It’s time for Portals of Pleasure, Body Trust’s annual deep-dive erotic residential retreat in New Mexico. Are you feeling the call this year? Find out more as Alex, Lizz, Zed, and Amy talk about the retreat, what to expect, how they are inspired by the work, and what their favorite Portals might be.
Registration for the retreat is now open. This year’s theme is “steadfastness” or what is steady and true in your body. Are you curious to learn more? Then head on over to https://www.bodytrustcircle.com/portals for more details.
Portals of Pleasure is a 5-day erotic retreat for genderqueer folks and women folks, held July 24-28, 2019 at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.
Tag: portals of pleasure
Show notes:
Pleasure Lab Episode 3 of season 3 includes an interview between Betty Martin and Zed Meade.
Betty Martin’s work can be found at BettyMartin.org, along with lots of information about the Wheel of Consent.
Books and inspiration mentioned in this episode are:
Full Spectrum Sex by Isa Magdalena, and more of her work on isa-magdalena.com
Science for Sexual Happiness: A Guide to Reclaiming Erotic Pleasure by Caffyn Jesse
Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want From Sex and How To Get It by Marty Kline
Our lovely intro and outro is “She Sees Mice” by Little Dog Big Ears, borrowed under a Creative Commons licensed music
Categories
Portals of Pleasure, an offering
When two of more gather, a circle emerges. The circle has potential, is greater than individual, and holds life. Circle work: we gather in community to explore soulful embodiment and to replenish ourselves—individuated and interdependent—utilizing the group energy for the micro and macro. Circles form and dissipate intentionally, spontaneously, and naturally. An intentional circle can be a portal.
There is a portal in New Mexico. The Body Trust retreat Portals of Pleasure is occurring from July 19 through July 23 in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Individuals are prepared and traveling, guided by intention, the circle is formed and we are drawing close.
During these days and nights together, we create a particular portal for transformation. From a distance, there is opportunity for you to connect. How to join? Set an intention to tap into the portal and receive the energetic offering. It could look like meditating in the morning knowing that we sit in meditation, or taking time to nourish yourself, or finding a somatic pleasure and sharing it with another.
Feel it,
Alex
Categories
Potency at Portals
I want to riff on our theme of “potency” for this month, and to write to you about golden showers and the May pole, about focusing on a single point, about the geometric manifestation of an energy—but honestly most of what I’ve been working on with Body Trust lately is getting the Portals of Pleasure registration up and ready for YOU all to come and enter the first portal!
This annual deep temple retreat holds so much potency for me. This will be our 8th summer retreat together, the four of us, and our third that we’ve produced on our own. Retreating like this in the summer with a circle of women & genderqueer folks has become an axis around which my year spins, a pole to hang my ribbons on. I go deep and weep and open up in ways that I almost never expect, and sometimes I soar with the ecstasy of release or power or connection.
I love how we’ve started weaving more art in to our retreats. Art has been such an incredibly potent portal for me—and is for so many, I think—that it makes sense that we started including more of it, as a way to access our connection to spirit, to creation, to divinity. I channel when I write in a way that I don’t do any other place in my life (well, except maybe having sex).
We’ll be back at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center this year, and I can’t wait to dip down into those hot spring pools and get rejuvenated. I remember the last year I was there, in 2012, lying on my bed after soaking the first night I was there, marveling at Hosen’s joyousness and good attitude, and thinking, “You know, if I soaked in these pools every day, I would be pretty blissful, too.”
Hope you will come join us this summer!
xo Zed