The Body Knows is where we say the quiet parts out loud about healing, somatics and embodiment, and why trying to “fix yourself” never really works. If that makes you exhale, hit subscribe on YouTube, Substack, or your favorite podcast app.
(If podcasts aren’t your thing, you can find a digest of the podcast below. Alternatively if videos are your thing, you can watch the recording of the podcast here.)
Mystery we’re trying to solve:
Two months after we released this episode, it has suddenly passed 13k+ downloads! We’re thrilled… and also completely baffled about how it took off.
If you found this episode because someone shared it (a newsletter, a podcast, a group, a class, a friend) we’d love to know where you discovered it. Please leave a comment/DM and tell us!
There are moments that reveal exactly how much of ourselves we’ve learned to abandon for the sake of keeping the peace.
Someone at dinner makes a dig: “Must be nice to have all that free time...”
(Ana hears this one a lot, as she works as a hiking guide, lives in her van, and doesn’t conform to the 40-hour work week.)
Your chest tightens. You give a little laugh. You shrink. Later, you’ll replay it in your head, pissed you said nothing.
Or:
You place your fork down slowly and look at them with soft, unwavering eyes. “That landed like a dig. Is that what you were going for?” No heat. No apology. Just truth.
That second version is the Dark Goddess.
When we say Dark Goddess, what we mean…
Let’s get this straight immediately, because the witches weren’t burned that long ago.
Dark does not mean evil. We’re not talking about demons.
However, we are talking about emotions and expressions that have been demonized, the things we learned to repress in order to be seen as “good”.
So dark here refers to what lives in the shadows: your wildness, audacity, sexuality, rage, grief, untamed truth — aka, the parts of self we learned to lock away because “civilized” society deemed them unacceptable. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can actually talk about her.
The Dark Goddess is an archetype, an embodiment of a certain aspect of the human psyche, not dissimilar to the archetypes of Mother, Father, Child, Trickster that Joseph Campbell discovered were repeated in stories around the world. You can also find the Dark Goddess in pantheons from many different cultures: Persephone (Greco-Roman), Lilith (Judeo-Christian), Kali (Hindu), The Morrigan (Celtic), Sekhmet (Egyptian), Inanna (Sumerian), the list goes on. So this archetype is essentially universal, meaning we all have an inner dark goddess, a part of self that is wild and primal and sovereign, free and unapologetic. Just most of us have learned to shut that shit down.
This exiling happens early and quietly. You’re told your intensity is too much. Your grief is embarrassing. Your sexuality is shameful. Your rage is dangerous. Your needs are selfish. Your body is something to overcome, not inhabit. And because belonging is one of the deepest human needs — we literally need the tribe to survive — you learn to hide those parts of ourselves, while displaying the acceptable aspects of self on the surface.
The problem is that our shadow aspects, characterized by the Dark Goddess as well as the Dark God, don’t disappear. They just get locked away, allowed out only in private moments or when your defenses are down or when your restraint slips and they tear out of you, wreaking havoc.
But just because the Dark Goddess (and the Dark God, but we’ll talk about him some other time) is capable of harm, doesn’t mean she is harmful.
In fact, when she is integrated into a person’s conscious psyche — rather than exiled to the unconscious and forced to sneak out sideways — she helps us own our power, and stand for what we believe in.
Think of the lioness at the watering hole: calm and present until there’s a threat to her cubs, then suddenly decisive and undoubting, taking action to protect what she loves. But the Dark Goddess doesn’t just defend her offspring, she defends justice, integrity, truth, and liberation. In her own way, she fights for love. But a type of love we may not be accustomed to…
The cage of “love and light”.
The Light Goddess embodies compassion, gentleness, forgiveness, selflessness — beautiful and necessary qualities that keep us from destroying each other. But when we are limited to that end of the emotional spectrum, we inevitably:
abandon our own physical and emotional needs
swallow our personal hurt and desires so as to not burden others
Constantly override our own boundaries to accommodate people around us
And most devastatingly, we start to believe that love requires us to self-sacrifice, while staying quiet and small.
And then we have generations of people (*cough* women *cough*) who swallow their anger to keep others comfortable. Who perform “fine” when we’re falling apart. We’ve locked ourselves in quiet, suffocating cages and hoped it would finally make us feel like we were enough. The distortion shows up as suppressed wildness, demonized sexuality, love that feels like duty, and constant self-abandonment — that knot in your stomach when you say yes but your whole body is screaming no.
