Transforming Desire Through Shadow Work

So,

Thank you for being here,

And per usual in these spaces,

I just want to offer you the opportunity to really,

Really tune in with how your body wants to receive this information today.

Sometimes it feels beautiful to sit up upright,

Erect in the spine,

With the eyes open or shut down.

And sometimes it feels very nurturing and nourishing to lay the body down,

To step away from the screen,

To close the eyes,

To cover yourself in a blanket,

To feel nice and cozy.

So I encourage you to really tune in to your body right now and ask your body,

What is it that you need to ask your heart?

What is it that you need to tune in to your tenderness today,

To any sensitivities that you might have?

Also to any numbness.

If the body is feeling numb,

Is there something that you can do to allow yourself to arrive a bit more deeply?

And then let's take some breaths together.

So I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath in through the nostrils and let the belly fill with breath up through the diaphragm,

Across the chest as you inhale through the nose.

And then exhale through the nose.

And again,

When you're ready,

Inhale,

Fill completely up.

Hold for a moment at the top.

And exhale.

A few more rounds this way,

Inhaling,

Holding at the top for just a few seconds.

And exhaling through the nostrils,

Continue to breathe,

Ride the waves of breath,

Inhaling through the nostrils,

Hold at the top for just a few seconds,

Exhale,

Release.

And just with every round of breath,

Let the body soften more and more,

Arriving,

Arriving,

Arriving.

And then once you're fully settled into your breath,

You can let go of consciously focusing on it,

But do your best to really stay in an awareness of the breath as much as you can without too much focus.

And the topic that we're getting into today is around sexuality and the shadow.

So just a little bit about shadow work and about the topic of sexuality and sensuality.

The reason that these two topics are so powerful on their own and even more powerful together is the shadow essentially is any parts of the human experience,

The sensational experience as sentient beings that we are,

Any parts that is suppressed or repressed or hidden.

So the thing about shadow work is that usually we are unconscious of it because it is in the shadows,

Meaning it is in the darkness,

That it is not so explicit.

It's not something that we're explicitly seeing.

So a lot of times when we hear the word shadow and we think of darkness,

We immediately associate anything in the shadow with something that is dark,

But also what is hidden in the shadow are our golden shadow aspects,

Meaning some of our deepest desires,

Our deepest pleasures.

It might be where we hide our beautiful voices that want to sing or our artistic nature that wants to paint or our expressive nature that wants to dance or our wild nature that wants to make love.

And when we speak about sexuality,

And I'm speaking to it from what I'll term and what has been used as well as embodied sexuality,

Not going deep into the conversation of sexuality in terms of kinks and ways in which we can bring the shadows into sexuality,

But more so how do we have an embodied sexual experience?

And that can be with ourselves or with others,

But how can we be alive,

Number one,

In our body?

So to be embodied means to be in the body.

If I am numb or if I'm dissociated or if I'm dysregulated,

Then I'm not fully maybe aware of what my needs and desires are.

If I'm numb,

I may have no idea what my thresholds are,

My pleasure threshold,

My pain threshold.

I might not have an idea of what my needs are or my boundaries.

So in shadow work,

When we are working with both the shadows,

The repressed parts,

And sexuality,

Because sexuality is connected to sexual energy or energy that is translated into a sexual space,

This is one of the most vulnerable places that human beings can relate.

It's one of the most intimate places,

The most transcendental spaces that we can meet another sentient being.

And so the reason that it's so important to talk about shadow work and sexuality is that it being one of the most intimate places that we can be,

It's also one of the most vulnerable.

So if I'm dissociated,

If I'm quite numb in my body and I don't know what my needs are and I don't know what my boundaries are,

Being in a sexual space with somebody relationally can be very dangerous for me.

Because if I don't know what my boundaries are and I don't know what my needs are and I engage in a way that crosses boundaries that I'm unaware of or negates desires that I'm not aware that I have,

I might consistently be putting my body through more complex layers of unmetabolized trauma in a sense.

Meaning that say,

And I'll give an example from my own experience that you might relate to which is so many bodies relate to this,

There is a form of sexual dissociation called somatoform dissociation.

Somatoform dissociation happens when the genitalia of either body becomes numb and dissociated to the point where the being that's living in that body with the dissociated and numb genitalia,

Because they can't feel,

They may need to have really deep intensity in their sexuality to be able to feel anything.

Does that mean that they like that?

Does it mean that they like intensity and they need it to be really dynamic and wild?

No,

What it could mean is that there's so much trauma unmetabolized in their sex organs that in order to feel anything,

The pressure or the act has to be so aggressive in order for them to sense anything.

