![[Part 2] On Sex, Sacred Sensuality, Orgasm and Pleasure](https://www.seekingbalance.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/464732589_10164086283236102_1761221996231362467_n-1080x675.jpg)
by Joey
So, the topic continues to be hot, and it’s political.
As I see it, the way we make love shows us how we relate to the world.
When sex is reduced to a thing one does to achieve climax, the whole experience is book ended. There is a separation. A beginning and an end. It’s defined, linear, and a somewhat static event. It is a transaction of doing and being done to.
Living in this way has caused hurt, destruction and trauma for our bodies, communities and ecosystems. We are being ‘done to’, taken from and we are using our natural resources without continuous consent or reciprocity.
Collectively we are being confused: what is real? Can we really pay for clean water with money? Or, do we need to circle back to the origins of clean water and care for the ecosystems that willingly provide it?
Do we need to return to the earth and dance upon her soils, regenerating our love, grace, appreciation and interconnectedness?
Or, do we keep sleepwalking to the next vending machine to ‘buy’ the next ‘thing’ that we ‘crave’?
To participate in the narrative of transactionality, tit for tat, is to give our personal power away and to deny the Sacred that lives within all of us and everything.
So, how can we turn this ship and create a new way of being in our world?
Let’s talk about the waves of orgasm—because inside of this experience I think is the guidance that we all yearn for.
In my late 20’s, I felt deep confusion about sex, relationships and pleasure, so I made a silent commitment to myself to make sense of it.
I decided to explore the sensual capacity of my body—what can I feel? Where can I go? What is possible inside of this Sacred Vessel that I was born with?
I began to realise that orgasms feel like continuous waves the roll in various intensities. The embodied experience is a layered experience, head to toe, of sensation flowing from the very subtle—almost imperceptible—to the massive and confrontingly intense.
The emotional experience of the orgasm waves is as varied as humanity itself—in order for me to stay with the orgasmic waves I need to be consciously willing to stay with the full smorgasbord of emotions. Present.
Not only do I feel the light, playful, ecstatic and loving experiences but also the depths of grief, absurdity, loss, evil and corruption. Every flavour human experience washes into the orgasmic waters and my role is to keep feeling it, with an intention to remain receptive. To keep opening up into more it.
Rather than fight, flight, freeze or fawn from the sensory expansions, I place my loving attention and intention upon it, and ride the waves.
You might notice I’m not using the word climax yet.
I learned quickly that climax deadens the waves. It book-ends the experience. The dance is over. The music shuts down. The neurology hibernates.
We live in a modern culture that chases climax and deadening.
I’m wondering how our entire world might evolve differently if we all began to live within our orgasm waves, sensual, feeling, attuned to ourselves and the world around us?
What if we stayed in our bodies, opening up into the pains of life, breathing through it fully, and allowing the aches to soften into waves of pleasure?
What if we began to feel into the real pleasure of presence, here and now, in each and every moment—instead of chasing cravings that don’t really exist because they are not here, now. The things we crave are over there somewhere, distracting us from being fully here now. The chase towards climax, is an agenda that deadens the majesty of fully feeling in waves. We cannot be ‘here’ if our attention is over ‘there’.
So, for me, the waves flow, they crash and roll. I go inwards and swim with the full breadth of it, receptive and attuned to both inner and outer worlds. Wherever I am.
When climax comes, it’s an unexpected and unpredictable tidal motion that takes me to a place I never knew existed—every time. I choose not to control it, it’s a surrender into the soup of being human. Climax is not a goal or destination, it’s a journey into the unknown that may or may not explode. A never ending mystery.
I am starting to believe that collectively we need to return to our sensuality as a way of life. To allow our bodies this free flow of vitality, to become Sacred Vessels with full expression, rather than be constrained and ‘done to’.
