Grace continues her insights on the topic of the Balance of Yin and Yang.
What is an Identity?
In my work, both personal and professional, I spend a lot of energy becoming aware of identities, both my own and supporting those I work with in uncovering theirs.
But what is an identity?
Here’s a simple example. We are all born FREE. Completely, infinitely free. But soon after we’re born, we start responding to and being conditioned by the world around us. In my case, I developed an early age the identity of being self-sufficient. This came from a feeling that others’ needs were more important than mine and so it began to feel like a waste of energy to share my needs or ask for them to be met. Regardless of what the actualities of my childhood are, this is an identity I created: I will do it my damn self.
Where we can find empowerment in discovering this identity (also called a story) is in letting go of what actually happened to create this story and seeing that at its core, it’s completely hollow. Transparent. Nothing. When I see that, feel that, breathe that, I get to choose to be free again.
This morning, the aforementioned identity came up and smacked me in the face. It’s one that I’ve seen in my intimate relationships repeatedly this year, that others’ needs are more important than mine, so I will just take care of my damn self. It’s an identity that causes me to not state my needs or desires for fear or disappointment. It’s an identity that puts me in a holding pattern of fear and traps me into not expressing what’s alive under the surface of, “No, it’s fine.” And it makes it difficult to trust.
So, I have a choice: I can hide behind this identity, fault others for playing into my pattern and stay locked away in hiding. Or, I can see that whenever I feel that way, it’s most likely just the world bumping up into my identity and rubbing my bruise until it hurts. I can let it go. Again and again, every time it rears its head. Most powerful of all: I can love the shit out of that identity. I can hold it, embrace it, see it, accept it, love it, sing to it, cry with it, ask others to love it, and let it be absorbed and dissolved as part of me.
The more I meditate, ask for self-reflection with people on the Path, and pause to listen deeply to the ripples around me, the more the strings of my identities start to unravel. At times, this feels very liberating. At times, it feels dismantling and shattering. Today, it feels like a mix of both, the complexity of being both human and divine. Dissolving into the ocean of, well, myself.
Creating Energetic Boundaries – A Video Guide
Do you get overwhelmed by other people’s energy? Would you like some tools to cope with energetic boundaries? This short video offers practices to help create boundaries for you.
Female Ejaculation – A Complete Guide to Splashy Fun
When I was 18, I experienced something I thought at the time was terrifyingly embarrassing. I was in the car with my boyfriend and decided we needed to find a secluded place to touch each other in the woods.
Having found the perfect spot, he pressed me into a tree, lifted my skirt and started fingering my cunt, something he did with diligent precision and expertise from his Maxim magazine reading. After a few minutes and a few big orgasms, we found that there was clear liquid running down my leg.
And, of course, we thought it was pee.
Our short-lived assumption, this is back before you Googled things in your car, was that I had sexual incontinence, meaning that sex made me pee. As this started happening more and more, we did a little research and found that what was coming out of my vagina when he touched me a certain way was NOT in fact urine, it was ejaculate. Female ejaculate.
Over the years, I got really good at ejaculating and even started finding partners who really, really liked female ejaculation. Some even fetishized it. I started watching “squirting” porn and would get very turned on seeing other women ejaculate as well.
And eventually, I became a Tantric practitioner who offers Yoni massage and helps women access this incredibly intimate, sensual and powerful place in themselves.
Read the full article at Beducated.
Yoni Massage 101
Sssshhhh…
I want to share with you something very secret and very sacred. Something most people would never dream about which can totally change your life…
A yoni massage.
Yoni is the Sanskrit name for vagina, but it actually translates as temple or womb. Yoni is sacred and revered, unlike some of our common words for vagina, like pussy – which often is used derogatorily to mean weak. (Sidenote: I’m taking that word back.) Yoni is a symbol of the goddess as power, energy, life: the sacred feminine embodied.
Yoni
The term “yoni” does not only refer to women or bodies that have vaginas. All humans possess both masculine and feminine energies (also called yin and yang), so we can begin to understand our own yoni (sacred womb) as the deepest temple in our being, with the reverence that the Tantrics gave our human sex: fully divine.
For those assigned female or who have transitioned into assigned female sexual organs, the yoni refers directly to the vulva, vagina and cervix (as well as the rest of the reproductive system, but we’ll stick with the external parts for the sake of explaining yoni massage). Tantrics have long said that vaginas are to be revered, worshipped, adored and fully seen – and have created countless rituals and practices to do just that.
Cunts
Sadly, that is not often the way we experience our sex or how others view or treat our sex. Cunts have been given a pretty bad rep, and far too many people have experienced sexual repression, denial, coercion, manipulation, pressure, trauma, or violence. For many people, sexual interaction and expression aren’t times in which we feel revered and adored.
As an intimacy and relationship coach, it is my mission to change this pattern, one person at a time. My favorite way to spur this change is to spend time adoring, worshiping, and yes, massaging yonis.
