When I Get This Feeling…I Want…Sexual Healing.

"Most western sex is necrophilia; one dead body having sex with another dead body" - Joseph Kramer.

When I read this quote today, I was in absolute agreement with it. No brainer. Sex is dead. Long live intimacy! 

Many years ago now, I came across a book by a female performance artist and former sex worker Annie Sprinkle. At the time, I'd never heard of Annie nor come across her work, but this book, entitled "Annie Sprinkle's Post Porn Modernist" changed my life. Annie spoke to me about her sexual evolution in ways that were heartfelt, humorous and sometimes heart-breaking too, but then such is life. Her vivid descriptions of her up-bringing, adolescence and her journey (or perhaps deep dive) into the explorations of what it is to be a liberated sexual being were so incredibly inspiring. Annie seemed to have banished shame! This intrigued me. 

I have been fortunate enough to meet Annie, and at this meeting I was rapidly introduced to the magic that is Ms Sprinkle as a room full of people were taken into energy orgasm streaming right next door to a room of policemen and women, policy makers and officials deep into bone dry conversations of the cerebral type. The orgasmic noises filtering through the thin walls with increasing volume were just so delicious, and I can tell you now I sincerely wished I'd attended 'the other' break out session at that conference! 

From this meeting, this conference, a litter of ideas were birthed, giving rise to the Sex Work Re-Assessed Conference here in the UK in 1998. This joint project led by myself and two colleagues from The University of East London (Dr's Wendy Rickards and Merl Storr), came about after that trip to Los Angeles, where seeing so many create and change so much by giving a massive platform to that which is often unsaid was utterly inspiring. Perhaps in those days, funding was internationally more available, people were talking more about this stuff and there was a real buzz around sexuality, not a 'dry' buzz but more of a wet slippery one! Sex workers were speaking loud and proud and this is what they were saying…

But what is sex? what is sexual expression? Who gets to decide, and who gets to legislate? Personally speaking I don't ever want to witness a repeat of 'Operation Spanner' where in December of 1990, 16 gay men were given custodial sentences for consenting BDSM activity. Key word there = CONSENTING! So, the issue with sexuality for me lies in the distortions around it, and the value judgments which are seemingly inextricably tied to it. A bondage of a different kind! 

For me, it doesn't really matter what you do in bed, it's more about how you do it. As Joseph Kramer so succinctly puts it above, many of us are dead or dying from the waist down when it comes to the fine and exquisite art of truly 'love' making. Neither the hearts and flowers Mills and Boon kind, nor the opposite kind of the style you may find in a fetish club, for both can be equally besieged with a lack of true connection to the self and the other in my view. No, Joseph has nailed it (no pun intended!). 

For me, the three keys are breath, communication and presence. Being brave enough to really speak about what turns you on and off, where your energy is flowing and stuck, and truly making the first forays into stopping with the acting and starting to become the key player in your own pleasure maps. Following a path of Red Tantra has led me into the body in ways I could never have previously imagined. Without having to use fantasy as a tool to get off, one becomes able to use presence as the greatest erotic aphrodisiac on the market, and the good news is that it's free! All of the add-ons can be fine of course, but even then, if we default to major fantasy without fully remaining present to who is in front of us, what we are sharing and how we share it, then it's game over. If you're lucky you get a great O-gasm, if not, a somewhat deflated feeling that you've sold yourself short somehow. 

But what if you don't sell yourself short? What if you don't make love as one 'dead' body to another? Then, does it matter if you are paid for it or not? If you're tied up or not? If it's a one off or an ongoing thing? No! The whole point is, that you are truly alive and inhabiting your body, your sexual self and your personal erotic map in absolute and utter presence, and that my dears, is where the nectar truly lies. In integrity. 

So let's hear it for all of the Sexual Pioneers, healers and adventurers out there making this world sexier one way or another. I for one am grateful for each and every one of them. 

Shakti Tantra, Sarah Rose Bright, Joseph Kramer, Barbara Carrellas, Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson et al. Thank you for being there sexing up the planet! 

The Cosmic Orgasm of Life

This week sees your Hostess Claudia looking into and pondering Creation Myths and the general disconnect from the physical body and the act of union/communion.

