When referring to the Erotic, I’m speaking of a fundamental and intrinsic resource within. Beyond sex and the sexual it’s a resource that brings us to life and connects us to our joy, our pleasure and vitality. When we include and engage with the Erotic, we invite life force energy and boundless creative potential into our lives. As we enter into relationship with our essence and co-create with our life force, we engage with our innocence and approach life with a wide-eyed curiosity, openness and sense of awe.

Since life is so complex, paradoxical and rich with lessons, this curious aliveness and sense of wonderment keeps us present and open to possibility. Reminding us, when things get too heavy and messy, that there’s a natural, untamed joy that exists within connecting us to our essential, inborn goodness, the goodness of others, the tremendous wisdom of wild nature and the expansiveness of the cosmos.

Working with the Erotic involves bringing awareness, vitality and movement to your rich interior landscape. Enlivening the physical, emotional, psychological and energetic strata of your being. One such practice is grounding yourself in the beauty of your life and celebrating yourself. No matter how small or mundane, slowing down and pausing to notice the simplest of pleasures that exist around you, like the scent of jasmine on a balmy summer’s evening. Or the invigorating feeling of swimming in the ocean on a rainy day. Trust your senses and take your pleasure in them.

You’ll know you’re in the realm of the Erotic when a tingling, vivacious quality of playfulness, sensuality, novelty and vibrancy infuses your whole being. It’s the pulse of pleasure or the fire of rage. Ranging from the subtle to the intense. By intimately engaging with what feels good, savouring and anchoring this, deep transformation is able to take place beyond the language of words and thoughts. It’s a rapturous, full-presence experience.

How You Can Relate to This Erotic Energy:

As Eros, or arousal energy, moves through you, it stirs up the sedimentary layers of your unconscious, waking up what’s been inaccessible, blocked or unresolved; revealing what’s been dormant or suppressed so you can work with it directly and integrate more of yourself. Another way of  saying this is that erotic energy or life force energy circumvents the mind while giving you access to more parts of yourself, through different pathways other than the intellect, that have previously been denied or disowned. Especially in the context of sexual desires and expression. This is not always an easy or comfortable process, which requires discernment, support and internal capacity.

With this awareness, follow the current of life force as it spirals downwards and trust that in the process, you’ll be led towards hidden parts of yourself longing to be seen, acknowledged and integrated, beyond the cravings, the compulsions or suppression. Give yourself permission to gently turn inwards in the direction of something that feels edgy or taboo, and allow it to take space, without judgement or needing to do anything.

When you engage with the Erotic from this perspective, trust that you’ll be opened up in ways that invite more sensitivity, more receptivity and engagement with your whole life.

This doesn’t mean you have to act out some extreme fantasy or push yourself beyond what feels comfortable or accessible. There are many safe ways to give small expression to erotic proclivities that feel too threatening, embarrassing, shameful or potentially damaging to share. Dancing is a great way to express different aspects of your sexuality in the privacy of your own home. Maybe introducing a leather harness to wear under your clothes or a piece of lingerie for your own sexy pleasure. Perhaps going knicker-free for a day feels both liberating and risky at the same time. And if you’re in a loving partnership, maybe exploring fantasy role-play together might feel incredibly liberating and deepen intimacy.

Consciously working with your vital energy involves learning about what’s pleasurable to you, what turns you on, how to recognise it and then anchor these sensations in your body. By doing so you create new reference points of what feels good, healthy and accessible in your body, in contrast to any trauma or challenging experiences you’re facing. This capacity to feel good in contrast to feelings of discomfort is an essential component needed while engaged with deep, internal work. Being able to remember moments of feeling good in yourself, emotionally, physically or otherwise, gives you courage to continue doing the work when it feels relentless.

Practicing holding a pleasurable charge inside your body offers you an expansive sense of what’s possible beyond the negative experience. It’s an opportunity to recognise and shift existing narratives that keep you stuck or in pain. You become more spacious within, more discerning and open to new, fresh experiences. From this integrated and attuned state, you’re able to make positive and healthy changes, take risks, try new things and be more adventurous.

