The soul of sensuality - awakening the beauty within through pleasure and presence

Most of us do not enjoy sitting with uncomfortable feelings, we tend to try and escape them. At midlife, many of us experience a lot of discomfort because a lot of our old patterns and habits that no longer serve us, come into the forefront to be dealt with and healed. The body has such a unique capacity for healing and as we age and grow through our life stages, it gives us many opportunities to heal our childhood adaptive strategies to come home to our core self.

Midlife is huge transition for most people. As our bodies start to age and we enter perimenopause, things start to shift and what once worked for us no longer works. Whether it is the way we exercise, what we eat, our arousal patterns, our behavioural coping strategies, everything seems to be thrown up in the air. What most people report is a sense of confusion and betrayal by their body.

More than ever, as you enter this stage, you need to learn how to meet and be present with the feelings and emotions you are experiencing and give space for them to be expressed. This can be challenging, particularly when many people grew up in environments where they were not able to express their emotions, so their management strategies are all about repressing and squashing down said emotions.

Our sensuality, can be a beautiful bridge of support for you to connect with your pleasure, and that pleasure can be wonderfully supportive in regulating your nervous system (which drives you behavioural responses), restoring trust in your body and repairing any past wounding around sexuality.

Artist unknown

In fact, reclaiming your sensuality can be one of the most supportive practices you can use to reconnect your body and restore a sense of awe, reverence and wonder for it. Sensuality is about being alive and present to your senses - taste, smell, touch/feeling, sight and hearing. This makes it a safe and accessible starting point for women feeling disconnected from their body. And yes, it is also a doorway to your sexuality because sensual practices are like portals to embodiment and presence, which naturally open the door to pleasure and the body feeling safe again.

When we are able to connect with pleasure and what feels safe inside our body, we lay the foundations for deeper sexual awakening and expression, because sensuality practices can be a rehearsal space for women to explore their bodies and remember and/or learn what feel good without any pressure.

For many people sexuality can be extremely complicated. It carries the weight of cultural conditioning, expectation and often pain. Before we dive deep into exploring our sexuality, which can feel like an enormous burden, sensuality offers us a gentler path.

Sensuality is the art and practice of being alive to our senses. Its the visual feast of the mountains, streams and lakes, the taste of ripe fruit of your tongue, the feeling of the sun on your face, the texture of silk against your skin and the smell of your favourite meal. Unlike sexuality, their is no overhanging expectation of performance, outcomes or anyone else’s involvement. It is quite simply, you and your body in deep connection.

Through our sensual practices we return to our body as home. We learn to connect with our body again and trust it one small breath at a time, one sensation at a time. When we learn and connect with what feels safe and pleasurable within us, the doorway to our sexuality can open naturally without any force or agendas. Sensuality becomes the practice to connect with ourselves and experience intimacy; with ourselves, with life and when we are ready, with another.

A huge part of trauma healing work I do through somatic experiencing is about connecting people with their sensuality through the use of the language of the Felt Sense. Sensuality practices are not just physical practices they open, through the ability to focus on our internal experience, our felt sense which is the language of our nervous system.

When we use this approach, we bypass the logical mind which often drives many women to approach pleasure practices with an underpinning drive of shame (I should be able to do this). The nervous system doesn’t shift through thinking so we can’t think ourselves to safety. When we use the language of the felt sense we drop into sensation; the warmth of my belly, the softening of my jaw. We bypass corticol control and connect with the truth of the body.

Each time we feel, notice and observe or savour we are witnessing our bodies story instead of ignoring it or overriding it. This transforms sensuality into not just a pleasure practice but also to deep belonging, to oneself and to life.

How do we practice the felt sense of sensuality?

Notice one sensation - maybe the warmth of your hands, or tingles in your feet. Stay with it, without judgement. Notice what happens in your body.

What are some simple sensual practices you can try?

