Episode 73: Moment of Sensuality (with Ev’Yan Whitney)
A trip down a sensual memory lane. In this one, Ev'Yan talks about some of their favorite moments of sensuality in 2022—from things that gave them gender euphoria to experiences that inspired full-body pleasure.
Also, a little birthday celebration for something special.
The full transcript of this episode is below.
Links/mentions:
Get Ev’Yan’s guided journal, Sensual Self
Episode Transcription:
Hey, welcome to Sensual Self. I'm Ev'Yan Whitney and this is a space for you to slow down, tune in, heal and feel the sensations and pleasures of your sensual body. Thank you for being here.
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Hi friends! I hope you're feeling well and good in your body today. As for me, I am sitting here drinking some tea and really excited to get into today's episode. So today is a very special day for me. My book, Sensual Self: Prompts And Practices For Getting In Touch With Your Body is one years old. They are officially a year old.
When I was writing Sensual Self, I wanted to create a simple and playful guide that helped folks not just understand what sensuality is with their beautiful minds, but to actually have them experience it through the soft animal of their body, which is a hat tip to Mary Oliver. I envisioned that through the exercises and questions that I offer in Sensual Self, people would be able to nurture their innate and unique sexualities, reclaiming it from the clutches of sexualization, and figuring out what it is that awakens their senses and brings aliveness to their bodies. And not just during these quick, random moments, but to actually cultivate a practice of connection with their sensual selves on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis. I also just really wanted to create a beautiful journal for folks so that they could log their moments of sensuality with themselves, something that they can come back to, again, and again, that reminds them of their ability to slow down, tune in and feel into the sensations of their body. And it's with a lot of pride that I can share that sensual self has been all of that and more for folks.
I've received so many beautiful messages, and photos and voice notes from people who've been interacting with my book for the entire year. And the things they're learning about themselves, the pleasure, the reclaiming within themselves, seems to be like literally life changing. I personally feel really lucky and honored that I've been a guide for people in this realm of sensuality, pleasure and embodiment with sensual self. Maybe that's you listening right now, maybe you have been in a space of change and transformation within your sensuality and relationship to pleasure. And from the bottom of my heart. I want to say thank you for entrusting me to come along with you on your journey of reconnecting to your sensuality. Knowing that I've been the catalyst for the fullest expression of your central self is such a gift to me. So thank you. Thank you.
So happy birthday, to my book, Sensual Self. Can't believe it has been a year, it simultaneously feels like it hasn't been long enough. And also that this book has been out for three years, maybe because I started writing it in 2019. But that's neither here nor there. Happy Birthday, girl. We are so happy that you are out in the world. And for those of you who have taken the journey of uncovering your sensual self through my book and this podcast, I wish you so many more beautiful moments of sensuality with yourself.
Speaking of moments of sensuality, I thought it would be fun to share with you some of my favorite moments of sensuality that I experienced this year. As this year rapidly comes to a close. I specifically wanted to set aside some time to celebrate and savor some special and sensual moments I had this year.
So before I get into it, I just want to let you know that this list is not exhaustive. This is just a glimpse of some of the bigger, more highlighted standout sensual experiences I've had in 2022. But believe me when I say there is so much so, so, so, so much. These are just the bigger ones, the ones that stand out the most for me and my body.
Okay, so the first thing that comes immediately to mind when I think about moments of sensuality, is the day that I decided to shave my head. I have shaved my head before, I think I shaved it when I first went natural and 2010. This time, though, I grew my hair past my middle back, so the longest my hair has ever been. And I was feeling not a lot of joy or pleasure when it came to tending to it. Like just the idea of doing another wash day, which took hours despite the fact that I did everything to cut into that time and find little ways to make it simpler. I was just tired. I was so tired. And I started to get that itch that this very familiar edge of like, what would it be like to just shave it all off. This is something that I've thought about for a while. And this year, actually, I feel like I chewed on this for about two, three months before I actually was just like, fuck it, I'm gonna do it. And I remember texting my sister and telling her that I was thinking about shaving my head. And she was asking me why, like, what was coming up and I told her everything that I just told you. And she was like, do it, just do it. I was home by myself at the time. And I thought that that was a perfect time to do it. Because I didn't have Jonathan in the room. And maybe I could center myself and just like, you know, get in the vibe, get my courage on and I actually started to freak out a little bit at the last moment, I got the clippers out. And I texted her and I was like, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can do this I'm chickening out. And she texted me back. And she said, and I quote, "Stop, get your shit together." And I mean, honestly, I was like, alright, challenge accepted, I'm gonna get my shit together. And I'm gonna do it. And so I did. And I am so happy.