After a beautiful day out in Wales on Wednesday with Barry Spendlove from Healing Tao Britain, I was left, as usual when out on Barry's walks, in a state of presence and contentedness. Barry is one of the most embodied people I've ever met, and walking with him with his deep knowledge of the land around Wales, nature in general and the physical form, provides a really strong base from which to engage with the interconnectedness of our own bodies and the body of the earth. Observing the deep sunsets, engaging with the trees, with the feeling of Autumn approaching, the earth changing and yet also ever present in stillness, led me to what I can only describe as a state of bliss. This in turn got me thinking about sensuality and sexuality in general, and to wondering how many, if any, creation myths actually involve the physical in a sexual way and what that energy of creation and dissolution is about.

Nature has an exquisite way of mirroring sex. Just observe on your next walk how many trees, plants, flowers and rocks can hold an essence of this most natural act, and yet then consider where we, where the world came from, and how disconnected from the sexual this usually is. Generally we know that the increase in organised religions around the world saw the decrease of shame-free sexual expression. From early natural expressions of sex, amongst mammals and other animals and amongst people, gradually we saw a decline in that naturalness and an increase in judgement and censorship. Over time, we began to hide our sexual drives and to judge them. We became our own inner critics, and the ugly trinity of shame, guilt and fear began to take over from beauty, joy and bliss. Basically - we forgot.

So as I walk in nature and observe everywhere the essence of change, of growth and new life in spring, of decay and release in winter, and the beauty and magic running through all seasons based in that essential re-creation, I am left wondering why so many of our creation stories do not involve the physical expression of that. I found mainly one, a Japanese myth about the God Izanagi and the Goddess Izanami. It is said that these two made love with appetite and with passion, thus giving birth to eight of the Japanese islands.

What eventually happened to Izanami was that when she gave birth to one of her sons, a fire God, this birth was too much for her to bear and the fire consumed her - interesting right? Here is this passionate, sexually confident Goddess and the fire she gives birth to burns her up! So I'm left wondering about all of this cosmic bliss; it's a beautiful thing to feel, to experience and to contain. Orgasmic streaming of the kind that comes from deep, spirit connected, embodied sacred sex is without doubt a potent force for creation. Are we afraid of that energy? Are we shying away from harnessing that life force? Are we overly concerned about the physical aspects of sex when we should be focussing on the energetic ones in their most pure form, and by 'pure'  I don't mean of the kind judged on a moral basis. 

Life is beautiful. Nature is powerful. Sex and sensuality can be a gateway into presence and into bliss. Let's get rid of the distortions around it, open up the dialogue and welcome the great Cosmic Orgasm of Life! 

Leave me your comments on life, energy, nature, sex, creation. I love to engage with people!

Tantric Bliss & the Cosmic Orgasm of Life!

Good evening dear readers...it's been a while. I've been busy establishing my own tantra and healing client base, which has in turn led me to be into the midst of setting up my own Tantric Temple in Manchester, UK. I'm really excited about this prospect for so many reasons, but most of all because I get to earn a living doing what I absolutely LOVE! How long I've dreamed of finding my own path, envied those who've always known theirs, or had a clarity I felt I was lacking in manifesting their own vision and sense of purpose in the world. Now, I'm delighted to say, I have found mine. "Do what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life" is the mantra, and it's fair to say that doing what you truly love in life cannot ever feel like 'work' or a chore.

Over lunch with a lovely woman last week (read her blog here), we came to discuss the hero's journey, the Jungian concept of our journey into our true selves, and how our stories form us. I've never really been able to understand how all of my experience in so many fields of human sexuality could form my own story in a way that would make any sense to me. As an self determined 'outsider', yes I could relate to my edgy, non-conformist attitudes to life, my open minded, non-judgmental acceptance of the many shades of (way more than) gray in sex and sexuality, but how did it relate to my life path? Surely I was destined to be more than a 'former hooker'? Surely there were ways to bring sexual healing into the world that did not either pathologise, or get stuck in the analytical framework of 'head' and intellect based psychotherapy, which was not for me. I'm not for one moment knocking that practice, it can have a hugely important role to play in a persons self development, but it wasn't for me. And then I found tantra.

