Approaches to Sexual Healing for Trauma Survivors.

Healing from sexual trauma is a deeply personal journey, yet it flourishes when we embrace a multidisciplinary approach. Trauma doesn’t just affect the mind; it ripples through every element of ourselves: our body, psyche, relationships, and sense of belonging in the world. By holding these interconnected layers of experience in a recovery process, survivors can support themselves in thriving.

Below, we’ll explore how practices involving movement, bodywork, nourishment, mindset, education, and new experiences can support trauma survivors in reclaiming pleasure, connection, and a sense of wholeness.

Movement and Bodywork: Reclaiming Safety and Pleasure

Trauma might result in survivors feeling trapped, disconnected, or unsafe in their bodies. Movement and bodywork offer powerful pathways back to grounding and embodiment.

Movement practices, such as yoga, qi gong, ecstatic dance, or mindful strength training can help reconnect survivors with their physical selves in ways that feel safe and non-threatening. Practices that offer elements of nervous system awareness, choice, consent, and body awareness can be empowering resources for survivors to explore movement at their own pace and in their own way.

Somatic bodywork—like Sexological Bodywork, Somatic Sex Education, or De-armouring — provides a hands-on way to release trauma stored in the body’s tissues. These practices are unique opportunities for survivors to explore and claim their bodies as sources of pleasure, safety, and agency. For many, touch work (or pleasure-centred and trauma informed coaching if touch isn’t available) is a bold step in rebuilding a positive relationship with sensation and sexuality.

Food and Lifestyle: Nourishment as Healing

Trauma impacts the nervous system, often leaving survivors in prolonged states of hypervigilance or exhaustion. Food and lifestyle choices play a crucial role in restoring balance.

Nourishing meals support not just physical health but emotional regulation. Protocols like The Wahls Protocol, which emphasize nutrient-dense foods, can enhance cellular recovery and nervous system resilience.

Lifestyle changes—like prioritizing sleep hygiene, creating daily joy rituals, and spending time outdoors—can anchor survivors in rhythms that promote healing. These practices aren’t just about survival; they’re about building and connecting with lives that feel abundant, spacious, and aligned with what survivors value most.

Mindset and Meaning-Making: Rewriting the Narrative

One of trauma’s most insidious impacts is the way it reshapes our inner world. Survivors often carry shame, blame, or feelings of unworthiness. Healing requires not just releasing these burdens but replacing them with new, empowering beliefs.

Mindfulness and self-compassion practices can help survivors gently shift their mindsets. Survivors may find power in meditations, affirmations, journaling, or acknowledging their strengths. Spiritual practices (for those who resonate with them) can also offer a nourishing sense of connection and meaning, supporting survivors in feeling anchored to something larger than themselves.

Community and Connection: Healing Together

Trauma can be isolating, but connection is one of the most potent antidotes. Whether through group therapy, peer support circles, or creative workshops, survivors often find healing amplified by the presence of others who understand their journey.

Community spaces offer validation, shared wisdom, and a sense of belonging. They remind survivors that they’re not alone—and that healing, while personal, doesn’t have to happen in isolation.

Education: Understanding Patterns and Choices

Many trauma survivors experience challenges with intimacy, boundaries, and trust, often without appreciating the ways in which these are common trauma responses. Education about attachment theory and nervous system regulation can empower survivors to recognize these patterns, accept the gifts and challenges of them, and possibly work towards shifting them (if wanted).

For instance, understanding the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses helps survivors make sense of their reactions. Understanding patterns of anxiety, avoidance, and dysregulation in relationships similarly can help folks make sense of their experiences. This knowledge can be transformative when paired with tools for navigating relationships, strengthening boundaries, and cultivating trust with themselves and others.

Creating New Experiences: A Future of Pleasure and Possibility

Trauma often traps survivors in the past, but healing invites us to step into a future of our choosing. This means creating new experiences that reflect our desires and dreams!

• Pleasure practices: Daily rituals—like savoring a warm bath, enjoying a favorite scent, or basking in sunlight—help rewire the brain to associate the body with safety and joy.

• Exploring intimacy: Survivors may find healing in cultivating eros through paradigms that honour their autonomy and unique shape, such as consensual non-monogamy, erotic friendships, solo polyamory, monogamy, celibacy, and more.

• Play and creativity: Trauma often robs survivors of joy, but playfulness can be a profound tool for healing. Whether through art, music, or laughing with friends, cultivating a spirit of curiosity and lightness creates space for growth.

Professional Guidance: A Safe Container for Healing

While survivors take many meaningful steps on their own, the guidance of skilled, trauma-informed professionals can be invaluable. Therapists, somatic practitioners, and educators trained in sexual healing provide safe, compassionate spaces for survivors to navigate challenging emotions, sensations, and experiences.

Trauma-informed care ensures survivors are met with education, empathy and respect, empowering folks to build resilience and strength.

