healing hands

It was the final day of a week of immersion with the Back to the Body team and something shifted in the middle of my final session with my practitioner, Tim.

I had been working on surrender and I had finally, unapologetically done just that the day before. I felt myself let go, probably for the first time in my adult life. At first, the sensations of it all scared the hell out of me. I had started controlling my relationships at as a very young teenager in response to being raped, and that altered the course of my entire life, through two failed marriages, my relationship with my own body and sexuality. Control had kept me safe. I remember thinking, but wait, I had worked through my trauma in traditional talk therapy. I did it all, including EDMR! My past no longer controlled the choices I made when it came to men and relationships. I had worked through my trauma, or at least I thought I had, but my body had other ideas. I  still physically held on to all of the hurt and shame in ways I didn’t fully understand. In that terrifying moment, my flight instincts took over, and I seriously almost climbed off the table. The sense of vulnerability was physically painful, despite my mind knowing I was in a safe space. My practitioner realized I was struggling with this need to let go but not fully understanding what was happening in my own body and helped me stop, breathe, drop in and fully reconnect with myself. But I was still reluctant, It took the sensation of both the masculine and feminine working together in this perfect rhythm of erotic massage for me to finally feel safe enough to release something buried so deep I didn’t know it was even there until that energy inside me was gone. I can still hear the guttural, almost primal sounds of pain that came from a place I didn’t know existed echoing in my mind. That moment of finally feeling surrender, well it’s changed me.

Its absence has left space for something else, something that is all mine. It is creative, all feminine, and it is powerful.

I should probably back up a bit and mention that I had been working with Tim, a certified Sexological Bodyworker in the Everyday online program with Back to the Body, for a few months prior to this experience. My journey started just before Covid. I had met this powerhouse of a woman, Pamela Madsen, at one of her Portal Weekends. I had impulsively signed up for an in-person retreat after feeling in just those two days the power of sisterhood and feeling beautiful in my own skin for the first time. I knew there was more for me and I was eager, but the universe and a global pandemic had other ideas. I am the kind of woman that, once I make a decision, I fully commit and jump into things with both feet. Waiting sometimes is brutally hard for me. Looking back at this experience, waiting was exactly what I needed to fully develop the relational trust and connection to fully go where my body needed to journey. I have learned that slowing down, connection and talking are all part of my turn on. 

My short time working virtually with Tim virtually has also brought some powerful shifts in my life. After one intense online session, I realized he was the first man in my life that had asked for consent, like ever. As a woman it was always implied or simply was taken. I had never been honored enough to be asked. My silence was a yes and I didn’t live in a world where that type of fully open communication around sex existed. Sex was something that happened to me, I was not an active participant in my own turn on despite my intense sex drive.  I had an “ah ha” moment and that literally shifted everything for me. I woke up one morning realizing I had been dating the same guy for the last 30 years, through two marriages and a year of dating a series of men who were never my emotional equal because, despite all the talk therapy, it was what my body knew. I was finally dipping my toes into my power, in the choices I got to make for myself. Life stopped happening to me, I was more present than I had really ever been in my body, not reacting to a series of events but actively starting to shift, living an authentic life fully aligned with who I am and making the choices to make that happen.  The blinders had come off and I couldn’t unsee what I had now experienced.

Which brings me back to the moment I was beautifully tied up against the wall in a series of shibari ropes and knots. We had explored with ropes earlier in the week, and while I have always been sexually adventurous, I had found my kink. I was no longer the slightly nervous woman who demurely entered the room fidgeting with her hands just a few days ago. I had felt the power of my own sexuality in the gift of surrendering to another. He was not in control, I had given him the gift of allowing his masculinity to fully dance with my femininity, the teasing, the laughter and intimacy of that exchange. It was the first time I had felt the beauty in the balance between the two and how each compliments the other. Surrender is not about power or control as it has felt all my life, it is just the opposite. Surrender is about connection to another human. It is the feeling that I can trust and feel safe not just with the masculine but in my own body again. I am honored as I honor another. The rope is symbolic of that and brings me back to that space. I also discovered the delight in the playfulness and shared intimacy of shibari which I have brought home and into my own relationship. For a woman who has been a serious control freak her entire life, is it any wonder I found myself irresistibly drawn to the act of surrender!

So just how does this translate going from an immersive group erotic experience to back real life?  I lovingly refer to my retreat week as “Sex Camp”, which was way better than band camp ever was! What surprised me was how it so positively impacted my relationship with my boyfriend. We were very new to our relationship when I packed my bags full of lacy things and ran off to Vegas for a week. I was resistant to fully giving him all of me. I was terrified of losing myself again. What a surprise it was that through sharing what I was experiencing in session each night, it opened up this level of intimacy and communication with a man I never had experienced before. My time on the table ultimately created space and my desire for an authentic relationship within me. Another man’s hands on my body within a therapeutic container gave me the gift of connection to myself and an awakening. It is a gift, pleasure without expectation. That dance between the feminine and masculine energy, I have that energy in my own life now.  It is something I cultivate and play with daily. 

I am not the same woman I was prior to that moment on the table. I am professionally trained clinically as a social worker, and I say loudly from experience that this work is not just edgy, it is revolutionary. And so incredibly necessary. When I gave myself permission to fully step into who I am as a woman, my entire world shifted. I am no longer apologetic for being what our culture sees as “too much”.  I laugh louder, I speak up for what I want personally and professionally. I am no longer afraid of what the world thinks of me and it shows up everywhere now. 

I am an ever evolving work in progress, and bringing the erotic into all areas of my life is not just about making me a happier person, it’s making me a whole person. 

“Sexological Bodywork is somatic education that assists individuals, couples, and groups to deep their experience and awareness of their body, eroticism, and sexuality”