People are often confused by what I do when I tell them I am a Sexual Empowerment Coach and Sexuality Educator. The other day someone said, “Oh, so you do prevention?”
I smiled and explained that prevention might be one small piece of a holistic approach to sexuality, and that I’m more about creating and expanding sexuality than preventing it! We learn to deal with sexuality in deficits. What’s not there. What we don’t have. What we can’t be. What we can’t do. What we need to stay away from. I’d like to swing the lens around 180 degrees and take a look at what we DO want. What we CAN be. What we CAN have. What we CAN do. What types of lovers we CAN draw to us. What experiences we CAN create for ourselves. How we can EXPAND who we are exponentially when we develop, nurture, heal and explore our sexuality. This week, I want to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a sexually empowered person?”
A person who is Authentically Sexually Empowered and lives their life in alignment with their Erotic Authenticity is someone who:
- Is intimately connected to their sexual self
- Identifies and experiences wants and desires without crossing the boundaries of another
- Communicates needs, wants and desires without blame or shame
- Accepts rejection without taking it personally
- Feels at home in their self and their body
- Sets authentic boundaries and means it
- Is educated about how their body, pleasure and relationships “work”
- Knows and utilizes available options for sexual expression and erotic experience
- Feels fully sexually expressed and when they are not in full expression, they know how to get there
- Thoughtfully explores sex and sexuality so that they can make clear distinctions about what’s right for them and what’s not
- Develops and uses skills to make pleasureful, satisfying, fulfilling sex their norm
- Forms relationships and develops intimacy that supports the highest expression of their core energy
- Expresses a range of emotions in healthy ways that do not harm themselves or others
- Identifies defense patterns in relationships and works to overcome them and replace them with healthy ways of connecting to others
- Develops healthy coping skills for managing difficult emotions, grief and pain
- Engages in clean, clear communication
- Works to heal and release any shame, guilt or trauma about their sexuality
- Heals the need to be competitive with others and to release patterns of lack, deprivation and feeling like they “can’t have it all”
- Critically examines cultural messages about sexuality, gender and sex
- Rejects and challenges sexual stereotypes, assumptions, false ideas and cultural myths that hinder, impair, squash or dim their magnificent sexual self
- Identifies and experiences erotic authenticity even when socially popular ideas pressure them to do or like something else
- Explores and develops an authentic sexual identity and does not need to hide or shift that identity to feel comfortable and safe in their life
- Knows they never have to settle and that choosing one key desire and forsaking another is a false choice
- Makes authentic sexual decisions
- Experiences joy and pleasure regularly and as a norm in life
- Develops their confidence and sexual self-esteem
- Lives in alignment with their desires
- Shines their light in its full bigness & juiciness in the world
- Feels at home in themselves and moves through the world from a place of self-intimacy
I hope this list is thought-provoking. Please comment with your own ideas for what you would add to this list or your feelings about what is here. I hope you are living your own Sexually Empowered Life! If you don’t feel like you are, contact me about how I can help! That’s what I do.