A Journey Toward Wholeness

Healing from sexual trauma is not linear, and it’s never one-size-fits-all. It’s a deeply personal process of rediscovery, grounded in the practices and relationships that feel right for each individual.

Through movement, bodywork, nourishment, mindset shifts, education, and community, survivors can create lives that reflect their resilience, desires, and capacity for joy. Healing is not just about moving beyond trauma or erasing it—it’s about claiming the fullness of who you are and the richness of life itself.

You are not defined by what has happened to you. You are defined by the courage it takes to reach towards what you long for, the choices you make to claim pleasure and joy, and the future you build for yourself, step by step.

Reclaiming Pleasure and Presence: Why Professionals Are Embracing Somatics in Their Practice.

In a world where sex, pleasure, and the body are often treated as clinical or taboo subjects, many therapists, coaches, and healers are beginning to explore a different approach. The field of somatics — rooted in body awareness and giving voice to sensation — has expanded to address not only trauma recovery but, in the world of somatic sex education, also the cultivation of pleasure and safety within ourselves and our clients. This shift represents a reclaiming of the erotic as a nutritive and nourishing part of the human experience. For those of us who hold space for others, embodying this in our own lives can transform how we practice, live, and connect.

Why Somatics? Moving Beyond the “Tyranny of Normal”

Our culture is deeply entrenched in norms around sex, pleasure, and gender, shaping how clients (and we) experience bodies and relationships. These norms can narrow our understanding of what’s possible - and pathologize the very things that make us human. In many of the somatic practices I love to explore with folks, we seek to soften our attachment to these scripts and instead invite curiosity, autonomy, and a celebration of uniqueness in erotic expression.

The Role of Pleasure in Healing

Too often, pleasure is overlooked in therapy. However, pleasure-based healing can be a profound resource for resilience and well-being. This isn't only about “feeling good”—it’s about recognizing pleasure as a form of safety, and a way to connect with the nervous system, a way to experience selfhood and sovereignty. Much of my work aims to support clients in grounding, attuning to their senses, and expanding their capacity to feel both joy and difficulty.

Example: Techniques like guided breathwork or sensory grounding exercises can be powerful tools for fostering a sense of safety and presence. Over time, they help create an “anchor” that folks can use during challenging moments.

Consent, Boundaries, and Inner Wisdom

In my understanding of somatics, consent is foundational—not just as an ethical practice, but as a way to support people in listening to their own guiding wisdom. Consent goes beyond something taught within a therapeutic relationship and becomes an inner and ongoing practice - for both practitioners and clients to be aware of and honor their boundaries. This is key for those working with trauma, as it provides a framework of choice and agency.

Practical Tip: Practitioners can integrate consent-based practices by using language that invites choice (e.g., “Would it feel right to explore this with me?” or offering three options and inviting the client to choose). Over time, this empowers clients to tap into their own voice, trusting their “yes” and “no.”

Embodying the Erotic Self as a Practitioner

This training also asks us as practitioners to consider our own relationship with the erotic. When we show up for our clients, our presence is the greatest tool we bring into the room. Exploring our own embodied experience of eros—beyond sexuality and into pleasure, vitality, and connection—nurtures our capacity to hold space and act as a grounding presence.

Cultivating Erotic Futures in Our Practices

At its core, I hope that somatic work can invite a radical re-envisioning of healing: one where we celebrate the erotic as a natural part of being human, and where safety and pleasure co-exist. For practitioners, embracing this work means stepping into a fuller sense of who we are - and from this place creating a practice where clients feel seen, supported, and free to explore their own stories, knowing fully that the container cast is for their process and growth.

Whether you're already using somatic tools or simply curious, exploring this work can be a deeply enriching journey. As we labour towards a future where expansive expressions of pleasure and connection are honored, we make manifest the change we want to create.

How Connecting to Pleasure Supports the Nervous System & Aids Trauma Recovery.

When it comes to healing from trauma, we often focus on talk therapy, mindfulness, and other therapeutic practices, which are all important. But one aspect that is sometimes overlooked—yet incredibly powerful—is the role of pleasure in healing the nervous system. I’m not just talking about fleeting pleasures like eating chocolate or binging your favorite Netflix series (though, yes, those can help too!). I’m talking about connecting to the sensory, bodily experiences that bring deep satisfaction and joy—pleasures that can be as simple as feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin or as profound as sharing exquisitely pleasurable touch.

As someone who has both experienced and supported others through trauma recovery, I’ve found that reconnecting with pleasure is not only healing, it’s essential. Let’s talk about why.

1. Pleasure Calms the Nervous System

When we experience trauma, our nervous system can get stuck in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze. Our body learns to expect danger, even when none is present, and this makes it hard to relax or feel safe. Pleasure, especially when it’s rooted in the body, activates the parasympathetic nervous system—the system responsible for relaxation, digestion, and recovery.