• Applying oil or moisturiser to your skin, slowly and intentionally,

• Pausing to smell flowers in a garden and noticing when you smell that flower, how you feel,

• Moving your body to music in a free flowing way - not following a dance routine or sequence,

• Savouring the smells and tastes of healthy food,

• Laying still and gently placing one hand on your womb and one on your heart, noticing your breath and feeling warmth expand in your body.

Sensuality is not an indulgence, it is a remembering. Pleasure is our birthright, our bodies are designed brilliantly to feel, to savour, to awaken. Our sensuality is a pathway to our personal agency and power, not through striving and pushing ourselves but through softening and slowing down, to being present to each day of our life, moment by moment.

If you would like to practice some feminine embodiment practice, I have a complimentary mini course on my website that may be supportive of your sensual learning.

Are you a highly sensitive person? I am, here is how I turned it into my superpower

Are you a highly sensitive person? I am too. For those of us who are highly sensitive people (HSP) we pick up on everything that goes on around us. This can be great, people think we have extra sensory powers. It always made me a very good judge of character and I often felt I was able to feel what the other person was feeling. Turns out, I could, my body resonance is very good and I learned all of this through years of somatic coaching and somatic experiencing practitioner training. It helped me enormously when I worked in the corporate world in executive development roles because I was really good at spotting people’s talents and working through with them how they can continue to grow and learn and what work and life experiences would help them to do that.

So I am really good with my sensory experiences, very attuned to environments and very nuanced changes in them, I pick up minute details in people especially emotional and energetic changes. I am super aware of light, dark, electricity, climatic change.

Where does it become hard for HSPs?

I found the big differences for myself and for other HSPs I have worked with is whether the nervous system is regulated or not. That is, our ability to move into the different autonomic responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn) and then soothe ourselves and come back to our window of tolerance where we feel curious, connected and safe. Sensitivity is a gift when you are well regulated, it is your superpower. When you are aware of everything around you and don’t perceive it as danger, you can have a very deep connection with the world you live in.

Where is becomes a problem is when your nervous system is dysregulated. We can be stuck in survival mode. When you are stuck in survival and you are an HSP, you can find it really difficult to stay present and grounded. Everything in your environment can feel like a threat, you can become constantly anxious, overwhelmed, have panic attacks. It is not fun.

So how do we become an HSP?

It starts when we are young. Even as early as when we are in utero, yes inside Mum’s tummy. When babies are born they don’t have the capacity to regulate and self soothe. We do that as parents, mostly through touch. We soothe babies through touch, rocking, our voice. Brand new babies are super sensitive to the new world and they will startle and cry over any sound or cause of confusion to them. New babies are sensitive to new sensory experiences and to their parents. It is our job as parents to co-regulate their nervous system and this continues for the rest of their childhood. If a baby has had healthy co-regulation from an adult who can self regulate, at about 11 months old they will start being able to soothe themselves a little. The first three years of our little lives are super pivotal in the development of this capacity. What can cause us to become dysregulated is early trauma, it can start at conception.

We can experience stress in utero if our mother is stressed. My parents were in a motor vehicle accident when my mother was five months pregnant with me and one of the earliest experiences I had in my somatic healing was, we think, (me and my therapist) this experience that came up in a somatic experiencing session. It is hard to put to words because we have no explicit memory the first 3 years but we remember sensation in our body.

Stress in utero can prime a baby to be living in high stress when they come out into the world. Other experiences we might have that cause us to be in this state is if we grew up in a family where mum and dad fought a lot. We become masters at anticipating what our parents are feeling in order to defend ourselves. We become hyper-vigilant to the mood of the adults in the house. We become attuned to energy, emotions, physiology of others and in these survival states this may drive behaviour where we are very introverted or shy or just feeling like we can’t be ourselves. I also think some kids can experience this at school either with a teacher or other kids and become in this hyper aware state.