This is one of the biggest and best decisions I've made this year to cut off damn near 14 inches of hair, to cut off, damn near 12 years of growth, and to really come face to face with my own insecurities, and also complexities that I have around my hair. Because if you are a black femme, if you are a black woman you already know, there is a lot that comes along with our hair. And shaving it was an act of reclaiming my time. And it was also an act of reclaiming my joy. And I am so happy. I'm so happy. I still have people come up to me and be like, "oh my gosh, you look so good with a shaved head like it looks so great." And I'm like, Thank you, I think this is going to be the look for the rest of my life. Like I can't think of what it would look like for me to have hair again. Like why? I'm saving so much money on product. I'm saving so much time in the shower. And I love it. I love the way I look. I feel like it really-- it really affirms my gender identity, which is not something that I originally wanted to do it for I was seriously just like, I'm so tired of having long hair and having to deal with it. And it's just too much. But the moment that I saw myself in the mirror with a shaved head, I was like, Oh, that was the missing link. Like that was the thing that was keeping me from feeling consistent gender euphoria. And, yeah, I'm so happy I did it. And I feel so good. I feel so good with it.
The next on this list is learning how to swim. So I never learned how to swim when I was a kid. And actually, you know what, now that I'm thinking about it. It was this conversation that I had before I shaved my head that actually was the catalyst for me to shave my head. So I'll talk about it in a minute. I was sitting down with my partner Jonathan and we were talking about bathing or swimming or something like that. And I was saying how I was never really a swimmer. I always wanted to be a swimmer. But growing up as a black girl with a perm in my hair, it just like I was the fear of God was put in me about you know, getting your hair wet. And as a result, you know, I'm in my adult life and I realized through that conversation that I couldn't remember a time where I submerged my head underwater, just for funsies. Like, I could think about moments where I had my hair get wet because I was washing it. But outside of that like just to feel the sensation of water and closing on my scalp to be in a pool or a lake or an ocean. I couldn't remember the last time that that happened. And it made me so sad. And that moment, I just felt this, like, oh my god, I'm being deprived of this beautiful experience like this, the sensuality of being in water. And I knew that it had a lot to do with my hair and these, like learned patterns of behavior around, you know, not getting my hair wet, and just the upkeep of that and all of that. But it also had to do with me not knowing how to swim. So I shaved my head. And then I was like, I'm gonna learn how to swim. And so I did.
I took up swimming lessons and that has been so fun. And it's been really, it's been really lovely to come into the water in this way. To be in a different relationship with with the water. And actually something that came up through this process of deciding to learn how to swim is I had this deep body craving to be held by water, and not just in a bath, but like to actually lay flat on my back in a body of water and let the water hold me. And I'm realizing that that craving was so deep, because so much of this year has been about me figuring out how to flow. How to flow with my body, how to flow with my wisdom, how to flow with the twists and turns of the universe. And there was something about this craving to be held by water. I don't know, I just for me, it felt like my body wanted to actually embody trust and surrender, and to feel what it's like to be in relationship with the water, not as a way to fight against it, but to actually let it hold me. And that's been really beautiful. That's been really beautiful. So anytime I'm in water now, anytime I go to the pool, and I get to swim, it is a pleasurable experience. I love it. I love it. And also baby Ev'Yan loves it like she is so happy to be able to be in water, get her hair wet and not have to worry about the chlorine messing up her perm. Like it's beautiful. It's been really beautiful.
Okay, next on my list of favorite moments of sensuality. This one is new. It is scheduled sensuality time with my partner. Something that I've been noticing that I would love to talk about more on the podcast or in some other form, is about how me coming to the realization and embracing the fact that I'm asexual, how that has changed my relationship, and how that's changed my relationship with sex, and also how that's changed my relationship with my partner, Jonathan. And what I've noticed is that the deeper I go into listening to my body, the deeper I go into unpacking compulsory sexuality and all of these narratives and scripts that I've internalized about who I should be and the ways that I override my body so that sex can happen, the more that I disentangle myself from that, the more that I'm realizing that sex as a concept as an act just isn't front of mind for me. It's almost as though like, I came out as ace and that made me even more ace. And again, I'm going to try to unpack this at another date because one of the biggest questions that I get as I have these conversations about, you know, ace awareness and being ace as an identity, I was like, Okay, how do you do that? Like, how are you able to be in relationship with your partner who isn't ace while you are ace? So just know that that's something that I've been wanting to talk about and something that I've been thinking about, I just, I'm still in it. I'm still answering those questions. I'm still reflecting on the ways that my relationship has changed and also, what we're doing to meet each other where we're at. Scheduled sensuality is one of the things that we've been practicing.
