Coming Home to Your Body: What Sexual Embodiment Actually Feels Like

Most people who feel disconnected from their desire, their body, or their partner aren't broken. They're just exiled — from themselves. And nobody ever taught them the way back.

This episode is about what it actually feels like when you find it. The felt sense of coming home to your own body's sexuality — as a resource, a grounding force, and the place from which real confidence, real connection, and real intimacy become possible.

I was skeptical this even existed. Then my teacher demonstrated it on me with nothing but eye contact — and my body responded before my brain could catch up.

In this episode:

• What sexual energy actually is — grounded, demystified, no woo required
• Why most of us have it locked away (and what that actually feels like from the inside)
• The breathwork and mind-body practice that opened it up for me — and how I now use it with clients
• What becomes possible from this place: confidence, connection, intensity, and desire that doesn't require performance
• Why this isn't something you have to earn or learn from scratch — you already have it
• A note on group settings, charismatic facilitators, and who this actually belongs to (you)

If you've ever felt like you were performing intimacy instead of inhabiting it — this one's for you.

Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Find out about the Pleasure Path Diagnostic here: https://laurajurgens.com/diagnostic/

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

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Transcript

Welcome to Pleasure Uprising. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens — intimacy coach, somatic practitioner, and your guide to getting out of your head and into your body, your desire, and your real capacity for connection. This show is for people who are done performing and ready to actually feel it. Let's go.

Last week I was on a call with a client. We're going to call him Karim. He came to me carrying anxiety, ED, and a partner who was frustrated that he never initiated. This was our second session over Zoom, and we did an exercise that I absolutely love and do with all of my clients — to tap into your own sexual energy in your body. I do this with myself regularly throughout the week.

After about 10 minutes of this exercise, we had him open his eyes. I could feel it even before he said anything — he had just completely shifted. And he said to me: "I can't believe I had this in me. This feels amazing. I want to be here all the time."

I know that feeling. Because I said almost the exact same thing the first time I found it.

Today's episode is about what it actually feels like to come home to your body. It is not a how-to. It's a what's-possible.

I want to talk to you specifically if you've been learning, reading, listening, maybe doing some work — but haven't really felt it yet. That deep sense of connection to your own sexual energy. Maybe that term feels weird. Maybe it sounds too woo, or you don't know what it means, or you think it just means being kind of turned on. I want to talk to you if you don't yet know what that erotic home base feels like — that place where you could connect with another person and it would just be charged.

I want to invite you to stay here with me today, and just open up to the possibility that this is available to you. That's what I'm hoping for you.

Why we feel so disconnected in the first place

A lot of people think they are low-desire. They'll describe their clinical symptoms — low libido, ED, anxiety. And a lot of people will just say clearly: I'm stuck in my head.

Karim wasn't low-desire, specifically. He was high-anxiety, stuck in his head. And I want to say — at least half of my practice right now is some flavor of exactly that.

I had one woman come in saying she was low libido, but on day one she was massively turned on within about five minutes during a really straightforward practice. What was the deal? It wasn't that I'm amazingly sexy — I'm not everybody's cup of tea. What she needed was grounded sexual energy from a partner, with this slow-burn, I've got you kind of energy. I know how to do that. Her partner doesn't — yet. He's learning. She's responding. She actually has higher libido than him, it turns out. She had just given up on it.

I have so many clients who aren't getting what they need to actually be in their own erotic energy — either because they're blocking it themselves, which is almost universal in my practice and honestly in the world at large, or because they've actually had access to it and then shut it down after repeated disappointments with a partner.

The people who come to me are not sexually broken. They're mostly just exiled from themselves. And when we're in a relationship, it's not only that we can be exiled from ourselves — if our partner is also exiled from themselves, then there's no one home to connect with.

Where the exile comes from

This starts very early. Sometimes when we were toddlers, sometimes even younger — through shame, religion, families that never talked about bodies and sex, the general cultural message that our genitals and sexual energy are either dangerous or embarrassing. We learn early to go a little numb from the waist down. Not dramatically — just a low-grade shutoff that becomes so normal we stop noticing it. The mind-pelvis connection just gets quietly blocked.

A lot of times it happens so early we don't even remember. Toddlers, two or three years old, are playing with their bodies and told to stop, or get the message that part of them is dirty or bad.

