Unfurl - From being too nice to a courageous life

Unfurl

From ‘Being Too Nice' to Living a Courageous Life

A Journey Back to the Power of Your True Nature and Unique Feminine Fire.

Rediscover who you are underneath the woman you were taught to be.

Reclaim your true nature, re-own your power and rewild your life.

Imagine always feeling deeply, easefully at home: in yourself, in your body, in the world; back at the centre of your own life.

Imagine feeling free to follow what brings you most alive

and not worrying what anyone else thought about it.

Imagine living a life that feels soulful, seasonal, embodied, fun,

and full of meaning.

Imagine a life lived knowing who you are, listening deeply to your longings and having the courage to finally unfurl your dreams into being.

Imagine living true to yourself, even when it's scary, even when no-one else understands, even when you're not quite sure where it's leading...

I was tired of:

I was tired of seeing soulful, big-hearted women not living true to themselves.

Watching them compromise their needs, stifle their desires and censor their expression.

Settling for lives that didn’t honour their souls and slowly dying as a result.

Because they were afraid, because they were filled with shame, because they didn’t realise they had been caged.

I was tired of seeing women burn themselves out, making everyone happy except themselves.

I’d see them get pissed off, then depressed and then sick, all along blaming themselves for ‘failing’ and trying harder to make it all work.

It breaks my heart that as a result, so many women’s gifts, talent, art and expertise are never shared with a world that is in desperate need of them.

I was also sick of a coaching industry that capitalises on women’s self-blame and convinces them that they are a problem to be fixed, all the while calling it ‘empowerment’.

You are not a problem to be fixed,
You are a true nature to be freed.

There’s nothing wrong with you,
There’s something very wrong with our culture.

"I bottled everything up being the ‘nice girl’. I now see I have been fighting myself all along.

It is like trying to keep a wild cat in a box, the real me has been clawing and scratching and doing everything in her power to be released. All my energy has gone into trying to contain her, instead of following her lead. It made me seriously sick. Now I am on that journey to reclaim and nurture her so that she can be expressed and live.

I have to give her life."

Holly, Coaching Client

If you’re feeling:

Caged in your life, with a nagging sense that you’re not quite living the life or doing the thing you’re meant to be doing, that you’re not honouring your potential, that you’re destined for more than this, but you're stuck
Hungry for more depth, creativity, intimacy, joy and boldness in your life.
Pissed off that you’ve done all the things right in your life - you've been a really good, diligent woman, but it hasn't added up to what it promised and now you find yourself exhausted, depleted and resentful.
That you’ve got more to offer, and that, on the other side of the fear and resistance, is the more authentic, honest and satisfying life which you know is yours. You want to choose the life that truly belongs to you, but how?
Like you’ve been holding back from stepping into your truest, most authentic life; afraid it would mean shaking up the status quo or upsetting people you love. Instead you’ve been waiting for something … permission? the right time? to be ready? to make the leap.
Afraid to be wasting “your one wild and precious life” in a situation that isn’t right for you. You don’t want to choose comfort over courage, or end up like previous generations of women, living in fear. And yet, you still feel trapped and unable to take the next step towards freedom.
Like you’ve done a lot of healing work. You've tried therapy, workshops, healing modalities but you still feel held back and stuck. You're frustrated and angry at yourself because you can’t seem to act on what you’ve learnt. You fear that, at this rate, you’re going to spend your whole life healing and not get to the good part, that you’re somehow broken.

You’re not broken.

These are the consequences women suffer, when we are trained to be ‘nice’ rather than true to ourselves.

