Temple
If you get the chance to attend a Temple night, I encourage you. What happens in a temple? Only what you agree to. There are warm-up exercises for connecting, and later, there’s usually time for free choices. Once the building blocks of consent are established, you’re asked what you’d like to experience. At first, it’s hard to know what to say, and it’s inspiring to hear others' requests and perhaps to respond to the ones that pique your interest. It’s a chance to experience different people and situations, to sample and to connect. Sometimes you have to wait and witness for a while. When you pair up or join a group, you’ll have a conversation about what you do and don’t want to do. Limits are as important and welcome as wishes, and vital to feeling contained enough to experiment. Knowing that what you don’t want to happen won’t happen allows safety and relaxation. You choose if you want to create or to respond. Take it from there.
If you get the chance to attend a Temple night, I encourage you. What happens in a temple? Only what you agree to. There are warm-up exercises for connecting, and later, there’s usually time for free choices. Once the building blocks of consent are established, you’re asked what you’d like to experience. At first, it’s hard to know what to say, and it’s inspiring to hear others' requests and perhaps to respond to the ones that pique your interest. It’s a chance to experience different people and situations, to sample and to connect. Sometimes you have to wait and witness for a while. When you pair up or join a group, you’ll have a conversation about what you do and don’t want to do. Limits are as important and welcome as wishes, and vital to feeling contained enough to experiment. Knowing that what you don’t want to happen won’t happen allows safety and relaxation. You choose if you want to create or to respond. Take it from there.
Doubt
Doubt is an ocean I’ve swum in for years. It’s made me cautious, sceptical, slow, reckless, persuadable, open, mistaken, impulsive, anxious, experimental and wise. Yet seeing uncertainty differently as a chance to be thoughtful and considered, doubt has helped me take time, to come back to myself, to slow down, to speak and act when I’m surer. I’ve learned I can hold creative tension, that doubt doesn’t need to stop me acting but to give due consideration. Waiting is good, and patience is peaceful. Doubt is grounding.
Doubt is an ocean I’ve swum in for years. It’s made me cautious, sceptical, slow, reckless, persuadable, open, mistaken, impulsive, anxious, experimental and wise. Yet seeing uncertainty differently as a chance to be thoughtful and considered, doubt has helped me take time, to come back to myself, to slow down, to speak and act when I’m surer. I’ve learned I can hold creative tension, that doubt doesn’t need to stop me acting but to give due consideration. Waiting is good, and patience is peaceful. Doubt is grounding.
Tough
Learning to feel what you’d love is an embodied practice. Learning how to feel and ask for what you want, to speak the words aloud, and to say No and Yes, is tough at first and then it’s a quest for honesty and intimacy. It takes courage to rock the boat, to call time on conditioning in a dominant heteronormative model. It takes strength and new beliefs to understand your body is your domain, that your emotions, feelings and pleasure are up to you, to understand more is possible. To build an embodied sense of self with choices about what to experience.
Learning to feel what you’d love is an embodied practice. Learning how to feel and ask for what you want, to speak the words aloud, and to say No and Yes, is tough at first and then it’s a quest for honesty and intimacy. It takes courage to rock the boat, to call time on conditioning in a dominant heteronormative model. It takes strength and new beliefs to understand your body is your domain, that your emotions, feelings and pleasure are up to you, to understand more is possible. To build an embodied sense of self with choices about what to experience.
Martyr
Being a martyr sucks. Don’t do it. No one cares and you’ll be exploited. While you may have a good sob story to tell, what’s much better is to find your inner power and boundaries. Then there’s a chance to tell a better story - of living what you’d love without feeling selfish. As we nurture our heart’s dreams, connection and mutuality matters, so don’t get enrolled into the wrong thing. “No” is your friend. Try it. It leaves much more time for listening to and saying yes to your own heart.
Being a martyr sucks. Don’t do it. No one cares and you’ll be exploited. While you may have a good sob story to tell, what’s much better is to find your inner power and boundaries. Then there’s a chance to tell a better story - of living what you’d love without feeling selfish. As we nurture our heart’s dreams, connection and mutuality matters, so don’t get enrolled into the wrong thing. “No” is your friend. Try it. It leaves much more time for listening to and saying yes to your own heart.
Risk
Try what scares you. Driving, love, or moving to a new country. It doesn’t matter. Do it anyway. At your level, where risk is exciting and motivating. You don't need to jump off a cliff or from a plane. There’s a small place of risk that is exhilarating. Don’t let your need for safety paralyse you. Action changes the story. First, you have an idea. Try it. Then you see if anyone wants to join you. Take it from there.
Try what scares you. Driving, love, or moving to a new country. It doesn’t matter. Do it anyway. At your level, where risk is exciting and motivating. You don't need to jump off a cliff or from a plane. There’s a small place of risk that is exhilarating. Don’t let your need for safety paralyse you. Action changes the story. First, you have an idea. Try it. Then you see if anyone wants to join you. Take it from there.
