Lived experience

[greenstorm]

A friend of mine wrote this:

could this body be a wilderness
instead of a garden?
could it thrive, grow mysterious & intriguing,
develop shadows & secrets
and wild glens where herbs sprawl green
on the banks of burbling streams, and
aspens shiver gently in soft breezes,
their clean straight stems welcoming sun and wind.
could i be filled with endless summer sun
and the passionate torment of monsoon rains?
could i freeze hard in winter and come
to a complete stop
just breathing?

We played around in the comments a little, and eventually I added this:

could these humans be a garden
instead of a wilderness?
could they thrive, grow gracious and perceptive,
develop tolerance & knowing,
and walled rooms where creatures sprawl safe
in the murmurs of shared conversations, and
bodies melt in sympathetic support,
their nerves and muscles welcoming desired contact.
could i be filled with challenge and answer
and the passionate torment of empathy's exploration?
could i shed my armour in society and come
to a complete stop
just breathing?

She is yarrowkat / Kat Heatherington and you can find more of her here, her work is excellent: https://www.patreon.com/yarrowkat

But I want to talk about the process for a minute, because this felt really important to me.

I'm different from other people. That's really been the crux of this whole autism/PDA/whatever thing: it's that my experiences are just not the same as other folks, even given the same events. It makes folks very uncomfortable to know that my experiences are different from theirs so I spend most of my energy smoothing that over in various ways: highlighting the overlaps, shrugging off statements about "universal" or my own experiences, denying my own senses and the reality of my own thoughts.

A lot of folks don't seem to feel like people can be different from each other, so when I assert my experience they argue with me: no, I must have actually thought/felt some other thing. Or, if they accept that difference, they feel like then stating their own experiences somehow challenges the existence of mine, so they get real quiet. The concept of neurodiversity helps me put this into context. These folks don't believe in neurodiversity.

When someone states an experience around something I'm interested in, I want to find it fascinating. I want to dig in and compare. I want to both know their experience and share my own. Through this process I feel like I am both acknowledging/legitimizing this new experience and building knowledge about my own. So many folks view this as an adversarial invalidation, though, that I don't do it often. It's viewed as contrarian.

(I'm a little bitter: I grew up with "celebrate our differences" slogans and then when I go to do it folks feel attacked)

So when Kat wrote this poem (there's a bunch more to it) I kind of played with some of the lines. She identifies as a human, she is within the social and human sphere, and in the poem she's experiencing wilderness as external. I identify as a piece of nature, I guess, outside of the human sphere but interacting with it, and I identify wilderness as internal and humans as external.

In the comments of the poem we went back and forth: she'd write something, I'd use her formality of thought and her structure to invert her writing and gain a better understanding of myself, by using her lens. It was tremendously valuable. The exchange also reads as if I'm contradicting or challenging her. So for instance she'd write: "the wilderness is what doesn't fit. outside the comfort, the sunlight, the fence itself, it is what lies nameless and unknowable and necessary" and I'd write "humans are what doesn't fit. outside the intuition, the body, nature herself, they are what trade words for truth and congealed facts for certainty and busyness for the work of living and dying"

And through this process we built a thing, I learned a lot, and I also felt like I was allowed to exist as my actual self in the world: like making statements about myself didn't harm or challenge someone else. It was a precious experience for me. PDA never lets me just accept things, it always makes me assess them on their own merits (well, usually, I definitely have blind spots) and this leads to a worldview that's just... different. I got to play in that difference with another person, and I liked that.

Not quite sure where I'm going with this but I wanted to put the poem up there and to mark this. Notice what you like, so you can steer towards more of it if you see it around.

Comments

[greenstorm]

It's hard for me to tell how common it is. It's hard-won for me and I don't know too many people who have that kind of confidence in themselves, but I assumed that was my weird corner of aquaintanceships.

