The behavior is a patriarchal one because the person is doing what society encourages them to do – push through and pay no attention to any feeling. In doing so, the person becomes not only disconnected from themselves, but also from a Higher Power, God, Goddess, Godx, Source, etc. Those divine energies are accessed via a more feminine approach and often through the body.

None of these scenarios allow for flexibility or for the wide range of feelings and emotional expressions that are within the human experience. And that includes people with penises.

Therapy – whether it’s traditional, psychedelic-assisted, or sex therapy – never involves sex. Ever. Neither does therapy ever involve verbal sexual advances or any other kind of sexual contact or behavior.

Many of us are indoctrinated with shame. It seems to be a readily used societal mechanism to control and dominate when someone or something is perceived to be out of control. A place where that shows up a great deal is with sex, including solo sex, or masturbation. Shame is the instilled belief there’s something bad or wrong with you — fundamentally. It’s not the feeling that you made a mistake, but rather the feeling you are a mistake.

The breath is ever present. Always here as a constant in our lives. When we feel lost, we can come back to our breath. It is a guide for us. A tool to go inward. A tool to then go outward from a centered place.

Ideally, there needs to be someone present who is trained in trauma-informed work, the human psyche, somatic-oriented understanding of the human experience, and psychedelics. This person would know how to hold the depths of the realms that people go to, and someone to adequately conduct in-depth integration after the psychedelic journey.

The body is its own boundary. The body contains us, holds us, keeps our organs intact. Our skin especially separates us from the rest of the world. It designates where we end and others begin. The skin is what differentiates the inside from the outside.

However the body wants to respond, I encourage you to listen. The body has its own wisdom so let whatever wants to occur, occur.

The breath tells us something if we notice it. It can give profound insight into the inner landscape of a person.

Psychedelics offer the possibility of a mystical experience or connecting with something greater than the self. However, psychedelics can also heal intergenerational as well as ancestral trauma.

If you’ve lost your pet to death, I encourage you to take time to grieve because the loss is not a trivial one. Your life has been disrupted. As you honor the loss of your beloved pet, also be gentle with yourself and practice extra self-care.

They say it’s their medicine and their bodies operate better with it. That may be true – after all, the body gets used to substances (provided they’re made to be consumed). That’s why withdrawal can be so hard and highly unappealing.

A boundary is an imaginary line that separates you from another person, place, thing, activity, or process. Think of it not only in terms of separating you physically from another person, but also delineating your feelings, needs, and responsibilities from others. Boundaries also communicate how you do and don’t want others to treat you as well as what type of situation you desire being in.

There’s a great quote by the anthropologist Angeles Arrien that captures this well: "When did you start creating discomfort with the sweet territory of silence?" Silence…it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. Silence, it can be pleasant and something we welcome. It can be something we befriend and pour tea to sit with. However, silence is not often perceived as something we can embrace.

Sometimes bodies speak quietly, like through a whisper. And sometimes we miss that whisper and then our bodies speak more loudly, such as through a cold or an illness even. When we dis-associate from the body, the body’s inner wisdom has a way of bringing us back. Sometimes we know our bodies are speaking to us, but we don’t understand the message! It may be hard to decipher the messages from the body as they are encoded in such ways that require some quieting, slowing, or curiosity.

Betrayal runs deep. And if there is a betrayal wound in one’s life that began from a young age, this may show up time and time again throughout one’s life. The breaking of a trust bond is a betrayal. There was an implicit or explicit agreement made and all parties followed this until at least one did not.

Therapy as a field, by and large, is a broad and wide-ranging one. Therapy sessions with me are non-directive and open-ended. Coaching is goals focused and directed. Coaching may offer both a respite from your current state of mind and affairs by helping you make a plan and implement changes immediately.

Sex workers (sworkers). They are arguably the crux of most cultures, offering a service that is uniquely intimate. They are a part of every sociocultural makeup, yet denied, sometimes as existing, and sometimes as deserving, especially as deserving basic worker rights. International Sex Workers’ Day, or International Whore’s Day, was on June 2. This day of recognition, established in 1975 by a group of French sex workers, brings attention to the inhumane working conditions for people in this profession.

If you keep things inside, hold them in your brain and therefore, inevitably your body, it can create depression or heaviness and anxiety or dissociation. Holding on to thoughts, feelings, ideas, and even body sensations can weigh us down and/or create depression as well as anxiety.

I created a technique about 15 years ago called “Sexuality Mapping” as a way of working with a person’s sexuality and sexualness in order to potentially heal trauma by gaining a deeper understanding of their sexual past so that going forward they can make choices in alignment with who they really are.