How can we leave room in our teaching for wonder, I wonder?
This month I have been thinking about the meaning of liberation. We often talk about trauma-informed sex education, and that’s incredibly important. While educating we need to understand oppressions, both personally and for various identities, or we may do harm. But how often do we speak of the incredible opening that happens in sex education on a regular basis? How do we prepare for that? What happens when people are not having breakdowns, but breakthroughs? What then, when our students are not blown apart, but blown open?
I distinctly remember being in class in San Francisco during my doctoral work when we learned about Dr. Stan Dale. Stan’s work was about sex and intimacy, but it was really about love. This is the man who eventually went on to found the Human Awareness Institute, HAI Global. I had been absorbing tremendous amounts of didactic information about anatomy, physiology, sexual function, sexual anthropology, LGBTQIA+ identities and orientations for months, and suddenly I was face to face with the most basic of ideas: that sex can be paired, at times spectacularly, with love.
While the idea wasn’t new to me by any stretch and was certainly within my experience, I started to cry. Something was activated that lasted the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. I felt tender, vulnerable, grateful, and also somehow slain by the beauty of it. I wanted to bring that feeling to my own teaching…the idea that we can become not just mechanics, learning new skill sets and acquiring a bigger bag of tricks, but also artists in our own right. Poets. Dancers in this field of enlightenment. That we are not merely imparting factual information (though the importance of that can’t be overstated), but also inviting people into a new world of internal possibilities.
Things I have done when teaching to leave room for enlightenment experiences include movement, meditation breaks, art activities, breath work, and lots of play. I have used balls, stuffed animals, bubbles, hula hoops, crayons, and candy. I have led redefining exercises, discussed Byron Katie’s 4 Liberating Questions, held erotic poetry classes, had people try the 3-minute game. If you are a sex educator, you’ve probably done similar things.
When people go home after these wonderful experiences, we must support them in their opening, not just their trauma. We must connect them with each other, with community, with like-minded souls, with liberatory organizations.
When someone is blown open in joy, it’s not enough for me to say, “Yay! Look at you!”
I need to follow up with “Who are you now that you see what you see?" and "Who can be here to bear witness to the new you?”