[yarrowkat]

it comes up in Tantra circles. which are maybe my weird circle of acquaintance, lol. honor your yes, honor your no. pause and listen to yourself and find out what you want before you speak. (an aspiration, that, but repeated practice in temple definitely gave me that tool when i remember to use it).

it comes down to: another person can't trust your Yes if you don't honor your own No. and thinking in those terms, i began to understand that No is the kindest word. because a No doesn't offer any false promise, and it does clearly say where you're at, it therfore is infinitely more kind than a Yes when you didn't mean yes or wouldn't be able to come through on the yes. if i listen to my body and it says, "that thing sounds interesting but what i need is rest," then i say No instead of disappointing the other person when i have to bail out later because I'm too exhausted. etc. when i honor my own boundaries, i give you the gift of trusting a) that you can honor your boundaries with me, and b) that i respect you enough to be real with you, and c) that we can understand one another and be in a fuller, richer relationship because we are not basing our interactions on falsehoods, social or otherwise.

a lot of Tantra practice is actually about boundaries, and locating your own yes and no and then practicing them. it was a life changing practice for me.

[greenstorm]

Oh, I love that! And having a way to practice in a safe space! Yes! I have literally no idea what Tantra is -- it seems like one of those things where the popular conception of it is probably extremely different than the practice, see also: everything -- but that makes me interested.

Yes, it is kind. If it's flipped -- that's how I came to thinking about it -- I don't want to violate someone's real desire, and I don't want to have to guess and read between the lines and maybe be wrong at what they want. So, if they tell me no, they are gifting me so much freedom and certainty and ability to love and interact fully without holding back what I suspect might be a problem, as you say.

It sounds life changing! How did you get into it?

[yarrowkat]

EXACTLY. that is exactly how a No is the kindest, most honest & humane thing to say when it's what's real. it opens so much possibility for deep, authentic connection.

how did i get into Tantra. i am an initate of a wiccan tradition that gives a person the opportunity to dedicate oneself to a particular deity. i chose Aphrodite, because of my relationship to the concept and practice of Love as a healer, explorer, and guide. as a dedicant to Aphrodite, i found my relationship to those things deepening, and i started wanting a more structured, and much deeper, guide into that practice than i could find in the pagan community. a friend who is a sex worker pointed me toward some books, including Reclaiming Eros. that book was hugely influential for me. it is a book of interviews of & essays by people in the School of Body Electric and similar erotic/somatic practice.

around the same time i was reading this and related works, i met Dillon, who came to my farm to be a volunteer for a week - fresh from a BE 5-day workhop in the Jemez. it was one of those amazing synchronicities that are so good it doesn't even feel real. Dillon agreed to tell me in detail about the intro workshops, and with that information under me, i took a huge risk and flew to Seattle (where i knew no one - i had never in my life flown somewhere where i knew no one) to take a Celebrating the Body Erotic workshop.

my friend/mentor in this community, Zed, calls the work "educational erotic experiencing" and that about sums it up. it was exactly what i was looking for; it was more than i was looking for; it gave my life a hard left turn that i desperately needed. i not only stuck with it, i dove deeper.

over the years, BE & its spinoff queer Tantra organization, Body Trust, have absolutely changed my life, and given me tools to keep changing it. i miss it like crazy; the pandemic of course changed everything. from 2012 to 2017, i attended the 5-day intensive every year. in 2017 i had a rocky experience; in 2018 i took a break, and then the event took a break, and then the pandemic happened. now the organization is something new - https://erosomatics.com/about/ - when they start having workshops again, i'll have to see if it fits where i'm at right now and whether it makes sense to attend. i am hoping it does.

[yarrowkat]

"what is Tantra" is another question, so i'm breaking this out into parts. the word means weaving. and it is philosophically a weave of wholeness from duality, of self and other, inner & outer, what may be perceived as maculine/feminine (we worked one year with the idea of reforming those concepts as penetrative/receptive). in practice, Tantra is listening to the body, listening to the inner self, and honoring what you hear. it is willingness to physically and energetically, psychologically, explore, and an openness to the idea that exploration is valuable in itself without other goals. it is breath. we do so so so much with breath. it is witnessing - the body, our feelings, our experiences, our reactions, all those things in each other. it is learning through eros, using eros as a tool for healing, release, transformation, acceptance, engagement, exploration. it can be extremely intense, and it can celebrate that intensity; it can also be extremely gentle.

i realize this is vague. it is hard to put into language, it is SO somatic. information of all kinds stored cellularly in our bodies becomes available to us through applied eros. so much healing. so much raw open volcanic vulnerability (and in those workshops, held in a safe safe space, which is such a huge gift).

