About five years ago, I started having this very unpleasant experience.

Almost every time I orgasmed, immediately following, I would feel a rush of shame.

A pit of disgust.

Helllloooooo, recovering Catholic in a pleasure oppressed world!

It felt like coming down from a high and landing into a dumpster.

This unpleasant experience was not only unpleasant in and of itself, but when it first started happening, I needed to completely stop what I was doing.

It even made me start to avoid orgasms altogether.

What’s more is I was annoyed.

I HAD DONE SO MUCH SEXUAL HEALING work…for YEARS.

Wasn’t I past this?

I had already taken countless trainings and had been teaching FOR YEARS about pleasure, somatics & relationships…so I was a bit miffed.

Luckily, I knew and know healing comes in layers and often when a new layer comes up, it means we have found a new layer of safety to process it.

I felt and continue to feel extremely safe in my relationship. (Shout out to you bb)
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I’m now telling you all of this from a happy place of this rarely happening anymore.

However on the rare occasion when it does, it doesn’t freak me out.

Now if you are wondering…what shifted? How’d you do it?

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Well, here, my friend, are some tools that have really helped me work through it.

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• I recognized it for what it was: shame. I did not push it away or shame my shame. Instead of psychoanalyzing it to death, I visualized my shame as a wave, like any other emotion, and visualized it rising and falling through me. I noticed the sensations and imagined them like a wave, rising and falling. Imagining the wave can help the body find completion from an old stressor. Hands-down, this is what was most helpful.

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• I also let myself pause and stop whenever I needed to. I talked to my partner. I advocated for myself. He listened, empathized and was so supportive.

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• After some experience, I still noticed the waves, gave them space but then played with continuing having sex with my partner. I played with building up more pleasure after a wave of shame. This didn’t always work (meaning sometimes I would still need to stop), especially at first. But I played with the idea that I didn’t needed to stop everything just because shame and disgust showed up and that felt radical!

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• I also played with getting off on disgust. I practiced trying to feel pleasure in being disgusted and even being disgusting! I found immense pleasure in being dirty and wrong. Getting off on the monster itself took away a lot of its power and charge.

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• I continued to really advocate for myself. I would switch back and forth in wanting to be dirty and wanting to be innocent. Getting to play with both of those archetypes as much as I wanted and no more than I wanted helped me feel seen and loved in all of it. It also reclaimed my agency.

I think the last two are definitely not for everyone but they felt healing for me.

What this experience taught me is that shame isn't so scary and pleasure is deeply healing.​
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While shame can be a very intense emotion that may lead people to shut down or do horrible things to one another.... (helllloooo the violence of religion!)

…it is also another wave of experience and with some practice, recognition, welcome, patience, and empathy, it can be moved.

It can find its rise and fall.

It can find completion.

By recognizing my waves of shame and letting them wash through me, by letting myself feel the sensations of their heat and contractions, by letting myself speak to the experience out loud, ask for what I wanted, when I wanted to my partner who empathized and supported me…

I gave shame a seat at the table to be met with, to be loved and with that...

shame didn’t need to be so loud.

In fact, it feels barely there.

In its place, more pleasure. More magic. More me.

Knowing how to work with any emotion, especially shame, is such a necessary ingredient to healing our relationship to pleasure, intimacy and our bodies.

This is why I give it a lot of intention and attention throughout Pleasure Witch Academy. ​

It shows up in the modules on the Landscape of Our Emotions, Radical Body Acceptance, Boundaries and Limits, Culture and Pleasure Oppression and more…

​Pleasure Witch Academy is a woven tapestry because when you pull at one thread of pleasure oppression, we realize how much of both the pain and then the possibility of pleasure are connected.

If you are wanting to pull on the thread of pleasure and healing magic, the kind that doesn't just alter your own reality but ripples out to everyone around you,

consider this your whole hearted welcome.

​Come join us for a year of healing magic and accessing your inner pleasure witch.​

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What pleasure witches who have been to the academy have to say:

“Pleasure Witch Academy has freed me of years of unnecessary guilt, shame and energy about my past and current perspective of myself. It’s improved my sex life, communication skills and all of my relationships.”

-[Madison]

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xx luna