Intimacy Coaching
What is intimacy coaching?
This is the question I am met with whenever I speak about my work. My usual response is a question in return: what do you think about when you hear the word? I find the answer will reveal more about their relationship with intimacy and a natural place to begin the conversation.
Why I choose the word
As someone trained as a sex, love and relationship coach, there are endless parts to explore in these realms, and I choose to call it intimacy work because it is a more inclusive term for all the nuance that lends itself to it.
For me, intimacy is felt when there is a willingness to come closer to someone or something, to be present to what is happening within oneself and in the space, to allow yourself (to be brave!) to feel vulnerable or open hearted, and to tell the truth to yourself and to others. Vulnerability and truth appear in moments of intimacy.
Allowing ourselves to be seen (with or without words) can be both terrifying and liberating.
It can feel deeply connecting and threatening to our sense of belonging.
It can release tension in the space and fill it with discomfort.
It can feel deeply erotic or absolutely the opposite.
And yet, intimacy is powerful. Powerful in the sense that you can feel the aliveness that is created in the moment, alone or with another. It is a process in which you put down the familiar protection and allow yourself to be seen.
When we speak the truth, there is sometimes relief, and space frees up inside that we never knew was occupied. Withheld truths can come in the form of emotions, desires, dreams, preferences, boundaries, intuition and more. The longer we go on avoiding what is true to ourselves and our bodies, it comes at a cost. It can affect all parts of our life: emotionally, physically, energetically, relationally and sexually. Our withheld truths cost our aliveness.
So the questions arise: What truths are ready to be spoken? What are the decisions that need to be made in alignment with these truths? If we are choosing to be more intimate in our relationships, what does that look like for each one of us?
Intimacy work feels like a deep tending: to our relationships and to the desires of the heart, body, and spirit, seen or unseen, animate or inanimate.
So where to begin? Our relationship to ourselves is fundamental to all other relationships. The more intimate we can become with our bodies, hearts and minds, the more we can connect deeper with others. Part of this is becoming more intimate with our pain so we open to greater pleasure, aliveness and vitality. It is a way to be in the world that leads more with the heart and less with the mind.
This more vulnerable, truth telling path is not without challenge. It is our relationship with life that changes how we meet the moment. How we hold ourselves, how we hold others. It means less control and more trust. It is softening to the experience instead of fighting it. It is seeing what one needs to be responsible for and what lessons are being shown. It is listening to the body when you know something is wrong and you have tried everything to make it go away. It is your relationship with power and when you collapse under the pressure of all the outside options and programming. It is our comfort and discomfort with the mystery, the unknown, and moving forward anyway.
It is becoming so deeply rooted in who we are and what it means to be devoted to yourself that you stop questioning your innate wisdom.
Where we begin is completely up to you. This quality of exploration is slow and intentional. It is about building trust. It is about exploring edges with consent. It is about tending to your nervous system with great care and attunement. It is about supporting you in widening your capacity to experience yourself, your loved ones and life beyond what you imagined.
What it isn't
It isn't therapy, and it isn't a substitute for it.
It isn't sexual, and there is no physical contact.
The focus of this work is not results based or a quick fix. It is deep exploration that is set according to your comfort and pace of the topic we cover.
And it isn't advice. I'll ask, reflect, and occasionally suggest a practice. The answers stay yours.
Intimacy & Motherhood
Becoming a mother is one of the greatest changes a woman can go through in her life. Everything from her body, her being and the way she moves in the world completely shifts. And because we are busy tending to our children, intimacy with ourselves and our partners is less prioritized, if not completely abandoned for a while.
As time passes, we know we are no longer the same woman. Our relationship with ourselves changes too; what we feel, desire, choose to spend our time on, and with whom, can all shift. Mothers experience a variation of this based on how pregnancy, birth and postpartum all transpired, and it is directly connected to the amount of emotional, physical and mental support they received during this time. Women were never meant to raise children alone, and yet it is an epidemic in western society.
As a woman who experienced an incredibly challenging birth and postpartum, I feel especially passionate about supporting women on the journey of motherhood, helping them come closer to themselves (in their hearts, bodies, spirits) and to who they have become on the other side of the birth portal.
I feel this stage of motherhood not only changes us, it expands our capacity for not just love but also pain, vulnerability, truth and our understanding of life, if we allow it. It is because we have been initiated into motherhood, like the Great Mother, who is always demonstrating new relationships to power, balance, rhythm, cycles, interconnectedness, change, patience, adaptability, regeneration, collaboration, communication and what seems like magic.
This deep work aims to support mothers to (re)connect to the most natural and connected places within themselves.
The energetic space we explore
Leading with truth.
Create more safety from within.
Center life around presence and pleasure.
Honoring the wisdom of the body.
Reclaim your sensuality.
Claiming your desires.
Inside a session
A slow descent from the mind into the soma (body).
We arrive
A few minutes of settling. Taking a few deep breaths and grounding. Asking the question, what's alive for me right now?
We follow the body
That might be sensation, an image, a memory, a tightness that is present.
We stay a little longer than is comfortable
This is where the work happens. I'll be tracking you closely; you can stop at any point.
We give it somewhere to go
Breath, sound, movement, stillness: whatever the moment asks for. Sometimes nothing at all.
Some reflection and a close
Intentional time to be with what shifted. Sometimes there is small practice or integration exercise to bring home until next time.
What the work draws on
Embodiment
Living below the neck again. Noticing what your body already knows before your mind arrives to explain it.
Somatic practice
Bringing the energy from the head to the body. Working with sensation, tension, and release rather than only with insight. Understanding rarely moves a body on its own.
Nervous system regulation
Learning your own states, your own thresholds, and how to come back down without shutting off.
Boundaries
Not creating walls. Allowing clarity and discernment to lead in advocating for self, spoken plainly while also caring for the other.
A clear yes and no
Knowing what those words feel like in the body and then learning to discern which one the body is communicating.
Radical self love
Making decisions that center ourselves first so we can serve others in a sustainable and generous manner. Honoring your needs and assuring they are prioritized. Looking into whether you are desiring something from others that you do not give yourself.
Navigating hard conversations
How to stay in your body while speaking what's true, and how to be present when someone is sharing theirs with you.
Body literacy
Listening to what the body is communicating in the form of sensation and emotions instead of overriding it or pushing through. Bringing presence to what requires your attention. Connecting with the natural rhythms of the body in the form of cycles, seasons and circadian rhythms.
Breath
It is the quiet invisible tide that moves through the body to nourish and enliven. It acts as an anchor to the present moment.
Voice
The instrument of the body that represents our power and ability to communicate. Often in feminine bodies, the voice is strained or blocked. Sound, song or speech is a way to move (and transmute) energy, sensation and emotion through and out of the body.
Pleasure
Information about your desires and what is alive in you. A compass you can follow.
Creative and sexual life force
The energy of eros (not to be confused with erotic) lives inside all of us. Learning to feel it in our body as it comes more online and awake. The body comes more online as we become present first to our senses, which increases our sensuality, one of our most potent forms of non-verbal communication.
The wisdom of the heart
Letting the heart, not only the mind, be the thing that decides.
Physical pain and sensation
Listening to what the body is reporting instead of overriding it, including the parts that hurt.
Tantra
Understanding that all expressions of the human experience are natural and, when surrounded by love and acceptance, can lead to more wholeness and integration. It is seeing the sacred in the mundane, the cosmos in the human form, and life as a dance of the union of opposites.
Intuition
Learning to listen deeper to the messages and wisdom of the body.
You can't decide whether this work is for you by reading about it. You have to feel it in your body. That's the only place the answer lives.