pondering...casual sex
physical touch, the energetics of casual sex, lust vs. love, womb cleansing + healing, and sex as a sacred ritual
1.0 physical touch
My aunt said that it’s important to get massages while you’re single because receiving physical touch is so important for the human body. And I felt that. We are all human and have the need for human touch regardless of if our love language is physical touch.
When I was recovering from my ACL surgery two years ago, I lowkey fell in love with my physical therapist. It makes me laugh now. We literally had nothing in common and I was really just dreadfully bored but he was a cute man that was attentive to my needs (despite me paying him to do just that) and he was taking care of me and massaging me and making jokes here and there and he had a mustache and I love mustaches.
I bring him up because sometimes we just want to be touched and caressed and paid attention to and taken care of. I’m single and naturally have urges to have casual sex but I know it’s not what’s aligned for me at this time in my life and it roots down to just wanting to be touched and held and loved if I’m being honest with myself. When I really ponder, the things I crave the most are spooning and cuddles (so I shove pillows around myself to create that essence). Also the little touches that say I notice you and am thinking about you and here is a little blob of love for you just because (so I give myself a kiss on the hand as if I’m my own darling lover).
problem statement to ponder: I want to be touched and have urges to have casual sex but I know that isn’t what my soul actually vibes with anymore. :/
2.0 the energetics of casual sex
I was perusing a shop when I saw a retro-looking book on chakras. (I love old spiritual books––the hand-drawn illustrations, the softened rounded edges, the yellowed pages that almost smell sweet...). I opened it up to a random section and came across the following on sexuality and the chakras, surely a message that was meant to come my way:
“During sexual union the flow of energy along the main channel (sushumna) is extremely stimulated and intensified. The flow of energy in the second (sacral) chakra increases enormously, and this abundance of energy will charge all the other chakras if the chakra system is not blocked…[However], most people experience sexuality only via the second chakra…If sexuality remains limited to the lower chakras, it becomes a rather unilateral experience which tends to leave both partners weakened and dissatisfied, inclined to separate quickly and go back to being alone again…The most natural way to dissolve the blockages which impair complete sexual union at all levels is an exchange of the heart chakra’s energies…We suddenly become aware that our sexual energies are not locked up in our genitals, but are present in every single cell of our body.” – The Chakra Handbook by Shalila Sharamon and Bodo Baginski.
Having sex with someone you love will obviously always be better than e.g. someone you only kinda like or a one night stand. (No shit). What really got me was the goal of getting the other chakras involved, not just the sacral aka where our genitalia live. To think of the third eye, the invisible seat of perception and intuition, involved in sex…I can’t help but think that we have set our bar so low for what sex can give us. Pleasure is great but I want more than that. In its truest form, sex is an act of spirituality that brings us closer to God.
(I’d like to briefly pause and preface this with: I am not a religious person, but I am a deeply spiritual person. I say this to affirm that my beliefs do not come from a place of religious sexual guilt. In my own spiritual awakening, which quickly turned into a healing journey, I realized that sexuality and our relationship with it is one of the most important things we can pay attention to and heal for no one else but ourselves.)
We do not talk much about the energetic exchange that comes with sex because when we do, it becomes hard to even believe ‘casual’ sex exists when nothing about sex is actually casual when you look at it from an energetics standpoint. Po-Chang Hsu, MD, explains that “we are energetic bodies, and during sexual intercourse, the energy of each partner mixes. Every sex act is an exchange of energy [because] every sexual act raises or lowers your energy level.”
Hsu continues: “A sexual relationship isn’t a purely psychological or physiological, mechanical act, rather, it’s an energetic action. When we have an intimate relationship with someone, the two energies merge.”
The idea of “emotional residue” (when you can feel a person’s energy after they’ve left the room) is very real in sex. If you have sex with a shmuck that is vibrating at a lower frequency than you, you will experience lower energy afterwards because they drained you of your own higher energy. I wasn’t conscious of this during my college days because I just wasn’t a very aware person at the time, but now I am beginning to connect the dots. Sunday scaries were not just from a hangover and all the homework you have to do––they were from the energetic exchange that took place in the wee hours of the previous night.
3.0 womb cleansing
It is a common spiritual teaching to cleanse your new home through a smudging ceremony or to light some palo santo to reset the energy of a room. And yet we were never taught to do the same for our body’s home of creation: the womb. It’s no wonder that after years of situationships and one night stands and flings that didn’t work out for whatever reason that may be, the leftover emotional residue began to take a toll on my womb. Sharing that is scary for me, but it’s my truth and I know it will unfortunately resonate with many others. Men require the cleansing as well and are not exempt of this need, though I hypothesize that the receptive nature of a woman’s womb (paired with centuries of oppression) requires higher levels of cleansing compared to that of a man.
