The Therapeutic Power of Sex: Healing & Enlightenment Through Pleasure ©

By Pam Chubbuck PhD

Enlightenment is the ultimate outcome of healing. On a physical level, feeling good and being healthy is a sign of well being. Wonder of wonders, strong, vital, loving sexuality can help bring about both vibrant health and enlightenment.

So If We Are All Having Sex -Why Aren’t We Healthy: Or - Why Aren’t We Having Sex?

We are more afraid of pleasure than we are of pain. Pain we are familiar with, and it often becomes too much of a “friend”, so we keep it around like an old pair of shoes. Pleasure, however, is something we have blocked because some caretaker has felt uncomfortable with his or her own physicality.  When we feel a caretakers discomfort we automatically block our pleasure. Jumping, shouting, playing too loudly, touching ourselves, pooping and peeing freely, wanting to touch and be touched, and the natural way of feeding for an infant - breast feeding, may have been frowned upon by caretakers. We block our natural flow to please the ones we must rely on for our very life.

I have written three other articles on sexuality that may assist you. You may access these by going to: http://www.core-energetics-south.com/Developing-Capacity.htm#Sexless_Marriage  and seeing all three.

Core Energetics Has Become the Expert on Unified Sexuality.  In the Psychotherapeutic Realm, Core Energetics is Number 1 in understanding the process of healing the body/mind that gets you to spiritual expansion. Since we are all fundamentally sexual beings we must be open to healing that part of our innate nature.

John Pierrakos (1921 – 2001) founded Core Energetics and expanded the physical and mental work of Reich, Lowen and himself, (see below)  to include the spiritual nature of the human being. Pierrakos incorporated eastern teachings, his ability to see and feel human energy including the chakra system, with the teachings of the Pathwork guide. He wrote Eros Love, and Sexuality: The Forces That Unify Man and Woman, a small, simple and profound explanation of what the title expresses, in 1997.

John Pierrakos, therefore Core Energetics, incorporates eastern philosophy which includes sex as sacred, pleasure as a way to enlightenment and pleasurable sex as a healing modality. Spirituality merged with western medicine and psychology through Core Energetics becomes a most powerful healing modality.

In the early 70s when I was in professional Core training, I heard John talk about the divine sexuality that he experienced with his wife Eva. Students sat on the grass outside the barn, at what was then, The Center for The New Age of Man. With sun streaming through the trees, I will never forget the rapturous look on Johns face and the deep love he exuded when he talked about his sexual connection with his wife. The words he used have stuck in my mind for over 3 decades. I have used the feeling that it elicited in me, to gage my own spiritual/sexual connection with other, and to guide my clients through the often turbulent waters of relationship.

I learned that when coming together sexually, the potential for healing is tremendous. Being honest and clear with a partner, leads to the intimacy we long for. John talked about taking responsibility for our own pleasure and not blaming others for our lacks or frustrations.

John taught that by being real - revealing ones self to other - (real means the combination of the Lower Self and Higher Self) we share our true selves. By revealing the dark places of our sexual realm to our partner, we create profound intimacy that leads to expanded energies and feelings of love and ecstasy.

When I was in my early to mid 30s I was working with John to expand my capacity to tolerate pleasure; sexual pleasure. The more intensely pleasurable the physical was the more frightened I became. I then blocked my feelings and sensations to avoid my emotional pain. I froze or disassociated, or  went into my mask. Of course John and I worked on what had blocked me in my childhood and still had a hold on me in the present. He also encouraged me to tell my partner - during sex - that I was scared and to stop or slow down until I could start to move again without fear. Luckily I had a partner who was also working on himself and was open to healing in this way. I had powerful healing by being true to my deepest feelings.

For Fun - Let’s Look at Some History

Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor, 2697 to 2508 BC created the foundation for traditional Chinese medicine. He studied sex with a female teacher, Su Nu, (called Plain Girl – meaning: the combination of innocence and divine wisdom) who wrote the first known treatise on human sexuality. Their techniques produced states of ecstasy that make what we call “good sex” pale by comparison.

The Chinese taught the energy principles of male yang and female yin. They knew that sex was a healthy activity and could heal physical problems. And they knew sex should be joyful beyond day to day happiness. These ancients taught that through sexual connection people could merge with each other energetically as well as physically and experience God/dess on earth.

