by Natasha | Jan 10, 2025 | Awakening, Body Awakening ©, For couples, Intimacy |
Registration for the Body Awakening© online Course for individuals and couples as well as the Practitioner training is now open!
Body Awakening is a beautiful practice for individuals and couples wanting to learn more about their body, how to increase their capacity for pleasure, understand what gets in the way of their optimal sexual functioning and connect with their self and others in a new and meaningful way. Body Awakening touch has been a game changer for my personal intimacy and has provided me with a wider range of tools to help clients struggling with lack of sensations, performance issues, fear of intimacy and desire for more. If you’re interested I invite you to join me in this exploration and welcome any questions you have. https://natashasalaash.com/body-awakening-course/ It’s never too late to have the intimacy you desire.
by Natasha | Sep 27, 2024 | Body Image, connection, Intimacy, Raising children with a healthy sexuality, Sex and mothering, Vulnerability |

As I work with clients bodies helping them learn to feel safe in intimacy, I’m brought back to my time in Kenya learning that our roots of intimacy grow from our initial familial relationships. I sometimes wonder if instead of working with adults I should go back to supporting parents in learning to attune to their infants unique language of expressing needs. But then I realize, I’m playing a part in reparenting the infant inside each of the adults I have the privilege of touching. This story is based on what I learned from the Maasai mama’s that I think so perfectly describes the potential for intimate wisdom that can come from our earliest relationships.
Nashipai spends her days with her four month old baby Kimaren, strapped to her back while she milks cows, cooks, repairs the walls of her cow dung home, and connects with others in her village. From his position on her back he can see the world as Nashipai sees it, experiencing all that she experiences. He feels her muscles flex and bend as she prepares food, fixes walls and goes about the tasks of daily life — absorbing a sense of capability from her movements. With his little body folded fully around her back, he feels the confidence in her posture and a sense of rightness in what she’s doing. Kimaren’s body connects to this feeling and intuitively holds his own back naturally and comfortably straight against his mamas. Sometimes, when her movements become rhythmic — like when she’s mixing porridge or milking the cow — he gets mesmerized by the sensations of their shared rhythm, belly against back. The rhythm of their movement creates a hum deep inside him, something he’s later surprised to realize is there, even when they aren’t moving. Sometimes his hum will start buzzing without mama starting it, and his round little body will wiggle. Responding to his movements, Nashipai laughs, sways and twirls as Kimaren lets his head fall back, giggling with joy at these simple moments together.
Other times, Kimaren will feel a change in his mama’s movements that don’t feel free or flowy like they normally do. This happens when Nashipai is learning something new and isn’t skilled in it yet. On his perch on her back, he clunks along with her clunks, learning in time that as long as they keep going, the clunks will eventually become confident, swift and knowing movements. It’s uncomfortable getting there and he much prefers when she confidently flows, but each time it happens he gains capacity in the unknown that comes before the knowing.
When Kimaren feels an uncomfortable emptiness in his tummy, he wiggles against Nashipai’s back for help to make it go away. Nashipai, who’s learned what this wiggle means, slides him around to her chest and offers her warm breast for nourishment. Feeling the soft roundness of her breast against his cheek, Kimaren opens his mouth and begins to suckle. The empty feeling in his tummy is replaced by the warm milk and, once full, he contentedly falls asleep. This symbiosis helps him at times when the uncomfortable emptiness arises and mama is in the middle of something that she can’t stop right away. Using her soft, soothing voice she tells Kimaren in words he feels but can’t understand, that what he needs will come in just a few more minutes. It’s uncomfortable but, because she always responds, Kimaren has come to trust his needs will always be met. So he waits.
Later, he’s woken by an uncomfortable feeling of fullness and again wiggles to tell his mama. Nashipai, feeling the difference in this wiggle, responds by gently lowering him to the ground and holding his knees up to his chest. Recognizing the cue, Kimaren lets the water fall from between his legs onto the dirt underneath until his tummy feels comfortable again. Mama always knows just what he needs because she’s always listening.
