New York Encounter Part Deux: MalloMars to Venus

New York Encounter Part Deux: MalloMars to Venus

It’s Sunday evening around 8pm and I am walking home from parking my car on the west side. I have a bag of groceries in one arm, a score from the an out of town trip with my theatre company. I’m an opportunist when the option arises to stock up on suburbia goodies for $20 when the same bag of groceries will cost you $55 in New York City. My husband’s favorite cookie Mallomars were on 2 for $5 which retail for $8 at the arm and a leg gourmet grocery around the corner. I felt victorious on my saunter home with my dirt cheap booty tucked under one arm. As I was strolling crosstown, a gruff sounding “Excuse me!” erupted from behind. Everyone’s in a hurry in this city. I moved to the side to let Mr. Bad-Attitude pass. A rotund black man with a 6” long beard who was missing his front tooth brushed passed me in linebacker fashion. We locked eyes. His stormy gate suddenly turned to slow motion.

“What’s your name?” he said to me, switching gears quickly from get-the-fuck-out-of-my- way to I’ve-got-plenty-of-time-for-you-babe.

“What’s yours?” I bounced back at him.

“Ishmael,” he said a bit lasciviously, looking me up and down again.

“I’m Isis,” I responded.

“Are you spoken for?”

“Very,” I quickly replied.

“He better hold onto you tight.”

I smiled. Ishmael continued “I’m just returning to dating. My sister is encouraging me to get out there.” Just then, his hardened player face cracked and I saw a wash of sadness sweep over him. His voice quivered for a moment. “My wife, I lost my wife.”

We both stopped in our tracks.

“I’m so very, very sorry to hear that Ishmael. What happened?”

“My wife died of breast cancer a year ago,” Ishmael’s gruff voice softened almost to a whisper. Tears pooledon his lower eyelids. “My sister tells me its time for me to start dating again. I’m… it’s so hard”

We stood silent for a few beats.  The sounds of New York City muted into the background and somehow I could hear only the sound of our breath. Two strangers simply being with each other in a deeply vulnerable and intimate moment.

“Ishamel, I am so very sorry for your loss. I know this must be very hard for you. You will never replace your wife. But you will absolutely find love again.”

“My wife was so special Isis.”

“I know she was Ishmael. And she would absolutely want you to love again and she absolutely wants you to be happy.”

A soft smile cracked through the dark clouds on his face.

“I think she would want that, yes,” spoke Ishmael.

We stared at each other another moment.

“Thank you,” Ishmael bowed his head for a moment and then walked away.

I shifted my armful of groceries to the other arm and continued my walk home, a little slower, more present and filled with the gratitude of small miracles –  more love just opened on the planet… and Mallomars were 2 for $5.

The Infinite Journey of Transformation

The journey of healing and transformation is endless. Celebrating our holy bodies, being embodied can be an excruciatingly painful process. It takes great courage. It takes great faith. Eve Ensler was an igniter for the work I do today.

 I am humbled and awe-struck by this courageous woman’s continuous evolution and path as a storyteller, a humanitarian, a global healer. Directing the Vagina Monolgues as my senior project in college in 2003 launched my path, created the opportunity for me to meet my first spiritual mentor, wove together my passion of theatre with sexual self-expression and women’s rights.  Sometimes on a journey we peak and never move on, resting on our previous laurels.  What is so beautifully transparent in this video of Eve Ensler is that the journey of evolution, healing and transformation is an endless one.  We can never peak and rest on our laurels.  Ascend, ascend, ascend.   Transform, transform, transform.

I often hear people who are beginning their journey say “I want to be enlightened. I found the modality!  It’s yoga, Reiki, Tantra, Christianity, Buddhism etc.”  My shamanic teacher, Kenneth Ray Stubbs reminds me there are levels of enlightenment.  Just when you think you’ve climbed the mountain fully, there’s another mountain waiting.  We will constantly be transforming and evolving.  We’re not done.  Any modality will only take you so far until the personal journey takes over.  Our personal journey will navigate the modality and the modality will assist the path until it doesn’t.  Eve thought writing about vaginas would help her reclaim her body acceptance and sense of self-love and for a while it did.  Creating The Vagina Monologues and V-Day movement put her in purpose on her path and awakened her dharma.  But what really brought her fully into her body and self-love and personal power was cancer.  

