The Power of Pleasure: How The Sacred Woman Changed My Life
A Heartfelt Reflection by Natalie LeSueur on the power of The Sacred Woman and how a feminine centered yoga practice can be a means for healing trauma.
This is not meant to be a preach blog post, but rather a deeply personal reflection of my direct experience with The Sacred Woman, specifically in regards to my complex relationship with my sexuality, sensuality, body, spirituality, and pleasure.
After experiencing a profound physiological and psychological shift in my energy body and overall health from The Sacred Woman, I feel it is important to share my insights.
At a very young age, I not only experienced complex sexual and relational trauma, but I was also highly sensitive, which added to the complexity of my short life thus far. As a result, in my teens, my sexuality became split off into the shadow and became a source of shame and secrecy. Unknowingly, I used it to manipulate myself and others, like a chameleon, trying to be everything to everyone but not for or of myself.
This led to a state of disassociation and fragmentation, and as a consequence it often involved alcohol. My sexuality became a projection of my objectification as a child, with a lot of role-playing, like a performance, which left me deeply wounded and trapped in a cycle of self-loathing, sabotage and sadness.
As I grew older and gained a deeper understanding, I recognised the necessity to address the wounds that had severed my connection to my true nature. This realization took shape when I engaged in contemplative yoga practices, enabling me to establish a profound bond with my body.
Simultaneously, within the confines of a close and solid relationship, I felt safe and liberated to explore my own pleasure. Nonetheless, a persistent layer of shame always lingered within me, refusing to fully dissipate.
Through working with The Light Collective, I discovered that our subtle body and lower energy centers, in particular, hold emotions and blocks related to trauma (a lasting emotional response caused by an event that doesn’t need to be a big or dramatic to leave an imprint or a wound) sexual trauma, inequities, conditioning, and cultural imbalances, as well as ancestral trauma of which we may not be conscious.
The devaluation of these lower centers in spiritual practices, that aim to take you out of the body and into elevated states of consciousness, also leads to a splitting off and disconnection from the body. As someone who has experienced this disconnection, I needed to find a way to reconnect with my body and embody my core (and I don't mean my abs!) So I decided to participate in The Light Collective's course, "The Sacred Woman."
The teachings of The Sacred Woman are designed to first surface and understand blocks and wounds, then to connect and release them, and finally to reconnect us to the natural energies in our subtle body and the unique spiritual power of the sacral chakra, where truth and deserving power lies. This leads to an embodied consciousness, a mixture of awareness, emotion, and physical sensation that becomes unified. This is particularly important for people who are recovering from sexual trauma.
This work is not intended to replace therapy for sexual trauma, but for me, it was the missing piece.
By taking the time to understand and deeply embody my own sensuality and sexual energy, and using it as a source of vitality in my body, I have been able to truly live a healthy life and establish healthy boundaries to regain agency, which I previously did not even realise I lacked.
In addition to the profound personal benefits, I noticed that participating in The Sacred Woman allows each woman to emit a kind of light, one that contributes to the rebalancing of energies that is currently necessary and deeply needed in the world right now. (Yes, you read that right.) Although you don't have to be a victim of sexual trauma or abuse to benefit from these teachings. I believe that every woman on the planet should engage in a similar process at some point in her life.
It provides a connection to the deep self, a kind of somatic attunement that is deeply grounded in reality and also fosters an embodied presence on this earthly domain. I now personally feel a sense of unity and expansion concurrently. I realised that these shadow parts were not an obstacle on my path but the path itself The Sacred Woman is crafted and curated by Sian with such care and sensitivity, it is a safe, supportive, and a deeply connected invitational container.
I have endless gratitude for Sian and this work. Never underestimate the power of your own love.
Forever a student in love and always Nat X
Inspired to learn more?
Step into your own personal exploration of your deepest self with The Sacred Woman course. Designed to support you in cultivating vast amounts of pleasure, inner power, healing and a recognition of the sacred within. Combining both Classical Tantra and modern Neo-Tantra, the Sacred Woman is a deep dive for women at any stage of their personal spiritual journey.
About the Writer
Natalie is intuitive and lives from the heart. She holds space for others with lightness and generosity like no other. She has a qualification and deep interest in complex trauma and the effects that yoga, pranayama and meditation have on self healing. Her dedication to this self inquiry has led her to an intention of bringing profound connection and love back into the lives of people who are affected by trauma. She’s a mother of two girls and her Divine Mother energy spreads lovingly to everyone she meets.
Nat started practicing yoga at the age of 19 and has always been drawn to physical practices such as dance, running and yoga as a way of channelling energy. This was intuitive to her and the benefits of these practices led her to pursue study and to develop a better understanding of the intricacies of trauma and the mind/body/spirit connection. Nat has studied with Sian Pascale, Zabie Yamasaki, Judith Blackmore, Scott Lyons and Sarah Peyton. She has been interviewed in a two part podcast with Sarah Buino The Wounded Healer where she discusses her story and her transformation.
From surviving to thriving, she holds space in a unique way, not from a text book but from a deep understanding. Her teaching style is inclusive, always from the heart and intuitive, currently she is a facilitator of The Sacred Woman and this work means everything to her.