When Pleasure Brings Up Grief
When I first started the practice of orienting towards pleasure, all I could feel was grief.
I didn't understand then how intimately pleasure and grief can live alongside each other.
How slowing down enough to actually feel pleasure can also bring us into contact with numbness, shame, rage, memories, and emotions our bodies have been holding. Or how learning to stay with all of it could eventually expand my capacity for pleasure far beyond what I knew was possible. And how pleasure itself could be the very current that carries my heartbreak towards transformation.
When I was in school to become a somatic sex educator and sexological bodyworker, part of my training was doing mindful erotic practice. A self-pleasure practice that takes you beyond your usual masturbation routine, into a new relationship with pleasure itself.
This is the story of what it taught me.
Like most people, my masturbation practice had looked the same for a very long time.
When I was a little girl, I'd put one hand on top of the other, place my hands between my legs, pressing against and rubbing my vulva until I climaxed. I did it a lot.
I remember one time a friend caught me, and asked my sister what I was doing. My sister said I was "scootching."
I remember my mom catching me doing it in the car while I was waiting for her to return from grocery shopping. She was very upset with me.
I remember my dad catching me on the sofa in the living room while watching TV. He said "oh sorry, I know that feels good" and walked away.
Once I got older, and found out about vibrators, my practice switched. I had a few favorite vibrators over the years. Once I found one I liked, I'd stick to it. I'd reach for it when I was stressed or horny. I wouldn't pay attention to any other part of my body, except sometimes my nipples.
It was very intense, and often pretty fast. Most of the time it was pleasurable, and sometimes I felt kind of numb, but if I hung out long enough with the vibrator, I'd still get to climax, and feel the relief of release i was looking for.
The mindful erotic practice invited me to slow down, to move beyond a genital and climax-focused practice into an erotic field, orienting towards pleasure, following what feels good, moment to moment. Utilizing all my senses, my entire body, and inviting movement, touch, and sounding.
I'd light the candle, put on some music, set an intention, and start by breathing into my body. Asking my body what it wanted instead of reaching for the drawer. Some days it wanted stillness. Some days it wanted a slow caressing of my collarbone and belly before anything else. Some days it wanted nothing, and I had to sit with that too.
This invited me into a different type of pleasure. Not pleasure to escape, avoid, or release, but pleasure to come closer, to discover, to deepen. This type of pleasure is connection. Connection to my body, to my entire range of human emotions, to the universe.
And when I first started this practice, all I could feel was grief.
It was confronting. My body felt like a battleground. I didn't know what I wanted or needed. I was frustrated and overwhelmed, sometimes bored.
I was frequently coming in contact with painful memories of violation and betrayal, numbness, and terror in my system. But I committed to staying. To be with the memories, emotions and sensations, accept the truth of them, and feel.
I listened.
When numbness arrived, I noticed everything I could about the numbness. Its size, shape, texture, weight. There's actually quite a bit going on. Numbness is a sensation too. I'd breathe into it, sometimes bring gentle slow circles to the area it lived.
And when I would dissociate, I learned not to push through it or force myself out of it, but to stay with it as an observer. A year into my mindful erotic practice, I started training in Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy, and it gave me a new skill to bring back into my practice: learning to stay awake to the sleepiness of dissociation.
I'd notice all there is to notice about it. And like the numbness, there was a lot going on. In dissociation, I felt like my entire being left my body and went into the very back of my head. It was pitch black, like outer-space. Floating, far away, watching life pass by me.
I knew this place well. While I was begin sexually abused and exploited, I'd escape to the back of my head. Things could be done to my body that I didn't want, and I wouldn't feel it. I was in a peaceful, quiet place, far away, where nothing mattered.
And when I stayed long enough, what was hiding underneath the numbness and dissociation would emerge. Terror, rage, grief. So I'd follow my impulses to wail, to shake, to collapse and hide.
And over time, I noticed that following these impulses, that asking my terrified self what she needed to feel safer, my rageful self what she wanted to express, my sad self how she wanted to move and be held, it began to feel pleasurable to grieve.
It feels good to follow your bodily impulses, to let the emotions flow and move through rather than use up all your energy to avoid them, fight with them, stuff them away.
And I'd ask all these parts how they wanted to be touched. What would feel good to them?
This is where I learned how to use pleasure as a resource, to stay present with what is true and hold what is uncomfortable and painful. The pleasure came from the touch itself, from following my impulses, and from the experience of finally being listened to.
Pleasure arose through attunement, choice, expression, and giving my body what had once been denied. These were the parts of me that felt neglected, violated, and betrayed. The parts that had learned their needs didn’t matter.
This was how the shame began to alchemize. Each time I asked these parts what they wanted, listened to their answer, and offered the touch or expression they had asked for, I gave them a new experience: their needs mattered, their impulses were worthy of attention, and their bodies belonged to them.