Since discovering tantra, my life has begun to flourish in ways I could have never imagined, and now that I'm fully embracing client based healing work, I'm full of gratitude every moment for those who come to see me. I genuinely *love* my clients, love that they bring me their open hearts and their willingness to heal, transform, change, move past that which may limit them, let go, surrender and truly experience the pleasure that is all of our birth-rights.

The transformation of negative attitudes is the foundation of my work. The messages that we have heard so often that we came to believe the lie, live in our bodies and our souls, and our spirits cry out to release them. Through Tantric bodywork I firmly believe it is possible to truly release this baggage we carry, most of which doesn't even belong to us. From the first moment we are caught self pleasuring and told that it is 'bad', or 'dirty', that we 'should be ashamed of ourselves' and more, we come to embody those ideologies. Why should exploring our own bodies to see how our pleasure feels be so bad? Why are we so stunted in our naturalness that we cannot even allow ourselves, as consenting adults, to really understand the liberation in pleasure? Feel comfortable in our nakedness rather than exposed or vulnerable? Through Tantra we can adopt a different viewpoint, and one of the things I love more than anything about this work is its inherent connection to love, respect of the self and of others. It is deeply honoring work in the truest sense of the word. As a woman, I have the right to say yes to things as much as I have the right to say no, and through tantra I am discovering where my 'yeses' lie. Through my work, I offer you the same respectful invitation to discovering your very own pleasure principles, and let me reassure you, we are all totally unique in our individual formulas. For me, this work has taken me into orgasmic living. I can feel pleasure in something as simple as washing the dishes, driving my car, talking a nap, walking in nature, making love, cleaning the bath out, whatever it is, so long as I do it mindfully, it is a blessing and confirms my aliveness in every moment. Tantra has led me to the cosmic orgasm of life, and I invite you to share in my journey, for as the image below says, how can we know how far we can go until we risk going that little bit further?

Sexual Freedom & breaking the bonds

What does "sexual freedom" mean to you? It's been coming to my attention for years now that we are so bound by our ideas of ourselves and our ego-centric senses of identity that most of us don't even know we're captive any more. We have sex for so many reasons; duty, obligation, guilt, fun, love, money, stuff, approval, pressure, connection, release...and yet all too often we often don't even truly SEE our lovers any more, yes ladies and gentlemen, we are both prisoner and jailer at the same time!

Sexual energy is creative energy and properly channeled and acknowledged can be a most blissful and healing thing to fully experience, so what stops us? Media ideas of beauty can be intimidating, social notions of romance can create disillusionment, familiarity; does it really breed contempt or is it a platform from which to truly get to know our lovers and their pleasures? The more I dive into my Tantric journey, the more I realise how vast the range of both experience and pleasure is, how different our bodies are and how varied their/our needs. I used to be afraid of the term 'sacred sexuality' fearing it would lead to a kind of disowning of my more carnal side, my archetypal (or actual!) 'whore' or playful 'slut', however given the right teacher/teachings, just as with any other spiritual discipline, light, dark AND shadow can be fully embraced and played with. Enough of the guilt of being a sexually active, liberated woman in pursuit of hot sex! Enough of the judgment and labels...time to re-claim our power, and that goes for men too. Not power over but power of self expression in healthy, respectful, playful and celebratory ways; truth-telling!

Many cultures have historically known this, and here in the west, where I'm from, we have the gift of exploring many aspects of our sexuality with a great deal of freedom too, however there are things we need to bypass first - the erotic police invest in the suppression of sexual energy knowing its potency is great and its potential for liberating us phenomenal. Yet who 'polices' our sexual expression in truth? Mostly we do a very good job of this ourselves. Our 'phnaar phnaar' attitudes and 'Carry On Up The Khyber' mentality keep us protected, safe from the fear that we may not in fact be "getting it right". Once upon a time there were temples of sexual healing and the women who worked in them were considered Priestesses and highly revered, and yet now, so few work with sexual energy in this healing way, and yet there is change coming.

