Dear Rosies,
What if one of the great missing ingredients in our relationships is simply that we don't understand each other's bodies?
We all want to please each other. He wants to be the lover she never forgets. She wants to be that lover for him, and to be known that deeply in return. It starts before any technique, with understanding what's actually happening inside each other's bodies.
We are dynamic processes, changing all the time. Each of us is utterly unique, and each of us also moves through a predictable arc. A woman's body passes through nine distinct lives, from the baby girl who arrives already carrying every egg she will ever have to the woman in her eighties whose passion finds quieter pathways. In relationship, both of you are changing. If you are partnered with a man, know that he moves through his own arc right alongside you, through andropause. Knowing where each of you is at in any emergent moment is a beautiful kind of attention.
I love the vision of men and women who genuinely like each other. Men and women who uplift each other and want each other's joy and freedom. Body literacy belongs to that vision. When you know each other's bodies, you meet as whole people, and each of you gets to be fully known.
In classical tantra, strength and receptivity live in every one of us, and their meeting is one of life's great mysteries. Body literacy is how that meeting becomes specific.
This week on the journal I've gathered one surprising truth from each of a woman's nine lives, and what it can mean for the two of you.
My work is for men and women who want to know the female body. To know the male body, I recommend urologist Dr. Rena Malik's new book, The Hard Truth. Read them on your own, or side by side, and talk about what surprises you. The body is a wonderful place to begin.
To your most beautiful, valued, sacred embodiment,
Christine