Every time I did this, I brought them back to life, slowly, over time. Back into belonging. Back to knowing their inherent value and worthiness.
I began entering practice with a certain part in mind, whichever one was stepping forward, asking to be tended. The one who feels like she is inherently wrong. The one feels her desirably to others dictates her value. The one who still carries a backlog of grief and disappointment from all the sexual experiences that left her unmet.
When I first started asking these parts what they need, how they want to be touched, sometimes all I received was silence. I kept asking and listening. Over time, I learned to ask more specific questions: How do you feel? How does that emotion want to express? What impulse wants to move through sound, movement, or touch?
An impulse for a slow full body rub down followed by a gentle loving hand on my vulva. Wanted pleasurable touch replacing all the experiences of unwanted touch.
A desire to scream no and kick and punch, giving all the pent up rage a place to go, rather than turned towards me. Reclaiming my voice and my fight response and coming out of freeze.
Allowing my inner child to fall apart, sobbing, asking for my own arms to wrap around me. Wanting adult Ariel to turn towards her and say "I got you, I'm here, and I'm not leaving."
I was learning to hold pleasure and grief in the same hand. Feeling them simultaneously.
And as I continued to practice I had more and more moments of pleasure, without grief. I had more and more sensation coming alive in my body, more space in me for new experiences. For connection, joy, ease, and play.
I also started to incorporate other energies into my practice. My plant allies, like cacao or cannibus. The trees in my yard or the ocean. I made love to them and allowed them to make love to me: to energetically penetrate me, enliven me, and feel me. I let our energies merge, dance, and play.
And then, when I was ready, I began to share myself this vulnerably and intimately with other humans. Both with lovers and while receiving sexological bodywork.
I started to experience freedom in my body and in my voice. My body became a joyful place to be. And I began singing again. Something I had grown up doing, and then stopped.
And my intimacy with other humans began to shift. The safety and trust I was developing with myself allowed me to take more risk with others. Opening up my heart to give and receive.
To take the risk of being loved deeply, held, and seen by another. I had become so intimate with all of me that the fear of what someone else might find began to dissipate. I had shown myself that I could create a loving home inside my own being, so the possibility of being disappointed or hurt by someone else no longer felt as threatening.
The ability to voice my no's and set boundaries made it safe enough for me to start opening to receiving.
The practice of attuning to my own needs began to change what I tolerated in relationships. I was no longer willing to enable imbalanced dynamics, where I was over giving and taking over-responsability. Some relationships needed to shift, and some needed to end. And new people arrived.
I learned that pleasure and grief are two sides of the same coin.
I don’t believe we can go to the depths of pleasure while remaining unwilling to feel our grief. They live in relationship to one another.
Each time I have expanded my capacity for pleasure, entering a new depth of connection that I have not experienced before, there is grief that follows. Grief for the ways I have been missing out on this level of connection.
And when that grief moves, a new depth of connection becomes available to me. I may contract again, but I am no longer entirely closed to what I have experienced.
And the flow between pleasure and grief continues.
I've been incorporating this practice into my life in various ways for the past 6 years and it has radically changed my relationship to my body, to pleasure and grief, to love, to life itself. It has greatly expanded my capacity to receive, to be seen and to take up space.
I am living a life that I could not have even imagined from where I stood before. More connection and pleasure and sensation and aliveness and desire and passion and purpose moving through me than I ever knew possible. And yet, I know there is more. Still waiting, available to me on the other side of my fears.
Sometimes I still reach for my vibrator, wanting release, wanting escape. There is nothing wrong with that. And I enjoy it.
And sometimes I descend into my body and its emotional landscape instead. Into waters and flowers I've never tasted. A new terrain of sensations and desires I didn't know were in me.
It requires being willing to meet myself fully. Things I don't expect still arise.
This is the thing about freedom. It is the unknown. And it is full of choice.
Over time, I adapted the foundation of mindful erotic practice into what I now call Sex Magic for Metabolization, weaving parts work and my Eight Pillars of Intimacy framework into the erotic practice that changed my life.
It is a practice of using pleasure and your own erotic energy to metabolize what stands between you and the life you most deeply desire. If you want to explore this practice for yourself, I created a free ritual guide to walk you through it.
The guide will help you create an intentional erotic space, listen to what your body actually wants, and work with whatever arises: pleasure, grief, rage, numbness, shame, or desire. Through this practice, you can gradually teach your brain and nervous system to orient toward the beauty, pleasure, and connection that are already available, while building your capacity to receive more.
It is a way to welcome your fragmented parts back into belonging.
What’s Next?
Download the free Sex Magic ritual guide or, if your wanting personalized support, connect with me to talk about an Eros Alchemy Container.
Not ready for sessions? Continue Reading
What is Embodiment: The Practice of Coming Home to Yourself
How to Build Emotional and Sexual Intimacy: The Eight Pillars of Intimacy™