This full-bodied awareness is the core of feminine practice. It’s an organic, undulating, relational and responsive experience, connecting you directly to the wellspring of authentic power, sensual aliveness, wild wisdom and creative flow. Erotic embodiment, in particular, is associated with qualities of feminine consciousness – receptivity, rootedness, responsiveness, intuition, access to emotions and deep non-rational knowing. When mediated through presence, reverence and an awake heart, Eroticism becomes an alchemical force for actualisation. As we transform ourselves, able to be more present with our lives, the world around us changes.

Essentially working with the Erotic is an invitation to turn towards both your desires and buried parts of yourself, while recognising the deep needs that lies underneath and giving it all room to exist. Using your capacity to feel and hold arousal energy as a profoundly healing resource, you’re now able to embrace estranged parts and live from wholeness. This is the transformational quality of the Erotic, a sacred path to integration and embodiment.

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy

Pleasure is not only a sensory experience, but also an emotional and spiritual state of being. It’s integral to our well-being, allowing us to tap into our deepest desires and connect with our innermost selves. Pleasure is not just a luxury available to a select few, but a fundamental part of what it means to live a healthy and fulfilling life.

Our ability to feel good, perceive what is pleasurable and reside there is available to all of us. It’s our body’s natural state. Pleasure comes in many forms and is experienced differently by each one of us. It’s not something we need to earn or something we need to deserve.

At its core, pleasure is about allowing ourselves to fully experience our sensuality and the world around us. It’s about engaging with our senses, being present in the moment, and opening ourselves up to new possibilities. It’s a visceral experience of what we allow to flow through us; what enlivens, inspires, arouses and provides a sense of ease.

Whether it’s savouring a delicious meal, indulging in a massage, or exploring our sexuality in a safe and consensual way, pleasure allows us to tap into the richness and vibrancy of life, and experience all that it has to offer.

But pleasure is not just about indulgence or hedonism. It’s also about fostering a sense of connection and community. By allowing ourselves to experience pleasure, we can cultivate deeper relationships with others and create a sense of intimacy and trust. When we share what turns us on (and off) with those close to us, we create a space of openness and vulnerability that can lead to profound emotional and spiritual growth.

Moreover, pleasure is an essential component of our physical and emotional health. When we deny ourselves pleasure, we can become disconnected from our bodies and our desires, leading to feelings of anxiety, depression, and disconnection. We can all learn to return to a place of feeling relaxed, receptive and enjoy the sensuality our bodies have been designed to feel.

Of course, pleasure is not always easy to come by. In a society that often equates pleasure with sin or indulgence, it can be difficult to give ourselves permission to fully embrace our desires. It’s important to keep in mind that feeling good and connected is a natural and necessary part of our physiology and humanity; it’s our birthright. When we turn towards our pleasure, we access a wise and deeply nourishing inner resource, that guides us towards effortless abundance and joy.

By cultivating a sense of pleasure in our lives, we can tap into our deepest selves and create a sense of wellbeing that is truly transformative. We can do this by making small efforts to appreciate the world around us and prioritising self-care and following what feels good.

So let us embrace pleasure, not as a luxury, but as a fundamental part of what it means to live a fulfilling and meaningful life.

Here are some practical ways to add more
pleasure to your daily life:

1. Move your body: Choose a physical activity that makes you feel good, whether it’s dancing, yoga, martial arts, surfing, swimming or simply taking a walk in nature. Focus on how your body feels as you move, and the sense of vitality and energy this movement provides.

2. Engage your senses: Our senses are powerful tools for experiencing pleasure. Take a moment to tune into one sense and focus entirely on your experience through that sense, i.e. savour eating a piece of fruit. Take your time and really taste it.

3. Slow down: Slowing down the pace at which you move through your day can have a significant impact on the depth and range of pleasure available to you. Our fast-paced lives cause stress that numbs our senses and dulls perceptions.

