Having been asked how I came to write the book
NOBODY WANTS TO BE THE GIRL ANYMORE…REDISCOVERING THE POWER OF THE FEMALE YIN, I decided to examine my journey.

Since I am an Acupuncturist and practice Oriental Medicine, I have come to understand that the central principle behind the Eastern view of the world is balance, and the key to the Taoist philosophy is to understand not only the balance of nature but the balance of energies in our bodies, including the balance of male and female energies.

Over the years, I have noticed that many of my clients, both female and male, are not comfortable in their skin as the aggressive “go-getter” that our society so values. Our Western Yang culture would like us to believe that if we become forceful and aggressive enough in our behaviour to achieve what is generally thought of as success, we will “have it all”. But the “American Dream” and the contentment it is meant to provide still eludes most of us.

We, as westerners, can too easily confuse our true nature of being complete and caring people when too much emphasis is put on the prize causing us to fall out of balance with ourselves in an effort to “get what we want.”

As I worked with many patients over the years and saw their imbalance of energy and spirit and the illness it produced, I became a life coach to work with the real cause of their illness… the imbalances caused by their excessively Yang thinking and actions. I saw that people define themselves by how others react to them, and instead of them being their authentic balanced self… commanding respect for their real talents and who they are, many people “become” who they think they have to be in order to be seen as powerful and get the rewards and approval they seek.

As a result, many of those that I treat are unhappy acting in the role of an aggressor and admit, in confidence, that they would much prefer to behave in a kinder and gentler way that they feel is more in keeping with their personal nature.

I have come to know that one cannot be a complete person unless the aggressive, active, doing nature of male Yang is balanced with the powerful female Yin qualities of feeling, mercy, strategy and justice.

I wrote the book NOBODY WANTS TO BE THE GIRL ANYMORE to help illuminate the difference between inherent male and female energies…how they are different and how they are each of vital value and TOTALLY equal in power.

The book is essentially about empowering women by reacquainting them with the power they already have, but have lost sight of as a result of the fast paced and demanding nature of our western culture. So much emphasis in the western world is put on winning or producing or controlling. Because of this, there is enormous pressure for all of us to “appear” aggressive and successful in order to compete.

I wanted the book to allow women to see how they can embrace the Yin power that is natural to them… a power that is capable of balancing and equaling any power a man might have, and when combined with a positive Yang energy within themselves or with a positive Yang energy in a male, total balance and true union is possible.

Both men and women can reclaim the power of the female Yin… that meditative, creative force that is female… and by doing so…many women will come to understand what they have come to devalue in themselves in their attempt to appear more acceptably aggressive and Yang. Many women have taken on male traits and behaviour in order to compete in the workplace and in our culture…. often casting aside the extremely powerful female Yin traits that are their natural birthright as women, and, as a result, they often become nothing more than a caricature of the worst sort of bullying man.

Male behaviour is not, in itself more desirable than female behaviour but, in this culture that rewards little girls for being tomboys and shames little boys who play with dolls, one is given the message at an early age that being the boy is where it’s at.

As a result of male behaviour and aggressiveness being so esteemed in our culture, many women, and recently more and more men, find themselves unable to keep up…. unable to perform…(hence the rise in the use of stimulants, energy drinks and products like Viagra and Cialis)

The demands our western culture makes on us has forced many of us to fly to the opposite end of the continuum of power and become too passive, powerless, incapable of any action. We become totally Yin… unable to move out of a place of total disempowerment and helplessness.

We are supposed to GET a job, GET a raise, GET a better house, GET noticed, GET famous, GET GET GET…BUT HOW? Getting is a YANG, aggressive, male action. We think we need to GET things and often forget that the female, YIN way of achieving a goal is to ALLOW. We need to realize that we, as men and women, are each different and the modern thinking to promote the idea that there is little or no difference between men’s and women’s energy is damaging and erroneous. Now, I am not suggesting here that the sexes divide up into two camps and the men do the GETTING with active Yang energy and the women must settle into the seemingly more passive role of ALLOWING, but rather that the Yin art of subterfuge, suggestion and emotional manipulation and waiting are all part of the female intelligence of ALLOWING. The modern woman might be well advised to reacquaint herself with this age-old female practice, and the modern man would be wise to understand the subtler power associated with a less intrepid but more reliable way of getting what you want.

The inherent difference between female Yin energy and male Yang energy is what makes balance possible… not only within ourselves but within a society as well.

Each of us, as men and women, has an intrinsic role to play that only we can carry out. Men and women have innately different expressions of how they express devoution, duty, honour and even love…. that is why John Gray’s book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” still resonates with important undeniable truths.

If someone is telling you that we are all the same…don’t listen. Male and female energies, the Yin and Yang that create the balance celebrated in the Dao, are essentially two equally powerful but opposite energies that are necessary to come together to create movement and change in the world. We have come to extol the virtues of the Male energy as superior in our western culture and, as a result, both men and women have striven to emulate these Male, Yang qualities and have put the Yin qualities of the female in a decidedly demoralizing position of second place. But for those of you who might conjure the biblical reference of Adam and Eve and might suggest that a Patriarchal God in Heaven made the man in his own image and the female as an afterthought, consider that it was Eve who ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, thereby awaking the understanding of the difference between the sexes, and arming herself with a valuable tool that she has used it to lure, pleasure and manipulate men ever since.

FEMALE, YIN ENERGY IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS MALE, YANG ENERGY… always has been…always will be. Without female healing, nurturing, strategizing, campaigning, scrutinizing, saving, counseling, designing, judging, feeding, exposing and parenting….just where would our precious Yang culture be?