The irony is that cleansing is already ingrained in women’s bodies via our monthly menstrual cycles. Now I am unlearning the dread of my bleed and am learning how to build ceremonies for it, create sacred rituals for it, enjoy it. Now I am giving my attention to the past sexual encounters that I brushed under the rug years ago and am connecting those efforts to the timing of my bleed. I am tuning into my body’s automatic monthly shedding of what no longer serves me and creating rituals to cleanse my emotional body of the same.
4.0 lust vs. love
In all of my casual sex encounters, lust played the leading role. As mentioned above, sex out of love can be a full body experience where as sex out of lust is contained in the second chakra. In lust-driven sex, you might completely enjoy yourself but it will never be truly satisfying. At some point you realize that it’s not enough. That your soul yearns for more. I don’t care how good the sex is, lust dries up real quick.
This was my reality for years––it was all I knew. My many sexual escapades were themed by me pretending to be the chill girl that ‘enjoyed’ casual sex when in reality I wanted deep connection but didn’t know what that looked like or how to ask for that or how to build towards that. I denied that I wanted to be in a relationship because I thought that was weak/lame/not ‘chill girl’ and so I pretended that situationships were what I wanted. It always ended up as me passively trying to get someone to love me. It wasn’t really until last year that I learned and really felt in my core that you should never feel like you have to convince someone to love you. Nor should you ever believe that if you wait around for them, they’ll maybe end up falling in love with you.
Lust alone cannot be a foundation for anything special because there is a hollowness to it, a dream-like nature that is not grounded in true reality. The lusts that you have are often projections of how you want to see your lover. Lust cannot hold the person before you in their totality, good and bad, dark and light, like love can. Lust only can play with the sexy idea of your lover.
In a sense, when lusting for someone, you dehumanize them. That may sound intense but you aren’t seeing them as they truly are, you’re seeing what you want to see, and when you finally see the truth, you’re no longer interested, and that isn’t fair to anyone. But maybe it’s not even about what’s fair or not. It’s about the temporary nature of that illusion and the concern that this is ‘normal’ and that we have become satisfied with that. It personally sounds so NOT satisfying to me. In a world of immediate gratification, it’s no wonder lust has become ‘enough.’
(I want connection that is intentional, slow, meandering, unfolding, tear-jerking and nothing less.)
5.0 womb healing
I am returning to the remembering that my womb temple is a sacred place. I recently did a deep meditation where my subconscious somehow took me to the realest visualization of my womb space. It was a sacred temple. Before you are allowed to enter, you take your shoes off and leave an offering of flowers on the front steps. You pray to the holy temple that is pulsating with life energy asking if you may enter and expressing your gratitude for even being in its presence. Slowly the doors open, only to the worthy and the devoted, and you smell sweet earth mixed with sandalwood and frankincense. The floor is covered with deep red ornate rugs and the ceiling hangs low with soft pink sheer cloth that ripples in the soft warm breeze. There are candles and lanterns lining the walls that give everything a warmth and a coziness. You want to make your home here and never leave. No wonder, for this is where life is created. This is where you came from, your forgotten home.
There is no longer a place for temporary visitors in my temple. This is a place for true devotees.
6.0 pondering results: sex is undeniably sacred
The ultimate indicator of change and growth is craving different desires. What do you now crave that you never before did? Your evolution is happening whether you realize it or not. I lean into my desire for commitment and safety in my sexual experiences while honoring younger Kristen’s escapades as part of the journey that got me to where I am. Yay, we are integrating, something is happening.
I do still find myself envying those that can genuinely enjoy casual sex. What a treat that must be. I wonder if they actually do enjoy it or if they don’t realize that they don’t just yet. Is it an ‘ignorance is bliss’ moment or are have they found a way to find satisfaction in casual encounters like this? I don’t know. But again, I am not here to talk on behalf of others’ experiences/beliefs, I am here to talk of my own:
I wish sex ed taught us that sex (and pleasure) is holy and fun. Not in the religious guilt way/not in a way to keep us from having it. But in a way that honors it, in a way that makes us, especially women, value our bodies and our pleasure more than we are taught (or more commonly not taught at all).
Sex is a sacred ritual. It is a mode of deep connection. It is the act of creating another being, the union of two humans. Regardless of whether you are into casual sex or not, I think it’s undeniable that there’s a deeper meaning behind why we all love it so dang much.
Sex is a vehicle for spirituality when done with intention. That is my desire. That is the way that aligns with this version of myself. That is my path.
xoxo,
Kristen