Imagine how your body feels when you slide into a warm bath, enjoy a slow, deep breath, or receive a gentle massage. These experiences tell your nervous system: “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.” This shift from a state of hyperarousal to one of safety is exactly what the nervous system needs to begin healing from trauma.

2. Pleasure Rewires the Brain

Our brains are incredibly adaptable—this is the magic of neuroplasticity. Trauma can change the way we think and feel, often leaving us on high alert, expecting the worst. But here’s the good news: when we focus on pleasurable sensations, we can start creating new neural pathways that lead to feelings of safety, joy, and connection.

One way to do this is by intentionally noticing the little pleasures of everyday life. Slow down and savor the way a soft blanket feels against your skin, or the taste of your favorite tea as it warms your mouth. These small moments of sensory pleasure teach your brain to notice good things, not just potential threats, and over time, they help create a more resilient, peaceful mindset.

3. Pleasure Expands Your Capacity to Cope

Trauma can narrow what’s called our window of tolerance—the space in which we can handle stress and emotions without becoming overwhelmed. This often means we get triggered more easily or feel dissociated when life gets hard. But the good news is that pleasure helps expand this window.

When you take time to experience pleasure—whether that’s through sensual touch, dancing to your favorite music, or even something as simple as stroking a pet’s fur—you’re gently increasing your ability to handle more emotions and stress without going into overdrive. You’re teaching your nervous system that it’s safe to relax and feel good, even when things get tough.

4. Pleasure Anchors You in the Present

Trauma has a way of pulling us out of the present moment, either back into painful memories or forward into anxiety about what might happen next. Sensory pleasure helps anchor us in the here and now. It draws our awareness back into our bodies and into the present moment, which is where healing happens.

Try this: next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, pause for a moment and focus on a simple, sensory experience. It could be the feeling of a soft breeze on your skin, the sound of birds chirping, or the warmth of your hands clasped together. See if focusing on that experience helps ground you in the present - even just a little bit - and if it might help remind your nervous system that right now, you are safe.

5. Pleasure Helps You Reconnect with Your Body

One of the most painful aspects of trauma is that it can make us feel disconnected from our own bodies. We might feel like our body has betrayed us, or we may struggle to trust it after trauma. Reclaiming pleasure is a way of rebuilding that trust and connection.

Here’s where my work as a somatic sex educator comes into the picture. Sensual pleasure—whether through solo play, experiences with a sweetie, or even sexologic bodywork—can help you rediscover your body as a source of joy and pleasure, rather than just pain or fear. Slow, mindful exploration of what feels good to you in a safe environment can be incredibly healing. It might be something as simple as gently massaging your hands or feet, or running your fingers lightly over your skin. Start small, and notice what feels good, and let that pleasure be a guide toward reconnection.

6. Pleasure Builds Emotional Resilience

One of the beautiful things about pleasure is that it builds emotional resilience. By regularly tuning into what feels good, you’re nurturing your nervous system and expanding your capacity for peace, joy, and balance. This doesn’t mean life’s challenges disappear, but it does mean you’re more equipped to handle them without losing your sense of self.

So, here’s my invitation to you: give yourself permission to take even just a few minutes a day to seek and savor pleasure. Whether it’s through enjoying sensual touch, a delicious meal, or the sensation of warm sun on your face—let pleasure be a part of your healing process. It’s not indulgence. It’s medicine.

Pleasure is a resource that’s abundant, freely available, and always within reach. By leaning into it, you’re giving your nervous system the gentle care and attention it needs to recover and thrive.

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If this resonates with you, and you’d like to explore deeper ways to integrate pleasure into your trauma healing journey, feel free to reach out. I’m here to support you in discovering how pleasure can be a part of your recovery and healing process.

Resilience & Recovering from Childhood Sexual Abuse.

In trauma recovery circles, there's often a lot of discussion about exploring the narrative—the ‘why’ behind unwanted past experiences. Diving into our personal stories can be a powerful tool for gaining clarity and fostering self-awareness. It can also help us reframe and rewrite the story we tell ourselves. After all, storytelling is a powerful way to make sense of our lives. However, focusing solely on narrative may not be the complete solution for overcoming childhood sexual abuse.

When traumatic events occur during childhood, such as childhood sexual abuse, they can profoundly affect our development and self-perception. These experiences can influence not only our beliefs and stories (that form our narrative and outlook on life) but also manifest in various other aspects of our lives, including our sexuality, gender identity, orientation, and even physical health issues like autoimmune disorders and high cortisol levels.

For those who have endured unwanted sexual experiences, it’s crucial to identify how these experiences have impacted their actions, emotions, and thought processes. By shining a light on how developmental trauma has shaped our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives, we can better understand and address the unique challenges we face. This process allows us to honor and grieve the complex journey of our lives, recognizing both the dark places we have known and the light we have within.

As Carl Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Engaging with modern research on attachment theory, keeping a log of your thoughts and feelings, exploring cognitive biases, and developing mindfulness practices can be highly beneficial in a process of creating greater awareness. While working with a professional can greatly support this journey, solo exploration can also offer valuable insights.

Carl Rogers wisely noted, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.” Embracing and nurturing yourself as you are can be a powerful act of resilience, and one of the most powerful steps in recovering from childhood sexual abuse. Resilience is our ability to adapt and recover from adversity, and it is crucial for anyone navigating trauma recovery.

You can cultivate resilience by focusing on:

• Supportive Relationships: Build connections that are both committed and respectful of your individuality. These relationships should foster interdependence rather than co-dependence.

• Self-Efficacy: Take responsibility for aspects of your life you can control and focus on your own growth and empowerment.

• Self-Regulation: Develop your ability to manage your emotions and adapt to challenges.

• Faith and Cultural Traditions: Build a relationship with faith, hope, and practices that nurture your well-being.

In my practice, I emphasize fostering resilience in the realm of the erotic - on helping clients connect with what nourishes them. The goal is not to dwell in past pain but to discover paths to greater ease, pleasure, and joy.

If there’s one key takeaway from this article, let it be the importance of practicing resilience. Reflect on your relationship with yourself, others, and the world around you. Examine your mindset and attitude towards life’s challenges. Assess your ability to manage emotions and find calm during distress. Consider the role of faith, philosophy, tradition, or religion in your life, and evaluate your relationship with pleasure and self-expression. Are you making choices that bring light and vitality, or do they feel confining? What can you do to make things just a little bit better for yourself?

Erotic Friendships.

Sometimes when working with clients they might share challenges about their current relationship structures and agreements. Folks might name they’re feeling in a bind - where the structure they have slid into (or consciously chosen) doesn’t reflect their values or where they wish to go in their own lives, or their dynamics with their partners.

Certainly I relate - the ‘pre-fab’ relationship structures we’re offered often won’t be just the right fit. While in my own questions about how to cultivate relationships that have the potential to offer both safety and stability while also being committed to erotic freedom, my colleague and friend Caffyn Jesse introduced me to some writing they’ve done on erotic friendships. I’d love to share it with you, in hopes it might offer a seed of inspiration to guide you towards more of what you want for you and your loves.

Erotic Friendship - Caffyn Jesse

Love, joy, passion, tenderness, the exchange of fluids without the assignment of roles, pleasure without possession – the concept and practice of “erotic friendship” is a way to explore love and eros that thrills me. I won’t want to dive deep with another, without a paradigm for relationship that welcomes and cherishes the great holy wild we are. Wild means undomesticated, impatient of restraint, fierce, crazy, eager with desire, free. Wildness is life energy, the intricate wisdom of natural systems, instinct, anima (breath, soul). Call it what you will, it calls us - out and away from domestic spheres and human settlements, into the forest, down to the water, up the mountain.

In finding and forging connection with lovers and others, I have invented and practiced a form of loving relationship I call “erotic friendship.” When we meet as friends, walls around us and inside us open. What matters now? I / Thou. Friends make space for each other, and it is space where we can be all we are becoming. This love that unfolds in a frame where we can listen to our wild hearts, find full voice to sing with, stretch our wings. “Family” is a word derived from the Latin famulus, meaning “servant.” The word connotes obedience. The word “friendship” evolves from the Anglo-Saxon freond, meaning “love.”

Friendship is a space of ongoing attunement. An erotic friendship can start and stay small, or it can unfold its more and more with a wild and joyful magic. There is space here to soar, dive, and journey dark and deep -- into the wildness of the world.

*Learn more about Caffyn Jesse’s work here.

What is Ecosexuality?

Ecosexuality is a belief system of relating to the world around us and the planet as a lover. Also called sexecology, it was coined by Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens. Frankly I don’t resonate with the word ecosexual, however, I deeply resonate with the philosophy.

For me the joy of ecosexuality is about the joy of connecting with erotic aliveness beyond human connections. It’s the joy of being able to witness and savour the *infinite* experiences of aliveness, pleasure, and eros that are ever present every time I smell a ripe peach, or go for a walk, or watch the tides come in, or stroke fresh herbs.

My history in the world has included a lot of feelings and beliefs of scarcity, aloneness, and disconnection… Tuning into the world around me as a web of aliveness that I can connect with as an interdependent lover has created so many opportunities to question and re-write my old stories, and notice the abundance of connection and eroticism that’s available to me at any time.

How does this philosophy feel in your body? Are you hot for the feeling of summer sun on your skin? The feeling of cold lake water touching your genitals? The taste of fresh in-season fruit? The smell of cedar? Is there anything erotic about sensory experiences like these for you?