For boys socialized as men, the message is often that their sexual energy makes them predatory and harmful. So sometimes it shuts down because they're trying so hard not to harm someone. For girls, we're told our sexual energy makes us targets — and somehow also responsible for what happens to us. All of this seeps in before we're even consciously registering it. We grow up swimming in a sea of genital and sexual shame and we don't even notice that's what we're swimming in.

The result is that we live from the neck up. We think about sex instead of feeling it. We manage it, perform it, avoid it, make it about the other person. We're rarely actually in our own bodies — not with a partner, and often not even during solo pleasure. We're just trying to get to the release as fast as possible.

And nobody teaches us another option.

I didn't believe it either

I want to say — skepticism is reasonable, normal, and actually healthy. I was completely skeptical. I didn't necessarily think this even existed. I heard about this idea of accessing your own sexual energy in my early training — in my sex educator training, in my somatic sex coaching training. The idea that you could let it fill you up, have it become a resource. I wanted it, but I was skeptical that it either existed or that I could have it.

Then my teacher demonstrated it on me. With just basic eye contact. Nothing else.

First, she showed me what it looked like without her connected to her own sexual energy. She looked at me. It was flat. Nothing in my body. Just normal eye contact. Then she dropped into herself — into her sexual energy — and looked at me again.

I literally melted. My body just responded. I watched it happen — my brain kind of observing from the side, like what just happened to me? I was suddenly completely turned on from a look. No touch, no words, no performance. Just her being fully present in herself.

I was like: What is this magic?

And then immediately I questioned it — am I just being a suggestible student? But I actually suspected it was real, because there was literally no way for me to be that turned on that fast, especially when I had been so skeptical. I tried it a few more times with different people — teachers who were good at it, students who were a little ahead of me, people who hadn't learned yet. When someone hadn't learned yet, I could feel they were up in their heads. It didn't do anything for me. When someone had it, it always worked. That's when I really believed.

Then came the next layer of skepticism: okay, maybe it's real — but can I do it? Who, me?

I was given the breathwork exercise — the mind-pelvis connection exercise — to practice for a couple of weeks. I started feeling a slow build of awareness, but nothing particularly dramatic. I was wondering if I was doing it right. Just going on faith.

Then, in week three, the dam released.

This sensation just flooded me — warmth, tingles, light, power, groundedness. Incredibly relaxing and energizing at the same time. A sense of being fully in my entire body, with access to this pool of energy I didn't know I had. It felt deeply authentic and deeply mine. Not something external to manage — a source of power and connection. Real connection to myself.

I wasn't performing anything. I wasn't trying to be sexy.

I just felt like I was home.

What sexual energy actually is

My scientist brain wanted to understand this. I'm a biology professor at the point I'm learning all this, and I dove deep trying to make sense of it.

What I can tell you is: the science hasn't fully caught up to the experience. But here's what I know. Sexual energy is just life force energy in the pelvis. The same energy that makes you feel alive, grounded, present, magnetic. It's not necessarily mystical — though maybe that's what mystical actually is. I don't know. What I do know is it's available to everyone. I've worked with a lot of people, and everyone has been able to find it. Sometimes at different paces depending on personal history, but it's there. It's a birthright. It's human energy that just happens to feel extra amazing and juicy and really lights us up in a particular way. We don't have a complete scientific explanation for that yet, and honestly, it's more fun to just experience it.

The two patterns I see

There are really two ways this energy gets blocked.

The first is the shutoff pattern — what I described with Karim and with myself. Living from the neck up, or really from the waist up. Not really feeling like you're living in your pelvis. There's like a door that's closed, and we often don't notice the door was even there until we open it. This is almost universal.

The second pattern I've only ever seen in men. It's where the sexual energy isn't shut off — it's leaking outward. It lands as that vague, creepy energy. A kind of childlike demand, or actual predatory creepiness. It's what happens when the energy is coming out but has no container inside. Women have been conditioned toward shutdown. Men have often been conditioned to expect others to service their sexuality, so the energy can just come out in this uncontained, leaky way.

The solution is the same for everyone, with a little extra work for men around closing that leaky channel. And in my experience, men love it when they do — because suddenly it fills them up. They feel like enough. They feel this groundedness and confidence, and they become genuinely magnetic to their partners in a way that actually works.

What becomes possible from here

When you have access to this energy and let it fill you up, it doesn't actually need anything from anyone else. It's not directed outward. It just is. It's a being energy, not a doing energy. It lights you up, fuels you, grounds you.

