Intimacy is a Language of the Body
Even when we are exploring intimacy more “casually” or with less labels of commitments to the future - we must still lean into the pulsing open of the heart for intimacy to truly be felt.
The spiral always brings me back to the fact that I am purely, simply just a writer. It tunes me back into facing the question I asked myself four years ago of, is this enough? So here I am again, with my coffee and keyboard, exploring exactly that.
There’s an aching we all have that pulls us towards living. And a fear we all hold that contracts us into not quite living enough. I’ve been facing the confrontations of these polarities with a magnitude that many won’t take on. Because as I count down the days towards my next solar return - a new year with euni - I also find myself feeling a pressure to do “more” with this life I’ve been given than I have before. I frequently get feedback that I’m always doing “too much” and to “rest more.” And I’ve been challenging how I’m doing - for what reasons - in what ways - and how it feels in my body every step of the way. This process is beautifully exhausting, which in parts brings me into accepting the permission to rest.
Through this, I have been learning that the only true way to understand what is “enough” is to do and feel into the process. We can’t really understand what we want, need, or have the capacity for if we don’t push ourselves towards our edges, which often in the process will weave us in and out of finding, defining, and walking the edges of our boundaries.
image: 2019, from BODIES, inside the Self Study Lab
I’ve been thinking and exploring a lot lately about keeping the heart open. It’s something that feels exceptionally hard in this moment in time for me and it also seems to be a collective energy from what I am experiencing in the interactions and observations that I’m having with others in my personal and professional life. Keeping the heart open is a commitment to authenticity, vulnerability, truth, trust, curiosity, creativity, play, and presence. It is also a resiliency to allowing us to meet the depths of our grief, fear, anxiety, insecurities, loneliness, and pain. It demands that we live from the language of our body and not the logic of our mind. It asks us to tune into the messages from our soul and to turn down the distractions of the world. It requires a confidence in sitting face to face with anything in front of us and turning towards intimacy - especially when discomfort invites us to turn away.
I don’t know what the “right way” to do this thing is. But I do know that if we don’t do anything, we will never find our way. If we live life from our fears rather than the things that peak our curiosity we will move through life half-heartedly. I think this is what brings people regret when they come to the end of their life. Not chasing liberation that exists when we stop oppressing and repressing our own selves.
I also understand that if we continually resist what is right in front of us, it will eventually dissolve and transform into something else. Because every moment holds a preciousness that is not promised and the ways in which we push-pull on ideas, people, places, and invitations puts out an energy that says we don’t believe in the path that we are on, but we also are not willing to get into another lane and claim the life we long to live.
One of my biggest activators in relationships, especially when dating and in romantic partnerships, is ambiguity. I struggle with the space that exists where things are unclear, unsaid, or lingering. Not because I need to control everything (although the Virgo in me does find comfort in control). The challenge is more so because I can feel into the energy of everything outside of me. I can feel the push-pull that is the turmoil others are battling within the exploration of intimacy and trusting connecting more vulnerability with another.
What I often have to find humility and patience within is that, as a former partner said to me once, (comparatively to the average) I am a “professional in intimacy.” I have spent most of my life with contentment in being a jack of all trades and a master of none. This is still true for me in parts. My curiousness pulls me in every direction with enthusiasm and through this I’ve been able to learn many skills, collect an abundance of tools + practices, and dip my toes into expressing myself in a variety of mediums, formats, and ways. But the common thread that has been weaving the ways of my life, my work, my art, and my relationships has been intimacy. This is what I have been on a track of mastery of somewhat indirectly.
In my reflections this summer, I came to greater understandings of what it is (and what it is not) that I am doing. What my heart’s work is and what my “path and purpose” is. I spent time reflecting on the work I started in 2019 when I began the project Not Without Dirt (which has evolved and woven into layers and foundation of what is now Self Study and some of which I will show next month in the BODIES Exhibition). I found common threads of everything I’ve been engulfed in these last 5 years. When I first began, the roots of the work was a “breakdown of human connection.” This has shape-shifted into existing with intimacy. And a microscopic dissection of intimacy as the greatest form of human expression.
