Taking a Sacred Pause
Most decision-making scenarios in our life are not dire emergencies. We have no urgent need to decide right away in most situations. We can offer ourselves ‘the gift of time’ to take a ‘sacred pause’, tap into our body wisdom and give voice to what we really want and desire in the moment, especially when it comes to sexual encounters. Taking this time to discern and decide about our sexual needs and desires in the moment leads to the fuller enjoyment of each sexual experience.
The sacred pause is a common somatic (body-based) exercise we use in somatic sex education practice to slow down the decision-making process for ourselves and for our clients. It makes space for deeper deliberation to inform ourselves about our practice and inform our clients about their sexuality-related inquiries. It allows time for a period of inward reflection.
The sacred pause involves thinking more holistically about a decision and examining the pros and cons. It involves paying attention and leaning into our mix of feelings about the matter. It involves noticing the senses and sensations in our body. By taking the time to do all these things, we tap into our somatic wisdom. Somatic wisdom is ‘the wisdom of our body.’ It can be used to inform us better about ‘what decision feels right for us’ in a variety of situations.
Somatic (body) wisdom is harnessed for our use by taking a sacred pause and paying closer attention to the messages that we receive from our body as we ponder a question. Are you feeling a surge of warmth or coolness throughout your body? What does your heart say about the matter? What is your gut telling you? Are your knees wobbly and if so, why? Where are your eyes drawn to in the room? What sounds are you noticing? Are you getting a headache thinking about the question? Does the question put your body into freeze mode? Are you starting to tear up? Do you feel joy? Are you filled with exuberant energy at the thought of something? Are you flooded with feelings of doubt or dread or with hopeful anticipation and excitement? Are your arms contracted and closed in tight to your chest or are they opening and reaching for the sky? What are you noticing in your body and what is your body telling you as you reflect on the question? How are you being informed and guided by your body wisdom in response to your inquiry?
Taking a sacred pause can also involve a period of quiet meditation, prayer or connection with our higher power or spirit guides. That is why the exercise is called ‘sacred’ pause. The result is ‘our knowing at a deeper level’ regarding what decision is right for us.
In today’s fast paced world, there are strong undercurrents of social and cultural pressures to decide quickly and act quickly on most matters. We are taught time is of the essence. Don’t waste time is the message we receive often in our life. Establish routines for efficiency’s sake.
The fast-food restaurant business shows us a micro-view of the values we place about doing things fast in our society today. It is a good example of the pressures we face to decide and act as fast as possible and to create routines to go faster yet.
Fast-food restaurants have timers in place to measure the precise time between placing and receiving orders. The pressure is on staff to reduce this time frame. Their eyes are anxiously fixed on this timer which is front and center of their view. The seconds are ticking away quickly. The time pressure is on them constantly. Performance reviews and employment contract renewals depend on how fast and efficient they prepare and deliver the fast-food orders.
The staff in fast-food restaurants are taught to operate on auto-pilot mode to increase time and task efficiency. Decisions on how things are done and in what order is decided for them. Operations are routine and highly structured. Tasks are repeated over the over. There is little need, tolerance or time to make independent decisions. Routines and structures are already in place. Staff just follow the standard routines and structures and do not deviate.
These deep and powerful undercurrents of pressure to be fast and efficient and to follow routine and structure may be what is needed in the fast-food restaurant business. But in our personal sex life, upholding the value of being as quick and efficient and following the same routine is a big problem.
Sustaining habits, following routines and operating on autopilot in the bedroom is bad for our sex life. Many of us fall into that trap. We tend to self-pleasure in ways that are the same each time. Some of us perform sex acts in certain ways and on certain days out of habit or obligation and not always with full enthusiasm or full consent. We may find ourselves engaging in unwanted sex acts because it’s our standard way of being together. We may get dependent on the use of pornography or other means in order to experience arousal. We repeat the same sexual activities in the same order time after time and year after year.
It becomes a habitual pattern. It limits our enjoyment and causes us to get stuck in deep ruts of doing things a certain way. It disengages us from our body awareness and separates us from our authentic sexual desires of the moment. Our sex life gets unsatisfying and boring. Some become resentful because our sexual needs are not being met. New desires remain unknown because established routines and habits get in the way. Many people lose interest in having sex and some just stop having sex. Others feel conflicted and disappointed about their mediocre sex life.
