i have no one to send my nudes to (& i don't want to send them to you)
erotic devotion as the antidote to body dysmorphia, reality distortion, and other stuff you should care about
did i get you with the title? my most liked and shared post is called you need to take more nudes, about the erotic practice of self-portraiture.
self portraits have been integral to my process for decades. it’s an obvious choice to take photos of yourself when you feel “good.” aka you’re not trying to escape pain or discomfort or restriction… like sure you’re already down with this version of yourself. why not take some photos? you look hot bb.
HOWEVER.
what’s more mind-blowing, transformative, mysterious, erotic, seductive, devotional, provocative, beautiful… is when you look into yourself in the exact states you’d rather avoid.
when you are restricting bc you feel like shit about your body.
when you are avoiding the mirror & wearing baggy clothes because you feel like a snarling hideous beast.
when you hide because you feel fat or gross or ugly or any of those other words you use to describe the state of self you’d rather not experience.
when you’re just like FUCK IT and derail yourself completely cause what’s the use you’ve already fucked up once so obviously you now must go completely out of control or become supremely rigid in the way you operate.
THESE are the times when the erotic practice really changes your world. this is where devotion comes in. you show up when you’d rather not. when it’s most challenging. when you’re meeting yourself in the shadows you usually avoid, deny, and suppress in any way possible.
the thing about avoidance, denial and suppression is that it creates more of the exact thing you’re trying to avoid. it creates more discomfort, more distortion, more dissonance.
dissonance is a misalignment of frequency.
we’re always wanting coherence… but the narrative on coherence often excludes coherence with negative emotional states.
to be in coherence you must include ALL internal states… wanting to be over there when you are in fact right here, and refusing to interface with right here… means you are in dissonance with — denying — your current reality.
you can desire change and still be in coherence with your frequency in the present moment. it might be uncomfortable. it might feel restrictive. it might be painful. it might suck…
but you’re only going to get over there by walking the path to there which means moving through what’s here now.
and the other thing is… once you touch a sensation fully, it dissolves. it’s all our thinking about it that makes it such a drag. all the resistance we create with our minds. the build up of tension against what we might actually enjoy should we choose to step directly into it.
the potential to shift your frequency is always available. maybe not as quickly as you want. but as long as you are willing to breathe into - open to - directly touch the sensations present in your experience (not the stories about your experience but the sensational experience itself)… you are in the transformational field. you are in the vortex. you are in coherence with what is. and that is the key most often skipped over in favor of toxic positivity and other such bullshit.
where do you think that sludgy energy went when you decided to slap a smile on your face and suck in your belly?
it’s still permeating everything you do. reality is holographic. you can’t isolate anything. really.
layering the appearance of happiness on top of visceral discomfort and self hatred is not the answer.
pretending to love your body while just a millimeter into your psyche you want to rip all the fat away from your muscle and become a skeleton… is not the answer.
i was going to write a piece specifically on body dysmorphia and erotic devotion but i think this is actually what needed to be written. because body dysmorphia is psychic dissonance projected powerfully onto the physical self. it works like any other state of dissonance. it just so happens that in body dysmorphia, consciousness is fixated on physical appearance — so that’s where the distortion appears to appear.
because reality is holographic, if you stopped focusing on the body and fixated elsewhere, you’d see the same dissonance at play. whatever you are avoiding in yourself, you’d see in romantic partnership, or in dissatisfaction with your career, or your home, or whatever it is you are focusing on yet restricting yourself from interfacing with — from actually experiencing.
all reality is a mirror, remember.
and change happens when we go through the looking glass. when we touch things.
this word restriction is interesting. it immediately makes me think of hunger. hunger > desire > erotic life force.
erotic life force is the force of desire. the desire to LIVE. this cosmic hunger is what we most deny in ourselves.
and not to beat the concept into oblivion but because reality is holographic, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. and idk about you but i did not grow up with a healthy relationship to hunger.
so we need to reframe - repair - unearth - our relationship with hunger. bring it into the light. it’s a deep, complex relationship. it can be helpful to have an anchor. a place we know we can return to, a place that will remind us it’s safe to be here, as we are.
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okay. that’s it for today. let me know your questions are and i will respond in as much detail as possible.
in devotion,
xx faye
p.s. thoughts on my outfit choice. this blue dress is edgier than nudity for me. for a few reasons.
the tight fabric creates an intense sensational awareness via compression
aesthetically… it’s not “forgiving” god forbid i breathe and you might see that my belly expands when i inhale.
it’s not as immediately sexual as the love struck teenage part of me would like - sometimes she tries to fight me on wearing things that are just for my own pleasure and not designed to attract a man. inevitably my own pleasure did indeed lead to undressing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i’m sure there’s more i could say but you get the idea. the point isn’t always literal nudity (though that is a powerful place to explore within) but rather what makes you feel most exposed/bare/vulnerable. more on this to come probably.
like what you read? want more?
I found so much of this article very deep. I had to restack a specific paragraph. Thank you, Faye!
Such a powerful post, Faye. I’m struggling a lot with body image recently, having lost a lot of weight and then putting a lot of that weight back on. The feelings it’s brought up are so uncomfortable to deal with. The guilt, the shame, the feeling stuck. Ughhh, just feels icky. I don’t really know how to accept my body right now when I’m just so uncomfortable in it. Anything you can share would be wonderful. Thank you for all you do. 🙏🏽💛✨