Erotic Oracle: Self-Sacrifice
Welcome to The Erotic Oracle, your monthly guide to awakening your inner pleasure and power. Through the inspiration of deities, folklore, & fairytales from around the world, we'll explore symbolism and archetypes that can help you tap into your sensual power and release your sensual shadows.
This month’s draw:
Three of Swords
Guiding you to Empowered Pleasure
Expression:
Pleasure is personal.
You are responsible for your pleasure.
For your orgasm.
For your satisfaction.
That means knowing how and where you liked to be touched, and how to communicate that to a partner (so you don’t worry about bruised egos).
That also means you are responsible for taking time to let your body sink into delicious pleasure, and making your experience of body-melting-bliss a priority.
We do ourselves harm when we endure what isn’t working for us, because we are coaching our bodies to put up with something that doesn’t feel good (or that feels mediocre).
We’re also coaching our lovers to give us more of what isn’t working, which doesn’t serve anyone’s empowerment!
Sometimes we’ll choose to “endure” in order to get what we want: intimacy and connection.
But pleasure is missing from that incredibly powerful triad.
This month, try to notice moments where you’re giving away your pleasure.
Notice what happens in your head and in your body.
Can you make micro adjustments to your actions that will guide you toward empowered pleasure?
Journal prompts:
What are things you’d like to ask for or experience that you haven’t asked for or allowed yourself to experience? Getting clear on paper makes it a lot easier to get clear in your head and can make asks or desires seem a lot more reasonable and easy to get.
In what ways do you give away your power, or put another person’s experience ahead of your own? Think about this not only in relation to sex, but also personal pleasure…how many times do you limit your experience of pleasure because you’re doing something for someone else, e.g. work or kids keep you too busy to “get in the mood.”
What do you struggle with when it comes to going after what you want when it comes to your pleasure? What fears or concerns or hesitations come up? What does the voice inside your head say about you?
This month, experiment with prioritizing your pleasure. It’s like being on an airplane. I’d like you to put your oxygen mask on before helping someone else.
Pleasure Practice: Spoiling Session
With a Partner:
Step 1 is to tell your partner that you’d like to try a new pleasure practice out. It’s called a spoiling session. The first session is yours. The second session is for them, if they’d like one as well (the order here is important!) It’s best to have these on different days, though that may feel like a level 2 challenge. That’s okay. You can work up to the practice to keep your session and your partner’s on different days. The goal is to connect on an intense physical and emotional level without any distractions and to give yourself up to the pure experience of accepting pleasure. Are they down? Dope! Let’s get into the practice.
A spoiling session’s sole purpose is to focus on one person’s pleasure. The first session, again, is yours. That means you’re experiencing one-way touch. Your partner gets to massage, cuddle, lick, stroke, or sex up your delicious body and you get to surrender to the experience of pleasure. You don’t touch back. You also get to practice voicing your pleasure and asking for what you want. If this is a challenge for you (👋🏼) you can ask your lover to ask you “do you like that?” periodically so you’ll feel more invited to say, “yes, and can you try” or … “mmm, what if you did….” The goal isn’t orgasm (though that can be a juicy surprise). The goal is to experience pure, selfish pleasure.
Aftercare: cuddle, snuggle, appreciate, thank, eye-gaze, or shower your partner in gratitude. Talk about what felt good and what felt “meh.” This is an exploration – a creative practice – so treat it as such!
On your own:
Set aside time for your practice. I like to run spoiling sessions for a couple of hours…so set a time that possibly stretches your comfort zone. The goal here again is to indulge yourself in pleasure that you otherwise aren’t making time for.
Give yourself the attention you deserve (you do deserve it). Feel into your body. Where do you want to touch yourself? How? Experiment with different types of touch. Experiment bringing yourself to the brink and not letting yourself go over. Experiment stretching your pleasure out over time.
And give yourself some self care after too, be that a bath or a smoothie, or a long gentle hug.
