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Have you ever noticed how we as a society are getting increasingly neurotic about the most basic things in our life? You’d think we know how to do things like sleep, eat, have sex, and raise our kids (since we’ve been doing those things for a long, long time). But it seems we’ve forgotten, or been made to forget. Instead, we end up consulting experts, the latest research or find technological interventions to help us.
In today’s interview I speak to somatic experiencing practitioner and sexological bodyworker Kimberly Ann Johnson, who says:
“A healthy nervous system means you can go to the bathroom when you need to, you can fall asleep when you’re tired. You can have an orgasm when you’re turned on. And you could get pregnant, because that would be the most functional thing around.”
And yet, so many of us are struggling with these exact basic functions. To me it points to something being severely off kilter in the way we relate to our bodies and each other.
In the aftermath of a birth injury, Kimberly began to realise that all the skills she had learned in yoga and other body-based practices were not adequate to help her, because they did not account for the needs of women’s bodies. This launched her into a journey of working with somatic trauma resolution and hands-on bodywork. Since then, she has helped thousands of women to reconnect with their bodies and heal from birth injuries and sexual boundary violations.
In this episode, she takes us through the nervous systems (did you know we have a “social nervous system”, in addition to the sympathetic and parasympathetic?), and explains how correctly understanding them can help us break out of destructive loops. We also talk about pleasure as a pathway towards healing, and how we can develop a more expansive eroticism in our lives. She says,
“In order to repair anything, we have to have some degree of ability to be present to things that feel good. And that could be the smallest thing. It could be the sensation of your fingers touching one another, it could be the light that’s coming in on your face. It could be the memory of the smell of something. But we have to be here… We have to have an ability to come home to the body, and stretch out how long we can stay with something that’s pleasurable.”
Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Ingrid
This is the second episode of the Blood mysteries mini-series. You can find the introduction to the series as well as the first interview, with fertility awareness expert Jenny Koos, here.
Event with Robert MacFarlane and Pella Thiel
March 12th at the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab
I’m going to be moderating a conversation between two people I admire greatly, the writer Robert MacFarlane and the ecologist-activist (and friend of the podcast and myself) Pella Thiel. I think there are still a few spots left – register here!
(And if all goes to plan there will be a recording of the conversation for those of you who can’t make it).
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
What healing could be made possible if we began to work in ways that honoured our nervous systems? How could pleasure be a pathway to health? How can we have more true intimacy and eroticism in our lives?
Kimberly Ann Johnson is a Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, yoga teacher, postpartum advocate, and single mom. Working hands-on in integrative women’s health and trauma recovery for more than a decade, she helps women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries, and sexual boundary violations. Kimberly is the author of theCall of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It for Good, as well as the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester, and is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast.
LINKS:
- Kimberly’s website.
- Kimberly’s Sex Birth Trauma Podcast
- To read more about the sympathetic, parasympathetic and social nervous systems, you can download the first chapter of Kimberly’s book for free here.
- Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine)
- Organic Intelligence by Steve Hoskinson
- The Erotic Mind by Jack Morin
- The Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin