A month ago, I had completed a coaching process with a one-of-a-kind woman. She had come to me while being in a relationship. Although she was attracted to her man, although the attraction was mutual, she did not feel at all in her own waters – this is a Romanian expression.
She was grieving the fact she couldn’t feel almost any pleasure. And she wanted to feel that with him. And it hurt her that even though she had his understanding and his support, she still could not open-up and relax. She felt something was missing. She couldn’t understand what.
“I cannot enjoy! I’m stricken when I want to be available to him and sometimes I just do not feel like doing anything. Not that I never feel like that, but I often feel hastened & grabbed when he approaches me. I feel there’s just oo much without being asked or waited a bit. Without any form of wanting in that moment. Why don’t I want to? Why can’t I? Why don’t I feel? ”
We initially started with the idea of exploring all the physical practices that a woman can go through in my coaching process. And there are some practices worthy to put on a list of exploring for any woman. She wanted to try everything out and engage in the entire process. I was delighted to see her courage and desire to transform something vital to her own life. And I was determined to do everything I could to help her express everything she had inside.
During the first sessions I have some calibration practices. Simple, seemingly innocent and completely non-erotic practices. Bodywork is much more complex than she initially expected. And those foundations should be tried by everyone. From those exercises we both saw how her relaxation & pleasure was intertwined with instincts of defense & struggle.
It was one of the most difficult moments to see her shadowed erotic blueprint – without even going to deep in the practices. I realized that no matter how able she was to carry out the practices I could facilitate for her, she needed something else. Not a brave exploration, but a conscious connection to self. She needed genuine and real peace within her body.
Why did she not have? In her interactions many things had not been respected, a lot of her vital boundaries had been broken. In time she had come to a closing down of her own body.
So from our initially courageous intention, I consciously put my foot on the brakes and told her we were going with small steps. And gentle ones. I invited her to do the practices that required her conscious & maximum presence in her own body.
It seems something minor, but when you come to such a presence in your body and with your own sexual energy … it is one of the toughest and most powerful things I’ve ever seen in all the groups I’ve been in.
Not everyone has the real patience to sit there with themselves in their darkest and heaviest waters. Moment by moment. With every sensation and every state in their body. She did that. Until she slowly and sometimes with difficulty saw how her condition transformed. She saw, felt and expressed that transformation step by step. Usually we search for intensity, pleasure, haste and explosion. We all want our light, few of us sit with our shadow. Our shadow is slow and it needs our intense presence.