Celibacy and Healing - Yes or No?

I was asked to write something about celibacy. Especially, staying celibate while we're healing.

We are always healing. As long as life's happening, there will always be trigger points to shine a light on, obstacles to handle, physical ailments to treat, and emotional blocks to unblock. Does that mean that we shouldn't let another person near while we're dealing with this life of ours?

I'll let you answer it for yourself. 

In my world, healing never stops. I associate healing with self-improvement, personal growth, letting more love in, learning the balance between giving and receiving and having so much awareness that we no longer sabotage ourselves. Ideally, no circumstances can stop us from manifesting the life we'd love to live.

Celibacy is a whole another realm. I flirted with it in 2017. It's hard to flirt with celibacy though. You either go all-in, knowing your why and knowing what will be the sign for you to quit, or you better not torture yourself. Some people abstain from sex with gusto. They have a goal in mind - that's usually a healthy relationship as a reward of their strong will and devotion to themselves or to a chosen deity. I like that idea. I tried it. I admitted that I had not had a lucky strike for a few years and that the best thing would be to take a break from dating for a year.

Perhaps because I began celibacy while not a virgin anymore, my life felt very sexual even while celibate. I would still see clients for Tantric coaching, help them with their sexuality, I'd sex-text with my past lovers and even kiss some random lads if it felt right. I would not sleep with anyone. A few months into the year-long experiment, all kinds of shadows bubbled up, and I had to deal with more than just feelings of horniness. In my case, gaining awareness of unhealthy patterns that ruined my success in love was worth the wait. Nevertheless, the sexless year was agony!

Celibacy half-hearted is insincere and all the healing work that one could do while abstaining is half-arsed if there are still sexual undertones to everything you do and a lot of masturbating in between. Yes, orgasms are means to stress-release. Running towards physical pleasure is also the perfect way to avoid feeling the inner void. 

Does it mean we cannot grow/improve our lives if we're not celibate?

Absolutely not. The answer is this simple because nothing can prevent us from enlightenment if we don't let it.

But don't cover up what's not right in your life by too much physical stimulation, or any stimulation of the senses (Tv), and engulfing yourself in sexual pleasure. You're avoiding doing the inner work and gaining awareness of how you're sabotaging more sustainable happiness.

Sex with someone you love is amazing. I don't like celibacy. I hate when I am in a relationship and for some reason, like distance, I can't practise regular love-making with my man. But when I'm single, I prefer to stay celibate with moderate self-pleasuring and do the deeper healing work to make sure that the person who comes into my life next is the right one for my body, my mind, and my spirit too.

Thank God, I now know how to heal without abstaining from sex altogether...

What trauma leaving the body may look like

Since pleasure and pain are so closely linked together in the world I lived in, it used to seem that I couldn't be with either sensation individually. It's a tricky matter I'm trying to heal. I'm choosing to embody pleasure and learn from the past pain to create a different destiny. 

Maybe all the bad sexual experiences that I endured in the past are a blur... but their energetic imprint stayed stuck in/around the physical body... I believed that I cut some cords and released the faint memories from the body-memory... yet, I was in for a surprise. Yesterday I did yoga (first time in ages) and myofascial release at home. I stayed in the pigeon pose for some time, worked on opening my hips, and I stretched my legs so I could do a split again in a few weeks if persistent. Damn, everything crawled under my skin! It was the most unpleasant feeling, I felt so disconnected - did I willingly joined a torture club and the first lesson was in masochism? I clenched my teeth and didn't feel like being there; I wanted to disassociate from my body in order to stop the pain. Lying on the back, my left arm still extended, holding onto the foot of my left leg spread out to the side... I observed pain in the whole limb and also in both hips... Was I voluntarily offering my body for abuse? Specifically, sexual abuse. The whole pelvis area felt constricted, my pussy closed, wrapped in an aura of dread... I tried to stay with that anxious energy and let my irritation find a breakthrough and transform... It didn't happen. So I released the grip. I massaged my groins and let a few tears escape my eyes. What the hell was that?

