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Valentine’s Day is a holiday that celebrates romantic love. It is a day for lovers. So this Valentine’s give yourself a treat and start early to remind yourself that you are a sensual creature. One of the most powerful things you can do to do this is to bring your attention home to yourself and to your own bodily senses. This can be counterintuitive in this busy world of ours, where our attention is pulled to the next crazy headline, or the next problem to be solved. Yet moving our attention is a power we have, and when you move it to your own body and to what you are physically or energetically sensing you can create valentine magic. 

In our world of seeing faces over Zoom, or across café tables, we forget about our own power center, or the place where ‘chi’ abides, as martial arts call it. We put our attention elsewhere. That does not help us when we go into the bedroom and somehow can’t get our attention on ourselves and our genitals.

 Who reminds you that you are a sensual being? Who lets you know that your body is not just a tool to get tasks accomplished, but is a source of pleasure? Your partner may remind you, with touches or words, what this holiday celebrates. That can happen in an instant with the right contact. That right touch can instantly rally your awareness to your skin or your vagina. Yet if our attention isn’t where the touch is, or if the touch isn’t compelling enough to get us there, we won’t succeed in getting turned on. Disappointment or frustration sets in. It doesn’t have to be all on your partner to get you there. You can independently get yourself cued up to remember this lovely capacity to feel pleasure. 

Who reminds you that you are a sensual being? Who lets you know that your body is not just a tool to get tasks accomplished, but is a source of pleasure?

To do this tune into what you feel, not what you think, or what you are planning. Feeling can feel like a letting go and a dropping in and down. Your circling thoughts quiet down. You may feel less ‘smart’ but you will feel more ‘you’. You then register your skin sensations, register your breathe going in and out, and for this holiday in particular I would drop your attention into your pelvis and register what it is feeling.  

The female pelvis is so central to the world that it should have its own holiday, probably named after a female, rather than St.Valentine. Until then I personally celebrate the female pelvis on Valentine’s Day. So let’s get ready for an erotic time on Valentine’s Day, a day where touch can take you to new states of being, ones that can feel delicious. Here are three steps to get your awareness more in your pelvis. Between now and next Monday the 14th, try these three things every day:

1.Greet your pelvis during the day by doing a subtle pelvic tilt. This can be done so subtly that no one around you notices. A pelvic tilt is when your pubic bone tilts up as if it wants to go towards your nose. Your lower back will move back when this happens. Repeat it five or six times each time you do it, and do it five to ten times per day. When you scoop the pubic bone up you activate your abs, and your body awareness drops down. There is a link to a video that shows a pelvic tilt when lying down, click on ‘pelvic tilt’ above. You can adapt that motion to standing or sitting. If you move half as much as the video shows you will still get your awareness to drop. 

2.Right before you enter a room or a new Zoom meeting let your awareness settle into your pelvis. To do this move your awareness down from your thoughts or down from the level of your head into your pelvis. You can do a few pelvic tilts to help descend. When you feel it drop down – then enter the room. In your mind’s eye let your pelvis walk into the room first before your thoughts and mind enter.  

3. During the day, when you go out to eat or prepare a meal, ask your pelvis what she wants to order or make. Listen for the answer. Even if you don’t get an answer, be curious. It isn’t the answer that is important, it is the placing of our awareness there that is the key. 

Your body center is also a place where unfelt feelings get layered in. When your awareness moves in to feel sexual pleasure it can also feel the other things stored there. It can be hard to feel pleasure if you have to first feel how pissed off you are, or feel the disappointment of not being seen or heard by the one you love. Naming the feelings and feeling them fully is a ticket to them being released.

In my experience working in the energetics of relationships, particularly my training in Sente Energetics, unexpressed feelings in body center get in the way of being available to what the moment is offering. One doesn’t have to necessarily fix a problem around the feelings for the past feeling to be felt and released. Name the feeling and give yourself space to feel it fully. Is it resentment? Feel it, even if it is toward your partner, the one you will spend Valentine’s with. Feel it fully. Don’t be afraid to go into it.  

If you do have a cringe about inhabiting your pelvis with your awareness, proceed gently and be tender with yourself as you explore. If you have had physical or sexual trauma, and the feelings that come up are too big or overwhelming, then inhabiting your pelvis can be a bigger project and one you may want a therapist to be with you as you explore. For many women keeping attention up with our thoughts is a habit, robustly supported by our culture. You will find you can change this habit with practice. Not only will you feel more personally aligned, you will have more fun, and have the potential for more profound states of being during sex.   

PS: And on Valentine’s Day as you move into whatever sexual or sensual encounter you may have, let go of your identities that get in the way of pleasure. You want to let go of the capable you. The one that get things done quickly. Let go of the mother you. Let go of the do-er you, no matter how effective that do-er is. Let go of the responsible you. Let yourself enter a space where time does not exist. Relate to the lover in you. The one who loves to touch skin and feel warmth. The one who is excited to be turned on. 

We arrived in bed, arms around each other and legs entangled. I was thinking about sex and thinking we would make love. My husband then said something, in an almost lamenting voice, asking why he was the one that always initiated sex. His voice wasn’t a total whine, and maybe not even a whine, but it was definitely a lament.

I was taken aback by it. He had never voiced that before, ever once in 20 years, and it startled me. I knew this to be an almost universal complaint of men, at least stereotypically, and it had never applied to me. And on top of that I thought it just wasn’t true. I could remember the last two weeks and the three times we had had sex; I had been the one that initiated things each time. I had given him an inviting wink, or an extra-long suggestive kiss. In that moment I was truly confident that it had been me that started things the last few times, and indignant that he was saying he always did.

I started to protest. To point out why this was untrue. I began to recount the details that would counter his conclusion. He wasn’t always the one that initiated it – ‘let’s set the record straight.’ 

As my mouth started the protest, my mind skimmed forward to what would or could unfold in the next ten minutes. There would be a back-and-forth discussion of what each of us thought had happened. I would listen to him, and he would listen to me. Chances are we would actually hear each other. There was a small chance we would be triggered and emotions flare, but probably not. It wasn’t a horrible way to spend ten minutes, but it wasn’t what I wanted. At the end it looked like we had understanding, but there wasn’t much juice in that view. We certainly weren’t having sex. Going that route looked flat to me in comparison to where I’d wanted to go. 

The aha came to me in a flash… We could go in a different direction.

The aha came to me in a flash. Underneath his lament was his desire to have sex. He liked sex. The invitation to debate the truth and set the record straight was not the direction I actually wanted to go and in that flash I knew it wasn’t his either. We could go in a different direction. 

I stopped talking and reached for him. I kissed his lips with passion and made a sound that indicated pleasure. We skipped the conversation and went toward what we wanted more. In that moment I made a choice to go in the direction of sex. I did not go in the direction of deciding who was right. I also didn’t go in the direction of understanding more about the psyche of my husband. I chose sexual union with my partner. I jumped tracks – from being on a train running in one direction I leapt onto a line that was obviously going to a different destination.  

It has been 5 to 6 years since that experience and the aha of going towards what I want stays with me. I share it with you so that if you are in a moment that is going in a direction that feels automatic and natural to you, and yet it is not taking you any closer to what you actually want, you can jump. Jump off that line and onto a line that takes you to what the core part of you desires.  

What women truly desire has yet to be taken seriously in this world – let’s make sure we, ourselves, take what we want seriously.