Don't play with knives I was told as a child and, even today, my mother's voice still echoes vaguely in the back of my mind whenever I start slicing vegetables: 'Careful, it's sharp!'

Of course now this is always mentally followed up by, 'Yes, yes, I know it is', with the absolute certainty of an adult who knows her way around a knife block. However, in spite of this, I recently sliced the end of my thumb off while chopping up an onion.

Nothing had to be sewn back on and it's healing now, but for the last few weeks, I've had to work around it, being careful not to knock it on anything because if I did, it really hurt...

It's reminded me how big an impact one little thing can have on the rest of your life. All the other parts of my body have been working just fine, but that thumb has caused no end of problems in its own small way.

People assume that they need a life coach when they're falling apart, when everything has gone wrong, when they're utterly broken and need fixing. 

Actually, in most cases, it's more subtle. It's about working with someone to sort out their metaphorical thumb – the one small part of themselves that's stopping them doing and being all they want to be. 

Of course they're functioning just fine with that aspect of themselves being out of whack, but - wow! How much easier life becomes when they don't need to operate in that permanent state of work around!

I believe that life coaching often involves making the little changes that can create wider  horizons, open out possibilities and allow you to notice what suddenly becomes possible that wasn't before.

Our bodies are clever – they automatically compensate for our weaknesses. When one muscle or joint is under-performing, others take over - but after a while, we tend to feel other aches and pains as a result of being out of line and off balance. 

Like a chiropracter, a life coach is about realigning, rebalancing and helping you perform in a way that reduces stress. It allows you to be more effective, to move more effortlessly, and yes, sometimes to let go of pain.

So what's your metaphorical thumb? What's holding you back and making you compensate and work around?

And one final question - if you could change one small thing about the way you do things today, what would it be? 

I used to be a ballet dancer. Not a good one. Someone's mother said, aged 6, I had wings on my heels, which sounded nice - but when it came to official recognition, I sat heavily and consistently in the average garden. 

The examiner would give us a complicated French word to turn into movement and I hesitated to see what the other girls did first, in case I got it wrong. I was a natural follower, because I didn't want to make mistakes. Then, movement came second to words and the need to be right.

Now I dance the tango and I'm supposed to follow. It's an exercise in switching off my head, my thoughts, the words that put a degree of separation between me and the experience. The movement still comes second, but now it follows a feeling – the impulse and energy of the lead.

The tango is a lesson in allowing myself the freedom to find an almost meditative space of being in my body, without a running commentary of self-critical mind chatter – You didn't do that very well... You've done it wrong... You'll never be good enough... 

To dance, I have to trust myself and the lead I get from my partner. It's sometimes frustrating and challenging. It can also be beautiful – a flow of two bodies in the same moment. That's the part I aspire to - with the desire of that little girl who wanted to feel those wings on her heels. It's also the embodiment of rapport, subtle communication and consideration between two people. It's about interpreting music together. 

I often make mistakes, but you have to learn and swiftly move on.  That foot out of place is a moment gone and if I dwell on it, I mess up the two or three that follow. And when do those mistakes happen most frequently? When I stop trusting myself and what I'm feeling.

I have to give myself fully to the process and commit to it. If I hang on to indecision and doubt, the next step I take lacks conviction - and if I can't be wholehearted about myself, my dance partners experience only part of what I could be.

The tango is an invitation to connect with someone else, to be a part of their world and to share my own. I choose - or not - to accept, because although I'm a follower, I have my own space, my own boundaries and my own sense of self. I also have to keep my own balance.  

I can enter into this relationship with a sense of pride, confidence, strength and passion or I can be small, apologetic and mouse-like – which would you rather be?

Of course there's so much more to learn and hours to be spent on the dance floor to give my movements the confidence I want them to have, but in the meantime, I just have to forgive myself for my weaknesses, give myself credit for what I do best and enjoy the dance, wherever it takes me. 

Image gratefully borrowed from visualvamp.wordpress.com

It's a woman's thing, crying. Of course we don't hold the monopoly, but our hormones and even the structure of our eyes make us more prone than men. Given that emotional tears also contain a hormone that is a natural painkiller, you might as well call them a biological imperative – but in spite of that, tears are liquid loaded with issues.

We watch them with fascination on TV, from quiz shows and the X Factor to documentaries, and we shared grief as a nation without really knowing why at the death of Diana – and it was as if then it became OK to go public with our tears, the first time since the war demanded that we pack up our troubles and keep them quiet and dry.