The first time I sensed my body's irritability, tension, and a sense of stuck psychosomatic trauma was during a 10 days silent Vipassana meditation course in 2019. 

Every morning we would sit down on a meditation cushion, and except for toilet and meal breaks, we would stay there to meditate for 10 hours. No eye contact was permitted, no words, no other activities (including reading) either. By day 4, I've had enough! I began perspiring on my cushion, fidgeting, scratching myself; I felt so uncomfortable inside out, I wanted to jump out of my skin, and with the whole room being so quiet, everyone with their closed eyes deep into it, my irritation grew. I craved to scream and shout, to fuck, and then get the fuck out. I did neither. I did what I was instructed on the first day. 

Sit with the feeling. Invite it, let it be felt...you do not need to despise it nor love it. And then it happened... I crumbled. Huge sobs escaped my trembling body, and that one tissue I had handy became soaked in a minute. I don't remember how long I sat there crying, but just before the hour was up, I reached a strange sense of tranquillity. Something has left my body. I didn't need to know what or how. It did, and I felt relieved. The whole Vipassana experience changed since that moment. The remaining days were spent in peace.

Hopefully, I don't need another retreat to stop self-sabotage because I found the culprit to watch out for and along with it the cure.

The body keeps a score (the title of an excellent book, by the way). Why? After a painful event long gone, why do we still feel like an impending tragedy is just around the corner?

The answer is biological and to me, energetical too. I will not overwhelm you with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, but my natural response to perceived danger is flight. I scan my brain for predictable outcomes and run. The mind is trying to protect us from similar harm... filing traumatic events under threats to our wellbeing, and something to avoid. The body remembers very well how that felt... it does not want to feel that way again.

You see, soon after a properly intense love-making... I go into a self-preserving mode. I might be shaken by the intensity of the climax or by the fact that I actually do it with someone I love and who loves me, and at the same time, I am searching the files in my unconscious mind for any evidence that this shakiness could be dangerous to my wellbeing. I've had sex before, I also experienced 'accidental orgasms' while not being in love with that person, hell, I’d not choose them again from an empowered attitude in a million years... yet, the body responded anyway. It's natural to feel aroused when all the right spots are being stimulated. After relaxation comes a thought: I must keep my guard up.

My only logical explanation is that I desperately seek the comfort of knowing how to label and file this new romantic experience in my life. When I cannot make sense of it, get confused and want to run, I seek the familiar. Sometimes familiar doesn't mean 'better'. I need to know who I am in my own body without someone ‘invading it’. And I can feel that invasion even weeks later. I feel conflicted between wanting to run away from pain/pleasure towards pleasure/pain, whichever is more familiar, while still not recognizing which is which (and what's better for me). The sexual experience feels natural, the person feels different, the feelings are heightened, and the premise of love quite real. On top of it, when we both descend back to the earth, the energy is in homeostasis, I perceive his withdrawal along with all the freedom he gives me as rejection. I struggle with that the most.

How can we self-help?

The good news is that if the traumatic events of the past passed, we're free now. So let the body know that it is safe. Self-soothe. Breathe. Relax. Eat well. Have a bath. Let's not focus on the why, why we feel this tight. Let's focus on the hows, the solution to feeling more of the good stuff. Stay present, understand that healing trauma is not pretty at first, but numbness is worse.

The only way out is through.

Remember that no person and no activity is the same even though you've been there done that thousand times before. 

Frankly, my body has been through so much trauma with men that I lost count of how many times I've wriggled myself out of a safe embrace. Would you recognize genuine love if it was right in your face? I bow down to you!

I'm loving this new experience even though it drives me nuts sometimes. I shall welcome it.

Don’t run away from perceived pain. Let’s try to heal it. Using EFT is one of the methods.