We don’t care for our bodies; we are our bodies and our bodies are nature, earth. We don’t fix our bodies; we listen to our innate embodied intelligence and respond to the needs within and around us, attuned. We don’t achieve climax or go get pleasure; we are living in waves of orgasmic potential in every moment and the mystery of climax invites us into her mystical lair if we are receptive to her whispers.
Pleasure is a language that we all must learn to speak with our bodies. It’s subtle and satisfying. The slightest breeze or rain drop can be all it takes to awaken this deep forgotten place within us.
May we remember our Sacred Sensuality and come home.
Pleasure is not fast food, cars, fancy homes or material wealth. Pleasure is literally at our fingertips and lives in the deep well of our collective Divinity.
May we all return here together and sing. With the waves of orgasm pulsing to the thrum of the universe itself. Interconnected.
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have any.
I’m opening a space for these juicy and powerful conversations in my new Sensing Ground community.
I’m curious to see where this exploration takes us.
I have noticed that my clients who begin with complex pains and persistent unwanted bodily sensations, awaken a whole new life for themselves when they return to sensuality. They take their power back. They know themselves. Pleasure flows again. Their bodies are set free.
Isn’t this what we all want?
I dream of a world where we belong with each other because of our beautiful differences rather than being addicted to sameness, cliques, hiding, and monocultures.
Sensing Ground is a community to explore the many invisible layers of shame, pushing through, pretending and masking that we all live through.
Sensing Ground is for every person, whether you identify as man, woman, or non-gender; as profoundly gifted, autist, ADHD’er or neuronormal; as young or old; as any religion or any race.
Sensing Ground is for therapists, teachers, yoga and pilates devotees, doctors, surgeons, builders, plumbers, tech workers, healers, and artists.
Everyone belongs, because we all have a body.
Our common ground is that we all want to discover how to understand the sensations of our body and respond to it like a compass.
Join me in Sensing Ground to explore your Sacred Belonging within yourself and to transcend the separation paradigm of the identity wars. We all belong here. Our bodies know this.
Together, we find that home is in the body itself.
Join the early notification list for the Sensing Ground community here.
![[Part 1] On Sex, Sacred Sensuality, Orgasm and Pleasure](https://www.seekingbalance.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/464498803_10164085085226102_8691076657627421288_n-1080x675.jpg)
by Joey
So, here we go. The topic is hot.
For me, sex is everywhere and in every moment. Let me explain.
When I’m present, consciously connected to my experience and willing to stay with it fully, I am penetrated by everything around me: breath, visual wave forms, sound, touch, smell, taste, ideas, dreams, fear and desire… it all enters me.
I take it all in. I move towards the pleasures of aliveness, wherever that is, and I cast my attention upon each wave of sensation from the subtle to the massive. I feel it all in my whole body. It’s an expansion and a symphony, lived poetry.
And, in return, I also penetrate the world around me; my thoughts, breath, words, and actions also flow outwards shaping the place and space that I occupy. It’s multidirectional, the whole exchange is divine. The Divine Exchange: like oxygen and carbon dioxide passing between my body and the local vegetation. We are massaging each others’ molecules.
I give, I take, I allow, I receive; in all moments.
This extends beyond the experience of love making with my husband and includes every moment in between.
The precious time we have together to touch and be touched.
The religion of ‘skin on skin’. Holding and being held all at once. The feel of a long, slow caress like sunshine warming one side of my body and the tender fingertips tickling or grabbing depending on the mood.
Each touch is fresh, a first time experience. Stunning, awaited, apprehended.
A string of first times, adding up to an immersive emulsion of two people waxing and waning in a sensual shared dance that has ancient roots.
The way my body turns on, is mine to own and explore. My power lives in my own connection to this sensuality and it is not something I would give away: it’s shared.
In other words, it is nobody else’s job to turn me on—this is my way of being. To be turned on is to choose to feel. To remain open. To not shut down. It’s a choice. And choice is power.
Sex, for me, is not a transaction or a sport. It’s not a bribe or a destination. It’s not an effort to achieve something and it’s not a relief release.
