Metamorphosis

Three weeks ago I was packing for a Conscious Leadership Group retreat tingling with excited anticipation. It was four days on the California coast devoted to growth and self-development. Yes, please. I knew it would crack me open — personally and professionally — and I was ready.

Yet now, today, I’m terrified. Heart pounding. Hands shaking. I want to run away from the wide-open space inside me.

What changed?

This blog is about the power of retreats — the deep self-transformation they can spark — and the destabilization that often follows.

Trigger warning: I mention sexual assault and include work-inappropriate language. Best save this for later if your boss might peek over your shoulder or your kids are doing homework next to you.

STORY: Metamorphosis – the power and terror of self-transformation

READ MORE: A collection of Conscious Leadership resources and articles

BOOK STUFF: and the new book for February and March is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

GOING FURTHER: Join the Heroine’s Journey Women’s Leadership Retreat – enrollment is  open til end of March. I’m also looking for a select few volunteers for sample coaching practice as part of my coach training.

STORY: Metamorphosis

Before I tell you about the retreat, it helps to understand what actually happens inside a chrysalis. I used to assume that metamorphosis was an upgrade: caterpillar head becomes butterfly head, legs rearrange themselves, wings sprout neatly out the back.

Nope.

Two years into my tenure as school leader of Chrysalis Charter School (appropriate, I know!) I stumbled across this Radiolab episode – Goo and You. That’s where I learned that a caterpillar doesn’t transform so much as it dissolves.

Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar digests itself into goo — a slimy, snot-like mess of amino acids, sugars, and fats.

Goo. The caterpillar turns into goo.

Floating within that goo are imaginal discs: tiny, highly organized clusters of cells that survive the digestive process. Each disc contains the blueprint for a future body part — wings, legs, eyes, antennae. These discs are formed early in life, before the caterpillar even hatches from its egg. In fact, if you dissect a caterpillar, you can sometimes find tiny translucent rudimentary wings, antennae, and legs tucked inside.

The imaginal discs use the surrounding goo as fuel, growing and organizing themselves into something entirely new. A 50-cell disc can become a 50,000-cell wing.

It would be like humans going through puberty not by growing into our existing bodies, but by dissolving into a puddle of slimy Jell-O and then reassembling ourselves into an entirely different species.

The chrysalis

So, off I go to a Conscious Leadership Group (CLG) retreat— a big fat caterpillar heading to the coast to willingly enter a chrysalis for four days.

This retreat marked the beginning of a seven-month coach certification program I’d been ecstatic about. Several close coaching friends were there with me. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I’d attended a CLG Integrity Boot Camp before and done some of the deepest leadership work of my life (see this blog post from 2024). 

This time, we were asked to identify our growth edges — the areas of our lives we most wanted to change. And of course, being the overachiever that I am, I went straight for my deepest one.

My issue was an inability to fully access what CLG calls creative sexual energy, stemming from a sexual assault I experienced my freshman year of college.

When I first encountered the term, I had no idea what it meant. CLG defines creative sexual energy as “the energy of creativity and creation — the signal that something new wants to be birthed into the world.” They invite leaders to imagine themselves and their teams as pregnant with ideas and innovations.

I could access the intellectual side easily — scientific insight, artistic creativity, music, awe at the natural world. But the embodied side — sexual attraction, intimacy, desire — was wrapped in fear. Outside of the very safest spaces, like with my husband, it felt inaccessible.

It was as if the hose through which this energy flowed had been clamped shut since college.

At the retreat, I stepped into the circle asking what was “wrong with me” and how to fix it. Instead, the facilitators helped me see that nothing was wrong at all. Of course my hose was clamped. Of course I needed safety. Of course fear made sense.

Whoa. What a relief. 

Rather than chide myself for being “wrong” and “broken”, instead of treating myself as broken, I could meet myself with compassion — like holding a younger version of me on my lap, stroking her hair, letting her stay curled up as long as she needed.

Rather than try to grow wings, I let myself dissolve.

So, I stopped trying and let myself be a mess of slimy human goo.

The imaginal disc

Over the next few days, several things happened to introduce me to little islands of future potential (imaginal discs) floating in the nutrient-rich goo. 

