The Movement of the Feminine with Sheila Kelley

A Personal Note from Orion

Your body is a sacred, sensual, beautiful, and magical work of art, but unfortunately, many of us women forget to acknowledge our bodies, or are driven to shame about them from outside pressure. I know that as women, we face a lot of challenges – cultural, societal, corporate, religious, etc. – when it comes to embracing our bodies and the divine femininity that is naturally occurring within us. But the time has come you connect with your body and see how that connection can transform the energy, peace, and love in your life.

Sheila Kelley is one of my biggest mentors, and has had a tremendous amount of impact on how I see myself as a woman, the power that is within me as a woman, and how beautiful that energy is and why I should not be ashamed of it. In this episode, we talk about connecting with your inner femininity through movement and reflection, and why this femininity is so important to the world! You read that right – our inner feminine power, unleashed through movement and appreciation, is truly healing for the world and something we need more of!

In this Episode

[02:53] – Sheila gives a brief introduction for listeners who may not yet be familiar with who she is and what she does. She then explains how she got into the kind of movement she now teaches others in S Factor.
[05:01] – What happens when a woman connects with her body?
[06:05] – Sheila talks about some transformations that she has seen in her students.
[07:35] – We hear how Sheila gets her ideas or — as she puts it — listens to what the body has to say to her.
[10:36] – Orion takes a moment to share her own experiences with Sheila’s work. Shelia then talks about the difference between who she was at the beginning of this journey and who she is today.
[13:52] – Sheila discusses her ways of infusing love and a sense of sisterhood into her S Factor community.
[16:41] – There is nowhere on the planet for a woman to safely and fully embrace who she is, Sheila points out, which is what S Factor aims to provide.
[17:43] – How can Sheila help a listener who has body shame? In her answer, she shares a story about her three-year-old daughter.
[19:25] – Sheila offers more advice for someone who isn’t feeling great about their body, and she and Orion discuss the importance of movement as an aspect of femininity.
[22:36] – Sheila talks about how to transition from the energy of unguarded (and vulnerable) femininity present in her retreats back into everyday life.
[25:53] – One of the things that Orion loves about Sheila’s method is that women learn it for themselves rather than for other people.
[28:20] – Orion shares a story about her recent experience while driving home from a seminar in San Diego.
[29:01] – Can anyone do pole dancing?
[31:01] – Sheila points out that part of the job of a leader is to help awaken those who don’t know that they’re sleeping.
[32:15] – In Sheila’s perspective, what is the difference between “feminine” and “masculine” energy? She answers, then talks about how to bring one’s feminine side into the business world, which is generally very masculine.
[35:51] – If the feminine doesn’t rise, the whole planet will be a disaster, Sheila explains.
[36:29] – Sheila talks about the primal circle and the important role of femininity.
[38:33] – Orion reveals something she learned on a visit to her family in Israel. Sheila then offers a story of her own about discoveries through travel.
[40:52] – We move on to talking about alter egos and the 10 icons that Sheila mentioned briefly earlier in the conversation. She then discusses how making physical changes can also have emotional impacts.
[45:06] – Sheila lists the icons or energies that she has been talking about. The five light energies are the innocent teaser, the blissful pleaser, the champion, the lustful lover, and the joyful playmate. The darker ones are the naughty provocateur, the dangerous challenger, the ice queen, the deep soulful siren, and the shy reluctant enigma.
[46:33] – Each month this year, S Factor will highlight one of the icons. Sheila takes a moment to talk about the innocent teaser and the ice queen.
[49:16] – Sheila talks about the three-year program that some of the S Factor teachers take, and mentions the book Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy.
[50:00] – Sheila lists places where listeners can find her.
[50:11] – What are Sheila’s three quick tips to living a stellar life? 1. Move your body. 2. Breathe all the way down into your lower back and let it move into your toes. 3. Embrace and free and allow every single emotional response you have to move healthfully through your body.

About Today’s Show

‏‏…who you’re meant to be and unapologetically. There is no place on the planet that is safe for a woman to be fully embraced in who she is – nowhere. That’s right. You can read. You can cry. You can laugh. And your sexuality is beautiful, and it’s a life force energy. It’s just an incredible place of being able to relax back into yourself and really explode from there into your fullest potential.

‏‏Hey and welcome to Stellar Life podcast. How are you doing? My name is Orion, and my guest today is one of the biggest influences I had in my life. She’s the one who taught me what being a woman really meant for me – how to embrace my darkness and my light and how to really embrace my body and her glory and really fall in love with her. Sheila Kelley is a successful actress, author, speaker, philanthropist, and most notably the originator of S Factor. Her classes offer sensual feminine movement without the taboo or shame or judgment. S Factor teaches women the language of their body’s fluid feminine movement. The world’s leading authorities in personal development including Tony Robbins often reference the depths of Sheila’s findings. Sheila has appeared multiple times on numerous television shows including Oprah, The Ellen Show, Conan O’Brien, The Martha Stewart Show, the Tonight Show, and so so many more. This is gonna just rock your world. This interview is really, really special, so maybe you should grab a pen and paper and start taking notes right now. If you’re driving, just do it later. Now without further ado, on to the show. Hello, hello Sheila.

