The Itch is the Invitation
About 7 years ago, I participated in a month-long meditation retreat. The practice, though not Zen, was very Zen-inspired, meaning, we sat 12-14 hours per day, in 45-minute increments with walking meditations between sitting periods. In Zen-style meditation, you do not move. Not to adjust your position, not to wipe away your tears, not to lick your lips, and certainly not to scratch an itch.
During one of the sitting periods, I got an itch. This happens all the time, and each time before this one, I’d been able to ignore the itch until it just disappeared. But this time, it would not go away. I went to battle with it, doing everything I could to keep it out of my mind. I focused on my breathing, counted some breaths, checked my posture, returned to one of the guided meditations I’d been given throughout the retreat. But it would not relent.
I knew I wasn’t going to scratch the itch, but something had to give. So rather than continuing to try to push it away, I let it have me. I yielded all of my attention to the itch and it grew. The sensation took over my entire body. It came in great undulating waves, crashing into the boundaries of my skin before splashing back into the core of my body. The sensations were intense, crossing back and forth between pleasurable and painful. In some moments, I thought I was going to have an orgasm. The next, I thought I might throw up.
This went on for some time and I sat still, breathing, blinking, and feeling the ground beneath me. Slowly, the sensation subsided and I was left feeling very much alive.
I didn’t know this or have the language for it at the time, but looking back on it, this was undoubtedly an erotic experience –– the way we use the word erotic. This itch, and not scratching it, helped me make way into a capacity to simply be with and move into sensation as it is happening in my body. Sometimes this erotic embodiment looks like big experiences like this one, but mostly, it’s a quiet recognition of what’s happening, paired with a gentle welcoming in and moving toward.
We are mostly taught to manage our sensations. To get away from some of them, soothe some, and move toward others. By simply allowing them to be without making snap judgments about what they mean or what we need to do with them, we can open the door to all kinds of surprising experiences in an increasing range, from the huge swells to the subtle, barely perceptible ripples.
This is one of the first steps in reclaiming our erotic pleasure: you first have to build the capacities to notice, attune to, and make yourself available to the sensations that are arising in your body. They are an event and experience unto themselves. What you do with them is an entirely separate thing.
Our upcoming program, Reclaiming Erotic Pleasure, will offer you information and practices to help you build the capacities to recognize and be with sensation so that you can find your way to your erotic pleasure.
