Sweet Reminders

Dear Hearts,

I wrote this last Thursday, just a couple hours before we were blasted with the full force of a tropical storm and my attention turned to leaky windows and floor mopping! LOL. 
~*~
I’m happily sitting on the living floor at my lovely makeshift desk.   I’m right in the path of Tropical Storm Isaias;  winds rushing through the open front door. With wildness, the wind caresses my body and tumbles my hair before heading on its way, out through the lanai door.

I gotta pause here …  just for a sec, I’ll be right back . . .

. . . Ahhhh. That was a pause for pleasure. A pause to fully give myself to the body sensations that are here right now.  

There is the yummiest bliss always waiting for me in this body.     I can go for an hour, or even an entire day, without turning my attention to the exquisiteness of my body’s pleasure.    I know, it’s hard to believe!   Once I was called a “sensation junky”.  It was said with endearment and I took it as a grand compliment.    Pleasure is an exquisite portal to presence.   That’s right. Pleasure is a portal to presence.

Have you ever stopped to ponder the nature of the body’s pleasure?   Have you ever had an experience that revealed how life can be absolutely orgastic, oozing with pleasure in surprising ways?

I’m not just talking about the orgasms found in sex play, which is eye-rollingly delicious.    I’m also talking about the orgastic sensations that are everywhere; available in any moment, when I’m awake to feeling them.

The kind of exquisite attention to pleasure I’m talking about wasn’t easy for me to become friends with.   Along my growing-up path I picked up baggage that was crammed with ideas like: pleasure is taboo, pleasure is saved for special occasions; my pleasure is selfish; pleasure is sinful; pleasure is a reward …  You get the idea. It was a pretty jumbled-up, extraordinarily messy suitcase that I was hauling around.  Does any of that sounds familiar to you?

Years ago, as baggage started falling away, I learned how to open to and welcome pleasure.  I learned how to cultivate pleasure.  Yes, I opened to ecstatic sexual pleasure through lovemaking, with myself and with a beloved, but I also opened to the ecstasy of pleasure that’s always here, in any moment, regardless of the circumstances in or around me.

I lived into that revelation about pleasure being a portal to presence; and, paradoxically, pleasure as a consequence of being present.

What I’ve learned, not just from my own conditioning and experience, but also through working with beloveds in the Sacred Sexual Arts for over 20 years, is that many of us have become disconnected from even beginning to know how to feel the depths of pleasure that are available to us.   And those depths, I believe, are limitless. There is always the potential to feel just a little deeper that which is under the skin of what I’m familiar with.

If you’re curious about joining me in this exploration of limitless pleasure, wonderful!  The exploration is simple, interesting …  and pleasurable.

Below I’m sharing with you one of the most astonishing practices for activating and broadening your ability to feel pleasure.   The form of this practice is from the wisdom  of Dr. Betty Martin. I share it with gratitude. 

If you need a little more encouragement for diving into your pleasure, here you go ….

Pleasure helps keep you hormones happy by supporting the release of:
Oxytocin
Endorphins  
Dopamine
Serotonin

These hormones are busy. For starters they:
Reduce Stress
Increase energy
Improve sleep
Enhances your immune system
Improves your sense of well-being

And there are lots of great things that go along with these!!!
Find out for yourself!

In the pleasure of this moment,
Sharon

Every Sunday morning at 10am I curl up on my couch to be lead and loved through a luscious breath meditation with Lucy Hamel. 

Lucy has a knack for bringing me rich insights through her simple questions and reflections.   Then the breath journey invites something organic and beyond my thinking mind to emerge.  
Each week my experience is utterly unique.  I am often surprised by what unfolds for me.

This past Sunday’s harvest came from these simple statements:

     ~  Anxiety is who I think I should be
     ~  Anxiety is who I think other people should be
     ~  Relaxation is who I am

Since Sunday I’ve been chewing on these with curiosity and appreciation.

Of course, you know I have a lot I could say about this, but today I’ll leave you to your own insights and aha-s.

With a breath of insight and love,
Sharon

Returning to my beloved after I’ve traveled has never been very simple for me. Under the anticipation and excitement there is often something unnamed that feels a little tenuous and vulnerable.  

After the initial rush of joyful delight at being reunited I become aware of a tender rawness; a pulling into myself as if protecting something precious.  It might take days or only moments for me to fully drop back into the shelter of our love.

