Releasing the "Shoulds" and Grounding Into Our Bodies
...a practice + optional ritual for the full moon in Virgo
Over this past month, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way that we often put a lot of pressure on our bodies to be perfect in our sex lives.
We expect ourselves to be able to orgasm every time we have sex, in precisely the sexiest and most erotically pleasing way (which is often some version of what we’ve seen in movies, where the person with the vagina is able to easily come at the same time as her partner with a penis during p-in-v penetrative sex).
We expect our bodies to feel arousal at the drop of the hat, even if we are inundated with household tasks, things to do with the kiddos, work stress, relationship issues, and the grief of living in a world where there is so much pain.
We expect our bodies to heal from childbirth within the six week window and be back in sexy action.
We expect our bodies to be aroused by simply the acceptable confines of monogamous, love-based encounters.
We expect our bodies to have a linear progression forward as we heal from trauma, a progression that does not involve days spent in bed or those hours where it’s tough to calm our racing hearts and clenched muscles.
We expect our bodies to be pristine and to not make any sort of weird noises or body fluids during sex.
We put pressure on our bodies to comply with beauty standards that are formed and deeply shaped by oppressive systems.
With all these “shoulds” that we experience, it’s a miracle we’re ever able to experience pleasure. When we’re thinking about the way that our bodies should be performing and looking, we’re not able to be fully present in the actual experience of being embodied or even easily recognize our worthiness.
But what if we could start letting some of those shoulds go and instead focus on what our bodies actually want and need?? What if we could be grounded in our innate wholeness? What if we could ground ourselves in our body’s capacity for expansive pleasure?
What if we could just be embodied in all our messy, imperfect, magnificent glory?
The full moon takes place in Virgo at 7:30am Eastern on February 24th – and it’s also the last full moon of the astrological year.
This is a wonderful time to get grounded in our bodies — and to reflect on changes that might have been happening in our sex lives over the past year.
Being an earth sign and associated with the goddess archetype, there’s something within Virgo that also invites us to reflect on our worth. As Tanaaz of Forever Conscious writes, “The Virgin Goddess knows how to put herself first and make her body her temple. She knows that within her lives a forever-flowing source of wisdom, intuition, and personal power.”
While perhaps doing one ritual around the full moon isn’t going to reverse a whole life’s worth of messaging and expectations, this can be a powerful time to work with these themes and rewrite some of the narratives that have been handed to us.
An Introduction to this Practice: