When We Deflect Certain Sensations, We Deflect All Sensations

This is an intense time to be in a human body. It requires a certain perspective and capacity to live vibrantly in a vessel that has been brilliantly designed to gather information through multiple avenues, all day and all night long, both consciously and below our mind’s awareness. It can be hard not to numb ourselves to certain embodied experiences, attempting to cherry pick the ones we feel capable of enduring, let alone actually enjoying. But in fact, when we (attempt to) select certain emotions, sensations and feelings and ignore others, we truncate our capacity to experience everything. If we wash out “negative” feelings, then the tremendous, pleasurable, and joyful experiences become washed out, too. 

The fact is, in order to feel joyful and well, we must also hone our capacity to embody deep pain, sorrow, rage and despair. And, even further, the more we create the muscular scaffolding of wellness that allows us to feel despair, the more fully we are available to pleasure, joy and belonging. 

We call this Erotic Embodiment, and it is distinct from the general embodiment most people refer to. Rather than merely being aware of our experience at any given moment, erotic embodiment is a genuinely nourishing, generative experience that requires that we also notice and nourish the reciprocal relationship we have with the world around us. 

We are never alone. And we are never static. As long as we are breathing, we are evolving. As long as we are standing, we are engaged in a dance of gravity with something. As long as we are seeing, there is something that is being seen. 

These are the relationships that anchor us and that nourish us. Erotic embodiment allows the truth of this never-ending reciprocity, and offers us road maps and practices that strengthen and deepen this never-ending intimacy that creates our fundamental belonging. And it is this very experience of belonging that enables us to feel everything without being swept into a sea of overwhelm, despair, or even the by-pass that can come with preferencing happiness and peace.

Now more than ever, understanding the pathways to our erotic embodiment is not merely an act of wellness. It is an activism of love for ourselves and for the world. It is an intense experience being human at this time, and having the capacity to feel it all and to trust our capacity to do so, is the difference between numbing ourselves to the world and participating in whatever ways are ours to participate.