By CJ Joseph

About This Session:

We've all received unwanted touch and have tolerated it but how do we move beyond and begin to embody our own choice and uncover our desires? CJ takes you from being in your head to getting back into your body to feel sensation, pleasure and begin the journey to unpacking and redesigning your relationship to touch and to intimacy with others.

Welcome. I'm so excited to be part of the Own your energy summit.
Today I am going to be talking about embodying choice and touch and centering yourself around
pleasure and intimacy.
So who am I?
My name is cj.
Welcome. So glad you're here.
I am a sexual empowerment educator, mentor and coach.
What does all that mean?
Well, basically I trained as a sex and life coach after my own journey of getting divorced, beginning
to date again, exploring my own sexuality in my 40s and just learning a ton about myself and also
realizing that the way I've been doing things in the past or the way that I started to do things again
in my 40s in terms of relating to other people, dating other people, becoming intimate with others
was a little bit messed up.
So I started trying different things.
And one thing that really spoke to me was platonic touch.
And it was a game changer for me.
I'm also trained as a cuddle facilitator and a professional cuddler.
I know some of you are like, what is that?
Why?
Who would do that?
What's the deal here?
And it's a thing.
If you haven't heard of it, I want to assure you it's for real.
And it's actually a beautiful practice.
There are some sort of like sketchier aspects in some cases, but it is actually a training that most
people hopefully are, are doing before they start becoming a professional.
And it's a great container or can be a great container for creating consent, which is basically what
I'm talking about when I'm talking about embodying choice. Right?
We can embody choice and not.
Well, we embody choice so that we can have consent.
Right?
That's how you're going to get there.
That's how you can consent to something or receive consent from somebody else.
So that's a little bit of my background.
But we're going to get pretty like narrow in our experience today.
Just giving you a little taste of something on the menu.
Maybe a little amuse bouche here to maybe get you hungry, hungrier for more.
You know, this is, this is something that has been really life changing for me.
And if you're beginning a new journey in life, if you are struggling in dating or relating to others, if
you have your guard up for any reason, this could be a really great practice for you to begin to
explore platonic touch, cuddling and practicing boundaries and really getting into what you want
and what you desire.
Because we are responsible for that ultimately.
And if we don't even know other people aren't going to know either.
So today's presentation is going to be me talking a little bit more about the framing of this and I'll
share a little personal story and then we're going to do an exercise together to begin to get you
into your body in understanding what might be happening in this moment. Okay.
So this is something that I learned or heard in a workshop that I think is really impactful.
It was really impactful for me.
None of us in our lives have escaped touch that we didn't want.
Sit with that for a minute.
We have all received touch that we didn't want.
Yeah, it basically starts when we're born because we can't verbalize our needs.
Of course, we have caretakers, hopefully who are attending to what we might need, but we're not
able to verbalize it.
So sometimes the touch that we're getting or the response that we're getting isn't what we need
and it's not what we want.
So we've all experienced, it is the takeaway here.
We've all experienced some form of touch that we don't want.
And then when we do begin to verbalize things, often in our family structure, our community,
whatever, we have have expectations put upon us to engage in touch or behavior that goes
against what we want to do.
A very simple example is going to family's house for the holidays and being told that we have to
give a family member, grandma, Uncle Joe a hug and we have to kiss them on the cheek or they
want to kiss us and we don't want to, but we are basically forced to do it so we don't hurt
grandma's feelings.
Or it's because that's what we do in our family.
And although those are valid things to want to care about, what we begin to do is to erode our own
intuition or it is being eroded because there might be some reason that our body is saying, I don't
want to do that thing and we have to do it anyway or suffer consequences.
So it's no surprise that we end up doing this throughout our lives, particularly those of us socialized
as women. Right.
We have been put in this place, our choice taken away from us in certain instances, and it's just
ingrained in who we are.
Well, there are reasons, but we also have a choice to change that.
We can begin to change our relationship with touch, with our ability, our own agency, our self
sovereignty. Right.
Because we do have that control.
