A Healthy Sexuality

We are sexual beings.  From birth to death.  And from birth to death our sexuality impacts our wellness. From the broad picture related to our sexual identity and orientation, to the more subtle sensual perceptions of the world around and inside us perceived through our six senses.

The influences of the world on us, from birth to death pose deep impressions on our sexuality.  The way our parents are in their sexual selves (as their parents before them), the religious/spiritual/ education indoctrination we receive through our continuum, the ethnic culture we harken from as well as the general culture at large.  We are saturated by these influences (often distorted, superficial, negative).  In our nature's quest to heal this misinformation as adults, our chosen partners affirm and reinforce those indoctrinations magnifying the messages learned (in your face "heal this already!").  And luckily sometimes, our partners are instrumental in healing those deeply ingrained messages.  And to complicate things further, our learned and healed sexuality changes.  It changes as our cells and bodies change, as our hormone levels soar and drop off.  It changes as we change.  This happens because we are our sexuality and our sexuality is us.

Our sexual selves are not represented anywhere but in ourselves.  Movies, music, media, commercials, clothing designers have always tried to depict it; but they never are near accurate even in broad, generalized terms, because it's an intensely personal and intimate experience that is as unique as the singular person that is each one of us.  These external attempts at commercializing the sexual experience are coarse at best.  The subtle and sublime truth of a person's sexuality is connected to our qi, our prana, our subtle energies which coarse through our bodies and our layered energy fields.  Mostly, this subtle experience is lost on us, as we are not even aware of it half the time.  One of the reasons why sex attracts us, is that in our depths, we need to experience this finer energy in ourselves, and the possibility of exchanging it with another.

Recognizing that the first 50 years of life is an organic quest in manifesting and externalizing just about everything to the -nth degree, including our understanding of our own personal sexuality.  And recognizing the following 50 years, there is a natural quest in doing quite the opposite.  Whereas the early decades are a movement out, the later decades are a movement in.  Maturity makes it possible for sexuality to be energetically layered, subtle and more fully embodied.  Because sexuality, the movement of its energy are series of moments, ever in flux, it would be difficult to understand this unless you were there, at that age, in that moment. I remember in my late 20's an older woman mentor telling me this.  And I remember not having a clue, not being able to imagine what she was describing.  My youthful self imagined and projected the loss for all that spark and flame to something that sounded opaque and boring. Wow.  What's the saying? Love/life is lost on youth?  And so it is.  One's future sexual self is an unknown, veiled by the immediacy of the present.  Or is it?

And what does this have to do with health and wellness?

Because we are sexual beings in our nature, understanding and nourishing the interior aspect of what this is for us is important.  Those that are celibate, experiencing a fallow or inactive period in their sex life, are still sexual beings.  If an appreciation and nourishing of this subtle self isn't nurtured, human perspective on sexuality ultimately becomes distorted, frustrated and agonized.  Living an even sometime tortured existence in this way negatively impacts our health and well being.  How do we nurture sexual health?

Sexuality is not limited to the bedroom or sex act.  Sexuality is not limited in external connection to self or other.  Sexuality can't be compartmentalized nor appropriated into a neat forum; it is pervasively in our being.  Cultivating a layered awareness during our life's spectrum of the movement of one's qi, prana and sexual energy-- outside the bedroom, is key.  Normally, we don't identify sexual energy as such unless it is overtly sexual.  Sexual energy is Big.  It covers a lot of ground in subtle to gross measure.

A frequent connection to our six senses invites us into the sensual world, which opens the sexual energy field in oblique ways.  We are surrounded by the essential nature in all things: art, architecture, flow and movement in ordinary life, which are reminders of our own energetic flow.  Not acting on chemistry with others, but taking stock, noticing the movement, appreciating the flow is a way to bring an intimate awareness to one's sexuality.  This requires a maturity in self, and subsequently, these types of practices internalize the life of our sexuality, allow it to flourish on a deeper level.  It's a type of self-nourishment.  It opens our world.

As young children and even as young adults we explore our sexuality from a more pure perspective.  As mature adults, the search continues, adjusting to our more grounded understanding of ourselves and our energies and how this impacts our sense of wellness, our health and our being.