But there are still so many occasions when 'Keep calm and carry on' seems to linger on in our collective national consciousness – those moments when crying has the power to make us and others extremely uncomfortable, embarrassed or even angry. It seems to happen among smaller groups, or one to one, when there's no distance or crowd of people around to soften the impact. Then we're required to confront them and deal with the emotions that lay behind them.   

Of course the big events in life warrant emotional outpourings – births, weddings, funerals – but for other 'lesser' issues, tears are often seen as a weakness or vulnerability, as being soft, overly emotional or sensitive, hormonal, losing control or they prompt the question, can she (or he) really cope? 

A friend recently told me how she'd cried in front of her manager – and how bad that made her feel. Her fear was that he would think she just wasn't strong enough. And yet she's an incredibly capable, intelligent, resourceful, passionate woman who really cares about what she does. But her tears made her question herself – and not the environment within which she was trying to operate, or her manager, which might have been a better place to start. 

But it's true, rightly or wrongly, crying can have a huge impact on the way others see us and indeed how we see and feel about ourselves. 

There's a moment in the final Harry Potter saga when the tears of a dying man are used to create images of the past, his memories, his life. And that's all real tears ever are – the sum of our experiences, good and bad, a little bit of who we are. They reflect our deepest values – and when they've been violated or upset. 

Crying tells a story. Often when words are inadequate or can't be found or we're incapable of expressing what the heart is feeling, it's tears that speak louder than words and offer the kind of release that vowels and consonants just can't. And then crying is our greatest ally - and that's when I'm glad to be a woman.

Men draw the short straw. In many ways, a woman's tears are more easily accommodated, but because it is seen as a female trait, crying without a decent life or death reason can cast a question mark over the very quality of masculinity. Hardly seems fair. On either sex. I'd like to think there will be a time when being compared to a woman isn't seen as a way of insulting a man...

However, I'm amazed at the male constitution, the nature or the nurture of it, that allows some men to withstand the most upsetting, difficult or moving moments without the merest hint of eye mist.  

I on the other hand cry quite a lot. Sometimes when I talk about something I'm passionate about, I can feel my eyes filling up with the emotion of what I'm feeling. My conviction shows. It's just how I am. 

But there are as many kinds of tears as their are emotions – as a child we cry when we're lonely or afraid, we cry over the bumps and bruises of growing up and when we're older, the pain of relationships ending that can be so great we want to crawl out of our own skin. And of course there are tears of happiness too, of joy, of pleasure – a literal spilling over of good feelings.

Crying can also be about letting go, and rather than being accompanied by wrenching sobs, those tears just flow quietly, washing away stress and tension and bringing relief, peace and a deeper connection with yourself. 

So why would anyone want to hold them back? Maybe it will make people uncomfortable from time to time, if they happen to catch you in a moment, but I think that emotion should be allowed to flow freely and if that means tears, well, bring it on. 

Swallowing down those kind of feelings can choke us if we don't find another way of letting them go and ultimately, the big important ones won't go away anyway, not really. And that's another thing about tears, you can build up a backlog, an ocean waiting, needing, wanting to be cried.

But when emotion flows freely, it allows you to move beyond it, through it, past it and then it doesn't define us, any more than our tears do.

Image shown: "Larmes Tears", by Man Ray

In a much-loved farm house, surrounded by cornfields, you'll find the Ewefields Retreat. It's a place for seeing things more clearly, a beautiful, light-full space. Swallows were scoring perfect parabolas through the air as I let myself inside.

There were six of us. Two coaches and three others like me - waiting to see what would happen.

We sat on the carpet, in a circle, in a mainly empty room designed to let the people be the focus not the furniture, and for much of the first day, we talked. We talked about where we were in life personally and professionally and what we needed and wanted. With all the doing that happens, it was a time for being and taking stock.  

I'm aware that I do a lot of rushing around and, occasionally, a casualty of this is the ability or perhaps even the willingness to think about why I'm doing what I do, what I want to get out of it and even whether I actually know. 

Sometimes we find ourselves on a trajectory, propelled into doing (at speed). It may be a trajectory initially determined by us, but often it's by circumstances or other people - and sometimes it's taking us in the wrong direction. 

The trouble is, by then we're already moving at such a pace that unless we jam the brakes on, we'll carry on until we hit the destination we didn't want. Or like a doomed rocked hurtling through space, warning lights start flashing and the body starts malfunctioning. Sometimes. 