We just need to learn ways of getting back there and listening to what our desires are because
they're in there.
They're in our bodies, they're there.
We just aren't paying attention.
Have been, you know, socialize to look outside of ourselves for validation or for what our needs
might be.
But what we really want in this moment is in here.
And we need to listen, we need to tap into it, we need to get back to it, we need to unlearn some
things.
So I want you to take a moment and to think about your current relationships, any relationships
you might be in.
This might be an intimate relationship, it might be, you know, a friend, whatever.
And you don't necessarily have to focus in on the touch aspect of this, but just in general, when
you're giving something to somebody, do you ever have the sense that you're a martyr, that you
are giving to get something in return?
Do you ever feel like when you don't get what you're giving to get.
Do you feel resentful to get burned out by over giving or in allowing other people to take what they
need from us?
Not us necessarily giving it, but allowing people to come into our space or to require things from
us?
Do we ever begin to feel like a doormat or a victim?
Do we feel like we can't speak up?
Or if we do speak up, we're not heard.
These are super common feelings.
And if I'm completely honest with myself, I have felt all of those things in different situations with
different people, in different scenarios. Right.
I want to share with you one example of a sexual encounter.
For me, I won't get explicit, but I was seeing this person, you know, on a couple of dates and, and
we became intimate and I felt safe with this person and excited to explore.
There was definitely an attraction there.
And during our time together they did something to me that was.
Had never been done to me before without a prior conversation and was a surprise because they
didn't mention it previously, that it was something that they wanted to try, something that they
wanted to do.
And it took me by surprise.
And rather than saying no thanks, I tolerated it.
I tolerated it for probably just because they wanted to do it.
And.
But it wasn't really.
I wasn't feeling it.
It wasn't something that I was enjoying it, enjoying in the moment.
And this could be, in some cases the silencing, the freezing could be a stress response.
I don't think that in this particular situation for me that was a stress response.
I, I have had many of those and will go deeper into those in some of my other work.
But, but in this case I just tolerated them doing the thing to me because they wanted to do it and it
was for their pleasure.
Now we can talk about their perspective, but that's not really what I want to talk about today.
I'm talking about what puts us in a position of tolerating touch that we don't want begin to ask
these questions like why?
Why am I allowing this?
What is the bigger picture here?
What is the purpose in allowing this?
How can I discover what I want and center that instead and learn ways of communicating these
things rather than surprising somebody else and putting them into a position of tolerating?
When we're intimate together, tolerating something doesn't sound that sexy.
Does really doesn't sound that fun.
Like we don't want someone else to be tolerating something that we're doing to them.
We want them to enjoy it, right?
And also that's speaking of them enjoying.
There's a couple of routes to pleasure, right?
There's a direct route, me doing something that I want to do for my own pleasure that feels good.
Me touching myself in a particular way, touching someone else in a particular way, and just
enjoying that for me is direct pleasure, indirect pleasure.
What a lot of us do, it's easier to access for some of us is us looking to the other person for the
response that they're giving us, and that's indirect pleasure.
So we're getting pleasure from giving them pleasure and then being excited about it, which also
isn't about us.
It's not about our direct pleasure, our desires.
Okay, so what are we going to do about this?
You know, is this worth exploring?
Well, I feel that it is because I value myself and my pleasure, and I hope that you do too.
And one way of doing it is to embody ourselves.
We're so often up in our heads thinking about things, planning the next thing, you know, self doubt,
negative talk.
All of those things are up here in our heads.
Let's get into our body and begin to experience sensation, joy, pleasure, titillation.
Let's ask ourselves, what do I want right now?
Because what I want right now isn't going to be the same thing that I want tomorrow.
Probably there might be some through lines for me.
I consistently like light touch.
Light touch is pleasurable for me, has been since I was a kid.
Continues to this day as an older woman.
I love light touch.
For some people, it's too tickly.
They hate it, you know, so that's something that I know about myself and it's been consistent
throughout my life.
But I Might want, like a nice firm grasp or a massage tomorrow, but today I don't want that.
So it's just getting in touch with, like, what do I want in this moment?