Persons who have lost interest in sex because it has become repetitive and boring or obligatory and distasteful can be helped by guiding them to slow down and take sacred pauses. Taking a sacred pause helps them to look inward and consult with their body awareness and their sexual desires. It helps them to discern what touch they truly desire in a sexual encounter at that very moment. It gives them the permission to find voice and ask for what they want in the here and now and to state their limitations. Erotic desire in the present moment often varies naturally from desires in past sexual encounters with use of the sacred pause.
Taking a sacred pause is one of the most important body awareness tools used in somatic sex education practice. We use it continually in our role as practitioner to better know ourselves and our limitations and to better serve our clients. We use the sacred pause to deepen into our own somatic awareness as we decipher the parameters of our service offerings that feels right for us. It creates mindfulness and clarity for us about our self-care and boundary-setting needs.
The sacred pause helps us tune into our intuitive knowing for the benefit of our clients. It supports our ongoing emotional regulation and stability so we can sustain enjoyment for our work and experience job satisfaction. This supports the consistency, authenticity and quality of our offerings to clients.
Taking a sacred pause allows us to accurately discern what service we can offer to our clients with full consent and a full heart. Offering service with full consent and a full heart is a basic principle contained in our guidelines for ethical practice. Service provided with a full heart by the practitioner lands in the clients’ body with positive impact and full of nurturance, goodness and healing on a more consistent basis.
In somatic sex education sessions, we guide our clients to use the sacred pause to increase their access to sexual pleasure and healing. It is an important component of all the somatic sex exercises of our modality. It is an aid for our clients to build somatic awareness skills. For example, we ask our clients “where do you want to be touched?” Then we guide our clients to take a sacred pause; to slow down, take their time, consult with their body wisdom and respond to the question when ready to do so. Responses are more personal, consensual, assured, authentic, and aligned with their true desires at that moment with practised use of the sacred pause.
We teach our clients about the importance of taking a sacred pause to discern their desires and boundaries for increased sexual pleasure and healing in their lives. We do this by guiding clients to practice taking sacred pauses to make choices about what they want in sessions with us. The sacred pause helps them to know about what they want and desire in the present moment; how they want to be touched, where they want to be touched and what touch they do not want. Practising the use of the sacred pause helps clients gain more clarity and certainty about their ‘yes, no and maybe’ responses to sexual situations. The sacred pause is at the heart of ‘inner knowing’ and ‘giving voice’ to enthusiastic consent regarding the nature of any sexual contact with an intimate partner.
Clients get practise taking a sacred pause in sessions with us. We guide them with this practice to discern their desires in the moment. We coach our clients to apply this new skill to their personal sex life with intimate partners. When clients learn to regularly use the sacred pause in their personal sex life, they gain the capacity and confidence to know what precise erotic touch they want, or don’t want, in the moment with their intimate partner. And they know what precise erotic touch they are willing to offer in the moment for themselves and for their lovers.
When clients use the sacred pause regularly in their personal sex life, they learn how to give and receive erotic touch with full consent and also with a full heart. Erotic touch that is given and received with a full heart is filled with more robust intimacy, joy and pleasure. Touch given and received with a full-heart ‘lands in bodies’ with positive impact. Full-hearted erotic touch is full of loving life-force energy. It imbues nurturance and goodness. It is touch that is healing.
The sacred pause is a powerful way to increase access to unique and dynamitic experiences of sexual pleasure and healing in the moment and in the long term for our clients. Use of the sacred pause can inject spice and variety in their sex life. The sacred pause provides a means to discern, negotiate and honour issues of consent for receiving or giving erotic touch. The sacred pause is a great way to be imaginative and to bring wanted erotic fantasies into focus and then into reality. The sacred pause can restore enjoyment, pleasure and intimacy in stale or conflicted relationships. And it can facilitate natural healing to occur with the goodness of loving life-force energy that it generates.
Taking time for a sacred pause will increase the likelihood that sexual encounters are experienced as ones given and received with full consent and with a full heart. Taking a sacred pause will increase the likelihood that sexual encounters feel intimate, dynamic, nurturing and pleasurable to both lovers. Competency with using the sacred pause is foundational to a happy and healthy sex and intimate life that can last a life time.
My name is Wendy Scheirich and I am a proud somatic sex educator from Manitoba Canada. A common ethos of our modality is “Pleasure is Healing”.