Secure
Boundaries allow you to stand in being you, and to be one of the people who model steadiness, integrity and clarity in relationships. Learning the skills to become ‘learned secure’ isn’t easy and it is possible. Understanding habits, personality and trauma is helpful or life plays us out over and over again.
Boundaries allow you to stand in being you, and to be one of the people who model steadiness, integrity and clarity in relationships. Learning the skills to become ‘learned secure’ isn’t easy and it is possible. Understanding habits, personality and trauma is helpful or life plays us out over and over again.
Wholeness
I’m not a lover of the vocabulary of sovereignty, manifestation or being a queen, but if you are, use this power well. Otherwise unconscious entitlement may outstrip understanding. Watch what you manifest, it’s not only bragging about the good stuff. Few of us know the depth of our neediness, codependence and hidden trauma until we get to a relationship. Shadows and awareness are an inside job for wholeness. And forgive yourself - most people are great at the beginning, including you.
I’m not a lover of the vocabulary of sovereignty, manifestation or being a queen, but if you are, use this power well. Otherwise unconscious entitlement may outstrip understanding. Watch what you manifest, it’s not only bragging about the good stuff. Few of us know the depth of our neediness, codependence and hidden trauma until we get to a relationship. Shadows and awareness are an inside job for wholeness. And forgive yourself - most people are great at the beginning, including you.
Slipstream
I’m so grateful I didn't get the relationship I wanted so badly half a decade ago. Stuck in misery, I’d have tied myself to a life of waiting, longing and trying. The doors slammed on every aspect I used to try to make the impossible work, until I got the lesson. Dodging that bullet has given a liberation and beauty beyond imagining. Feeling the slipstream of doors opening pulling me towards Corfu, had an ease that I still can’t quite believe, obstacles dissolving along the way. Building trust in the possibility of better takes a certain degree of willingness to believe there is no glass ceiling, parapet or barricade to the soul journey.
I’m so grateful I didn't get the relationship I wanted so badly half a decade ago. Stuck in misery, I’d have tied myself to a life of waiting, longing and trying. The doors slammed on every aspect I used to try to make the impossible work, until I got the lesson. Dodging that bullet has given a liberation and beauty beyond imagining. Feeling the slipstream of doors opening pulling me towards Corfu, had an ease that I still can’t quite believe, obstacles dissolving along the way. Building trust in the possibility of better takes a certain degree of willingness to believe there is no glass ceiling, parapet or barricade to the soul journey.
Simultaneous
Understanding pleasure is key. Can you feel the sensation on your skin, are you present, are you willing, are you breathing steadily or holding your breath? Are you tense? Is your mind busy, anxious or relaxed? What else is pleasurable for you besides the more common signs of a hard-on or feeling nervously excited or on alert? As you build the capacity for mindful awareness of body sensations and emotional recognition, you can simultaneously learn how to enjoy breath, movement or touch to allow your body’s response. Feeling safer in your body and the company you keep. With patient practice, it brings an end to enduring, and to feeling and speaking honestly in erotic exchanges.
Understanding pleasure is key. Can you feel the sensation on your skin, are you present, are you willing, are you breathing steadily or holding your breath? Are you tense? Is your mind busy, anxious or relaxed? What else is pleasurable for you besides the more common signs of a hard-on or feeling nervously excited or on alert? As you build the capacity for mindful awareness of body sensations and emotional recognition, you can simultaneously learn how to enjoy breath, movement or touch to allow your body’s response. Feeling safer in your body and the company you keep. With patient practice, it brings an end to enduring, and to feeling and speaking honestly in erotic exchanges.
Commitment
In sustaining the thrill of novelty over the long term, keeping playfulness, ingenuity and wonder alive seems essential. To keep a commitment to joy, rather than to conventional relationship rules. There’s a commitment to the aliveness of love that outweighs entrapment to a person or an institution.
In sustaining the thrill of novelty over the long term, keeping playfulness, ingenuity and wonder alive seems essential. To keep a commitment to joy, rather than to conventional relationship rules. There’s a commitment to the aliveness of love that outweighs entrapment to a person or an institution.
Date
I love a good first date. Some of my most memorable ones in the last decade were blindfolding and undressing a man deliciously slowly in a hotel room, dinner on a rooftop restaurant in Crete, and playing the 3-minute game in a grove of 49 trees at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Each was filled with gratitude - for the day, the man, the beauty, the creativity and in some cases the touch. I loved the anticipation in the unknown, being able to bring anew the optimism of possibility.
I love a good first date. Some of my most memorable ones in the last decade were blindfolding and undressing a man deliciously slowly in a hotel room, dinner on a rooftop restaurant in Crete, and playing the 3-minute game in a grove of 49 trees at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Each was filled with gratitude - for the day, the man, the beauty, the creativity and in some cases the touch. I loved the anticipation in the unknown, being able to bring anew the optimism of possibility.