Nashipai knows everyone in the village, and with Kimaren’s cheek resting on her shoulder, he gets to know them too. He especially loves to see the faces that make mama’s body get soft and warm and he notices his own body become soft and warm in response. One face in particular lights mama up so much it feels like there’s a fire burning deep inside her. Kimaren watches this face and notices the way their eyes and body open towards mama like they’re inviting her in. His heart beats faster with hers and he recognizes a shared truth between the three of them; the truth of just how special mama is. His hum hums, and even though he can’t see her face, he knows mama is smiling.
Kimaren is most curious though about the faces that make mama tense and tighten, her hum go quiet and her fire dim. He notices that their eyes and arms are closed and they look down on her instead of welcoming her in. Kimarens body tightens against his mamas in response, and when she feels that, her hum starts buzzing inside her. All the muscles in her back go solid and he feels her body get bigger with every breath she takes. Even though the face was higher than mama before, it now seems like she’s looking down on them. Kimarens body softens in response to mama’s buzzing hum, and he settles against her curves, unafraid, soaking in a deep sense of her knowledge, capability, softness and strength. Being so close to mama, Kimaren is always listening too.
At night time, while mama lays beside Kimaren in their sheepskin bed, she traces her hands over the dips and curves of his whole body. Mama’s fingers are rough from hard work, but her touch is soft and curious and Kimaren senses her own pleasure as she lingers extra long over the grooves and folds of his chubby legs and neck. His body softens more the longer she touches, and he sinks deeper and deeper into the bed. Kimaren notices his hum is constant, like the purr of a cat. The feeling he has when mama touches him this way is something he can’t understand until he recognizes it later on in life when he’s a man touching his own wife and children in the same way that his mama touched him. Skin to skin, body to body …… this is the wisdom of intimacy.
by Natasha | Sep 9, 2024 | Intimacy, Intimacy Coaching, Posts, Raising children with a healthy sexuality, Sex and mothering |
“You just plunk yourself down beside me and that makes me feel safe. Like there’s nothing wrong with me or my body. I’m just normal.”
“The way you rested your hand on my leg while you were touching me with the other hand, made me feel like you’re not scared to be close to me and that you’re okay with touching me.”
I’m a mother. I touch you with the same comfort that I touched my five babies. Carrying them on my back, breast feeding, sleeping beside them for years on end — I’m comfortable beside your body and I’m comfortable touching your body.
Legs overlapping legs.
Baby suckling my breast.
Inhaling sweet milk breath while I sleep.
Baby on my back.
Smelling sun sweat on their heads.
Covering the pee spot with a blanket until morning so I don’t have to get up.
My half asleep hands reaching in the dark to make sure they’re all still warm.
It wasn’t delicate. It wasn’t careful. It was normal life. It was getting the job done…..
Well…. sometimes it was delicate, and sometimes it was careful.
Tracing the contours of their skin with my fingers, over and over.
Feeling and learning their bodies textures and grooves like a map I never need to look at to remember.
Knowing who needs an extra hand of support today and who doesn’t, without asking.
Imagining the best possible reason for their behavior.
Empathizing with their emotions.
It’s an immersion in intimacy. It’s mothering. I didn’t learn it in any training or in any book. Others might, but for me this comfort came from living it with my children and then later learning to feel it with my own body. Mothering has been my greatest teacher.
by Natasha | Dec 18, 2023 | Body Awakening ©, Intimacy |

As I get ready to turn the page of my client log book for 2023, I’m reflecting on how much growth and learning this year has given me.
I was fortunate to support 916 clients – 488 women, 366 men and 62 non binary humans this year. I started offering a piece of my heart through “Body Awakening” sessions which help clients learn to; identify what “yes” and “no” feel like in their body and communicate it, anchor to presence during intimacy so that they can feel MORE, relax into their body to allow for the natural function of arousal to happen, regulate with their breath and explore pleasure. I teach this through either touching clients myself or guiding couples in how to offer Body Awakening to each other. I facilitated my first week long “Intimacy Immersion” experience with a couple, completed level 3 of an Integrative Trauma and Attachment Treatment Model training, learned to “Love Another Way” in a course on boundaries and am currently training in Genital Dearmouring.
