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A while ago I was sitting with some colleagues, facilitators in different fields.
One of them said to me ‘I wish I was brave enough to attend one of your workshops.’
I was really surprised at that. These were people who do some pretty deep work.
But sexuality and pleasure are a different world, especially our own.
Then I remember a health center I worked at. It was a peaceful place, mostly psychologists, a few other therapists, and me.
There came a time when my being there wasn’t OK for the other therapists, more specifically, the psychologists. What came out during discussions was that it was acceptable for people to cry, to walk past someone’s door and hear crying was fine.
It wasn’t fine to walk past a door and hear pleasure sounds.
Earlier in the year, I was going to teach in a different city, I heard about a holistic center that looked really good. I emailed them about space for some talk workshops, no touching, no nudity, to be told that ‘we don’t have that kind of workshop.’
We fear pleasure.
We fear sex.
We fear the power, the possibilities.
We fear our bodies.
We fear our genitals.
We fear the mystery.
We fear the beauty.
We are much happier in pain, talking about pain, healing, maybe, pain.
We’re happier in a space of disconnect.
We’re happier going to workshop after workshop about our pain.
We’re even happier to walk on hot coals than talking about, explore, learn and experience orgasmic states.
We’re happier to acknowledge our hurts, limitations, inhibitions, and traumas than our links and fetishes.
We’re OK to have a body that mostly ends at the top of our thighs and starts again at the bottom of our bellies.
And as much as we slam and lambast and vilify porn, it’s the model of sex we’ve accepted, and more than that, it’s OK because it’s outside of us, somebody else is doing the sex, not us.
It’s OK for erotica to be dirty books, dirty pictures, dirty movies.
It’s OK for our spirituality to be above the waist, or even above the heart.
It’s OK for us to think that having sexual problems is normal.
So much of the ugliness of sex is caused by these beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
So much if the guilt, shame, and embarrassment is fostered by these perceptions.
Enough.
Let’s make it beautiful.
Let’s make it honoring.
Let’s make it sacred.
Let’s embody the power of pleasure.
Let’s open to the healing, the learning, the growth this path can bring us.
Let’s allow the touch, the tenderness.
Let’s allow ourselves, our divine selves.
And on if the most beautiful ways to do that is a sacred erotic massage.
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Photo courtesy iStock.
This post previously published on eroslife and is reprinted with the permission of the author.