My Pleasure Journey
I am a first-generation immigrant to the United States, born in England with roots in Sri Lanka. I spent most of my life experiencing the ethos of consistent hard work and delayed gratification. I was rewarded for this throughout my life with good grades, accolades, and eventual acceptance into medical school. Becoming a doctor was the epitome of the South Asian immigrant’s dream.
Was that my dream? Was that my family’s dream?
Or was that the colonized dream that had been imprinted into my consciousness?
Was that my dream?
Was that my family’s dream?
Or was that the colonized dream that had been imprinted into my consciousness?
Whatever it was, the experience of pleasure definitely took a back seat in my life’s journey. Until two decades later when I found myself burnt out and lost in a profession that I no longer fully believed in.
The untimely passing of my younger brother while I was in medical school resulted in a significant turn in my path. His suicide led to me veering away from my trajectory in pediatric medicine. I became a child and adolescent psychiatrist and spent years dedicated to alleviating the suffering of youth and families.
The familial and cultural pattern of appeasing others became habituated in me – such that I lost sense of my own needs and wants. I instinctively put others’ needs before my own.
Until it hit me.
Pain was a significant motivator in my life. Pain from intense deep and intense sadness and grief; pain from not knowing my own worthiness and deservingness; pain from colonial, capitalistic patriarchy. I held the belief that I needed to work relentlessly in order to feel worthy, deserving, or valued – to feel any sense of belonging.
I began to ask myself, What do I truly want to feel in my body and in my life?
I began to ask myself, What do I truly want to feel in my body and in my life?
I was called back to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda which had captivated me some years prior. The healing of my ancestors guided me to make a big decision – I left my job and moved to Sri Lanka to explore my roots and delve into this ancient healing tradition.
In the practice of embodiment and sensuality work, I could feel myself rooting into a new way of being.
While in Sri Lanka, I found myself at another crossroads. I had to decide between an intensive Ayurvedic program in India with a renowned internationally-acclaimed Ayurvedic doctor or a women’s tantra retreat in the jungle of Mexico. This was a pivotal decision in my sensual journey of saying “Yes!” to pleasure.
Colonial conditioning told me to follow the rational choice of going to India and immersing myself in the study of Ayurveda.
But my body yearned for pleasure, joy, and bliss.
I chose to follow the guidance of my body and its desires. The transformative retreat showed me what was standing in the way of my experience of pleasure. Surrounded by women also breaking down their own sensual oppression, I learned to move my awareness out of my mind and into my body.
This experience expanded me and opened opportunities to serve as a mentor and teacher to others within a renowned coaching program. I developed my own practice as a sensuality coach as well.
Yet as time went on, I began to recognize that in this space dominated by white instructors & coaches, there was an absence of awareness of systemic oppression and how this can impact the experience of embodiment and pleasure.
I knew that I was being called to root deeper into pleasure from a decolonized perspective. This realization led me to Somatic Abolitionism and the work of Resmaa Menakem, and to Decolonial Healing and Alchemy and the work of Dra. Rocio Rosales Meza. I immersed myself in these practices and began to connect the threads between the themes of my own work.
This was the catalyst, along with several signs that kept pointing towards centering my practice on melanated women and femmes.
Yet as time went on, I began to recognize that in this space dominated by white instructors & coaches, there was an absence of awareness of systemic oppression and how this can impact the experience of embodiment and pleasure.
I knew that I was being called to root deeper into pleasure from a decolonized perspective. This realization led me to Somatic Abolitionism and the work of Resmaa Menakem, and to Decolonial Healing and Alchemy and the work of Dra. Rocio Rosales Meza. I immersed myself in these practices and began to connect the threads between the themes of my own work.
This was the catalyst, along with several signs that kept pointing towards centering my practice on melanated women & femmes.
THE AHA MOMENT CAME AS A FULL-BODY ANSWER –
I am called to serve as a Sensual Alchemist for Women & Femmes of Culture.
I am here to guide melanated beings, black, brown, indigenous and immigrant women and femmes in navigating internalized oppression, to transmute the things they are holding that do not belong to them, and to find their power as sovereign sensual beings.
I am honored to be your guide!
Experience the freedom of radical self love through sensual alchemy