Eve remains a heroine of mine – always evolving, ever on the path, ever transforming.  

Here in this link she speaks about her journey.  It is worth your time to watch this. It could be the most important part of your day…
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eve_ensler.html

Energy Orgasms ~ A Romp with Queen Anne

“What’s wild carrot?” I asked on my first herb walk several years ago.  It was a name I’d heard Kate, our herbal guide, say several times as we began our afternoon walk through Prospect Park.  Kate led us over to a tall slender stemmed white flowering plant with a red center.  “This,” she said triumphantly, “is wild carrot.”  “Queen Anne’s Lace?!” I exclaimed overjoyed that I knew a plant, and wasn’t a total herbal neophyte.  “Yes, also called Queen Anne’s lace,” Kate confirmed.

Hypnotized, I moved closer to the plant.  Something about Queen Anne’s Lace always attracted me. Growing up, I would often find myself simply standing by her, feeling the draw to be close to her stately presence. On family vacations, I had a tendency to walk over to her at road stops and run my fingers over her bird’s nest of delicate white flowers with the mysterious solitary red center that appeared even more crimson in the summer’s sunlight.

On this particular herb walk, Kate, our guide, invited us to speak with wild carrot and open ourselves to receive any intuitions or information from the spirit of the plant.  Having never actually had a dialogue with a plant before, I played along and followed my intuition as it guided me towards a tall statuesque Queen Anne’s Lace towards the middle of the field.  I stood in front of her delicate flowering top and introduced myself.

“Hello.  My name is Isis.”  In that instant, I was immediately swept into a deeply ecstatic state, as if meeting a long lost love.  I felt my womb space open and expand and the edges of my labia begin to tingle and become moist.  A pleasurable wash of energy galloped up my spine and my mouth opened letting out a sound that could only be equated to an orgasmic surprise.  I blushed and quickly looked around to see if anyone heard me.  The other women were deep into their own meditation and did not hear my very public pleasure-filled moan. My Goddess, was I having an orgasm in the skirts of Prospect Park?!

I turned my attention back to Queen Anne.  Rather than having a happy chatty conversation like I assumed the other women were engaging in, the waves of pleasure continued to roll through my system, and the hair on my arms goose-fleshed and stood straight up on my body.

 “Oh Isis,” I heard a voice say.  ‘Ha!’ I laughed out loud losing all awareness of anyone else around me.  “Did I just make this plant, moan?”  I stammered in my mind.  I then felt the two of us, the spirit of the plant and my spirit pull together like magnets. I could feel my heart beat in my uterus and my energetic roots unfold from my legs and reach out and twine around Queen Anne’s roots.  Wave after wave of orgasmic energy moved up my spine.  After about five minutes, Kate, our herb guide, asked us to circle again. I was sure my energy field looked like I’d just had a romp in the hay.  My cheeks were flushed, my heart racing and a glint of perspiration covered my skin.  Had I just made love to a plant?  Kate looked at me quizzically catching my eye and asking if I was okay.  I nodded, and darted my eyes around.  Did anyone else notice my quickie with the plant?  When she asked for impressions around what we experienced, my lips remained sealed.  I wasn’t one to kiss and tell.

My life’s work the past decade has been dedicated to the study and teaching of sacred sexuality through the lens of Shamanism.  Orgasmic experiences were a dime a dozen in my line of work.  But having an energy orgasm with a plant… This was an entirely new paradigm that raised even my eyebrows.   Startled by my experience on the herb walk and feeling the calling of my spirit to immerse more fully in the green world, I signed up for an herbal apprenticeship with Susun Weed at the Wise Woman Center.

The day before the start of my herbal apprenticeship, my husband and I drove up from New York City and stayed in a B&B in the Catskills.  We unpacked our bags and checked into our room.  As we settled into our cozy accommodations, I took a look around our room and discovered that above the bed on the wall was a picture of Queen Anne’s Lace.  So that’s what this apprenticeship is going to be like, I thought, silently laughing to myself.