4. Surround yourself with beauty: Beauty is pleasurable. Curate an environment around you that feels both attractive and inviting to all your senses. Perhaps it’s with art, textiles, lighting, fresh cut flowers or even rearranging the space to be more comfortable.

5. Practice savouring: Savouring intensifies and lengthens the positive emotions that come with doing something you love, while anchoring good feelings in the body. Once a day practice “catching” a moment of pleasure. Slow down the moment, and extend it if you can. Use all of your awareness to feel the pleasure as deeply as possible. What are you aware of? What do you feel? Where do you feel it?

6. Practice self-care: Self-care is a vital component of pleasure and well-being. Set aside time for activities that nourish your mind, body, heart and soul. Prioritise sleep, healthy nutrition, exercise and sacred practices that connect you to your essence.

7. Connect with others: We are social beings and our feeling of belonging can be a deeply pleasurable experience. Make time to connect with others in ways that bring joy and satisfaction, whether it’s sharing a meal with friends, having a stimulating conversation or engaging in a shared hobby.

8. Embrace sensuality: Sensuality is integral to pleasure and arises from our senses – touching, smelling, tasting, hearing and our felt sense, and creates a feeling of wellbeing. Take a moment to appreciate and amplify the sensation of massaging your skin, of tasting a piece of fruit, or listening to your favourite piece of music.

9. Connect with nature: Spending time in nature is grounding, restorative and revitalising. Take a walk in the forest (barefoot) or swim in the ocean. Immerse your senses in nature – listen to birdsong, observe water moving or sunlight playing through dappled leaves.

Prioritising pleasure in our lives can become yet another task to get through in a day, particularly if we treat it as yet another goal to be achieved. However, the reality is that pleasure doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. A warm bath after a long day or spending a few minutes to savour a cup of tea are simple ways to include pleasure in your day.

Photo by Maria Orlova

Why is it that women differ in their responses to sexual arousal? Why does a lover’s approach work on one woman and not another? Exploring the answers to these questions could enhance your erotic experience and open up new levels of sexual intimacy and pleasure with your lover, since the real differences are predominantly physiological.

Every woman’s pelvic nerve complex is wired quite uniquely; personal preferences and styles are influenced by these nuanced differences, but essentially this wiring is why women respond differently from one another sexually. From arousal through to orgasm, what works for one woman doesn’t necessarily work for another.

Since all women have multiple pleasure mechanisms, we have a wide range of pleasure available to us if we seek to discover these pathways ourselves. We are physiologically designed to have a variety of orgasmic experiences and have the potential to orgasm without end, even entering altered states of consciousness through extended erotic play.

A woman’s pelvic nerve is a complex network of nerves that connects at the base of the spine to the spinal cord, creating an electrical energy circuit with the brain. In her influential book, Vagina, Naomi Wolf explains that the erectile tissue of the vagina is infused with nerves that run through the pelvis and trace through the column of the spine to connect with the brain. This network branches throughout the pelvis: one originating in the clitoris, one in the walls of the vagina, and one in the cervix. The perineum and anus are connected to another network of nerves.

Wolf goes on to explain that this delicate pelvic neural network splits and connects to the clitoris and vagina along different branches like an incredibly intricate root system. This complex arrangement of nerves allows women to orgasm from multiple areas in the pelvis. Depending on how each woman’s individual pelvic nerve is structured, she may respond more strongly to clitoral stimulation, cervical stimulation or stimulation of the perineum and anus. Some may respond to any possible combination of the above and with practice women can experience a range of orgasms.

This brain-vagina connection, exclusive to women, processes and influences feelings of pleasure, pain and intensity of sensation in the pelvis. This would explain, to some extent, why our vaginas have a consciousness independent to the rest of our bodies; wisdom, power and an inner knowing that guides us toward greater levels of pleasure and connection with discernment and sensitivity.

Unlike the nerve matrix of the male body, which is somewhat simpler and practically symmetrical for all men, each woman’s vagina is innervated uniquely. This difference between men and women, in neural complexity comes down to the fact that women have both sexual and reproductive organs – cervix and uterus, which men don’t have.