‏‏Hi Gorgeous.

‏‏Thank you so much for being here, and welcome to Stellar Life podcast. How are you doing today?

‏‏I am so amazing. I am here talking with you, and there’s butterflies behind you and there’s people. It’s all good. Life is sweet. We’re so blessed.

‏‏Cool. For the people that don’t know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you? What do you do?

‏‏Oh god, Orion. I am the founder of a movement called S Factor, and it is a movement of the feminine mind, body, heart, and soul – moving the feminine more into her body, into her motions, into her sensuality, into her connections – ability to connect and intuit. That’s what I do and my passion. I have two kids. Do you want to know everything?

‏‏No. More of how did you came up with that, where did you start? How did you become that beautiful, feminine, goddess queen that you are now?

‏‏Well, I am an actress, and I played a part in a film called Dancing at the Blue Iguana. Actually I produced the movie, and I wrote the movie. I wanted to learn how to do this movement. I had seen it in clubs, but I didn’t want to be a stripper – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but not my thing. So I produced the movie, and I played a character. I learned the movement, and it changed me molecularly, cellularly. I became so much more bright, so much enlivened, so much more happy, so much more full. The movie wrapped, and I put a pole in my husband’s office because I was like, “I still want to keep doing this.” This is my pole in my bedroom. It’s not really about the pole for me; it’s about what the pole allows my body to express.

‏‏Right.

‏‏It’s about how the pole frames the artwork that is my feminine being and how the emotion moves through me in this gorgeous art form called S Factor. I just started doing that, and then women started coming. I felt like the pied piper. They just started coming, and I started teaching. I created a technique based on my work as a dance major at NYU and a somatic minor. I’ve been studying bodies my whole life, and so watching how when you brought a woman back into her body, what happens – it’s electric. It’s absolutely electric. That’s my passion.

‏‏What happens when a woman connect to her body?

‏‏Okay. Let me give you an analogy. Feminine energy is electric; it’s electricity. If you don’t have the wire to conduct the electricity to move to one point to another, it’s just useless energy, inside, trapped inside, and when you give a woman her language of her body movement back, it’s like giving the electricity the wire to conduct and move forward and just express out in the world the full potential of who she is and what she is.

‏‏Just talking to you, I feel like my body starts to move.

‏‏I wanna move.

‏‏You have such a beautiful way to put those ideas in language. I feel like we don’t speak enough about the sensual movement or the sensual part of ourselves in feminine language, in a way that resonates with other sisters, with other women. What are some transformations that you saw in your students?

‏‏Oh god. So many. I mean it’s literally as simple as a locked body. I worked with Tony Robbins sometimes, and I worked with Regena Thomashauer. And I’m actually gonna teach at Michael Beckwith’s resort down in Costa Rica. I go to these events, and I see women who – they didn’t come to me. They don’t know who I am, and they don’t know what I do. I will ask a woman if she wants me to help her unlock her body, and I’ll bring her up on stage. She might just come in really tight and square on her shoulders, really tight and square in the hips, and just a body shut down by shame. You just start unlocking it through stretch and movement and through following the integrity of the body. Within two minutes, you got a ragingly, astounding hot, beautiful, fiery goddess in sexual pleasure. She’s just like “Wheeeee!” and alive, and she’s moving through parts of her body that have been shut down. You know, we all live in this very male world, and so we all know how valuable the feminine body is or at least we know how policed the feminine body is, so when you un-police it and you free it and you unleash it, that body will sing. That body will tell you stories. That body has plans for you.

‏‏Right. How do you get your ideas? How do you connect?

‏‏I don’t know if I’d say it as my ideas. I would say that I just watch. I just watch and learn, and I learn what the body says to me. One of the titles that we say is that Sheila’s a body whisperer or body whisper, and then from that body whisper, I might create a new movement or I might create a new way of – a new exercise or something from my retreat. You’ve been at my retreats. I’m always inspired by watching and working with and speaking to a woman’s body. I often tell women, “I love your mind, but I’m always gonna take your body’s side. I’m not gonna listen necessarily to the literal words of your mouth. I’m gonna look at your body, because your body will never ever lie. Your body has volumes and volumes of emotional stories to tell and erotic stories to tell.

Your body has volumes and volumes of emotional stories to tell and erotic stories to tell.

‏‏Yes, 93% of communication is non-verbal, and the body never lies. Yeah, you have to be really skilled in the art of deceiving in order to lie with your body.

‏‏Yeah, good luck.

