When Sex Gets Psychedelic

I wake up to my man enveloping me in a cocoon of sexual energy. He is ready and he wants me but first logistics.

I stumble to the bathroom and wash the nine hours of sleep from my crusty eyes. The two dogs follow me, urgently prancing and wagging — they’re ready to pee, poo and have breakfast.

Still arriving in this dimension I take them downstairs to do “all the things,” bumping into the cleaning lady and the vacuum on the way. By the time I come back to meet my husband’s warm, waiting body in bed I feel scattered. The flurry of activity; the mundane little details of necessary routine; not the most sexy.

Choice point.

I could say “you know what, I’m not feeling it right now.” I could take a shower to force myself awake. 

Instead, I crawl under the covers and the ceremony begins.

Up until recently I used the word “ceremony” mostly in conjunction with Indigenous plant medicines such as the Amazonian brew Ayahuasca.

Now, after seven years of traversing the multi-dimensional terrain of the shamanic realms as a devoted student of these ancient ways, I haven chosen to step away from plant medicine ceremonies and am re-entering what I’ve come to refer to as the world of the “3D,” aka the Third Dimension of time/space reality, in which the bulk of what most people would consider “normal life” exists. 

In other words, it’s the realm we navigate with our five senses. The realm of Starbucks and car payments and poop-getting-stuck-to-your-dogs-butt-so-you-have-to-find-a-leaf-or-a-stick-to-get-it-off. You know the drill.

It’s also the realm of sex. And in this transition, sex truly has become a ceremony for me. A microcosm of the inter-dimensional journeys I have been taking with the psychoactive plants. Except this time, my own neurochemistry is the drug, catapulting me not out of my body, but further into my body.

At first glance, sex is a physical act. But of course simply inserting the pointy bit into the squishy bit is generally not enough to make it worthwhile. The emotional part is pretty important too. Love makes for a great ingredient when looking to optimize sex, and love has physiological expressions too. An open heart, the feeling of trust, knowing you’re safe to fully surrender into the dance of sensations that sex offers are all pretty crucial components. But there’s more.

Through my work with the plants, I’ve made intimate contact with the spiritual realms, aka, the realms that exist beyond the five senses. The metaphysical arena in which the vast majority of our subconscious and Higher Self aspects exist, co-creating our reality without much of our own conscious awareness.

Until we wake up, that is. To our own multi-dimensionality.

What do we discover when we go into the ever expanding heights and depths of our spirits and psyches? Well. We find diversity. Diversity of preference. Of thought. Of capability. Of needs. Of truth.

We encounter many voices and many feelings; often in direct conflict with one another.

So as I climb into bed, the invitation is to practice my ability to pivot from left brain (logistics), to right brain (creative). From the part of me that feels groggy and discombobulated and already overwhelmed with how much I have to get done today, to the part of me that is sensually awake, vibrant and orgasmic; a conduit for life force energy to move through me, uninhibited. 

That’s no small pendulum swing.

It requires a practice of surrender and it happens on the mental plane first. If the mind is clear, the body can follow and that’s when the spirit can take the wheel.

I close my eyes and bring all of my focus to my breath, sinking into my husband’s warm embrace. His lips find mine as I deepen the internal practice of trading thought-forms for sensations. This is an active meditation, the purpose of which is to unite all fragmented aspects of myself and relinquish resistance. And let’s be honest. We all have resistance to letting go and surrendering out of our heads and into our bodies, no matter how much pleasure awaits us there. It’s easier to succumb to the ever beckoning demands of the digital realms than to fully feel.

Sex is the arena in which I get to allow something much greater than my never-ending To Do lists to take over. It’s where a part of me comes to willingly die. The part that wants to exist anywhere other than the present moment. The part that has turned her intellect into a comfort zone and spent her whole life trying to run away from her body. 

This part of me cannot exist in this bed, with this man, in this ceremony because this is not a tick-the-box experience. 

This ceremony demands ALL of me. Fully online. Fully present. Just like Ayahuasca.

As the heat between us intensifies, it burns away any debris of grogginess. It obliterates logistics. My awareness drops out of my head and into all the squishy bits. My sense of self continually dissolves as more of my body awakens and relaxes into the ride. Whenever I lose focus, whenever my mind drifts back to that important email I forgot to send, I course correct back to melting into the sensations and merging with the sound of my own voice, expressing the “mana,” or “life force energy” flowing through me. Pulling my breath deep into my chest and belly I consciously open my heart even further to my husband, willingly giving myself to him as if for the first time.

As we near the end of our ceremony, I close my eyes. I am in a white void, a bliss bubble of sensation where thoughts simply cannot exist. All of my edges have become fuzzy, my identity has been disassembled and I am beyond the constraints of linear time. 

For a brief moment of eternity, I am timeless.

This is the same place my plant teachers have guided me over and over again. And now, as I close a seven year chapter of being initiated into the shamanic realms, I am learning to open inter-dimensional portals in my very own bedroom. 

On a Wednesday at 6:32am, amidst launching a massive legacy business, writing a book, producing two documentaries and various other digital content, preparing for a TedX talk, gearing up for an extensive remodel of our home, buying and building a retreat center out of the country and being present for my family, the medicine woman in me is alive and well.