The Essence of Sensuality is Life.
The Essence of Sensuality is Love.
The Essence of Sensuality is Feeling.
The Essence of Sensuality is Awareness.
The Essence of Sensuality is Intimacy.
The Essence of Sensuality is Possibility.
In a few weeks I’m hosting a retreat called The Essence of Sensuality.
We have these great names for workshops and retreats, and I was thinking, what does it actually mean, The Essence of Sensuality?
I teach a range of sensual micro-practices, body meditations, moments of awareness using our senses.
One of the key elements of these is being present, with what we see, what we feel, what we hear, what we taste, what we smell, what we touch.
Moments where we use our sensuality as a path of awareness, a path of presence.
And this is important in understanding more of what sensuality is.
There are many elements of sensuality, and most of us tend to connect that with sex, often as the foreplay, the lead-up to sex.
This is an extremely limited perception of sensuality, and also keeps us from so many experiences, from such possibility.
Of course this is an element of sensuality, and there’s so much more.
Here is one of the practices I share, and if you’ve followed me for a while you’ll know a little about my relationship to coffee.
This is a Conscious Coffee Ritual.
The first coffee in the morning, or whatever else you drink.
Look at the coffee in the cup, the colour.
Hold the cup, feel the warmth, the weight.
Bring it to your nose, inhale the aroma, just once.
The first sip, feel it in your mouth, taste it.
One sip.
Then drink the coffee.
A moment of sensual presence.
From that, think about how many moments there are in the day, just moments, to experience your sensuality, with presence.
A moment of feeling the air on your face, whether it’s hot or cold, whether it’s still or raining.
A moment to hear the sounds around you.
A moment to inhale fragrance.
A moment to feel a seat beneath you…
And then think about this.
Approaching your lover with that awareness, taking a moment to really look at them
A moment to put your arms around them, hold their hands in yours and really feel.
A moment to breathe their scent in…
Sensuality is how we experience life, ourselves, each other, the world, through our senses. We see, we touch, we smell, we feel, we taste, we hear.
And there’s more, we intuit, we think, we experience.
And it’s all sensual.
So many of us live this experience with little awareness. We simply eat, drink, feel, without much connection, much consciousness. And so our sensual experience becomes quite narrow.
Through the practices of Sensual Awareness, we become more sensual.
We see that sensuality is actually a path to awareness, to a deeper connection with ourselves, with others, with life.
This is the key, awareness, because so many of us live, and love, and pleasure, with little awareness.
And as much as sensuality is a path of awareness, even of spirituality, it’s also a path of deep pleasure, and these are entwined in each other. We often see them as separate, they’re not.
One opens the door for the other, one ushers us in, one gives a richness to all of life.
One of the elements of sensuality, that the awareness practices teach us, is presence.
Presence is an element of intimacy.
Both of these are important with a lover, both of these are important in conscious life.
As I become more aware of my breath, for a moment, I can become more aware of my lover’s breath, for a moment.
Both of these are filled with sensation, with pleasure.
And with all this seriousness there’s a lightness in our sensuality.
There’s a fun, there’s a playfulness.
There’s a creativity.
There’s a vibrancy, a vitality.
It becomes more present in life, it becomes more present in pleasure.
The beautiful thing about sensuality is that it’s here, it’s within us, it’s around us.
Every moment.
It’s our bodies, our breath.
It’s the sensation within us, the feelings we feel.
It’s our tears, it’s our orgasms.
It’s the touch of my own hand on my skin, and my hand on your body.
It’s the taste of my coffee and the taste of your mouth.
It’s the movement of my body as I walk, and it’s the dance of our kiss.
It’s the deep stillness within me, and the stillness that our lovemaking brings.
It’s the space of limitless possibility.
It’s the sensuality of life, of love, of pleasure.