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‏‏That’s a great question, Orion. The difference between how I was at the beginning of this journey to how I am now is worlds apart. I think that I was completely in shock and ecstatic when I first started. I went on Oprah a couple of times, and I kind of set the world on fire with this thing called pole dancing for fitness. It was like, “Oh my god. Pinch me. I can’t believe there’s other freaks in the world that really wanna express themselves, express their sexuality and their sensuality in a wholesome, beautiful way! Yay!” That was just like gleeful and ecstatic, and as I’ve done this for 16 years, because it was 16 years ago that I started teaching, I’ve become really, deeply, and profoundly moved, grounded, humbled, in awe, curious at what continues to unfold in the deepening of what this journey is – the deepening of it’s not just about be sexy on a pole. It’s not just about “Hey, this will turn my man on.” It’s so deep. It’s so profound. It’s about coming home and satiating the hunger that every single woman on the planet knows what I am talking about. It’s that hunger that no matter what you do, you cannot seem to abate it. This does that. Seeing that – one woman after another, seeing each woman’s story from her body, not her mouth or her mind, is one of the most emotionally satisfying things I have ever experienced in my life. It’s like I got the front row seat to the greatest theater on the planet.

‏‏Yeah. I can always sense your passion, and you built an amazing community. You have a thing about sisterhood and community, and as a leader, I feel like every group or community really reflects the leader. With the S Factor ladies, sisters, it’s always such a beautiful, supportive, loving community. What do you do to infuse that love into the community – that sisterhood into that community?

‏‏I just came home from the retreat out in the desert called Exotically Sexy.

‏‏I wish I was there.

‏‏Oh my god. It’s off the charts.

‏‏I’m so jealous. I saw some of my girlfriends there, and I was like…

‏‏It’s crazy. Come to the next one in October, Wild Sexy and Free. That’s gonna be epic. But anyway, we were talking about what’s exotic about you. Exotic is mysteriously unique. What is mysteriously unique about you, and for me, I had figured out that what’s exotic about me is the way I love, unconditionally. I love so deeply and so profoundly and innocently, and I think that’s what helps create a community of tolerance and respect and embracing of all of us and not necessarily – it’s a brilliant community, very. Some of the most brilliant women I’ve ever met, but it’s a really body-led community that has incredible tolerance for growth. It’s really quite amazing to see how we help each other grow. There are times when you grow – when you’re growing and you’re dealing with dark, dark emotions that maybe are in your body, and they’re twisted unhealthfully in there that you’ve got to untwist and move through. Sometimes that’s really tough, and this community is steadfast, man. They are tight, and they will hold even the most difficult situations. And that can be – oh my god! That creates the deepest and tightest tribe I’ve ever…

‏‏Yeah, I’ve been there, and I felt it. It’s just so beautiful. I think it starts in your classrooms, where there are no mirrors and there are no bright fluorescent lights. There is no shimmy and looking good. It’s all about how we are mirrors for each other, and we know that we did something because our sisters are cheering us. They don’t only cheer us when we look good, they cheer us when we have tears, when we’re angry. It’s just a safe container to express all your emotions, and that is so unique to any other place that I’ve been involved with. I go to so many seminars. I’m a learner. I go to two seminars or conferences per month, and many of them are run by men. Even the ones that are run by women – there is a lot of façade and pretense and “let’s be within the box,” and your community is… Tell me. How is it in your community?

‏‏They’re in a box. You come and you work at S Factor what we do is give you the hatchet so you could smash that fucking box apart and explode into who you’re meant to be and unapologetically. There is no place on the planet that is safe for a woman to be fully embraced in who she is – nowhere. That’s right. You can read. You can cry. You can laugh. And your sexuality is beautiful, and it’s a life force energy. It’s just an incredible place of being able to relax back into yourself and really explode from there into your fullest potential.

It’s just an incredible place of being able to relax back into yourself and really explode from there into your fullest potential. Share on X

‏‏How can you help a woman that is listening right now and have a lot of judgment about her body and is in constant internal war with her body, or even not at war, there is something that she feels like, “I wish I was taller, skinnier, older, younger, more perfect”? How do you deal with body shame?

‏‏I would start with what I did with my daughter when she was 3 – just being able to talk – because I was in bed with her, cuddling, putting her to bed, and she’d just eaten a chicken dinner. Her tummy was a little bigger, and she goes, “Mommy, my tummy’s fat.” Three years old. This happens in class as well. I started the touch exercise with her. Just put her hands on her belly and say, “I love this belly because this belly takes the food I eat and turns it into energy.” Then she comes up her to legs and goes, “I love my legs because these legs walk me around.” As you’re touching them and tickling them. How do my legs like to be touched? Even though a three-year-old, “How do you want your legs to be touched? How do you like to touch your own legs? Do you like to scratch, touch, tickle? Do you like to squeeze?” and really just going through her whole body and acknowledging what each part, each region of your body is gifting you with every single day of your life. There are people that can’t do that. There are people that don’t have that ability. Maybe they’ve had an accident. Maybe they are not able to feel their legs anymore. I mean, what an incredible gift that we have! And to be grateful for every single part of your body. When you start to build and remedy the relationship between you and your body, watch out. Nothing will stop you. Yeah.

