A Sensual September

Challenging ourselves to connect to sensuality in a month of abundance and mortality

Interiorly, we all hold traits or ways of being that we find compelling and simultaneously hold as impossible for us to ever embody.

There is a roiling sort of shame that rises up anytime that secret wish to be seen seems to be apprehended by someone else. We curve back at the mere mention of our own desire to be seen as…

brilliant.

desirable.

creative.

enchanting.

magnetic.

mysterious.

alluring.

beloved.

Maybe we find it so humiliating to be known in this way because the first place we learned these traits to be impossible for us was in childhood. When we were young, shame taught us what might be possible. Shame taught us it would be humiliation to be seen trying to be something that isn’t for people like you.

As a therapist, what I often see with people is how they enliven when we, at some point in therapy, get to the point of talking about what they secretly wish to be. They are perturbed by even saying it out loud, but they become buoyant when they say what they want out loud. It almost becomes a bit more possible simply by having another person know about the desire and not respond with critique.

Under the broad umbrella of being cool, hot, fun, brilliant, charming etc. etc. are also the actions that we think people like that do but not me, I could never, and it’s too late anyway. Maybe it’s going to a restaurant alone, and savoring your meal, a book, and people watching without shame ruining the time for you. Maybe it’s dancing freely at home or out at night and being good at it. Maybe it is trying your hand at applying for that grad school or that opportunity that seems out of your league. It may even be not at all about what you do, but what you allow yourself to be seen doing.

As an academic and a woman who was raised in the Midwest in a Catholic school, there has always been a block for me when it comes to sensuality and desire. While this has opened up in many ways as I went through my 20s, it is the area that provokes anxiety in a cyclical way in my life. Being sensual—not even explicitly sexual—has always been a part of me that I feel embarrassed to connect to. I don’t think my story is a unique one, and I don’t think our culture does a good job of helping us as women connect to our bodies, our pleasure (of all sorts), or our communities as people who are bodies. We only have so much attention span—how are we to monitor our appearance and act as the “correct” iteration of femininity while also noticing how good the cold water of the ocean feels at our feet, how nostalgic a decent chocolate ice-cream renders us? We are at odds. Reconnecting feels unfamiliar.

In cognitive-behavioral therapy, there is a saying: everything ends in exposure. This means that often the most effective and freeing part of therapy is when we do exposures to feared stimuli at the right challenge size, and help people form a different response to their fear. As someone who does this kind of therapy with people combined with a self-compassion frame, I’ve seen over weeks and months how people light up when they surprise themselves with what they can do. In this case, it might be in what we could embody.

September’s Theme is an exposure therapy for me, but it might also be for you.

September is a hazy, golden month. It is also a month where we watch nature around us start to wilt and die off. Mortality—as opposite as that might seem to sensuality—is actually at the core of many philosophies of embodied living. Of course, there is always the fact that sensory experiences are ephemeral—here and gone. There is the fact that we cannot experience every sensory stimuli again and again forever—even in the moment, we only have a sparse amount of noticing to devote to any single moment. The fact that September is both lushly fruitful as well as the beginning of the ending season of the year is what makes it so rife for exploration with the senses.

Throughout the month, I’ll be sharing with you how I am getting into my senses, and ideas on how to get into yours through fall-themed ways of embodiment. Beyond a sort of mindfulness, though, there will also be prompts to connecting with your body and identity in ways that challenge you to move into sensuality. Do not get it twisted—I’m not about to write about “being in your feminine”. This is not gendered. This is about connecting with parts of who you are through your senses that you’ve been taught you need to turn off.

I’ll leave you with three questions as we go into September to think on, write on, paint on, etc.

Who is the coolest woman you know? What is it about her that you find so intriguing? Is there anything about her that you admire and also feel you could never be?

What is your most disconnected sense? For me, it can be touch—it’s so easy to get overly-cognitive, and not notice anything that is occurring in my body or its location in space.

What sensory experiences did you love in August? What are the sense-based moments you’ve loved in prior Autumns?

Take care, and take your time,

Margaret of Bad Art Every Day