Somatic S*x Education, Part 2

I’m going to start with a repeat of the last phrase from my 1st blog: “Research points to exploration of erotic self-knowledge in a safe container with trained, ethical, professional support as a direct, safe, and effective way to resolve trauma held in the body.” 

Very few people take to swimming naturally. I don’t know anyone who figured it out without some help, some support, and maybe even swimming lessons. There’s a lot to manage when you get in the water – floatation, motility, managing water that is everywhere and wants to get in your eyes, nose, mouth, ears, learning to breathe and coordinate your body in a near-weightless state, and more. Well, s*x is a much more complex activity than swimming but very few people consider getting educated about it or even taking some lessons or coaching that would deepen their erotic self-knowledge, their erotic expertise, and immeasurably enhance their ability to communicate their wants and desires to a partner. 

By the time that many of us are s*xually aware, we have already been traumatized and hurt in this tenderest of places. If we haven’t suffered direct physical insult, we’ve been bombarded from earliest memory by the schizophrenic messages propagated by both religion-based shame and commercial hypersexualization, so we’re essentially uninformed and simultaneously ashamed, inhibited, and stuck between two distortions. Women in a heteronormative framework have the added disadvantage of usually being introduced to s*x through a male partner who is also uninformed, and our societal bias is patriarchal, focusing on the man’s pleasure and making the woman’s pleasure a secondary thing. The male arc of desire is dramatically different from the female arc of desire. Because many men operate on the sad paradigm of ‘get in, get off, get out’, many women’s bodies are just waking up as their partners are finishing. Women are then unaware of their enormous sexual capacity, don’t know their bodies or their desires, and wonder why they’re depressed and frustrated. 

In her book “Vagina”, author Naomi Wolf talks about a woman’s “Goddess Array” – her full and glorious complement of erotic energy and response – and how it takes not only time, but also a woman’s requirements for two other vital elements – trust and safety – to melt into her true power. 

Somatic S*x Education is both the container and the content of this work. The goals are to heal trauma through the body, specifically s*xual trauma, to bring the client to a deeper knowledge of her body and her s*xuality, to heal body shame and s*x shame, to break through pleasure barriers, to empower the client’s choice and voice, and ultimately to live what I call the ‘turned on’ life. The energy and joy of our eroticism also fuels our creativity, our hearts, and brings a broad spectrum of pleasure into our lives.

In my next blog, we’ll take a closer look at the container and the ethics of Somatic S*x Education, how those factors safeguard both client and practitioner, and we might begin to explore what actually happens in an SSE session. 

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