Why Do I Feel Disconnected From My Body? (And What Erotic Devotion Has to Do With It)

“Why do I feel disconnected from my body?” This is a question I hear from spiritual women often. Here’s my take.

If your spiritual life feels more like a discipline than a joy — and your body feels more like a used car than a temple — this blog is for you.

So what is “erotic devotion?” In short, it’s what I call the weaving of spirituality, sexuality and somatics that frees you to flourish from the inside out — so you can lead and love from a place of embodied power and pleasure.

The Erotic it centers your embodied experience. It’s reflected in how you move, how you stand, how you do or don’t perceive beauty, how you love, how you turn on, how you radiate, how you have sex, how you relate, how your soul feels expressed, how you feel good on the planet right here and right now.

This has been the field of my greatest learning in life. It’s held my greatest challenges that have also become my expertise. I’ve spent years countless sessions, classes and ceremonies guiding people back to their erotic thriving. The Erotic reveals nooks and crannies in your life that would otherwise go unnoticed. Hiding behind our successful and capable veneers is desire, passion and power that longs to be met and manifest. This is especially true for high-achieving spiritual women who have built everything they were supposed to build — and still feel like something essential is missing.

Why the Erotic Is Not What You Think — And Why Separating It from Spirit Is Costing You

In most of the spiritual paradigms we’ve been given, we presuppose that The Erotic is something tolerated, something separate from Spirit (i.e. what “really matters”). So we go meditate or pray and do all the spiritual things but then our erotic life is compartmentalized elsewhere. But in the threads and lineages that I work with, The Erotic is the expression of Spirit.

So when I hear someone say “I’m super spiritual. I love devotion”

But their marriage sucks…

They don’t remember the last time anything felt good…

They’re constantly commenting on what a terrible time it is to be alive…

Or they’re stuck in these “good girl” feedback loops

I don’t see a spiritually in tact person. I see a massive disconnect that’s bound to create a life void of fulfillment, enjoyment and empowerment. Rather than accepting that your erotic life is separate from your destiny, I’m looking directly at your erotic life to see how sell this life journey is going and what it needs to heal.

Because of this commonly accepted disconnect, most people equate feeling good with being bad or “not spiritual.” I can’t tell you how many times I regularly sit in front of people who tell me their stories of when they were shamed, disappointed, heartbroken for going after delight, desire and joy. That’s sexual shame doing exactly what it was trained to do. And it’s left this nagging sense that they’re being bad when they feel good or that feeling good isn’t worth pursuing since it’s not productive or patriarchally pious.

These sentiments are deeply ingrained into our culture and our nervous systems. Even if it wasn’t explicitly taught to you, you’ve likely inherited their imprints from your family of origin and your surrounding environments (even if you technically believe something different). And if these imprints and disconnect are within you, you are also passing them along to others.

Your Body Doesn’t Lie: Where Nervous System Healing Begins

It’s easy to think we’re hiding fear, guilt, resentment and shame as long as we don’t say anything about it. But embodiment doesn’t lie. Energy doesn’t lie. Your nervous system, your aura, your emotional field, your erotic expression… all of that is loud and clear, revealing the story of what’s really going on.

The good news is : these are things that can heal. But it takes more than inhaling a deep breath and affirming to yourself that “I’m safe.” It takes magic. It takes a radical reconnection and a deepening of desire and devotion to your own life. It takes a new story about what your life means and what Life is about. It takes embodied experiences and sacred practices to help you shift your relationship to who you are and what your body is capable of experiencing. This is sexuality healing as much as it’s spiritual healing. You can’t separate the two.

While The Erotic is wider than your sexual expression, it does include your sexuality, your sensuality, your intimacy. And it’s important to stay centered in that. I’m wary of conversations that keep The Erotic in the abstract and vague sense of “it’s just a connection to life force.” Eros absolutely is your connection to life force, but that’s not a scapegoat for excluding the parts of your life you’d prefer to keep hidden and unpacked. Let’s not de-physicalize and tidy up something that is inherently physical, relational and a bit messy (like trying to lick honey off the corners of your mouth).

The Erotic is a force that’s strong enough to pull you across all the lines and boundaries of what you think a “good person” is, a force strong enough to create a hunger amidst all of your successes and accomplishments. That’s because The Erotic is a force of transformation, a force like gravity that pulls and slithers and changes always towards wholeness. And Wholeness is a much bigger and wilder reality than your goodness or success models.

This brings me to an important point that is a core issue my clients encounter when we start working with desire. They want to just be okay wanting what they want and not feeling bad about it. But here’s the catch, your unworthiness, shame and any rigidity around being right, good, perfect and judgmental must go. Welcomed in its place is something you’ve been trying to earn but can only be received.

I know I made it sound simple just then, but this is an initiatory leap. Why? Because most people have decades of wounding, identities, stories and flimsy soul band-aids holding up the scarecrow of their unworthiness, shame, etc. It can be scary (at first) to leave these behind and root into something deeper and wilder. But it’s worth it. These stories bind you into constrictions and contortions that leave you exhausted, depleted and wondering what’s the point of anything. You will feel so much better, lighter and at peace on the other side of this transformation. Eros wants to take you there.

