Lorde believes our erotic pleasure is a force of truth and change with the power to heal so much of what is currently ailing us. We wholeheartedly agree.  

Perhaps more so than pleasure, our understandings of what is erotic have been distorted and dictated to us by society. Lorde says the erotic “has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation,” when really, it’s so much more. 

In our own personal explorations, and in our experience guiding hundreds of women, we have come to understand that erotic pleasure is embodied, present, and generative, and it has space for the full range of our experience. It isn’t specifically sexual pleasure but it certainly includes the sexual. It is the pleasure we experience through the pores, senses, and sensation of our bodies. Erotic pleasure is a dynamic weaving of body and mind, bringing both together to help us harvest every last drop of pleasure available from the moment.

Our capacity for pleasure is sophisticated and dynamic. And, pleasure comes in myriad forms. It is not merely the ‘Oh OHH OHHHH!!!!’, or the ‘ooo-ahhhhhh’ or even the ‘mmmmm’ moments. True, holistically nourishing pleasure, the kind that is neurologically, physically, spiritually, and soulfully nourishing, can include these peak experiences. But it also requires acknowledging and honoring the almost imperceptible sensations; the embodied experiences that occur below the radar of our cognitive mind’s narrative and labeling. Nutrient-dense pleasure even includes some of the uncomfortable, uncertain, unfamiliar experiences and sensations.

Yet, most of us have been given wrong, incorrect, and misguided information about pleasure…

Through endless marketing we are fed contradictory and erroneous messages about pleasure, even from people who claim to be purveyors of female pleasure:

• Real women feel a lot of pleasure, all the time

• Sovereign, liberated women take what they want. And they want a lot, all the time, without regard for others

• Worthy bodies are capable of having great pleasure – no matter what has, and has not, been done to, or for them 

• Experiencing pleasure is a switch and it’s always in the ‘on’ position

• Our ‘yes’ is untrustable and dangerous

• Pleasure is earned, not a birthright

As compelling and persuasive as these stories might be, they are tactics designed to keep us in a place of insecurity and not-enough, and they maintain a superficial understanding of pleasure. 

Pleasure isn’t just about feeling good –– as in ‘just-watched-a-great-movie’ entertained, or ‘just-ate-a-delicious-piece-of-cake’ yummy, or even ‘just-had-a-great-workout’ enlivened. 

In fact, pleasure is as much about being available to and able to metabolize SENSATION of any kind as it is about feeling ‘good’.  

And while pleasure is a biological imperative “a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation,” if we do not feel safe inside our bodies, we are more likely to minimize all sensation, pleasurable or otherwise, than we are to ravenously hunt it down and binge on it as we are endlessly told we should. 

In this class we will:

• Reclaim our embodied pleasure as an act of liberation and activism

• Learn how our bodies are wired for sensation and pleasure–– but only if we feel safe(enough)

• De-couple sensation and pleasure so we are more available to both

• Learn about the nervous system states that set us up to be nourished by embodied experiences of all kinds – including the uncomfortable ones

• Explore the neurological and contextual differences between pleasure and sensation, including practices to help you develop more nutrient-dense pathways to both 

• Untangle our relationship with nourishment. Our capacities to acknowledge our need for nourishment, seek it out, and receive it are all learned in the earliest moments of our lives, just as we are forming our most intimate relationship with our bodies and our belonging. If we have not investigated and re-negotiated these earliest beliefs, we often find ourselves running in circles

This class is for you if:

• You are hungry to know more about the link between your Nervous System and pleasure and you want practices to help you feed both

• You desire to feel more embodied pleasure, presence and joy but aren’t sure where to turn next

• You have old contracts and narratives that stand in the way of your embodiment, your wellness and more sensation in your body

• You experience a lot of ‘oo-ahhh’s, but they aren’t actually pleasurable or satisfying. 

• You’ve swallowed the stories and expectations for female pleasure whole and you want to uproot them and replace them with your own truths

Program Details

Dates:
Wednesdays, May 4th – 25th, 2022
10 am – 12 pm Mountain / 12 pm – 2 pm Eastern

Location: 
Online via Zoom

Investment:
$199

This also includes the prerequisite evergreen course Wandering into Wellness, an Embodied Tour of the Autonomic Nervous System and the Vagus Nerve, which will be sent to you within 48hours of registration.

Partial scholarships available — Apply here

Format:
In this course we will present didactic information and also invite sharing and weaving between the participants in break-out groups and experiential practices. Although it’s strongly encouraged, you do not need to be present for the calls. 

The course will be recorded and available for viewing (not download) for 30 days after the completion of the calls.

Faculty:

All quotes, unless otherwise attributed, come from Audre Lorde’s essay, ‘The Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power’. You can read it here or listen to Audre Lorde read it herself. ‘Sister Outsider’ — a collection that includes this essay — introduces Audre Lorde in the following way:

“A writer, activist, and mother of two, Audre Lorde grew up in 1930’s Harlem. She earned a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for poetry, and was New York State’s Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1993. She is the author of twelve books including ‘Zami: A New Spelling of My Name’ and ‘The Black Unicorn’. Lorde died of cancer at the age of fifty-eight in 1992.”