Attachment, Sex and Intimacy with Kai Cheng Thom and Dr Scott Lyons
Starting in February 2023, we’re bringing together some of the world’s most esteemed teachers on Somatics and Attachment Therapy for our unique, 60-hr Somatic Attachment Therapy Certificate Program. We recently caught up with Co-Directors Kai Cheng Thom and Dr Scott Lyons to talk about how sex and intimacy will be covered in the program.
Let’s talk about sex and intimacy
Kai:
I'm so glad we're talking about sex in our program. Because, you know, I went to a full year, a full calendar year-long program, a master's program, a couple and family therapy. And I think we talked about sex twice. There were two lectures about sex. One was really good and the other was not so good. But it's just amazing to me that I might in some world be considered a “master of couple therapy” and have had one three-hour lecture that was actually useful on human sexuality. So not everybody likes sex, and sex is different for pretty much every person on this planet, and we each have our own unique way of understanding sex, sexuality, and sexual pleasure. But I think it would be a mistake to try and do any kind of comprehensive learning or teaching about attachment without then coming along to intimacy, which, as you say so beautifully, Scott, is not just about two people coming together.
And then there’s intimacy. Intimacy is also about embodied pleasure, embodied pleasure in the self, embodied pleasure in other people's bodies, and embodied pleasure in all of the many layers of the world. When I think about the erotic and attachment, I immediately go to black lesbian feminist poet Audrey Lorde’s seminal essay on the uses of erotic, where she talks about the erotic, not as just comprising the sexual, but the embodied pleasure that we can take from being with one another, from touching one another, whether or not in a sexual way. And the power we get from really feeling, literally feeling through our bodies, through our skin, through touching other people and the world around us, that if we can take delight and pleasure, a feeling of real grounded physical connectedness to that which is around us, then we become more alive. And to Audrey Lorde, it is an entire movement of liberation. Feeling is freedom, and connection to life is how we can resist the oppressive forces of this world and tell ourselves and the other people that we love that we deserve to be here.
Scott:
You know, I think there are so many places where we can identify, I would say the compensatory responses or our attachment styles, the behaviors showing up in the world. And one of those places is deep intimate connections and sex. And so it would be amiss of us to talk about workplaces and collective systems of attachment without also talking about how this same experience is manifesting in the intimate account. And it's because it's simply another entry point into this world of healing. These aren't just places of occurrence. These are also opportunities or places of opportunity to address, to bring awareness, to embody, to connect and to work with from these places. And so, I'm really grateful that you brought into this program, this element of working with attachment and intimacy.
Kai:
You know, one of my dear colleagues and most revered teachers, Caffyn Jesse is a somatic sex educator who says that when we touch people's bodies, we touch their whole stories, we touch their entire selves. And I don't think that there's a differentiation between the touch of a romantic partner to another or the touch of a parent and a child, or handshaking our coworker at work. Encoded within our bodies are some serious feelings about touching and being touched. The way we experience our ability to be proximal to other people says a lot about our ability to be proximal to ourselves. At the core of who we are is the desire for relationships and relatedness. And at the core of who we are is our desire to touch and be touched on metaphorical and literal levels. And that's just an edgy thing to say. I am really excited about being able to go there with you and with the students in this program because it's not something you can get in many other places.
Scott:
No, and the fact that we weave that in, I hear the edginess of it and, and there's something about deconstructing why it is even edgy. And also our first sensory input of the experience, a present consistency of our caregivers is through this sense organ of our skin is through touch. It's not like we're intellectualizing as babies of “I don't think they're present.” No. Our experience of their presence, of their consistency, of their relaxedness or not comes in through the input channels of our skin, of our touch organ. Touch is foundational to attachment from the very beginnings of the developmental process. We'll explore how we are experiencing others and ourselves through movement and touch all the way to how that manifests and can be addressed in later adult encounters of intimacy.
“When we touch people’s bodies, we touch their whole stories, we touch their entire selves.”
Learn more about harnessing the power of somatics to help heal attachment wounds and trauma, and support the creation of profound and empowering relationships for yourself, clients, communities and the world with our Somatic Attachment Therapy Certificate Program