10 signs you’ve been caged by niceness:

1. You never feel good enough: you have this low level sense of always having to earn or prove your worthiness. You might seem confident and self-possessed to others, but underneath you never feel deeply, easefully at home - in yourself, your relationships, or the world.
2. You overgive: you put others first at the expense of your spirit, life force, and health. You negate your own needs and end up feeling resentful and exhausted.
3. You have a hard time knowing what you need: You’re highly sensitive and often lose yourself out in the world or in other people’s experiences, losing a sense of your own separate emotions or wellbeing. You then struggle to know what you feel, what you think or what you need.
4. You worry a lot about what other people think: you often adapt or mould yourself to what you think other people want, you can be chameleon-like. Even when no-one is around you find them influencing your choices and decisions.
5. You struggle with boundaries: You avoid conflict by saying yes reflexively and struggle to say no, you feeling guilty when setting any sort of boundary. Often this leaves you feeling swamped, overcommitted and overwhelmed.
6. You are overly flexible and responsive, often passive rather than generative: you have a hard time expressing yourself or getting your voice heard. You struggle to state your preference or an opinion. You give your power away to keep others happy and be liked, only to find that you are not given respect or taken seriously.
7. You are a perfectionist and procrastinate. You find yourself filled with self-doubt whenever you try to create, and either avoiding the tasks all together until they are urgent, or constantly improving them rather than getting 'real world' feedback.
8. You fear being too visible: you find yourself shrinking and hiding; not feeling safe to be seen.
9. You don’t ask for help: You fear being a burden, or too much. You feel you should be able to do everything yourself and so don't ask for the support you need. You often feel ashamed for having needs at all.
10. You have a tricky relationship with rest. You struggle to really allow yourself to do nothing and enjoy rest. You feel guilty or uncomfortable whenever you stop, even though you're exhausted.

Culture still cages women.

It separates us from the fullness and power of our true nature.
And trains us to live according to other people’s preferences.

Shrinking is not your true nature.

Self-doubt is not your true nature.

Lack of confidence is not your true nature.

People-pleasing is not your true nature.

That is all the cultural conditioning that’s been layered on top of your true nature.

Those are the bars of the cage.

The discontent you feel, the anger, the frustration, the longing…
That’s your true nature communicating with you,
shaking the bars of the cage,
shaking you awake.

The good news.

We can return to our true nature,

reclaim the caged parts of ourselves

and restore our wholeness.

In doing so, we re-own our feminine power and rewild our lives.

Are you Ready to Break Free?

Sign me up now

My approach:

Critical thinking:

We must know why we are caged in order to break free.

Most approaches don’t address the wider societal and cultural context within which women are living. Which is that we live within a system which was never designed for us to thrive. If the confidence course or the boundaries workshop or the healing method you're using doesn't also address the causes or context for why you struggle, it implicitly frames you as the one with the problem.

A woman is NOT a problem to be fixed, she is a true nature to be freed. Society and cultural conditioning make that incredibly difficult still.

True empowerment helps you become more critical of the systems you exist within, rather than encouraging you to do what you’ve been trained to do, which is to assume that you are the one to blame, somehow inferior and in need of constant improvement.

There is nothing wrong with you, there is something very wrong with the culture.

~

Embodiment:

We must know how we are in cages in order to break free; and embodiment is the key.

Culture is embodied. You can know the role that social conditioning plays in women’s lives deeply, you can study feminist theory and understand the issues cognitively, but until you realise that culture is an embodied experience, all you’ve got is a detailed map of the cage, without the tools to escape.

I knew I was caged for a long time before I found a way to actually be free in the world. Culture exists in and through our bodies: in the entitlement we feel to space, unwanted touch, eye contact. How we are in our own bodies and in relationship to other bodies is the key to remaking culture and our place within it.

Embodiment offers the ‘how’ to breaking free that other approaches don't.

~

Soulfulness:

I believe our true nature is poetic.

Often, mainstream approaches don’t speak to the mystery beyond both the intellect and the body.

Our true nature responds to myth, images, poetry. It is stirred by beautiful art, wild places and the more than human world.

If we are to break free of the cage of culture, we must nourish our true nature with the soul food it most desires.

~

Valuing Healthy Yin before healthy Yang:

Most approaches to women’s empowerment attempt to help women build confidence, influence, etc without first nurturing healthy inner connection, compassion and self-discovery.

It’s another form of undervaluing the feminine and it replaces one cage for another: in the form of now having to become ‘badass’.

You don't have to overcome people-pleasing etc by replacing it with dominance and aggression. You can learn to be powerful and kind, compassionate and have boundaries, listen deeply and lead.

You get to discover what your feminine fire looks like and decide how to use it.

~

Community and spaciousness:

It takes a sisterhood to break free and it takes time to unlearn and decondition ourselves from our training, and to experientially rediscover and embody our true nature.

We live in a culture that prioritises quick fixes and life hacks, the heroic ideal and individualism. There is often not enough time for integration in order for real change to happen. And so women jump from one course to another.

Seasonality, spaciousness and relentless community support are necessary for women on the heroine’s journey of returning to themselves and unfurling into courageous living.

So, join me in this year-long, seasonal journey and give yourself the time and space to discover your true nature, begin to take bold action and live into a life of courage, confidence, and creativity.

About me.

I’m Erika Chalkley, I'm a six-figure business owner, Buddhist meditation teacher, embodiment coach and I’ve worked in female empowerment my whole career.

I am committed to helping women overcome niceness so that they can live fearlessly according to their own desires.

Why? Because I believe in female freedom. I've spent my whole life intent on finding freedom. Social, economic, political and spiritual.

Right now, I believe the world is in a mess because a huge amount of female talent is never shared. It serves no one but those invested in the status quo. It’s time for a jailbreak!

I know the escape route because I’ve been there. My own journey started when I was 25; in the midst of a crushing burnout, I looked around and realised that the life I was living did not feel like my own, it didn’t belong to me and I didn’t belong to it. I'd created it based on all the things I'd been trained to want, rather than from my own authentic desires.

At that point, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted, but I knew it was more than I had been allowed to believe was possible, so I set about dismantling the cage of my old life, and growing into a life that had me at its center.

It's a journey that keeps unfurling.

In this programme, I will take you step-by-step through the keys that set me free, and which I now use to help liberate women across the globe.

Sign Up Now

Establish for Entrepreneurs

The skills that I’m teaching in Unfurl are the key reasons I’ve been successful in business.

I see women entrepreneurs struggle to implement all the strategies they’ve learned because they don’t have the embodied foundation that allows them to.

Female entrepreneurs are the front-line, blazing edge of cutting through patriarchy.

Of course it's scary. Being successful in business means going against all the ways we were taught to stay safe.

And yet, running a business gives women a unique opportunity to live their truest, most courageous lives, build generational wealth and shape culture directly.

I'm committed to helping big-hearted, soulful, ethically minded women achieve success in business and offer their gifts to the world.

Add an additional series of training and webinars to Unfurl, designed specifically to build the embodied foundations for business success..

Click here to find out more about Establish

Guest Teachers

In Spring we'll be joined by:

Rachel Blackman

Artist, somatic educator, theatre maker, trainer, Feldenkrais practitioner and mentor.

Roma Pijlman

Karate Instructor, Coach of the Netherlands Olympic Karate Team, Life & Business Coach

Vix Anderton

A recovering perfectionist, authenticity warrior, cyclical living maven and embodiment coach.

Amy Woods

Founder and Director of the social enterprise SoulShine, Certified Eating Psychology Coach.

And many more guests to be announced as the year unfolds.

Testimonials

Who is this course for?

Women feeling stuck

If you've been feeling stuck in your life recently, lacking inspiration, overwhelmed yet slightly bored or generally burned out and depleted.

If you've got the nagging sense that this isn't really what your one true precious life is for - all this people-pleasing, shape-shifting and self-abandonment.

Unfurl might be for you.

Women on the threshold of a bold change

You know you need to make a change in your life, you might even know exactly what it is you want to do and yet, you keep finding yourself stuck and not taking action. You might fear upsetting people you love or rocking the boat in your life, or you might be doubting your ability to make your dreams a reality.

Unfurl might be for you.

Early stage Entrepreneurs

If you've made the bold decision to step into your truer life by starting your own business. You did this because you longed for more freedom and creativity, but now you keep finding yourself stuck and not moving forwards. You're often paralyzed by self-doubt, questioning your expertise and unable to share your work without feeling icky.

Unfurl's sister programme: Establish

might be for you.

More details here.

Sound perfect for you?

Sign Up Now

Why I Created Unfurl

I have been helping women find their voice and express their gifts through somatic tools and practices for a long time.

Something I’ve noticed throughout the years is that women will finish a course and the community that was created was so amazing that it just felt like a shame to not have more time and space to explore and connect.

We live in a world that privileges quick fixes, but if you’re trying to turn around a way of being that’s been shaped over an entire lifetime, it simply takes time.

This work creates big shifts in our physical, mental, and emotional experience, and I’ve found that there’s a strong need to slow the process down and really give women time to embody it—hence, a yearlong, spacious course.

The community aspect is equally as important as the curriculum itself. When women join for a whole year, they’re in community for a whole year.

Slowing it down means friendships have a longer time to develop and blossom and women can draw on each other’s support for a longer time.

Because this course is about getting back to our true nature, I wanted to teach it in a way that is aligned with the natural cycles of the year. (I’m in the Northern Hemisphere).

There are times in the year when it’s easier to be introverted and there are times when it’s easier to take bold action in the world, both of which coincide with natural rhythms.

It’s easier to learn these ways of being when the natural environment is supporting it. For instance, you wouldn’t want to learn to ride a bike in the winter or learn to ski in the summer.

When we learn in tune with the seasons, we can embed these practices into our systems more easily and really embody them. When they’re truly embodied, we can then draw upon them in less supportive conditions.

Also, we all go through different patches in our lives, and taking a course over the full rotation around the sun means we can see ourselves through hard and easy times.

This feels less rushed and reduces the panic that can set in when we’re making big shifts in our nervous system and stepping into bold action.

To commit to a whole year honours the part of yourself that is ready to make a change in a real way.

A full year means time to integrate, put learnings into practice and lean into community support in a humanely paced, trial-and-error experiment.

Want to chat to me about it? Click here to book a free 15 min call

You might love this course if....

You already have some embodied experience or practice like yoga or meditation. It doesn’t need to be fancy or athletic, but you know you enjoy (or long to enjoy) being in/moving your body.
You are interested in alternative soulful approaches, but you’re not super “woo”. My teaching style is kind of pragmatic/practical meets poetic.
You love exploring things through myth, poetry and imagery.
You love books about adventurous women who’ve changed their lives - Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Untamed by Glennon Doyle, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. They really inspire you but then you’re like “okay, but how?”
You’re curious about the human experience and playful in your approach.
You're up for co-creating—you’re not looking to be saved, or for me to have all the answers. I see my work as a living, breathing conversation and inquiry between us. I'll be listening and shaping the course in response to what arises from the group. I want you to bring your proactive engagement to the mix too.
You’re drawn to nuance and complexity. You’re not just looking for answers, but maybe better questions too.
You’ve got a drive to go beyond the cage of fear and resistance and you’re willing to go through the discomfort to get there.
You’ve got a fire in your belly and you’re ready to make a change. You are done shrinking from your true life, you're ready for more.
You’ve tried lots of shorter courses and you’ve found in the end that you don’t implement the learning and you’d like a bit more of a container and community support.
You have a longing to reconnect with the seasons and seasonal living more fully, and are interested in a slowed down approach that allows time and spaciousness to integrate.
You’re looking to foster connection within community.
You’ve done a considerable amount of your healing journey—maybe you’ve seen a therapist or done other modalities—and you feel ready to move beyond that and take the next step, but you’re not sure how.
You feel like you’re on the threshold of stepping into more—maybe it’s quitting your job, going for a scholarship, leaving a relationship, starting a business—but you need some support to take the leap.

This course might NOT be for you if...

You are actively experiencing trauma. Embodiment coaching can be disruptive and a base-level of robustness is assumed for this programme. If you have active trauma, please talk to me before signing up so we can see if it’s a good time or a good fit.
You’re looking for someone to heal you or save you. That person is not me. Nope.
You are in the depths of self-blame, self-hatred, or shame to the degree that it might be hard for you to take responsibility for your life in the way this course asks. There's no shame here, it might be worth some work with a therapist first - we've all been there.
You tend to be disorganised to the point of chaotic, e.g. you usually run late, lose Zoom links, etc.
You are not open to new concepts and ways of thinking and being.
You have more fire than you know what to do with, e.g. you often find yourself in arguments and explosive feelings and situations. This programme is helping 'nice' women become more powerful, this is not designed with fiery women in mind.

