Somatic Sex Education - Healers on The Edge

I would like to introduce you to a fabulous book that contains some insightful information about the emerging (and increasingly necessary!) field, Somatic Sex Education. 

To learn more about the ways in which  work with clients, I invite you to read some excerpts from the book. And I am so honored to have had Caffyn Jesse as one of my teachers in my original training to become a certified Somatic Sex Educator/Sexological Bodyworker.

​Please contact me if you would like to learn more about how we may work together!

---

 "We need sexual healing. We are in profound, desperate need of mindful attention and care for our intimate lives. We are deeply hurting, individually and collectively, but we don't know where to take our sexual wounds for mending. We are sexually abused, traumatized and disempowered. We are disembodied, fragmented and disconnected. We are dissatisfied, but we aren't really sure what we actually want, or what is even possible. We don't know where or how to find out, and we are discouraged from asking. We certainly haven't been given any compasses or roadmaps. What we have been given is reproduction-focused diagrams of ovaries and testicles, and minimal, if any, information about the pleasure aspect of what happens, "down there". We've been given shame.

​In this enormous need for sexual healing, and the dire lack of awareness about the ways it can begin to occur, that motivated the creation of this book. People need to know what is possible. They need to know how to nurture their sexual selves and bring much-needed healing to their intimate lives." ~ Cassie Moore

---

"Cultural and personal experiences surround sex with stress, danger and neglect, not only inhibiting the ecstasy that is possible, but generating opposite effects - our cells are bathed in stress hormones and neurochemicals that damage the nervous system and actively obstruct pleasure, learning, happiness, connection and sexual response. Changing self, culture and community begins with changing our bodies' unconscious processes, so we can shift the fear-based patterns grooved in our own autonomic nervous systems. With this recognition, the profession of somatic sex education was born.

Somatic sex education utilizes the new science of the brain and nervous system as a basis for expanding sexual happiness. With awareness of neuroplasticity we understand that the whole nervous system is continually changing - either learning and growing, or contracting and becoming inhibited. Just as muscles grow when we work out and atrophy when we do not, the brain and nervous system grow and evolve with more enrichment and diverse stimulation. We can create new practices and form new habits, including the habit of sexual happiness. We can expand erotic possibilities with positive experiences of physical pleasure. We can repair damaged attachment systems with experiences of feeling cherished our sexuality, and encouraged and prized for who we are as erotic beings.

​Somatic practices are body-based exercises and experiences that allow each person to open an inner dialogue with their autonomic movement, mindful masturbation and extend erotic touch in a container of safe professional relationship and caring community. Individual somatic sex education sessions are places to practice feeling and expressing desires and learning efficacy and empowerment in the erotic realm. Practitioners and clients form a community of practice that celebrates and cultivates the erotic for personal and social change." ~ Caffyn Jesse