SENTIENT TIMES Dec/Jan 2001

Sexual Union, Inside and Out
By Peter Moore

In each of us resides our gender opposite, but it may lay hidden and mysterious-and that leads to problems. We will try to find what completes us outside of ourselves. Our urge for wholeness, for healing, makes us fall in love; our partners at first seem to embody some trait which gives us a glimpse of the possibility of ecstatic union. Then, invariably, we are disillusioned, the honeymoon is over; our partners cannot give us what is already ours but which we have denied. It is our own denial of the wholeness in ourselves which leads to the fall from grace.

This struggle in relationships recapitulates the bonds we had with our earliest caregivers. At first our need, in infancy, is for a symbiotic union. This gives way, as we approach our toddler stage, to a need to move away from our mothers. Differentiation, "No!", and the exploration and stimulation of the world away from our mothers is the order of the day. The birth of a new "little" self occurs around the age of 2 or 3 and consolidates with the arrival of new energy in the pelvis. This energy is preorgasmic, in the sense that at this age we are not driving toward a conclusion, a climax, or the completion of a reproductive union. As we explore the yummy new feelings in our bodies, we discover a whole new level of pleasurable sensations when our head, heart, belly, and pelvis are connected by streamings of energy. When we reach puberty, our urges want to reach toward climax and release, to move toward having sex, conceiving, birthing, and forming close pleasurable ties which will form the communities so necessary for the raising of humans.

How these developmental stages are experienced, and the success we have in them, depend on how our mothers and fathers welcomed and encouraged our new sensations and discoveries. It is the internalization of these childhood parental images which guide us in how we feel in our sexuality, inside our selves or with a partner. Subsequent experiences as we enter adulthood will modify, confirm, or challenge these energetic patterns.

In "Merging and Dissolving," Sentient Times, February 1998, I outlined a guided meditation to help connect up the male and female energies inside of us. Once a greater inner union is arrived at, more flexibility and pleasure is available in an outer relationship with a partner. Here, we will work with breathing and movement to provide a more physical way of uniting these aspects within oneself. I am indebted to Jack Painter for the synthesizing of these ideas, though some of the refinements are my own. He is the originator of postural and energetic integration processes, with training centers throughout the world, and has developed methods for pelvic-heart integration.

Come to a comfortable standing position, with your knees unlocked, and your feet shoulder width apart. The movement of primary importance for this exercise is a rocking back and forth of your pelvis. The backward movement will increase the concave curve in your lower back, and your sacrum and tailbone will point further back. The forward movement of your pelvis will bring your pubic bone forward and the curve in your lower back will flatten.

Many people will automatically lock their knees as they bring their pelvis back, then unlock them as they bring their pelvis forward. If you do this you are moving your whole trunk as a unit and not really moving your pelvis. When the whole trunk moves like this, the muscles of the stomach and of the back have to be held rigidly, thereby preventing a surrender into your sexuality. Put one hand on the muscles in the small of your back to see if they are shortening and lengthening, as they will when you move your pelvis. A deep chronic contraction here, however, may prevent these muscles from relaxing, in effect giving a double message as you approach another. There are many different messages here, but one could be, "As I approach you, have sex with you, I won't surrender to you, give fully of myself."

The tension could be more in the belly, even if the pelvis moves in relation to the trunk. The message here could be, "It's too risky for me to surrender to the pleasure you give me." Also, some people move their pelvis forward by squeezing the muscles of their buttocks. This will bring a forced quality to their sexual expression, perhaps bringing with it elements of domination rather than surrender to their feelings or the power of their sexuality.

Although not crucial to the learning in this exercise I am describing, it is helpful if the pelvis can swing free. One method which can help is to actually bend your knees more as you swing your pelvis back. Then, as you push down on the ground with both your legs, you can let some of the energy straighten your legs and let some of the energy push your pelvis forward. This way you will be using different muscles from your stomach or buttocks to swing your pelvis forward. Make various attempts at this, because, if you're finding it hard to get, chances are you started to immobilize this segment of your body when you were very little.

Now we need to add a breathing pattern to the above movement, and we need to differentiate between male and female patterns. You will be doing both patterns regardless of your gender. We will start with the female movement. You will be inhaling fully as your pelvis comes forward. Imagine your (female) genitals are sucking in the air (energy), and that, as your pelvis gets full, gradually your whole body fills up with energy. Forget about abdominal or yogic breathing for now. As you breathe in let your whole mid riff lengthen and see your ribcage all around opening up like a parachute, back, sides, and front. Let your breath fully come up into your chest, enriching your heart and flowing over your collarbones.

