“Namaste”. The word said at the close of yoga class is a balm on my soul. I feel the deep resonance of connection to my community, and sometimes it brings a tear to my eye. Despite my NYC hardened exterior, my center is ooey gooey. I want to belong in a world that places a premium on peace and love. Had I been alive in the 60’s I would have been an easy mark for a love cult, or started one. Chanting in a group makes my heart sing, and when we end by bowing to one another with Namaste, I am full of peace and contentment, and truly feel like the best version of myself when I am open and seeing others just as they are.

How do you approach your body when you masturbate? Do you do it in secret? In a rush? Do you have a ritual where you get all the accoutrements ready at ahem at hand? When your hand or toy makes contact with your body, what is in your head? Where are you in space and time? Is your “self” even in your imaginings? Are you looking at a screen and not thinking about yourself at all?

I am a sex coach, Domme and kink counselor. I spend all of my working moments and quite a bit of my personal life helping people navigate their orientations, kinks and troubles in the bedroom. It shatters my heart to see people in so much pain and so much of it is an easy fix that got conflated into something paralyzing. There is an overarching common factor…shame. For a society steeped in hedonism, it is truly remarkable to me how shame is omnipresent and makes it way into relationships in a most insidious way. I think if we are to make a very real effort to embrace our human sexuality, we need to start at the fundamental act of pleasure, masturbation.