Pati Revisits Our Retreat and Heart Pleasuring
Today, we have a guest post from ImMEDIAte Justice mentor and homie, Pati (AKA Chula Doula). Pati is an L.A. based doula, assistant midwife, somatic sex educator, DJ, and mentor. At the beginning of our summer program, Pati blew our minds with sex positive workshop that we are still talking about. Pati writes for us today to give our reader’s an inside look to what ImMEDIAte Justice mentees have learned through our program.
“When I was asked to be a part of ImMEDIAte Justice this year I was elated. It has been an honor to share with youth the radical perspective on sex education I have cultivated over the years. Even more so as a queer gender-fluid person of color, which has given me a unique perspective to work from, ultimately addressing colonization and practicing methods to decolonize our lives through our sexuality.
In July I took the drive the Pacific Palisades campsite to meet with the young folks of ImMEDIAte Justice.
Typically I go through various images and diagrams from the book A New View of a WOMAN’S BODY, A Fully Illustrated Guide by the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers. Sometimes this can be overwhelming because it exposes so much of our anatomy and it is brilliantly illuminating of our PLEASURE anatomy. Nonetheless, I figured it was a promising place to begin learning about our bodies, I mean, I would have LOVED to have known this information at age 12, 14 or even 16!
What stood out the most to the youth and mentors was the “Heart Pleasuring” somatic exercise that we practiced as a group. Somatic means to learn with your body, meaning instead of using our heads/minds to process information, we use our breath and body movements to reprogram ourselves.
Heart pleasuring consists of breathing in, clenching your pelvic floor (genitals) and at the end of the inhale visualizing your heart reaching down and pulling up the [erotic] energy back into your heart. Then you exhale without effort and release/relax your pelvic floor. Repeat. We did this during the sex ed portion of the retreat for about 5 or 8 minutes. There were different experiences, some felt tingles, some felt nothing, others felt their hearts beating faster. I suggested to the group to practice this daily, along with masturbation for at least 15 minutes a day, and if possible up to 30 minutes. It seems as though that was the first time anyone had given them a direct invitation to masturbate, without shame attached to it.
To develop a heart pleasuring practice is a form of meditation and masturbation, like Annie Sprinkle says “Medibation”. I felt as though during sex education there has been a huge focus on partner sex, avoiding pregnancy and STI’s and not enough promotion of solo-sex. I come from the RuPaul school of “If you don’t love yourself, then how the hell you gonna love someone else? Can I get an AMEN?” So this is how we are going to revolutionize our lives, through self-love, literally.
It is important to give thanks to the Cherokee as they are the originators of this practice. This Cherokee practice was taught to youth as they began to show signs of arousal and sexual curiosity. By making a genital-heart connection, we learn that we are connected to more than just our genital sexual pleasure. We can generate an intense pleasure, even ecstasy, from our genitals and into our hearts on our own. It has the potential to cultivate self-love, erase negative messages we have received and can bring awareness to our spirit on a whole new level. I wonder what the future holds for ImMEDIAte Justice after receiving the tool of Heart Pleasuring. Stay tuned . . . .”
