People are often confused by what I mean when I say I work with people to become sexually empowered. That there are steps to sexual empowerment.
Sexuality is so vast that when people want to work on their sexual selves they often don’t even know where to begin. One of my client prospects said, “It’s like my sexuality is a big round ball and I don’t know what to grab onto or how to get in.”
For over 15 years I have taught sexuality to teens, college students, and adults. Out of my work I have developed 9 steps to a sexually empowered life. In my coaching and educational programs, I work with people on these 9 steps to sexual empowerment so that they can be more connected to their sexuality. So they can feel more authentic with themselves and their lovers and live the Sexually Empowered Life they so deserve. (Why 9 steps? Well, it just happens to be one of my favorite numbers AND my birthday is November 9th 😉
These are the steps I’ve created after working with thousands of people over the years to help them have the sexual lives they want. I have seen people transform their lives based on these step. As they become open to the relationships they really want, dream and demand more in their sexual lives. And express their sexuality from a place of confidence and clarity. I’m sharing them with you now to shed some light on “how” I work (people are always curious). I would love it if you would share this with any women in your life who you think will resonate with the 9 steps.
One last thing — I don’t see these as 9 steps to sexual empowerment that you go through one by one. But more like 9 congruent elements that are always in development and always impacting one another.
Sexuality is vast and complex — not a linear graph, not a one-way street, but an ever-unfolding prism.
My 9 Steps to Sexual Empowerment
1. Rewrite your sexual story.
Everyone has a sexual story. Not only a list of the experiences you’ve had, both solo and with other people. But also, a deeper internal narrative about what sexuality means to them. And how they see themselves as a sexual being.
Rewriting your sexual story means looking clearly at the experiences you’ve created and how and why you did that. The painful ones as well as the exciting and pleasurable ones. It’s time to look at the beliefs you carry around your sexuality. What it means to be a sexual person, and the messages from the culture/other people that you may have internalized.
When you work on this, you give yourself the gift of releasing parts that no longer serve you. Or do not embody the sexual person you are becoming.
2. Release sexual shame & blockages.
The next piece is to identify beliefs, experiences, and origins of your sexual shame, guilt, and trauma. The feelings that have blocked your own sexual magnificence and expression. And then to work to heal the impact of that shame and trauma. So that you can release it and move into your ideal sexual self.
Sexual shame is ubiquitous in our culture and it thrives in isolation. That’s why working with professionals and/or being in a supportive group setting where sexuality can be openly discussed is so important for this step.
3. Nurture and increase your sexual energy.
I work with my clients to keep their core sexual energy fed, and teach them to nurture that energy so they have more pleasure and joy in their life.
A big part of the work here is shifting & re-framing negative views of sexuality into sex-positive beliefs that nurture you and make your life more juicy and alive.
I have a whole toolbox of skills that I love to teach on this subject, all about ways of connecting more deeply to your body and strengthening your second chakra, so you deepen your self-intimacy and express your vibrancy in a powerful way.
4. Shift emotional patterns that damage relationships.
What are your personal defense mechanisms? How have punished yourself and others with them? Where in your life are you saying ‘yes’ and where are you saying ‘no’?
When I work with people on this step, we develop a process for breaking them once and for all in order to fully break free of your damaging emotional patterns. You have to learn to express and maintain boundaries that support you to have what you want and avoid what you don’t so you come into a place of fully authentic emotional expression that does not harm yourself or others.
And the big step — forgiving yourself for old wounds.
5. Activate desire & create a sexual practice.
I love helping my clients maintain a sexual practice and create new rituals that support their potential for their highest sexual and spiritual good.
This step is about making sexuality a priority EVERY DAY so that it stops being something that gets put off, procrastinated, or falls to the bottom of the “to-do list”. This work is about exploring your sexual desires, needs, and fantasies and taking steps to make some of your fantasies real if you choose.
You increase your desire by daily attention to your sexuality — energy flows where attention goes.
6. Radically accept your body.
It is so important to break your patterns of body abuse and learn to radically accept the body you’ve been given with grace and gratitude so you can begin to enjoy your body in ways you didn’t know or forgot you could.
This is such important work in a world filled with distorted images of what the human body “should” look like, and where the media objectification of women and female sexuality is almost unavoidable. But when you radically accept your body, you learn to take greater pleasure in yourself and to build your confidence and sexual-self esteem.
7. Develop sexual skills.
What’s in your sexual repertoire? What sexual skills have you mastered and which ones do you know you need to work on? What are your top 5 tools for experiencing sexual pleasure and activating your own desires?
When you identify, improve and expand your sexual repertoire, you can start having the best sex of your life and the quality relationships you want.
8. Develop your Erotic Authenticity & personal love language.
This step is about assessing how you are best loved, and how you learn to communicate your needs for giving and receiving love.
It’s important to examine how power shows up for you most authentically in sex and relationships and what you want to incorporate in your erotic terrain. Ultimately, you will come into deep alignment with your sexual nature as you develop your authentic language for flirtation, touch, connection, sex, power, and expression of your needs.
9. Come home to yourself.
Come home beautiful! Learn how to come home to yourself and stop leaving yourself in relationships so you are more authentic, radically self-reliant, and able to meet your own needs. When you fully love and embrace all of who you are, you draw to yourself the relationships that honor that person and you live a fully expressed and intentional life!
