The Constellation Ritual: Releasing Fear from Desire Through Self-Pleasure

The recent self-care movement has been inspiring as it challenges the notion that self-care is selfish. It’s given permission to millions of people to create healthy boundaries, prioritizing their bodies, mental health, and emotions. This movement, having opened the door to the sacredness of self-care, has given businesses like Chakrubs the opportunity to have a seat at the table. Now more than ever, voices that advocate the importance of pleasure in our well-being and awakening can be heard. My life has been a testament to this. When I began dedicating my life to living in harmony with the divine dance of pleasure, my life transformed.

I first began exploring pleasure when writing my master’s thesis. After having what I consider a kundalini awakening during a sexual experience, I knew I had to learn more about this connection between body and spirit. Revealed after hours of writing and scouring through research was the interplay of eroticism, desire, and pleasure as a constellation of awakening.

This arrangement of co-existing elements composes the joy in our daily lives. Like different states of matter (gases, liquids, and solids), they create our reality. The erotic, our divine creative rhythm, is exuberant and expansive like atoms in their gaseous state. This energy motivates the fluidity of our emotions, materializing as desire (liquid state). Finally, in this constellation, is embodiment (solid state). Imbued with our consciousness and voice, this energy birthed into reality is expressed as pleasure.

Like states of matter, this constellation also serves to function in reverse. Pleasure facilitates greater awareness, fueling its light to expand. This propels us to encounter hidden emotions and unearth newfound desires. Through this process, we are reunited with the source of this inspiration, reinforcing the erotic as our divine will. Our bodies have been asleep to this knowledge. For too long we’ve been indoctrinated to ignore or fear these elemental aspects of ourselves. Healing the trauma of this deep-rooted fear is the practice of building sovereignty in our bodies and the freedom to explore and claim our desires.

We’ve been taught to perceive desire through a lens of suffering, diverting us from its true meaning. In this way, desire is defined as the longing to fill a sense of lack. In contrast, when desire is experienced from the lens of abundance, this perspective becomes an emotional loom, intertwining our physical lives with our divine nature. There is a limitlessness to our desire that frightens us because we’ve been entrained to believe in our limitations. Self-pleasure is simultaneously the middle finger to a disempowering system as well as a radical declaration of presence and celebration of your body’s exuberant wisdom.

The Constellation Ritual of Self-Pleasure

The Erotic – Initiate this ritual by closing your eyes and focus on your breath as you engage in ujjayi breathing, breathing in and out through your nose while slightly constricting the throat, or breath of fire, a quick, shallow breath where you pump the naval towards the spine on the exhale and release on the inhale. This heat building breath, traditionally used during yoga, is meant to clear toxins and build enough oxygen to maintain the practice. During self-pleasure, additionally, this balancing breath helps connect with your internal erotic rhythm, drawing you into presence and awareness.

Desire – Once you feel prepared to engage in dialogue with your divine self, ask “What do I desire to create? What do I desire to receive?” Create the landscape of this image in your mind’s eye. Compassionately release judgement or unworthiness if those feelings come up alongside your visioning. With delicate diligence, gather the details of your desire’s terrain and hold this within your heart-space as you begin to touch your body.

Pleasure – “What type of touch does my body crave to usher these desires into reality?” This is the guiding question and your body holds the answer. Now is the time in this ritual to release the need for thinking and entrust the guidance of feeling. Release the expectation of orgasm and embrace the path of building curiosity, trust, play, joy, ecstasy, and pleasure. When we experience the manifestation of our desires through the feeling of pleasure, we lift the veil to our potential and realize the truth of our desires. This evolves into an encoded sense of faith and an embodied motivation, unrestrained by apprehension and fear.

Self-pleasure creates an open field of possibility. The opportunity to process and release fear from desire creates the fertile framework to experience physical pleasure and erotic freedom. Just as important as the time we devote to our bodies during exercise or to our skin with morning or nightly routines, self-pleasure is the time we spend nurturing our connection to this constellation of awakening. When we recalibrate our bodies to pleasure, we welcome the remembrance of our divine nature.

Feature Image by Alexandra Kacha