Speaking for the body

If you’ve followed this blog at all over the years, you know that for me, body image and sexuality are intricately interwoven aspects of the human psyche. Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone, not even for all women, nor do I want to repeat everything I’ve said about being uncomfortable in my skin… this time, I want to let the body speak louder than the forever-questioning mind. I have to use words that pass through my brain, but I trust that they come from my heart and from an inner awareness of my being, including my body, before flowing out as thought processes that lead my hands to letters on a keyboard.

The human body is such a beautiful thing! Just looking down at my fingers clicking away, I am grateful. These hands have been around… they’ve caressed lovers and husband(s!) and held newborn babies. They’ve written many a love letter and drawn pictures and played the piano and prepared food for the many people that I consider family. They have also on occasion refused to give or receive, spent money carelessly, or fed me obsessively, but that’s only because they’re attached to a mind more often in control of their actions than the heart and the body itself.

For me, one of the most precious things about being a sexual person, and allowing my sexual nature to be expressed, alone or with others, is exactly that magical aspect of letting go of the mind, of allowing the body to speak, hands to roam, lips to graze and bodies to move in a way that they lose themselves in giving and receiving. All of these sensations can be so overwhelmingly beautiful they become like a euphoric drug that we just can’t get enough of. But these wonderful sensations cannot live in isolation; they just don’t happen if the hands are not connected to a brain, or the heart, to a penis or a nipple, and it works best when all of these aspects come together to entwine people freely giving what flows through them from a place of not only desire, but also of love, mutual respect and compassion.

That’s the best part… the whole body-heart and soul experience of it, and having touched on this, I don’t want to know anything lesser! It’s the lack of this whole experience which is precisely what I find offensive about porn – not the sexual acts in themselves, but the absence of love, respect and compassion that I read into them… which is why I have done so many drawings from pornography, before moving on to images of myself or others who are not acting – because it helped me translate something I saw as empty and crass into something that breathes from within.

Sexual energy is a fragile, beautiful, and often earth-shattering creative force within each of us, and if we can learn to make room for it in our lives, above and beyond biological reproduction and simply satisfying basic needs, it can also become a meeting place for very intimate sharing and growth and a better understanding of ourselves and of our partners. Motivations and perceptions are definitely not the same at 16 years old as when we’re in our thirties, nor later on… what sparks desire can change, levels of awareness change, relationships change, but when we learn to listen to our bodies and hearts as well as the desperate, earthy need to thrust our loins against another human being, we can learn profound truths about ourselves and the people we choose to get close to. And walk away feeling fed and taken care of, and come back for more on the same terms. My body says “yes” to this vision of things… it just feels right from the inside-out.

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Tags: drawing, emotions, feelings, intimacy, love, pornography, relationships, sexuality