[yarrowkat]

and FR the popular impression of Tantra bears little relationship to its actual practice. :)

[greenstorm]

Is it primarily a social/interpersonal practice?

What do you mean by eros?

"openness to the idea that exploration is valuable in itself without other goals." I would love to be an a room full of people who share this philosophy.

I suspect it would take years in a place like that before I could ascertain if there ever was, in fact, a space where I was not too much for people in some way, even for a second.

Funny story about breath: I breathe at roughly half the rate of other people, that is, whenever I notice breathing (which I do fairly often) and I'm in a room with other folks, I take 1 breath to their roughly 1.6-1.8 breaths.

I enjoy using dualities to cast differing perspectives/experiences on things. I would likely struggle if they were characterized as male/female, or if male was characterized as penetrative and female as receptive.

How are folks screened/how is the space kept safe? That seems like a remarkable accomplishment to maintain and repeat.

[yarrowkat]

i would describe it both as an interpersonal/relational practice, in the context both of sexual relationships and in terms of how one approaches/thinks about other relationships, and as a relation-to-self/philosophical practice. the second informs the first, of course. but i learned it as a set of approaches to social and erotic/sexual practice and it is tied to that context for me.

i have described eros as the energy of the big bang, the energy that takes a tiny bean the size of your fingernail and turns it into a 7' tall vine covered in flowers in under a month, the energy of expansion and creation in all ways and all beings. it is in dynamic harmony/balance with thanatos, the energy of death & decay; the bean falls & enriches the soil & grows again. this is as true in human bodies & sexual encounters as it is in the garden (i can't entirely untie those - i think you get it.) eros is also the energy of sexual desire, though it is useful to separate the concepts sometimes; othertimes they are the same thing.

Tantra's reputation is entirely sexual, and that's not incorrect, merely incomplete. the people i study with say, "We understand the body as a laboratory for transformation and erotic energy as a source of power and healing. We believe that somatic teachings, nonjudgmental sexual exploration and play, and radical erotic acceptance in inclusive community will heal the planet. We create and nurture this community through art, literature, workshops, gatherings, deep dives, and more."

and that feels like an accurate way to put it into language. body as laboratory; pleasure as laboratory for healing, transformation & release.

yeah, nobody wants human energy characterized as male/female so we were trying to find alternative ways to describe polarities that we experience in our bodies. dumping the m/f duality entirely; i would not say that male energy was described as penetrative etc, at all, but rather, that penetrative & receptive are energies all of us were able to feel in our bodies and play with. we worked with electric/magnetic as a playground one time, too.

keeping the safe space is a LOT of things. the coordinators go through intensive trainings in Sacred Intimacy before they begin leading these things. and there are usually 4-5 coordinators for a group of 12-18 students (18 is a lot, that's a huge class; and it happens sometimes). so the ratio and workload balance for them can be spread out among the 4-5 people.
there's generally somebody whose job it is to handle external-world logistics, like shuttle scheudles and is the laundry done and are the right supplies in the temple for the next exercise, so that everybody else doesn't have to think about that stuff. then the teaching is divided up among usually two leaders with a third and maybe fourth person as instructional support. that group holds some very clear norms around treatment of other people, complete but safe expression of feelings & energies. and the first thing we do, always, is a bunch of consent exercises. finding your yes, finding your no, exercising those things, and exercising the "listening to and respecting someone else's no" muscle. there's one exercise where you're in pairs and you suggest something to the other person and they have to say no and you have to hear that, and you go back and forth like that for a while. then the same exercise but instead of saying no, you modify the ask. and another where you accept it. nobody's actually going to do whatever is being suggested; the suggestion & hearing the no, or hearing the modification, or hearing the yes, is the exercise. there are probably two dozen similar sorts of exercises we do, building that "rejection is not about me" muscle, and the practice of listening internally and respecting what we hear from our bodies and from what other people tell us, so that we can all trust each other's yes & no in Temple.