Also medical experiences or sickness we experience as a little person. If we had to have surgery or spend a longer period of time in hospital our little nervous system can become super overwhelmed and can struggle to understand what is safe and what is not safe. Over time if we have a few of these experiences we can shutdown to our feelings and emotions. This is our nervous systems way of coping.

The impact of experiencing all of this dysregulation over time, is that our nervous system can go into shutdown, this is the dorsal vagal state of the parasympathetic nervous system. When untreated this can lower our metabolism, energy and immune function. There is a lot of evidence that early and developmental trauma has a significant impact on health outcomes as an adult. Look up the ACEs study if you are curious, this has all the info in it.

Other kids might not shutdown they just might become hyper-attuned to their environment, these are our highly sensitive people. Their system is revving on high and they perceive everything as a threat, they don’t ever really feel safe.

Experiencing that co-regulation from caregivers when we are young is super key in teaching children to self-soothe and bring themselves back into presence and calm. If their caregivers were dysregulated because their nervous system never learned this, we end up with early developmental trauma.

A little passage from rumi or hafiz

If you identify as sensitive, whether you are introverted, extroverted or somewhere else in between, your sensitivity is a foundation.

Sensitivity is so wonderful, yet so fragile and misunderstood. We spend so much of our lives resenting it, fighting it, trying to smother it down, instead of nourishing it.

Sensitivity is often labeled as a weakness but in reality it cultivates a strength most people don't ever experience.

Sensitive people used to feel more so they can often simply handle more, when push comes to the shove.

The good news is that we can work with this. There are many somatic modalities, like somatic experiencing, neuro affective touch, neuro affective relational model, sensory motor psychotherapy which all support nervous system healing. It is never too late to learn, to heal your nervous system. When you do this nervous system healing work, your HSP gifts turn into your super power because you use them from a more grounded place. You are aware of your environment and you can witness your own experience on the inside and be with both at the same time. You can experience the world in technicolor and bring yourself back to calm, centred and grounded.

Come talk to me if you would like to explore healing your nervous sytem.

Pleasure: how it nourishes us, resources us and helps us to grow

Pleasure is your birthright. When I say that, when you read it, what do you notice in your body?

Pleasure is certainly a word that sets a lot of us off and that is because of the stigma of cultural shame that we hold in our body around it first and foremost. Our body has orientations toward pleasure and pain. Pleasure is opening and expansion and pain is constriction and a move away from energy. Pain tells us when something is not safe and our nervous system moves us into action to take us away from it. Maybe we’ve also had personal experiences of when we overdosed on something we felt was pleasurable and things haven’t turned out well. That is one way to stop our nervous system from letting us feel free to fell it.

Humans are incredibly sensuous beings and our senses are how we experience the world through our five senses of smell, taste, smell, sight and touch/feeling. We experience pleasure through these sensory experiences. When we are consciously doing this we are building new neural pathways for our body to feel this expansive energy. We need to do this in small doses, like microdoses, otherwise that nervous system kicks in, says I’m not enjoying this, or this is too much and that shame reaction comes back.

Let’s just talk about shame for a minute. There is a relational component to shame. It’s usually something like this, “That person made me feel ashamed by saying/doing……. “. People definitely use shame as a weapon, and shame definitely been used to stop us feeling and embracing our bodies need to feel pleasure. It’s been used to take away autonomy and choice without a doubt.

But shame occurs when there is a part of us that agrees with the other. There is some part of you and me that agrees with the shaming idea/assertion/concept and then we feel shamed. The shame that is living there in the unconscious, actually agrees with what the other is saying or their perception and ideas of you. The person might be actually saying the thing that we have always feared is actually wrong with us and now it must be true because they’ve said it.

What this shame tells us is that we are seeking external validation to tell us we are ‘good person’ and that there is a part of us thinking what they are thinking. It wouldn’t bother us if that part wasn’t there feeling the shame.

When we realise this it is liberating because we know that anyone can say anything to us and we don’t have to feel shame.

