Hi sister! Welcome back to another episode of A Taylored Adventure to Happiness. If you are new, welcome! If you are a regular, you know I love you!
Today, I’m going to share with you some of my intentions for an experience I’ll be diving into with Johnny in Costa Rica. Sisters, it’s juicy AF. I feel like I’m going into a whole new layer with myself, and I hope that by sharing my intentions for this experience, I can serve as a mirror for you to look at your own path to healing.
I’ve chosen to partake in an immersive experience combining sexuality, shamanism, tantra, and trauma-informed conscious communication. My goal is to push myself into my edges, to come up against the parts of my shadow side that are still holding me back, and to alchemize those shadow aspects into more abundance, more beauty, and more joy.
I’ll be doing this in a seven-day immersive sexual experience in Costa Rica via the International School of Temple Arts. They’re a slightly controversial organization known for pushing boundaries when it comes to sexuality, and if you take a look at their website, you’ll see what I mean. You might see a picture of a couple making love tantra style with their chests pressed together heart-to-heart, and keep in mind that a lot of these scenarios happen in group situations. I believe this experience can hold a lot of healing for those who go in with intention, awareness, and an open heart (I wouldn’t advise someone who isn’t experienced in transformational work or has some major unprocessed trauma to jump into this.)
I’ve had my eye on this program for three years, but I didn’t push it. That’s the beauty of divine timing — when something is meant for us, we don’t have to push it or fight for it. We can allow it to flow to us when the time is right.
The experience takes place in a large group consisting of people who hold diverse sexual backgrounds — including celibacy, monogamy, and polyamory — and who come from countries around the globe. We’ll work on things like boundaries and consent, emotional release, shadow work, conscious communication, breathwork, sexual manifesting, and neo-shamanic techniques.
It’s going to be a game-changer, and in this episode, I’ll be covering my intentions for the experience. Let’s get started!
Why I’m Healing My Sexuality
If you’ve been with me for a while, you might know my story of familial trauma and healing. I’ve healed unexpressed rage at my narcissistic father through intense psychedelic experiences, I’ve tapped into my divine feminine through exploring my edges with my husband Johnny, and I’ve made my way past countless limiting beliefs to unlock abundance.
But I also have some very deep sexual trauma from being molested by my father as a young girl. This manifested later in life as a lack of self-care in the form of my unaligned sexual experiences, using my body to gain approval or manipulate men, and putting myself in unhealthy sexual situations. I’m happy to say that, having done some serious healing, I managed to attract my soulmate Johnny with whom I have mind-blowing erotic experiences. But I also know there are even better things awaiting me on the other side of this immersion.
I expect this experience to help me go deeper into some of my earliest and most vulnerable wounds. I don’t know what will come up for me — we can never predict what comes up — but I’m ready. I’m saying bring it on.
Not only do I hope to reach those deep shadow aspects of myself, but I also hope to illuminate more of my natural light around eroticism. Despite my sexual trauma and the negative effects it had on me, I’ve always had a natural appreciation of sensuality. I’ve been very comfortable playing with women, I adore being nude, and I enjoy being around other nude people. In some ways, this space I’ll be going into feels incredibly natural to me.
Becoming the Student Again
My first intention for this experience is to do something I haven’t done in a conscious, well-defined way in a while — go into an experience as a newbie. As a spiritual luminary, it’s my duty to create a sacred container for the thousands of women I help transform and step into their life purpose. It’s a role I’ve been owning for years. But I’m not just the teacher — I’m also the student.
Going into this experience means that I take off my hat of teacher, mentor, and leader to become receptive again. It means flowing into my feminine, being okay with the unknown, receiving information, and allowing myself to give up control. It’s going to be beautiful and a true gift to myself, but also a little uncomfortable. I won’t be the expert, and I actually crafted my experience to be this way. I didn’t do a ton of research on the program. I didn’t look into a lot of details. I just went for it. I kept myself in the dark for the most part because I wanted the full experience of going into the unknown.
I know that once I’ve allowed myself this experience of surrender, it will be easier to go into that place afterward and in different scenarios. So I’m really going to be bringing about more balance in my life, between masculine and feminine, and between striving and surrendering.
It’s also a chance to practice humility. I never want to think of myself or allow anyone else to think of me as some perfect person who doesn’t have issues to sort out. I definitely do. That’s the beauty of this evolutionary path we’re on. There are endless layers. The more I know, the more questions I have.
Where can you surrender? Where can you dive into a new class, a retreat, a workshop that you know little about and not have a linear, masculine, goal-driven reason for doing it? Where can you go with the flow and give yourself the gift of not knowing?
Where can you shift your perspective and go from wise one to young one, from the old sage to the open-minded, enthusiastic student? Are you okay with not having the answers? Are you comfortable with not being the best?
Finding My Edges
Another reason I’m going is to find my edges — and in this world of sexuality, that often means coming to terms with the things that both terrify me and turn me on.
There are so many ways that this can manifest. One person might be turned on by watching their partner with another woman but afraid of how insecure and jealous it will make them feel. Some might want to be more dominant in bed but feel that it’s somehow bad to do so. We all have edges, and if we want to explore those edges, we can do so safely by identifying and accepting them without judgment.
In order for me to find these edges, I have to surrender. I have to go all the fuck in, not ignore the things that I don’t think are appropriate. I also have to listen to myself. Because this doesn’t mean that I go into situations that violate my boundaries or hurt me emotionally or make me feel bad to be in my body; it means that when I get to that edge where I desire something but also fear it — I give myself permission to go to that edge.
