Over the last few years I have been working with men, women and couple’s. It has been an amazing path of self discovery for me as I work with everyone. One of many things that I have awoken to is how closed our society really is in the field of pleasure and sexuality. Yet we are over taken by these two things at the same time. How is that we can constantly be sold merchandise with the appeal that if we get this or that it will make us happier, sexier, more satisfied, increase our love/sex lives and bring us bliss, yet still say that pleasure and yes sexual pleasure is not good; we should not crave it? Yet we do.
At the core of pleasure and sex for many people are our genitals. Our pussies and cocks or those of our lovers. We long to touch, taste, penetrate and feel the deep orgasmic pleasure roll through our bodies and watch this pleasure as well as feel it accumulate and release throughout our lovers. Yet because sex and pleasure are so taboo in society we really have no idea what we are doing and how best to achieve maximum results from ourselves or with a partner(s). This is especially the case with women and their vajaja’s.
It has been statistically stated that over 60% of women say that they know VERY little about their vaginas. And if this is true then how is it possible for men to ever have a sound knowledge of how to please us or our vulvas/vaginas?
The main reason for us women to not have a strong understanding of our most intimate pleasure palace is because since we were small children our parents and society have been telling us that, “ladies, don’t touch themselves like that.” “Ladies, don’t sit like that, or think those things, eat like that, crave that, act like that, and so on and so forth.” Yet young boys can run around without a shirt on, and touch themselves, groan, grunt, fart, make jokes and even if they get busted masturbating we say as a society, “boy’s will be boy’s.” We assume that because a boy does not have fatty tissue and milk ducts in the same way that a girl does that his bare chest is not obscene. So why do we find our bodies obscene anyway? Do we find the body of our new born infant something that is grotesque and obscene? Do we look at a baby’s bottom as something that is yucky? NO. We adore these sweet “innocent” moments in our children’s youth. Girl or boy we see the beauty, we embrace the sweetness and we adore each moment, yet as a child ages we shame our children into believing that their flesh is something to feel bad about. We teach them this and yet they sit down and every underwear, perfume, condom, and even many food, travel and alcohol commercials tell them that the flesh is something to crave and pleasure. The mixed programming causes us to mistrust society, our peers, our lovers and most of all OURSELVES.
Somewhere in the middle of these two opposite messages is the truth of what we as humans NEED. There is nothing wrong, shameful, disgusting, obscene or otherwise ill about anyone’s body or longing to feel pleasure in any form of the sense. What is wrong is to suppress these longings and shun then as though they were demons, causing self-hatred and sexual dysfunctions. Only through self-love can we truly learn to open and love another. And in our self-loving we embrace our human needs and desires for pleasure. We learn to heal through pleasure, both giving and receiving it and we open the doorway to new paradigms of relationship in all areas of our life.
Opening My Petals to Shame
In my youth I was very inquisitive about my vulva and vagina and still am. I was amazed by every aspect of it. To the point that I would get my little boy friend to help me explore all of its petals. I wanted to experience what everything felt like. Much like a baby who puts everything in its mouth to discover what it is, I was playfully experiencing myself. I loved playing doctor or trying to reenact something that I had seen on the television in some movie or something. I was nosey as heck and dug through my father’s “personal” space and found some old Playboys that had beautiful pictures of naked or partially nude women. I adored looking at these pictures and of course even in my youth I compared what mine looked like to the models.
Luckily for me I grew up in a household where my mother was an older mom and was from Europe. My father was an out of the box thinker, whom often disagreed with societal norms even though he was extremely logical and programmed by a long genealogy of structure and societal standings. My mother was extremely open about sex with me and was more than willing to share her personal stories and answer any questions I might bring up. Yet, even though she was open about the topic she still was damaged and needed her own healing. She could only answer for me and share with me to the point of her understanding and level of consciousness about sex and pleasure. And because she was my mother, she also had the nurturing worry that goes with the god given job. She wanted my safety and she wanted me to be smart about things. So there were plenty of times that I experienced shame in my youth from just exploring myself. Each time I got caught playing house or doctor in the nude with my little boyfriend, I felt shame. Every time I was interrupted in my shower masturbation games or bathtub pleasuring acts, I felt shame and embarrassment. When I took one of my dad’s Playboy’s to school in the 4th grade (a parochial Catholic school) and got busted by my teacher, I felt tremendous embarrassment, now I had not only shamed myself but my parents as well. Each time I played up some steamy hot sex scenes with my barbies and my mom or dad walked in, I felt shame. Slowly as years past I learned that it was not acceptable to look at, touch, play with, explore or share these parts of myself. I became shameful and embarrassed of myself!!! My flesh, my internal word, my desires and my pleasures. So I suppressed them for the most part.
