“That which is not in the body is not in the universe.”
~N.N. Bhattacarya, History of the Tantric Religion.

I can’t say that I’ve ever felt completely at home in my body and sexuality, not fully at home in the way that I yearn for. But I will say that I am close, very close to that goal of fully inhabiting my sensuality and living joyfully in my skin.

And I will say something else, which may surprise you: I think menopause is the journey that will finally carry me the rest of the way home to fully loving my body and fully living my sexuality.

Learning to love our bodies and love our desires – I have always seen this as a gateway to power for women. A woman completely at home in her skin, a woman whose sexual self is fully emancipated, a woman who knows her paths to pleasure and is comfortable with her desires – that woman is a force to be reckoned with, a sovereign, shining, joyful being. Everyone wants to be close to her. She has the integrity of body and soul that makes all of her work in the world grow deep roots and produce lush blossoms.

I’m learning to be that woman. And my heart’s desire is not only to become that woman, but to see you become that woman too.

So, where do we begin? And why tantra? And why menopause?

Tantra is a much misunderstood term in the West. We might think of arcane Hindu practices or of new agey couple’s workshops in California. Well, yes. Both of these things happen under the name of Tantra. But when I use the word, I am using it in a more universal sense, I am using it to mean the experience of the sacred and divine through the experience of embodiment, and not in spite of it.

The word Tantra comes from the ancient word for loom, specifically the word for the warp, the continuous unbroken thread that holds the fabric together. In  the same way, Our spiritual experience is woven onto the warp of bodily experience, and the integrity of our lived experience depends on the unity of warp and weft.  Are you with me? Our cultural habit is to consider the spiritual or sacred as separate from the physical, and to consider the desire and pleasure of the body as something ‘lower,’ to be subdued by the ‘higher’ desires of the soul. But the habit of a sensually emancipated woman is to know that her health and well being depend on the integrity of the sacred and the mundane, of her spirit and sexuality, her desire and self-love, her body and soul. That integrity, to me, is Tantra.

Sadly, our society does not encourage this kind of integrity in women. We struggle to love our bodies, we struggle to find our innate, healthy desires beneath the unhealthy cravings and self-hatred set in motion in us by patriarchal structures. Our experience of sexuality is especially fraught. As young women we may be understandably caught up in making ourselves powerful objects of desire, and in so doing may lose track of our own agency and pleasure. In our middle years, we may find that we are consumed by family life and career, and even if this is a joyful time, we find little room left in our lives and psyches and bodies to consider, much less nurture, the integrity of our sensual and sexual selves and our pleasure.

It is a fine paradox, then, that the era of menopause, which is seen by society as a time when we are losing our sexual power and value, our pleasure and desire, is in fact, in many women’s lived experience, a most natural time to finally find sexual emancipation.

The menopausal years are in so many ways a time of coming home to ourselves. The accumulation of lived experience opens us to wisdom. The shifting of our hormonal landscape, while challenging, brings us to a new place of equanimity. And many of us are beginning to stand in sovereignty in our relationships, maybe for the first time. To put it simply, we like ourselves a lot more, and care a lot less what anyone else thinks about it.

Sovereignty, self-love, and a lack of self-consciousness are important ingredients for a deeply happy and pleasurable sex life. Menopause can set the stage for the best sex of our lives. If we are willing to open our minds, and to devote time, courage, and care to this part of our lives, the rewards can be profound.

So where to begin? Here are seven beautiful places to start.

1. Get to know your pleasure and desire. Things have changed. The sexual habits and fantasies of your twenties and thirties need to be re-examined and maybe rewritten. Remember the sense of discovery you had as a teenager, and the sense of adventure in exploring your own body and responses? Give yourself permission to start again with a clean slate. What really feels good now? What do you honestly crave?

2. Learn – from books and from the text of your body. Read the latest research on female sexual response. Books like Naomi Wolf’s Vagina and Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are are game-changers. You owe it to yourself to really understand your body and your needs. And books are wonderful, but so is simple and loving self-exploration. Don’t be afraid to get physical and get curious.

3. Have the courage to ask your partner to come on this journey with you. If you are in a long term relationship, you have certainly fallen into patterns which may not serve either of you so well anymore. Talking to your partner about sex can be one of the scariest things… even in the most intimate relationships, it can still feel excruciatingly vulnerable to share your sexual truth. But you are a strong, bad-ass woman and you can do this. You deserve the pleasure that lies on the other side of this difficult conversation.

4. If you’re not in a partnership, then you’ll need to  have the courage to go on this journey alone. Can you learn to delight in your own sexual company? Can you challenge yourself to seek and find the lover you deserve?

5. Accept your body. If not now, then when? This is such a big challenge, it needs a post of it’s own, so tune in later this week for my favourite physical, emotional and psychological strategies for loving your body as it is.

6. Get help if you need it. You don’t have to do this alone. If you are dealing with unresolved trauma, major relationship issues, or physical challenges that impact your sexuality, please know that you deserve support, and build a team to help you through. Your health and your pleasure deserve the investment. Find a physician who really listens, a therapist you can trust, alternative practitioners who specialize in women’s health and sexuality. Don’t compromise. You deserve the best help and support you can find.

7. Understand that depth is as valuable as intensity when it comes to pleasure. In our society, sexual pleasure is often portrayed as one-dimensional – it’s all about speed, intensity, and slick surfaces. What has always been true about female sexuality becomes even more important at midlife. We like it deep, wide-ranging, and delicious. Fast and hard is fun sometimes, but long, multi-layered, rich and complex will always be more compelling. At midlife we are better equipped to enjoy a full and sophisticated banquet of pleasures, even as we may be less equipped to take it hard and fast. Don’t see this as a loss – it is a net gain. Our pleasures now can be the richest, most multi-dimensional, and deepest of our lives.

What do you think? What are your strategies for claiming your pleasure at midlife?

xo
Love
Bronwyn