And this can be really vulnerable when we only know our own way of having sex and being in this sexual space and then we bring in lovers to our life and we share this very vulnerable space with them and they've had different connections but this is all that we know.

And so then when we find out that maybe other people might be more sensitive or that this might be quite intense,

It can be very shocking for the system to find out that we're different and that we have different needs.

And so there are so many wonderful somatic therapists and different sexologists that you can work with now when you find a really safe space and a healthy practitioner to work with to not in a sexual way but in a very embodied way help you bring these things back online.

Really working with any sexual shame that you have,

Any dysregulation,

Any numbness,

Any dissociation to bring these parts of the body back online and in aliveness.

It can be very challenging for us as beings,

As sexual beings to not understand that this is what's happening until decades and decades into our sexual lives to find out that there's something that we're experiencing that maybe other people don't experience or there's a level of sensitivity that other people can experience that we're not experiencing.

And it's really important in those moments to give compassion to ourselves that we're not broken and that nothing's wrong with us and if we like things very intensely or not intensely or a certain way,

There's nothing to be ashamed about,

There's nothing weird,

You know,

Too weird.

So many of us have this idea that what we desire and what we want is weird and if there are some truly strange things that we desire,

It is good to speak to somebody about that that works in this area to see if that desire comes from a place of love and embodiment or if it comes from a wound.

So I,

Again,

In my example I can share,

Because of the somatoform dissociation in my own body for so many years,

There was a deep desire for very intense sexual experiences.

And it wasn't until I was into my first decade of being a sexual being that a partner that truly loved me shared with me that this intensity that I wanted was very rare for him and that he hadn't experienced that with anyone else and that it was a bit uncomfortable for him to give me this need because it brought up his own things,

His own fears around too much aggression or whatever it might be.

But it woke me up to a loss of sensitivity that I didn't realize I had.

So the reason I speak to this is so that we can understand when we speak in this world,

We talk a lot about kinks and playing with submission and dominance and understanding what our needs are,

But it's also about understanding where the needs come from.

So first off,

In sexuality,

If we want to mix shadow work and sexuality together in a healing way,

It's very important that the people that we're sharing sexuality with have our best interests in mind,

That they really care about what our needs are,

That they really care to lead us to create boundaries,

That they lead us to know what our true no is and our true yes is.

Because what can happen in disempowered relationships that are codependent and based on loving one another from a wounded space but not from the heart is that if I love you from my wounded place and you're loving me from your wounded place,

There's a lot of complexity that can mix there and a lot of fear because if we're coming from a wounded place,

There's generally a fear that's going to keep us from being truly transparent with each other.

So I might feel uncomfortable telling you that some of the things that you need bring up a bit of discomfort for me,

You might feel a bit uncomfortable asking me for some things that you really want but you have shame around.

And so a big part of doing shadow work and sexuality is to find a partner that we feel really safe with even though life is not safe and someone can't give us full safety but someone that we feel that we can trust that we also slow down a bit.

Sometimes we enter into sexual spaces so fast and so we slow things down and we have conversations before engaging sexually.

And I'm not sure how many of you have heard of the acronym RBDSMA and this is a life-changing tool to use before getting engaged with someone sexually where I'll tell you what the different letters stand for,

R is relationship status.

You ask the person that maybe you're spending time with or and even if you're in a relationship,

You can go through this with them but you ask,

What is your relationship status?

Who's in your field?

Who are you engaging with right now?

Who is in the space that you would be engaging with sexually?

It's good for you to know.

Is this somebody that is focused on just connecting with you or the field is a bit open and there's some loose ends?

B is boundaries.

What are the boundaries you want to have with this person?

So this is if we start dating,

I can say I have a boundary that I'm curious about you and I am open to sensuality but I'm not open to sexuality yet.

I'm not ready to engage in a sexual space but I would love to be in a sensual space and hold hands and maybe kiss and get to know each other.

D is desires and then we can go more into desires.

What do we desire about this person?

S is around sexual conduct,

So STIs,

Anything that we need to know about the physical body and anything that's happening in our sexual health.

M is meaning.

What does this mean to you?

So if we're having this conversation,

We're going back and forth and we get to a part where it's meaning and I say,

Wow,

This would mean a lot to me.

I feel so connected to you.

I'm really wanting to work on healing some of my sexual shame.

I really want to have a partner I can work shadow work with that I can look at these repressed parts of myself,

Learn to speak my boundaries,

Learn to speak my desires and it would mean a lot to me if that was you.

And then the other person goes and if they say their M,

Their meaning is actually I'm kind of connecting with many people right now I'm dating.