Ask
If we want our bodies to connect and collide, slip and slide, what if we simply ask? If I want to touch you, I ask. If I want you to touch me, I ask. If you want me to touch you, ask me; if you want to touch me, ask. We’re ultimately each responsible for our own pleasure. You have the right to pleasure, and so do I, but we don’t get to decide for each other what that might look like.
If we want our bodies to connect and collide, slip and slide, what if we simply ask? If I want to touch you, I ask. If I want you to touch me, I ask. If you want me to touch you, ask me; if you want to touch me, ask. We’re ultimately each responsible for our own pleasure. You have the right to pleasure, and so do I, but we don’t get to decide for each other what that might look like.
Appreciation
Appreciating what’s here instead of what’s missing shifts complaint to wonder.
Appreciating what’s here instead of what’s missing shifts complaint to wonder.
Limits
As a basis for empowerment, we need to understand we have a choice about what happens to us. A belief that we can have moveable limits and boundaries which will be respected allows us to be more generous, trusting and intimate. This is tricky in relationships, where there are many unspoken assumptions at play. Recognising that someone else’s pleasure is their bag allows you the freedom and responsibility for your own. This means understanding your preferences, your body’s arousal or lack of, and sharing that information with the person you’re getting up close and personal with. Initially, this might sound a bit mechanical and lacking ‘magic and chemistry’. Yet, once expectations, inadequacies and egos are put aside, it’s liberating to have a clear understanding which helps sort out underlying suppositions. Then the real magic of intimacy can begin: honesty, fun, relaxation, variety, and pleasure. It’s radical, subtle and revolutionary thinking.
As a basis for empowerment, we need to understand we have a choice about what happens to us. A belief that we can have moveable limits and boundaries which will be respected allows us to be more generous, trusting and intimate. This is tricky in relationships, where there are many unspoken assumptions at play. Recognising that someone else’s pleasure is their bag allows you the freedom and responsibility for your own. This means understanding your preferences, your body’s arousal or lack of, and sharing that information with the person you’re getting up close and personal with. Initially, this might sound a bit mechanical and lacking ‘magic and chemistry’. Yet, once expectations, inadequacies and egos are put aside, it’s liberating to have a clear understanding which helps sort out underlying suppositions. Then the real magic of intimacy can begin: honesty, fun, relaxation, variety, and pleasure. It’s radical, subtle and revolutionary thinking.
Trust
You’re more likely to receive what you’d love when you take responsibility, rather than wait and hope for something nice to happen. It’s a fine balance of trust, letting go and knowing when to take the right action, living within the paradox. Taking ownership of your life and your attention to co-creating relationships is a decision to trust in yourself and the greater unfolding. Building the awareness, skills, beliefs and behaviour where change is inevitable fosters agency.
You’re more likely to receive what you’d love when you take responsibility, rather than wait and hope for something nice to happen. It’s a fine balance of trust, letting go and knowing when to take the right action, living within the paradox. Taking ownership of your life and your attention to co-creating relationships is a decision to trust in yourself and the greater unfolding. Building the awareness, skills, beliefs and behaviour where change is inevitable fosters agency.
Eventually
There’s something about living from your spirit and choices that eventually allows the mistakes and glories to have a sweet satisfaction and equanimity.
There’s something about living from your spirit and choices that eventually allows the mistakes and glories to have a sweet satisfaction and equanimity.
Act
Recognising your power and desires and using them wisely helps you live more fully; able to see the beauty and possibility of a more interesting life than the one you’re being sold. Staying curious about who you are, what you have chosen, and about life itself will serve you better than complacency and Netflix. While there’s some great stuff on TV, it’s time to be the main actor in your own life and break out of the audience.
Recognising your power and desires and using them wisely helps you live more fully; able to see the beauty and possibility of a more interesting life than the one you’re being sold. Staying curious about who you are, what you have chosen, and about life itself will serve you better than complacency and Netflix. While there’s some great stuff on TV, it’s time to be the main actor in your own life and break out of the audience.
Refuge
Imagine intimacy as a long journey with triumphs and travails. Bodies change, as do desires. Changing the sexual script to create new ways of connecting, driven by emotion and embodied pleasure rather than performance, is essential. Pleasure can be so wide-ranging. Relationships take time and attention, so when you find a way to make intimacy a refuge, it becomes a safe harbour for discovery, to return to again and again.
Imagine intimacy as a long journey with triumphs and travails. Bodies change, as do desires. Changing the sexual script to create new ways of connecting, driven by emotion and embodied pleasure rather than performance, is essential. Pleasure can be so wide-ranging. Relationships take time and attention, so when you find a way to make intimacy a refuge, it becomes a safe harbour for discovery, to return to again and again.