Do you experience numbness?
If you do, you aren’t alone, and I’m on a mission to make this something that we can all talk about more readily, and not normalise, therefore having easy access to ways to feel again and have a life filled with pleasure, or even better - never get to the point where we have to numb to start with ❤
Ask these questions to yourself:
Do I feel numb and stuck in my life?
Do I use unhealthy habits to avoid feeling?
Do I feel nothing ‘down there’?
Do I dislike any sort of activity that is ‘supposed to be’ pleasurable and avoid sex?
If you answered yes to some of these questions, you could be experiencing dissociation from your body and feelings, which is sadly super common. I can’t tell you how many women I work with who are in your shoes, but don’t worry, it’s not a irreversible situation, and actually the journey back to feeling can be really enjoyable!
My story with numbness
For years I was so numb in my body I didn’t even know I was numb. We don’t get taught, or at least I didn’t, about how amazing our yonis are (yoni is all of your sex organs as a woman). They are literally made for pleasure and the anatomy of pleasure is something I was delighted to discover and something I LOVE to teach other women, and men!
So if we don’t learn this, and then boys aren’t taught this either, and then they go about largely learning about sex from movies and porn, this means the whole world misses the incredible-pleasure-sensitive-powerhouse we own, and make it all about the guy - DOH!
Now when we do this we aren’t only missing out as women, but the guys miss out too, we are literally the initiatrixes of full body and cosmic orgasms, which both sexes can experience - and right now I bet most of you are probably wondering what | am going on about, so back to my story…
I was numb, very sexual, but very not-in-my-own-body. I learnt to be a people pleaser from a young age and this didn’t only fill my working and platonic relationships in life, it seeped into my romantic relationships too. This seemed ok, and I knew no different, but the further down this path I went, the more numb I got, and I knew deeply that all of this people pleasing came from a place of low self-worth and feeling like I needed to earn love - wow how wrong is that!
Add to this the ‘women are emotional’ and hearing that I was too much, and we have a concoction of narratives and inner beliefs built that feeling in any way isn’t great, or safe.
You see, that as well as feeling numb from not knowing that we have permission to feel pleasure and feelings, and that all of that is ok, we also become numb from trauma.
All the meanwhile, I kept being drawn to tantra and eventually managed to find a way in to explore this world, as well as the world of cosmic orgasm, which are both about ‘what is’ and getting out of our mind and into connection with our body, our self, and our lover.
Tantra helped me release my blockages, my traumas, and to go back to the start, back to just feeling and exploring what I enjoyed; what I felt like when I ate some delicious fruit, how pleasure and feeling are in everything and are not sexual, and this also was hugely releasing for my emotions too as I moved into where I had stagnation, from years of disconnecting from what I wanted in order to please others.
Shadow work
This wasn’t all strawberries and chocolate and orgasms though;
when you open up yourself to feeling and more pleasure, this also means you feel more of the things you ‘don’t want to feel ‘as well
but this was actually extraordinarily freeing for me, in fact I couldn’t really feel again until I let go and allowed myself to venture into the places that I didn’t want to look. After years in abusive relationships, I had a lot of rage trapped inside me, and my gosh was it amazing to learn how to release this, with support from women who had done this work before me and I still come back to this work regularly to keep going deeper and deeper and letting that younger me be heard and seen at times when she really wasn’t, and gave herself in many situations when she didn’t want to.
A life filled with pleasure
Life should be pleasurable, and those of you that come to my yoga classes, know that even on the mat, I have begun to bring this into our practice; it’s so important that we free pleasure and feeling from its cage of taboo, because millions of people, if not most people, have suffering around not being able to truly express themselves and be connected with their body, and we stand in silence until we allow ourselves to free ourselves. The results of becoming more connected and feeling all the feels, are infinite, bliss beyond recognition, and all this energy spilling into our life!
If this resonates with you, as it did with me, I have created many ways for you to get involved, so that no-one is left out!
Time to be free of numbness? A little exercise and some options for deeper work…
A way to begin your journey back to feeling right now, is to slow down and start to listen to what your body is saying. Yoga and meditation as well as ecstatic dance are fabulous for this, so a quick exercise to do right now is this:
Stop what you are doing and close your eyes. Using your left hand slowly explore your right arm, stroking it, tapping, gentle pinching, light scratching, rubbing. Find where feels good and move more into that, just be with how it feels and what that brings up in you. Do this for a few minutes and then switch sides and see what you discover. I LOVE doing tantric bodywork with clients and watching them come alive and find feeling in places they never had before. You too can experience this with me, drop me a message to chat - men and women welcome.
In my 1-on-1 energy and sexuality coaching sessions, we delve deeper into this feeling exploration, as well as releasing traumas, movement, sounding, tantric rituals, and other healing modalities to bring you back to your feeling and pleasure - it’s an amazing journey and I have just launched my ‘Shakti Unleashed’ 13 week coaching programme - so excited to work with more of you deeply to heal and feel ❤
For info about the programme or coaching email me at the link here to book a free clarity call.
Due to popular demand, I have decided to run ReWilding again once more time this year, and we start in October. This is a group coaching and healing container, and one that runs deep and touches on many of these topics. You can sign up for free to my ReWild Your Life workshop to find out more AND get info about my upcoming ReWilding Retreat!!
Last but not least, I have a fabulous half-day workshop on Sunday 10th October called ‘Body Love’. This was postponed from last weekend due to venue challenges, and means you have more chance to get onboard! Find out more:
There is something for everyone, remember you aren’t alone and together we can get through this and FEEL more than ever before! If you need someone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to message me on hello@suzieford.com.
Suzie Ford is a yoga and meditation teacher, tantra facilitator, energy and sacred sexuality coach healer. She specialises in feminine arts, trauma-release work and tantric sexual healing. She loves to be in nature and to share her heart through her writing.
She would love to hear from you and welcomes you into her community where love, joy and pleasure are abound ❤