‏‏I feel like even – for me, doing this work and doing it for a while, I have days where I don’t feel that hot. What do you do? Just go back to self-love and touching your body and appreciating? What if you don’t feel like it?

‏‏For someone like you? I think that I would have – for me, it’s always about movement, with women who know this movement.

‏‏Yeah. I get it.

‏‏Yeah. It’s about immediately – I can feel like crap, and I can just do this. I can just start to feel my muscles, and I start to play. It’s like frolicking. You’re frolicking in the ocean of your body, like a dolphin frolics.

‏‏Listeners, we’re streaming this live on Facebook, and I wish you could see Sheila right now. Sheila, you’re turning me on. So beautiful.

‏‏You know, you do incredible. Just start to let your pleasure – when you start to just move pleasure through your body. I don’t care if you’re in the shittiest mood. I don’t care if you just got evicted and lost your job and whatever. Just sit in a moment, in your body, in your breath, in your pleasure, and stretch and move and find what feels delicious and beautiful and gorgeous and sexy. We all have it. Every single feminine creature on the planet has this.

‏‏Since I’ve been doing your work, I walk around and I see women that are so locked in their bodies. It’s so funny. I see this woman who looks bitter and maybe a little cranky, and I just imagine her doing the movement and opening up. I see her potential. I went to a seminar not long ago, and there was this older woman, who was very in her masculine, very locked. She was crabby. She was sending me this *krr* energy. It was like, “I don’t like you, and I don’t know why.”

‏‏Stopping beautiful, Orion.

‏‏Yes, and then the next day, it was a money seminar, and we had to sell our services. She became a client. She came to me, and she’s like, “I see you, and it reminds me that there is something in me that I’m missing. I want to feel adorable again.” Killed me.

‏‏I love that.

‏‏I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it. We’re working on getting her and making her feel adorable. We haven’t started real coaching yet, but we’re gonna take her there. Yeah, it was powerful. People go to your retreats. They go to the pole dancing class. They feel sexual and sensual, and then they leave the safety and the container of the event or the pole dancing class. Then the real world hits. Some people will judge you for your sensuality, and some people will look at you weird because it’s their own story – not yours. How do you put the boundaries in the real world, where you are still feeling that awakening beautiful self – that sensual part of you, but putting up boundaries so predators or people that are naysayers will not come and try to feed on your energy?

‏‏That’s another great question, Orion. It’s almost like you’ve been to my retreats.

‏‏It’s almost like that.

‏‏Let me just preface this for your listeners – what happens at a retreat is we spend the first day just peeling away all the armor, all the tension, all the contracted musculature, all the thought patterning into finding what your body wants to express and softening and finding the pleasure in your body that exists every moment that you’re alive. So it gets very vulnerable. For me, I’m very keen on making sure women have the boundaries around them, and know what your boundary is, what your safe space is. What is your space? What is not your space? How do you feel safe in that space? We do an exercise on that, but I also talk about modulation because my voice, as I speak to you is like I’m speaking very softly. I’m not speaking really loud. If I wanted to talk to someone down the hall, I might yell to them. At the retreats or in the S Factor classes, we give your body voice the permission to speak very loud, but what we also teach is that when you go outside into the world, you don’t have to kill it. You don’t have to stop it, but you do have to modulate it so that you’re not screaming at someone who’s standing right next to you. I often talk about healthy flatline clothing – clothing that is a safety net for you. I love to walk around wearing a hoodie or I’d bring a hoodie wherever I go. I like to keep my energy radiating and alive and enlivened, but I also sometimes want privacy. I don’t need people’s eyes and men’s penetrating gazes all the time. I might put a hoodie on. I might wear a hat. I might wear a turtleneck because it makes my body feel private. I want to modulate the energy that’s coming from my body. Those are things that women have to learn how to do because we have unlearned them, and I think that was something very primal that we all knew how to do – how it is to modulate how we move our bodies. Instead of doing the big S walk, where you’re undulating like this, outside you’re gonna modulate it so that you’re still…

‏‏Since I started S, I can’t stop doing this. I do it all the time. I don’t even notice, even the little – keep flipping my hair all the time.

‏‏That’s how you do it. You have to really listen, and you have to be very aware. It’s not just, “Hey, I’m gonna get hot and be hot everywhere.” It’s like you’re hot all the time, but there’s levels of hotness. There’s a private, safe hotness, and then there’s going out in public. There’s a way to be private out there. There’s a way to speak in a softer voice with your body.

‏‏I love the analogy of – I love it – what you said about your body. It’s like your body’s yelling sexuality, and sometimes it’s too much for the world to handle. Then you keep it to yourself. What I love about your method is that the dancing, everything that we do, we do it for ourselves first.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Women learn lap dance, for example. They learn it for themselves. They might not give a lap dance to anybody for a decade, and they’re just doing it – all their movement, all the sensuality is for us to feed our soul. It’s not an external thing to show, “Hey, look at me. I’m so sexy. Woohoo!” It’s something so deep and internal. I went to see a showcase of a different pole dancing studio, and the movement was beautiful. The ladies were beautiful, and it was so external. There was maybe one or two women that really got the internal work of what pole dancing or sensual movement can bring.

