Book Highlight: The Wild Woman’s Way by Michaela Boehm

In The Wild Woman’s Way, Michaela Boehm draws on her extensive counselling and clinical experience in the fields of intimacy, relationships and trauma together with the wisdom of her female Tantric lineage to gift women the essential guide to feminine embodiment.

She offers a compelling explanation of The Wild Woman archetype in all of us – she who is connected to nature, ancient wisdom, healing traditions, personal power and pleasure through the intelligence of her body. 

When I first read this description a few years ago it completely stopped me in my tracks as it never occurred to me that the wild woman I had longed to reclaim actually inhabited me and was accessible through the rituals and practices Michaela shares in her book. The Wild Woman comes alive on every page of the book and I have since returned to it repeatedly as a resource and reminder of what is always possible. 

There were many moments of deep learning in the book. Most notably chapter 5 about the “Energetics in a Woman’s Body.” In reading Michaela’s explanation of how being in constant “go mode” creates a stress response that disconnects us from the sensations and feeling in our body, I realised how this was modelled to me from an early age and perpetuated by the world we live in. 

The importance of deepening the “relationship with your own body before connecting with and feeling others” really struck a cord and sent me on a journey to explore the patterns of resistance, numbness and tension I held in my body. Turning to her practices of Moving What You are Feeling and focusing on Lower Body Relaxation allowed me to identify where in my body I was contracting to give space to soften and undo the layers of holding and tension. 

Chapters 6 and 7 on “Embodiment” and “The Barriers to Embodiment” were equally thought provoking. I appreciated how Michaela put this much talked about “buzzword” in the context of Peter Levine’s and Bessel van der Kolk’s trauma and somatic based work about how emotions and trauma are stored in the body. I was able to understand embodiment as a way of continually “coming back into the body” and being in constant dialogue with my body. Through the embodiment practices of Hip Circles, Moving What You are Feeling and Lower Body Relaxation I established a practice of tracking, distilling and distinguishing the full range of sensations and emotions I experienced moment by moment.

Through this process I was able to be with discomfort, numbness and resistance and allow what was hidden beneath to be felt, processed and shifted in a very organic way. Once I was able to release, soften and relax, I experienced subtler realms of pleasurable sensations I had once felt but thought were no longer available. I was able to remember and experience the aliveness and vitality of my pleasure body that Michaela in Chapter 9 calls our “birthright.” 

The embodiment practices for accessing a “sensual and pleasurable life” are some of the simplest but most profound in the book. They involve engaging the senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch to sensitize the body to the sensual pleasure that resides within us. They offered me the opportunity to slow down and be present with the sensual awakening of my inner world. I came to appreciate my body for all that she could feel and enjoy from the richness of life around me. 

Michaela’s background pleasure practice was also a wonderful pathway to exploring subtler sensations of pleasure and noticing where in my body there was already pleasure to experience. Her instruction of spreading the pleasant sensation to other parts of my body was also enlightening. I found her belief that engaging in self pleasure as a “way of accessing our bodily wisdom…and becoming sexually self-sufficient” one of the most empowering messages in the book.

The wisdom offered in Chapter 11 “The Wise Woman” is particularly relevant to me as a woman in my 50s and a topic that still does not get much air time in our youth and age obsessed culture. This chapter highlights why it so important to cultivate the “Wild Woman” in each of us, and this is because she “naturally develops into the Wise Woman who is open, connected, intuitive and free.” I appreciated Michaela’s personal and honest account of getting older and becoming this Wise Woman. I loved the advice she would give her twenty-year-old-self!

I was anticipating Michaela’s expert advice on relationships and Chapter 13 didn’t disappoint. I felt all of her sage advice in previous chapters around sensitising the body and developing intimacy with oneself before engaging with another led seamlessly to this important topic of how to nurture your relationship. I can honestly say my own relationship with my partner has grown from strength to strength because of the advice Michaela outlines in this chapter.

The last chapter in the book on the “Sacred Practices of the Wild Woman” Michaela offers instructions on specific embodiment practices “meant to inspire and reconnect you to your body, nature, and the beauty within and around you.” I found I was able to dive deeper with these in the context of the Wild Woman’s Circle training I have done with Michaela. There was something very beautiful and profound about sharing many of these practices with the other women in the training albeit virtually. The opportunity to witness each other in our various embodied states allowed for a deep resonance for which I am deeply grateful. There is so much power when we gather as women to share, support, be heard and be seen.

In summary, Michaela’s offers a creative and inspiring roadmap with which to reclaim the Wild Woman in all of us. She brings together the best of her Tantric lineage and science informed knowledge to gift women with a go to guide of timeless female embodiment practices. In a moment where many of these practices have become over commercialised by today’s wellness world, Michaela restores their sacredness, beauty and potency.