SENSUALITY

What is sensuality?

To avoid making too many mistakes in English, I use an app called Grammarly which constantly corrects my words while writing my texts.

Every time I write the word "sensual", it suggests "erotic" as a synonym.

And in this simple suggestion lie all the contradictions and this whole crux of what is usually classified as sensual. Sensuality is mixed up with sexuality, if not replaced by it.

But what does sensuality actually mean?

To me, it is always helpful to take a closer look at the word itself: Sensuality contains the word sense. And that means the sense or senses of our human body: our sense of touch, our sense of smell, our sense of hearing, our sense of sight, our sense of taste.

So sensuality is something we experience when our senses are engaged and signals sent to our nervous system, possibly leading to a change in our mood. Yes, erotic or sexual actions do include this aspect, but they are not the only ones.

Suppose we reduce sensuality to that one aspect and exclude other actions or circumstances for fear of being depicted as erotic or sexual, we deprive ourselves of an essential part of our humanness. Being pleasantly stimulated through the senses includes the experience of a sunset, the pleasure and eating of a delicious meal, the feeling of slipping into a freshly made bed, the smell of freshly baked bread, the sense of warm sand between the toes, the song of crickets on a summer evening, the silence of falling snow, the relaxation of being able to stretch out again after a long car journey, and so much more.

All of these are sensual experiences.

Transferring that to the yoga mat is only a small and logical step since yoga is all about feeling ourselves, emotions, and physical sensations. And this also includes sensual feelings initiated by movements themselves: the slow lifting of an arm, the stretching to the tips of the toes, the very conscious placing of a foot, a deep conscious breath, the turning of the head, looking at our body during all these movements and enjoying being ourselves. All of these are equally sensual experiences that nourish and charge our system so endlessly. Not paying attention for fear that they might be erotic acts [who actually defines what is erotic and what is not? Just a side question...] robs our practice of its fullness.

It's time to take sensuality out of the context of sexuality and look at it for what it truly is, a wonderful experience of what it contains to be human.

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