of which I already was given an insight into through a psychic many years prior as being a naturally born shaman with many past life connections and soul family deriving from ancient shamanic tribes.
All my curiosity and drawing in new sources of information led me to dive deep into my own healing journey which took me through many different avenues and depths in exploring many different modalities starting with meditation, shadow work, Reiki & Seichem, Shamanism and the teachings of the Goddess. I felt like I was following the breadcrumbs and moving in total flow, but I always felt I knew that I wasn’t just doing this work for me, it felt I was doing it for the generations before me and those that will come after me – breaking free of the deep-rooted unconscious patterns.
It was all part of my journey to move through my healing journey at such an acceleratory speed to be the teacher and guide I’d always set out to be when I began studying counseling right at the beginning of my adulthood.
Before I knew it, I’d dived straight into unlocking my natural shamanic gifts and even though I trained as a shamanic practitioner – it is not something you learn, it is something you remember to be the intuitive channel to move between the worlds of spirit and non-spirit and be guided by shamanic tools (drum, rattles, feathers stones, crystals) and my counsel and team in spirit. At the same time, I was also awakened to womb healing, which was a catalyst in my healing journey that seemed to unlock a deep code of remembrance within me. I had always severely suffered from menstrual cramps, and it was my reconnection with my sacred womb space that allowed me to not only understand myself better but have deep compassion and love for my being, teaching me the embodiment of self-love.
I was called to add embodied movement as a daily practice in conjunction with meditation.
But, I didn’t even know that ‘embodiment’ was even a thing or a known practice, all I knew was I added this expressive dance to my daily ritual because it felt good to move my body, it felt liberating, and it felt like emotion was moving through me…and of course that is exactly what it was doing and when I researched into dance therapy it opened me up to the world of somatic healing, embodied dance & coaching all from a therapeutic standpoint in clearing blocks and limitations that are held within the body – as the body holds the score.
All the healing modalities I teach and use today with my clients are ones that I naturally was called to do before I began any training in them, it was a deep knowing and calling that I am now a devotee in healing the sacred feminine within each of us residing in body and soul and our soul yearns for freedom. So, here I am today activating women’s freedom from within.
Could you explain how you weave together different energy healing modalities derived from Reiki & Shamanic Traditions with Feminine Embodiment Coaching to provide a multi-dimensional approach to transformational evolution?
Through my very spiraled journey of diving into different modalities and along the way collecting my very own unique set of tools I now use Reiki Healing for energy auditing to bring up what’s held in the unconscious to bring to the conscious awareness whilst raising a client’s vibration. Shamanic Healing dives even deeper into communing on a spirit level where I intuitively channel information using sound vibrational frequency to heal through past lives, ancestral lines and past lived experiences from childhood or lived trauma with an aim to bring client into wholeness and bring new sense of vitality to their life. Feminine Embodiment Coaching is the bodily integration of where we use the approach ‘feel to heal’ and where both the mental and energetic shifts get grounded into the body that is what creates sustainable changes and powerful soul level transformations in my clients.
My sessions and tailored containers focus on one very solid core intention which is to bring my clients back into wholeness and balance guided by body and heart. It is from this place that brings alignment and flow back into their lives with a connection to their deeper purpose of their existence to break free from unconscious patterning, conditioning, limiting beliefs and deep-rooted fear.
This requires a process I call embodied delayering, which is a process of unbinding layers one by one to give room for tightly held wounds to be acknowledged, expressed, and loved too so that one feels safe enough for their authentic self to be revealed, to be fully embodied and to truly shine…and this is the return to self.
These wounds that project into one’s everyday life have many different forms that hold them back from living in their fullest potentiality and these wounds can be carried down from past lives, generational trauma (ancestry) as well as derived from their own childhood experiences and trauma. Therefore, Shamanic Healing takes the approach of healing and integrating the past which liberates the sufferings faced in the present, so they no longer have a hold or cast a shadow for the client in the present allowing them to move forward into their future.