To repeat, energy flows into your pelvis, fills you, and, as the embodiment of all that is feminine, you have transformed that which you have received in your pelvis into female energy. You now exhale, swinging your pelvis back, and give out a milky way of energy from your heart and breasts. You hold nothing back, you surrender all of the energy, because, by now, astute readers will have realized they are surrendering their love essence in its female form to the (inner) male which they are visualizing standing in front of them. Imagine what qualities this male version of you would need in order for you fully to surrender to receiving from him in your pelvis and completely giving to him from your heart. The male that you first sense there may be modeled on earlier males in your life and, if negative, may make it hard for you to claim your female side. Don't worry: just turn all the negative things you perceive in him into precise instructions for creating the male side which would support your femaleness. If he's mean and blocked, make him kind and receptive. To keep the archetypal energies clear, however, make sure he's giving in his pelvis, receptive in his heart, and that you're the polar opposite of that: receptive pelvis, giving heart.

Now do this: imagine your ideal mother behind you, and her ideal mother behind her, and your ideal mother's ideal grandmother behind her, and so on until you reach into the very depths of your soul and cells, into the deepest levels of the feminine. Feel the support of their bodies behind you. You, as the embodiment of female energy reach for the male, and you feel all those women behind you, as far back as Eve and beyond, reach with you and in you. And, in the space between your shoulder blades, which widens and becomes oh-so-receptive, you feel the feminine energy of your ideal lineage pour into the bottom of your heart, an open window across time, from which you pour out your love.

After some time with this, take a deep breath, let that experience go, and come a few paces forward, then turn around. You will now feel your way into your male side. This time, of course, the flow of energy is reversed, out of your pelvis, into your heart, but first just come to the breath and movements. You inhale as your pelvis swings back, you exhale as your pelvis swings forward. As you breathe in, feel all of the breath fill your chest completely, then your belly, then your pelvis. You are filling from the heart first, not your pelvis. Only when your heart is full, visualize the energy then filling into your pelvis. As the embodiment of the masculine pattern now, you pour out your male energy with complete surrender, holding nothing back, exhaling, beginning to feel, as you breathe and move more and more deeply, that there is no reason to hold back, because your female side is surrendering to what you offer, and she gives back, she's right there for you, just as you've spent your last drop and you take your inhale, and her divine feminine energy pours into the centre of your chest.

If the female side you are exchanging energy with seems now to be modeled on negative female figures in your life, modify the image, guided by what would enable you to feel full with, and surrender to your masculine side. Again, keep the archetypal polarity going. In your male side, energy flows from the front of your pelvis, and into the front of your chest.

The ancestral energy can be invoked on the male side, too. Imagine your ideal father, father's father, and his father, and so on down the line to the deepest masculine principle in the universe, beyond Adam. This time, on the male side, as you breathe in, you take in the female energy way back into the depth of your heart, sending the energy back through your ideal father, to grandfather, to great-grandfather, all the way down the line. As you wait for the great wave of male energy to begin to exhale, you begin to feel the supportive pouring of positive male energy into the back of your pelvis, a deep male support for surrendering all your male energy to your female side. This way your male potency does not have to be forced, which is usually the case when it is cut off from the masculine support which is potentially available to you.

Continue through several cycles of moving and breathing, letting the energy build by breathing faster and deeper, if that seems right for you. You may also want to switch back and forth between your male and female side to strengthen them.

When both sides are strong, we can ask for or give a supportive hand on the back, or a kick in the pants (!); with our partners we can play with different sexual attractions, swapping sexual polarities, or we can be brothers in energy together, or sisters. Or, alone, we can surrender to the pleasurable streamings which arise from the dance of masculine and feminine within our cells, within our bodies.

Peter Moore graduated from Oxford University, and, since 1980, has pursued his interest in healing. Included with his study of a variety of modalities is certification and postgraduate training with Siegmar Gerken Ph.D., and John Pierrakos M.D., the founder of Core Energetics, an approach which attempts to unify the personality on the levels of body, feelings, mind, will, and spirit. Peter is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a practice in Eureka, CA, and can be reached at (707) 442-7228.

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