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 | Aug 16, 2024 | Raising children with a healthy sexuality, Sex and mothering, Vulnerability |
Based on a true story:
There once was a beautiful little girl with big brown eyes that, from the moment she was born, was the delight of her mama. Observant and contemplative, mama marveled in experiencing through the little girl the wonder she saw in the world around her. The little girl loved closeness, being touched softly, cuddling and sleeping alongside her mama. She had a special connection with her grandpa who, with the strength of a carpenter, held her in his strong arms beneath the trees in their yard — watching the leaves above them blow while the breeze touched her face.
As she grew into a toddler and began interacting more with others, mama noticed that she often held back, taking her time to settle in and feel comfortable with new people and experiences. Being such a beautiful and curious little girl, many friends and family wanted to hold her and while she enjoyed them, she didn’t like feeling pressured to go to them. When this happened, her natural curiosity turned off and her body stiffened as she retreated back into the safety of her parents arms. Witnessing this, mama asked the people to simply invite her towards them with open eyes and smile — allowing space for her natural curiosity to draw her forward in her own time. The ones who listened to mama, delighted in the softness of the the little girls chubby legs as she sat on their lap, and the sing songy sounds of her voice as she chatted away. The ones who insisted on rushing her, were left disappointed that she chose to enjoy them only from the lap of someone else.
As the girl grew, so did her circle of people and she especially loved playing with other children. As always, she took her time at first, sitting on the edge, observing them and waiting to feel, without pressure, the readiness in her tummy drawing her closer. Invariably it would come and she would run off to play for hours and hours — occasionally looking back to check that mama was still there. Mama loved her little girl more than life itself and the only thing that could get in the way of that were when her own unresolved childhood wounds showed up. On one particular day, mama felt the pressure from other parents insisting her daughter play before she was ready. Feeling the need to please them, mama pushed her little girl to go and almost instantly was brought back to presence by the sight of her daughters little body contract and harden. Acknowledging her wrong doing, mama apologized and felt the little girl soften and settle against her chest as she held her, welcoming in space for her to reconnect to the feeling in her tummy that told her when she was ready.
The little girl grew older and taller, loving school, friends and spending time outside in nature. Sometimes, mama would watch her through the window laying on a blanket under a tree and looking up at the leaves above her. Intuitively mama felt that this was one of the ways her little girl connected to herself just as her grandpa, now passed, had taught her to do all those years ago. Other times she would, like any other kid, explore the world with her siblings, climbing trees and testing her body. Every so often she would stop and look at mama —questioning with her eyes how high she could go or what her body was able to do — and mama would respond “listen to your tummy, it knows best.”
The girl grew into a teenager who cared a lot about the world and the environment around her. She was tall and beautiful and, along with her contemplative and quiet nature, this made some people perceive her as aloof. She wasn’t at all — she just knew she needed space alone at times and to take time to pause and listen to her tummy’s wisdom.
When the girl began dating she listened to her tummy to set the pace of what felt right for her and knew that no one else’s desires were more important than what her body needed. “No ones gonna die if I say no to them” she told her mama. This seemingly simple statement touched something deep inside mama. She recalled her life long pattern of pleasing and as a result, internally bracing and guarding from touch that came from the feeling in other peoples tummy’s but not her own. Feeling unable to say no, made it hard for mama to feel when her tummy said yes. When had she forgotten to slow down and listen? Why had it taken her to this moment to remember that the wisdom she supported in her daughter, was innate to all of us?
Pondering this, mama went to her room, laid down on the bed and — with her hand on her tummy, turned her eyes towards the trees outside her open window — watching the leaves move and feeling the wind on her face. It took some time, but soon enough she felt something faintly familiar in her tummy — a resonance that she remembered feeling way back when she was a tiny little girl herself. “Listen to your tummy, it knows best.”
by Natasha | Jun 9, 2023 | Awakening, connection, Posts, Sex and mothering, Vulnerability |
I haven’t felt the internal pull to write and share my innermost self with a wider audience in so long. Maybe I’ve felt too tender, maybe I needed the space, maybe I was fulfilled with sharing my innermost with the people closest to me and in the spaces I hold for clients. I’m not sure exactly the reason. Today though, I feel that pull.
