Two of the most essential embodiment skills

I have two major goals for Body Trust entry-level workshops—which are the same two things we expect people to be able to do in the inter
mediate or advanced workshops: 1. to communicate about what they want their experience to be like, and 2. to be able to stop or change an experience that they don’t like.
Writing those two things out, they seem so simple to me … and yet for my own exploration of desire and pleasure in my body, I know it has taken me years to even reach a moderate level of competence in those skills.
I remember feeling dread when Alex would say that we were going to play the Three Minute Game, knowing that I could freeze up when it came to what I wanted to do for my pleasure. It took more time and practice to get a little rolodex of things I could generally always ask for and enjoy (for example: foot massage, solid pressure on my back and shoulder
s, pounding on my butt, wrist and hand massage, energy exchange at a chakra, castor oil on some scar tissue), and to be able to flip through it and chose one on command.
Even though it takes some time to develop, in hands-on clothes-off whole body work in groups, the ability to identify and vocalize what one wants, and the ability to identify when something is not going so well, are momentous and essential.
As we continue to build and grow the curriculum for the Dedicated To Your Body workshops, I am keeping these two things in mind, and we are breaking down those skills into smaller parts and increasing the exercises to strengthen those parts. I’m sure th
ere are many more things that our entry-level workshops explore, but right now, these two feel like The Big Two, the things I’m particularly interested in encouraging us as a community to play with and strengthen. They feel so essential to me in order to go into the more intense work of sensation play, restriction, increasing the body’s capacity, and moving energy.
So, that’s what I’ve been pondering lately. If you feel like sharing it with me & the other Body Trust folks, I’d be curious to know: How did you develop your capacity to ask for what you want, and change things you didn’t want? How did erotic embodiment work in community help support your agency around this? What exercises helped this click for you?
—Zed