Sacred Intimacy is a phrase becoming more frequently heard as women and men long for something different, desiring of healing our sexual wounds and our erotic nature, which can be so many different things. I recently met a woman who works within the UK National Health Service and was so deeply saddened to hear how many women she comes across with great trauma and shame locked into their bodies and souls. Women afraid to look at themselves, who will not even touch themselves and who have disowned themselves from the waist down. Women who believe their genitals to be ugly rather than a thing of great beauty, and I'm sure there are as many men suffering the same disconnection. There are as many different types of vajra (cock) and yoni (pussy) as there are hair types, eye shapes, noses, bodies yet we persist in subscribing over and over to the myth of 'sameness' and aspire to some kind of non-existent sense of perfection. Breaking out of that is POWER-FULL and liberating. Allowing ourselves to truly love our bodies as they are, and to learn to name our pleasures is just as potent. BREAK THE BONDS and find the true expression of your sexual self...I promise you, you cannot fail to enjoy the ride, even if a little bumpy at times....

Ex-Stasis

"Ecstasy n. A feeling of elation. From the Latin ex-stasis, standing outside oneself."

Many people search for it; through substances, work, fitness, meditation, and of course sex. What is it to be able to 'stand outside oneself'? Is it the thought of being able to view ourselves more objectively (too 'heady'), or is it simple a hedonistic pursuit of an ultimate feeling of bliss/pleasure? Are we so locked into our sense of self via the Ego that the moments where the ego disappears, or rather quiets down, give us that sense of ecstasy? Busy lives, busy world, busy minds. For many of us a moment of true calm is a rare thing.

Sex can certainly provide us with many opportunities to reach heightened states of bliss, but that said, the shadow side of sexual expression seems to me to be far more prevalent in our modern cultures. In countries where Tantra and Tao first originated, women are as repressed as they are in any other, so it's not simply the roots of a philosophical or spiritual practice that honor it's original meaning, it's the understanding of and practice of it thereafter surely that give it it's potency and true potential.

What's happened to us when it comes to sex? Violent one moment, guilt ridden the next, we seem to have forgotten the easy and natural pleasures of being a fully em-bodied sexual being. New age sexuality cuts the balls off sex, and the media gives us ten overblown botox-injected pairs on the other end of the spectrum, but it's all screwed! Sex education, for what it's worth focuses almost entirely on warning, prevention, protection from disease and pregnancy, or if you're luckier than that, how it should be saved until after you're in a deep and committed relationship (judgment).  You see where I'm going? Where are the teachings that our bodies and our sexuality are to be celebrated and enjoyed despite all of the finger pointing moralising? We don't talk about sex in celebratory ways, but far more often in taboo ways, if we even get to talking about it at all. It's like the big global secret that ever remains behind locked bedroom doors. Bad girls enjoy sex and need punishing and boys are 'just being boys' and we should turn a blind eye right?

As children we are rarely taught about what happens to our blossoming bodies and emerging sexuality and resort to awkward shame-laden fumblings beneath dark covers in the deep silence of nightfall. I've often been chastised by lovers for being "too noisy" when I cum! "What will the neighbors think?" Um...that I'm enjoying my sexuality maybe?

Sex is NATURAL! It's FUN! It can be immensely healing. And when it is suppressed, repressed, judged or flung into the arena of a moral high ground, it can be dangerous, destructive and scary. There are so many myths spread about sex, so many deceptions, so many lies (Cosmo hold your publishing hands up please!) We are made to feel that we are generally "getting it wrong" or if we're not, that our lovers therefore must be, as lofty ideals that paint pictures of perfect sex being hot and sweaty with orgasm as the ultimate goal are held ever before us as the Holy Grail of sexual fulfillment. Yet for many men and women, sex is something that causes great anxiety either before, during, after or all of the above! It is rarely seen as an opportunity for a spiritual experience yet to the Tantrics and the Taoists that's exactly what it was. The conscious channeling of sexual energy is seen as an opportunity for the dynamic integration of mind, body and spirit and for prolonging and improving drastically our health, vitality and longevity. So what could be better? So why do we think there is so much resistance o this natural state of bliss? It costs nothing, it improves much and we could become powerful, strong human beings by re-connecting with this very primal energy....and who could possibly be threatened by that right?