Among these women, talking was uninhibited and honest. We had the chance to be heard and to listen. Mutual respect and consideration gave room for emotion to emerge and then cradled it gently. 

It was a contemplative space in which we shared humour and experiences and found connections through sympathy and empathy. It was a place to put the brakes on.

The second day was more about setting new trajectories, gaining a clearer idea on what we wanted and needed and looking more closely at how we could achieve some of our most important goals, dreams and desires. 

Of course you can do this kind of thing on your own - you don't need to go away on a retreat - but, for me, the guidance of two experienced coaches and a supportive, all-female group made the mental and emotional self-exploration more profound and the process of gaining focus far easier.

In my (albeit limited) experience, men seem more likely to do this kind of processing on their own - and appear much less frequently than women on retreats like this one. They may have one best mate who they talk to in depth, or a partner, but the default seems to be to go it alone - and there is a miraculous process I've observed where they will take themselves off for a pre-defined period of time and come back with THE ANSWER. I am in awe of this. 

Many of the women I know (myself included) choose to look for answers through a more collaborative process, building the networks that provide the support and feedback they need to make their own minds up. 

There is no right or wrong way to go about the process of answering questions - but I think the secret is to be open to anything and leave no stone unturned. 

I have noticed that unexpectedly amazing revelations can come from the most unusual and unlikely of people and places - and whatever leads you to them is doing it for a reason. Trust it. And yourself. We know everything we need to know about ourselves to be happy. It's just a case of stopping and listening.

I've noticed certain words crop up over and over again when women describe women – adjectives like loving, intuitive, nurturing, feminine, giving, strong, resourceful... Seems our collective identity is firmly rooted in our biological potential to be a mother, a carer, a creator and protector of things smaller and more fragile than ourselves. 

As it happens, I like these words. I think they're beautiful and positive; I have no qualms about applying them to myself, but I do have a question: How much do they limit our sense of what being a woman can be? 

We have created something of a female blueprint – and that means standards have been set and expectations established. If this is the case, what are the assumptions being made about what a woman can achieve and if I don't match up, should I be giving myself a good talking to? 

Equally, if we have made these words our own unique property, how much do they skew our sense of what a man can or should be?  

Of course men can be nurturing, giving, resourceful etc, but are these the words they would choose to describe their masculinity?  Probably not. And I know they're not the words that immediately spring to mind for me. 

As a general rule, 'male' words are related to performance, personal power and intellect over emotion – a few that spring to mind include tough, charming, powerful and dependable. 

And what about the words that can comfortably be applied to both sexes - words like strong? It seems they have very different overtones depending on who you're talking about. 

Do a strong man and a strong woman possess the same kind of strength? I'm not sure they do. Strength is a nominalisation that translates very differently depending on the gender in question. When used to describe a man 'strength' tends to imply physicality. In a woman, it suggests more a sense of determination or some kind of mental ability to withstand hardship and difficulty. 

We use words so often without thinking about what they really mean or what we mean by them. For this reason, many conversations are based entirely on approximation because, let's face it, life's easier that way. If we were to consider the full implications of everything we say before we say it, there'd be many long drawn out silences. 

But sometimes, words are worth thinking about because they're never just words. The way we use them reflects our sense of who we believe we are in our world, as well as what we expect from others. 

Words allow us to express ourselves, but can also limit the ways we have to do it. Unless of course you get creative. So why not become that unexpected description of yourself and be a word you've never been before.  

"Why talk about being a woman?" he asked me. "Wouldn't it be better to think about yourself as an individual? Why set yourself up with the potential to become a stereotype or a generalisation?"

Well, it's something to think about. I don't want to suggest in any way that women (or groups of women) are all the same. The gentleman I was talking to had a point - of course, we're all unique, we all have our own map of the world. To generalise is merely an exercise in simplification and, as much as that makes life easier, it also leads to all sorts of nasty oversights.

So I will just write about my experiences of the day. I was on a Tantra & 5Rhythms workshop. I don't do this every Sunday, but I've had experiences of both before. If you're not familiar, follow the links - there's plenty to read about. 

For now, I'll just say that today, from 9.30am to 6.30pm, I've been in a large dance studio with about 60 people, half and half men and women. We have indeed danced, and also been silly, honest and quiet in an amazing environment that created sensuality, self-expression, respect, openness, gentleness, some crying and shouting and enough laughter to make it a great place to be. 