Even in my early sexual relationships I could not fully open to the pleasure and love that was before me. I was fearful that my lover would think poorly of my hungers. I was afraid that if I shared in great detail what I really wanted to experience or how I wanted or where I wanted to be touched, kissed, pleasured that my lover would think I was disgusting or crazy. I was concerned over the potential loss of this lover more then I was concerned about sharing pleasure in fullness with them. Of course, my lover would ask me, “What are your fantasies, your desires. How do you want to be touched? Does that feel good?” But I did not know if I could honestly answer and not be judged. And in a few occasions I did allow myself to be revealed and felt tremendous pleasure, but because of my back programs I woke the following morning questioning myself and feeling strange about my pleasure. As if it was wrong.
Healing through the Pleasure Palace
My story is similar to many women’s tales. Granted there is so much more to all of our stories and programming then this short overview and many of us women have suffered through some sort of sexual trauma that has only supported our shame, embarrassment and self-hatred or misunderstanding. Yet at some point in all of our lives we find ourselves at a crossroad, asking “What’s wrong with us?”
Why am I not happy?
Why does sex not feel good to me?
Why do I feel addicted to sex yet not satisfied from sex?
Why do I always attract the same type of man?
Why can I not love myself more, feel life more, connect more?
Why am I not getting over ________?
Why is that a good book or movie and bowl of my favorite yummieness is better than sex with my lover?
Why am I so emotionally unstable?
Why can’t I have an orgasm?
Why do I always fake it?
Does any of this really matter anyway?
The answer to these questions and many others can be discovered on a sexual healing path. One that leads us women into the depths of our vaginal canals where we can discover a great pool of self-love, healing, passion, feeling, intimacy and all sorts of forms of pleasure. Only through going into the source of where we store our repressed emotions, our shame and fears can we learn how to release them in a safe and loving fashion and fully except ourselves. By doing this we can call into our lives lovers, friends, and life partners that will except us and support us at the level that we need.
Any woman who finds the courage to take the step down a sexual healing path will quickly awaken to how powerful the path is and then to how powerful SHE is! In Tantra and many other sexuality practices such as One Taste, the first steps to healing come from revealing our petals and allowing another to actually accept us in a non-sexual, loving fashion. The immense healing energy of having yourself revealed fully, to be naked in every sense of the word in front of another human being and then to hear them say, “ You are beautiful, divine, perfect.” To hear them describe what they see in total acceptance and unconditional love as though they were marveling at some famous painters work. This step on the path to healing starts the opening of our hearts to ourselves. It allows for us to experience ourselves in a way many of us woman have not.
The sexual path of healing is a long and ever changing one. An individual has to be willing to not expect an outcome in any particular time-frame and has to be willing to face their inner darkness as well as their inner beauty within any given moment. The emotions, thoughts, ego and the soul of what comes up for us is something new each time. With each session we open ourselves a crack more and allow for more trauma to be released and greater pleasure to be expanded upon within us. We “clear” slowly the many levels of our psyche and physical blockages to pleasure and within time learn to open up the channels to our souls and heart.
As we walk this orgasmic path of healing we release shame of our vaginas. We learn to embrace our flesh and our desires. We come into communion with our higher selves. Here in the valley of our vagina we discover our pleasure, our truth.
In the unmasking of this truth we awaken to our divine nature. Through, its unveiling process of sexual healing practices we also open the book of personal knowledge and become that child again, exploring ourselves, giving ourselves permission to feel, to taste, to look, to act, to PLAY and to embrace others to do the same.
We stop fearing and we start living! Living the abundant, orgasmic, pleasurable life that we were intended on having. With our orgasm we gift this world with love and radiance. We increase happiness and connection. With our ability to receive pleasure we gift our lovers with an intensity of passion and creative energy. We reveal to them our self-love and acceptance and thus show them a vast horizon of pleasure, love and acceptance for them as well. Here is the gate of intimacy! Even if it is with a first time lover…
–KW