We missed a crucial step in building emotional maturity. We FIRST have to feel safe to feel what we feel, to say what we need and want, to express what we need to express, and to be accepted in those things. Yes, this ideally is developed in childhood, but let’s be real: cultural beliefs like “children should be seen, not heard”, “good girls are sweet and quiet”, and “boys don’t cry” has messed all of us up.
We don’t need to get too deep into the developmental psychology of it, but essentially we can’t safely access compassion and unconditional love without this foundational psychological safety.
But you see it everywhere, people preaching “good vibes only” and “love and light” and “think positively” as a way of saying “your innate human messiness is not welcome here.” Not all people who say these things mean them like this, of course. But as a culture, we are deeply uncomfortable with expressions of hurt, anguish, rage, wildness, sexuality — especially when they aren’t happening either at a sporting event or explicitly for the male gaze.
Don’t get us wrong, compassion and forgiveness feel noble. They feel evolved. They feel like proof that you’ve done your inner work and transcended the petty human stuff like being frustrated with traffic or cursing when you stub your toe. Spiritual bypass culture reinforces this constantly: meditate more, forgive faster, love is the answer to everything. It’s a much more comfortable narrative than “I’m furious and I have every right to be.” So we reach for light work as a way to skip over the uncomfortable truth that our foundations are cracked, that we’ve abandoned ourselves, that 90% of the time, we’re all faking feeling good in order to play the part.
The Dark Goddess holds the foundation. She is the ground beneath your feet, your safety, your belonging, your right to take up space and have needs and feel everything you feel. She stands at the doorway to all that light work and says, “You’re not skipping this part. Not anymore.”
We prefer “love and liberation”.
So Light without Dark is just bypassing, and we definitely need Dark because Leona and Ana said… but it still sounds kind of scary?
Yes, yes it is.
But it’s also everything you’ve dreamed of.
Here are just a few examples of how embodying the Dark Goddess — embracing the aspects of yourself that are wild, powerful, and unapologetic — is fucking awesome.
She’s the Boundary Witch — not the broomstick kind, but the bone-deep-knowing kind. The woman who hears her body say no, and the air around her thickens because she honors it. She doesn’t argue her boundary or justify it or apologize for it. She radiates it because it simply is. She won’t let you abandon your truth for one more second. She won’t let you tolerate harm to maintain an illusion of harmony. She says, “You’ve been playing small and it’s not helping anyone. It’s time to remember who the fuck you are.”
She’s the Queen of the Underworld — she embraces the aspects of self that others try to suppress. Grief, rage, shame, desire, guilt, resentment, jealously, self-loathing are her loves. Not that she lets them run rampant in her life, she instead tends to them like a mother to an upset child… until they lose their bite and reveal themselves to actually be named vulnerability, fear, and tenderness. “Every inch of you is lovable. You don’t need anyone else to prove that to you, you just need to finally meet yourself.”
She is the Lioness — all swishing hips and bloody maw. She bows to no one… though she rolls on her back and shows her belly to those she loves. “Stop playing small, and then taking your pent up frustration out of those you love most. Who are you beneath your insecurity? Who are you in your bones? Become HER.”
She’s the Destroyer — like Kali rolling in with liberatory destruction, removal of egoic illusions, fierce compassion that will rip shit apart if that’s what it takes to set you free. “I will burn this relationship, career, life to the ground because it’s seeded with lies. You’re done betraying yourself.”
This is liberating love. Love that cares more about your wholeness than the comfort of your ego, or the egos around you.
Every emotion is love (but has a shadow too).
The Dark Goddess essentially sets us free by reminding us that every emotion we feel, at its core, is love. Rage is love for what’s been violated. Grief is love for what’s been lost. Shame is love for belonging, twisted by unworthiness. Fear is love of our own life.
When you stop demonizing these emotions and meet them with curiosity, you realize they’re not the enemy, they’re information and fuel.
However, there is a crucial difference between rage that protects and rage that punishes. One says “this stops here” and channels itself into action and boundaries. The other spews venom, trying to hurt because it was hurt.
The Dark Goddess teaches you to wield your emotions from love instead of distortion. And you’ll mess this up. The first time you use your voice after years of silence, it will probably come out too loud, too sharp, or aimed at the wrong target. But you can only get better by practicing (and being prepared to apologize whenever you screw up). The difference between weaponizing your pain and channeling it is usually in your motivations: Is your boundary protecting you, or punishing them? Is your rage fighting for something, or just trying to hurt someone back?
Usually beneath the fire is “that hurt” or “see me” or “ respect me.” You’ll know you’ve hit love when you’ve hit vulnerability too.
The trick is to express the true, aching, vulnerable emotion without losing your backbone.
If you’re enjoying this post, and would like to give back, you can show your appreciation here!
