What Kind of Woman Attends a Back to The Body Retreat?

"Know that the gifts you are giving are the kind that keep on giving, like a well seasoned meal that can be savored for a long time. Each of you offered gentle support and a safe place to work. Your example of bravery were inspiring. There's a lot to take home, memories to savor, lessons to be launched. You are my teacher.  Like a Sherpa guiding us to the mountain top. Thank you for the new and beautiful view!" - Back To the Body February Graduate The team at Back to the Body: Sensuous Retreats for Women is now offering our eighth retreat at our home nest in Victoria, BC.

So....what kind of woman comes to a Back to the Body Retreat?

• Passionate and Powerful in their own lives
• And they are ready for even more! They want to go deeper into being more of who they already are.
• Personal growth is important to them.
• They are curious about their own sexuality. They want to know more and go deeper. They already know on some level that their sexuality may the missing or essential link to a more fulfilling life.
• They are interested in using sexual energy as a life force fuel.
• They are ready to heal sexual wounds and shame.
• They may be experiencing mid life changes such as menopause, divorce  or job changes.
• They are ready to experience all that their bodies are able to offer them.
• They want to play and have more pleasure in their lives.

Tell me more:

Many of our clients are simply curious. They want to learn more about their bodies and feel dis-empowered or disconnected from their own physical selves. Their relationship with their sexuality and their bodies have finally made it up the “bucket list”.  Sometimes they don’t have partners, or if they do have partners they don’t feel that their partners are meeting their sexual needs. My clients often feel unsupported and unappreciated sexually and want to have more pleasure in their lives.

Many are looking for safe ways to explore being more sexually adventurous either on their own or within a coupled relationship. Some of my clients are actively looking for a partner, and are looking inside their own sexual expression to see if the hold up is inside their own relationship with their bodies.

Some of our clients are not having the orgasms that they wish to have, and want to be able to explore their sexual desires in a way that will not bring them shame or ruin their lives.

Many of our clients are at war with their bodies. They want to love themselves deeply and don’t know how to. They get stuck when it becomes time to speak up for the desires, and often end up enduring sex rather than loving sex. They are ready to prioritize  sex in their lives, and often want to experience new sexual experiences. Our clients know that there is more to sex than they are having, and they are ready to figure out what that is. Most of our clients are in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's.

We are devoted to assisting you on your own individual journey to sexual empowerment, freedom and pleasure.

To learn more about the complete program please visit our website here.

We would love for you to consider joining us for our 8th retreat in Victoria, BC on July 3 through July 7. Retreats are limited to six women. There is one spot left for our July Retreat. Payment plans are available. http://www.backtothebody.org/

Email Pamela at Pamela@backtothebody.org to set up a free consultation.

And we have lots of graduates that are will than willing to speak with you!

Falling Into The Gap: An Exploration of Mindful Touch and The Pleasure of Surrendered Receiving

Join Internationally known Sex Educators Pamela Madsen and Ron Stewart for an extraordinary workshop on the tools of touch and embodiment. The key to a delicious sex life with your partner or with yourself is understanding how to give and receive touch. Our fingers, our eyes, and our breath are all tools for connection. This seems basic and yet most of us have never been taught these skills. It’s all suppose to come “naturally”. Falling Into The Gap: An Exploration of Mindful Touch and The Pleasure of Surrendered Receiving

This clothes on workshop invites intrepid explorers (singles and couples) of all ages, genders and sexual orientations to learn with us in a playful and non-threatening environment.

Participants will discover that both the giving and receiving of touch is not only fun and delicious, it’s also transformational and healing. Through a series of mini-lectures, demonstrations, movement, breath and touch exercises, we will open our hearts to what is possible through the power of touch.

What you will explore:

* Communication and Boundaries -. Overcome the fear of setting limits and be comfortable with your own boundaries. Explore your own “pleasure ceiling”, and challenge yourself to raise it.

* Mindful Practices - Movement, breath and meditations will be offered to help participants become present to the subtleties of giving and receiving touch.

* Touch Explorations - Through guided exercises, improve your touch skills and deepen your capacity to connect with self or partner(s).

* Receiving Pleasure - Utilizing conscious relaxation,verbal/non-verbal communication and active receiving, we will heighten our ability to become more present to pleasure.

Date: April 27th, 2014 Time: 6:30pm to 9:30pm Location: 115 Wooster Street in SoHo NYC Buzzer Apt 2F Cost: $35.00 Reservations are required: To reserve your spot and to ask any questions please contact Pamela Madsen at 917 703 3785 or email at Pamela@backtothebody.org  AND you can register on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1383597568549034/

Please wear comfortable clothing. We will be doing gentle, easy movements that most people will be able to participate in. This workshop involves no nudity.

Don't Break Up With Your Desire

I am surrounded by friends right now in my personal life who are feeling dumped. Truth be told, I'm feeling a bit dumped too. We can feel dumped in all sorts of ways. Someone we loved may not love us back. A project that we believed in may be getting dumped. Our boss may have dumped us. A friend or a group of friends may have dumped us, or a family member. And sometimes, we even dump ourselves. But here's the thing:

Don't break up your desire even if you feel dumped by circumstance, misled, or lost. You still know what your desire is. Right? You can feel it. What it is that you want in your life. It's okay to feel impatient for it. Feel the ache like a tooth exposed at it's nerve.

Don't shame yourself for trusting the path that you set yourself on, even if all the plans went wonky. All that happened is that you tried. All that happened is that you loved. All that happened is that you danced with your desire and your dreams.

Come sit with me in the compost for a little while. It's kinda warm here, and there is plenty of room.