This means that some women have more nerves in the clitoris (which has more than 8000 nerve endings and biologically designed for pleasure only), some have more nerves in the G-Spot and some have more around the cervix.

“The vulva, clitoris, and vagina are actually best understood as the surface on an ocean that is shot through with vibrant networks of underwater lightning – intricate and fragile, individually varied neural pathways. All these networks are continually sending their impulses to the spinal cord and brain, which then send new impulses back down through other fibres in the same nerves to produce various effects.” – Naomi Wolf, Vagina

Looking a little deeper through this lens, having awareness of the distinctive difference between male and female arousal trajectories is essential to having more satisfying sexual experiences. A woman’s response to arousal and orgasm is biochemically different to that of a man’s. Her arousal cycle is complex and has multiple layers. Its movement is radial, moving from the outside inwards; from context and surroundings through the different erogenous zones towards the centre, the vagina, and can take between 35 – 45 mins to build. In contrast a man’s arousal trajectory is shorter and moves in an up-down direction, from the penis outwards.

This is important for both women and men to understand, especially considering the culture we’ve been raised in, where women’s sexuality, erotic consciousness and experiences have not been honoured. Instead, women have been shamed for following their pleasure, especially when expressing it and wanting it in less ‘conventional’ ways.

The way you experience pleasure, pain or any sensory stimulation in your pelvic area, is unique to you. This means that even though your anatomy looks the same as other women’s, it’s up to you to explore and get intimate with your body so that you can discover what arouses you authentically rather than what you expect yourself to be turned on, or by what’s being prescribed on social media.

Large numbers of women experience issues around their sexuality based on misinformed beliefs, body issues, cultural taboos, and a lack of real anatomical and loving experiential knowledge about their own body. Trauma also plays a significant role in interfering with a woman’s connection to her body, pleasure and sexuality, increasing sexual discomfort and dissatisfaction.

When considering these differences in each woman, there should be no embarrassment or shame felt for wanting say, ‘more’ oral sex, or asking to be stimulated in both vagina and anus simultaneously whilst having sex, or wanting only deep vaginal stimulation or only clitoral. Perhaps your arousal is fired up by kinkier or harder play, or what turns you on is more energetic and subtle.

Essentially, whatever you desire or need sexually may be due to your physical wiring and not necessarily your conditioning. This understanding gives you freedom to explore your body and experience your sexuality as an uncharted erotic landscape while revealing deeper sensual pleasure, both for yourself and your lover.

Artwork by Yuriko Kawase, @poooooint.y

Over these past few winter months, life has called me in ways I didn’t anticipate nor really desire. I’ve felt pulled in different directions, and as a result, have felt frustrated, perplexed and resistant to this low tide. Why is this experience presenting itself to me? Surely, I’ve outgrown these patterns! What do I still need to learn here? The answers, I realised are not so simple, nor easy to recognise directly, nor do they arise in my intellect. Paying close attention to my nervous system during this time has allowed me to navigate situations which in the past would have either completely overwhelmed me or escalated due to my reactivity.

With curiosity and compassion for my humanity, I recognised I had a choice; either to continue walking down a familiar path of a very old story, or take back my power (my energy, attention and time) from areas where it has been slowly leaking out and return to a state of coherence. With increasing awareness I’ve been able to discern what is useful and what isn’t. What’s aligned and what can go.

Instead of resisting and reacting, I started leaning into the richness of the contrast presenting itself to me, listening deeply to the way Life is communicating with me. And by following the wisdom of Rilke by living the questions, living the process. In my activated state of fight/flight I had momentarily forgotten that times of contrast serve a purpose for releasing, rebalancing, renewal and new creation. This was an opportunity for deeper healing and soul-making.

While I know that living in sync with my infradium rhythm involves high and low tides of all kinds, what sustains me energetically, emotionally and physically is knowing that I can internally resource myself. Learning how to regulate my nervous system, specifically in relation to my erotic wisdom, has been pivotal in my process.

