The Erotic Heart: Healing the split between heart, body and sexuality

The Erotic Heart is an experiential workshop offering an opportunity to engage with the relationship between your heart, body, and sexuality.

As soon as we leave the womb, our bodies are wired to seek pleasure, guiding us to feed, reach out for contact, move freely, and be curious about others. When we hit puberty, a whole new part emerges as hormones run wild throughout the bloodstream, tempting us into a new deeper form of connection as our bodies become fertile. These powerful needs for connection stay with us. 

The way these stages of development are responded to play a major part in the relationships we have with our bodies, hearts, and sexuality. If these parts are met inappropriately, through shaming, anxiety, abuse (physical or psychological), abandoning, objectifying, rather than heartfelt acceptance with open, honest communication, a fissure emerges between the heart, body and sexuality.

This split is then supported by the cultural zeitgeist; pop songs glorifying co-dependency, social media that predominantly tells us we’re not enough unless we consume more or look and behave a certain way. Throw in religions with oppressive beliefs around sexuality, and it's easy to understand why there is so much fear and confusion around sexuality and the heart.

This split means we can’t fully ease into our sexuality, heart and body simultaneously. Some symptoms that arise from this are a fear of intimacy; obsession with physical perfection; affairs; porn addiction; body-dysmorphia; eating disorders, erectile dysfunction; proximity issues, a lack of boundaries or being over boundaried, romantic idealisation, isolation, sex addiction, etc.

The weekend will be held within a gently challenging, contained space. You will be invited to explore areas around the heart/sexuality split, boundaries (impenetrable and lack of), wounding around sexuality which may be unambiguous or more subtle, the duality between an oppressive head and an alive, sensual body, the celebration of your heart, sexuality and your natural curiosity. There will be space for fun as well as any feelings that emerge.

The structure will involve various therapeutic exercises, working in pairs and dyads, movement to music, creativity, non-sexual touch and group sharing/processing.

This workshop is suited to those who wish to work with the heart/body/sexuality split and therapists/bodywork practitioners wishing to work in a more embodied way around sexuality.

CPD certificates will be available on request.

For more information or to book you can email or phone me on 07847 970 973 or go https://johnleighdent.com/the-erotic-heart 

Cost: Early bird (before 1st May) - £160  Low income. £140 Standard (from 1st May) - £200 - Low-income - £170

A non-refundable £70 deposit is required to reserve a place, with the remainder to be paid 2 weeks prior to the event.