This came through because we were noticing that throughout the busyness of our days, we weren't really connecting with each other, physically, intimately, sensually. It wasn't necessarily about sex, though sex was a factor for us, it was just more about like, we weren't being intimate with each other. And something that has come up for me a lot, through my own practice, and my own journey is not feeling pressurized to have sex. That I need physical contact, I need emotional intimacy, I need to feel in a space of safety with my partner before I can even attempt at imagining what having sex would look like. I think that that is part of the trauma that I've I've experienced. And also it's just part of me being ace. And so what we did was we sat down and we were talking about like, I really miss being in connection with you, I miss these moments where we're just like cuddling or making out or just having these like sweet romantic moments where we get to like love on each other that isn't contingent upon having sex, you know. And maybe it's because I watch a lot of these like married competitive reality television shows, but I was like, you know what we should do, we should write on slips of paper, acts of sensuality, that don't necessarily have to do with sex, put them in a jar, and pull them out every once in a while. And Jonathan thought of the great idea to do it once a week. So we do this every Sunday. And that's exactly what we did. We sat down, we got pieces of paper, we wrote down these cute, sensual, or I'll say senses-based activities that we would do for each other. And it's been really, it's been really cute.
I'm laughing because I am historically not a very romantic person, I think I have romance in my heart. But when it comes to actually doing it as a practice, it can often feel really corny or forced for me. So the fact that we've been doing this, and it's been a lot of fun, and we've had some really sweet moments, I should share actually some of the things that we do. So it's, it's so simple. And we really sort of make this into a window of time in our Sunday that we sort of check in and it's like, hey, just a reminder, we're gonna be doing our, you know, sensual time together in a couple of hours. How are you feeling? Do you need more time? Do you want to do it later, like, we really have it be very open-ended. And then once we're ready, we take out the jar, one of us puts our hand in it, we pick it out. And some of the activities that we've done have been write a poem that expresses appreciation for each other. Another thing that we did was like looking into each other's eyes and saying what we love about each other. And one time, we pulled for one day, take a shower together. And yeah, the chemistry the sparks were flying, it's really hard not to feel some sexy, sensual vibes when you're in a shower with someone you love. And that's what I love about this practice is that it's really open-ended, it really allows us to flow with our own energy that, you know, we're not making any particular you know, to do's or shoulds on us in terms of how we need to show up to that practice. It's just like we show up where we can how we are and then we go from there. And we have fun and I've really enjoyed those days. I've really enjoyed the times that we've done those practices and I often walk away feeling a lot more connected a lot more in my body. Just been really nice.
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Hey, friends wanted to take a quick break from this episode to talk to you about a new podcast I love that I think you'll love called Safeword. On Safeword to sex therapists Casey and Camille, answer listener-submitted questions about sex, relationships and identity while sharing their own messy stories along the way. Not only do you get a peek into the inner lives of therapists safe word is a reminder that we are all beginners when it comes to queer relationships. They cover topics such as new relationship energy, breakups, trauma, guilty pleasure and relationship conflict. And fun fact, I'm going to be a guest on the show in the coming weeks, which I'm so excited for you to hear. Find Safeword, that's one word, wherever you find podcasts, including Spotify, Amazon Music or Apple Podcasts. And to have your questions read on Safeword, go to the bio in the @safewordpod or @queersextherapy, Instagram page. Safeword is sex therapy unhinged.