Last year I lost my friend Brenda. She was in the deep, early stages of grieving her son Thomas who died by suicide just over a year before. We weren’t everyday friends, but I helped raise Thomas in my daycare, our boys had been best friends, we bonded over beers, laughed at how we both felt inferior to each other for being a “better” mother and in particular connected through the vulnerability of loss and grief. I loved Thomas too and throughout preschool and elementary, I wiped tears from his eyes, told him how wonderfully kind he was to be such a good friend to the younger children in my care and cuddled him when he was hurt. I was his emergency contact, and I’ll never forget how my heart stopped the moment the school called to tell me he died. I’ll never forget Brenda collapsing into me inside her back door, with Thomas’ shoes still lined up on the mat ready to be put on. I’ll never forget the pain in my children’s eyes and holding my daughter Selam up as she struggled to stay in her body at his funeral.
I checked in with Brenda regularly after Thomas died and connected her to a suicide support group for grieving parents. That wonderful group became an absolute lifeline for her and, in my view, was the one place where she felt 100% understood in her grief. Still, I worried about her a lot. Thomas was her only child and I didn’t know a mom who loved their child more than she did. Brenda loved seeing my son Mateyo, loved talking about the times she’d taken him and Thomas to the Exhibition, or to their farm and how happy they were together. When she hugged Mateyo, I could see in her closed eyes that her hands reaching up around the shoulders on his tall, lithe body reminded her of hugging Thomas. I could see how it hurt her to let go.
We found Brenda on the cold floor of her bathroom one day in May, after she hadn’t responded to texts for 48 hrs. She’d been there, still alive in body but not in soul, for nearly 2 days after suffering a brain aneurism. Sweet Brenda who had devoted her life to her only child Thomas for 17 years and who would do anything for anyone, was gone. I remember standing on her front lawn with the paramedics taking her away thinking how in this moment so many things that had seemed important, just didn’t matter at all. Facebook didn’t matter. What people think of me didn’t matter. Being successful didn’t matter……
The first weeks after her death, I thought I was going insane. I’d never felt like that before. I couldn’t handle what I felt. The injustice of it. The pain of seeing her like that. The reality of her being alone for hours and hours in that state. I wanted to rip my skin off. Slowly, the pain eased and, miraculously it seemed, I started to feel okay again. I was sad, but I could be in my skin, and I was okay. The image of her curled up and soiled on the bathroom floor didn’t leave me though. I couldn’t help but think that even if I kept on living the rest of my life in service to others — my clients, my children — that I could still end up alone, dying on a cold bathroom floor too. If so much doesn’t matter, then what does matter? Like a curious observer, I stepped back and took stock of my life. I saw that I’d been running for years since my divorce, working several jobs to both cover up my guilt at ending my marriage, and make enough money to support my kids on my own. I don’t know if working that much helped the guilt, but I could see that I was able to support them and I might not need to work so hard. What was the cost on me? Was it enough for me to end up on my bathroom floor alone too? Did I want to work this much?
Slowly I started making changes by cutting back my hours at my job as an ADHD Coach and creating space for my Counseling practice, which provided enough income that I didn’t need to run myself into the ground. Why hadn’t I done that before? I’d been too busy creating self suffering in an attempt to alleviate guilt. Wasn’t being a mom all about sacrificing yourself? I started setting really firm and clear boundaries with my clients, children, friends. I quickly realized that I no longer wanted to work that job at all and started making a plan to quit. I hired a Coach and went to therapy to help me unravel the strings of guilt and self-punishment that were so deeply ingrained in me. When I became a mother, I did so because I wanted children more than anything else in the world. AND, I was afraid of facing myself and the other things I wanted for my life. I didn’t know I could have both. Motherhood was the ultimate way to sacrifice myself.
I kept going. My grief fueled me to do hard inner work. The layers of exoskeleton that had been removed through the past 7 years of stepping into vulnerability, uncovered a deeper set of layers. Layers over my innermost self, the part of me that isn’t just interested in meeting the needs of others. The me that has dreams of my own. I realized I was tired of how much work Bodysex retreats were and that I no longer wanted to do them in such a laborious way. I LOVED the circle of sharing, I loved the weekends with women, I loved how I grew and felt seen from them and I loved sharing pleasure. I didn’t love all the work before and after though. Maybe it didn’t need to be so hard….. I stopped offering workshops in Saskatoon and continued in Quebec where I had support with all the marketing, advertising, retreat supplies and food. I quit my job and made the decision to only Counsel clients 3 days a week and devote the other 2 days to something my innermost self was passionate about — writing a book. My work blossomed. The moment I quit my job (and I mean literally the moment), I had more than enough clients to fill my days and then some. Since then I have created a daily practice centering around myself and my passions — self-care, connection, health, pleasure and my work which involves all of that!
