January Membership Meeting Write-Up — Douglas Green, LMFT

Revitalizing the Soul of the Healer:
Sex-Positivity and Embodiment Practices

Presented by Jacqueline Mendez, LMFT

When Jacqueline Mendez, LMFT, was working with children in the Foster Care system, she found that many of her clients had suffered sexual trauma. Of course, she worked to relieve them of this terrible burden. But when she thought that it would be helpful to also talk with them about what sex is supposed to feel like, her supervisors refused to allow it. This led her on a journey to becoming a Certified Sex Therapist and Sex Therapist Supervisor, to found The Center for Relationship and Intimacy Well-Being, as well as Latinx Sex Therapy, supporting sex education and resources to the greater Latinx community.

Fortunately for us, it also led to her presenting at the January SFV-CAMFT meeting on “Revitalizing the Soul of the Healer: Sex-Positivity and Embodiment Practices.”

Voicing regret that the presentation had to be virtual, as she’d planned it for an in-person group, Mendez delivered a two-pronged lecture on how to help clients (and therapists) become more comfortable with their own natural sexuality, and how this can help with the burnout therapists have suffered during the pandemic.

Therapists, she pointed out, even non-verbally, often let clients know that they’re not comfortable with the sexual issues they bring in to sessions. This stems largely from our cultural discomfort with these topics, but, she pointed out, most Psychology schools also skirt the issues of sexual feelings, and when discussing sexuality, focus on reproduction, anatomy, and couple dynamics instead. However, “clients will bring these things up,” she asserted, “if they know they can.”

Sex-Positive Sex Therapy, she explained, sees sex and sexuality as inherent, essential, and beneficial dimensions of being human, and even sees sex and erotic energy as the core of human experience. It seeks to heal misinformation and negative beliefs about sex, and helps clients understand their own “unique flavors” of who they are sexually. It normalizes a client’s experiences, and helps them find what can work for them, given their preferences. When often asked by a client about their feelings, “Is this normal?” she happily answers, “Yes, if you’re going through it, it is.”

She points out that, while sexuality is often looked at as frivolous, “Pleasure is also a form of activism. It is freedom and an essential part of self-care and self-love.” She has found that women of color, in particular, have been taught that their sexuality should not be their own, but rather ought to be in the service of others.

The key, Mendez stated, to releasing this natural sexuality, is Embodiment. By which she means literally being in your body. To achieve this, her first step is to “get the client and the therapist out of their chairs!” This enables the client to be more in touch with their whole body, and for the therapist to be able to witness what the client is experiencing (versus just hearing it reported the next week). She made the great point that the pandemic has only worsened the problem of being unembodied, as so many of us literally only dress-up from the waist up, while meeting with others wearing pajamas or sweats for pants (or worse!).

Experiencing therapy in an embodied way helps the client find new ways of being in their own body, through self-awareness. Mendez will have the client move as feels right to them, and then ask “How would you move your body through a vat of molasses?” Doing this then helps their brain literally build new neuropathways, helping them remember the instinctual wisdom they had as babies, but lost through life experience. “The wisdom of the body beyond the use of language and linear thinking.” And in so doing, she is able to heal her clients’ traumas that have shut that wisdom down. (Importantly, she pointed out, she never touches her clients, and there is no nudity in her office; the individual or couple only experiences the sessions in themselves, in a deeply safe way).

Vitally, she explained that none of this can work if the therapist is unaware of their own discomforts, and their body-language’s messages. And as the pandemic has pushed us into burnout and isolation, we need this work at least as much as our clients do. The goal is that we should be as comfortable as possible, so that when the client’s brain hits a point of fear, activating the Sympathetic Nervous System (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn), they will only freeze for a moment, and then be able to move into activating the Parasympathetic, where their body’s sexuality is able to express itself physically.

She pointed out that 98% of the heterosexual couples she sees come in because the male partner has lost sexual desire in the relationship. She sees this as the result of men never having learned what actually engages their sexuality, and are now facing a chance to learn, to bridge the disconnect between who they really are and what they thought turned them on. “Erectile Dysfunction is really Erectile Opportunity!”

She then listed her three main techniques she uses for Embodiment. First is Breathing — but a very specific form wherein the person does not control their breath, but simply notices it. Noticing when it’s shallower, and when it’s deeper, accepting all, to help the brain connect to the whole body in that way.

Second was a method she calls Concretizing. She asks her clients to think of an object that feels especially good to them, or a memory that does, and then connecting to it in a sensual way. (For example, she asks what your favorite dessert was as a child, and then has you verbalize it in detail — the touch, the taste, etc.). She’ll ask each member of a couple to bring something in that connects them to a time things felt great between them, and then experience those objects with all senses similarly.

And the third is Eye-Gazing. This can be done individually, having the client look at themselves in a mirror, and send their reflection loving messages and say “I see you.” While with couples, she’ll have them not only look into each other’s eyes, but do so with one hand on the other’s heart and one on their own, sharing words of praise or admiration, or just expressing those through touch.

As Mendez wrapped up her presentation, with a quote from her mentor Gina Ogden, “Sex isn’t everything, but it’s part of everything,” the unanimous view in the meeting was of “not enough:” The presentation should have been in person, there shouldn’t have been so many Zoom glitches, and this presentation should have been able to go longer.

But isn’t that, after all, one of the keys to sexuality? Always leave them wanting more? Isn’t that just what Ogden was talking about?

Wanting more and yet fully satisfied, the chapter members then went off into their days inspired and excited, by this dynamic speaker and her provocative and loving material.

Douglas Green, MA, MFT, has a private practice in Woodland Hills and West Los Angeles, where he specializes in helping children and teens live lives they can be proud of. To find out more, you can contact Doug at 818.624.3637, or DouglasGreenMFT@gmail.com. He's also often at our chapter meetings, serving as the volunteer coordinator. His website is www.DouglasGreenMFT.com.