In addition to desire, sensuality, sexuality, intimacy relationships, The Erotic also brings a hunger for your destiny. Destiny, not fate. We feel good, we feel powerful, when we are living who we feel like we were made to be doing what we feel like we were made to do. Most people don’t embody their destiny because they’re so concerned with what everyone else thinks. They’re terrified of being misunderstood or outcast. They’re disconnected from desire.

The Erotic wants to steer you towards Destiny, and Desire is the fuel for that car. To embody the level of purpose and meaning you crave, you have to learn to live skillfully (and beautifully) with Desire.

So why isn’t everyone already doing this? Of course we want sensuality, desire, intimate relationships, purpose and meaning. Yes, but wanting it and believing in it are not the same thing as embodying it, as living it. These beautiful, desirous parts of life are also some of the most sensitive and where we carry the most wounding. It can be tender and scary to allow The Erotic perk up and “get your hopes up.” It can bring up past disappointments, heartaches, shame, failure, and unworthiness. It can bring up fear when you dare to look at the distance between where you are and where you want to be, between who you are and who you want to be.

When these uncomfy feelings arise, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It’s just revealing all the reasons you aren’t already living that way as that person. The Erotic shines Her light on them and they rise to the surface so that they can be healed. When this process is happening, it means that the pilot light of The Erotic is trying to flicker back on inside of you and the dust in the room is now apparent. This process cannot be undertaken alone. And if you need support, guidance, education, and perhaps a little magic, you’re in the right place.

Willpower Got You Here. Devotion Will Take You the Rest of the Way

The Erotic brings us towards the body, towards our mortality, in our vulnerability, and our intimacy — all these qualities that are fleeting, impermanent, and mortal.

But rather than viewing these things as less valuable because they are temporary, The Erotic asks us to delight in them and be devoted to them.

What is devotion? Devotion is a deepening and elevation of commitment. It asks even more than commitment.

It isn’t enough that you have willpower and staying power. These, in and of themselves, aren’t interesting or rewarding. They won’t get you where you want to go and they don’t innately bring rewards. In fact, if you’re reading this, you probably have more than enough will power to go around. You can put that hammer down for a minute and pick up the wine glass, communion cup, of Devotion.

Sacred Practices: What Devotion Actually Looks Like

Devotion is not pathetic, self-flagellating offerings or acts of service.

Devotion is bringing your whole soul and spirit online and bringing this wholeness to everything you do, everyone you touch.

Devotion is offering your body and your life as the feast — willingly not just willfully, desirously not just dutifully. Not just with your words, thoughts, hopes and dreams but with your actual body, actual actions, actual movement.

Devotion isn’t just for the things that we think are pure, perfect and ideal.

It’s for the every day.

It’s for your spouse, your partner.

Devotion is for your Tuesday morning coffee not just your meditation or your retreat.

It’s for your work as well as your rest.

When we live in true, ecstatic, erotic devotion to our lives, every day becomes the feast and the altar for a life worth living.

Why Being Successful Isn’t Enough for Spiritual Women— The Leader AND the Lover

Some people who come into this work definitely resonate with being a leader. She’s really good at structure and success, getting organized and making things happen. But her edge is stepping into becoming a devoted Lover of Life, of her life, her body and the present moment.

This kind of leader taking responsibility for her life, vision and relationships. But she wants to feel belonging and pleasure not just intellectually understand it. She wants to have sex so good she forgets who she is and sees god for a minute. And that means, she’s going to have to become more than a Leader. She needs to become a Lover.

The tools that got you success, accomplishment, competence and degrees are not the tools that will get you multiple orgasms, ecstatic moments of blissful prayer, or the joy of being alive. You have to be both a Leader and a Lover.

Not from mere resentful obligation but from a place of destiny, desire, embodiment and devotion — erotic devotion.

You must learn (re: remember) a new language and new way of being. And what most people find, is that it’s not new at all. It’s something that feels like coming home after a long odyssey at sea.

When you open yourself to this erotic devotion work, you will experience more pleasure and more power. You will feel more like your true self and more of your unique special gifts. Your nervous system will change. Your relationships will respond accordingly. The God wound will become the blissful Beauty. You’ll feel less like everything in your life has to change and find more delight in all the things you already have. You’ll find yourself meeting life with more presence, capacity and fullness in all kinds of weather.

That’s the promise and path of this work. That’s why my work exists. To support you, guide you and teach you the practices and paradigms, to offer the experiences you need to even play this game (and enjoy it). Welcome to your Erotic Devotion. You’re all invited.

If this is landing… 

I invite you to start with the podcast episode above — and if you want to go deeper, check out my EROS class for free, then head over to our Offerings page for more. If you’re ready to stop feeling disconnected from your body and start actually living in it, this is where you begin.

Join EROS Class (it’s free!) →

Come as you are. Achievements, exhaustion, and all.