I watched others step into the group circle for coaching. I observed one person who also felt clamped shut, as if they were bound in a straightjacket. I saw another dance as creative sexual energy flowed through. I watched others accepting themselves for being human goo. 

Then, there was the “emotions workshop” where we were invited to meet our core emotions one by one. The last time I’d done this particular exercise, I spent the creative sexual energy segment curled up in the fetal position trembling with terror. This time, I went out onto the patio, away from all the others, into the sunshine, overlooking a gorgeous valley covered in trees and grapevines. It was as if Mother Nature herself was keeping watch over me, protecting me, keeping me safe. 

I danced. 

As I swayed my hips and waved my arms in sinuous patterns, a little trickle of sexual energy started to flow.

The next morning, during a voice exercise,I noticed how much tension I held in my lower body. My breath never reached my belly. My butt cheeks were perpetually clenched. Even my pelvic floor felt tight.

So whenever I noticed myself clenching, I intentionally relaxed. It felt good.

Later, during a practice coaching session, a facilitator stopped me.

“Irene, stop thinking. Stop coaching from your mind. Coach from your pussy.”

I froze. Did he really just say that?

“I don’t know how,” I said. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Relax. Loosen your hips. Get grounded.”

So I swayed. I softened. I tried coaching from gut instinct instead of intellect. It was awkward. I felt ridiculous. One facilitator said she couldn’t feel my gut at all.

And yet — something was there. A hint of future me. Something that hadn’t dissolved. An imaginal disc.

In that Radiolab episode they say: “This isn't about death. This isn't about decay. This is actually about transformation…. It's not just what of me carries forward into the future. It's like what of my future self is in me right now?”

I could almost taste it.

The reorganization

And finally, a consistent trickle of creative sexual energy began to flow. 

In the next practice session, it felt less awkward. The facilitator who couldn’t feel my gut before could sense it this time.

Back home, I led several workshops and team sessions. Each time, I set the intention to coach from my pussy (though in my out loud voice I said “lead from my gut and pelvis”). Three different people — who had worked with me before — pulled me aside afterward to say they felt a difference. Deeper work. More grounded. Less heady. (One woman even suggested I get a T-shirt with “I coach from my pussy” on it! 😱)

And bonus, I notice that my husband is even more sexy than usual. 💋

The resistance

But it’s clear that I haven’t fully emerged from the chrysalis as a butterfly. I’m not sure if I ever will. 

This CLG game is intentionally disruptive. It’s meant to dissolve you and transform you anew. It’s led by coaches who literally call themselves “destabilization junkies”. 

I get all righteous about the story that my stable identity and my stable life feels good and comfortable and joyous and alive. I love my life. I love my family and friends. I love my work and clients. I love my home and the land I live upon. 

This goo, this destabilization, feels like a huge threat. Now I’m scared s*#tless for a completely different reason. My life is so darn good right now. F&%k you CLG for inviting me to mess it up. 

Others in my cohort are destabilized too. And I’m not sure yet how to be with others — or myself — while I’m in the slimy goo stage.

Maybe this is the real work — not rushing toward wings, not forcing transformation, but learning how to live gently inside the mess. Trusting that something in me already knows who I’m meant to be.

READ MORE

The Conscious Leadership Group has developed a suite of tools to help us work through our conflicts. Go to their website. Read the book. Take one of their workshops or ask me about it. 

BOOK STUFF

Join us February 26th and March 19th for our Inquiring Minds Book Club zoom call at 4PM pst. We are reading and discussing Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. If you are not yet signed up to participate in book club calls you can do that here.

GOING FURTHER

There’s a reason retreats matter. When we step out of constant doing and into a safe chrysalis with trusted peers, we can dissolve, discover the future self that was there all along, and transform. We can move out of threat-based efficiency and back into curiosity, play, and connection.

This is why my dear friend and brilliant executive coach, Tutti Taygerly, and I offer the Heroine’s Journey Women’s Leadership Retreat each year. It’s not about fixing yourself or forcing transformation. It’s about creating a safe enough container to slow down, listen inward, and let whatever wants to emerge do so in its own time.

Join us May 1–4, 2026, among the trees and crashing surf of Mendocino, California.

More details here:

https://www.irenesalter.com/leadership-retreat