The Scoop: Emotional tension tends to make physical pleasures more difficult to enjoy. This is why Sacha Fossa, a sex coach and healer from Sacred Temple Arts, uses tantra, erotic blueprints, and bodywork to help her clients release trauma and tension so they can rediscover pleasure.
I’m continuously amazed by what the human body can do.
I’ve tripped down a flight of stairs, been in fender-benders, and slid head-first over home plate. Each of these hurt like hell, and yet, I watched in awe as the bruises faded, the bones clicked back into place, and my body healed.
Why do emotional scars take so much longer to heal?
Eventually, emotional tension settles into the bend of your neck, the crook of your back, the expanse of your pelvis. Trauma has a pesky way of hiding in your body and hindering your sex life. Shame over your sudden lack of desire and a dearth of education on the matter only makes the experience more isolating.
Thankfully, Sacha Fossa of Sacred Temple Arts can help. A sex coach, holistic sexual healer, and tantra practitioner, Sacha guides her clients to finally release the trauma that’s holding their sex lives hostage.
“There are so many ways to embark on this path to intimacy, to better sex, and to better relationships, and all of it has to start with your own body and your intimate relationship to your body,” Sacha told us.
Healing from Trauma Starts in the Body
If you want to achieve sexual fulfillment, Sacha recommends studying modern tantra techniques. “Tantra is an erotic art, and it is a healing art,” she said on her website.
With the help of an experienced tantra practitioner like Sacha, sex can be a means of achieving transcendence, with or without your partner. Tantra can help you achieve a heightened state of awareness. Being mentally and emotionally present during sex is almost always going to make it more fulfilling.
Pleasure isn’t only about the body, but about emotions, Sacha told us. “These days, people are looking for more consciousness in their lives,” she said. “When I studied tantra, it was about more conscious loving, which means dating, too.”
In this way, her clients can apply what they learn from Sacha to their sex lives, dating lives, and beyond. “When I do my programs for my clients, my clients walk out of their programs with more sex, intimacy, and relationship education, awareness, and experience than, like, 99% of the population has.”
There’s value in talk therapy, but don’t overlook energy and bodywork.
“We can do therapy, and we can talk and we can do a lot, but energy and bodywork is where it’s at,” she told us. This may be especially true when it comes to addressing emotional pain, which so many people feel on a physical level. Sacha reminded us how trauma can twist desire into shame, and fantasies into nightmares.
Her goal with energy and bodywork is “to actually really get rid of shame, and to really clear these deep, insidious (traumas).”
She emphasized the importance of touch-based practices to help heal painful traumas. “What I do differently as a healer, a coach, and a coaching educator is that I do this healing work in a very hands-on way,” she explained.
Sacha said she can help redistribute tense or stagnant energy through Reiki, meditation, essential oils, and other energy-based practices. Bodywork, meanwhile, can bring gentleness, consent, and empowerment back to a body stuck in fight or flight. “These are all things I do to help the body unfold and release that trauma so it’s gone for good,” she explained.
Couples can grow closer and create deeper intimacy via Sacha’s tantra, energy, and bodywork courses, but they shouldn’t always be each other’s healers. “Couples can learn,” she reminded us. “I teach couples how to heal each other sexually. But you can’t always have your primary partner be your healer as well.”
If you depend solely on your partner for emotional and/or sexual release, then you’re putting a lot of pressure on them. It’s important for you to learn how to heal yourself.
Sex Education Is Crucial
A more fulfilling sex life really does start with you. Having a deeper understanding of your own body and desires is sure to make sex so much better. “Everything should be about being your own first, best lover,” Sacha told us.
This means exploring your body and educating yourself about the countless pleasures it can provide. “Know how to have every kind of orgasm. Know how to provide every kind of orgasm,” Sacha added.
To do so, it helps to have a strong sense of self. This is why Sacha is passionate about love languages and attachment styles. She sees these as pathways to a deeper understanding of the self, which leads to a better sex life.
“My job and my coaching experience is about teaching my clients how to give and receive in all the love languages, and how to shift from insecure attachment to more secure attachment,” she told us.
Another of Sacha’s specialties are erotic blueprints. Developed by Jaiya, a somatic sexologist, erotic blueprints can shed light on your sexual desires. What turns you on, and how can you convey it to your partner? Jaiya has developed a few generalized erotic blueprints that can guide people to their specific sexual desires and provide insight into compatibility.
“I include (erotic blueprints in) all of my programs with clients, and they pay for access to Jaiya’s premium platform, which is her community that has all of her classes,” Sacha explained. “So my clients get this extensive database and lifetime membership that they can pull from all the time. Blueprints make it so much easier (to be sexually aware).”
Sexual awareness — understanding the body’s pleasure centers and its endless capabilities — has decreased in recent years, Sacha told us. She blames two factors: porn and a lack of sexual education.
Pornography can give off all the wrong impressions when it comes to pleasure and consent. A lack of education, meanwhile, creates obvious downsides: Suppressed shame, confusion, and resentment toward your body and the sexual feelings (or the lack thereof) it conjures up.
“Our sex education has been based on the male sexual model of high arousal and then ejaculation. He comes and then, boom — refractory period. That’s how most people have sex,” Sacha said. This dynamic may appeal to men, but what about women?
Sacha encourages her clients, male and female alike, to look beyond the narrow, male-centered sexual education they’ve received in the past. The body holds so many more opportunities for pleasure.
Harness the Power of an Orgasm
Yes, orgasms can be more powerful than you ever imagined. In tantra, being physically, emotionally, and sexually grounded can facilitate a truly cleansing release. “Your health is dependent on it,” Sacha said.
Oftentimes, couples’ sexual appetites change over time. It’s possible that your sexual desire has grown while your partner’s has diminished. It’s a problem Sacha hears about from her clients all the time. “That’s a really rough place to be,” she said.
If you want to regain your sexual desire, Sacha may be able to help. She emphasized how what makes you tick can really run the gamut. “It doesn’t have to be like, ‘I’m turned on because I see something sexy.’ It can be, ‘I’m turned on by the wind, I’m turned on by the flowers,’” she explained. This is where Jaiya’s erotic blueprints can come in handy.
“I teach how to have every type of orgasm in the body,” Sacha continued. She introduces people to pleasures they may have never even considered before. “Men can have multiple orgasms without ejaculation, or with it if they choose,” she said as an example. “Women are naturally wired to be multi-orgasmic.”
Never underestimate the healing power of an orgasm, especially if you haven’t enjoyed one in a while.
“(There are) orgasms that change your brain chemistry, release toxins, and clear emotions,” Sacha told us. “Then you have more energy. You’re not even tired. It’s like a whole different system has been intentionally hidden from us, and we’ve been given a false education.”
Sacha refers to a “level one orgasm” as a “pelvic sneeze.” They’re nice, but not nearly as mind-blowing as they could be, she told us. “Level two sexuality is the waves (of pleasure). Multiple orgasms are something totally different.”
Women may even be able to achieve what Sacha calls “cervical orgasms”, which “go even deeper into healing and cleansing, and having (this kind of orgasm) opens your heart in these huge waves at the same time.”
Why don’t we all enjoy these diverse pleasures? “People haven’t received the accurate education necessary to have the other types (of orgasms),” Sacha explained.
But with Sacha’s help and the help of other tantra and bodywork teachers, there’s reason for hope. “Everyone can learn,” Sacha told us. “Bodies are completely capable.”