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Okay, this next one is a little vulnerable for me. One of my favorite central moments this year has been saying I love you to my friend's friend, friendship and intimacy have been very big themes for me this year. I think this has to do a lot with the really deep somatic work and practice and study that I've been doing, which I'll talk about in a moment. But yeah, this feeling of, of allowing myself to be vulnerable, and to open myself up to being seen and held and loved on by other people. That's been coming up a lot, not just like, the desires, the deep desires I have for that. But what keeps me from experiencing those things, and a lot of that has to do with feeling guarded with having had my heart broken so many times in friendship, that it doesn't feel possible for me to extend my heart and to be vulnerable with people. When I've had some really beautiful moments this year, where I have been challenged, and also invited to cultivate new understandings and experiences within friendship that involve what I'm now coming to understand through my friend Euphemia. It was on the podcast, me and Eufemia have had a lot of beautiful conversations about friendship this year. And something that they gave me language for is this idea of poly intimacy, to be poly intimate—which is an offshoot of polyamory, but it's a little different in that it's about not seeing your romantic relationships, as the only place that you can experience love, affection and romance, that that can be extended to your friends. It's having this point of view that your friendships are important to you, that being able to show love, care and affection to those friendships are just as important as the love care and affection that you show to your romantic and sexual partners.
And hearing Euphemia talk about polyintimacy, something clicked in my brain and it really made me think like, Yes, this is exactly what I've been craving, I didn't know that it was possible. I didn't know that other people wanted that. And I've been really leaning into that I've been really leaning into being sweet with my friends, holding their hands, telling them my love them. Really offering myself up as a vulnerable, tender, squishy human being that wants to be loved, that wants to belong, and that is deserving of being loved and is deserving of belonging. So yeah, I've been saying I love you to my friends a lot this year. And it's been it's been really beautiful. It's been really beautiful. I've had some really sweet moments, moments of vulnerability, moments of closeness, moments where I feel like the hard, scared, closed off parts of me got to soften and be reminded of what it feels like to be seen, to be held to be supported. And it's been wonderful. It's been really wonderful.
Okay, as you can see, there are so many juicy things that I have dove into when it comes to sensuality this year. But I'm going to close with this one which is diving deep into somatic work has been one of the biggest moments of sensuality for me. At the beginning of this fall I embarked on a nine-month training journey with an institute that is teaching me how to be a somatic practitioner. I came to this work with a lot of excitement with a lot of curiosity and just like, like a sponge, like I really just wanted to dive right in and soak up everything that I could, not just to be of service to other people, but to just understand the inner landscapes of my somatic experience with my own body with my pleasure with my senses. And, yeah, that's what I've been doing for the last few months. And it's been teaching me so much about myself. It's been teaching me so much about the stories that my body is holding to keep me safe. The stories of armoring you know, kind of what I spoke about a moment ago around, not opening up not feeling safe, not feeling like I am able to be soft. It's teaching me so much about what I truly want and desire, which is community, and intimacy and connection, both with myself and with other people. And in order for me to get there, I have to do these really intense conversations with my body, about those stories that it's holding the desires that it has, and what is keeping me back, you know, the armoring that is holding me back from experiencing those things.
I feel like I will talk more about my experience with diving into somatic work at another time. But what I can tell you right now is that being a student of somatics, being a student of the body, it not only just opens you up to feel more, it opens you up to feel everything. And not just pleasure and sensuality and beauty but also pain, grief, sadness, and that's what I'm sitting with. I've been sitting with like, wow, in order for me to feel fully alive, that means that I have to feel fully and sometimes the aliveness that's there is the aliveness of sadness, the aliveness of anxiety, the aliveness of heartbreak, the aliveness of anger. And what is it like for me to sit with that? What is it like for me to be with those sensations, while also knowing and understanding that I can feel and have access to feeling other things as well?
And I would actually say that so much of everything that I've shared already, you know, these beautiful moments of sensuality that I've had, they all kind of tangled into the somatic work that I've been doing, like I'm thinking about when I shaved my head. It was shortly before I went to my first somatic training, learning how to swim was after I went to my first somatic training, like all these things, and epiphanies that I've been getting about friendships and intimacy and belonging, these were all circling around this deeper work that I've been doing around somatics, around getting into the body, around understanding the way trauma has shaped me and also working toward a new shape. So yeah, somatics, y'all. It'll change your life. It will change your life. It has certainly changed mine. It has certainly opened me up to feeling more, feeling more good. Feeling more sensually. Feeling more myself.
Okay, so, before I wrap, I wanted to just go through some quick things through each of the senses that have been my favorite for this year. I know I've talked about these like bigger experiences with these like deeper meanings, but I really wanted to go through each sense and talk about some of the favorite things that I've experienced through them, starting with taste. I have eaten a lot of good food this year. I have had delicious chocolate almond croissants from my local farmers market. I have had decadent cupcakes surprises from my partner Jonathan. I'm also really obsessed with this new recipe that I found online which is like delicata squash with pomegranate and kale and onions and pumpkin seeds and it is just so delicious. Yeah, I've had a lot of tasty things go in my belly.