This past month, as it looked more certain that Kenneth and I would find our ways out of quarantines and back to each other, I was aware of an undercurrent of that familiar vulnerability.

While many of my friends were cheerleading for our grand, passionate, sparkly reunion, I was a jumble of uncertainty as I anticipated leaving my Ecuadorian sanctuary and reuniting with Kenneth in unfamiliar territory.

For the past four months, as the world turned up-side-down and in-side-out, I had embraced the unique situation I had landed in and turned it into an incredible opportunity.   Rooted to the earth.  Days flowing with an organic rhythm. My heart and soul challenged and stretched. New insights. New convictions. New longings.  I even surprised myself with new expressions of creativity.

Long-held friendships deepened and new friendships blossomed. I was nourished by remarkable global connections via Zoom and Facebook Live events.  Kenneth and I found fun, lovely ways to nurture our relationship so that the distance brought something fresh to us.

I fully gave myself to a dangerous prayer, asking The Holy to have her way with me.  And She did. To my core.

Frankly, I did not know the woman who was going to be reunited with the man who had also gone through four months of his own transformational journey; the fullness of those months apart still being fresh and unformed.   Something unknown and a little disconcerting was moving in me.  Was I hibernating? Incubating? Marinating? Integrating? Un-becoming, or, maybe, becoming?

I realized it wasn’t for me to figure out. The last thing I wanted to do was box myself up, neat and tidy.  I was aware of how easy it would be to grasp for familiar ground in my relating with Kenneth.  We’ve been together for 30 years. I know the comfort of his familiarity  …   And we’ve been together for 30 years. I also know the vast potential of venturing into unfamiliar and uncharted territory together. 

The familiar has lost its shine for me.   And the world is in heartbreaking, devastating and beautiful chaos.  The world is ripe for transformational change.  That means I am ripe for transformational change. My relationship with Kenneth is ripe for transformation, too. 

Anyway, I get off the plane and fling myself into Kenneth’s welcoming embrace.  I am happy.  I am ecstatic. I am relieved.  And I am aware of this underlying  un-formedness of my being.   I feel the pull of renewed connection tugging against the desire to keep me just for myself a little longer.

Holy coincidence!!!  The day I arrive in the Dominican Republic is the day a three-week on-line seminar with the poet David Whyte starts.  The series is called “A Road Always Beckoning… New World: New Challenges and the Call to New Ventures”.   During the session each of David’s words spoke to me as if they were written for this very moment of my being. 

Ohhhh!  I am not alone in feeling this way.  In fact, most of humanity is in its own version of this conversation right now. What is this time bringing to me?  What is this time making of me?

David reflected on the fear that’s common when we meet a stranger; when someone new and unknown arrives. We often turn away from the strangers that stir discomfort in us.

And, in times of transformation, that stranger we are meeting is often the stranger within our very self; the new, future version of us that is beginning to emerge from its chrysalis, or perhaps blossom on the vine. 

That’s me!  That’s this tenderness and hesitation I’m experiencing; I just didn’t have the understanding or words to capture it.  There’s a stranger emerging in me and I’m little discombobulated by her.

So now, (thank you, David Whyte) as I settle into this new home and a new rhythm of my days, I turn to meet the stranger in my beloved, Kenneth.   And I turn to meet the stranger that has arrived in me… unfamiliar, vulnerable, shy, fresh, surprising and, …now … .deeply welcomed.

Sharing my heart with you, in love,
Sharon

Hello Dear Ones,

Greeting from the Dominican Republic where I have finally been reunited with Kenneth! Yee Ha!!!

If you’ve been hanging around my Sweet Reminders for a while you already know that I love to dance; to shake; to move, move, move.  I’ve gotta keep the energy flowing through this body of mine.

Movement is health.  This slogan was on a T-shirt I used to wear over 30 years ago. As time passes the truth of that becomes clearer and clearer.  Movement connects me to the orgastic expression of life. Movement keeps this 64-year-old body vibrant and turned on to this moment.

Movement is health … body, mind, soul and spirit health.

Movement is aliveness.  Movement is life.

Spontaneous, uncontrived movement is a wonderful ally, making space for something new to come in. New inspired ideas. New ways of being in the world. New insights. New openness. New neural pathways.