During this low tide, I also came to appreciate how vital my personal daily practices are, even when they feel like more things to do or if I don’t feel like it. One of my teachers often speaks about the importance of prioritising with personal practice, especially when one doesn’t feel like it, or during times of turbulence and uncertainty.

So, I make time in amongst the busyness of my life, to return to selected practices that ground me in my body, nourish and enliven me, and support me to live in alignment with myself, while navigating the messiness of everyday life as a mother, partner, and working creative.

Since doing “the work” doesn’t cease, by developing resilience, agility and deep internal listening, we learn to trust in our natural ability to restore harmony and live in alignment with ourselves, no matter what Life presents us with. This trust sustains us as we sift through layers of our being, reclaim our wholeness and recognise our true role on this collective journey.

Eroticism is a total being experience of the movement of our life force through us, influencing our body, thoughts, emotions and energetic state. When we cultivate a relationship with our erotic nature we work holistically with ourselves by tuning into our body’s intelligence and opening to our soul’s wisdom. This in turn connects us directly with the mystical qualities of vitality, vibrancy and aliveness inherent in all of creation.

How we experience the erotic within ourselves is determined by what we allow to flow through us that makes us feel good; from the quality of our intimate relationship with ourselves and others, our bodies, our desires to how much pleasure we give ourselves permission to feel, or how much we believe we deserve to feel, how much pleasure we have access to within ourselves and how safe we feel to express this.

Essentially our connection and attitude towards our own eroticism, our embodied sexuality and limitless creative potential, influences how good we feel as we move through our lives and how intentional we are with our sacred life force energy.

QUESTIONS TO REFLECT ON:
– How open, curious and receptive are you to new experiences and directions?

– What kinds of risks are you prepared to take to move you closer towards that which you want to manifest?

– What gets in the way of you experiencing more pleasure, sexual or otherwise, in your life?

– What stories and patterns keep repeating that keep you feeling stuck, numb, reactive, frustrated or depleted?

– If you had access to a wider range of vitality and creative flow within, how would you use this energy?

– How can you create space in your life to feel good with who you are and enjoy more pleasure in your body?

Various cultures and traditions believe the seat of consciousness and wisdom resides in different places in the body from the pineal gland, heart, solar plexus to the base of the spine. This awareness and understanding that our bodies contain a range of biointelligence and innate power is ancient and well founded, yet has been discarded along the way together with non-rational, feminine wisdom in favour of the mental, top-down approach to living and interacting in the world.

When we return home by opening and attuning ourselves to the intelligence inherent in our bodies we have the opportunity to heal, live in harmony with our current reality and in alignment with our true selves. We learn to live from the inside outwards, rooted in our wise, non-rational knowing, able to meet our own needs and have capacity to respond to any given situation effectively and appropriately.

As you learn to trust your body’s capacity to heal and come into coherence by listening to its unique biointelligence and following its lead, you develop resilience, restore vitality, and a deep connection and intimacy with yourself in ways you don’t have access to otherwise. This shift from perceiving our bodies as either holding us back or being disconnected from it means we experience our bodies differently. And when this happens our experience of the world around us changes.

To understand the wisdom of your body, enter into dialogue with it, ask yourself what drives it. The need to push, shut down or resist? Ask your body where it feels the wisest or where, in this moment, you feel safe?

PRACTICE:
Slow down and scan your body and allow the answer to surface through the information channels of your body – an emotion, thought, image, sound, movement or sensation. A longing or a sense of aliveness like a particular sensation or pulse within, a spontaneous movement or gesture.

These signals (information) are nonlinear and can be subtle or overt. Pay attention to whatever emerges and follow the impulse to explore it further. If you have a question ask this part of your body, your ally, lovingly and wait, feel, listen deeply for the answer. Or let this wise part move you.

Notice the quality of your energy levels after this practice. As your body awareness develops and you integrate more parts of yourself so too will you have access to more energy and vitality within your system.