Sometimes this means allowing myself pleasure. Sometimes it means feeling like I deserve pleasure because sometimes, when I am receiving a lot of pleasure, I cut it short. I stop it because it’s too much, which means I’m stopping myself from receiving, which means I’m stopping myself in other, non-sexual ways from receiving.
Are you holding yourself back from receiving? Are there experiences that are too pleasurable, too beautiful, or too amazing to bear that on some level, you can’t accept because deep down you don’t believe you deserve them? Remember the way we do one thing is the way we do everything, and remember that your sexuality is deeply connected to the way you manifest and allow abundance to flow into your life. Know that how you receive pleasure is how you receive prosperity, joy, good relationships, and all the other good things you want in your life.
Maybe you’re unpacking old beliefs around pleasure like I am. Since I was molested and since I then had many unaligned sexual experiences as a young woman, I’ve often equated pleasure with shame. I equated it with a bad feeling, a feeling like I’m not good, and a feeling like sexual pleasure is bad and dangerous. What are your stories around pleasure?
Connecting to the Divine Feminine
I’m super excited about this one. Even though I already know myself to be this divine feminine being, I can experience myself even more deeply that way through a sexual healing practice. But that doesn’t mean I only experience myself as a sexual Goddess. As I go deeper into divine sexuality and masculine/feminine polarity, I see more and more the Goddess within who is playful, joyful, sensual, loving, fierce, creative, destructive, and wise. It’s connecting to all aspects of the divine feminine in myself and others.
Doing this work doesn’t just mean a deeper relationship with my own divine self. It’s also the ability to recognize and celebrate in others. Ever since I started healing and working with my divine feminine and masculine, my relationships with other women flourished. Today, I am surrounded by women who I absolutely adore and love. Likewise, I’m around women who are killing it, crushing it, making a massive impact in their communities, and who are also allowing massive financial abundance to come in exchange for that because they know that they’re worthy of that.
The fact that these women are in my life has a direct correlation with the work that I’ve done to heal and connect to the divine feminine. As I continue to evolve my relationships with my beautiful sisters, we are making massive waves in the world through our impact. I can be an even better friend, an even better sister, an even better supporter through my healing. So I’m really excited to receive this medicine and be able to apply it on the other side of the experience.
What would it look like for you if you had an amazing relationship with the women in your life? How could your current relationships evolve, and which new ones would you create if you came from a new, more divinely feminine-inspired place? What are you grateful for now? Celebrate it and cherish it.
Connecting More Deeply to My Husband
My last intention has to do with my relationship, and I kept it last for a reason. While we’re going together to a divine sexuality experience, yet we each have separate intentions and more personal intentions than partnership intentions. This is because while my husband and I are on a journey together, we are also both on our own journeys. This is super important.
When I met him, he and I both were on our own growth paths, and we never thought of ourselves as completing each other, or filling in a void with each other, and that’s been critical to our success as a couple. I would even say it’s the reason that we are such a powerful couple. We’re powerful individuals.
When two powerful people come together, there is less fear and dependency, and that leaves much more room for true growth and true connection that is based on desire instead of fear. That means that when we go into a scenario like this sexual immersion — where there is the potential for jealousy and insecurity and fear and pain — we know we can get through it. That doesn’t mean that we know what will come up, and it doesn’t mean that what does come up won’t be painful. There are lots of reasons to be scared. But it does mean that we have the capacity to deal with it, both individually and with each other.
How do you approach relationships? Are you looking for someone to help solve your problems, relieve your loneliness, or take away your pain? What would you be like without your partner? Would you be the same? It’s super important to remember who we are as individuals, even when we’re in partnerships.
Just because Johnny and I aren’t in a codependent relationship doesn’t mean our relationship is perfect. We still have work to do, and our relationship isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it’s hard. We fight, we scream, we cry, and this happens more often than you might think. While we work through it, there are always more layers to peel back, and I expect that this experience will reveal at least a few of them.
My girlfriends asked me what I was most scared of in this scenario; it’s not seeing Johnny with another woman. For whatever reason, that’s not something that really worries me. My worst fears have more to do with my own vulnerability and concerns about how I’m perceived than anything else. But does that mean I can’t get triggered at the moment by Johnny connecting with another woman? I’m making room for that possibility because you just never know what can come up, and that’s the whole point.
Healing is never a straight line. Sometimes we move through something only to have it spiral back again later in time; sometimes, things come out of the left field. We’re so much more vast and more multi-layered than we think we are. We’re so much stronger and more powerful than we think we are. That’s why I’m so excited to become the student again, to see what alchemy I can create, and to see what treasures and nuggets of wisdom I gain from it.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t hesitate to let me know! Tag me at @iamtaylorsimpson on Instagram with a screenshot of the attack and your greatest takeaways!
I love you. I see you. Cheers to healing our sexuality, our sensuality, and our divine feminine lineage. And remember — always choose happiness because, well, why the fuck not?
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
- The next journey into my personal growth and sexual healing education
- What is ISTA and why I’ve been called into this container
- The reason I’m so devoted to my sexual healing and my sexual history starting at a young age
- The importance of patience and remembering when something is for you, you must surrender control
- How to shift out of fear and self-sabotage when you’re investing or about to invest in yourself
- Realizing what is meant to be looked at that may be disguising itself as a limiting belief
- Returning to my natural state in a more conscious way than ever before
- Learning to release control and immersing as a student
- Finding the edges that terrify me, turn me on, and terrifyingly turn me on
- The importance of allowing even more sexual pleasure
- What happens when you desire more from a place of abundance vs from a place of lack
- Creating a deeper level of intimacy with myself and the divine feminine
- Why I welcome triggers and conscious miscommunication
- What is my biggest fear as I enter this new container