Around 1500 BC ancient Ayurvedic medicine was organized and taught the balance of body/mind/spirit, sexual health being an important part of the balanced health equation. 

Tantra, meaning to manifest and to expand spirituality, was born in India more than 6,000 years ago. Tantra challenged the acetic beliefs of that time, purporting that sexuality was a doorway to the divine, and that earthly pleasures, such as eating, dancing and creative expression were sacred acts. In weaving together the male god Shiva and female goddess Shakti we create a harmony which enhances health and allows us to experience heaven on earth.

With Christianity’s Birth a period of darkness followed.  In the middle ages, the body was considered bad/of the devil and mind and spirit holy or saintly. Sex was believed to be banal at best and ungodly by many. Woman who truly enjoyed sex were often thought to be witches or prostitutes and sometimes put to death and/or tortured. Male sexuality was regularly overlooked but men were also sometimes punished for their natural sexual urges.

Freud (1856 -1939) taught, among other important innovations, that people could become physically and mentally ill if they repressed their sexual urges. Freud wrote a small volume called Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Given the era that Freud lived and wrote in, (100 hundred years ago) most people were afraid to read about sexuality. In 2005 psychiatrist Leon Hoffman wrote, “Freud's ideas teach us the value of intimate personal attachment and its key place in mature sexual fulfillment.”  Freud saw sexuality as fundamental yet never fully satisfied for women especially.

Wilhelm Reich MD (1897 – 1957), a contemporary of Freud, was the first Western psychiatrist who taught that working with the body was essential to healing psychological and physical issues. Reich took patients off the “couch” and began to teach them to heal their bodymind through moving stuck energy. Patients hit, kicked, screamed and beat the “bed” to heal. Reich had a lot to say about sexuality and how the repression of the sexual force made people neurotic and physically ill.  Among his many other books, Reich wrote The Function of The Orgasm in 1942, and The Sexual Revolution in 1945, (well before Masters and Johnson wrote “Human Sexuality”) He postulated that repressed sexuality created anxiety that he charted in his books. Reich became the leader of his time in understanding and teaching about human sexuality as part of the life force he called Orgone.

Doctors Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos, students of Reich, created Bioenergetic Analysis (analysis of the body’s Life Energy) and created the concept of grounding, which assists people to be aware of who they really are in the world. It assists people to move forward toward dreams and own their sexual reality as human beings.

Eva Pierrakos, founder of The Pathwork, taught that physical, mental and spiritual energies must be balanced. Sexuality was to be honored and practiced as a way to unification with God. Loving sexual union with another human being is the closest way to know God in our lives on earth. Eva’s’ lecture The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality, combining psychology and spirituality, may be read for free at www.pathwork.org

John and Eva met and married, thus merging their work, which has become Core Energetics, and what we know of as The Pathwork. Their work blossomed and both offer significant opportunity for healing on many levels.

Core Energetics understands the emotional and energetic issues that accompany everyone’s sexuality. Core Energetics assists people heal deep emotional issues that manifest physically. In 2010 we still must overcome childhood fears, our parents misconceptions, and religious distortions about our bodies and our natural sexuality.

I am taking up the torch of sexual healing, along with some other of my Core Energetic colleagues around the world, to bring the opportunity of healing in this powerful way to many people. Allowing the Life Force to flow through all of our cells is vital to our healthy existence!

Sign up for our next dynamic workshop Love Eros & Sexuality with Pam Chubbuck

"Those who understand the nature of sex will nurture their vigor and prolong their life. Those who Treat its principle with contempt will injure their Spirit and shorten life."
~ Tung Hsuan Tzu (c. fifth – seventh centuries)

On Wilhelm Reich & Sexuality
 
  "Reich believed a healthy and loving sex life is everyone’s right. In fact, he considered a good sex life absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the body. He stressed that the social and political ills of the world stemmed largely from society’s repression of sexuality. This repression leads to unhappiness, depression, and the inability to express joyous sexual love. For countless people the sexual energy is blocked because of personal body armoring. As a result of this armoring, such people often fall victim to various
aspects of the 'emotional plague'.”
~ Allen Cantwell Jr MD
 

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Grounding and Loving Your Body
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