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Finding The Lost Art of Human Sexuality

21/10/2018

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If it’s meant to be – it will work out. Won’t it? At 37 years old I began exploring what I wanted from sex and relationships. Prior, I travelled with an expectation that I should know how to be intimate with other people. Deep down accompanied by competing doses of fear of being alone, and unwillingness to go there.

To be fair, being a good person with positive intentions and expectations coupled with conditioning: ‘This is how things are done/my parents did it’ – can take you quite far in a relationship. It took me to 13years and I suspect it’s what has kept many more relationships going. 

If I waited long enough, the frustration that occasionally surfaced from not feeling seen, from not connecting and feeling disconnected – would pass. We would continue on. After all, I was in love, and love is all you need. 

It is fascinating that I lasted so long with this frame of mind. This, in the context of knowing that when I finally look back over my life, what I owned or achieved at work will count for nothing. What will matter most is relationships, and especially anyone I shared an intimate relationship with.

I think about this from the position of 8 years later. It seems my intimate relationships are the only part of my life where I was on some level content to work from trial and error. Unconsciously and conveniently in collusion with my partners.

In my 25year career in mainstream and alternative health, and more recently through events; caring for people with the benefit of an evidence base makes so much sense to me. Studying formally at high academic levels, I worked as a nurse for twenty years, mostly in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The NHS culture during this time strongly supported life-long learning and practice development. I lapped this up.

But how I related to those I was sexually intimate with, my friends, even people I worked with; had not made it into my plan for learning. Nor had it been included in my early sex education which focused on procreation – or avoiding it.
With hindsight, my belief was that wanting to learn more about sex and relationships was for those people who were broken, whose relationships were on some level, failing. I lived with good intentions and good enough. The other option would be admitting I was a failure. A failure is how I felt when my 13yr marriage began to crack and eventually broke down.

Motivated now to learn more about intimacy, I found a focus on counselling therapies, a plethora of books and magazines. This was helpful to a point. The reality of these formats was they couldn’t communicate how it feels to connect, how intimacy feels. It could not teach me how to be more present, nor integrate previous experiences. They ignored essential elements of adult learning: clarity of purpose, an experiential component and respect for past experience.

Around my hometown of Melbourne, I visited groups and clubs where sexuality was a focus. I found some had dress codes, asking me to change the way I presented myself. Or exploring your sexuality meant being sexually promiscuous. Some had rules or ways of interacting which the other attendees just seemed to know. Others were highly experiential, with little or no information shared to facilitate learning.

I felt uncomfortable and confused. I wasn’t after a quick fix but it felt like it could take years to understand and I didn’t feel like I wanted to change the way I looked or behaved to fit in. I’d already resisted doing that during my high school years.

In 2012, persevering, I attended a weekend event exploring the spectrum of sex and relationships. In one of the first workshops, I had to simply look into and hold the gaze of a stranger – and breathe. For all our discomfit we may have standing in a busy supermarket under fluoro lights. Naked. I was seeing them and I was being seen – and I knew it.

I now understand I was experiencing connection without sex and without an agenda. It was an experience that was initially uncomfortable for my mind, but my body knew this was what I had come for. That weekend event was to change my life on a personal and professional level, more so than I could have imagined.
Later that year I began running that same event under its new name, Celebrating Sexuality. Parts of the structure remain, however, over time I have gained more clarity about the impact of the event, not just on individuals, but also the wider political and social agendas.

Commonly people arrive in a similar way as I did, with little to no clarity as to why they are there. What they have in common is a willingness to share their curiosity, learning, fears and struggles; aiming to live their lives more fully.
Yes, I am providing people with an amazing weekend experience; but also with strategies and tools for moving forward. I am regularly contacted by the attendees, months and now years later, describing their experience as life-changing. They also keep coming back.

The most important thing I learnt thus far is that connecting with myself first is the enabler to connecting more deeply with others. It is not always easy, but loving myself has allowed me to love others more deeply in return. 

Indeed, love is all you need.
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Yasss people!! Last tickets remaining...6 weeks to go!!

7/10/2018

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little peek at our 2018 festival site visit today...

Festival site visit today - such a peaceful place! 

We have indoor accomodation as well as glamping.

​Huge indoor workshop spaces as well as some that allow us to be more outdoors - like this one by the lake!


www.celebratingsexuality.com
​
General tickets NOW on sale 😍😍😍
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    Author

    Jo Balmforth
    Co-Founder and Festival Director.


    I am a Pleasure Activist and Transformational Facilitator. 
    I have 25 year’s-experience in mainstream health, education, project management, research and alternative health –  in Australia and the U.K. 

    I am most excited about creating spaces for people to explore personal expressions of health, creativity, intimacy, connection and sexuality. I believe these experiences to be fundamental to the well-being of the individual and the community.

    Join me in creating experiences where creativity, healing, fun and self-empowerment are the norm. ​

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    p.s. Celebrating Sexuality has helped hundreds of individuals around Australia to feel more confident & free to express pleasure and desire, learn more about how to please their partner or future partners, learn more about what pleases them; and to feel safe to experiment.
     
    If you feel you don't know where to start, or you just want more, now is your opportunity to take a radically different approach and understand how you have been standing in your own way. 

    Let us help you to finally experience sex & relationships in a way you deserve. 
    ​

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​Celebrating Sexuality Festival isn’t like any other retreat you have attended, or are likely. 

You will gather a range of knowledge and practical techniques that will improve the quality of your relationships. 
​
Importantly, you will learn things that you can apply at once in your own life from people who are qualified to teach you.
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WEEKEND RETREAT WITH A FESTIVAL ATMOSPHERE: 15 - 18 NOVEMBER 2019

MORNINGTON PENINSULA, ​VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
​

CLICK HERE FOR 2019 TICKETS

OFFICIAL FESTIVAL MERCHANDISE
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2019 FESTIVAL ​PARTNERS and media

Tom from Celebrating Sexuality Festival on Vimeo.


2018 Workshop Presenter Myola Woods - Live Facebook interview 11/08/2018 from Celebrating Sexuality Festival on Vimeo.

Britt from Celebrating Sexuality Festival on Vimeo.


2018 Workshop Presenter HELEN ZEE - Live Facebook interview 17/08/2018 from Celebrating Sexuality Festival on Vimeo.

Past attendee of Celebrating Sexuality Festival

2018 Workshop Presenter CAM FRASER - Live Facebook interview 02/08/2018 from Celebrating Sexuality Festival on Vimeo.

  • HOME
  • ABOUT
    • WHAT IS CELEBRATING SEXUALITY?
    • TESTIMONIALS
    • GALLERY
  • FESTIVAL INFO
    • FAQ
    • EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
    • COUNSELLORS
    • WHO WE ARE
  • 2019 FESTIVAL
    • 2019 BUY TICKETS
    • 2019 FESTIVAL WORKSHOPS
    • IMPORTANT INFORMATION
    • APPLICATION INFORMATION
    • ACCOMMODATION
    • TICKET HOLDERS
  • LATEST NEWS
  • CONTACT
  • PARTNERS + MEDIA