Masturbation and its role in discovering our bodies !!

In the sexual calendar winter is traditionally Masturbation Month.

I was thinking about this, and thinking about how for many of us masturbation is actually functional more than anything else.

And everything that goes with it, a few moments of release, relaxation, stress-release, tension-relieving, sleep-aid etc.

These are all fine.

And there’s more.

The more is when we expand our awareness and practice to self-pleasuring.

And when we add consciousness, Conscious Self-Pleasuring, we enter a world of such wide and deep possibility.

This is a world of healing, of connecting with ourselves, body, mind and heart, of sensation, of feeling, of emotion, of exploration, of learning, of eroticism, of kink, of energy, of spirituality, of presence, of pleasure…

We are sexual and sensual beings on our own, all the time.

That doesn’t change when we’re in a relationship, although many of us only allow ourselves to be sexual when we’re with someone.

This puts our sexuality outside of us, it’s there when it’s connected to someone else.

Self-Pleasuring is about us, it’s ours. I think sometimes we put a higher value on pleasure with someone else.

We think that there’s more intimacy, more connection, and more pleasure. They’re not necessarily better experiences, they’re different.

If, when and how we choose.

So much of our sexuality begins with us exploring our own bodies, and so often we’re shamed for this.

I have memories of being ‘caught’ masturbating, and the embarrassment I felt at that.

In so many discussions with people they’ve shared similar experiences, and ones that went deeper, where they were shamed, belittled, judged, and how deep these wounds went.

This is where the relationship with our bodies, our genitals and our pleasure begins, and is set, where so many of our patter.