Opening
You can lead capably all day and still arrive home with nothing left of yourself to share. The gears of competence keep turning long after they are needed. What is missing is not rest exactly. It is the other energy, the one that lets you be a companion and not a machine.
Josephine Palermo has a practice for finding it.
The idea
Josephine Palermo is an executive coach and organisational psychologist in Brisbane, the author of Rising to Feminine Power, and a partner at Six Team Conditions.
We met through Disrupt HR, which she is bringing to Brisbane, and our conversation ranged from her Bali retreats to the energy we bring home at the end of the day.
Her retreats are built on four archetypes of femininity, developed with her friend the hypnotherapist Petra Plankanova, and on a claim she makes openly. Positive femininity deserves the same recognition positive masculinity receives.
“There’s lots of cues about positive masculinity but not necessarily about positive femininity.”
The retreat runs for five nights in Ubud, and Josephine designs the group journey deliberately, because groups and teams are her speciality.
Guests arrive on the evening of the first day, share dinner and a welcoming ceremony, and tell their life stories on the first morning, inside a container of psychological safety that she works hard to hold.
There have been tears in that first morning, and she treats that as a sign the space is working rather than something to manage away. She is careful about what she can promise. Her job is to hold the conditions for connection, not to guarantee it.
What I keep thinking about, though, is her own transition practice. Josephine notices when she is in her queen energy, all competence and drive, and she keeps a reminder in her diary that simply says stop.
That pause lets her soften into lover energy, the state where she is a better companion to her partner. She also designed three self-directed group sessions after the retreat, because the hardest part of any peak experience is sinking back into your old environment without support.
Working from home, the boundary between the two energies has to be built on purpose.
What I took from it
I lived this for years without having words for it. I would move from video calls straight into cooking dinner, carrying queen energy into a room that needed something else, and wondering why the evening felt transactional.
My months in the ecovillage taught me the value of shared rhythms that make switching roles easier, because a bell or a shared table does part of the transitioning for you. Now I keep my own version of Josephine’s stop reminder on my desk.
My family can tell the difference when I use it, and so can I. Her post-retreat wisdom applies far beyond retreats. Any high experience, a brilliant workshop, a weekend away, a milestone project, ends with a gentle slide back into ordinary life. We plan the event and forget to plan the landing.
I have started asking what the landing needs, and it is usually one honest conversation and a date in the diary.
Three things to try this week
- Notice which energy you lead with for one day. Name it honestly at midday and again in the evening, without fixing anything yet.
- Put a visible stop reminder in your diary or on your desk, and treat it as a real appointment to change states rather than a decoration.
- Design one small ritual that marks the end of your working day, such as changing clothes, walking the block or lighting a candle before you rejoin your household.
Watch and go deeper
Josephine describes the retreat mornings beautifully, and her energy fills a room. The full conversation is waiting in the player below.
You can explore Josephine’s book and programmes at Josephine Palermo.
New conversations land on the Rediscovering Connection channel most weeks
Close
The energy we bring to our relationships is designable, and our certification helps HR and communications leaders build cultures where people can switch states without guilt. Explore the certification, then ask what reminder would help you stop and soften today.