My days include space in between sessions so that I can ground and centre and think of the next person coming before they pass through my door. I say no to working weekends. I devote 4 evenings a week to going to the gym and 2 days a week to pilates – because my body feels great when I create space for it. I eat really healthy food, I drink wine, I walk every morning, devote time to enjoying pleasure, laughing and connecting with people I love. I can’t bring myself to advertise my work when I already have enough and don’t want or need to be bigger, more well known, get more likes or have more followers. I’m deeply grateful for what I have, and I just want to live my life from the innermost part of myself. I’ve noticed that in the space I’ve created, I’m closer to my mom, my sisters, my children. I’m more generous because I’m not running on empty ready to crash the moment I stop. I have space throughout my day to pause and feel and enjoy the moments.
I often wish I could tell Brenda how much she inspired me. How much I saw myself in her, how much I think of her in all the work I do, how much of an impact she has made on my life. After Thomas died, she told me that she could see her own pain every time she looked in the eyes of the homeless. She made a point to always look at them and had plans to devote her time to working with the homeless. I wish I could tell her that I saw myself in her too. In her loving devotion to her son, her outward care of others and in how she died. I know that could be me too. That could be any of us. That reflection changed me, and I’m forever grateful to her for helping me create space in my life for what matters. Spending time with people I love, smelling the lilacs first bloom in Spring, allowing others to care for me, the space to be present and ME.
In loving memory of Brenda and Thomas Schoor
by Natasha | Jan 24, 2022 | For couples, Posts, Sex and mothering, Sexual liberation |
When I was first exploring my sexuality, I didn’t resonate with using the terms masculine and feminine to describe myself — especially not when they applied to sex. I resonated with the idea of these energies co-existing, but not how having both of them could help me have a balanced sex life. Now, ten years later on this journey, I resonate much more with these terms and understand why that balance can be so helpful in sex and intimacy. At times in my explorations, I’ve swayed heavy to one side or the other, and thankfully this pendulum swing has been helpful in opening up a longing in me for the side that was missing.
I’ve always identified strongly with certain aspects of traditional femininity. I became a mother to a big family at a young age and the role of nurturing my children and husband felt at that time, like my highest purpose in life. Motherhood allowed me to tap into the soft, nurturing parts of myself that longed for connection and intimacy — through tending to the needs of others. Caring for my family became my attempt at meeting those needs in myself and yet, I often felt like something was missing. Without embodying my masculine side, I found it difficult to ask for what I wanted and needed or make decisions for myself that conflicted with my ability to care for others. My femininity lacked self-care that may have helped me feel nurtured or beautiful or comfortable in my body, and was solely focused on the needs of others. I stuffed my own needs down as deep as I could to protect this. As my children got older and built their own relationships and interests, parenting no longer met my need for intimacy, and the deep longings I felt bubbled to the surface. Slowly, I pulled them out one by one and learned that I liked to feel my body move through dance and to wear dresses and to feel pretty — for myself — and that femininity wasn’t only about caring for the needs of others.
Around this same time I discovered my pleasure in a more embodied way and the nurturing part of me that used to have sex for my husbands pleasure, started wanting pleasure for myself. It took awhile to learn how to do this, but eventually I no longer cared if he connected with me before we had sex as I’d long since been asking for. I learned that I could have sex solely for pleasure — as he had seemingly done for years and years — and that sometimes that was exactly what I needed. I learned to own my right to orgasm by making sure that, with the help of my hands, I always orgasmed in sex. I initiated sex, turned on the lights and took the pillow off of my face that I’d used for years to hide in shame. I didn’t have to feel shame to live in pleasure. It was my BIRTHRIGHT. I was doing what men have done for centuries and took ownership of my own pleasure. I’d believed my husband’s pleasure to be a given and that it was necessary for me to provide that for him during the 17 years we were together. Until I found my masculine, I couldn’t imagine believing my pleasure could be a given or necessary too.
High on this masculine energy I rode my right to pleasure as hard a cock. (see, just writing about my masculine gets me in that mode!) When my marriage ended, I continued seeking my right to pleasure in a masculine way — rarely asking for the nurturing or connection I also needed, or even discerning adequately who I was experiencing pleasure with. There are moments I remember in sexual situations where I felt almost out of body, wondering why I divorced my husband just to be back in the same situation of disconnected sex I’d wanted out of. I could orgasm just fine, but the longing for connection and intimacy and being seen, was still there.
