| Dear Sophie,
I’ve always had an intrinsic, natural connection to the erotic. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always loved dancing and moving my body. I love taking in environments with my senses: what I can see, smell, taste, touch and hear. As a little girl, I was fascinated by the feel of sand under my feet, or ripples of water over my skin. I loved colour and playing messily with paints. I would often enter meditative states simply listening to music. Innocent sensuality feels like my first language.
But early adolescent experiences taught me that my sensuality was either dangerous and something to hide, or something I needed to use and exploit to gain validation and power.
One of the things that I often hear from my students and clients is ‘I’m just not a sensual woman’. But, when we dig a little bit deeper, what we often discover is that these women can also recall early experiences of feeling fascinated by the natural sensuality of their own bodies and the world around them. Our innocent eros was just clouded over by cultural conditioning, by the messaging we received from their communities and families, by the busy pace of modern life.
The good news is - Given the right environment and right support, we can relearn how to connect to our sensuality, eros and pleasure. This is such a core element of our Somatic Educator For Women Training, and today I want to speak about this in more depth.
Reframing The Erotic
Our culture has taught us to see eros primarily as something pornographic and sexual. Many of us think that we can only experience our eros in an explicitly sexual situation, for example in the bedroom with a partner.
But there is SO much more to our sensuality, pleasure and eros.
Our eros isn’t purely sexual. It’s our experience of the fullness of our FEELING state & senses. It’s the felt experience of life itself, flowing through every moment. It’s what we experience when we deeply and intimately drop into our bodies and senses, when we connect with each sensation and the feelings that move through us.
Sadly, many of us have learned to dissociate from this simple act of communion with our bodies. We have been trained as “good girls” to live in our heads - in our thoughts, in the future, the past or anywhere except here in this present moment.
What Actually Is Sensuality?
Being a ‘sensual woman’ isn’t about wearing nice lingerie, or elaborate self-pleasure rituals (even though these things can be nice, too!).
On a basic level, our sensuality is about opening to our senses. It’s the little girl who knows how to immerse herself deeply in a moment of play and awe: feeling the texture of sand, splashing in water, dancing in her bedroom or singing wildly.
It’s also about including the full spectrum of our human experience. It’s about learning how to be in deep connection with whatever we are experiencing - including discomfort and pain. It’s about tasting all the little nooks and crannies of our present moment, whatever that looks like: joy, grief, frustration, boredom, despair… All of it.
When I first began my embodied exploration of the erotic (outside of the sexual) and embedded it into my daily life, I experienced a profound transformation in how I dealt with my emotions and discomforts.
At first, being in deep connection with the present moment was very uncomfortable. But I learned why I get dysregulated, and how to find my way back to safety again. Much to my surprise, I learned how to transform pain into eros, too.
Now, again, I don’t mean sexual - I mean ALIVE, aka erotic.
I learned to let go of the story about the discomfort, and instead be with the sensations in my body directly. And I began to feel so much more pleasure and sensuality running through my body and life!
How We Can Re-Learn To Feel Pleasure
Relearning how to feel pleasure is about making room for the fullness of our human experience, moment by moment, sensation by sensation, breath by breath.
When we learn how to do this, we can alchemise discomfort into pleasure. We do this without overriding, denying or suppressing any part of us.
The pleasure I'm talking about is not the kind of pleasure we were taught about by the dominant culture - an overstimulated, temporary entertainment. The pleasure I'm talking about is the experience of being completely and undyingly WITH the sensations in my body - however I am feeling, whatever challenge I might be facing.
Re-learning pleasure is about shedding the assumptions that:
1) Eros has to be sexual
2) Aliveness is about feeling energised and good
3) I have to be feeling happy or things have to be going well for me to experience pleasure
When we rediscover pleasure in this more nuanced way, even uncomfortable or painful feelings and emotions get to be treasure-troves of life force.
Ultimately, reconnecting with our innate sensuality is about awakening our capacity to FEEL. To really, truly, feel every little micro-sensation. Every little texture and sound or sight. To follow our body’s wild, sensual impulses and wisdom. To drink in our own experience. When we drop into these states, we become… delicious, inspired, awed, alive!
There is so much pleasure available to us right now, if we choose to claim it through the body, even (and especially) when it’s uncomfortable.
If you like this topic, you’re going to love some of the other topics in this year’s Somatic Educator For Women Certification, where we investigate sensuality, the nervous system & the erotic (drool!).
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