This wouldn't mean a lot to me in terms of intimacy.

I would love to have a sexual experience with you,

But I'm not really available for anything deeper than that.

I don't want to be in any processing.

I don't want to have any attachments.

So already having this conversation before being sexually involved,

I'm very aware that our needs and our desires are very different.

So this conversation is going to help me make a decision.

Okay,

This person has just given me a lot of information on where they're at.

Maybe this is not the place for me to work with my deeper relational intimacy with my embodied sexuality with shadow work.

And then the A of R,

B,

D,

S,

M,

A is aftercare.

This one is so important and it's been added in the recent years and aftercare meaning if you and I are to engage if we're to date or were to have a sexual relationship or for already in a relationship,

Aftercare is how are we going to care for each other after this?

So let's say we've already engaged together sexually.

We started dating.

Okay,

So what I say my aftercare is I would really love to have a check in a few times a week.

This is a very sensitive space for me,

So I would just love to check in and make sure that we just attune to each other's needs and see if there's anything that either of us need to feel comfortable or tune in about maybe anything that we might be feeling insecure about or nervous about and we can see what the other person's answer is in aftercare and if it matches.

So sexuality and shadow work is also about accountability and responsibility.

Are you making choices in partnership that are going to allow you to open up more in your sexuality?

Are you making choices that are going to shut you down and numb you?

If we are looking for safety and deeper intimacy and to heal these wounds,

These relational wounds,

But we're connecting with people that don't have the same boundaries and needs and meaning that we do in this connection,

Then we can create more and more impact,

More and more negative impact that creates pain and drives us away from the very thing that we want,

Which is closeness.

So the acronym again is R-B-D-S-M-A.

R is Relationships,

Relationship Status,

B is Boundaries,

D is Desires,

S is Sexual Conduct and E is Sexual Health.

N is the meaning of this connection and A is Aftercare.

So adopting this acronym before getting sensually or sexually involved with anybody will change your life.

It really will change your life and if you are already in a connection,

I don't want you to feel as if,

Oh,

I've already made the mistake,

I didn't say these things.

You can do this at any point because we're constantly changing.

So if you're with a partner now and there's a bit of ambiguity or you don't feel that you're able to be fully transparent or speak your desires or needs or you want to know if they really are also being able to feel transparent because they have their own insecurities and their own needs,

You can promote this and say,

Okay,

I would really love to sit down with you and go through this exercise I found out about and it can bring you even closer together.

You know,

You can make tea,

You can set up candles,

You can sit together face to face and you can go back and forth through this acronym and really get to know the person that you're connecting with in a more deep way.

So again,

In connection to shadow work and sexuality,

The way that we're seeing in modern ways of relating is this swipe culture,

The discard culture,

The capitalistic way of consuming one another.

We had turned each other into what Eric Fromm says in the art of loving personality packages.

So at best,

It's so easy to think that we have so many options because we can constantly swipe,

We can talk to people on social media,

We can engage and all of these ways may appear as if we have lots of options but in reality,

A lot of those options are illusions.

Most of those options are illusions because it's very rare that we meet somebody that we're so deeply in alignment with on the same frequency that we both have the willingness and opportunity to meet each other at a certain level of transparency to do really deep like cosmic soul work together.

And so when I say that,

It's because I want to invite you when you have the opportunity to meet somebody that's truly transparent,

That's showing up,

That has the willingness to do the work with you,

To do this kind of deeper relational work,

It is such a gift and we can so easily swipe past it because we feel like we have so many options.

But if we can start a connection with these conversations and we can say,

I'll give an example boundaries,

Say I'm in the RBDSM talk with somebody and I speak to,

I get to boundaries and I say,

Okay,

I've been through many years of deeply painful relating where I feel like I have met avoidance and lack of transparency in my partnerships and it has built up this shield around my heart that I'm thawing out and that I'm unfreezing and I really want to be courageous,

I want to love,

I want to deeply devote myself,

I want to give to my partner,

I really want to love my partner.

So I have this boundary of like I want to go slow,

I need to go very slow and I want to take my time and I want to take the steps very slowly.

If I say that to somebody and I'm being very vulnerable and very raw,

I'm being very open with what I want and they speak back of boundaries like,

I don't really have any boundaries and you know,

It's not so important to me that it's so deep,

You know,

I just have this desire to have fun and to play and I don't want it to be too serious and you know,

I'm in this carefree time in my life,

Then I would know that this isn't a place maybe where I'm going to be able to heal that deep relational wound.