I'm exhausted and feel like I've been hit by a truck, but I feel calmer, more grounded and more in my skin than I have in ages. 

I experienced some amazing moments of emotional intimacy, with men and women - women who made me giggle like a five year old and with whom I felt welcome, safe, comfortable, nurtured, strong and balanced. An equal and an opposite. 
 
There was also a point during the day when were invited to divide ourselves into groups of men and women. This was a simple split that included gay and straight, couples and singles and twentysomethings to fiftysomethings. And it was obvious then how much gender matters. 

Expression became more vocal. It seemed that in that single sex space, people felt they were able to express themselves more confidently. There was a celebration of male or female that happened naturally, without inhibition. It felt a little primal, a little raw. There was pleasure and power to be found in bonding in this way. 

I don't think I'm pushing any boundaries when I say that there is recognition and understanding between people of the same sex - or at least an assumption of its existence and the subsequent support available, which is often borne out. 

When that takes the form of today's expression, it's an incredibly positive experience. It's about feeling connected and creating anchors in a world that can be confusing, complicated and even downright catastrophic. 

That's no bad thing.

What does it mean to be a woman?

First, I need to qualify this question… I'm talking about the experience of being a woman, the sense of identity that may or may not arise from being female.

And secondly, I'm asking the question because I don't know. There are countless answers, as many as there are individuals, but I don't have mine. 

I had a conversation with a lovely twentysomething woman today. I'd talked to her about my project and our subsequent chat went something like this…

Me: So what do you think it means to be a woman?
Her: I don't know really. You'd probably speak to some people and they'd be able to give you an answer though..
M: What does it mean to you to be a woman?
H: I haven't really thought about it…
M: Maybe it doesn't matter?
H: No. Maybe it doesn't. 
M: Would you rather be a bloke?
H: (without hesitation). No. Don't know why though…

I'm intrigued.

When the simple fact of being a woman has such powerful social, cultural, professional, economic and sexual implications; when we discuss at length the way women are presented and represented in the media, in society, within the family dynamic, on the catwalk, in politics, why isn't there more clarity about what this means subjectively? 

Where's the curiosity, the compulsion that asks: 'Where do I fit into this debate? What does this mean for me, the way I live and my sense of self? 

How many beliefs, assumptions and expectations do I have and hold onto subconsciously because I am a woman? How much does my female status impact on my sense of personal value and self-esteem? How does being a woman affect my confidence, sexual identity and measure of achievement? Where, who and what are my benchmarks? 

Scientists decoding the human genome have discovered that 78 genes separate men from women and it's the absence of the Y chromosome that makes all the difference. But my experience of being a woman isn't about not being a man - and for the next 29 days, I don't intend to play spot the difference. 

My aim is simply to explore the journeys women take (myself included) to attain a sense of their female self - and to celebrate a little bit of what being a woman might be about. 

With this in mind, tomorrow's tantric workshop could be interesting...

There's a new talk on ted.com from Matt Cutts, an engineer at Google. It's called 'Try something new for 30 days'. 

His point is simply this: the next 30 days are going to happen, and there's nothing we can do about it. They'll either fly by or drag, but in that time, you can create something good – and do it every day, for the rest of the month. 

He suggests doing something you've always wanted to do. Now personally, I've never really had any lifelong ambitions. After a brief spell as Britannia when I was three, I wanted to be a cowgirl. Then a nurse, because of the upside-down watch, and then a teacher. After that things got a bit woolly.

Now, however, there is something that I want to give some attention to – but rather than it being something I've always wanted to do, it's actually something I've always been, initially in the making, but now more fully realised... I'm talking about being a woman. 

So for the next 30 days, that's what I want to give some time, focus and thought. What does it mean to be a woman? How are femininity, femaleness and womanliness expressed - and how important is gender in self-expression?

Your thoughts would be much appreciated, so please comment, share and retweet. I much prefer the sound of my own voice when it's accompanied by other people's, male or female.

And in case you're interested, here's Matt's TED talk... 
It's just over three minutes (no time at all in the broader scheme of 30 days!)

Because of the kind of people and organisations I follow on Twitter and Facebook, my timeline is often a constant stream of quotes and sayings - meaningful, motivational extracts of other people's judiciously applied words. Occasionally, I'll pounce on one that I'd like to have said if I'd been witty or wise enough. 