‏‏Yeah. There are five layers to how we live life, and we, in our culture, live usually only in the first two, which is flatline and presentational. Many of us never get past these two. Occasionally we’ll get to animated, which is moving your experience through life, but very, very few people get to emotional and soulful. These are the deeper layers of how you experience life, and that is what S Factor is all about. Yeah, you’re gonna be hot shit. You’re gonna look like the hottest thing on the planet, and you’re gonna move it. It’s gonna be incredible. You’re gonna dress it up, but then you’re gonna connect to your heart and to your emotional life through your body, through your animation, through how you present it. Then you’re gonna find out who you are as an emotional creature. That’s when you discover who you are as an erotic creature. Which erotic icon of the 10 erotic icons is my body most predisposed to be? When you find that, there is such a peace that comes over you. It creates such a sense of certainty of who you are as an erotic being. So that is the difference. You can go see all kinds of beautiful pole dancing and all kinds of beautiful dance of any kind. You can go to Cirque de Soleil and see gorgeous animated – it’ll take it here. Very rarely takes it to the emotional, and almost never have I seen it go to the soulful. That’s the most riveting.

‏‏Yes. Yes. I was driving back from San Diego yesterday. I was in yet another seminar, and I saw street signs. The first one was wine. The second one was hamburger, and the third one was go-go girls. I pointed out to Stephan, and I said, “Wow, this is the face of America.” It was wine – alcohol, then junk food, and then junk sex.

‏‏Yeah. Oh! Good one. Coin that. Write it down. Write a book. Junk sex.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Great name.

‏‏I just love the depth of your work. Can anybody do poledancing? I know the answer, but I wanna hear it from you.

‏‏Here’s the thing. I don’t call S Factor, pole dancing. Although pole dancing is a component of it, anyone can pole dance. Yes. Anybody on the planet. Male, female. It doesn’t matter. What I teach is coming into your feminine. So if you’re a man, and you wanna learn more of your feminine movement, your feminine nature, your feminine emotion – sure. I’ll teach you, but S Factor really is a journey into self-discovery and self-expression. Can anybody do that? Gosh. Anyone can do it. Will everybody do it? No.

‏‏No.

‏‏They don’t even know that they’re disconnected. I didn’t know I was disconnected. I didn’t know that I had zero idea who I was, zero knowledge of who I was as an erotic being, or as this woman in being. Nothing. Shocking.

‏‏I was just interviewed to a different podcast, just before we started this one, and I was sharing my story about how numb I was to the fact that my feminine was asleep, how I wasn’t even aware that she existed. I didn’t have the distinction of what is feminine, what is masculine, and after I got over an abusive relationship and did a lot of work physically, mentally, and spiritually to get over that, I became really hard on the physical. I started taking martial arts, MMA and aikido. I wasn’t able to have a relationship for more than two, three months. I didn’t understand why because I didn’t have what you’re teaching. I didn’t have that part. Luckily I had a breakthrough and a spiritual moment, where I prayed. I was in surrender. That was at the Tony Robbins seminar, after learning about masculine feminine, and after that, I met my husband – now, husband. He introduced me to your work because he was a platinum member of Tony Robbins. He’s the one who introduced me to you, and I’m grateful. He’s grateful.

‏‏Yay! You’re saying something very poignant, Orion, and I think it’s our job as leaders to help awaken those that don’t know they’re sleeping. That was me, so I can say that because that was me. I was really happy. I got a kid. I got a husband. I got a job. Happy, but something’s missing. Something’s missing. Maybe this job will fill it. No, maybe another kid will fill it. Maybe this will fill it. Everywhere I looked outside of myself didn’t fill this hunger, and when I finally found this lifestyle of the feminine, it filled – I am completely robust. I am completely, bodaciously filled. It’s like, “Wow! How simple,” because we do not live in a world that has any knowledge of what the feminine really is. None! We lost ourselves. Come find yourself.

We do not live in a world that has any knowledge of what the feminine really is. None! We lost ourselves. Come find yourself. Share on X

‏‏Right.

‏‏It’s eye opening. It’s life changing.

‏‏What is feminine, and what is masculine on Sheila’s planet?

‏‏You can exchange those words for yin and yang. You can exchange them for sun and moon. I don’t care what. It’s just the polar energetics. Feminine energy is life force energy. Feminine energy is movement. Feminine energy is curvaceous. Feminine energy is emotional. Masculine energy is linear. I have a lot of masculine energy. I cultivated my little – I’m the best little man I could ever be, but it’s very logical, very linear, very strategic, very encased, very square. There’s a hardness to it, a groundedness to it. I love masculine energy, and I love my masculine energy. But what I realized when I awoken – whatever the word is – my feminine – it was like Popeye. This was my masculine muscle – was like, “I’m Popeye.” But I had no feminine muscles – atrophy. Now I’m pretty evenly balanced. I love both sides of me, but I am by nature – I am a sexual essence of the feminine. That I am. There are women, who have a more masculine essence, and there are men who have a more feminine essence. Only you will know, but it’s a crime for every human being on the planet to go through the world and not understand who you are as – who your yin is, what your moon is.