Course Details

Unfurl is a year-long, seasonal group program.

It consists of four, themed six-week courses:

each untaming and reclaiming a different aspect of our true nature

and each aligned with the energy of that particular season.

When: Mondays | 6pm (UK)

Six-week seasons

Spring: 28th March - 9th May (no class 18th April)

Summer: 27th June - 1st August

Autumn: 5th September - 10th October

Winter: 28th November - 16th January (no class over Xmas)

Cost:

Unfurl: £2000

Establish for Entrepreneurs: £3000

Thrive Mentoring Programme: £5000

Payment Plans Available

Full Details Below

The results:

Unfurl ~ if you long to:

Be in connection with an amazing group of soulful, like-minded women who are on the same journey as you.
Get more in touch with your true nature and life’s purpose.
Let go of the shame you've been carrying for 'not being able to make life work'
Have practical tools, practices, and support to live sustainably in a culture that would rather have you overwork and under-express.
Find your authentic voice and learn to put it in service of living the life you truly want to live.
Be both powerful and kind at the same time.
Set boundaries and prioritise your wellbeing without losing your heart, compassion, or ability to connect with others.
Feel a genuine knowing that your life history has added up to something to be proud of.
Feel and trust your instincts, and act on your own inspiration, curiosity, and desires, instead of waiting for permission or worrying about what others think.
Build true confidence and learn to regulate your nervous system so that you can feel safe to express yourself in unsupportive environments.
Find the courage to be more visible in your life and work.
Feel worthy of shining, taking up space and sharing your talents without feeling ashamed or afraid of judgement.
Rest more deeply, and discover the richness of solitude without loneliness.
Truly understand that the problem was never you, but rather the culture in which we live.
Work less (even on self-development!!) and simply live more.
Live with more ease and enjoyment,
More freedom and fulfilment.
More impact and expansion.

WHAT'S INCLUDED:

Four seasons of content-rich guidance and support to find your most authentic expression and live it fully. Each season consists of six-weeks of input followed by six-weeks of spaciousness - to digest, integrate and deepen the learning while still being held in the context of community.

A year-long container filled with an amazing community of soulful, like-minded women.

24 weeks of pre-recorded content, released in advance of each live session.

24 live sessions where we will unpack and integrate the learning from the videos and explore them more deeply in community.

Bonus sessions with guest experts each season to take the learning deeper and support it's implementation in real life.

Journal workbooks to accompany each season’s curriculum with prompts and reflective exercises.

A dedicated Facebook group for ongoing community support and connection.

Seasonal celebrations to mark your growth and honor the changing natural world.

Exclusive community events such as grief circles, dance parties and morning coffees and co-working spaces.

And much more as the year Unfurls....

What We Will Cover Each Season

Spring: Setting Big-hearted Boundaries

28th March - 9th May (no class 18th April)

Your dreams, hopes, and desires are like seeds in your belly. Young, new things first need protecting.

In order to bring them to full potential and abundant growth, there are certain conditions we need to set in place.

We need to learn to be a safe container for ourselves and our budding desires. Learn to come home to ourselves and listen inwardly.

We need to become a safe and nourishing home for ourselves and learn to protect what is new, vulnerable and beginning to grow.

The conditions of our current patriarchal culture are not supportive — think pesticides, demolished top soil, synthetic fertilisers making you grow too fast or in directions you don’t want to go.

So, here we are looking at laying the groundwork to support healthy, desirable, sustainable growth.

Here, we’re going to learn to set big-hearted, full-of-love boundaries.

This part is about nourishing ourselves,not giving it all away, and learning the self-care of saying no.

Summer: Finding our unique feminine fire and taking action

27th June - 1st August

Now that we’ve learned to say no, we need to learn to say YES. Hell yes!!

This season is about rediscovering passion, playfulness and power, but through curiosity and delight rather than harshness.

This is about learning to say yes to ourselves, to our desires, and to life.

This is the phase where plants burst into growth and join in the dance of pollination.

We do the same here by learning to try new things, following what feels good, and uncensoring our expression.

This is about taking action, trusting ourselves, daring to take calibrated risks and having fun again!