Pleasure is Not a Reward.

When you’re in your pleasure (and I mean pleasure from spicy play to afternoon snacks) are you able to slow down just a little bit more, and see what you notice about your experience?

Many of us rush through pleasure or ignore it because of social conditioning, shame, or a belief that there is more or better pleasure in the future.

But! Is this true?

Slowing down, tuning into the senses, and asking the question ‘what’s feeling good *right now*’ can be powerful.

Pleasure is not out of reach. Its not a reward. It’s not meant to be rationed. Pleasure is available in a myriad of ways in any given moment and is abundantly available.

Welcoming greater pleasure is a practice of noticing how pleasure is available *right now*.

Your Sexuality is Yours.

Remember: your sexuality is centred in your relationship with yourself.

Your sexuality is yours alone, even if you choose to share it with other people. Since it is yours, be sure to give priority to your own experiences of pleasure. When you prioritize your own experiences and explorations of pleasure, there is amazing potential for self care and erotic growth, which is a rich learning landscape that can help you figure out what to ask for from others.

When you cultivate a self-loving and sexy relationship with yourself you are practicing connecting with the many facets of who you are...

• Your fantasies

• your body

• your gender(s)

• your desires

• your energy

• your spirit

This is more than exploring different ways to touch your bits.

This becomes a way to more deeply explore and integrate your whole sexual and erotic self into your life.

This becomes a way to unlearn cultural sexual scrips and turn towards and follow your own authentic pleasure.

This becomes a way to develop clarity about what relationships, people, and practices will nurture your erotic soul.

Choosing a Sex Positive Life.

Having a sex positive life means actively committing to practicing the strengths & skills that reflect the life you want for yourself. Some questions to consider:

• what kinds of support / skills would help you feel more connected to your desire/eroticism/kink/embodiment?

• how do you connect to affirming media/communities/people?

• who is on your sexual solidarity team? Who will be by your side when things are challenging or when you want to celebrate your sexual growth / experiences?

• what are the contexts when you feel sexy, attractive, seen, heard, or most like yourself?

Getting clear on what nourishes you sexually is needed so you can say ‘yes!’ to *more* of what connects you, turns you on, feels pleasurable, and satisfies you.

Summer Joy!

I just CANNOT get enough of the summer! Sun. Flowers. Fresh food. Swimming. Birdsong. Open windows…

Choosing to look for the daily gifts of life might be challenging. But slowing, noticing and savouring these gifts is a change making practice.

Negativity bias dictates that we’re really great at noticing and fixating on challenges we face. And, we can choose to ease & complicate that bias by intentionally practicing noticing what is feeling pleasurable and joyful. We’re literally *changing our minds* when we notice our habitual patterns that deepen our experiences of suffering and instead make small & simple & different choices about how we think and act.

After all - what we pay attention to grows. When we fixate on our pain, it will grow. When we fixate on our pleasure, it will grow. This is a core teaching of neuroplastic change.

What are the daily gifts of life for you these days? From your morning cup of coffee to your dog walks to the smell of your neighbour’s flowers… what’s bringing you joy?!

Pleasure: Medicine of Joy & Nourishment.

Pleasure is a powerful medicine & resource that is internally generated, freely available and abundantly renewable.

Don’t let capitalism or systems and institutions of power convince you otherwise.

Many of us may not have practice noticing and *feeling* the joy and pleasure in daily life. That’s okay! We can begin in any moment.

As we welcome and tune into pleasure - the gifts of sweet backrubs, birdsong, warm baths, dogwalks - we expand our capacity for peace, joy and resilience.

We deepen our capacity to be present and connected with the sacred and sensual gifts of life.

And when the pains of life present themselves we have a simple yet powerful practice to help us balance our experience and stay our course.

The Muddy Waters of Consent.

Do you ever find yourself in muddy or murky situations when it comes to consent? I'm not talking about big transgressions where there are serious examples of exploitation, bulldozing, martyrdom, or enduring... I'm talking about the hazy moments that show up in daily life where something's not quite feeling right.

• Perhaps you've assumed a willingness that may or may not actaully be there.

• Perhaps you're not saying no... and not saying yes either.

• Or you're saying yes when you don't mean it.

• Perhaps you're not quite willing to do something... but haven't said no.

• Or you've stayed silent.

• Perhaps you've assumed or coerced consent.

I've been on both sides of all of these dynamics many times. As have many of my clients, friends, family, and lovers.

Consent and power is a real and impactful part of our lives. Choosing to explore these topics can be a powerful way to heal and gain clarity. Not only about our own lives, pasts, and choices, but also about the cultural and systemic contexts we find ourselves in. And, as we choose to strengthen our connection with our rights & responsibilities, our ability to connect with ourselves and with others deepens.

Pleasure Your Gender!