Sex, is a conversation that never ends between me and the world around me.
It’s a choice I make to sway my hips and extend my arms as I move from here to there. To dance while I cook. To allow food to be a pleasure.
It’s the delicious and sacred act of breastfeeding with full attention upon the whole experience of nourishing my little babe and simultaneously receiving a huge hit of loving hormones and neurotransmitters.
It’s nature’s high. And anyone who has conscious connection to their body, and a willingness to fully feel it, can share this high.
However, it’s lost if I’m on my phone or multitasking, distracted by othering and chasing ‘stuff’.
I work with people suffering from unexplained complexities, persistent pains and sensory disturbances; pleasure can be zapped and life can feel deadened. Part of their healing is returning to sensuality. To reawaken felt-sense and to learn how to feel again.
Sensuality and sex are born from presence.
Pleasure comes in waves: orgasmic waves. A subtle flow of vibrations that arouse the body, head to toe, at any moment that there is this turn on. A choice to feel, breathe into, and to follow the pleasure. Birdsong. A crisp wind. The quirky shape of a mud puddle. A sunset that arrests. A piece of rotting wood on a shoreline. A group of teens on their phones enjoying each other. A bug that alights. Or movement, music and breath.
The experience of this Divine Exchange, sex, pleasure, waves of orgasm, is endless. It’s everywhere.
If we tune inwards and expand into life.
The more I tune in to the subtle parts of life and open up to the pains of being human—the harder stuff that we traverse in loss, tragedy and isolation—the more I feel aliveness wash upon my sensory shores.
There is a fine, fine line between pleasure and pain. Maybe pain is a form of pleasure once it has been surrendered into and allowed passage to dance through the whole body. Pain is a dead end or a portal.
To open up and to move toward the deepest, hiding pains with loving attention is the key that unlocks layer upon layer of pleasure.
I hold that space within myself as I explore to the farthest reaches of my sensory aliveness. I dangle my toes over my own edges and I pause, breathing. Soaking up the space that invigorates and hosts a pocket of fear.
To thaw the ice. Gently. Slowly.
To awaken the sacred sensuality that we all have, as living beings. I go there.
Sex is an art, a way of life.
It’s a conversation without words, and it’s reciprocity in action.
Foreplay is every moment that sits in between. I am learning that life itself is nothing more than a long lesson in how to flirt.
May we all return to our sensuality and breathe into and through our pains, awakening the Divine Exchange: a knowing that we shape our world and that our experiences are Sacred.
Not cheap, rushed or disposable.
Sacred.
I dream of a world where we belong with each other because of our beautiful differences rather than being addicted to sameness, cliques, hiding, and monocultures.
Sensing Ground is a community to explore the many invisible layers of shame, pushing through, pretending and masking that we all live through.
Sensing Ground is for every person, whether you identify as man, woman, or non-gender; as profoundly gifted, autist, ADHD’er or neuronormal; as young or old; as any religion or any race.
Sensing Ground is for therapists, teachers, yoga and pilates devotees, doctors, surgeons, builders, plumbers, tech workers, healers, and artists.
Everyone belongs, because we all have a body.
Our common ground is that we all want to discover how to understand the sensations of our body and respond to it like a compass.
Join me in Sensing Ground to explore your Sacred Belonging within yourself and to transcend the separation paradigm of the identity wars. We all belong here. Our bodies know this.
Together, we find that home is in the body itself.
Join the early notification waitlist for Sensing Ground here.
by Joey
On Motherhood
Today I am going to talk about motherhood.
As we grow alongside our children we reach new chapters of negotiation.
(Content warning: this post may act as a powerful contraceptive, or aphrodisiac.)
This weekend, my kids declared war, and we went into battle.
I would usually say motherhood is a flow state: eat, play, sleep, repeat.
Attunement and riding the waves of growth spurts. An ongoing connection that is whittled into its own shape, day after day.
