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As a 36 year old mother of 5, I haven’t always been in a place where I embraced pleasure. For years I felt shame in my body and enjoyed sex but thought it was more for the other than it was for me.

No one had ever told me that sex could be just as much about me and my pleasure as it was about my partner’s. Even though it felt good, I was ashamed of that and held back parts of myself so as to not go too far with it. I didn’t think that I deserved it.

Three years ago however, something really started to change for me. My body woke up and I began to feel alive. I paid more attention to my physical self, was more aware of the food I ate, and sought out ways to build my strength. My sexual desires became a prominent part of my everyday life. Desires from the root of myself. I paid attention to these desires, but didn’t really know what to do with them. So, I decided to look inward. I started by taking an honest look at myself, my beliefs and values around sex, intimacy, desire, shame, pleasure and my body. Where did these beliefs and ideas come from and why did they hold me? Why did I still hold them? What purpose did they serve? What was true for me and why was it true for me? Was there another way of seeing things? What beliefs and behaviours would support me being a fully alive, sexually empowered human being?

I found the answers in my childhood, my sexual history, by examining our culture and its encouragement of women to look sexual but be virginal, and in my deepest desire for authenticity and wholeness. I had been through no sexual trauma and yet there I was afraid to show this side of myself for fear that it would be too much. Where were the positive, sexually empowered, female role models in our society? Who could I look to for support? Well, it turned out that they were out there. I read many books and felt comfort in the words of women (and a few men) who had felt these same feelings as I was.

“It is my strong belief that people need to travel deep within themselves to find the place where their sexuality lies.”
– Marty Klien

I also began to get acquainted with my body through touch. I had been an attachment parenting leader for several years and had encouraged parents to lovingly touch their children. I knew the benefits of touch and how it enhances the growth of a person on all levels. On reflection, I realized that I had never touched myself in that way. I didn’t even know my own body. I knew about release and orgasm, but when had I ever touched myself like I would touch a lover? So, I began to do just that. I touched myself and I learnt that:

“There isn’t any body part that can’t be erotically charged. As you read this, somebody somewhere is making love with his or her elbow, knee, foot, hair, breath. There are no sexual parts of the body, there’s just one body. There’s erotic energy. The first experiences and expresses the second. If there is an exception to this, it’s the clitoris – the only organ in the human body with absolutely no purpose other than pleasure.” – Marty Klien

With this touch, I got to know my body. I discovered where I held shame and where I held pleasure. I felt my stories pass through my fingertips as I became acquainted with myself on a level that hadn’t existed before. It was authentic and true and there was absolutely no barrier between my body and my touch. As Julie McIntyre explains in her book Sex and the Intelligence of the Heart

“Intimacy comes from the Latin word intimus meaning “innermost.” To be intimate with another, we first must become intimate with ourselves.”

I was discovering this intimacy with each stroke on my skin. As I traveled the distance of my body with my hands, I explored new ways to pleasure myself. My sexual awakening began with myself and I fell in love. In love with the body that carried 4 of my 5 babies. In love with the young girl that I once was and the woman that I longed to become. In love with the scars, the stretch marks, the muscle and the lines that held my stories. Acceptance of this body came later as I discovered bodysex and attended my first workshop, but love of myself came from my own touch.

It is with this in mind, that I have designed a workshop called “The Art Of Self Loving.” Through this practice of getting to know my body and how it responds to pleasure, as well as from the teachings of sex educator’s Betty Dodson and Carlin Ross, (http://dodsonandross.com) I designed this. It is my great hope that all the women in the world learn to love themselves with the passion and desire that they love or hope to love another. With this, we can embrace pleasure, enhance our orgasmic potential and bring aliveness into all parts of our life. Stay tuned for workshop details over the next couple of days.

love and orgasm,
Natasha