We experience gender so many ways - through our fantasies, the clothing that we wear, the way that we present (and possibly alter) our bodies, our personalities, how we have sex with ourselves or others, how we create, play, storytell… and oh so much more.

I like to think of gender as the ‘art and storytelling of the soul’.

Sometimes we might find ourselves on autopilot with our genders. Perhaps because we’ve never given gender much thought, or perhaps we *have* but still find ourselves in a rut with how we understand and connect with our sense of self.

So! How might we take some time to pleasure and explore our gender(s)? Here are some ideas!:

• borrow differently gendered clothing from friends, family, and lovers and scatter them around a quiet private space. Take 20 minutes to slowly explore them (textures, colours, fit, how they make you feel), trying on whatever catches your curiosity.

• go to a public place and people watch: how are people gendering themselves? What would you like to try out, and what is juicy to enjoy about other people’s genders?

• choose some porn, erotica, or other sexy content that has differently gendered folks in it, and lean into fantasies and a variety of differently gendered experiences - what shows up when you explore these fantasies in different ways?

• try a sport, art form, or other skill that brings out different energies or qualities of yourself: what’s pleasurable about this different type of embodiment?

Remember!

Gender is a galaxy, and there is no rule saying you have to stay on one planet! What would happen if you embraced an inner explorer (at the pace that feels right for you!) and visited other planets - perhaps in your imagination, or for a quick stop, or for a longer and luxurious visit?

You’re at choice with your gender adventures! Some ways we like to embody our genders might be just for ourselves, or only shared with a select few people. Other ways we enjoy our genders might be *only* when *everyone* gets to see! And everything in between!

You can change your mind! Have you realized there’s a gender within yourself that doesn’t align with the way you’ve understood your gender to date? How fun! What are some ways to let this new part of you get some pleasure, joy, and time to shine?

Our genders are an important quality of what makes each of us feel seen, delicious, connected, and powerful. It’s worth taking the time to give your gender some TLC and pleasure!

Wanting Sex or Enjoying Sex?

Would you rather want to *want* more sex, or *enjoy* sex more?

Our culture is centred around the idea of ‘spontaneous desire’ - the kind of desire that hits like a lightning bolt, full of need and drive.

While sometimes this type of desire may show up, or for some of us may be the primary way we feel desire, it’s not the whole story.

Another important pathway to pleasure is through ‘responsive desire’ - this is the kind of desire where something juicy starts happening and *then* feelings of pleasure and enjoyment arrive.

Often when we’re feeling the effects of low libido or disinterest in sex the ‘solution’ feels like trying to make more spontaneous desire happen (which is hella hard/impossible).

One other really great (and much more achievable) path towards expanding feelings of arousal is by creating the context for responsive desire to arrive.

This is all about amplifying turn-ons (and I mean this word reaaaallly broadly) and addressing turn-offs.

Within somatic sex education we practice the tools and skills to expand pleasure, openness, and create more *context* to erotically enliven and follow pleasure, while also addressing the things that limit our feelings of arousal.

A big thank you to Emily Nagoski for these learnings.

Healing Landscapes.

I just got off the phone with a dear friend who lives in Hamilton Ontario. During our conversation I shared that I find Hamilton to be quite a deeply healing and special place. Playfully she asked to learn more, since that is not a common reputation for a city more likely to be personified as a working class steel town that’s down on its luck (while simultaneously becoming the newest suburb of Toronto).

Back in 2019 I had an unexpected and transformative somatic experience of sexual healing while visiting BC. It wasn’t something I was planning, however, it was something that profoundly informed my being, and massively shifted my self perception, desires, and values. When I went back to my life in Ontario, I found myself destabilized and without resources and community to help me make sense of what had happened in my life.

I began fervently seeking folks who might support me in my journey. Surprisingly, they were in Hamilton. My felt sense of that city became one of an oasis - one where folks without pomp or pretence but with aligned and embodied values were living and offering their gifts. Hamilton was a place where I could visit my learning  and healing edge while being a very messy version of me. It was where I began learning about somatics, where I received the beginnings of my own work in somatic sexual healing work, and where I began to build new scaffolding for my soul.

Oftentimes there might be an idea of healing spaces and people as being ‘extra ordinary’ - of hermits living in cabins in the woods, or mystics living overseas: people and journeys that transcend the banalities and disappointments of daily life. However, as I sit with what has truly mattered and what has truly made a difference for me, it was imperfect and ordinary people in imperfect and ordinary places. I’m really appreciating the deep reminding that healing happens where we are, with those we find ourselves in community with, and in the ways that work with the gifts and challenges of the realities of life.

Counternormative Erotic Principles.

This is an article that was recently published by my mentor, colleague, and friend Caffyn Jesse. It spoke deeply to me and powerfully illustrated many of the guiding principles and values that inform my work as a Somatic Sex Educator:

This is another reflection on what principles might distinguish my approach from those you might find with other teachers of eros and intimacy. In all my ways of work and play, I want to trouble normal and embrace the counternormative. 

