Came across this recently and I wanted to share this…

The following article is posted on UCLA’s Study on Friendship Among Women

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach quivering stress most of us experience on daily basis.

A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It’s a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research (most of it on men) upside down.

Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study’s authors. It’s an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight. In fact, says Dr.Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released, as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend to children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect.

This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone (which men produce in high levels when they’re under stress) seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic “aha” moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein.

When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly ninety percent of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something. The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health. It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the “tend and befriend” notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men.


Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol. There’s no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer. In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a six-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a nine-year period cut their risk of death by more than sixty percent. Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses’ Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that’s not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That’s a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That’s really a mistake, because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they’re with other women. It’s a very healing experience.

Gale Berkowitz, Freelance Writer
© 2005 Women’s Digest, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Jennifer Masters

Throughout history as we know it, we’ve been taught to feel ashamed of our bodies, or ignore it when in pain—which is how our body tries to tell us something is wrong. We don’t meet our own standards of beauty. Nudity is taboo. Sex is taboo. Deriving pleasure from sex is even more taboo—to the point where the whole of humanity has forgotten how to allow themselves, to give themselves permission to experience these pleasures.

The Temple Priestess recognizes that her body is sacred. It is a temple which houses her spirit. It is a perfect representation of the Goddess incarnate on earth. She knows it is a gift to explore, conduit through which the world is experienced, and the vehicle through which she expresses herself and the will of Spirit.

She acknowledges the connection between body, mind, and spirit. She is able to be present in her body, to be in the moment. She knows how to listen to her body and take care of herself. She recognizes that her body is a conduit for healing others, through touch, movement, dance, telling herstory—even her mere presence. She knows her humanity is not perfect in the common sense—but nature in its most perfect state is imperfect. She leads by living her life in example, and strives to do her best in all things.

She knows that she holds the power to be herself, to be free from judgment, from self and from others. Everything she needs to be a whole human being, she contains within herself. And she recognizes that she is part of a greater whole, that all of life is connected, we are not separate and alone.

She is the feminine counterpart to the equation, working in partnership, in balance with the masculine, the priest. One cannot function without the other. Yin and yang, receiving and giving, magnetic and electric. She recognizes that we all have both masculine and feminine energies, and our outer relationships can be just as diverse as our inner selves. A priestess is not just about one religion or spirituality, she is the element of the sacred feminine in any religion or spirituality—something that has been largely ignored, left out or forgotten in mainstream religion. She celebrates her femininity not despite or in contrast to masculinity, but in connection to it.

Every woman is a priestess in her own spiritual journey, but in a more formal sense, what defines a priestess is the willingness to step into the leadership role. A priestess is a position of leadership when she holds feminine strength and power while acting in service to others, holding sacred space within which anyone may come into connection with their divine source. A leader is a person who guides or inspires others (inspire = in spirit) to pursue that which is in their highest good. A true leader is someone who isn’t afraid to be different—she can stand by her principles, stand in her truth, regardless of what others do or think.

The path of the priestess is to lead the way into a life more abundant, more joyful. It is about how to be a woman in balance, and about living one’s life fully, being more in tune with her self, her body, her relationships, and her world. This is a state of being that each woman—all shapes, ages, cultures, and creeds—already has within her nature, whether she is conscious of it or has yet to explore. The priestess illuminates the path of self re-discovery.

Click here for information on Temple Priestess Training with Jennifer and Kaliani»