Day 10: Inner Narrative
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
– Mary Oliver
Your experiences in this course so far have likely disrupted entrenched narratives about what erotic expression and wellness is ‘supposed’ to look like. Reading, practicing, and reflecting on the content may be stirring confusing or confronting thoughts and feelings as you wonder about what’s possible in your erotic life from now on.
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.
Our availability to pleasure is constantly in flux, depending on context and past experience, and our highly intelligent and adaptive responses are in place to ensure our safety and survival. Our thoughts about these responses, however, can become barriers to our nourishment, especially when they are full of judgement. Today’s practice is an invitation to sit in the center of your experience, acknowledging your inner narratives — both the ones that support and the ones that get in the way of your experience of erotic wellness and pleasure.
Begin by attuning with your breath to settle your mind and invite present moment awareness. As you draw your breath in, focus on the rise of your abdomen, as you exhale, notice the stream of heat through your nostrils for at least 5 breaths. By anchoring your awareness in the here and now, you’ll build skills to become a witness of your thoughts rather than identifying with them.
From this place of observation, lean in and notice your thoughts or inner narratives about your relationship with this course, focusing on the practices that have been the most memorable for you.
Do some of your thoughts support your experience of erotic wellness while others inhibit it?
Do you judge some of your thoughts and feelings as ‘not ok’ while others are welcome? Try not to hang onto or push any thoughts away. Just observe.
The truth is that none of it is wrong, even if you imagine it is.
Liberating yourself from categories of right/wrong allows you to bring awareness and listen to what your experience is telling you. Doing so is a radical act of self love and supports your inner narrative to provide valuable information to you. There is nothing to fix or to be done here. Simply listen.
So now, close your computer, sit back, and explore the voices that are living inside you as they relate to your erotic wellness. No matter what each voice says, offer love and support to it. You’re bringing in witness awareness, watching often competing and contradictory thoughts whirl around your mind. Take it in like you’d take in a landscape. It could only be perfect. There’s nothing to be done and there’s nothing wrong.