When people arrive at the studio of an intimacy educator, they are often driven by the question, “How can I become more normal?” The Diagnosic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders offers an overwhelming list of s*xual pathologies, ranging from Hypoactive S*xual Desire Disorder to a variety of Hypersexual Disorders. There is even a Non-Normative Paraphilic Disorder ever-ready to pathologize anyone who longs for something outside the box. 

I see all our so-called pathologies as creative adaptations. They save our souls; they simultaneously have enormous costs. I want to invite each person I work or play with into a counternormative framework, where the inquiry can gently shift to one of “How can I become more fully me?”

Standard s*x therapy works towards normalization. Consider unintentional ejaculation – a common problem. Desensitizing creams, dissociative techniques, medications and exercises are focused on getting the person with the so-called problem to better approximate an ideal norm of PIV intercourse. Two minutes of penetrative s*x is considered a cure. Taking normalization out of the picture, we can focus on building capacity for expanded pleasure through body-based exercises and experiences. We can create counter-normative erotic space where ejaculation is welcomed and celebrated without signaling the end of a s*xual experience, and where s*xual experiences can include a wide range of physical and emotional pleasures that do not depend on having a hard c*ck. Ending unintended ejaculation is a welcome effect of this approach, but the creation of counternormative understandings is its foundation.

Common presenting issues in the realm of intimacy education include painful intercourse, low desire and anorgasmia. Often a client’s reach for healing and well-being is framed as a desire to normalize s*xual behavior and s*xual response. But all these “dysfunctions” fall away in the counternormative framework of erotic culture that celebrates non-penetrative options for erotic expression, solo s*x, erotic interactions without the orgasm imperative, and the choice to not be s*xual at all. When we don’t make our bodies' choices into dysfunctions, we get space to listen, tease, please and engage in respectful dialogue.

Whether someone is healing s*xual trauma, mending a couple relationship, exploring identity or navigating a gender transition, we can support each person on their journey to healing and well-being with a critical framework that challenges the biases, suffocating paradigms and structural inequalities held in ideal norms. We inherit a culture that specifies an ideal norm for gender, body size, s*xual expression and relationship structure, and we embody the daily and lifelong challenges of either conformity to or deviation from ideal norms. By looking critically at the regime of normal, and grounding our work and play in counternormative culture, we can offer people joyous and creative alternatives to normalization, including self-acceptance and the celebration of diversity. With a counternormative perspective, we can see that ideal norms do not emerge naturally. Our practices, identities and relationships unfold in an environment that punishes and pathologizes certain ways of being, while rewarding others. Normal is a social location that is continually produced and policed. 

Contributing to counternormative culture and dwelling in counternormative community, we co-create a crucible in which we can go on becoming truer, wilder, evermore deeply erotic versions of ourselves. When my attention is not focused on values that cluster around an average, I can better see what is rare, and find it precious. There are aspects of me and you that are unique, and no one else will do. There are extraordinary moments of life and death in which different elements interact in the creation of something new. That is the great holy wild I want for us. Those are the otherwise-unknowable ecstasies.

My Journey With Erotic Ritual.

Erotic rituals have transformed my life, and I have seen the sacred cauldron of erotic ritual transform the lives of so many others.

I began studying and working in the realm of the erotic in 2006. I loved the work I was doing, and I was good at it. I worked as a sex educator supporting folks as they learnt about how to have better sex. It was very rewarding work. I worked with people from all sorts of different life experiences, and, it was a real joy learning about the sex they were having and how to best support them in having more of the sex they longed for.

One day I met someone who offered erotic rituals, and, it piqued my interest. I decided to not think about it too much and dove into a session. And, that session was the beginning of profound spiritual and sensual embodied change for me. While in that session I was guided in how to be with my body and pleasure, and how to express my erotic energy. I felt deeply held as the complex erotic being I was. I felt my body ignite.

I couldn’t go back after that. I wanted more. This led me into a beautiful chapter of travel and adventure, where I sought out and learnt from erotic ritualists, masseuses, tantrikas, dominants, sex workers - travelling the globe in my quest. I wanted to immerse my soul in the magic that I was experiencing. I wanted to understand the science behind it. The transformative neuroscience, biology, chemistry, and spirituality of trauma recovery, sexual healing, tantra, and erotic ritual work enraptured me. This was a new realm - one of communing with the pleasures of my body and wider world in a deeply intimate way. It was a soul awakening experience.