As apprentices, our main assignment over the course of our apprenticeship is to cultivate a green ally relationship with one plant.  We were asked to ally with one plant by sitting with her each day, breathing with her and listening for her song.  When the apprentices were given our plant ally assignment, I felt Queen Anne dance beside me. “Yes,” I told her. “I know. We’re allies.”

Throughout the seasons of the seven-month apprenticeship, I meet with Queen Anne  daily for the first two weeks and then weekly.  I saw her grow from a feathery rosette with a white tasty root, to a statuesque Queen who towered over most other wild flowers and finally to the dried hand of the death crone as fall and winter turned and all that were left were her seeds, holding her blue print for the next year.  During the seven months we spent together, she and I moved from rapturous romps to bosom buddies.  I realized too that our first meeting was her acknowledging my work in sacred sexuality and was also her way of telling me she too was an ally in the sexual arts.

As a young maiden plant, her green feathery hair drapes along the Earth’s floor and her curvy and plump womanly root body nestles against the grooves of the Earth cradling her powers for her second year’s growth.  In sitting with her maidenly form in her first year, Queen Anne tells me “Most don’t, but you can actually sauté my greens and root as a tasty vegetable addition to any meal.  My maidenly first year leaves are brain food and supports cell health in the brain and circulation in the body.”

Her second year, she grows a long slender stem and has a crowning white head with a mysterious crimson center.  This is when she is ready to be harvested and when her womanly magic is afoot.  Queen Anne tells me “With strong intention brew my crimson spotted flowerheads in boiling water for fifteen minutes and drink the day after an unwanted potential impregnation.  I will support a fertilized egg from attaching to the wall of the womb by making the inner surfaces slippery so that it comes right out.” 

In her final phase of life, after her head closes, she instructs me “Take my seeds and carry them in a sweet medicine pouch next to your night table where you keep condoms and lubricant.  I go there if an ‘accident’ happens. Take two teaspoons of seeds every four hours for two days after your ‘opps moment’ and I will keep you from being with child.  In my second year of life I have a hairy stalk to remind you of the psyllium like qualities to move eggs from the womb.” 

“My second year head furls back in the fall but my first year leaf stays green.  In two years, my life is complete and seeds scatter and begin again.   I am the keeper of the maidens moons my red dot shows you when your cycle is upon me and I help bring it on.”

After spending seven months with Queen Anne and graduating my herbal apprenticeship, I feel like my relationship with her has only just begun.  As a sacred sexuality teacher, I’m not surprised that Queen Anne chose me as an ally when so much of her energy teaches about healthy sexuality and reproductive choice, something that our religious and political climate still attempt to usurp control over.   Queen Anne reminds me how to listen to the seasons and cycles within myself and to honor my body, my sexual energy and my reproductive choice as my own intuitive right as a woman.  My relationship with Queen Anne brings me deeper into my own inner rhythms around conscious conception and personal sexual power.  As a sexual shamanic teacher, my wish is for each woman to align with and feel Queen Anne’s support on the rapturous road of their lives.

Herbalist Robin Rose Bennett has researched and written substantially about the effects of Queen Anne’s Lace as herbal contraception.  For more information on Queen Anne’s Lace as herbal contraception Click Here

Woman’s Body Nature’s Body ~ A Journey to Rock Lodge

Woman’s Body ~ Nature’s Body

Paradise. Absolute Paradise. Those were the only words when thinking back on my day at Rock Lodge that were adequate to describe my experience and all to brief visit to this magical sanctuary.

“Packing light?” my husband joked with me as I put my sarong, towel and hat in my canvas beach bag.  Conspicuously missing a swimsuit, I smiled. I had been wanting to visit Rock Lodge all summer – a naturist paradise. Beautiful lake, scenic hiking trails, wildlife and nature in abundance and the option to be absolutely clothing free. I had offered to teach a yoga class at 11:30am that day and after a few wrong turns on my adventure there, I arrived just in time for the class. I was joy-filled to see wonderful yogis in the class as old as 70 and as young as 7 each celebrating their body and the spirit of yoga sans clothes. In my yoga practice thus far, naked yoga had been about consciously removing clothes, the identities behind them, finding a new deeper layer of freedom that isn’t generally available in the rushed metropolis of New York life. Now I was faced with a group of people who already had that layer of freedom. There was no disrobing ceremony.These powerful group were already uncompartmentalized, in celebration of their body, loved yoga and wore whatever clothes at Rock Lodge that felt appropriate in the present moment.Sitting, meditating, Om-ing with this community, I thought – heaven is truly here on earth.This is what a world looks like without violence.