What is a yoni massage, you ask? Think about a massage on any other part of your body: safe, loving touch and energetic opening to experience being in the body, relax, soothe, and deeply heal. A yoni massage is exactly that: safe, loving touch and energetic opening to reclaim embodiment, heal wounding and trauma, bring full acceptance, and open the flow of unconditional love throughout the body and into the yoni.
A Yoni Massage
A yoni massage is a chance for the yoni to be seen, petted, explored, mapped, desired, cared for and pleasured without any other sexual touch. No reciprocity. No expectation. Two or more hours just exploring the yoni and all of its unique, individual contours, hot buttons, sensitivities, and quite possibly traumas and stored emotions.
All yonis can benefit from this sacred and reverent touch, whether you’re attending the session with a specific need to heal, to orgasm, to be seen, or just to have space away from the rest of life. As a person with an active sex life, I still benefit from regular yoni massage to learn about myself, experience new sensations, and to commune with the divine. It helps me feel deeply seen and appreciated, safe, and held.
Every experience is unique. Every person’s intention is different. All bodies and experiences are welcome. All emotions, feelings and experiences are held with openness and acceptance. Instruction is slow, generous and soft. Requests are welcome. Boundaries are firmly communicated and respected. Consent and communication are explicit and professional. Hearts are opened. Bodies and psyches are healed. Wounds are seen and repaired. Experiences are confidential and continuously supported after the session. Questions are welcome!
For yonis who are healing from sexual violence or trauma, challenging relationships, a time of celibacy or a lack of physical touch, yoni massage can bring you back into connection with your physical body. It can invite you to engage with life in ways that might have felt inaccessible or closed off. It can heal a broken heart, or a series of them. It can awaken sensation you thought was dead, or just very dormant. It can reconnect you to YOU.
Curious to learn more right from your home? Check out the Yoni Massage 101 Course at Beducated! It’s a step-by-step program to learn how to give and receive a Yoni (Vulva) Massage. Suitable for singles and couples of all genders…and includes Yoni Self-Massage!
Here’s a few more online courses in Yoni practices…
Taking My Pussy Back
Ever hear someone say “Stop being such a pussy,” or “What a little pussy”?
Likely you have and maybe it’s just one of those slang words that doesn’t bother you.
But if you wear a pussy every day, you might have started to become annoyed that one of the most power-wielding parts of your body is used to mean weak, shameful or unwanted.
So, I’m taking it back. I’m taking back my Pussy. And yours, too.
I was surprised to recently hear a person I really respect use the word pussy as a derogatory term. Instead of letting him get away with it, I reframed. Here’s a flavored-up rendition of the conversation:
Friend: “I’ve just been a real pussy lately. I need to get my shit together.”
Me: “So you’ve been incredibly powerful and sacred?”
Friend: “Oh, I see. Point taken.”
Me: “You can call yourself a pussy, if you really mean it. It’s quite a compliment.”
Words are incredibly powerful. They have the power to build us up or tear us down. Please, please don’t let others get away with tearing your pussy down. Call them out and take back our pussies.
Liberated Living
Ten months ago I left Seattle with a very large backpack, an adventurous spirit, the intention to connect to myself and my partner, to find a greater sense of compassion for the world’s diverse peoples, and to let go. I let go, yet again, into liberated living. My practice over the last ten years has brought me to ever-increasing depths of surrender, starting with the first moment in a Bikram class where the Divine Consciousness very clearly told me to “let go, everything will be okay.” These words were repeated by a dear friend later that year at Kripalu as “Let go and Let God.” And this month as I finally overcame my lifelong fear of open water by scuba diving, I told myself over and over again to “Relax, breathe, and let go,” a mantra etched by hours and hours of japa repetition.
Often in practice we are looking for a state of consciousness beyond what we experience in everyday life. And while that has brought me more faith in my practice, the wider goal is bringing the experience of connectedness and Divinity into the waking world. In Tantra, the goal is not just to ascend and skip this worldly stuff. We aim to personally evolve, to be the best human being possible right here and now, to realize the divinity of body, mind, heart, and Spirit, and to live fully and freely. As said beautifully by Sia, “Welcome to the church of what’s happening Now.”
My last week in Koh Phangan, Thailand was marked with a Goddess Celebration hosted by Agama: three blissful days of self-transformation and worshiping Shakti, that aspect of the Divine which IS everything we see and experience. We were transformed into the Goddess – or better said, were able to see ourselves as the Goddesses we are and drop the masks which limit us from experiencing our wholeness every day. I will share many of these practices in the upcoming Transformative Women’s Journey.
With the transition back to American life this week, I take the time to learn and live the multitude of lessons life has thrown at me the last year around the world. I hold this year’s intention to appreciate, experience, and integrate life’s precious moments. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali says, “All experience can either be for bondage or liberation.” May this summer solstice bring you the liberated living that you so deserve.