Radical Sensuality

mailchimp BM

For the first time ever, after it being a goal of mine for nearly 8 years, I managed to get my bootay to Burning Man.

Nothing prepared me for what I experienced. It was literally like landing on another planet without having to take any psychedelics. Minus the intensely dry playa heat, I’m going to venture to say that Burning Man is the closest I’ve experience to a Utopian society. The 70,000 person city is built 4 days before the start of the festival and is then broken down in 24 hours. That’s radical teamwork right there.

Burning man also stands for radical self-expression, radical freedom, radical participation and radical inclusion. Gifiting is a huge value on the play and nothing other than coffee & ice (go figure) costs money.

I can go on and on about the million and one things I experienced there but for me, the primary experience I took out of it was one of radical sensuality.

I was lucky to have been adopted into a camp called Camp Mystic that included some revolutionary female leaders like Nisha Moodley, Alexis Neeley, Jennifer Russell, Annie Lalla and Layla Martin. It was the first time I was able to see feminine leadership embodied on a level I had only theorized about. I was able to experience a sisterhood circle that reminded me so much of the sisters I had cultivated during my time at S factor. It also reminded me of high school sleepover parties with hair braiding and lots of hugging.

Going into this trip, I knew my intentions were to surrender to the support of a community and to get as naked as I could – literally and emotionally. And what I discovered was so incredibly interesting. Getting naked (or close to naked) physically helped me get naked emotionally. I literally put myself all out there. And the result was an experience of life exponentially more intense and more awesome.

As women, our intelligence is in our bodies, in our gut, in between our legs, in our hearts. The more we cover our bodies, the more we are forced to use whatever is left bare, your head and your hands. This pushes us to cultivate our masculine skills of goal-setting and then working our butts off to get there – something that leaves many of us depleted, disappointed and empty. Because the feminine doesn’t thrive on fulfilling a goal, she thrives on connection, on experience, on feeling shit to the max!

When I was walking around the playa with only pasties and shorts on, I felt I had shed all obstructions in the way of my sensuality. I was able to feel my own belly rise and fall more deeply, I was able to feel the breeze around me on most of my body. I was able to listen to others more clearly and I was able to listen to my body more intuitively. It was as though I had somehow found that secret radio frequency of my body after years of being just one knob turn off.

BM sunset

Other than sharing, why am I telling you this? Because I really believe that the key to your success, whether it be cultivating your relationship to pleasure, your relationship to your body, your relationship to health or your relationship to the world, the key is really to be connected to your senses as vividly as possible.

And step one of that is realizing what is in the way of you experiencing life in your body to the fullest. For me it was shedding a few extra layers of clothes that were suffocating me. For you, it might be shedding accessories or shedding your technology crutch or shedding a belief that’s holding you back.

Whatever that is, I invite you to explore what life would be like, even just for an hour, without it.

So today, I want you to think about what you can do to emulate my Burning man experience at home, or in the office, or in your world. Can you put on that sexy underwear that helps you channel your inner Siren? Or maybe you can go to work without any underwear! *gasp *. Or maybe it’s as simple as starting a 10 minute naked dance ritual every morning. Or maybe for you it’s as simple as putting down that iPhone already.

I would LOVE to hear what you decided to do. And if you felt drawn to this idea but have no idea where to go with it, and want to flesh it out, shoot me an email at nadia@nadiamunla.com and I will happily be your bouncing board and virtually braid your hair. Hell, if there is enough interest, I can set up a sisterhood sleepover on google hangouts where we can all virtually braid our hair and gab about it.

With pleasure,
Nadia