Talking over a potluck supper that evening with my host Sandy, he mentioned of one young woman – 18 years old, a budding opera singer and regular at Rock Lodge since she was 11.‘She will never have an eating disorder’ Sandy said very frankly to me over our potluck. ‘When one grows up with body love and acceptance in all shapes and sizes and sees their parents embrace that, one never feels the need to alter who they are.’ I knew exactly what he spoke of. I envied this young woman who had been in paradise at 11 while I grew up struggling with body issues from pre-teen to adolescence. I stared at this young woman at all the women at Rock Lodge and was overwhelmed to tears with gratitude that a place like this existed on the planet. I recalled instantly, like moving through a memory box of pictures, the snapshots of shame I had felt in body from a young age – my rejection of wearing shorts in middle school because of my perceived ugly legs, walking out of a room backwards after making love with a college sweetheart so he couldn’t see my ass and thighs that I thought were unsightly, feeling the self-judgement and loathing of my body the first time I was naked in public as the young French boy I was dating stripped encouraged me to join he and his friends in the skyclad hottub as I tried to hide myself and my shame under the darkening night.

Now during my paradise day trip to Rock Lodge, after swimming across the lake twice, I pulled myself up onto a dock in the middle of the lake and sprawled flat on my stomach ass and thighs completely exposed to the sun, the elements, the community with not a twinge of shame in my body. No thought of hiding, concealing, judging what my body should and shouldn’t look like. Here was the quite ecstasy of one-nesss. I hiked. I swam. I talked with old and new friends. I bared myself to the world. I marveled at a young Israeli mother and her seven year old daughter who practiced side crow pose on the swim deck naked as a… crow ;)Accompanied with her mother, an accomplished yogi practicing next to her, I saw what my body would have been like if I had the muscle memory to both be in side crow and to be naked publicly free of shame at seven years old and wondered what my life would have looked like if that support had come from my mother and if I had grown up with a mother who loved her body instead of loathed it. I wondered for sometime what our world would look like if mothers taught and modeled for their daughters that their bodies were both sacred and shame free. It would be in blood. It wouldn’t be something we would have to search for, starve ourselves for, we would simply be in it, naked in nature, in side crow, in love of our bodies.

I recently re-read Eve Ensler’s The Good Body. Eve has created a world wide campaign to stop violence against women since 1998 with her play The Vagina Monologues. On her journeys interviewing women across the world for her later play, The Good Body, Eve conceded that when so many women were so dissatisfied with how they looked, they had very little time or energy left for the war in Iraq. Eve was one of these women, on a masochistic self loathing journey to banish the belly she acquired recently brought on by her aging body. Consumed with her own judgment and self-hate, Eve toured the world interviewing women about their relationship to their bodies. Among the women she interviewed across the planet 95% of women said if they could change one thing they would lose weight. For 13 years Eve has been bringing awareness with her V-Day campaign to stop violence against women, but what her most recent findings revealed after her revolutionary play The Vagina Monologues is that as much as women want sexual empowerment and self-love, what we really want even more is to be skinny, to shrink, to disappear. Her astonishing play focuses not on men being the abusers of women, but on women being our own abusers and targets of self inflicted violence creating our own self-hate and spreading that curse among our sisters and our children.

In moving through the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years ago, I spent sometime among the exquisite statues of Greek and Roman Goddess that show beautiful full figured woman, round, curves, softness and deep, powerful, unabashed femininity. I remember exactly what I was wearing that day, a long blue skirt that flowed like water and a brown and white cowl neck sleeveless shirt and sandals. The skirt was very long and I had picked up end of it and tucked it in the waistband to allow me more freedom to walk through the museum. As I was staring at a particularly beautiful statue, two women approached me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Are you one of them?” they asked me pointing at the statue. I had no idea what the women were referring to and I stood looking at them befuddled. “You look like them. You look like the statue. Are you Greek or Roman?” It took a second to sink in – these two women thought my body looked like the body of a Greek Goddess. I smiled and looked back at the statue “Maybe I am,” I said, with a twinkle in m eye.