So this is what I want to offer to you in terms of sexuality and the shadow is that if you really want to transform your life using sexuality as this transcendental place that is a meditation,

That is a prayer,

That is a place to like deeply,

Deeply find yourself,

To find your center and to help the other person,

Then you have to be so discerning about where you enter into this space with somebody.

So I also want to speak to woundings when we're connecting from wounds.

If we aren't already doing the shadow work outside of sexuality,

Our wounds are very prone to coming into sexuality,

Meaning if I'm a people pleaser,

If I'm somebody that really doesn't like to let anybody down,

Very much so in sexuality,

I might be someone that gives and gives and gives and serves and doesn't know how to receive.

The issue with this is that I'm a human being and there is desire in me,

Even if I'm numb to it and dissociated because I've taken on this archetype of the people pleaser,

At some point my system will shut down when it's not also receiving.

And what can be really sad about this is if there's two wounds,

If there's somebody on the other side that's never been given love and that's just absorbing it and they're taking it,

It doesn't mean that they're bad for taking it.

They might have a wound of never really being loved and they're just eating this up and they're just feeling all the love and they're receiving it,

But they just don't know how to give it because no one's given them that opportunity or you're not sharing that with them.

Then at some point when that breaks and we speak finally and say,

You never give me anything,

You never serve me,

You never care about my needs,

This can be incredibly painful for the person on the other side because it's not that they did something wrong,

It's that they didn't know how to ask questions,

That they didn't get curious,

That they didn't attuned to what your needs were,

But it's also your responsibility to say what you need and to speak for what you desire.

So it's a really beautiful opportunity to look at yourself inside the bedroom and outside of do you know how to ask for what you need?

Are you comfortable with both roles of giving and receiving?

Because if you're uncomfortable receiving in life,

Most likely you're going to be uncomfortable receiving in love and in sexuality.

And the same thing,

Are you somebody that takes?

Are you somebody that consistently is taking,

Taking,

Taking energy?

Most likely you're also taking in sexuality.

So it's important to ask your partner questions of,

You know,

What would make you feel really good?

What do you desire?

Is there something that I can do?

Is there a way that I touch you or a way that I love you that would feel even more loving for you,

Would feel even more pleasurable for you?

How can I gift that to you?

I want to do that for you.

Because it also is such a gift to us to quench the thirst of a certain desire for somebody that we love.

So it's beautiful to ask questions of like,

How can I make this more pleasurable for you?

And also if we notice that our partner tends to be a bit aloof or numb or dissociated,

It's a beautiful offering to ask them questions of,

Hey,

Sometimes I notice in our experiences that you close your eyes a lot and I feel that you're going inward and you're in your own experience,

But sometimes I feel disconnected from you and I don't know what you're desiring in that moment.

I don't know what you're wanting or what you're experiencing.

I would love for you to vocalize,

Maybe not in the space if that's uncomfortable for you,

But vocalize what you like or what's maybe a bit uncomfortable or what I can do to be there for you more,

To be more giving.

And the same if we have a partner that's really dynamic and is always asking for what they want,

This can be inspiring for us to learn how to speak for what we want as well.

As adults,

We are still children inside that are so afraid of expressing our desires and our boundaries and our needs and fear of being rejected.

And what I've noticed in relationship for myself,

I feel even more connected to my partner when they're very vulnerable.

And being in these heteronormative relationships that I found myself in a lot with male-bodied beings that have this social organizational way of experiencing sexuality where they have to be macho and have no needs and they just give,

Give,

Give.

This is not true.

They also want to receive.

They also would like to be,

In a way,

Submissive at times,

To be held,

Maybe to even lay their head in a little woman's lap and have her massage their head or stroke their hair.

It's important that we take ourselves out of these gender roles and that we're all just a bit more gender fluid and more understanding that sometimes I'm in my masculine,

Sometimes I'm in my feminine and that we all are more fluid than we think we are.

We get so stuck and somebody spoke about this earlier in the thread about not being queer enough or not being feminine enough or not being masculine enough.

And it's important that we drop these things as much as we can when it comes to our sexuality because this is where it all merges.

This is where the tapestry intertwines and we become one.

It is the most transcendental place where we deeply,

Deeply intertwine and become one.

And there's nothing more beautiful than the masculine pole and the physical pole between bodies that see themselves however they see them without a specific gender per se,

That we let things dance in that space,

That we let ourselves submit,

That we let ourselves dominate in moments and that we do this consensually,

That we check in with each other through words or through vocalization of does this feel good for you?

Is this okay?

Is this respecting your needs and your boundaries?

And that we speak to some of the deeper desires that we might have that do come from the shadow.