Okay, some of my favorite things that I've heard, I'm just gonna stick to music because it's one of my favorite things to, to talk about. So some of the most listened to artists on my list this year are Mndsgn, which you might remember last year. I mentioned him, they are great. Men I Trust, Lionmilk, Beach House, and of course, Radiohead.
Okay, sight. I've seen a lot of really beautiful things. But I think the first thing that comes to mind is the rolling hills and the big blue skies and all of the glorious cows that I saw on each of my trips to Petaluma, California, which is where I've spent most of my time this year as I've been in somatic practice and study. Yeah, every time I go, it's been a really beautiful time, not just because of what I'm exploring somatically but also what I am being invited into through my senses by being just in that beautiful, gorgeous city. So yeah, I love those sites.
When it comes to smells, the first thing that came to mind was guava. So on our property, we have multiple guava trees, but there was one in our backyard that was just abundant this year, I mean, I think it must have dropped like 100, 200 guavas and guava is very, very fragrant. It's very, very sweet. I would almost say sickeningly sweet. And when I think about the most memorable smells that I've experienced, guava is definitely up. They're both from this place of like, oh guava, you smell so good, and so sweet and so lovely. But also, it's a little much. It's a little much.
When it comes to touch. Ah, I really enjoy touching my partner's hair, feeling my feet being kissed by the ocean, experiencing the simultaneous coarseness and softness of my pup. And also the way that my head feels, every time I shaved my head once a week. It gets me every time. It's almost like the first time it's so beautiful. There's actually a video that I posted on Instagram of me being in sensual practice around wetting my scalp underneath the water. And there's just nothing like that feeling y'all, there's nothing like it. I have to say as an aside, if you haven't already, please consider shaving your head, once in your lifetime. Even if you think you have a funky-looking head, even if you think that it wouldn't look good on you. I just think it's, it's an experience that everybody should have in their lifetime.
Ah, okay, last sense, which is feeling. I know, I just went over touch but I really like to explore feeling which is emotions. For me, it's, you know, what I feel on my skin. And emotionally, I think I found a deeper range of emotion this year, I felt a lot of things. Because as I've already said, I've been in a really deep somatic practice and process over these last few months. So the more somatically you open, the more you feel, the more access you have to emotion and feeling. I'm a cancer moon, so I always have assumed that feelings is something that I'm really good at. And actually, through this work of somatic opening and awareness, I'm realizing that I was only accessing a fraction of my capacity to feel. So I have been exploring and experiencing deeper levels of feeling grief and pleasure and joy. It's been, it's been intense, you know, to feel so much. And also it's been such a blessing because it really goes back to so much of what I do and why I have this podcast in general, which is to remind us all of the wisdom that can be found within our senses, the wisdom that is in our bodies, and the practices that we need to do in order to make connection with that. So that we can come back to ourselves, come back and reclaim what's been lost what's been taken away from us what we've dissociated out of. Even if I'm feeling a lot of things that are hard, I am noticing that when I come across a hard feeling I have an immense amount of gratitude. Like, oh, yeah, I'm alive. And that's, that's a really beautiful thing.
Well, those are some of my favorite moments of sensuality of this year. Thank you for witnessing, thank you for going down a sensual memory lane with me. This was a lot of fun. And I encourage you to make a list of your own. Go through this exercise. Think about the things that lit you up sensually this year, you can take a screenshot of this podcast episode, and write out your moments of sensuality on Instagram. And please don't forget to tag me. You can tag @sensual.self because I would love to see what sensual moments you experience this year.
Okay, friends, I'm going to head out. Please go out there and do something that centers the pleasure of your sensual self. And in the meantime, I'll see you soon.
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Sensual Self is created and hosted by me, Ev’Yan Whitney. It is edited by myself and Tribble. Music is by Melodiesinfonie from his song called ‘Just Healing.’
For show notes, transcripts, and resources for your sensuality, go to evyanwhitney.com/podcast. You can also follow the show on Instagram @sensual.self.
As for me, I’m on Instagram at @evyan.whitney, and you can check out evyanwhitney.com to find out more about me and my work.
Also check out my book Sensual Self: Prompts and Practices For Getting in Touch With Your Body. You can find that wherever you find books.
Thanks so much for being here and I’ll see you in the next one.