The Power of Breasts
Breasts: the positive feminine polarity. a portal to passion. the pathway of nurturing.
I am, and always have been the queen of itty bitty titties. When all my friends were ‘developing’ I felt left behind as my training bras never became filled with gorgeous overflowing skin, or as the cheap culture called it ‘cleavage’. I stuffed my bra with tissue, it didn’t help. I transited puberty at the height of Victoria’s Secret and push up bras, begging my mother to invest in one for me. Desperation, for the part of me to flourish and bloom, an experience that never came until pregnancy.
In pregnancy and breastfeeding, they sure did grow and stretch and fill with gorgeous milk for my babies. Up until this point, my breasts were a sensual afterthought, cast aside as too small and certainly not right. Now, postpartum, milky and full, I found a depth within me that opened my inner connection to my heart my womb, my sensual self, my capacity for nurturing. It opened my femininity in ways that I had previously repressed. It softened me and slowed me down as I was always pausing, taking time away to breathe deeply and feed my sweet babes. My breastfeeding journey was not simple, but rippled with clogged ducts, mastitis, and ongoing engorgement challenges which I was not prepared for. In hindsight, I can see that years of repressed emotion, negativity toward my breasts and nutritional deficiencies created pain, clogging, difficulty in my journey. My breasts were like a mirror to the pain within my heart, emotional stagnation in my body that I hadn’t yet built the capacity to shift.
After weaning, both times, my gorgeous double D’s shrunk back into my typical A cup. But the femininity that blossomed within me remained. The empowerment of being my babies sole lifeline was astonishing to me. I no longer regarded my breasts as being boring for small, they were essential to the life of my children, and they had activated within me the womb heart axis— an inner coil of sensuality and intuitive awareness that connects nipple to breast to heart to womb to cervix.
This inner pole is an energetic pathway not only for sensuality, but also for emotional and spiritual expansion, a conduit for growth and transformation. Women carry this divine positive pole upon their chest, upon their heart and lungs, which illuminates her essential feminine nature. From her heart, she can journey within to the darkness of the womb, make meaning of the dark, integrate intuitive and emotional awareness, and make magic through her hands.
Tragically, what sits atop most women’s breasts today are shields of protection, cultural conditioning in all directions suggesting she’s too big, too small, not the right shape or size or color. Not only do body insecurities exist, but how safe is our society for women to fully embrace and express their essential femininity? Im quite certain that abuse and rape culture have done a number on the sense of embodied security to embrace this feminine aspect fully.
And as for breastfeeding, women here and across the world have been manipulated by formula marketing, by separating the baby from the mother, by casting fear and projections onto the process of breastfeeding, making it much more difficult to achieve. Many women have to fight for breastfeeding, when we know at our core, somewhere deep within, that all of humanity was nurtured at the mothers breast.
Later in life, breasts continue to be a medical battleground. Fear, obsessive checking, frequent interactions with a sickness model are dominant when considering the collective relationship to breasts as women age. I personally became thrust into this spiral when I was only a few months postpartum with my second baby and found a lump— a swollen lymph node in my left armpit. The cascade of searching, prodding, biopsy created a deep fear that I was about to face my worst nightmare as a young mother. When the search yielded inconclusive, I was left only with a letter from the Seattle Breast Center labeling me as high-risk indefinitely— and that I should start annual mammograms now (age 31).
Like most things, I could not accept this. I reject the notion that somehow blasting my breasts with radiation annually will make me healthier or prevent a cancer from forming. Like always, I turned to alternative and holistic models of healing to shapeshift my dense breast tissue into something more supple and free. Now, my relationship to my breasts is much more loving and tender. When I massage or examine them, I do so with gentleness and love, not with prodding, searching and fear (hello cancer culture!). I tend to my breasts frequently through self lymphatic massage at my clavicle, neck and underarms. I invite them into sensual experiences first, not last. I worked to open my heart, to shed layers of conditioning blocking my ability to express my feminine nature. The energy here is that of receptivity, the breasts are an intuitive pole, taking in and receiving from the outside world, and channeling inward and downward to integrate what we would like to receive, so that our creations are infused with our own intuitive energy.
The breasts illuminate the dynamic nature of feminine energy. They are not just symbolic of one thing. They are not just portals for illness, fear, domination or abuse. They are giving and receiving, they are life force, creating milk, generating potent sexual energy and intuitive awareness. Breasts are alive, ever changing throughout a woman’s cycle, pregnancy, postpartum, womanhood, menopause, a sacred compass to our inner self.
In mythology, breasts are revealed in mythology as power sources, protectors, and nourishment for entire civilizations. The Egyptian goddess Isis is the epitome of divine motherhood and magical power. Known for her devotion, healing powers, and her deep relationship to both life and death. Her profound grief and nurturing brought her husband Osiris back from the dead long enough to conceive their son, Horus, whom she raised in hiding, nourishing him with her body and her magic. In one myth, the baby Horus is bitten by a scorpion while Isis is away. She runs back, chanting spells, and with her words and her milk, brings him back to life. In some stories, her breastmilk is so powerful it becomes a cosmic force — restoring balance, banishing poison, even feeding the gods. Her breast is more than a physical organ — it is living protection.
In the Hindu representations of Kali Ma, we see a dynamic depiction of breasts that is often misunderstood in the western world. Kali is a cosmic mother and her breasts hold some of the most complex, mystical, and liberating symbolism of any goddess. Her breast symbolism is raw, wild, paradoxical, and soul-shaking. A radical invitation into the unfiltered, primal aspects of the divine feminine. Her exposed breasts, often lactating, represent maternal power and abundance, meanwhile wearing a garland of skulls which represent the stripping back of illusion, of ego, the trappings of the conditioned mind. Her breasts in this imagery are not eroticized, they are untamed, unashamed, and full of primal potency. They challenge sanitized, colonized ideas of the feminine. They do not beg for approval. They nourish and devour.
So what do we learn from these depictions? We can sense that the connection to breasts exists on an individual and collective level. That the energy of the mother and the feminine are driving forces of healing and nurturing as well as the raw, primal and embodied power of the feminine— a power that the patriarchy works so hard to suppress.
The invitation here is to simply take back power by connecting deeply to your own breasts, in your own time and in your own space of safety. Simply sensing into the breasts, frequently as a practice. Set age, appearance, size etc. aside for the moment. Sense the breasts from the inside out and discover the truth they carry for you. Focus on the tissue and the entirety of the breast and nipple. Try to focus on both at the same time, rather than one or the other. At first, there may be resistance or distraction, that is ok. Just return to the practice. When doing this, you may experience a kind of emotional release, tearfulness, anger—anything is welcome. Invite self compassion for however it is that your journey with your breasts have unfolded. When we can sit with the emotion and transform it, we can peel back the layers of protection we have put upon our sacred receptivity. In the end, say thank you.
The impact of this? A new layer to reclaim our purpose and sovereignty to embody the reality in which we seek to live. If we seek sickness, seek fear, seek the male gaze—whether consciously or unconsciously— our reality will mirror that. When we create spaciousness and possibility for healing starting with our extremely powerful, potent breasts, something within us can shift. We can sense our wholeness from within. We can observe the energetic blockages and over time, release and transform. We can experience a profound sensuality that generates the creative energy needed to build a the futures we so desire.