Radiant Embodiment, Articles

2005-2006

What is Feminine Radiance?

I have come to know in my heart that women in particular are the ones right now who could live the Love, compassion and vulnerable power that are needed to move beyond old fear and taboos. Women are the ones who can bring their natural passion, light and Love into our relationships and the whole world.

A woman's deepest longing is to live and express her Love's light not just from her genitals but through her heart and the radiant movement of her whole body in its natural ease. This requires our body's softening and opening from our pelvis, then up through our solar plexus and diaphragm through our heart and out through our neck and head, arms and hands. We also need to rely on a true and pleasurably flexible grounding through our legs and feet.

Over the last 25 years, I have designed Symphonic Touch^®, an Integrative Movement Massage Process, which gently creates these openings and the awareness of the connections in our bodies. Learning to use these unique and very nurturing Touch and Movement Sequences will give you the chance to move yourself open and receive while you are giving touch and nurturing.

Feminine Radiance is the natural expression of your body's relaxed pleasure in every moment.

Women have had to learn so much to compromise their pleasure and cope with a 'hypermasculine' world, that requires that we animate too!! much of our masculine force and ability to function to survive, hold and heal the whole world...This is not at all healthy for our bodies and what we want in our relationships.

Only true Feminine Radiance attracts real Masculine Presence, Integrity and Trustworthiness in Intimacy. All Touch and Movement Sequences you will learn in these workshops can be given to your sexual partners and continuously be practiced with other women, family and friends to open the world one by one and to support further blooming of the celebrations of the Feminine Essence.

The schedule of teachings for these weekends is structured to allow space to address any themes that interest the majority of the group.

The Radiant Embodiment Workshops are not promising to heal sexual abuse issues or provide psychotherapeutic support. If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact Sabine personally.

After the Tantric Letdown

You return home from the latest Tantric sex workshop, longing for the end of your sexual frustration. You work harder to clear a few hours in your packed schedule. You build an altar with feminine and masculine symbols. Banning everything from your bedroom that does not exude sacredness, you hunt for the right candles, music, incense, soft sheets, and pillows to perfect the set.

Exhausted but determined, you dress up in goddess wear. You enter your new Temple of Love, hopeful and uneasy, and use your Tantric skills to practice eye-gazing, perform rituals, release fear, and invite blessings for your sacred sex session. Closing your eyes, you meditate to transcend your old and unfulfilling patterns.

You have set the stage for having divine sex.

But hold on! Can you really make sex sacred?

Carefully designed sexual sessions in the Western Tantric arena may be nothing like the wild nights of pure fun that you remember, the thrills and chills in your head and through your body. But the high of those nights didn’t last, and in the years since, you may have experienced the slow decline of sexual excitement into boredom, disinterest, or even disgust, leaving you with a big NO to sex.

In my practice as a bodyworker and workshop leader, I often hear women in utter distress saying “I wouldn’t care about sex, but I’m afraid of losing my relationship.” “My partner doesn’t know how to give me what I like, and I don’t know how to tell him.” “Actually, I never really liked sex.”

So what’s missing?

In relationship, we long to sense and trust that we can give all of ourselves, not hiding any piece of truth, dark or light. We are drawn to long-term relationships because we sense that only in commitment and intimacy can the raw jewel of our love be polished to its full brightness.

But we are terrified that opening the door to our ever-changing emotions will alienate our partner and deepen our sense of separateness. We are used to hiding our fear, pain, depression, and insecurity. We don’t even dare to show our happiness, or tears of joy.

So we suffer a painful split between our heart’s desire to be fully seen, and the reality of cold, heartless sex. We swallow and suppress our experiences of remoteness and disconnection, the agony of not being truly met. This separation of sex from love begins with the fear in our heads and spreads through our whole bodies, including our genitals, constricting the flow of blood and life energy.

Will practicing Tantric sex fill our heart’s aching void? Will it end the frustration, or just add more emotional turmoil and confusion? Will adopting more rules, or beautifying ourselves and our surroundings, soothe our soul and make sex sacred?

I don’t believe so. The missing piece in our sexual lives is a sense of oneness and belonging in our own physical bodies. We need to marry our upper-body love with our lower-body sexuality.

My article “Sacred Sex Begins with Yourself” describes how you can reconnect the upper and lower body, energetically and physically. You use your breath to bridge the gap, and you pay attention to your body, and the world beyond, through your senses. You want to move beyond living in your mind and emotions, and also inhabit your sensual body and spirit, connecting to your soul.

Once you have experienced the union of your body and spirit, you will naturally have the courage to bring your whole self to a sexual relationship. You will also deepen and transform your partner whole-heartedly.

Sacred Sex Begins with Yourself

Many women are turning to the promise of sacred sex workshops to address the pain and frustration in their sexual lives. But when we put the emphasis on our partner for change we get even more stuck in outward trappings like candles, eye-gazing and costumes or their shortcomings.

Truly fulfilling sex happens after body and spirit inside your own body have united. We cannot anticipate sacred sex with a partner until we have learned to make it real within ourselves. To satisfy our human craving for oneness and connection we need to nurture the relationship of our own physical body with love and sacredness.

Fissures between our body and spirit develop when we do not feel safe to bring our full selves to any given moment, even when we are alone. We suppress our emotions, including our vulnerability so that we won't be hurt. During sex we focus solely on the erotic and the orgasm, closing off our heart.

Our heart's love, the joy and availability we can give without shame, is radiating from our upper body. We share this love freely with family and friends, with our pets and with nature. Heart love is an embodiment of divine light, which soothes our minds and releases the clench of fear on our heart when we express it with open arms or a smile.

During puberty we start disconnecting this pure innocence from the sexual animal energy that awakens below our waist. This tremendous force can be healing and freeing, and it can also be destructive. Wild exploration of that forbidden zone can leave us confused and unsure of ourselves if not traumatized, still looking for the right partner after many years.

To live more safely, we allow our minds to take command. By holding our breath we control our appetite for more pleasure, sex and freedom. We also hide our gut feelings and potent emotions from others, cutting ourselves off from the unpredictability of our lower body.

So how can we reconnect what has been severed?

First, feel your diaphragm, the natural boundary between the upper and lower body. Many women sense a tight grip here. Instead your diaphragm is the divine bridge that connects the two worlds of love and sexuality making sex sacred.

Place your hands on your belly, below your belly button. Breathe in and notice how far the breath moves down-is it only in your chest or deeper into your abdomen? Now pull in your stomach, immobilizing the diaphragm. Breathe again and notice the restriction. Tighten even further, exaggerating the effect, and breathe again. Finally, release your locked muscles and notice the difference. Breathe down into the space you just opened up, past your belly and into your pelvis. Breathing fully into this space connects your heart with your genitals.

Second, develop an awareness of your body through your senses; the qualities of taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell. Usually we consult our thoughts or emotions to evaluate how we are doing. Instead, notice what your body says through softening, warm, relaxing sensations and through pain, tension, and stiffness. Bringing this kind of attention to your body is loving. Awareness or sense-ability allows you to realize physical reality here and now as your spiritual embodiment. Non-judgemental awareness allows you to fully experience your whole body, and the world beyond. You naturally develop clarity and healthy boundaries.

Reconnecting the upper and lower body in these ways, feeling the interplay of heart vulnerability and pelvic power is the embodiment of true love. You can find the missing link, the love that was lacking in sex, within yourself, rather than searching for it "out there." Now each breath and sensation is sacred union-the divine communion of spirit and body within yourself, in every moment.