We find a rock and see within it veins of rich red and luminous greens. We know this is because when this rock was young and forming, the trauma of volcanic movement caused cracks to appear which allowed minerals from elsewhere to enter. Trauma has many shadows. Its light, however, is that into the cracks caused by pain, a healing power from elsewhere can enter. We can learn to direct this energy to heal ourselves and others of physical, psychological and spiritual wounds.
'Life energy', is 'sexual energy’ and it is the energy that creates all form, from cells to stars. When our bodies are relaxed, without tension or trauma, the simple smell of fresh earth, or the feel of rain on skin, can fill the whole body with orgasmic sensations, with feelings of delight. This is our birthright, and we witness this truth when we watch babies play. It is when traumas get ‘trapped’ or stuck in particular places in our bodies that many common problems, both physical and mental occur. ‘Emotion’ is ‘energy’ in ‘motion’ and when emotion can flow freely, trauma, strong emotion and physical tension can be transformed into powerful waves of energy and released. We are then able to circulate 'life energy', and achieve seemingly impossible things. We can enter altered states which dissolve our sense of separation. We can be guided by 'knowings' that exist outside our 'I'. We can use its creative power to manifest the material into the material. We can remember memories from outside this toxic paradigm.
The reason I believe this to be possible is from my own lived experience.
Traumatic events throughout my formative years meant that during this pivotal period of my life, my body had no way to learn what it was like to feel safe as it was constantly in danger. My body had no experience of feeling joy without accompanying fear or dread that something terrible would soon follow, no experience of what it was like to experience unconditional love. Thankfully, my healing journey led me to tantric and shamanic healing methods. These practices enabled my body to remember, in a deeply embodied and experiential way, memories of profound joy and safety that had been lived by other children and animals, at other times, in other lives that were not mine. In one ceremony, I had a visceral memory of being a buffalo. I experienced the sensation of being big and powerful, I could taste the pleasure of cud as I chewed grass, felt the wind tickle my fur, and the sense of my herd around me. When the ceremony ended, I found that my whole physical posture had changed. I felt big, broad, my shoulders sat back, I stood much more upright. And this change was permanent, whereas before I carried myself hunched and small, if you were to meet me now you would see that I carry myself upright. This is because my body now remembers what it is like to be strong and unafraid, to be confident of one’s physical power. I now have this memory embodied in my body despite this memory originating in another life. I had other similar experiences in ceremony. As I write a memory of being a young child playing around a fire comes into my mind with an accompanying feeling of delight, the joy and abandon I felt as we fooled around, of being deeply loved and cherished and I am smiling as I type, I feel warm inside. Yet again this memory, deeply routed in my body as it is, is not from my life. I am grateful to have had access to these ancient healing methods. My ability to access memories from other beings’ lives has been key to my ability to heal the trauma I suffered in this life.
Tantric and shamanic practices have also played a vital role in my healing journey by enabling me to release the trauma stored in my body and allowing me to return to my natural 'orgasmic' state so that even the taste of the blandest of foods can fill my body with orgasmic sensations. I am now able with intention and gentle touch experience orgasmic sensations all over my body. I can use self-pleasure and lovemaking to enter expanded states of consciousness where my sense of ‘I’ dissolves and I feel connected to a greater wisdom, a space where healing may occur.
And strange as it may sound, I have a healing power, a vibration I can transmit with my hands and my voice. It was the 'cracks' my trauma created that allowed this light to enter me. I am grateful to the tantric and shamanic practices that support me to learn how to direct this power in ways that might play a part in individual and systemic change.
Many of us work hard to heal ourselves and to challenge and change this toxic system. Yet the truth is that any change, individual or systemic, that arises only from the collective memory of trauma, will bring with it the seeds of more trauma. It is for this reason that it is vital that we work with both trauma and sexual energy differently.
Tantric and shamanic practices may offer us the possibility to heal by allowing our bodies to access understandings and memories that arise from outside the trap of our isolated small sense of ‘I’ and the trauma within which we swim. They may offer us the possibility of ways of living, moving and deciding together that arise from outside trauma, genocide and oppression. They may offer a pathway to the emergence of a culture that is not underpinned by ideas of competition, ownership and separation, that we, having known no other way of understanding the world, have no choice but to reproduce as we have no meaningful understanding of anything else.
In my work as a tantric and shamanic facilitator, I use these understandings to support healing on an individual and group basis. In my role as an activist, I use these understandings to work with others to develop embodied ways of listening, learning and engaging in 'right relations' with wisdom keepers so that new forms of collective organising might emerge. It is my hope that my work will support both healing and new ways of living, moving and deciding together that stand a better chance of bringing about the fundamentally different world many of us seek.