One of my clients said, as we were closing out our work together: "The first session I had with you, it felt like you gave me drugs over Zoom." That's kind of how it felt to me the first time too.

So what actually becomes possible?

Confidence that doesn't need feeding. Not puffed up — rooted. Karim walked into that session anxious and uncertain. He didn't leave with confidence about any specific thing. He left connected to something that doesn't require reassurance, doesn't require performance, doesn't require masking his real human vulnerability. It's unshakable because it's embodied, it's real, it's human. That's why he said I want to stay here — not just the energy, but the way it makes you feel completely okay.

Flirting that actually lands. Not clever lines, not knowing the perfect compliment. Presence. This is what my teacher demonstrated on me with nothing but eye contact, and what I did for that client who thought she had low libido. It's not a party trick — it's physiology. Humans evolved to read each other's nervous system states long before we had spoken language. When you're in your body, feeling grounded, feeling that unshakable sense of I'm okay here — other people feel it. It lands as deeply present, and their body relaxes and responds.

The couples application. I've had couples in my practice where this was genuinely the only tool they needed. One partner's anxiety or disconnection was creating the entire mismatch, because it was the opposite of what their partner needed to feel turned on. Once they found this place in themselves, the dynamic shifted completely. Not because they performed something different — because they were somewhere different. Their partner felt it and responded. Problem solved.

Sex that isn't a transaction. Foreplay, connection, intensity, playfulness with power dynamics — all of it becomes available from this grounded place, as expression of a joyful, embodied presence. Not a checklist. Not anxiety about what to do next. Just being, and how we want to be together.

One of my clients said: "I was suddenly experiencing all I had ever wanted and more, and so quickly. I feel more empowered in my body than I have before." That's someone who has landed in their home base of erotic energy. That's what it feels like.

You already have it

Let's go back to Karim's words: I can't believe I had this in me.

He had it the whole time. I had it the whole time. My teacher didn't give me that energy — she just showed me the door.

I'll be honest with Karim, and with you: I don't think it's possible to be there all the time. At least I haven't found a way. But that's not the goal. The goal is that it becomes a home base. Somewhere you know how to get to. A place you can return to — to nourish yourself and to connect with someone else on a really fundamentally human level.

I've had clients say I'm finally out of my head and really in my body. I had a client named Mark say it's easier than I thought. What they're all saying is: I had this in me the whole time, and now I know how to get there.

This is not a cognitive skill. You cannot think your way here. That's why all the reading in the world — all the great books about sex — won't get you there. And why a couple of weeks of a specific embodied practice can. It's a skill you build in your body, not in your head. Like any physical skill — you can read about volleyball for days, but until you actually practice it, you don't know what you're doing on the court.

A note about workshops and gurus

I want to say something here because I just did an episode with the journalist Anke Richter about red flags in workshop settings — and it feels relevant.

This kind of work is sometimes done in large group settings with charismatic facilitators. When those environments aren't run by exceptionally well-trained, ethical guides, you can find this place there and walk away believing that the guru, or the group itself, gave you that experience. Because no one told you that it wasn't them. It was always yours.

Once you know how to find this in yourself, you can access it for free, forever. No one can take it back. You do not need a group or a guru. You might need a teacher to show you the door — but a good teacher will be very clear that what's behind it belongs to you, and that it doesn't depend on continuing to pay them or attend their events.

Coming home

Neither Karim nor I believed this was available to us. We'd never experienced it before. And we found it anyway. I know you can too.

Once you know the way, you can always land back at your home base.

If you felt something in this episode — if something in your body said I don't know what that is, but I might want that — I'm here. It's my absolute joy to help people find this. If you find it elsewhere, wonderful. There are other teachers and other ways. Just know: it's yours. It's your birthright. And it feels really good to come home to your own body.

That's the place we're going when we want to get out of our heads. Find your own erotic energy, your own life force energy in your body, and connect to it. No one can ever take it away.

Alright, my dears — I hope this was illuminating. I'll see you next week.

Before you go — if you enjoyed this show, I want to invite you to check out one of my favorite things I've ever created. It's a free guide called Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and Shoulds Around Intimacy. It has four reflection exercises that go deeper than anything you'll find in a typical freebie, and most people feel a shift just after part one. Grab it at laurajurgens.com/guide — link in the show notes.

And if you're ready to find out what your specific path looks like, I'd love to talk to you. Booking info is also in the show notes. See you next week.