A few days ago however, my oldest decided that adult-rules cage his little body in unforgiving ways. He rebelled. He grew wings and found his roar.
His little brother colluded with him and joined the frontline because it seemed like a hootenanny.
All boundaries and rules were contested without words.
–
Round 1 begins
Fighting.
Snatching. Biting. Kicking. Pushing.
Poo and wee in inconvenient public places.
Licking the rain drops off the neighbours car mirror. Tasting the world.
I tend to agree, there are too many rules and life can feel sterile, contrived, prepackaged.
My battle strategy was connection. How can I get through to these wild children, seemingly immune to my words and deaf to my voice?
Mud. Ankle deep in it.
Rock piles. Puddles. Trees to climb.
Bush walks and bridge crossings.
We stumble upon a venomous brown snake. Got a little too close to it accidentally.
Face to face with danger.
We jump backwards and embrace each other. Hearts pounding.
A pause and a moment of quiet, snuggling on a high ridge line.
Home through wet grass.
I feel as though my strategy might be working…
–
Round 2
The couch deconstructed.
The water tap knobs removed.
The toys, thrown.
Laughter.
The potted planted, denuded and knocked over.
The dry laundry, scattered recklessly around the house.
Our neighbour left petrol laying around near their shed—that got poured onto the dirt. Petrol stench.
Running. Hiding. Laughing.
Blind and deaf to any hint of containment.
I feel myself hating my children.
The hours of effort.
The thrown food.
Then, I’m hating myself.
Becoming the monster with more rules.
Shame comes to join the battle ground.
My mind starts to search for external answers, losing confidence.
–
Round 3
Wrestling. Crying.
Laughing.
Tumbling. Tickling. Rolling.
Jumping. Swooping.
Charging like a bull.
Becoming rhinos.
I begin to trust my raw wild instincts.
Suddenly I am myself.
swooping, rough tumbling, and dodging the rhinos.
I enter the battle with my whole body. Heavy against them. With them. I am pulled into the play. Playing.
A relentless assault on my senses.
And, the only way to speak their language.
Where are the high energy kids ready to scramble and roam with them? I grieve for the absence of thick vigorous play in their lives, not realising that maybe this is my job—I’m the battle opponent.
–
Round 4
Climbing the kitchen bench.
Kitchen knives being run around the house.
The laundry cupboard pulled apart, linen and towels run around the house, more laughter.
It’s not so funny.
The fridge being raided.
Milk poured two-year-old style onto a puddle in the kitchen floor.
Chairs relocated and formed into an obstacle course.
All bedding covers and pillows taken to create a jumping crash pile.
I’m riding the waves of my own powerlessness and power.
Their energy and creativity in how they are unleashing their wild bodies is quite frankly, stunning.
I love them and I hate them all at once.
Shame. I feel so far removed from the idea of motherly material.
I am part frustrated Monster and part deeply caring Mother.
I recognise that my boys want to feel the world organically enter them. They want rough, hard, heavy, deep play. They want to taste, smell and feel everything.
“Don’t touch! Stop! No, not that!”
And every day they are confronted with ‘nice’ play that follows all the social niceness.
I hate myself for being so nice.
I hate myself for beginning to enjoy this tough play.
I surrender into the mud, rocks and rumbles.
And, I love myself for my nice, my mud, my ugly rough edges.
Compassion. Love. Wholeness.
The edges of the edges.
Staying with it. Always searching for a crack between us where connection might lie. Feeling my way through my senses.
What does my body know here in this liminal space? How can I follow my animal instincts in war zone?
Listening. Responding. Feeling.
Firmness. Wild chaos.
The laughter.
Adults are so serious with so many rules. It is true.
My kids want to massage cheese into feet and mud into wrists.
Meeting them in their wildness and moving into the mess is the way.
Getting rough and rumbling.
Edging in toward very precarious boundaries.
Navigating a sense of questionable safety for all of us.
I join the fun: alive, panting with breathlessness.
Going against my ‘nice’ training.