‏‏How do you translate this to business for a woman, who is very alpha and very (let’s call it masculine because it’s easier) very masculine? Why would she develop that feminine side? How will that influence her business or the way she shows up in the business world?

‏‏Well, it goes back to the story of every woman I know, there’s not even an exception – is looking to fill the hunger inside, so she’ll man up. She’ll become this, and she’ll become that. CE-this and CF-that and lawyer this. She’ll be very successful out here, and she’s constantly attaining results out in the world except inside she feels empty. Inside she feels very little life force. She feels tired. She feels disconnected from her radiance, which is a light, energy, electricity. She feels almost kind of empty inside. That’s an experience that I’ve had, and I’ve coached a lot of women who have the same experience. So when you have attained all of this and you have really, really Popeye-d your masculine muscle in the world and attained and achieved a lot, come back to yourself and now fill in that great, beautiful masculine energy – fill that in with the verdant flora of your feminine. What I believe it will do is it will enhance your experience of life. It will allow you to enjoy more of what you have achieved. It will allow you to bring the feminine style of living and way of living into a world that is desperate for it – a world that is so overly yang-ed that we’re gonna yang ourselves to death, especially the country in which I live right now.

‏‏Oh yeah. Yes. Yes.

‏‏What will that do is it will be a part of the tribe of the feminine because the feminine – if the feminine does not rise, the whole planet is just gonna be a disaster. I truly believe that. When I think of the feminine, I also think of earth. Earth is of the feminine. It’s a life force. We are destroying the earth. We are destroying feminine all around us, so to me, it’s vital. It’s vitality.

‏‏Yes. Can you talk about the primal circle – how there are so many circles of men out there, but the female, the feminine was the original circle? Dancing fertilized the Mother Earth.

‏‏Yeah. I study a lot. I study a lot about the feminine as far as biology and neurology and anthropology and archaeology, so one of the things that – the way that civilization began (pre-civilization) was the feminine was the original family unit that sat in camps of circular – camps. The fire was in the middle of the camp, and the food was in the middle of the camp – and all the babies and children, so that the women surrounding the fire and the children protected the children and protected the food, the fire. But they also protected each other. So I would be sitting across and be able to see anything coming up behind the women across from me, and we together could overpower a sabretooth tiger or a domineering masculine that wanted to come in and rape and pillage. That was an extraordinary circle of energy that was what I believe S Factor’s community is becoming, which is a circle of tolerance, respect, and love and protection. The feminine can be light and bright, and yes, they did dance. They did undulate. They did think that at that time – because they didn’t have science – they thought that the feminine body was a miracle worker and full of fertilization. The feminine body, the feminine would go over the – this was when it was more agrarian – they would go over the crops in nighttime, and they would dance. They would undulate their pelvises over the crops, and they believed that their pelvis was dropping fertilization onto the plants and that it helped sustain the crops. It’s quite beautiful. Somewhere we took a right, when we should have taken a left, and we’re getting back there.

‏‏Right.

‏‏We gotta bring the tribe back together.

‏‏So beautiful. It was when you first shared that – it just made my heart sing. I really loved it. I loved the concept, and I talk about this concept. It’s so beautiful. I went back to visit my family in Israel. I’ve learned that my mom’s from Tunisia – that in Tunisia, the women in the island of Djerba used to come and circle and sing together and sing for the divine and sing for healing and sing for blessing. I was like, “Yes! It’s in my DNA. I love it! So cool!” Yeah, it was beautiful to learn about it.

‏‏I wanna show you something.

‏‏Show me.

‏‏Because you just said something about it being in your DNA, and so I was like, “Every woman has this in their DNA.” Go look. Go look at your heritage. I was in Ireland, and I found all these old, ancient churches had these figurines of women called Sheela Na Gigs.

‏‏How’s it called?

‏‏That’s one. Sheela Na Gigs. Here’s another one. They’re on Catholic churches. That’s her all completely exposed. They would ask the question, and they would ask the Sheela Na Gigs a question. The answer was no, if you spun and walk toward one. If you touch this one, it would be no. If you touch this one, it was yes. How beautiful are those.

‏‏Wow. That’s beautiful. Wow.

‏‏These are ancient. So beautiful.

‏‏How old are they?

‏‏Oh god. I don’t even know.

‏‏For our podcast listeners, I’m gonna take a screenshot. Wow.

‏‏That’s the back of it.

‏‏It is funny they have your first name in it.

‏‏Hello?

‏‏Hello.

