In my own healing journey I have spent years doing important unwinding and repatterining work, making changes in how I eat, sleep, organize my work life, and move my body. I did this based off of books, articles, and the advice of my medical care team. I was often spending my nights reading articles about the harmful effects of this or that, and trying to see how I could adjust my life in response to this information.

While most of us haven’t been raised in sexually liberated spaces, that does not mean we are not entitled to living our sexual liberation *now*. History has shown that waiting around for someone else to do the work of “overthrowing the regime” means we’re going to be doing a lot of waiting.

Neuroplastic change is the shifting of patterns that results from changing your inputs. Brains remain ‘plastic’ throughout life - they are always tracking their environments and adapting as changes occur.

I know I’ve written about social media and mental health before, however it is such a pressing topic on my mind that it’s worth a re-visit! And, frankly, a few more re-visits too.

There’s a model of sexuality called the dual control model - in this model the premise is that things that hit our ‘gas’ pedals support us in having sex, or ‘turn us on’. And, things that hit our ‘brake’ pedals tell us that sex is not a very good idea or ‘turn us off’.

I ‘came of age’ into a sexual philosophy where I believed that the only way to ‘do the sex thing’ was to give 150% to be as knowledgable, performative, and spicy as I could. And, you know what was missing from the books & messaging that I received? That sex isn’t a job to do.

I’m writing this on a day of rare snowfall - a big Jeep is having some fun and dancing in the snow outside my window, and I’m cozied up in wool and longjohns. I’ve got water boiling for mint tea, winter sky is shining in the window, and I'm feeling feelings of curiosity and excitement about writing you.

The orgasm gap, or pleasure gap, refers to the disparity in orgasm time and enjoyment between two sexual partners. While this can happen in many different types of sexual dynamics, it is most common in parings between cis men and cis women.

Living with unresolved traumatic stress in the body may mean that normal everyday experiences like a friendly hug, a vacation, or a doctor’s office appointment feel unsafe and unwanted. Old nervous system responses to past traumatic experiences may be deeply grooved into the body in ways that result in unwanted or unsupportive physiologic reactions to things in the present day. Recognizing these patterns is key to expanding opportunities to live in relationship with what truly matters to us.

What does it mean to be healthy? So often, the rhetoric of health is liberally peppered with classist, ableist, ageist, racist and phobic rhetoric that creates narrow windows of acceptable selfhoods. Often the bodies who don’t experience themselves as fitting into these windows are left with an individualized burden of shame and blame, which nourishes a destructive feedback loop of depression, anxiety, and wash of damaging chemicals that are anything but ‘healthy’.

As a bodyworker and Somatic Sex Educator, I’ve been reflecting on the role social media plays in our lives. Both from the standpoint of deciding how I’d like to relate to it professionally, and how it impacts our bodies and access to pleasure, sexuality, and embodiment. Digital life and social media affects us in many ways, and I’d like to share some observations from my research.

The question “should I hire a sex worker?” has come up often throughout my career working in the sex industry. Only you can answer that question, however I want to take a moment to weigh in on the topic by celebrating that sex work and sacred intimacy is a critical part of our history and social fibre, and that, if it feels right to you, it is a potent gift of self love to pay for sex or other erotic experiences. 

A few dandelions have popped up in my front yard and have inspired me to take a moment to celebrate this early spring healer. Dandelions (from ‘dent de lion’ or ‘lion’s tooth’) are old and important medicine.

I celebrate Grace Lee Bogg’s wise words that invites each of us to “transform yourself to transform the world”*. Many of us are sitting with the knowing that we desire a better and brighter future for ourselves, our communities, the planet. We become what we practice, and it is my feeling that by inviting more pleasure into our lives, we practice inviting more joy, feeling, rest, connection, slowness, contentedness and healing into our lives. Further, the world becomes what we practice, meaning that when we invite more pleasure into our lives we invite more joy, feeling, rest, connection, slowness, contentedness and healing into the world.