The complexities and levels of depth this work takes us truly has no bounds and works purely on this moment in time with what is holding them back from reaching their fullest potentiality and truly living it so that their truest desires and dreams for life become their outwardly lived reality. It really is the process of so within, so without.
What does it mean to awaken the undeveloped feminine and how does intuitive body wisdom play a role in this process?
I hear this a lot from clients that come to me saying ‘I’m just not feminine’ and really it is not that we are not feminine it is that our inner feminine is deeply undeveloped and conditionally suppressed. The modern world is structured heavily in patriarchal society, the idea that men have more power, dominance, and privilege than women. However, patriarchal systems affect both men and women and ultimately suppress the inner feminine within us all.
I’m referring to feminine as energy or even archetype and not to be confused by gender. We all have an inner feminine and inner masculine within us that makes up our whole, it is our inner feminine that is in touch with our inner world, our emotions but also the ability to transform, create and be in constant flux with our own intuition and deep knowing that goes beyond the constructs and logical analytic reasoning of the mind which is a quality of the inner masculine. Both work in conjunction with one another however due to our patriarchal systems it means the way we get taught to navigate through life is very masculine dominated prioritizing constant doing, productivity and striving for more this creates such an imbalance, and it is what many of us internally feel. The answer is in developing our inner feminine to bring wholeness and balance within our being to align and move through life driven by a deeper meaning and purpose.
When developing our inner feminine especially for women we can uncover a lot of anger as we break through some deeply held conditionings and ingrained beliefs of suppression and the boxed roles that are expected of women in this society in being the ‘good girl’ or ‘Be seen and not heard’ and also ‘Be a mother, a breadwinner, a cook, a cleaner’ feeling like we have to do it all and on our own. These are some of the painful truths that are uncovered. Each of us have our own stories around this and it is our bodies that hold the imprints of our unprocessed and unintegrated trauma that remains stagnant until it is deeply felt and expressed for its liberation.
The feminine lives within body and heart and so when reconnecting and developing our inner feminine we must reclaim our bodies as our own source and tool for healing. We have been heavily taught to disconnect from our bodies and focus on operating solely from the logic and reasoning of the mind (masculine doing). But it is our bodies that hold the score, our truth, and deepest desires. When we become acutely aware of the sensations and signals of the body, we can navigate through life with a sense of knowing rooted in trust. This is how intuition speaks to us through our inner felt senses – if you’ve ever had that gut feeling that something isn’t right, that sensation in your gut is your intuition speaking to you and it is not just the gut that holds memory and knowing.
In your work as a Feminine Freedom Healer, what are some common limitations and deep-rooted conditioning that women often face, and how do you assist them in breaking free from these patterns?
I have worked with many women and ultimately there is no coincidence that the women drawn to working with me will have similar woundings and stories to my own. The more I do this work and hold spaces for women to gather the more patterns I see and recognize we are all so much more the same than we are different.
Some common limitations and deep-rooted conditionings that women often face are fear of being seen and speaking their truth, not feeling worthy or good enough to receive love and be accepted just as they are and instead feel the need that this validation must be earned and given from outside of themselves and feeling disconnected to their authentic expression lacking passion and zest for life. The limitations are the inner critic and self-judgment which when unraveled we reveal was never truly their own voice that was speaking to them but a illusive voice or parental figure that had conditioned them in staying confined or having to show up in a certain way for cultural appropriation and societally created standards or other reasoning.
The process for everyone woman is very individual as we move through their story, background, and experience of life but there are a few threads that are always touched upon and this is predominantly working strongly with our own inner child, understanding the complexities and the effects of the Mother Wound especially in women in trusting their own inner feminine and authentic relationship with other women in their lives.
It is through expansion of awareness I build in my clients that enables them to become detached from their story, past narratives and identity that’s been conditioned in them and begin to let it crumble away through a deep grieving process. This is the only way we can rebuild new foundations through the falling away of the old – this is truly a sacred feminine teaching of the cycles of death and rebirth. Through practices that I guide and their own commitment and devotion to themselves they began revealing their truth and authentic expression that is just longing to be seen and we allow this to take up the space.