Being impulsive. Allowing my inner instincts to take over and move for me.
Impulse driven play and connection that is somehow rough and laughing.
Beyond the comfort zone of what mothering apparently should look like.
I felt battle-trained like a warrioress at peak fitness. Flying alongside my preschoolers, jumping from edge to edge, running and grabbing, hooking and hoisting. Tickling with ferocity.
All breath. Instantaneous processing through felt sense. There were no words or internal scripts. Just pure movement between our three bodies. A union.
Pure attunement to who I was and who my children needed me to be in that moment.
The intensity of this play felt like giving birth. Deeply intimate and spontaneous. Alive, together, inside each other and touched firmly by one another.
Wild. Animal. Impulsive.
It wasn’t nice. It was more muddy.
Not the soft, gentle mother of the media.
I did and said a lot during that war that I am not proud of.
Rupture and repair has an intimacy to it that we traversed repeatedly.
I kept looking for the cracks where new roots could grow connections between us.
And this feels enough.
Motherhood is learning to love the mess, the hate, the wild, the broken and the venomous.
–
Round 5
Books. Cooking. Cleaning the mess together. Lego movies and snuggles in bed.
They’re so cute when they sleep.
–
As this mammoth weekend of boundary exploration came to a close, I felt invigorated.
The kids returned to their usual eat-play-sleep rhythm.
People asked me after I posted about this: “Why weren’t you exhausted?”
The answer is this; “Because I was Sensing Ground. I was in my body, breathing through each moment and connected to my senses. I was alive with presence, attuned to myself and my children. I was opening up, not shutting down.”
To join me in Sensing Ground, sign up to be notified when the community opens here.
This way of life gives us the resilience to meet any challenge that comes our way.
We ride the waves and we maintain perspective. Above all else, we trust our body as our compass and we look within to find our own answers.
We know that in each moment, we have all the information that we need to navigate here and now. Always arrived. Eternally connected and reconnecting.
I’d love to share the Sensing Ground journey of discovery with you and to see you in my upcoming monthly Sensing Ground Calls.
Learn more here.
by Joey
Today I am going to talk Birth and Rites of Passage.
It’s hard to share my story but I’m going to share it anyway. Why? Because stories are our most powerful medicine. Stories shape our culture.
I experienced two ‘ecstatic’ births that showed me who I am.
I didn’t give birth, I experienced it fully, in a 360-degrees way. Waves of sensory variety.
I was reborn, my babies were born and I entered more deeply into a new paradigm of life. A paradigm that I call Sensuality. I morphed into presence, Eros and aliveness.
I moved through the Paradigm of Fear and Separation by ingesting it.
In this world of Sensuality, that I choose to live in, I own my raw power, I trust my bodily sensations fully and I empty myself of the stories that do not belong to me.
My sons were born in water baths, by candle light, with wild wind and moonshine in our midst.
I felt intensity of many shapes, yet there was no pain.
I felt softness and expansions, yet no contractions. I was in expansion, dancing with my babies, trusting the unfolding nature of this breath and the next.
I processed my fears before stepping into the altar of birth.
I digested the possibility of a stillborn, my own death or permanent injury, deformity, disabilities, premature labour or any other very real medical anomalies. I was realistic.
I felt through each scenario and I knew that I was resourced to meet it. I could birth my baby into this world and fully accept the process however it unravelled. I slowed down and made space for all of me.
Birthing is akin to orgasm; it’s the same hormone release with the intense sensation of riding waves with ever growing surrender.
I created a birthing environment where I could fully relax into my body, undisturbed and fully experience my body and my baby in safety.
I gave my medical records to the local hospital and I told them that I would gratefully attend hospital if the birth became a medical event. It didn’t. I was strong, healthy, ready and so were my babies. It never once occurred to me to consult a doctor. I had private midwives who visited me at home, often.