After such a transformative journey along the winding path of reclaiming my erotic joy, it only made sense that I would become a sacred intimate - a bringer of erotic joy - for others. I have offered erotic rituals across Canada and Europe, plus to journeyers from Spain, Brazil, Lebanon, Romania, South Africa, Iran, the USA, and many more beautiful places on this planet. I have savoured every single opportunity to drop into transformative exploration with others. I treasure being an erotic ritualist and guide for those who are wishing to deepen into the erotic and immerse themselves in the pleasurable delights of ecstasy. I treasure being an educator for those who wish to practice expanding their pleasure using the sacred gifts of breath, sound, movement, touch, and imagination. And a companion for those who wish to be exquisitely held and cared for as they tend to their erotic wounds and fall back in love with life.

Connecting with bliss is a journey. Listening to our erotic souls is a skill. Communing with the Divine is a process. It’s rare to be taught these practices, yet make no mistake - they are learnable. Having travelled the path of manifesting a deeply erotic life, I delight in being in service to you and your manifestation journey.

That is why I am here.

Why Explore Healing Erotic Bodywork?

Living in this sex negative culture, we have all experienced some form of sexual trauma. We’ve been circumcised, diapered, spanked, shamed for exploring our genitals, taught to conceal our sexual urges. We’ve been programmed into narrow gendered personas that aren’t who we authentically are, and bullied when we don’t adhere to that programming. We’ve experienced unwanted sexual advancements, abuses, and assaults. We’ve experienced sexual stereotyping and violence based on our race, gender, ability, age, class. We’ve been denied access to money, housing, food, love, respect, and care if we are not compliant with the sexual expectations made of us, or, if we are deemed sexually undesirable.

While sex therapy and sex coaching exist, the magic of exploring trauma healing in organic containers that include the potential for chosen and client led erotic touch and play is that these containers include the *whole* body. The *erotic* body. The exact parts of ourselves that have been the sites of battles and wounding.

This welcoming and holding of the whole self is a sacred and deeply healing experience that cultivates lasting change. Further, it is needed. It is critical to explore trauma at it’s source - the body. We will never think or talk our way out of trauma. Trauma lives in the body, and we must meet it in the body.

Trauma Healing Is Spiritual Work.

First, a caveat: spiritual healing and growth is in the eye of the beholder. If you resist or reject the premise of having a spiritual landscape, that’s awesome! If you are in process with your own relationship with spirit and healing, read on!

When we are living with the impacts of unresolved traumatic stress in our lives, this affects our ability to navigate daily life with grace. The manifestations of traumatic stress are very individualized - maybe manifesting as chronic activation and anxiety. Or as despair and lethargy. Often as some blend of the both.

Traumatic stress usually comes about from a rupture in the relational matrix - perhaps because of a shocking experience. Perhaps because of a lack of social and systemic supports. Perhaps because of bias and bigotry. Perhaps because of childhood neglect and mistreatment. Perhaps from the literal rupturing of the boundaries of bodies and skin.

Trauma recovery is a winding path of repairing these ruptures. It’s not a one-size-fits-all journey. Often there are trends and overlap, yes, however, *your* trauma recovery journey and *my* trauma recovery journey are two very different journeys.

Certainly a key quality of trauma recovery is the welcoming home of our fractured parts and experiences. And, as we integrate, opportunity arises to notice and attend to deeper feelings of fracturing and isolation that might exist that sever ourselves as individuals from the larger relational matrix of humanity and the beyond-human-world. 

This experience of noticing and choosing to weave ourselves into the larger web of relationship is a slow and spiritual process. For myself, I’ve discovered that the landscape of the erotic is a powerful landscape within which to practice this weaving.

We can practice cultivating erotic feeling and energy (an abundant internal resource) to manifest states of excitement, bliss, connection, and creativity. Through practice we expand our capacity to feel ourselves and our aliveness more deeply. Perhaps as individuals, and, as we practice, perhaps as part of a larger web of abundant and vibrant life.

Spiritual journeying is a quality I never expected to find myself exploring in professional practice, however, having an erotic spiritual practice has become a constant companion that has made all the difference for me.

Your Pleasure Is Dangerous.

In this world is there anything more dangerous than a person that has realized that they control the means of their own pleasure production, and that pleasure is an abundant renewable resource?

Is there anything more dangerous than a person who has discovered that 'resisting temptation' is a strategy that has been taught to maintain the paradigms of colonial and capitalist and white supremacist control?

Is there anything more dangerous than a person that has learned how to cultivate and follow bliss, excitement, pleasure, and connection based off their own internal truths and wisdom, as opposed to listen to external sex negative culture?

Is there anything more dangerous than practicing exploring the tools of our bodies - our breath, sound, movement, touch, and imagination - to cultivate greater and greater erotic aliveness?

Is there anything more dangerous than pleasured bodies radiating that pleasure-full erotic aliveness into the wider world? Is there anything more threatening to current systems of power and control than speaking and acting from a place of embodied pleasure and wisdom?

Don’t underestimate the power and wisdom and truths that that are available to you through cultivating your pleasure.