Put a red rose between your teeth. The rose is important because you get to look foxy and the perfume of the flower helps ease the scent of the compost!

But don't discount the murk. There is life in the shit. Seeds full of hunger and desire ready to sprout.

Can't you feel it?

Kintsukuroi and The Heart/Vagina Connection

My day is often filled with speaking with women who are trying to connect to their vaginas. Some of the women that I speak with find it hard to get through the conversation without feeling physically ill. They may get a headache or an upset stomach. Some speak of an inability to feel their own vagina or any sense of aliveness in their genitals. Some are willing to make peace with this feeling, others sense that there is so much more life in their bodies and that somehow it is related to this somewhat unknown place between their legs. The feel a sense of  disconnection or brokenness.

And I keep coming back this week to this art form called Kintsukuroi.  This idea that an object can be made more beautiful after it's broken. It's value is not diminished, in fact the filling in of gold, silver or lacquer is used not only to repair, but makes the object more beautiful. What a metaphor for so much in our lives.

This is what I have learned. Our hearts can stretch to hold love, grief, devotion, and dreams. Our hearts can sacrifice, forgive and remember. And I believe that in female bodied persons, so can our vaginas.

We just have to be able to listen. And we have not been taught to listen to our own vaginas. So somehow we are getting static on this incredible line from our vaginas to our hearts and then back again to our vaginas. You see, they are wired together.

If we are feeling physical illness, numbness, and fear when we think about connecting to our own vaginas it's time to stop and listen deeply. Trust your vagina the way you trust your heart. Sometimes, we will need to practice Kintsukuroi and support the places that have worn thin with gold or silver. It just makes what we have more beautiful and more valuable.

And if your vagina is screaming at your heart to go away - listen to that too with a different ear. Why is she so scared and shut down? Perhaps it is time, to hear her pain and softly begin to coax her out of hiding. Speak to her about the practice of Kintsukuroi and tell her that you will go and get some gold, or silver.

After all, your vagina will ache for you, bleed for you, open for you and shut down to protect you. Pay attention to her. She has stories to tell you. Truths to share. She is valuable.

And sometimes, her silence is a cry for help.

Loving you from here,

Pamela

Meditation and Sexuality a Newly Discovered Link

One of the first things that I teach, when I work with anyone around their sexuality is the link between sex and a clear mind. Sex requires our presence, not numbing out. The best sex requires of us that we are fully in our bodies, and alive to the possibility of sensation. or skin awareness. As we awaken away numbness we are actually able to experience the softest of touches as electric vibrations through our entire body. If you think you're erotically numb, hormonally challenged or simply "over sex", this does not have to be. Erotic numbness is reversible and it begins with reawakening our ability to feel arousal.

Arousal is a state that not only fuels our creative engines, but can be enjoyed from our genitals up through our hearts and throughout our bodies. Now, what does this have to do with meditation?

It's really difficult to feel sexual arousal if our minds are busy and our thoughts are interfering. This is where meditative states can be incredibly useful. When we can quiet the mind and connect to our genitals—we are able to feel deeply into our bodies in ways that we may never have experienced before. Sometimes, it's in these quiet genital connections that we are able to find the source of any blockages to pleasure and our relationship with our own bodies. But we have to be quiet and tuned in enough to be able to listen.

If we can learn to clear our minds and connect to our genitals this can be a path to full awakening. And when I say full awakening; I'm talking about mind, body and spirit.

I discovered all of this on my own at the feet of Dr. Deepak Chopra when I attended "Journey to Healing" and combined that experience with my knowledge as a sexuality coach that believed in somatic or through the sexual body healing.

Meditation is the perfect entry point to many profound sexual experiences. Successful meditation and successful sex all start with the same three key entry points:

1. Get comfortable.

2. Slow down.

3. Connect to the breath.

When we are able to approach sex just like we approach meditation (without rushing to go somewhere fast) we are able to touch deeply ecstatic or erotic states where we have "alterations in bodily perception" and a "diminution of self awareness" according to researcher Gemma O'Brien who studied the link between sexuality and meditation.

These shared experiences are found both in subjects deeply in meditation and in people having sexual experiences.

As I got more practiced at meditation, I was able to feel my ego dissolve along with my own general sense of self-awareness. As I floated into "the gap," the place that Deepak Chopra says is the place without words, I also noticed that I lost track of where my body was in place and time. Oh yeah, I have been in these places before and it was not in the lotus position!

Gemma O'Brien found that people meditating and having an orgasm both experience the afore mentioned "diminution of self-awareness" and "alterations in bodily perception."

According to the study, when you meditate, the left side of your brain becomes activated and when you engage in sexual activity, the right side of your brain runs the show. Both of these brain responses helps you to stop the constant thinking or talking in your brain. And herein lies the key—when you are able to stop the chatter, and float into what can be called "falling into the gap," "states of higher consciousness," "erotic trance states" or even what is known as "sub space" your brain helps you by allowing you to lose physical and mental boundaries. That is where we can find enlightenment or dare I say it—bliss.

Our busy lives takes us to a place where we live all the time in our thoughts. When we are run by our thoughts we can lose connection with our bodies. This is known as "sensory amnesia" and is a feeling of not being able to give presence to our bodies. It's possible to reclaim our bodies and our sexuality. I have seen the practice of meditation and the combination of meditative states with the addition of touch create incredible openings in the lives of women.

We can regain our own sense of our bodies and begin to shed our numbness.

What to do next?

Like this blog, leave a comment and share it!

Do You Want To Learn More?

Check our my guided sexuality meditation

Watch My Video:  The Arousal Principle