My first born slowly nudged his way down the spiral staircase of my womb over a three-day and three-night process. I felt a mild twinge in my sacrum each 8-minutes. I walked, played board games while squatting, painted, sang, cooked and slept. I cried. I spoke with my baby.
His birth was two-hours of active labour. My body opened and he slid out into the water, his father received him and passed him to my chest. It all just happened; like real magic.
There was no force or pushing, there were natural forces at play that unfurled beyond any ‘doing’. Nature.
My second baby birthed from start to finish in 4-hours and 56-mins. He made a steady spiral-like dance down my womb. I was awake, alert, grounded and breathing in our dark room by the cosy fire.
He crowned for an hour, so I’m told, I was breathing and entranced by the waves of expansion, unaware of details. I felt no pain. He birthed with both shoulders square like a rugby player, choosing not to complete his final turn in the birth canal.
I didn’t argue with his choice. I breathed. He became stuck with both shoulders and head poking out of my body, and with a loving tug from his dad, he was born into water and soon passed to my chest. The midwives witnessed.
Birth is miraculous, it is the creative force in its most majestic form.
However, I feel that the before and after events are more juicy.
I prepared heavily for birth. I read about it. I surrounded myself with real stories from women who had experienced uninterrupted, non-pathologized birth.
I did not believe the fear-mongering.
The stories that tell me it is unsafe to birth.
The stories that say it will be hard and painful.
The stories that tell me that I am broken.
The stories that say I will need to numb myself to cope.
The stories that say I need external guidance to birth my baby.
I understand the human body. I know my own body.
I know my centre, my edges, where I end and where you begin. I know my boundaries.
I understand the difference between birth as a natural physiological process and a medical event.
Birth may be part of a true medical event and in this instance, medical intervention saves lives. This is part of the story, not the full story.
I know who I am and who I am not.
It was very clear to me that my body did not want strangers in my space, lights on, unusual smells, questions being asked, monitors and procedures being ‘done to me’ as a course of protocol.
I knew what I needed to enter the orgasmic state and I created this for my oxytocin and other birth hormones to flow freely. I was sovereign.
I released all fear.
I relaxed into my own strength.
And, I was astounded by how utterly addictive birth is.
It feels intensely amazing.
So, dear reader, how can we collectively step into a paradigm of trusting the body? Our Sensuality leading the way as navigation.
Can we reawaken our ancient-knowing that bodily sensation is our inner intelligence? This is our compass for life.
If we numb our body, we lose our compass.
If we give our power away to external authorities, we never discover who we are or how to play our ecological role in our whole.
Birth is one of many rites of passage that can show us who we are. There are others: menstruation, marriage, divorce, career, menopause, illness, death, war, crisis and so on. Each is an opportunity to digest fear and separation and to follow the intelligence of bodily sensation.
After birth, postpartum—woo! This was the ultimate test! I entered a tremendous period of groundlessness, not-knowing and deep vulnerability. I held myself through this with the loving container of a few special people who witnessed me. This was power. To fall so deeply into mess and to retain sovereignty.
I know my power and because of this, I see and know your power.
You do not need to hide from me.
You can stand tall.
You can fall flat.
You can scream in confusion or pain and I can hear you.
You can be ugly, messy, tender or ferocious and I can witness you.
You can shine your brightest light and I will not look away.
You can judge me, be jealous, turn away or try to squash my nature—and I will hold ground knowing that these are your digestive pains. This process belongs and I understand.
I know who you really are.
And, I invite you to meet me here and tell me your story.
We all need to reclaim our stories and digest our fears.
We all need to relax and surrender into our nature where life flows in clarity.
I do not speak this to seek external approval.
I belong to myself.
I belong with everybody and I belong to nobody.
From this place, I can see clearly, walk my walk and spread my natural radiance out into the world.
May we turn up the volume on birth stories that nourish women and open doorways to their raw power.
May we stop believing the lies that stem from legal mitigation and external protocols.
May we trust her, her body, her voice and her natural timing.
Meet me here, in this Paradigm of Sensuality.
