EroSomatic Arts Collective

Light.
Sunlight is essential for all living organisms.
Photosynthesis in plants is light energy converted to carbohydrates, food for insects, animals, and eventually the soil. Light direction and duration promotes the plant growth cycle. Plants turn toward the light. Sunflowers are harbingers of autumn. The diminishing light sends plants into dormancy. Daylight and night rhythm expressed.
For mammals, light and dark rhythm creates the circadian flow in an almost 24 hour period. Sleep, dream, wake, hunger, content/wellbeing, activity, hormone regulation, slowing down, moving into sleep.
Light receptors in our eyes and skin produces the neurotransmitter serotonin and sends information to the pineal gland to produce melatonin. Endocrine system in flow with the earth cycle. The pineal gland initiates the circadian rhythm.
The pineal gland has been called the third eye, producing insight and inner wisdom. In many lizards and frogs there is a parietal eye, the third eye is visible, it winks at the daylight and offers a direct route inward. Daylight produces wakeful consciousness; nighttime produces dream state consciousness. Luminance.
Welcome equinox.
xo, Alex

I read this piece this morning, and I’ve been pondering it ever since: “Your body is not your masterpiece — your life is. It is suggested to us a million times a day that our BODIES are PROJECTS. They aren’t. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is. Stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world.”
It’s such a counterintuitive headline to me, working with embodiment both in my own personal journey and supporting others. But still, my brain and my gut and my heart went YES YES YES while reading this piece. Not because I don’t believe that my body, too, is a masterpiece, and is an instrument that I want to fine-tune and hone and study and appreciate, but because ultimately, the message of the piece is to appreciate this amazing tool that I (we all) have, and stop obsessing over my body and it’s lack or abundance or style or whatever, and get on to the creating anyway.
I love the idea of my life, my spirituality, my relationships, and my work being projects that I am working on, my masterpieces. I’m not sure if I agree that my body can’t also be part of that masterpiece. I think some of the healing of this obsession over the masterpiece of the body can happen, and we can perhaps accept the innate masterpiece-ness of the body.
Well anyway, here’s the whole piece: Your Body Is Not Your Masterpiece, by Glennon Doyle Melton. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
— Zed

While we were hiking along the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Olympic National Park, my kid started to say that she couldn’t take another step because  “I don’t like to walk”.  I paused.  Walking is such a pleasure for me, it surprised me that she didn’t feel the same.  So I asked that question, “what do you like to do with your body?”
Together with our hiking companions we generated a long list, then it was my quest to “do things we like with our bodies”  all afternoon.
Here are some things that we stated and then did on our list:
Singing
Dancing
Jumping in the Pacific Ocean
Eating gummy bears
Touching others softly
Peeing in the woods
Imagine the possibilities with this question:
What Do You Like To Do With Your Body?
With love,
Alex

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

When we lead residential retreats and eat together, we often invite the group to give a blessing before each meal. It’s a practice I sometimes do at home, and always one of those little moments on retreat that I intend to pull back into my life, though it often slips.
(Even now, as I’m writing this, I realize I just ended up eating what will probably be my dinner, though it was intended to just be a snack when I started it, and that is often what happens! Note to self.)
I have had this poem on my bed-side table for years now, and recently I’ve been trying to memorize it, so it was on my mind during Portals of Pleasure. I shared it as a breakfast blessing one morning, and now here, I share it with you, too.
Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Do you have a blessing practice around meals? What are the blessings that you use? Just curious … maybe if I found one that resonated, it’d be easier to practice.
xo,
Zed

Right now the whole Body Trust team is at the Bodhi in New Mexico at our Portals of Pleasure retreat doing a deep dive into erotic pleasures with a group of twenty beloveds. But while we’re away, we haven’t forgotten those of you who couldn’t be there with us. In fact, we’re sending you some Portals-love!
We’re working on a Body Trust coloring book. In it, we channel voice to the chakras in words and images. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the First (Root) Chakra.  Drawing by Amy Butcher.
About the 1st Chakra, AKA the Root:
From where I sit, I can see up and down. I am the base of the tail, the coccyx, the focal point, the balance of grounding and support. When I am robust, my tendrils lunge downward, extending toward the ground. Like an umbilical to the planet. A woven web of pelvic fibers holds the form, to tend and support the functions of the entire body.
With a deep anal breath and love,
The Body Trust Team