Author: Amy Butcher

It’s the dog days of summer and I’m about to head to the beach! The question is: what book shall I take? Or books, plural, because I can rarely travel with just one. Here are some contenders from the bedside pile:

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Writing from the Body by David Lee
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn (want to join me on the 28 day challenge?)
• Behrouz Gets Lucky by Avery Cassell (alright, I already read it but it was so good!)
• Or pretty much any female main character murder mystery!

What will you be reading these dog days?
xo,
Amy

One of my favorite portals of pleasure is drawing. What I love about the process is the deep witnessing of another creature (in this case, a flower–can you name the kind?). In order for me to draw it, I first have to really see it.

• How do the blossoms change as they move from open to closed to barely buds?
• What is that pattern on the leaves (it really is this crazy)?
• Are the leaves alternating or opposing?
• How to I create something on paper that captures what exists in three dimensions?
• What lines will capture the essence?
• So many details that I only really notice when I’m trying to filter it through my eyes, my brain, and then back out through my fingers and pen. I become an alert, witnessing conduit. It awakens a capacity for ‘knowing’ that serves me in so many other places in my life.

This type of witnessing with curiosity is deeply pleasurable for me. It serves me when I bring that same attention to another’s body, or my own.
xo,
Amy

May’s theme is all about potency. What power is rotating at about your core? What kind of vortex are you creating by your very being? As kids, we might have imagined ourselves to be Spiderman, WonderWoman, or a pirate witch who transgressed cultural norms. Somewhere inside, though, we knew we held deeper capacities than our mundane world acknowledged. We knew we had superpowers.
So what is your superhero name? What is your superpower? Your tool, sword, or cape? How do your superpowers show up in your life, especially in the erotic realm?
Perhaps your sensible adult has grown a bit rusty at this whole superhero name thing. Never fear! Just use this chart as a starting point to determine your superhero name. Once you have your mighty moniker then what do you think your super power might be? What is it’s symbol? And, unlike Clark Kent oblivious to the tiny untucked corner of his cape peeking out of those 1950s trousers, how can you let your superpowers be known this month?
— Amy

It is that time of year for me, springtime is cleanse time. Each spring for many years I do a ritual cleanse. This year also included a time off grid at a natural hot springs. This gave me an opportunity to consciously shift my intake of food, internet, usual activities and then support release. I now feel the flexibility and resourcefulness of my whole body.
And every spring I read the detox chapter, Chapter 8, of Radical Healing by Rudolph Ballentine, MD. This chapter assists in identifying what kind of detox, for what purpose and how to detox. I also follow the guidance of my naturopathic physician, where she suggested a particular type of cleanse that fits my body and health needs.
Here is a simple approach to detox taken from Radical Healing, pg. 318:
For maintenance of…

• Colon: Exercise, High-fiber diet, water
• Urinary Tract: Water, Diet low in fat, salt, protein
• Skin: Water, aerobic
• Lungs: Complete Breath

Ahhh, getting clear and cleaner. Why don’t you join me this year?
—Alex

How about you? What holes are calling? What feels holy? How are you becoming whole?

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