The Paradigm of Fear and Separation is to be fully digested and transformed into raw power, through our sensual body. We feel through the fear in order to metabolise it.
The body knows how to do this.
It’s a natural power that every single one of us possess.
I call this process Sensing Ground.
To learn more about joining my new Sensing Ground community, visit here.
I look forward to digesting fear with everyone who signs up.
Sensuality awaits us all…
Our senses guide us home, beyond symptoms, pains and fear.
We transform each moment through the lens of love, presence and connection.
by Joey
Today I am writing about shame, belonging and why this matters for our neural health.
–
For the last few decades shame has been slapping me in the face like a cartwheeling monkey.
I thought I’d share about it, to release it from my body, as art into the world.
First, I recognise that my stories are everyone’s and nobody’s. There is shame in the air that we all breathe. I’m not alone in this and for anyone reading this who relates—you are not alone either.
Second, a few older women in my community have stopped me in the street to encourage me to keep sharing my stories publicly. Thank you. You have no idea how much it means to feel seen, heard and witnessed with your warm wisdom and love. I deeply appreciate the invisible scaffolding maintained by the older women in our world—I see you.
So, shame.
Shame lives in every cell of my body.
Since birth I received this golden message from the world:
“Above all else, never, ever be yourself. Anything but that.”
“Quiet down, stop asking questions, don’t whinge, stop exaggerating, settle down, deal with it, enjoy the moment and no—you can’t possibly see/ feel/ think that. Just pretend. Go along with everyone else.”
I learned that only some parts of who I am are accepted. That who I really am is bad, not okay, not welcome and not valued in our world. I shrunk myself down into a private little fairy, bouncing around the world without really committing myself to anyone or anything in case they got too close and discovered who I really was.
I hid myself from everyone. And that seemed to keep everyone happy, except me.
That’s life, right? Don’t complain.
Today, my almost 3 year old cried and cried after I wouldn’t put on his favourite video. He circled the house, tears grunting, head down, arms waving and thrashing. I heard him quietly mumble:
“There’s something wrong with me.”
My heart heard the vibration of shame spiralling from him and into me. I scooped him up and said:
“It makes so much sense that you feel sad, frustrated and want to cry. You are not getting your video and you really want it. There is nothing wrong with you. It makes sense you feel this.”
“Yeah, it’s soooo sad” he exclaimed.
We rested together for 30 mins, heavy into each other slumped on the couch snuggling. Him moaning and me holding his moans.
I want him to escape some of the shame that I absorbed. I want my kids to feel at home in their own nature, comfortable with themselves and willing to bend rules to match their own cadence. I want them to believe themselves when they feel different things to others.
I want my kids to speak up and stand against systems that oppress them. I want them to find friends despite differences.
I want them to feel moved by the world, to trust themselves and feel steady. I don’t want them to hide.
Shame is deep. It’s hard. It’s lonely.
I’ve never had a close companion, blood related or other. I’m not believed when I share that, because I have so many friends and so many beautiful connections in the community, but it is true—my deeper self is invisible. I’m never sure who to call or who to align with. My life has been private, isolated and riddled with shame.
I know I am not alone in this, I’ve since met many others who share my story, and that is why I am starting to talk about it.
Life taught me to connect with others through difference, not sameness. I never met anyone else like me, until I turned 40. I met others who also hide or live bold.
Throughout the decades, I never felt a sense of like-minded others or tribe. That concept was theoretical and unknown to me. I’m an outlier. I see people as they are, I don’t see their social status or allegiances.
I have learned to belong with everyone rather than subscribing to a specific group or thing.
I have learned to be my own friend and chip away at the layers upon layers of shame. To find ways to gradually reveal who I am to others. To not take it personally if they can’t see me or if they don’t believe me.
My unique way of sensing and experiencing the world is not a crime with a life sentence of loneliness; it’s a rare gift that I’m choosing to move into art. This conversation is rich.
