A ONE-day festival for women with a mission to inspire, uplift and empower will be held in April.

The Empowered Feminine Festival comprises a day of speakers, workshops and yoga, with 16 presenters and an evening of performances at InSync yoga studio in Griffith, says creator Nandini Medici.

Yoga teacher Nandini says the festival, which first ran in 2017, offers women an opportunity for connection, sisterhood, networking and sharing.

“Women can feel empowered on so many different levels, it’s a beautiful day to be celebrated and nurtured,” she says.

“At the festival, we look at empowerment through connecting with the heart’s desire, developing resourceful skills to enhance everyday life, learning to ask for support from community and sisterhood, bringing more joy and pleasure into our lives, and loving our bodies and ourselves.”

Nandini grew up in Tahiti and says when she moved to Australia in 2002 she had trouble adapting.

“It was so different and looking back I think I shut down a part of me so that I would be able to adapt,” she says.

“After a few years I realised I’d lost my joy, I wasn’t relating to people in a way that was satisfying and I felt I had shut down the feminine side of me.

“And I found that the feminine is quite shut down, individually, at a community level and globally.”

Nandini says she found yoga when she was 14, being taught in an old building in Tahiti, and that she began to teach when she was 19. In Australia, she studied yoga in 2002 and started teaching in 2005.

Nandini says the idea of the feminine isn’t gender-based, though this particular festival is only for women, except in the evening.

“Men and women have both qualities, even though women are traditionally the custodian of the feminine and men of the masculine,” she says.

“The feminine is the energy of the heart, while the masculine is the energy of the head – ideally they come together for balance. Both can be out of balance, if the feminine is out of balance it’s over-emotional, gossiping, bitchiness and stuck in non-action. The masculine out of balance is a lot of what we see in the world, that need to control, competitiveness, lost in the head and not seeing the interconnectedness of life.

“To create the festival I need my masculine or it won’t happen! We can’t talk about one without the other, because the feminine doesn’t exist without the masculine and vice versa.

“The thing is we are way too much in the head, we forget what it’s like to be in the body, to bring presence to the body which is healing.”

The festival resembles ancient women’s circles, says Nandini, and will open up to men and children for the evening session of sound healing and kirtan.

“We will be discovering the gems of the feminine, there are sessions on defining your deepest desires, sisterhood and feminine leadership,” she says.

Nandini says there’s an undercurrent of feminine awakening in the world to support our communities and the planet.

“When the feminine is awake we cannot hurt the environment because we feel that connection,” she says.

“The feminine is healing, it’s transformation, connection, a deep instinctual knowing. The masculine is structure, action, goal-oriented and achievement-focused.

“When we bring them together it becomes inspired action.”

The Empowered Feminine Festival, InSync Yoga Studio, 2A Barker Street, Griffith, from 7.30am, Saturday, April 6. More at empoweredfemfest.com or email enquiries@empoweredfemfest.com.