What It Means To Let Go
I am lying on my belly, finally receiving the touch my body has been craving all week. The news these days has my body navigating the wildest thoughts, shoulders draping around my heart, drawing up towards my ears. My hips are locked and loaded.We might have to flee. Are you ready?my brain asks the body.You ain’t gotta get ready if you stay ready,my body responds.
My massage therapist does the thing she does, softly digging fingers into the nooks and crannies of my armor, whispering messages of love and safety to it. I try to remind myself that for the next 90 minutes or so, we won’t have to run. We won’t have to fight. I say silently to myself what actually needs to be yelled.It’s okay to let go.
Her touch, the music, the incense seems to be working. I am drifting off inside a new day dreamscape. Then she gets to my legs. They have been ready to run all day. All year. All life. These legs have run 14 marathons, because, well you ain’t gotta get ready if you stay ready.These legs have hurdled, squatted and deadlifted, competing across state lines. These legs are rigid, strong and taut.
When she lifts my foot, bending my knee to rest on her shoulder, my leg is rigid. strong. taut.
I do not notice.
She tells merelax your leg.
Honestly, I haveno ideawhat that even fucking means.
I have been a bodyworker for 22 years and that cue fucks me up every time. I know ‘relax’ sounds innocent enough. It’s something we’ve all heard in massage rooms, yoga studios, hell even when bent over on all fours squirming to make something fit when it seems like there is no more room left to fill. Still, every time I hear someone tell me to relax I can’t help but thinkthis person has no ideawhat it means to be a body.
With two decades of experience, I know better. Still, I frantically search within for some tension switch that I can flip off on command. My desire to please this person taking such beautiful care of my body takes me over, and I forget that I am stitched together by memory, emotion, pleasure and survival. The contractions in my body have history behind them. They don’t believe me when I say I am safe. They don’t hear her when she says relax.
This all begs the question, if I can’t relax on command, how can I possibly expect to let go enough for orgasm? If there was ever a way to explain how erotic bodywork tends to the body, this question is at the root of it, because letting go and relaxing are not even close to the same thing.
Since the most commonly available bodywork available is superficial, it wants me to relax. It asks that my muscles to go limp while my nervous system stays braced. Erotic body work beckons the release of theemotional investmentthat keeps me tense in the first place.
Modern massage therapy’s superiority complex treats tension like it’s random, forgetting that its functionality is how we get through our lives. Tension is what holds us together when the world feels like it’s falling apart. I don’t know if Ishould relax it.Its grip is what I know keeps me safe.
I do though want to let go. Two things can be possible. I want tension to continue to clamp down so that I survive when saying no isn’t an option. I want my body to know it can let go safely when nois an option.
The Erotic is a space of practice. In its dojo, I am reminded that I am holding tension because it helped me and I am intact enough to feel more. Its orgasm undoes me for a few moments, allowing the armor to fall away just long enough for my body to say,“I am safe enough to feeleverything.”
What does it mean to let go?
I am holding on to things that have served me well, but all of those will not serve me well in this moment. I have held on to them to manage the what ifs that plague my body. What if my jaw needs to be clenched again, what happens if my hips aren’t locked and loaded? To let go means to surrender control and trust that I will find those things with ease if the time comes when I need them. And why wouldn't I? I have held them so tightly for so long, I could find them in the darkest moments with ease.
My orgasm though, cannot be managed. It makes sensation move through me even when expansion feels dangerous. Pleasure is risky, and the business of pleasure reminds me that I can be fully in it, tension and all, without losing myself completely. My tension keeps me tethered to this unfortunate reality.
The sex worker massaging me helps my armor fall away without commanded it to do so. They invite me only to notice where I am allowing tension to be a part of the experience and what it is doing for me in the moment.
I allow their hands to go higher on the inside of my thigh, incorporating my labial folds into each stroke, reminding me that my legs and my pussy are the same body of intelligence. Here, letting go means divesting from the tension that I have mistakenly believed is who I amandnot trying to control its departure.
“Can you stay with this sensation without trying to change it?”
Sex work, unlike modern massage therapy, isn’t about commanding the body to relax. Erotic touch simply wants me to be in right relationship withsafe enough, so that I can finally come home to my body.Here, letting go is a process.
It has been over a decade of me learning how to witness my body instead of trying to fix it. Two decades of touching and being touched in ways that invite inquiry while holding on to everything that has kept me safe enough to survive, followed by ten plus years now of sitting in the mirror and asking myself,what happens if I loosen the grip of control.
To let go is to become pleasure.
Want to go deeper?
EroSomatic Touch™and 1:1 coaching is designed to help you identify the emotional investments that keep you tense, meeting the fear beneath the grip, and learning to let go in a way that feels safe, supported, and profoundly pleasurable.
If you’re ready to divest from the tension that’s been holding you together and discover what’s possible when you get to feelsafe enoughto let go, I’m here to walk that path with you.