‏‏Take a screenshot of these guys because they’re…

‏‏I’m gonna come and spin around, and then if I’ll bump into you, I’ll know the answer.

‏‏At the retreats, you know what? I use these. I will have them in the chair, and the chair sitter will put them arbitrarily in one hand or the other. When you start your dance, you’re gonna touch a hand and you will have asked a question in your dance. You will find the answer.

‏‏That’s brilliant. Listeners, we’re streaming this live, but I’m gonna have a screenshot in the show notes, so you could see these beautiful art pieces. It’s just insane. It’s beautiful.

‏‏They’re so beautiful.

‏‏Let’s talk about alter ego and the 10 icons.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏You came up with 10 icons – sexual, sensual icons that we all have inside, and of course, we have so many more but those are the prototype or the main ones. Can you share about them a little bit.

‏‏Yeah. There are 10 (what I call) emotional body energies. These are emotional energies that the body experiences. They’re not intellectual. They’re not thought. They’re primal, mammalian, and reptilian brain emotional responses. Each of these is connected to an erotic energy in your body. You will find through the journey of S Factor which one you are most inclined to express your erotic energy through. It’s life changing because it’s like, “Oh my god! That’s the one I have? I thought I was this one,” because our neocortex, our logical brain thinks she knows us and thinks she knows your body, but she can’t because she’s trying to tell the body how to live. Really, the wise one here in the relationship is the body. Sorry to tell you. Your body should be telling you how to live. The icons – there are five dark emotional icons and five light. They’re all beautiful. They’re all incredible. They’re all in your body, and they all need to be cultivated. They all need to be explored and learned how to express. Yeah, do you wanna know what they are?

Really, the wise one here in the relationship is the body. Sorry to tell you. Your body should be telling you how to live.

‏‏Yes. Yes. I also want to add that just exploring those icons and being okay with connecting to those beings, the internal beings inside me was – it was just liberating. I was like, “Wow. There is no other place in the world where I can be okay with expressing all these emotions and being rewarded for that.”

‏‏Yes. It’s quite stunning. It’s so fascinating having studied bodies all my life, having studied somatics, having studied emotional energy in the body, having studied how emotion, when swelched changes the musculature and the fascia and the way your body is in the world…

‏‏Changes the fascia?

‏‏When you hold your body in a certain posture over and over again, maybe it’s from shame, it will twist your fascia and your musculature into a shape. Sometimes that shape is blocked and frozen, so that when you get – fascia is the stuff that holds all the muscle in place and all the organs in place. That can actually get twisted and reshaped by muscular tension and trauma. When you go to move your body and reshape your own body and reclaim your own body, you are gonna be breaking open a lot of stuff that’s been held and twisted. Untwist and open it up and find out who you truly are.

‏‏All those emotions are locked in those places, so the moment you release the emotion, the fascia, the physical reacts and opens up.

‏‏That’s right. It opens up. You’re changing patterns, body patterning. Body patterning will change how you feel in the world. I have seen people come in who have a glower here, a shoulder here. The minute I point out their pattern of the way that they pull their lips down or the way that they glower or the way that they hold their body and repeatedly pointed out to them, and they change that shape – it changes their emotional state. It’s amazing.

‏‏Right now, when I broke my wrist and my whole shoulder is pulling, I feel like my whole body is so tight. I can’t wait to heal this and start dancing, and maybe dancing with it.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Just do it.

‏‏No reason why not. Anyway, so it’s fascinating the way the body and emotional energy in your body works, and our erotic energy moves through all that. The five light energies are what I call the innocent teaser, the blissful pleaser, the champion, the lustful lover. I’m gonna forget this last one – joyful playmate.

‏‏Joyful playmate. Yes.

‏‏The darker one‏‏the naughty provocateur, the dangerous challenger, the ice queen, the deep soulful siren, and the shy, reluctant enigma. You will find, as you journey through all of this energy in your body – you will find that one of these is your essence. You will learn how to use that essence to, I believe, attract the love that you are called to be with.

‏‏I used to call mine the naughty challenger. I mixed both.

‏‏Because you have – this gets really sophisticated – probably too sophisticated for this conversation, but there are three. You’ll find that you have a triad. You have a core emotion and a secondary and tertiary that is basically the dance of your erotic body – is this emotional story. You probably had dangerous challenger and naughty provocateur.

‏‏Right. They changed. The more retreats I went to, the more other ones showed up, and it’s just a beautiful exploration. Just to give an idea, can you talk about, let’s say, one or two of them more in depth, so people will understand. Maybe one dark, one light.

‏‏Sure. I just finished – each month this year, we at S Factor will be highlighting one of the icons.

‏‏Cool.