Goddess knows it’s taken me years to come to love my body and to understand that my soul chose this body or my Earth walk. Even with a regular practice of yoga, self-pleasuring and conscious nudity, having grown up with both a childhood and a world that holds such a small idea of what beauty is, I find myself from time to time pulled down the vicious cycle of self criticism, until a moment happens on my yoga mat, or at Rock Lodge or in the Met that reminds me –hey – I’m a fucking Goddess.

To my sisters – the curse stops here. We have the option to step into our beautiful bodies and our Goddess-hood and teach this to our daughters. We are this next generation.

Lunar Dominant Masculine Sexuality

Lunar Dominant Masculine Sexuality – A Case Study

My practice is like a nature walk – on each encounter with a new client, we take a journey, never quite knowing where we’re going or what we’ll discover along the way.  We trust in our full surrender to universal guidance and divine transmission that we will be lead in the right direction in a state of grace.  This week held a particularly inspiring journey that I felt called to share.

A new journey began this week as I met with first time client, Gabe.  Gabe is a handsome massage therapist and yoga practitioner in his mid thirties.  He is tall with a beautiful body and a gentle spirit. Gabe contacted me specifically around his interest in Shamanism and also hinted that he felt he had blocks in his system particularly around sexuality.  Many of his questions and contemplations around relationships and sexuality were deeply thought out and held profound insights that had come from true introspection on his part.  Gabe had recently broken up from his relationship of two years with his live-in girlfriend and contacted me with the impression he was blocked or stuck around his sexuality.  When I inquired further, he said it took him time to find a connection or feel a connection in sex.

Gabe explained to me in the past, his girlfriend would often desire sex or initiate sex, which generally resulted in Gabe doing his best to please her, but ultimately leaving the experience one-sided and on his part void of intimacy or true connection.  Gabe found these interactions difficult and found himself challenged in his ability to stay present for sex or to generate the connection that both he and his girlfriend desired to experience.  He expressed that he needed time to feel or generate an authentic connection for this desire to awaken and for him to become aroused.  He found it difficult to connect on command.

Gabe expressed to me there were times when his girlfriend or a girl he was dating would reach out and grab at his chest or crotch which instead of turning him on, resulted in him feeling objectified and shutting down.  He had trouble getting or maintaining an erection during intercourse and often defaulted to oral sex as a way to pleasure his partner without having to make himself perform.  This pleasuring while sometimes enjoyable for him, mostly got his girlfriend over until the next time she initiated sexual contact.

I asked Gabe to tell me about the times he did feel connected to his girlfriend or other women he had dated in the past. Successful sexual moments he did site were having sex right after a yoga class, making love after giving his girl friend a massage, passionate encounters unfolding when meditating with his beloved.   “I want the women I date to be attracted to what’s inside me,” Gabe confided.

In an energy assessment, I could see that Gabe’s soul body was deeply interwoven into the sexual desire within his physical body.  Based on what I perceived, I was not surprised that Gabe could not find himself aroused from outward sexual suggestiveness or isolated sexual acts.  His soul body desired to be witnessed with the power of deep presence before his sexuality would awaken.  Sexual Shaman Kenneth Ray Stubbs talks in depth about the distinction of the four energy bodies and their ability to orgasm in documentary Path of the Sexual Shaman.  The circuitry for Gabe’s sexual turn on in his physical body was located within his soul. Uninspired by the common form of masculine arousal coming from sight based desire, Gabe’s erotic connection needed to ignite from the inside out, not from the outside in.

We began with a clearing where we burned Artemsia – a powerful herb, which helps anchor the soul body into the physical body, bringing it into deep presence and connection within oneself.  We then did a simple meditation where we began with bringing our awareness to the outer most layer of the skin and working our way in to find the inner most and truest layer of self where our divine essence exists.  This inner most layer is always available to us but is often one that we forget to access as we default to more surface based way of connecting.  During our meditation, when we both journeyed to this inner place, tears welled up in our eyes and an erection in Gabe’s shorts.  “The connection is incredible.  I’m so open and turned on.  I feel like I’m flying and I also feel so nervous and vulnerable.”  Gabe’s soul body was luminous and powerful and in its presence and awakening, his physical body went into full force arousal.

