Every now and then someone will say oh, you run the Festival of Sexuality, right?

Sexuality is an integral part of the festival, no doubt. Almost everyone who comes to the Festival of Sensuality wants to understand their sexual nature better, perhaps explore their sexual boundaries, navigate the feelings that come along with sexual desire, learn how to communicate in a sexual context.

But sensuality is so much more than that.

We navigate this life through our bodies; we watch a beautiful sunset through our eyes, we hear melodious birdsong through our ears, we taste sweet mango through our tongues, we feel the touch of cool water on a hot day through our skin, we can even delight in poetry with our brains…

But to experience life as a sensual person takes practice.

I remember first learning this at school: to our collective disbelief, our teacher announced we would all get a chocolate. The catch (we knew there had to be one) was that we would write about the experience; first she made us look at it on our desks, taking in the shiny wrapping, the promise of sweetness; then we slowly unwrapped it, listening to the crackle of the plastic, catching our first glimpse of dark brown; then, groaning, we were made to pick up the chocolate and feel how smooth it was against out fingers, feel its weight in our palm; then, dying now, we were asked to smell it and observe what changes we felt in our mouths, the stirrings in our stomachs; then we were allowed to place it in our mouths but not to chew it, just to sense the first tinging taste…and so on, until the chocolate was safely in our stomachs.

Never had we imagined we could experience so much from so little.

And that’s the principle at the heart of the sensual life: less is more. We all have sensual appetites that vary in intensity through our lives but we can all experience and appreciate more when we awaken our senses to all that’s going on in our bodies, our emotions, our minds.

Modern consumer culture, of course, attempts to give us more! Faster! Stronger! We’re prompted to consume, to indulge, to glut, and it can leave us feeling saturated, gorged, sickened.

We see this in porn. To anyone with a phone in their hands, instant sexual gratification is just a few taps away but the initial kick soon fades into a listless search for the right image, the right presentation of desires to make us feel something, anything. An excess of stimuli mean that soon enough we become numb.

Why would we do that to ourselves?

The world can be a painful place. Every day we risk disappointment, rejection, loneliness. The selling point of any addictive activity is that it will numb us to the pain. But we can’t selectively numb what we feel and so we find our pleasure also fades away. The quest for pleasure can lead to anhedonia, where we feel nothing at all.

Not all we feel is pleasurable. Maybe pleasure is not the point. A sensual person is open to feeling deeply into all the sensations, feelings, emotions that arise whether having sex or eating chocolates. It’s only by embracing a little pain that we can ever feel the depths of pleasure that this amazing life has to offer us.

The post What is Sensuality Anyway? appeared first on The Festival of Sensuality in the Czech Republic.

Do you love me?

Am I welcome?

Am I good enough?

Do you want to?

In a world full of a vast number of possibilities, so much of what we want, need and hope for comes down to a binary question.

And when we’re asked that question it may spark a flurry of other queries inside us:

What do they really want?

Will they be angry if I say no?

Who am I to tell them they can’t?

Maybe I should?

When two people meet the borders between them are often undefined. They shift according to the moment. And it’s in the hazy territory of maybe that we can get lost. Asked to do something, accept something, reciprocate desire, we may doubt our right to say no! We might be so concerned with the well being of the other that we might not know what we really want. We might be afraid of the consequences if we do. We might have learned that pleasing other people is the only way we can quest for acceptance and love.

Saying no can be terrifying.

And yet it’s an essential part of living an authentic life. Saying no we establish for ourselves and others who we really are and what we really want. We affirm our right to only do what we want. While we may empathise with the feelings of others, they’re not our responsibility.

And in the context of a meaningful encounter or relationship, by saying no we trust that the other person will accept our answer.

I’ll say it again. It’s an act of trust.

How to hear no

We all encounter rejection in our lives. It’s built in to every relationship whether it’s romantic, social or professional. It would be preposterous to imagine that the world would be structured around our need for all our desires to be granted.

And yet when we hear no, it may trigger all kinds of feelings: disappointment, dejection, exclusion, self-doubt.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just about us.

When we ask someone if we can do something, if they reciprocate our feelings, if they approve of our actions, we’re engaging with the feelings, beliefs and experiences of another person who has their own sets of needs and desires that are entirely independent from ours.

It’s totally natural to feel rejection, especially if we felt vulnerable in asking the question.

But when someone says no they’re letting us know where their borders are. And that’s so valuable as we map our where we both stand. By saying no they’re trusting us with a piece of knowledge. And if we accept their answer is given in good faith we grow closer to that person and henceforth we’ll know we can also trust their yes.

Yes, no and maybe on the festival

Of course these questions aren’t always entirely binary. We’re not always sure of what our answer is when we’re asked what we feel or whether we’re willing to do something. We might give a different answer in the morning than we would in the afternoon. Nothing is written in stone.

So it might be that we say no for now or no to that but what about x instead…

In the context of the festival, however, a maybe must be taken as a no. It might later change into a yes but, while human relations are often inherently ambiguous, it’s important we stay on the side of caution; we want to create a safe bubble in the festival where our answers carry weight. When our borders are respected, we can relax into ourselves and feel free to explore our desires.

We might even be surprised at our own answers.

The post What does it mean to say no? What does it mean to hear it? appeared first on The Festival of Sensuality in the Czech Republic.