Shame lives in privacy and silence. I know this. It’s an ugly critter of a conversation but I feel it is radically important for every single human. All of us.
I dream of a world where we all own our individuation and sit deeply in our truth, honouring who we are, as we are. To be playful and audacious with our quirks.
I dream of a world where we believe each other when we speak up and where we create emotional space for differences.
I dream of a world where we belong with each other because of our beautiful differences rather than being addicted to sameness, cliques, hiding, and monocultures.
by Joey
I’ve recently been contemplating abundance and joy as I feel it through my senses. Smelling life.
The simple truth that in each moment, I truly have everything that I need. This and every following moment of sensuous presence; recharged by my own aliveness.
I’m always arrived, here, feeling rivers of sensation massage my whole body—head to toe.
I notice my own presence thrum deeply within my bones and sinew, like a song that I hear from within.
And then I get pulled into scarcity: the feeling lack, striving, chasing, seeking, searching or not-enough. I feel my body contract and tense. Not-Quite-Right (NQR) sensations bubble up to the surface of my awareness always in these dense moments… it does not last long. I respond almost instantaneously to these implosions. They take me in, I go with them, following the sensations with loving attention. I become an explorer navigating new inner terrain. Willing to get lost.
The NQR sense is calling me back into sensuousness. To soften into who I am, where I am, as I am. A reconnection. A little reminder that there is nothing to fix. I am arrived, here, always.
I’m always precisely where I need to be, learning what I need to learn, growing and evolving into my next version of self. It’s a cycle of life unfolding within and around me. I’m part of it.
So I expand into my fuller radiant self and I breathe a little deeper. The NQR passes and I’m flooded with full body sensation head to toe; the gates of vitality open when I surrender into my body rather than fight myself.
Body scanning for me is not ‘thinking’ about the body. It’s not observing ourselves from a distance. It’s not a mental exercise or an intellectual mishmash of geometric shapes. It’s being inside the inner experience of our sensory landscapes. We go in. We enter our felt-sense entirely. We become life.
The full body vibration ripples freely no matter where I am or what I am doing, when I connect inwards. Joy ripples through my neural synapses because I’m quite content to ‘be’.
The slime-like feel of conditioner against my shoulder as I wash my long hair slowly. I rest into it.
The prickles of sand inside my socks and the dirt under my fingernails from planting seedlings in the veggie box. I marinate in these textures.
The visual mess and vibrancy of chaos that is my kitchen lounge. Everything everywhere and nothing out of place—the scattering of joy upon each food scrap, random paper and soiled clothing that hasn’t yet made it to the laundry. A smile upon my lips.
I ‘see’ the story of preschooler fun written all over the floor: mud, rain, thorns, and spontaneity.
Mystery surrounds me, and mystery is at the heart of it all. Sensual living is a commitment to presence, connection and mystery.
Nothing is prepackaged or certain.
In my Sensing Ground community, we talk about consciously weaning ourselves from our addiction to certainty; we know it’s a trap. An anxious scramble to a destination that doesn’t exist—because we are always here, arrived.
Each breath has a mysterious and joyful quality.
Each sound that falls upon my ears has a mysterious and pretty unfolding melody; bird song, laughter, a child’s defiant scream.
Each touch upon my skin has a mysterious length, firmness and brevity; always shifting, gliding and changing with my own mysterious movement.
Each moment is fresh. New. Unknown. Something to invite in and meet. A living gift to receive and open up towards, to taste it all fully.
I feel utterly full. There is nothing more that I need because I am satiated with beauty. The subtle joy of everything everywhere of which I am a part.
Patterns, colours, textures and music.
Life is art. When I plug into myself, I am free and wild in the most beautiful sense. Connected to the universe within.
And nobody else knows about my sensuous inner life: it’s my secret, for me, moment to moment.
Your sensuous life, is yours.
Stay tuned for more details about Sensing Ground: I am creating something beautiful for everyone who would like to join the sensuous.