Maybe we have grown up watching a lot of porn or seeing sexuality as this very objectively transactional thing and we speak to that and we tell our partner,

Look,

There's a part of me that has this conditioning that believes sexuality should be like this and this is what is sexy and this is what it should be like and I know that that's not the full picture but it exists inside me.

And we work together to integrate or to heal this conditioning that I have around sexuality.

And so anything that you feel like you need to hide,

This is the stuff we speak about.

This is the stuff that we start talking about and we do our best to make it about ourselves,

Not about our partner not being enough or not giving us what we want but we say,

Look,

I have this desire or I have this conditioning,

I have this fantasy.

We put it out into the sunlight and we just ask,

You know,

Like we're going back and forth in conversation of this is here,

It's in the room,

It's in the space.

How does it impact you for me to speak about it?

And let me let you know how it impacts me and how can we integrate it?

How can we work with it?

How can we take it out of the shadows?

And when we take the shadows into the light,

It's a time that we start working with releasing projections of what a man needs to be,

What a woman needs to be,

What it means to be queer,

What it means to be this or that and we do our best to drop the projections and archetypes and just allow ourselves to feel,

To really be embodied,

To let go of that numbness or dissociation or aggression or hypervigilance and just land fully in our center as a sexual sentient being and we just allow.

And when we allow,

There is this,

I can even feel my body taking a full breath,

Like when we allow and we surrender to what we are and what we feel into our fantasies and when we let go of the shame and I should be this,

I should be that,

There is an aliveness that comes in and just speaking it and hopefully it erases a bit of the emotional detachment that we have or the avoidance that we have and it allows us to be more vulnerable because sometimes these weird things that we desire or the things that we experience in ourselves,

They bring up a lot of excitement and curiosity for our partners of like,

Wow,

Okay,

This is interesting.

I haven't experienced that before.

Where does this come from?

And we jump down the rabbit hole of when was the first time you experienced this?

What made you desire this?

What do you think the need is that stems from this?

And so we become more vulnerable,

We become more alive,

We become less shameful.

And if you were to study meta-modernism,

This is the new era that we're in,

When we look back all the way to the beginning of time of animism,

Living off the land and living in tribes,

We've moved from animism into Faustianism and post-Faustianism into modernism and post-modernism and now we're into this meta-modernism.

And in that meta-modernism,

We're meant to feel deeply,

Deeply alive and we're also meant to be very paradigmatic,

Thinking more fractally how everything is connected,

Getting more curious,

Asking more questions.

And we're in a time where so much of our history,

So much of our generational history as well,

Has pushed us to shut our bodies down and to limit our identities into this is a female,

This is a male,

This is healthy sex,

This is unhealthy sex,

This is a kink,

This is good,

This is bad.

And it's just time to shred all of that,

All of those archetypes,

All of the masks and to come into center and to be this being,

This being that is both masculine and feminine,

That is dancing with energy and really allowing us to meet these united transcendental states of deep,

Deep vulnerability and aliveness.

But first it starts with embodiment,

It starts with waking ourselves up because we need to know what our needs are,

We need to know what our desires are and our boundaries.

And even more better if we have a partner that truly loves us and wants us to know that for ourselves as well.

Because when we're in codependent partnerships that are quite abusive and unconscious,

We push each other to be small so that we can feel safe,

So it's that I need you to be this certain way so that my things that I'm hiding and I don't want to share don't have to come out of hiding.

But a truly conscious relationship where we're healing,

It's scary,

It takes a lot of courage to say here I am,

Flaws and all,

With all of my wounds and all of my shame and all of my trauma that comes from the past and here you are and all your imperfections and how can we re-parent one another's little ones inside,

How can we take ourselves out of this meta-modernism shame regime,

This shame regime that the world has conditioned us in to be more beautiful,

To be more efficient,

To be more productive,

To be more sexual,

More feminine,

More masculine,

It's always more,

More,

More and it creates so much shame around not enoughness.

So we break that down in these conscious relationships and we get courageous and we get truthful,

We get very honest and we share ourselves vulnerably.

So I wish this for each of you that you can,

Yeah,

Really breathe into your being and to show yourself for not even who you truly are but the thoughts and the conditionings that you are connected to that you would like to uncover a little bit more,

To actually find out that you're just a sentient being,

You're just this meat case,

This flesh bag of deep feeling and that you are all of it,

You are all of it,

You are the wildness,

You are the tenderness,

You are,

Yeah,

You are all the things.

So if you get lost in this journey between sexuality and the shadows,

Remember to take some breaths and to drop deep into the body and to just feel what is your truth right now in this moment and share from that place.