The three stages: dormant, distorted, divine.
Working with the dark goddess happens in stages, and like we showed in the last section, there’s no skipping ahead. (Shoutout to ReWilding for this framework.)
Dormant: The energy is completely repressed, locked in the basement of your being where you don’t even know it exists.
Developing/Distorted: The energy is starting to wake up and move through you, but it’s messy. You’re learning how to use it and you’re absolutely going to fuck it up. You might swing too hard, burn bridges you wish you hadn’t, mistake destruction for liberation. This is the stage where you practice. (And again, hone your apology skills.)
Divine: You’ve learned to wield your repressed emotions cleanly, from love, with precision. You know the difference between boundaries and walls, between fierce truth and cruelty, between power and domination.
Most of us stay in the developing stage for a long time… or regress whenever we get a little too sure of ourselves.
How to actually work with this.
Start with your body. Ask yourself: How would my body move if it were wild? Not performed wild, not what you think wildness should look like, but actually wild, untamed, free. How would your shoulders move? Your hips? Your spine? What would your face do? What sounds would want to come out?
For many people, the first answer is: I don’t know, or I can’t. And that block is cultural conditioning living in your body. You literally cannot move in certain ways because you’ve been taught, explicitly or implicitly, that those movements aren’t allowed. Too much. Too wild. Too sexual. Too aggressive. Too weird. Too free.
Luckily, we have doorways in. Put on a song that helps you feel free and unburdened, and then start dancing… Once you’re in your flow, ask yourself, “how can I be 5% more wild right now?” Can you shake a bit, even if it’s off-beat? Can you roll out your neck, and then let your shoulders get involved? Can you make weird shapes with your hands and arms? Can you take up more space, letting your limbs swirl through space? Can you stick out your tongue? Can you growl or snarl or even roar? Can you crawl around? Can you imitate a snake or lion? Can you just let LOOSE?
PSA: if just reading this description brings up anxiety or even panic, that’s okay. Your system learned somewhere that it wasn’t safe to be in your body. So if you find it anxiety-inducing to try this practice, go slower. Yep, ever slower. And ideally not alone. Work with a trauma-informed somatic practitioner trained in Somatic Experiencing or a similar modality who can help you titrate the work and build safety from the inside out (like Ana!). There’s no shame in needing support for this. The gentler you can be with your own resistance, the faster you’ll move through it.
For those who can access these expressions without feeling unsafe (feeling awkward is a sign you’re going in the right direction), play with embodying the different aspects of our repressed feminine: wild, witchy, seductive, rageful, destructive, powerful.
Notice which “flavors” trigger your system into discomfort, resistance, heat rising in your chest, fear, a voice that says you’re being ridiculous. That’s your nervous system saying, “I’m worried this isn’t ok, and we’ll get hurt” because you’ve learned that something bad will come if you show that aspect of yourself. But now we are (gently) rewiring that belief. Lock yourself in your room alone and start to free parts of yourself that have been caged for decades.
Not sure you believe us? Think about it this way: which emotions and expressions can you only access your wildness when you’re drunk or high or at Burning Man and alone in the woods or perhaps just in your imagination. When expression is conditional — when it only comes out under certain circumstances — it means it’s been exiled, living in the shadow, allowed out only when your defenses are down, or everyone else is doing it.
If you want to be able to access these parts of self — delicious parts of self! — without substances or specific conditions, we need to practice. So find a safe space and start to take yourself back.
What this looks like in regular life.
The Late-Night Message: A client messages you late at night with something “urgent.” Without the Dark Goddess integrated, you respond immediately because you’re afraid they’ll feel abandoned, that they’ll think you don’t care, that you’ll lose them. By morning, you’re drained and resentful, giving from an empty well.
With the Dark Goddess, the message comes in and your breath stays deep. You feel the impulse to respond, and you also feel the boundary. You wait until morning and respond clearly: “I’m only available during work hours to protect my time with my loved ones.”
The Cancelled Plans: Your partner cancels again, last minute again. Without the Dark Goddess, you say “It’s okay, I get it” even though it’s not and you don’t. But you stuff down the disappointment, telling yourself you’re being compassionate. You end the day feeling hollow and unappreciated.
With the Dark Goddess, you can feel all the hurt without lashing out. Instead of tightening or numbing, you drop down into your belly and feel the disappointment fully. Then you speak: “It hurts when you cancel on me last minute. It’s happened a few times, so it seems like it’s becoming a pattern. I know unpredictable things happen, but I’m not available for this to happen regularly.” No lashing out or blaming. Just the clear closing of a door to anything that erodes your dignity.