I’ve noticed how I have my “go to” dance moves. The easy way my body finds comfort, ease and delight in the familiar. It’s the “I want to look good” dance.  I’m dancing to the music and its pure ecstatic happiness.   And it’s the “I” that is dancing.

But there is a different way to be with dance. There’s a way to let the music itself dance me.  When I slip into that dance, magic happens.  Instead of reaching out to meet the music, I slow down, I quiet down and I feel the music begin to stir me.  

My body opens to an organic movement that doesn’t give a shit about looking good. The music dances me freely. It dances me in surprises.  It dances me playful into “I don’t know”.  It dances me in ways that are embarrassing to my “look good” persona.  It dances me alive to this very moment.

I let go into un-orchestrated, uncontrived, unexpected, out of the usual groove.  This kind of movement stirs up the fixed patterns anchored in my nervous system. This kind of movement opens a space that invites something new to emerge.  

This kind of movement cleans outdated, sluggish energies out of my pipes and opens the way for vitality to flow in.

The fresh, new, uncontrived something that flows in isn’t just about the way a body moves.  It’s about the way I move through life. 

Today I want to encourage you to join me in a little dance experiment.  Play some of your favorite music.  Stand in stillness and begin to listen with your whole body.  Notice how the sound begins to reverberate through your body.  When the impulse to move arises from inside the body, follow the movement of that reverberation. 

Let the music dance you out of the expected; out of the ordinary; out of the looking good move; out of your comfort zone; into wildness; into uncontrived surprise; into new possibilities and into freedom.

Here’s a link to an ecstatic dance mix that’s been dancing me the past few weeks. 
ENJOY! You have come to be danced!

Being Danced with You in Love,
Sharon

Hello Beloveds,

It’s a “Happy Birthday to Me” day!

It was Saturday afternoon when I wrote this, with Wednesday in mind.  I chuckled when I realized that I would be queuing this to be sent at the exact time my birth certificate testifies to my entering the world 64 years ago.  July 8, 1:30am PDT.  Being a home-birth baby, delivered by my dad who was never into the astrology thing, I imagine no one was paying much attention to the clock, so the exactness is debatable.  

There is another thing that’s great about 1:30am.  That’s the time my flight is scheduled to leave Ecuador tomorrow morning, Thursday, finally taking me to my sweetheart’s arms. Now that’s a birthday present!!!!  (crazy update ….flight cancelled just now … Maybe I’ll be in those arms of July 12th, fingers crossed.)

Quite a few of you sent me notes after my “Enough” message a couple weeks ago.  As I reflect on the full-range of thoughts you shared, I am appreciating the way we each sift a message through our unique filters, beliefs and points of view. Every note speaks to each of us in a unique voice.  How wonderful!  

That “ Enough” post is still percolating in me.  During this birthday week I’ve been basking in deep reflections for the gift of this life.   Every moment is always perfectly enough, just the way it shows up.   

Once upon a time, my birthday week was a time to set goals and make a plan to improve, achieve more, and make big changes.  (My family name is Gohl … pronounced “goal” which could explain some of my tendencies to gravitate toward that modus operandi. {Darleen, I can hear you laughing right now}) 
 

I’ve slipped away from that kind of strategic planning. As I have become much more intrigued by the astonishing mystery of Life that lives through me, my birthday week has become filled with gratitude and celebration of this life that I have the privilege of inhabiting.   

As part of my gratitude, I followed a thread into my past experiences, remembering a potent exercise that I experienced during a workshop, 20-odd years ago.  I want to share that with you right now …

To begin, make a list of all the words you’d use to fully describe yourself.

My list starts with wife, coach, adventurous, friend, sister, playful, strong, 5’8’, business-woman, USA citizen, brown-eyed, healthy, kind, mischievous, educated  … Take a few minutes to write your own list.  I remember the list I made in that workshop being three full columns on a sheet of notebook paper, probably college-ruled!

After you’ve made your list, you’ll want a 45- 60 minute uninterrupted block of time for the next step.

One at a time, take each descriptive word and put it into this inquiry…
If I was not   fill in with one of your descriptive words   would I still exist?

If I were not a wife, would I still exist?

If I wasn’t a coach, would I still exist?

If I did not think of myself as adventurous, would I still exist?

Go all the way through your list, asking and answering the question “would I still exist?” for each word.

Take your time.

Come to each statement fresh and curious.  

When all the labels are explored, what remains?

Sharing The Mystery with You, in Love,
Sharon