Joy & The Body - 6 Week Course for Advaya

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A joy-filled and body-centered online course taught by Aisha Paris Smith, 15 August to 26 September 2023. Weekly live sessions on Tuesdays, 5–7pm UK. All sessions are recorded.Register here This course is an opportunity to return to the joy of the body & the richness of life. How we feel about our body is never in isolation to how things outside appear to us. Our body is our world, so let’s fill our world with joy. About Aisha Paris Smith Somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach. Aisha blends her conscious approach to life with the profound experience of being in a body. She embraces all that it means to be a human with flesh, blood, bones, ego and eros. She experiences every day the wisdom of her body and has seen clients transform through the power of somatic methods. Aisha specialises in hands-on sex coaching, offering her clients a direct and practical approach to reconnecting with and reclaiming all aspects of their bodies. For Aisha, this work is about more than pleasure - it’s also about finding safety, freeing self-expression and integrating shadow. She works with the principle that when we can be with and integrate all parts of ourselves, we will each have a greater sense of who we are, where our individual purpose and pleasure lie and how to create a life we love. She came into this work inspired to support couples create a relationship that works on all levels. Today, her clientele ranges from couples to teenagers and the elderly - people of all ages, descriptions and identities. Aisha is fully accredited by the ACSB and a professional member of the Association of Somatic & Integrative Sexologists. The body is not a fixed, slow-moving object. It is constantly rebuilding itself & is malleable at any age. The internalised blockages we physically & emotionally hold in the way of feeling pleasure quickly begin to crumble when we tune in, breathe, & touch the places that need attending to. About the Course The human body has an incredible capacity for pleasure that most of us are not accessing. Instead, people struggle to relax and enjoy being in their body, which becomes a struggle to engage with life. Unable to identify what they like and want, people live without joy, stumble upon it randomly for short periods or derive joy from doing things that make other people happy. The body’s pleasure pathways must be unblocked through the senses to increase our capacity for joy and to reclaim our personal guidance system. When we touch a body, we touch upon the memories, emotions and thoughts encased within it. Touch allows us to bring a tactile experience of care and attention to places that may never have received it. When the body feels under-resourced to process an experience or feeling, it is repressed and seemingly buried inside the flesh. Touch can gently recall those experiences to the conscious mind. With safety, relaxation, self-awareness and somatic fluency, the body will naturally begin to unwind and turn on. Receptivity will begin to sprout like a young seedling, bringing life back to our pleasure pathways and shaking off the outgrown skin that we are ready to expand beyond. It’s less about being taught something new and more about being prompted to find the permission to access and act upon an intelligence that was always there. To return to the joy of the body, we will come together to connect with our bodies on every level. Working together means working not just in a group but in a community upheld by clear agreements and fused by a shared intention. Every week we will step into somatic awareness, explore body-based practices, and observe the openings, shifts and releases they facilitate. This is not about manipulating or getting the body to be a certain way. It is a chance to begin a new way of relating to your body, creating new levels of intimacy and understanding, and creating an internal and external environment for it to flourish. With the everyday pressures and threats of modern living, the naturally arising enjoyable sensations of the body are overlooked. By training our attention and focusing our mind on what feels good, we also train the body to bring more of those pleasurable sensations to the surface. Learning Outcomes ✴︎ Deepen your understanding of skilful touch and its role in repairing the body’s receptivity to feeling ✴︎ Expand your knowledge of sex, sexuality and your own sexual function ✴︎ Learn somatic tools to continue practicing and integrating into your life for a more grounded and present way of living ✴︎ Discover the connection between pleasure and self-knowledge and where your denial of pleasure has been holding you back ✴︎ Explore your body in a sex-positive space with measured exercises that support titration and regulation ✴︎ Address what is in the way of your own joy! Learn from a joy-led teacher! ✴︎ Increase your capacity for pleasure, sensation, receiving and self-expression