Leona’s internal taskmaster — her mind, her drive for productivity, her relentless inner critic — dominated her feelings and desires for years. Her brain said, “Work harder. Push through. Have fewer needs. Stop being so sensitive,” while her body became the doormat that absorbed it all. When she started working with Lilith, the archetype of feminine liberation and power, she learned that her body and emotions don’t have to live in the shadow of her mind and will. They’re meant to be in partnership. Structure and productivity aren’t bad, but they don’t get to rule. They don’t get to silence the body’s needs, the heart’s desires, the soul’s knowing.
Ana’s edge was audacity. For so long, she witnessed injustice and stayed silent, afraid of being demonized, of losing connection, of being seen as too much, too loud, too disruptive. So she started working with a mantra: “May I have the audacity.” May I have the audacity to speak when there’s harm being done, when power is being misused, when something unjust is happening right in front of me and everyone is pretending not to see it. How many times have we all witnessed something wrong and said nothing? The Dark Goddess helps us face the fear of ruffling feathers in favor of speaking out for what we know is right.
Your liberation liberates others.
One of the most beautiful truths of this work is that when you free yourself, you create permission for everyone around you to do the same. Leona’s boyfriend can immediately sense when she’s tapping into her wild dark goddess self but it doesn’t scare him, it sets him free. Her willingness to be seen in her messy vulnerability, to take up space, to be honest about what she’s feeling without sugar-coating it opens his heart and gives him permission to stop performing too.
In this way, your freedom becomes an unspoken invitation: you can be real here too, you can take off any masks and express what you’re actually feeling. It’s like you become a Siren of Truth — you’re not seducing anyone in the manipulative sense, but your total authenticity becomes magnetic. Your bravery and vulnerability draws truth out of others.
Which is why Dark Goddess work is always operating on two levels:
Personal liberation: Ending self-abandonment. Ending self-betrayal. Learning to hold our own difficult emotions instead of numbing them or projecting them onto others. Stopping the performance of “fine” when we’re anything but.
Collective transformation: Creating a world where fierce, authentic power rooted in love becomes normal instead of exceptional. Where people can witness each other’s grief without needing to fix it. Where rage becomes sacred fuel instead of something to fear or suppress. Where we can be whole, complex, contradictory humans instead of flattened versions of ourselves.
Every time you set a boundary that people don’t like, every time you speak truth when silence would be easier, every time you refuse to abandon yourself to keep someone else comfortable, you’re challenging the systems that taught you to place productivity over humanity, logic over compassion, “civility” over justice. You’re creating a ripple. Your willingness to be whole and undeniable becomes permission for everyone around you.
It’s not a perfect process, of course. Leona and Ana will be the first to admit, we’re still deep in the developing phase!! We fuck it up regularly. We’re still learning how to wield the power of the Dark Goddess cleanly, how to channel destroyer energy from love instead of wounding.
But this work makes our lives, relationships, and communities better every single day, even when it’s through the apology that comes after an *ahem* outburst.
Don’t confuse self-suppression for virtue.
What if you started noticing where you’ve been told you’re “too much”? Where you’ve learned to laugh off comments that are passive aggressive, where you say “it’s okay” when your heart is hurting, where you witness injustice and stay silent…
Notice where you only allow yourself to be wild when you’re drunk, where you override your body’s clear “no” to avoid disappointing someone, where you dismiss your own needs to prove how disciplined and productive you are.
The Dark Goddess is here to remind you that self-sacrifice doesn’t serve you or anyone else. Your rage has love at its core, your wildness is not a character flaw, your sexuality, grief, audacity, and chaos are all welcome. You don’t have to play small to earn love anymore.
The parts you’ve exiled, the parts you’ve been taught to fear were never actually the problem. They were always your power.
If you’re interested in one-on-one support, visit RoamAndRise.com.
Shaped by her own journey with healing chronic illness, Ana guides clients in embodying the changes they’ve been trying to make, so life feels steadier, more energized, and grounded in trust.
Her work weaves trauma-informed somatic practices with integrative health support, rooted in the belief that healing happens through relationship, not force. She is devoted to helping people return to a loving relationship with their bodies as the foundation for lasting health.
If you’ve gotten to the bottom of this post and still want more👏 dark👏 goddess👏 , we published this post as a follow-up!
When being “nice” stops working - TBK #17
Women need better models for reclaiming power. We're often given the two options of being a door mat or being in a bitch, but there is a third way. A way of being that holds boundaries without hardness, fierceness without chaos, and power without domination. If you struggle with people-pleasing, self-sacrifice, or coming off as harsh, the lioness archetype is for you.
