As we teach and invite it, our erotic wellness is the measure of our capacity to be found and nourished by the erotic stream. But even more, our erotic wellness is a measure of what we are offering as much as it is a measure of what we are receiving.

The other than human world is all around, and within us. Recognizing this and reconnecting with it is as simple as looking out our window at the full moon as it rises in the night sky, or putting our bare feet on the grass and taking a few moments to breathe into the contact, while acknowledging that we come from this. We too are a part of this other, wild world that is not centered around and dominated by our current human culture.

Co-regulation typically refers to the beneficial impact systems have on each other such as relaxing one another, welcoming one another and, in the process, creating more secure attachment, intimacy and wellness. But it can also refer to the harmful impact systems can have on each other such as creating a field of fear, lack of safety, and mistrust.

Today’s practice is an invitation to exercise your five predominant senses – sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Doing this can bring you into your present moment experience, providing an avenue for embodiment and intimacy with the other-than-human world. It can also be a helpful practice to use if and when you find yourself overwhelmed, anxious, or in some other way dysregulated or disembodied.

Today’s practice is an invitation to exercise your five predominant senses – sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Doing this can bring you into your present moment experience, providing an avenue for embodiment and intimacy with the other-than-human world. It can also be a helpful practice to use if and when you find yourself overwhelmed, anxious, or in some other way dysregulated or disembodied.

Living in Industrialized culture has all but severed us from our relationship with our bodies. Our food, shelter, clothing, and comfort comes off the shelf rather than from our toil, sweat, and skill. The consequence is that feeling connected with our bodies has become optional. Many of us live from the neck up, and instead of relating to our bodies as highly tuned and sensitive instruments, we disregard them as simply a vehicle, or worse, a burden.

Humans are complex, highly relational, miraculously designed creatures. Our autonomic nervous systems are designed to preference intricate, non-linear, ever-unfolding social cooperation and connection with everyone and everything in our midst. We are endowed with chemical reward mechanisms and pleasure pathways that have evolved over millennia, to help guide us toward critical nourishment and away from danger…

For the most part, we only pay attention to our genitals when we are in a sexual context or when something is wrong with them. Rarely do we offer them slow attuned holding that has no expectations or goals.

But our arousal isn’t innately linear. In fact, with a little curiosity, awareness, and intention, we might even be capable of rather significantly changing our experience solely, by experimenting with the possibility that our arousal has a different shape than a straight line. From there it might seem like a natural thing to wonder...what shape is it? We can explore the possibilities by placing our focus on a different moment within our arousal experience. What if we imagined that our arousal was a spiral, not a rocket ship straight line?

To update our relationship with Eros, it’s crucial that we give our present moment attention to all that’s going on — on the level of sensation, emotion, thoughts, and inner narrative as we engage the course and our moment-to-moment lives. Everything is information that we can take in and get curious about, remember — it all makes sense. 

Today’s practice is a guided journey that is intended to bring you into a felt sense of the web of life and wellness that we are all embedded in. It will take about 15 minutes, and you’ll want to devote your whole attention to it. So get situated, get comfortable, and here we go.

The journey of erotic wellness requires that we feel our belonging enough to relinquish some of our control and allow ourselves to be impacted and to have impact in the world around us. As we near the end of this program, we hope you have had some experiences of your inalienable belonging within the web of Life and that you understand that your never-before-seen curiosity, attention, and participation is necessary for the unfolding of Eros and therefore of Life itself.

Today we invite you to craft a simple ritual that you will repeat at least daily (but even better if it’s twice a day) that is a gesture of your belonging and wellness, and the gratitude this creates within you.