For example, this evening: 
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there". That one caught in the net. 

I don't know exactly what Rumi meant, but to me, that says liberation, the idea of freeing yourself from judgement and finding the space to connect purely and simply, in forgiveness and acceptance. Beautiful. 

However, most of the time all these valuable thoughts just flow past me with, at most, a skim read. And I know that means there's probably a whole heap of wisdom just falling off the bottom of my screen - but this is the problem: when it comes to quotes, sometimes there are just too many of them. Line after line of mindfulness that, after a while, becomes meaningless white noise. 

And then I see dead people. That timeline is full of them. Wise, but dead. And it's a little like being in solitary confinement with a very well-written book to read.

Now don't get me wrong - I love quotes. I have a folder full of them and a good one appears like illumination in a sloeblack, crowblack sky… Mostly they're quoted by someone I admire for the powerful, seductive, expressive way they create shapes with language.

But there are times when that online deluge creates something of a feeding frenzy and gathering 'great quotes' and adding them to a collection becomes more important than taking them on board. This is when quote watching is more like waiting for a beautiful butterfly to land so you can stake it with a pin and put it in a box on the wall. 

Words need the room to breathe, to live, to fly. This takes time and space which they don't get when they become a flood. 

Simply put, the more I am told, the less I hear, but when I take the time to feel something, it lingers, unfolds and connects with something inside me. There is so much wisdom in the world, but sometimes creating space, without words, is the best way to let the knowledge you have take shape. 

However, if I had to choose between having that background noise of illumination and inspiration or not, I admit I'd take the background noise. 

There are times when those inspirational quotes appear with the frequency of fireworks on bonfire night - but I like fireworks. If ever I do something important in my life, I want there to be fireworks. And so why not have the written equivalent on an ongoing basis? 

OK, so sometimes the rocket will misfire or fail to catch, but I'd sooner have a good supply of words designed to inspire and motivate than a set put together to ridicule and belittle. I'd rather have quotes about love than headlines of frustration and anger and I'd rather have a backdrop of positivity than an ongoing moan. Really, there's no contest.

And today, as it often is, my favourite quote is this one from Anais Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom". Because it means something to me. 

But really that's all these quotes are ever about - helping us identify a little bit of ourselves that we want to acknowledge and be proud of.

What would it be like if beauty came without constraints? 

Think of the possibilities for happiness if we could allow it to become limitless, unconfined by the length of a leg or the shape of a face... 

How would it be if we could feel it within ourselves - at least most of the time - and not need someone else to prove it's there? 

What if we owned and were responsible for our own beauty and lived it out on a daily basis?

When I was five, beauty meant something shiny - platinum blonde hair that sparkled in the sunlight like it did on television, my mother's evening dress and her squeaky, shiny black patent shoes - and my own smaller, rounder versions - were objects to be adored. I watched my feet as I walked and thought they were beautiful.

When I was a teenager, beauty was about a flat stomach. I used to turn sideways to the mirror every morning to make sure I had one. Everything, I decided, looked better from the side, more beautiful when seen in profile. By halving myself, I became more - according to the standards I set myself. Of course, I was considerably less than I am now. I weighed less. I had experienced less. I knew less. 

Now I'm 37, beauty means something else. It's not just visual - it can consume all the senses and, in its most powerful form, it really does. True beauty stirs emotion - a feeling, often an incredible happiness, which starts inside and radiates out, often bypassing thought and existing purely kinaesthetically. 

Psychologies magazine have just launched the Positive Beauty Manifesto. It's a good idea (and one that I assume more high profile men would like to be supporting, not just Trevor Sorbie!)

I'd like to think that Positive Beauty is the kind that exists without the time stamp that can make it tomorrow's out of date fashion. It has the shape of reality, of three dimensions, of imperfections. It has the tangibility and depth that comes from the presence of confidence, self-esteem and balance. 

While beauty will always remain to a large extent in the eye of the beholder, it is also possible to feel beautiful, to be beautiful from the inside out. That's the kind of beauty that creates not just a visual impression but a fully-realised version of who you are - the one that comes with warmth, charisma, energy, passion, inspiration. 

This is the beauty that can make you stand out in a crowd - and hold its attention - the beauty that will draw people to you, that will inspire love, admiration and affection, not just the need for association.  

It's the kind of beauty that doesn't need someone else to make it valid - it'll work for you when you're alone. You own it. 

It's a good beautiful to be.