Just like every good house has a good foundation, the work we do is no different. We base all of our work upon five pillars. Through these pillars we invoke the essence of the earth - that which we are made of, and of Spirit - that which is our essence, to help promote healing, unity, and freedom from past traumas and into a more fuller embodied existence.
We incorporate all five of these elements - breath, movement, sound, touch, and intention to help you create a more sensate focused experience, build and move erotic energy throughout your body, and help you reach ecstatic states of pleasure!
Breath - Air
Through breathwork we teach you about the significance of full body breathing. We live in a culture that teaches us to be shallow breathers - from the chest and not the diaphragm. For instance, in the interest of slimmer bodies and flat abdomens, many of us have conditioned our bodies to contract our bellies as we inhale (only focusing on chest breathing) rather than fully drawing breath all the way into our bodies.
Shallow breathing from the chest has negative consequences in that it maintains a higher level of stress within the body - fight, flight, or freeze, while also maintaining a higher heart rate. In other words, we have primed our bodies to be in a constant state of quick reaction.
We teach you down-regulating breathing which stimulates relaxation, stress, and anxiety relief as well as up-regulating breathing that can be used to promote natural energy boosting qualities and a heightened sense of feeling, eroticism, and presence. Breathing, like the wind, brings refreshing into stagnate atmospheres.
Movement - Earth
The physical Earth is a dynamic system. Below our feet, the ground we carry out our daily lives is in constant motion. Geologists call this movement plate tectonics. The Earth also has an awesome way of relieving stress - we call these events "earthquakes." In the same way, during the course of our daily lives, we create stress and distress that, without proper and regular relief through some type of movement, only compounds until the body eventually is crippled.
In Somatic Education we teach you the important of regular movement and physical stress relief. In this education we support the belief that the body is wise and knows what it needs and what it wants. However, because so many of us are so out of tune with our bodies, we can not fulfill these basic bodily unctions. In doing so, we often lock our bodies into rote practices.
We help teach you how to get in touch with your basic bodily desires of stimulation, movement, and expansion. Just like breath, movement opens up our bodies to heightened senses of well-being.
Sound - Water
We live in a culture that esteems silence. We are constantly being called to political correctness and editing of our ideas, beliefs, and ideologies as to not seem unseemly and disruptive. This silence can often carry into many of our sexual lives. For instance, many of us discovered masturbation (an act of truly appreciating and exploring the temple of our bodies) in our parent's home. And because many of us, by that age, had combined this joyous sexual act with shame, we practiced it in silence, as to not get caught. As adults, many still carry this practice of silence into our sexual lives.
At the height of orgasm (one of the most energy inducing events our bodies can experience), many of us practice silence, hence bottling up all that energy inside of ourselves. Even the journey to that ecstatic state is accompanied with damning up the sounds that our bodies long to emote.
During session we invite and strongly encourage you to find your own unique erotic voice. This can come slowly and awkwardly at first, since you might not have explored such freedom before, but with proper intention (which will be discussed later) and practice you will find that in co-joining your ecstasy with sound, a damn breaks inside and a primal part of yourself is allowed to flow freely, unhindered, and able to enhance your eroticism.
Touch - Fire
We are communal creatures and touch is one of the most important aspects of the relationships we have with one another. Via touch, we communicate many things - acceptance, validation, comfort, compassion, love, support, acknowledgment, safety, belonging, etc. Touch also helps stave off depression, boost the immune system, and helps relieve anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is starkly touch deprived. In many spiritual traditions, the transfer of energy through the "laying on of hands" is the cornerstone to physical healing.
Many people come into Somatic Education sessions to get reacquainted with physical touch because it is often lacking in their personal life. This is also why many people pay to get massages. Somatic Education sessions are beneficial in that it is one-way touch, from the practitioner to you. This provides many with the opportunity to learn how to receive touch without feeling obligated to reciprocate. How much more do you think you would enjoy if you knew you didn't have to give back? How much more present do you think you'd be?
This also offers the opportunity for you to learn what type of touch pleases you and to learn how to ask for it. Many of us have experienced touch that was not healing or consensual. These events often leave scars like that of a burn. Touch can be used in many ways as fire can be - for good or for ill. In our sessions, touch is only used as an educational tool to bring you deeper into a more mindful presence.
Intention - Spirit
Intention is the means by which we create a channel through which spiritual energy can manifest in the physical world.
The final and arguably the most important pillar of the work we do is intention setting. With intention setting we not only make up our minds about what we desire to get out of each session, we also speak our intentions aloud and by doing so give flight to our desires. And for clients that are also spiritually inclined we encourage them to draw from their own understanding of the divine to assist them in their somatic education, evolution, and healing.
Many of us have heard the adages that what you focus on expands and what you resist, persist. These are important universal laws of attraction - energy follows thought. In the same way, we are encouraging you to set intentions that create clear channels for this energy to work on your behalf in a wholesome and therapeutic way. Once that is done, we allow the practices and the energy to do the rest.