A dislocated shoulder is a painful thing; hard to ignore. And yet Chartered Accountant and entrepreneur Nicky Rowbotham was so tightly wound by her octane-fuelled life in business that she had actually failed to notice her shoulder had popped out of its socket. The surprising diagnosis was the wake-up call Nicky needed: her overwhelmingly demanding lifestyle and internalization of stress were dismantling her body.
In an effort to heal, Nicky deep-dived the scientific literature on stress and what she discovered not only allowed her to rapidly recover from a crippling suite of stress-related maladies but also inspired two books, a career shift, and a healing movement that has since guided a great many people, particularly woman, away from a life of fierce struggle and towards an empowered, authentic, and unarmoured state of grace. The best part of her epiphany is that such a life is immediately available to one and all if you would but embrace your elegant power.
Elegant power: A state of standing grounded in reverence of your own self-worth
Nicky Rowbotham’s book Embrace your Elegant Power was born out of question: what if we stopped using force to beat a path toward traditional masculine standards of success and instead allowed our innate elegant power and unique gifts to guide us?
To explain: brute force and elegant power are diametrically opposed terminal stations of the human energy spectrum. On the one hand, you have aggressive conquest and force — the hunter, masculine — and on the other, a gentle holding of space and compelling presence — the nurturer, feminine.
For millennia, the standards for success, from the battlefield to the boardroom, have been firmly rooted in masculine energy. We strive hard, are aggressive in our desires, and claim space through force and conquest. While this extreme end of the energy spectrum produces results, it takes a toll upon our bodies and, often, our relationships, too.
But what if we stopped forcing our way towards our goals and instead moved more gracefully by connecting with our intuition and stepping with thoughtful simplicity into our radiant power? It sounds a little “woo-woo”, but it’s more than just possible: it’s the better way. Like Anne Lamotte wrote: “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
This is how Nicky Rowbotham healed herself faster than conventional medicine would have believed possible — by recentering herself in her elegant power and, in doing so, popping her life (and shoulder) back into alignment — and this is what she writes about most eloquently. Her commitment to helping people, especially women, to stop dimming their light in an attempt to be more accepted and agreeable and intentionally create, transition to, and live a life they love based on their individual and unique gifts shine like a beacon on every page.
“When we embrace the elegant power in our own lives, we step into our inner knowing and fully own our innate, intuitive and individual gifts. We unshackle from the shoulds of societal conditioning around how we are expected to show up in our lives. In doing so, we redefine success on our own terms as we own what makes us different and what makes us special and unique.
But how do we do this? By stepping into our own natural light.
It’s not about changing or becoming. It’s about remembering and knowing. We are already enough. Our authentic nature glows from within at a soul level. It emanates from every pore with our knowing that we have elegant power in our enoughness. This is the path to easefulness, success through ease, in our lives.
When we are grounded in a sense of self-worth and self-love, we do not seek approval or validation from outside of ourselves. We are at our most powerful, and our self-recognition emanates from every pore as we trust our sense of self and stand tall in our own value. It’s time to shine!”
– Nicky Rowbotham