‏‏We just finished with the innocent teaser, and we’re moving into the blissful pleaser in May. I’ll talk about the innocent teaser. The innocent teaser comes from the primal body emotion of that energy of surprise – of surprise, of curiosity, of hope, of openness. She’s what I call the Buddha body, meaning the innocent teaser – we have all had the innocent teaser experience in our body at some point or another when we were born. When an infant comes out of the womb, that baby is its full potential. It’s just everything is new. Everything is “Ahh.” She doesn’t know fear yet. She doesn’t know all the different icons yet. It’s just pure I’m-in-the-moment of being so vividly alive. I love the innocent teaser. I have innocent teaser energy in my everyday life, but I don’t have any in my erotic life. That’s a deeper conversation.

‏‏I know. It’s really deep. Yes.

‏‏Then let’s say, a dark one is ice queen. The ice queen comes from the body emotion of – as that innocent teaser body experiences more of life, that body is the body of disgust. Think of when you opened the refrigerator and pull out a carton of old milk and go, “Eww.” See that pull away? See that posture? That’s an energy. That’s an emotional body reaction of “Get that away from me. It’s poison.” Disgust is beautiful emotion if it’s not destructive or unhealthy in your body, if it’s healthy – pulling you away from an unhealthy situation. That’s the ice queen. The ice queen pulls herself up and away a lot. She elevates herself. She loves the finest things in life. She has a coldness, but it’s a mobile, moving coldness. But she aches for a love that will burn her and melt her.

‏‏So beautiful. Yes, your work is so deep, and there is so many layers. I wish we could talk more about everything. It will take about – would you say about at least a month straight to learn everything that you’re teaching or at least the beginning of it?

‏‏I would say a month straight to learn everything – to learn the depth of the intelligence of your body through a sadria.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏I have a program with some of the teachers called the Apprenticeship Program, and they come in for three years to study.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏The journey of the science behind it all, the physiology behind it all, the anatomy – all of this is supported by science. There’s a great book by Amy Cuddy called Presence, and Harvard is beginning to understand that it is the body – that when you change the body, you change the life.

When you change the body, you change the life. Share on X

‏‏Yeah. Wow. I know you have a hard stop, so we’re gonna stop here. Before we finish, what are your three quick tips to living a stellar life and where can people find you?

‏‏People can find me at SFactor.com. They can find me on Facebook. Sheila Kelley. They can find me on Twitter – theSheilaKelley. They can find me on Instagram – SheilaKelleyS. The three top tips to living a stellar life is move your body. Absolutely number one. Breathe all the way down into your lower back and let it move into your toes – number two – because that will start to move your body. Number three would be embrace and free and allow every single emotional response that you have to move healthfully through your body.

‏‏Perfect. Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. I love and appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time to being here and sharing all these beautiful knowledge with us. You are amazing. Thank you. Thank you for being on the livestream and loving it. I’m sure you loved it. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on my mission to light people up and change lives around the world. I hope today’s conversation inspires you to step up, go after the life of your dreams, and be who you want to be. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to go to stellarlifepodcast.com for show notes, transcripts, and other cool stuff. Please subscribe, review, and help spread the word by sharing us on Facebook and Twitter. Have a lovely day, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

Your Checklist Actions to Take

✓ Stretch your body regularly to unlock the tension in your shoulders and hips. This will help you form the “S movement” a.k.a. the feminine movement.

✓ Join communities that can help you discover your body in an in depth manner, teaching you to love it deeply and profoundly.

✓ Remember that your sexuality is a beautiful life force energy.

✓ Practice rhythmic movements that help you be comfortable with yourself and express your sensuality, giving it the power to explode into your fullest potential.

✓ Learn to love your body by not judging your own appearance. Instead, be thankful for your legs because they help you go places. Be thankful for your tummy because it stores the food you need for nourishment.

✓ Feminine energy is electric. For you to find your true feminine energy, you need to have a conductor. Find an outlet that brings it out of you through seminars, retreats or meet ups.

✓ Believe that your body is more than just a physical aspect. Once you start listening to your body, it helps you know the truth about who you’re meant to be.

✓ Use movement to find what feels beautiful, gorgeous, and sexy to feel better and improve your mood.

✓ Find balance in radiating your energy through your clothing and actions by knowing when you can be lively, loud and excited or quiet & private.

✓ Learn to embrace your emotional responses by breathing all the way to your lower back down to your toes, allowing your body to feel healthy.

Links and Resources:

Sheila Kelley
S Factor
Twitter – Sheila Kelley
Facebook – Sheila Kelley
Instagram – Sheila Kelley
Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by
Oprah
The Ellen DeGeneres Show

About Sheila Kelley

S Factor® creator and founder Sheila Kelley created a new school of movement many now call Sensual Fitness. Her own soulful journey, which began as an actress researching a role as an exotic dancer, soon became a passionate and scientific study of the feminine body, soul and purpose. Sheila has been featured on TedX, Oprah, is a regular speaker on stages across the world, including Tony Robbins retreats and Mama Gena events. At Tony Robbins retreats she is the go-to authority for feminine empowerment, healing and discovery. Her authority on the feminine is cited in numerous news publications for its groundbreaking understanding of how the feminine best expresses itself, and her impact on women across the globe.