Okay. These are the ways that we are going to begin to unlearn some things and redesign our
relationship with touch and hopefully with others.
Okay, so let's move on to our practice.
And this is just going to be a simple practice.
Touching and getting curious about our own bodies, about our hands in particular, because our
hands have a ton of nerve endings, right?
And I believe they have as many nerve endings as the lips and our genitals.
So the hands are a wonderful thing.
They can give and they can receive touch sensation.
So just watch me for a moment.
I'm going to show you what I want you to do in a moment.
And I have my elbows resting on armrests so I'm comfortable.
I'm leaning back.
You can see I kind of lean back.
Now I'm more relaxed.
Make yourself comfortable.
Since we're working with hands, if you don't have an armrest, put a pillow on your lap, something
or rest.
Rest your. Rest your hands on your desk or wherever you are.
See if you can just get into your body.
Relax so you're not tensing up in a particular area and drawing attention to that.
Okay, so you're just going to take your hand, you know, Watch me first.
Take one hand and rub it over the other.
Begin waking up.
Your hands might surprise you.
Wow, there's a lot of sensation there that we use our hands for so many things and we don't really
pay attention.
Get curious about it.
If you're comfortable now, you can begin to do the same.
Alternate between which hand is touching and which hand is being touched and slow it down.
Even get really curious.
Close your eyes.
What are you learning about this body part that you didn't know or maybe you forgot?
Which hand is feeling the sensation?
Is it the one being touched or the one doing the touching?
While we're doing this, I want you to think about this question.
Which hand is a 4?
Is it for the hand touching or the one being touched?
Maybe it's both, but see if you can play with.
It's for the hand who's doing the touching.
What would you change, if anything, about that touch to make it for that hand?
Slow down and notice.
Notice what's coming up now.
Are you going to change anything when the sensation is for the hand being touched?
What do you need to adjust for that?
Can you focus on the hand being touched and what it's feeling?
Ask it.
How do you want me to touch you right now?
Notice if it has an answer.
If you're not feeling anything, slow down.
You might even just choose one part of your hand to focus on.
Maybe one finger, one knuckle, the palm.
What does it want?
When we give our bodies space, attention and time, we can learn something about them.
This is a practice you can do with yourself anytime, just about, you know, giving yourself a
moment.
If you're feeling stressed or things are moving too fast in your life, just take a break for a couple of
minutes and begin to feel again.
Begin to acknowledge the enjoyment that you can have in your own body.
And begin to ask the questions, which hand is it for?
Why am I doing this?
What do I want right now?
Play with it. There's so much to play with here in such a little practice that seems like nothing.
In fact, probably seems kind of ridiculous, but it's actually not.
It's really important for us to begin this exploration because when we add another person, the
stakes change, patterns arise, socialization comes in.
Expectations, pleasing, giving, taking.
All of the things with another person become infinitely more complex.
So I invite you to begin to explore yourself first in order to become more embodied in what brings
you pleasure.
And what are no's for you.
What are things that you've been tolerating that you maybe don't want to tolerate anymore?
There's a lot of good and pleasure to be had.
I invite you to figure out ways of getting it.
So this was just a little.
A little taster, like I said.
And if you would like some more, I do have a free Feeling Yourself meditation.
It's an audio file that you can sign up for.
We'll leave the links for you.
That's a freebie and it will get you into my world.
My business is no shame with cj.
You can follow me on Instagram.
I am not super active there right now, but it will get you.
If you sign up for the audio file, you will get on my list.
And I'm going to have an upcoming course that I'm really excited about.
Not just because of the fun name.
I do think it's kind of fun.
I'm calling it Fuck Around With Yourself and find out.
It's all about getting more curious about what we enjoy and what we want and how to embody that.
And then prepare us to go out into the world and ask for it with our partners, with our future
partners.
So please get on my email list, grab that audio file, do some more practice at home, and I'd love to
hear.
How was your experience? Reach out.
Be great to get to know you once again.
I'm CJ And I'll see you soon, hopefully. Take care.