When we are children we don’t really have the life experience and inquiry skills to look at it this way. To do the self inquiry and perspective seeking work. We rely on our parents and caregivers to support our nervous system through co-regulation and to give us information about ourselves, our behaviour. What is ok and not ok, help us with our boundaries.

When we don’t get that support as kids, we tend to continue to look for external validation from others into our adult life. It would be silly of us to expect children and traumatised nervous systems to not feel shame.

So back to pleasure. That cultural conditioning that said you are a bad person if you feel pleasure, well a lot of it comes from religion and came in times of austerity when the cultural austerity came in to curb the excess of hedonism. The pendulum of culturally acceptable behaviour swang really hared the other way. Those Romans they were hedonists. The French revolution came about after years of hedonism and sensually gratuitous behaviour by the French Royal court. Kind of makes sense, but the pendulum swang too far and here we are a couple of hundred years later disconnected from our bodies because we don’t feel safe to feel pleasure.

This is why sensual pleasure is a good start and starting small is a good way because that small dose of it will feel safe in your nervous system, and that part of you that feels shame, it won’t go into overwhelm. Our sensory experiences help us connect to our bodies, they are the language of the nervous system. So by starting small we build and strengthen the nervous system. Our autonomic nervous system is beautiful and it is always working really hard to keep us safe and to regulate us. Small doses, titrate it for us. We have to practice. It takes devotion too. We have to commit to letting ourselves feel pleasure every day and the best way to do it is by starting off your day with pleasure. Our body will fight us, there will be resistance. “I’m too busy, I have work to do'“. Flight response. “I feel like I don’t deserve to feel pleasure it feels terrible putting myself first’. Flight and freeze working together. “I’m too tired to do it”, that is collapse.

Pleasure is the counter vortex. It builds that alternative neural pathway to the vortex of trauma. This is how it resources us.

So what are some pleasurable activities that are healthy choices.

• Singing, Chanting or Dancing

• Using our breath; doing breathwork or breathing exercises

• Movement, exercise, walking in nature.

• Eating nutrious food and really being present to the taste of it

• Surfing, skiing, rollerblading - they take a lot of concentration and ask of us to be truly present in the moment with our body.

• Going to an art gallery and admiring the art

• Listening to music or creating music

• Sexual self-pleasure is very nourishing and supportive

This helps us in everyday life and it helps us in the bedroom. When we know what we like we can talk to our partner about it. We can ask for what we want.

What about the pleasure we might feel from coffee, drinking alcohol and taking recreational drugs?

Well you might feel good but actually we take them to avoid, to not feel and to soothe most of the time. So coffee is great but it stimulates adrenaline in our body which creates that fight and flight energy. So if we are taking it because we are tired and need more energy, we are ignoring our bodies boundary and its message that we you need to stop and rest. Alcohol is a downer and generally distracts us from feeling. Or for some people they can only express themselves and find a voice when they are drunk which is still avoidance. Recreational drugs, the stimulus response depends on the drug, but they are a tool of avoidance from being present in the moment, to wanting to feel.

Addicted to the pleasure of shopping, that high from buying stuff? This is a little hit of external validation that elevates us to help us feeling a sense of belonging but its a super quick hit and we often feel empty afterward. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with shopping per say and personally I love a good spot of window shopping and looking at clothes, but when you use it as a distraction to make yourself feel good, to not feel the ‘difficult’ emotions, or can’t stop your online shopping, that is a problem.

Finally, pleasure, how does it help us grow?

Well when we build up our capacity to receive it in our nervous system, we build up our capacity to feel more expansive energy. This is an open and vulnerable energy, we can only grow from this position. We cannot grow from constriction and shutdown, from invulnerability. We are not open to other perspectives in this state, we rarely inquire, we cannot listen to another person’s point of view and we certainly find it hard to let ourselves feel bigger emotions. We are in disconnect.

As always if you like this post, feel free to share it with someone for whom you feel it might be valuable.