before anybody even gets to Temple, a lot of safe-space keeping has already happened. they do a written questionnaire, and then a phone intake interview with anyone who expresses interest, and this includes a "vibes check" that helps ensure potential participants are well-aligned in terms of consent and what they want to get out of the experience (ie, personal exploration & healing & education, rather than sexytimes in a way that is exploitative of others). there's a core community who participates in a lot of workshops together in various formations, and referrals of new people from members of that core community are taken seriously because presumably the referring person has had signficant experience with the new person suggesting the will behave safely and respectfully in the space. but people come in without such referrals, too, from the facebook page or from the website or word of mouth that extends further out, and so on.

[greenstorm]

That's so interesting, thank you for such a thorough description. I've done a few of those say no/say yes partnered exercises before, this sounds like it's much more in depth and then goes from there.

Robust curation and governance of small groups is such an art, I love that folks are doing it well in places.

With such a focus on consent, is there a requirement for exchange of sexual energy with all other folks there? Some, by choice? None?

The whole thing feels very confronting to me, which makes me curious. I have a bunch of stuff to plough through in that realm that I don't currently have a plan for. It's neat to know there are folks doing this work out there.

[yarrowkat]

yes, that's where the intensive workshops start, and then they get, well, intense.

i wouldn't call it a requirement. experiments are up to the individuals involved, inside a structure offered by the teachers. a lot of very different experiments can be going on around the room at the same time, some extremely sexual, some more subtly based around energy-exchange, some more BDSM-shaped. what kind of energy the specific humans want to exchange with each other shapes what a given experiment is. there was always this one woman i am pretty resistant to intimately exchanging energy with, and who herself is simultaneously invested in the process and resistant to it in challenging ways, and when i was in a group with her, i could offer a service that she asked for, but i could not ask for anything intimate from her bc i didn't want it. and we were in those groups together for years and years and now i find that she's a friend. :) there's only one person i've found myself really actively disliking at these things. i would sit next to her in circle on purpose, knowing we'd be counting off by threes or fives for the next experiment, and that you're guaranteed not to end up in an experiment group with the person you're sitting next to.

the work is very confrontational. it's right up there in your personal business. it's wild the connections i've made with people doing this - i know their most intimate self, and literally nothing about the shape of their life - where they live, if they're married, have kids or no, what they do for a living. we'll add each other on socials later and i'll discover so much about them. and yet i know the core of their soul because of where we've been together in Temple.

[greenstorm]

I have a very clear and visceral sex boundary with many many folks, as in, there are lots of folks with whom I am I guess sex-repulsed (to use ace terminology). I know that spills over into other kinds of intimacy, where I don't trust people to not be trying to connect sexually under the guise of friendship (shoot, there's a term for that). It would be amazing to be in a place where I could honour that boundary and then also maybe learn to trust some folks anyhow. Because I don't believe such a place could exist, and because I can't imagine folks could be okay with me giving, not just a soft no, but a hell no, and still interact with me-- yeah.

And I quite often really dislike people when they're "too close" but can like them fine from a distance, what would it be like to be in an intimate environment with someone like that? I have no idea.

I've always had a tendency to be very emotionally intimate/vulnerable with folks pretty quickly, to have that get mistaken for... I don't know, sex isn't the issue so much as some form of normative commitment. A place that allowed for intimacy outside of that normative structure would be great. I like people's souls, I guess? And that doesn't need to have meaning outside itself.

This is my PDA joyfully going to battle with my learned resistance/trauma around being reduced to a pretty girl, incidentally. I love confronting my own stuff.

I bet there are lots of bad groups doing tantra workshops too.

Hm.