This is truly the power of embodiment of work because the experience is not conceptualized from the logical understanding of the mind but in fact it is one that is felt through and in the body that creates shifts at an energetic level and that is what then manifests in the changes to our outwardly lived lives. When a deeper understanding is revealed as to why we do what we do whether that be unhealthy patterns or habits through our awareness alone we can begin to shift the old narrative and create space for the new, bringing more alignment into all areas of our life and when you live life aligned you are met with the least resistance as you are communing with life itself, it is not happening to you but it is happening for you, you are in flow.
Can you share some success stories or transformative experiences of women who have worked with you as a Feminine Freedom Healer and how their lives have been impacted by your intuitive body wisdom and energetic healing practices?
This work is truly life changing. I’ve watched the transformation in women go from feeling burned out, doubting themselves, feeling lost to feeling more aligned than ever all because they are tuning into their body and heart that is the deep driver and passion behind anything that they set themselves out to do.
Ultimately what is amazing is the heightened awareness that my clients can cultivate. Understanding that they had been operating from a place of the subconscious mind and allowing fear to dictate how they lived. Once we slowly begin unraveling these fears and healing through the layers, they can come to the realization that they have a choice – they can choose love, or they can choose fear and it really comes down to these two choices.
I recently guided a client on an exploration of them not feeling enough through and in their body, what unraveled and made itself known was their 6-year-old self that was carrying grief, sadness, and loneliness for not feeling acknowledged at that age.
By embracing their 6-year-old self, speaking to her, acknowledging their feelings that went unprocessed and misunderstood, and calling her back in to integrate as part of their whole, knowing that it was safe now alleviated their weight that was being unconsciously carried and permitted the surrender into acceptance the ultimate form of self-love.
The beautiful insight that arose from this session is that the feeling of ‘not good enough’ is derived from parts of you that feel missing. It is never that you are not enough but instead, those feelings that arise are a cue for you to recognize what parts of you need to return home and become whole.
Another success story was a client in my 3-month container From Fear to Feminine Freedom who came to me feeling lost and wanting to find her purpose, knowing she wanted to help people but had no belief in herself or idea of what route to go down. By the end of the 3-months she had gained so much confidence and self-trust, she truly knew what it meant to listen to her heart and not just hear it but let it take the lead. In our time together we had spent a lot of time focusing on the feminine quality of surrender and receptivity and through this letting go of control of outcomes she became in tune with the synchronicities that were there all along she had just shut herself off from seeing them clearly and from there the penny dropped everything felt effortless as it was all coming to her as she opened her self to receive in this way uncovering her calling to be a Self-Love Coach and now runs a successful practice.
What is the Mother Wound?
The Mother wound is a product of patriarchy it is one of the core issues at the center of women’s empowerment and a key element in healing when reconnecting and awakening the divine feminine within for we cannot be a strong container of the power of the divine feminine if we have not yet addressed the places within us where we have felt banished and in exile from the Feminine.
The Mother wound is the pain we carry down from our mothers and their mothers and their mothers’ mother. We are physically birthed through our mother but on another level, we come through her experience of her own struggles, learnings, limitations we come into this world as a continuation of this exploration of all the women in our lineage through generations that have been subjected to the patriarchal cultures (patriarchy is social system where males are favored & dominate). So, the mother wound also includes passed on dysfunctional coping mechanisms that are/were used to process that pain. The conditioning we have inherited from our mothers such as patterns and behaviors when we bring our conscious awareness to recognize these, we can then begin choosing to make our own new stories for ourselves.
Please note that the mother wound is not subject to just women, men also carry the mother wound however the female-daughter relationship has more complexity to it because as mothers the daughter often triggers the remembrance of themselves and so it is more common to hear a daughter having a difficult, complex relationship with their mother over a sons experience.
If you would like to find out more about Francecsa Raffa, visit https://www.francescaraffa.com/
