Feminine intelligence for a regenerative future: FemmeQ's Karen Downes leads an online conference from Costa Rica

We’ve featured the work of Karen Downes and FemmeQ in these pages before - so we’re delighted to feature the above Zoom interview with Karen (and A/UK’s Indra Adnan). It sets up the FemmeQ conference, “Feminine Intelligence for a Regenerative Future”, taking place online and offline (in Costa Rica) between 24th to 31st July, 2021.

Below, Karen has also kindly written us a note explaining her motivations and aspirations around the event:

FEMMEQ = feminine intelligence. Why this? Why now? 

By Karen Downes

Feminine intelligence is a deep knowing that we are all part of a living universe, an innate sense of responsibility for the survival of human and planetary life. A conscious intention to heal. The concentration of love, energy and life-force, dedicated to someone or something that is of the greatest importance beyond self-interest.

During this time of global pandemic, we’ve all had to adapt to an uncertain world and an unpredictable future. There is a deep sense of ‘not knowing’ in the collective consciousness.  This results in either a profound disconnect from what’s going on. Or hyperactivity - being on alert and in action. 

In October of 2020, I felt hyperactivity in my own system but instead I quieted my mind, followed my intuition and moved to Costa Rica.  In part this was to fulfil my role in Bounce Beyond in a regeneration project.  

But within weeks I knew there were other reasons. Soon after arriving I felt a deep sense of relief, a breathing out, as if my system was expanding versus contracting for the first time in months.  I slowed down and I woke up.  

I began to imagine once again.  I imagined bringing my colleagues, thought leaders, activists, changemakers here to reconnect and rebuild themselves in order to go back out into the world to build the future we are all yearning for, because know we can’t build on broken. Thus I pulled together the next FemmeQ gathering, as its host.

Costa Rica is an extraordinary country. Here, Mother Nature seeps into the pores of your skin, the vibrancy of the jungle enlivens, and the quiet spaces that exist here allow for deep reflection and contemplation.

This is a place to heal what has been broken, reconnect to what we have forgotten and recover what has been discarded - not only during the pandemic but more precisely, during the last several hundred years. That is the feminine principle and qualities that is so needed at this time: FemmeQ. 

For centuries, we have become detached and dissociated from the feminine and the mother; both inside of us, in our relationships between men and women and with our Mother Earth.  This disassociation and detachment has cost us all dearly.  

It is now time to come together and reintegrate the feminine in all genders.  FemmeQ is not a fight for the feminine to be acknowledged, which causes polarization and a conflict around gender. It is instead an awakening to what we have sacrificed at the altar of domination and patriarchy. 

What we have sacrificed has numbed us to feeling or acknowledging the power of the feminine. It’s critical that feminine qualities are in our psyche, to restore balance and harmony on our planet.  

We are hosting the FemmeQ retreat and streaming the online programme, from July 24th – 31st. Our intent is to heal, to re-member, to reconnect, in order to regenerate.  The feminine must arise inside of us, to reconnect to our Mother Earth.

I invite you to join us, to become part of the process and support the emergence of the feminine. It is then that we can co-arise in true partnership and restore integrity (wholeness) to the systems in our lives – our own and the planet’s. 

For more on the FemmeQ event, offline and online, click here