We then explored various degrees of openness within his soul body so as not to overwhelm his system.  We explored fully open, opened at half-mast, and being completely contained and wearing our opening behind a veil, knowing we need only part the curtain to find it again.

I asked Gabe to drop into his soul body connection and ask to be shown a symbol for this connection within him that he could use to access this space at will.  After a second he laughed and opened his eyes.  “What did you see?” I asked.  “A white circle..?”  He said confused.  Duh!  I thought – The image of the full moon.  It was indeed the night of the full moon where our energies were at their peak and lunar energy was fully present on the Earth.  “You’re lunar dominant,” I blurted out not even really sure I knew what that meant.  Tears welled up in Gabe’s eyes.  “That makes so much sense,” he marveled.  “Other intuitives have told me I have a strong connection with the moon.”

In Taosit tradition, it is said masculine sexuality is like fire – quick to ignite and quick to extinguish where feminine sexuality is like water – taking a long time to rise to a boil but sustainable and rolling when tended long and well.  On the most basic level, Gabe’s sexuality was core water and feminine and like waters of the world, it was governed by the moon.  Because there are many preconceived ideas of masculine and feminine and this polarity I’ll take a moment to clarify that by feminine I do not mean woman in gender –terms, nor masculine to mean male based, but am rather referring to a quality and/or characteristic of energy.

Each of us has certain rhythms and cycles to our inner body, emotions, mind-sets.  Most commonly referenced, for women, our menstrual cycles frequently sync with the lunar cycles and to the cycles of other women.  Men, less commonly discussed, are also subject to influence of lunar cycles even though in our western world we commonly perceive the masculine to be solar dominant as we live by a solar dominant calendar and in a solar dominant society and thus solar dominant sexuality – always turned on.  But what does lunar dominant masculine sexuality look like?  For Gabe – it looks like nurturing presence, intimacy and connection of his soul body during sex.  With this piece of information, instead of blaming or judging himself as blocked or broken, Gabe is now seeing the unique beauty of his sexual desire within his soul.  He can now move forward celebrating his lunar dominant sexuality by being aware of what is going to turn him on and creating those situations and seeking a partner who is ready to connect on a sexual soul level.

Another piece Gabe and I examined in our time together was how Gabe was actually getting into relationship and meeting his partners. When I asked him how his relationships with women generally started, he told me that women were generally the ones to approach him and make the first move.. I inquired if he had felt attracted to or magnetized towards these women initially and he said no – while they were beautiful, he didn’t feel his soul calling to be with them.  I asked him if there were women he was attracted to on a soul level and if he had approached them or ever asked them out.  He said he did experience attractions to certain women but never acted on them.  Gabe and I discussed that each time he chose not to do that he was telling his soul and its sexual desire that it didn’t have to be honored or taken seriously.  This struck Gabe deeply.  I gave him the home assignment of listening for the connection and vibration of attraction towards a specific woman and to acting on that desire through engaging the woman in conversation.  In addition, Gabe also agreed to get an app for his phone that charts the moons phases so he could better understand his own cycles and how the moon physical body and soul body.

I was deeply moved by my session with Gabe and was humbled in contemplating this form of masculine sexuality and the depth and complexity of its sensitivity. Of course we desire deep connection with another to inspire our sexuality but Gabe’s sexuality has taken sacred sex to a whole other level.  In sacred sex, we seek the sacred through sex, in Gabe’s paradigm, we must be the sacred first to initiate sex.  Gabe’s soul has an inner bullshit meter for sacred sexuality and it comes out as a ruthless ref calling foul on any false play. “I’m not feeling it,” his soul will tell him.

Gabe’s ideal future partner will be one who is interested in the spiritual dimensions of sexuality and is on their own journey of self-inquiry.  In session work, I am often shown different cultural, religious and spiritual blueprints and pattering of sexuality that are on the planet, and I feel Gabe embodies a new form of masculine sexuality.  As the women I work with articulate wanting a deeper and more spiritual connection in sex, I wonder secretly if they have the patience for this new masculine that has sex only from soul connection. Women – are you ready for him?

For more information about Isis and her work visit www.sensualshaman.com