CREATING A PLEASURE-BASED CULTURE TOGETHER

MY LEARNINGS ABOUT CULTURE MAKING: 
I’ve recently relished being a student with the space to learn, receive, and practice in a group of people focused on creating a culture through Karine Bell’s Rooted amongst other somatic learning spaces I’m involved in at the moment. 

It’s been a process of allowing myself to not know or understand things already and exploring them through somatics and feeling. The experience has absolutely solidified my belief in how important, and imperative it is to gather to create culture to be able to birth new realities together.

With my background and Masters study in Community Cultural Development, I always knew that creating culture by gathering people was essential to societal shifts for justice and collective liberation. I’ve experimented with creating culture through workshops and events, but they are often too fleeting to create a sense of community and culture. I also didn’t know until now how to create long-term spaces and places which centre pleasure without them feeling sleazy, intimidating, homogenous, or spiritually bypassing justice.

INDIVIDUALISM AND SHAME:
Previously and still now, so much of our reality is being united in our sole, lone, insular struggles while being very stuck in our heads as we yearn to create shifts within ourselves and society. Oh the blatant but fucking sneaky individualisation of capitalism and white supremacy.

Then layer that with insidious sexual shame and we’ve been left to struggle and fumble with sexuality and pleasure behind closed doors, hidden, secretive, quiet, quick, silent, alone, or with “intimate” partners. Or we work privately with coaches like me, therapists, sex workers, or bodyworkers. We’re too embarrassed to be witnessed in our process of not being “perfect” or “completed”. But by all means, I don’t think we need to be all-telling or transparent about our processes with sexuality to process. I’m very private if you haven’t noticed.

It’s also not believing we need to absolve or release ourselves of shame or “bad” feelings. My coach and teacher, Jane Clapp, expresses this idea really beautifully in her article ‘Our Obsession with Releasing Is Hurting Us’. 

I rather see it as a process of allowing ourselves to notice, understand, accept where we’re at and be witnessed in a supported environment to normalise our experiences. As Brene Brown says “shame festers in the darkness so bring it into the light”. Or they way I like to talk about is that we can dance and/or cosy up with shame, which I believe so much I wrote a blog about it called ‘Cosy Up To Your Shame’. Of course doing work individually and receiving support is integral and essential to ensuring we don’t cause more harm for others and practicing authenticity without feeling performative.

NOURISHMENT IN COMMUNITY: 
With this, I believe we need to shift from the individual to the interpersonal/interrelational to the collective. I also simultaneously realise more and more how important it is to have a space, group and emerging community to explore our beliefs about pleasure, fantasies, fully expressed unbridled not self-deprecating joy, shame, fear, and self-worth and be “seen” by others. We’re not supposed to go through this process, or this “work” alone. 

To practice validating our experiences, or learning new perspectives and experiences from others and accepting them as also valid. To cultivate our pleasure practice in our everyday lives, and see how pleasure is a direct expression of validating our sense of worth and deservability. 

We also all deserve supportive spaces and places to “be in process”, and not feel like we need to perform and have things sorted. Where conversations are had to practice, unlearn, listen, and share. To streeeeetch our sense of what is and can be. 

These reflexive practice creates a sense of feeling “safer” together through a space for co-regulation. Which is ESPECIALLY important in hard intense times like now to create social connection and therefore individual, interpersonal and collective resiliency.

But of course it’s important when we gather to acknowledge how we were socialised, and which identities and experiences we hold and how that creates privilege and will impact the dynamics of the group and space. Or what is also called our “positionality”.

SOJOURNERS MEMBERSHIP GROUP: 
So in the spirit of my reflections, learnings, beliefs, and prioritising of community being “in process” I created the intimate and private Sojourners 6-month membership journey. I see Sojourners as a stepping stone to a new way of feeling collectively.

Sojourners is a place for gathering, sharing, learning, and a gentle nudge to prioritise our pleasure practices. 

It’s an experiment of co-creation and allowing the needs and wants of the group to emerge and direct how the group explores. Sojourners is also a space for me, as our pleasure practices are never mastered and we all need spaces to gather and exist not in the spotlight.

But I also want to name my positionality as the facilitator of Sojourners membership group. I am a person who holds privilege and experiences as a white, able-bodied, queer, genderqueer but often cisgender-passing, middle-class, trauma survivor, choice-led immigrant, and a sex focused business owner.

It’s totally understandable if you feel intimidated. Know your capacity and boundaries, There’s an opt-in level for Sojourners. You can choose your level of engagement and input. Here are the different membership options: 

This is not a sex cult, or a hookup joint! We’re culture makers creating a pleasure culture, together. Sojourn with us.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SOJOURNERS:
Learn more about joining Sojourners here. Doors close Friday 4th September.

SIPPER: $5 USD/month - access to membership hub, monthly Sojourner-only museletter, and Instagram ‘friends only’ stories.

SLURPER: $13 USD/month: - all SIPPER offers, 10% off my pleasure toy and e-guides, and monthly video checkins/workshops.

SWIMMER: $34 USD/month - all SIPPER and SLURPER offers, 10% off all products (wands, e-guides, workshops, and sexual technique videos), and a personal handwritten letter.

Sojourn with us.