Listening to my feminine, I started practicing discernment and realized that deep intimacy and pleasure (beyond just a basic “get me off” orgasm) happened when I felt relaxed and safe. Just “taking” my orgasm wasn’t enough anymore and I still longed for the more I craved in my marriage. I wanted pleasure yes, but also connection, softness, surrender. To have this, I had to learn to trust and to receive — both very feminine qualities. I realized it was much easier to long for these things than to actually make myself open to them, but I committed to practice. Using breath, presence and masculine confidence, I learned to soften my body like a jelly fish or sea sponge — able to absorb and feel the subtlest nuances of pleasure. Slowly I opened my legs, arms, hands and heart to myself, my partner and the universe. Allowing the feminine in me to receive and soften meant I could allow my partner to pleasure me for as long as I needed. When I felt insecure, the masculine in me was helpful as the strong voice in my ear reminding me, as it’s reminded men for centuries, that “this is my right!” Finally, the two parts were working together.
Looking back I feel that as a traditional, non sexually embodied woman — so far swung on the pendulum in that way — it was necessary for me to swing as far as I could the other way and find my masculine. I needed to own my right to pleasure and exercise it as my own, so that I could come back and own my right to embody my full femininity too. In order to surrender to pleasure, love and allow myself to be fully seen, I needed to know I deserve that. It’s my right as a human being. Regardless of gender or sexual orientation, I believe these two energies exist in all of us, as does the potential to actualize them. To know if your pendulum is swung too far in one way, you can simply ask yourself “what else am I longing for in my sexual and intimate life?” Your answer, is an invitation to explore what’s missing.
by Natasha | Aug 19, 2019 | Body Image, Bodysex workshops, Nude in nature photos, Sex and mothering |
I was having a drink with a friend I’ve known from way back the other night when she said “I always tell people how you used to wear capris all summer because you hated your legs and you were fully covered up no matter how hot a day it was. Now look at you!” Lying on my bed listening to her say this, my mind kept going back and forth between those days of such body/self hatred to the present moment of being so comfortable in my body that I’m consciously trying to remember to keep my bare pussy contained in the tiny onesie I’m wearing.
It’s easy to forget how much the way I feel in this body has changed over the last 7 years. Before my first nude Bodysex workshop in NYC, I hated it. I don’t mean dislike, I mean hated it. I thought my legs were too big, vulva lips too long and my stomach too wrinkly and loose from all my pregnancies. The only time you’d see me in shorts was when I wore them in the swimming pool over my basic black one piece. I remember clearly thinking, when I walked into that Bodysex workshop, that I was disgusting and now everyone in the room would know it too. But they didn’t see me as disgusting, they saw me as me.
I survived that weekend feeling liberated and inspired. I realized that even though I still didn’t necessarily like my body, I wanted to like it. But how? Covering my body had allowed me to avoid it and in a sense I could almost pretend that it wasn’t a part of me. I remember thinking so many times that “if only my legs looked skinnier or my stomach firm again they’d feel like mine.” I put conditions on my body’s worth and yet treated others with love unconditionally.
Taking a cue from my Bodysex experience, I decided to actively and regularly uncover my body. I started looking at myself, touching myself and was even convinced by my friend to let her take nude photos of me. I was terrified, but with her and another woman’s support, I relaxed enough to enjoy the ultimate pleasure of sun on my bare skin. I even felt kind of pretty. The more I got naked, the more normal it felt and the more normal it felt, the more I craved it. When I began leading my own Bodysex workshops there wasn’t a woman in my circles that I couldn’t see myself in – and all I saw was beauty. Maybe my legs didn’t need to be thinner to be mine. Maybe my vulva lips contain an abundance of glorious nerve endings to provide me with a life time (and more) of pleasure. Maybe the loose skin on my stomach made me even more me.
When I look at these pictures now, I want to wrap my arms around the woman in them and say that her thick,strong legs will do an amazing job carrying her up and down the steepest hills of her life. That her long vulva lips will come to signify that they’re as excited for life as she will be and just don’t want to be contained, that her stomach will someday simply be a reminder of the most important people in her life – her children. She is this body but she’s also so much more. I am this body, but I’m also so much more.
These days my most favourite thing to do is to be naked outside, naked inside, naked, naked, naked. It soothes me when I’m sad, comforts me when I’m lonely and makes me feel like I’m drop dead gorgeous. Is it true? Who knows. Who cares. It’s what I feel today in this body of mine.
**special thanks to Betty, Carlin and Bodysex <3