Being four years, going on five, out of a globally jarring transformation that we label as “quarantine” or “COVID” - I’ve been with much confusion observing and analyzing how humans have shifted in how we connect in such a way that it actually feels more disconnected, isolating, empty, and confusing than anything. I have been feeling into and guiding people through fear, anxiety, disassociation, stuckness, lack of confidence, grief, heartache, and pain. I’ve seen how what is normal levels of openness feels like way too much for the average person these days. How the baseline ways of connecting brings freeze and avoidant actions that centers pushing others away. There’s a general energy of distrust that appears to be a baseline for how many move through the world. And an inability to feel into our own bodies in ways that helps us uncover our own truths outside of the noise of the crowd.
Discernment was my word of the year back in 2020 and/or 2021. I learned a lot about what is was to listen to my intuition and to slow down in ways that helped me make decisions that were truer to the life I wanted to live and own rather than the chaos that continually unfolded around and within me. Discernment was my first true commitment to any mindfulness practice. It was the way I learned how to build rituals out of what felt like rigid routines. It taught me how to unfold what I needed and what I needed to honor for myself no matter what.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the layers of intimacy. And why it seems to be so hard for so many - at times, including myself. I have been thinking about how intimacy isn’t purely actions - those come authentically and with ease when we have the ability to feel into our own selves deeply and build a trust with what is felt. Intimacy comes from a place of knowing. And knowing comes from a place of curiously exploring and reflecting on what we’ve discovered along the way.
Intimacy is something that can be learned - but it is mostly something that we must learn to feel. Because intimacy isn’t an action. It’s a feeling. It lives in the body. And is guided by the heart. Even when we are exploring intimacy more “casually” or with less labels of commitments to the future - we must still lean into the pulsing open of the heart for intimacy to truly be felt. We cannot exchange, feel, or expand intimacy in spaces where there are blocks, where the heart is close. We cannot give or receive intimacy if our own heart is blocked or protected in ways that push-pull to prevent others from getting close.
I’ve been in a run the last couple weeks with the endings and transforming of relational openings that didn’t have the ability to hold my intimacy in the ways it beckons to be held. This is the ways in which I am currently exploring and practicing boundaries with myself. Shifting power by way of restructuring the priority and impact that closed hearts have on my sense of “connection.” Which means not changing the ways I express intimacy, but standing more fearlessly in the most authentic versions of myself. Which has meant sinking into more discomfort with pushing the edges of others who ask to be pushed. And which also means leading with less attachments, even in the ways I feel ease in being detached.
I’m currently playing out what it is to weave these understandings into spaces designed for healing, intimacy, kink, pleasure, and play. As this is still the root and core of my work and what we will continue exploring inside the Self Study Lab. But less like the glamorized-click-bait forms, what I am discovering is that even within places of pleasure + play, we must do the work to get to know, trust, express, and hold true to ourselves if we are to experience the depths of pleasure and richness of life, connections, and experiences we long to know. That our wildest fantasies are not random happenings that are just sprung upon us, but they are actually things we call in, curate, and create openness to give space for and allow to come into our lives. That when we move with our hearts open, our bodies can tell us what our minds will never fully understand or know. And that when we learn to listen to our whole selves - not just the parts we’ve found comfort, ease, or control within - then we expand our edges which allows us to be more vulnerable and expand the ways we feel, experience, and share intimacy, pleasure + play.
Writing right now feels organic to me and holds a way that I am able to show up within and connect intimately. I am enjoying sharing what’s sitting on my heart with you and keeping space to piece together some more specific containers for guiding, playing, and learning with you in the fall. In October I’ll be returning to group classes + workshops and opening up space for group and 1:1 mentorships in ways I have not before. The longer I sit and listen, the more I’ve been able to dissect what is missing in the spaces between intimacy + every day life. This is something that I am looking forward to opening up with you in the months ahead. In the meantime, please enjoy the mindspins and ponderings I have to share here as I wind down my summer sabbatical and dip my toes into expanding myself deeper in new and familiar ways. If you’re feeling called to dive deeper in on your own journey with guidance, book a private session and let’s explore that space. As always, take what lands, release the rest. with love.