In 2024, I’m excited to go to California for hands on Genital Dearmouring training, expand my office space to include this as one of my services, offer couple’s intimacy workshops facilitated by myself and my husband (saying that is also new for me in 2023!) and continue writing my book on – you guessed it – Intimacy!
As always, I’m in awe of the endless connections between mothering babies, and helping adults feel safe enough to tip toe into experiencing their limitless capacity for connection and pleasure. Thank you to everyone who allowed me to accompany them on their intimacy journey this year and I’m excited to keep learning and expanding with you all next year!
by Natasha | Mar 26, 2022 | Intimacy, Posts |



For most of my 44 years, I thought sex and grief existed separate from the rest of life — behind closed doors and in hushed conversations. I now realize that in separating them, I missed the opportunity for the most beautiful intimacy I could have ever imagined.
Over the past 3 years, me and my children have experienced 3 tragic losses and at first, I had little ability to navigate them through what felt like unimaginable pain. Untimely, tragic deaths of children wasn’t something I’d dealt with beyond a clinical understanding in Counseling training, and I oscillated between fear that I would also lose my children, and gratitude for a deepening connection to them through our grief. Looking back on this time I can’t help but notice the parallels with my experiences in the intimacy of loss, and the intimacy of pleasure. There have been moments during this time where I felt I was experiencing the deepest intimacy of my life — Intimacy that is available when I move beyond my own fears and insecurities — and stay present in the seemingly insignificant details of the moment.
Seeing my 17 year old son hold the hand of his 16 year old sister as she cried in fear for the life of her friend. Hearing him teach her to breathe in the way he had learned to calm himself down when he had lost his friend the year before, and directing his other sisters to put a wet cloth on her forehead. I watched this scene in front of me, noticing the tv still on and half eaten food on the desk of the hotel room we were staying in. We’d come to celebrate my youngest’s birthday and all of that changed in a moment with one text message.
Fast forward a year and I’m standing in my friends’ doorway, holding her crying in my arms after losing her son. I feel her shoulder blades under my fingers, smell the shampoo in her hair, see his jacket on the hook behind her and his shoes casually sitting on the door mat under her collapsing legs — as if he’d just casually kicked them off and walked upstairs.
Interwoven with tragedy and grief is the unmistakable normalcy of everyday life.
After eating a bowl of homemade soup together in my dining room, surrounded by folded clothes and children’s books, we move to my bedroom. The woman, who’s come to me for orgasm coaching, lies down naked on my bed and I watch the color rising up her chest as her pleasure builds. Sitting on my chair I notice her seemingly oscillate between the push and pull of control and surrender — not knowing exactly how things will turn out if she just lets go. Increasing the sound of my steady breath to support her, we breathe together and she lets go; tears and laughter follow as her flush lessens and tears flow. “I’m not broken” she says. After she leaves, my children come home and we eat dinner at the same table.
Arriving at a hotel jacuzzi suite for a weekend of pleasure with my lover to discover my bleeding has come early. He takes off his red plaid shirt for me to bleed on — as if it’s the most normal thing to do in the world — and the rest of the weekend is spent naked, in pleasure, eating good food, discussing life and refolding the red shirt under me to find new squares to catch the blood.
Interwoven with pleasure and sex is the unmistakable normalcy of everyday life.
In January, we once again experienced the untimely loss of a close friends’ mother and, while supporting her through it, I couldn’t help but feel once again, this deep sense of intimacy. Intimacy in being alongside a person you love while they grieve. Intimacy in sharing stories about her life and legacy and the intimacy of asking myself what my own legacy will be. Intimacy in my daughter recognizing that her friend doesn’t “just want to talk about losing her mom, she also wants to talk about clothes and movies.”
Interwoven with tragedy and grief, pleasure and sex is the unmistakable normalcy of everyday life……….
* This is my experience only and I recognize that grief and loss are different for everyone. I’m not suggesting my experience should be anyone else’s