This module is in the High Summer, the peak of yang.

With the Sun as our guide, we will see that the feminine fire has many forms and discover which ones we find more supportive for the life we long to live into.

Autumn: Stepping Into Sovereignty

5th September - 10th October

We’ve held space, we’ve learned to play and to follow where it takes us.

Now, we will prepare to be visible in our fullness.

Spring and Summer were about discovering what’s inside of us.

Autumn is about learning to take up space and be visible in the outside world.

Here, we grow into maturity and overcome the fear of being seen.

This season is about bigger thinking, bigger perspective.

This season is about recognizing that we have fruit and medicine inside of us that will benefit the community and it’s time to offer our gifts from that place.

Here we learn to take ourselves more seriously, realise the impact we can have and start to consciously move toward what we want to create for the future.

This season is about leadership and investigating what feminine leadership looks like.

This season is also about celebrating ourselves, honouring our journey, and rejoicing in the abundant harvest that is us.

Winter: Returning To Rest

28th November - 16th January (no class over Xmas)

Now that we’ve learned to courageously offer our gifts, we must learn to manage our energy.

There is a time for action and a time for rest.

This season is about learning to come back to the richness within and to be at home in ourselves

This season is about sinking into pleasure and not feeling guilty for a lack of productivity.

This season is about learning that we’re worthy even when we’re not useful.

It’s about allowing ourselves to dream again.

Plants let go of their leaves and those leaves are composted for next year.

Here, we learn to trust that we don’t have to keep pushing for our lives to be rich, meaningful and abundant.

You are allowed to rest deeply and still be worthy.

BONUSES

Bonus sessions from guest experts every season, worth £1500

Seasonal celebrations and special events, worth £600

Regular community co-working and practice spaces, worth £300

Access to monthly office hours with me, worth £600

Discounted access to 1:1 sessions with me.

Pay in full and as a thank you gift - a bonus 1:1 with me.

If you want to move from being too nice to living your most courageously authentic life - this programme will give all the embodied foundations to do so.

Interested to join Unfurl 2023?

Complete the form to add your name to the waitlist to be notified first when Unfurl opens for sign up for the 2023-24 iteration.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is embodiment weird? Do I need to be athletic to take part?

Nope, not weird and not athletic. There’s no chanting or anything that’s too ‘woo’. I’m soulful, and I believe in nourishing the imagination in my work, but I also highly value the intellect and our lived experience. So expect pragmatic, practical teaching with clear exercises you can easily do, with an emphasis on you experimenting and finding what works for you. But also with poetry, music and myth in the mix.

What if I can’t make all the calls live?

No problem, we’ll have a private community space for the whole course and absolutely everything will be recorded and uploaded for you to watch on demand in your own time.

What if I don’t have much time right now?

This programme is designed with women’s lives in mind. It’s spacious with lots of time to digest, integrate and deepen the learning, and to catch up when life inevitably gets in the way. This programme recognises that life, in all its messiness, is the way! Everything is recorded and available on catch-up.

Will you be teaching us business strategy?

No. I won’t be teaching you how to write a lead magnet or grow your audience. I won’t be showing you how to sell on Instagram or how to improve your copywriting - there are amazing courses out there that teach that. And you may already have done many of them. This course is about overcoming the fears that stop you implementing what you already know. I don’t believe you need more knowledge right now, you need to learn how to embody a different possibility for yourself. This course will allow you to confidently implement which ever direction you choose to take moving forwards in your business. I will however share my own strategies, what I’ve found to work in my own business and my learning from thousands of hours studying business, along the way.

Is this a trauma course?

However, one of the reasons embodied coaching is so effective is that it can go deep very quickly and sometimes this means it touches into layers of emotion. A level of robustness is assumed.

Are you offering any bursary places?

Yes. I’ll be releasing details about bursary places after 6th March. If you’re interested feel free to email me.

What are the programme Terms & Conditions?

You can view the full programme Terms & Conditions, here: https://www.yourrighttobe.com/unfurl-tcs-and-disclaimer

Any other questions?

Please don’t hesitate to contact me via email at erika@yourrighttobe.com