Sex: The Most Potent System for Transformation I Know
The four properties that make sex a powerful engine for personal transformation. (Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union: Part 2)
Sex is the most potent transformational system I’ve ever encountered.
And I don’t say that lightly.
For eight years, I’ve walked the path of transformation. I’ve poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into retreats, trainings, and coaching. In the beginning, it was a project of self-improvement—a striving to become better, more whole, more free. But over time, it became something else: a devotion to discovering who I truly am. A return to the parts of me I had long left behind.
The truth is, that yearning had lived in me for years—a slow-burning fire I hadn’t fully let myself feel. But after I ended a 17-year sexless relationship that left me a virgin, still at 35—a marriage in which I had slowly, quietly, learned to suppress parts of myself just to survive—that fire could no longer be contained.
I didn’t know how much of me had gone numb. I didn’t know how much shame I was carrying. I just knew that something in me was aching to come alive. To return to intimacy with the parts of myself I had long hidden away. The parts I had buried just to feel okay.
That longing changed everything. And it led me to intentional containers that worked on the one thing that had been missing in my life: sex. Quite quickly, sex became not just an act, but a path.
Sex became a portal. A mirror. A teacher. A tender and intensely intimate encounter with the parts of me I had never let be loved.
And what astonishes me now is not just how profoundly sex changed me once I began to include it back into my life—consciously and intentionally—but how clearly I now see it:
Sex is a transformational system.
It reveals. It mirrors. It rewires. It iterates.
It reshapes our relationship to self, to love, to the world.
This is part two of “Sex, Systems, and Sacred Union”—a series weaving story, framework, and lived experience to explore sex not just as pleasure, but as a sacred system for healing, awakening, and intimacy that can hold everything.
If you haven’t read the first piece, read part 1 here: A Virgin, Again.
If this touches something in you, subscribe to follow the unfolding.
And by “sex,” I don’t just mean the act itself. I mean our entire relationship to it:
How we relate to our desires.
How we speak them—or don’t.
How we numb them, chase them, trust them, fear them.
How shame, guilt, disappointment, longing, and love all move through the body in the presence of intimacy.
When we look closely, we begin to see that our relationship to sex mirrors our relationship to life itself.
And what feels most alive to name right now isn’t just how excited I am—but that I have something to teach. I will forever be a student of this path—and I’m stepping forward as a teacher of it, too.
This isn’t just a personal story. It’s a lived framework. A way of seeing sex as a transformational system—one that has changed me from the inside out, and that I believe can change how we live, love, and awaken.
Naming that tingles my skin with aliveness. Because I know the power this work holds. I’ve felt it in my body. And I’ve seen what happens when we begin to relate to sex not just as something we do, but as a system that reveals, heals, and rewires our relationship with life.
This piece is a map—of the four core properties that make sex one of the most accessible, integrated, and potent systems for transformation I know. And when we learn to work with it consciously, it becomes one of the most powerful tools for awakening I’ve ever encountered.
The Four Properties of Sex as a Transformational System
What makes sex so uniquely powerful as a vehicle for transformation is not just the pleasure or intimacy it can bring—but the way it functions as a living system. One that—when approached consciously—reveals, mirrors, charges, and iterates our deepest patterns. These are the four properties I’ve come to see most clearly:
1. Sex Reveals.
Sex strips away abstraction.
There’s a nakedness to sex—not just physical, but emotional, energetic, psychological. When we engage it with awareness, it has a way of revealing the most tender, foundational truths of who we are.
Sex reveals not just surface behaviors, but the raw, unfiltered essence underneath—the survival strategies, attachment patterns, and emotional truths we don’t always know how to name.
Held with awareness, sex becomes a direct path to our deepest conditioning.
It shows us our fears of abandonment. Our longing to be chosen. Our impulses to control, collapse, hide, or prove—so that we can stay safe or feel loved. These don’t just show up somewhere in sex—they often show up first. Because sex touches the parts of us that are still raw, still alive, still waiting to be met.
One of the most life-changing things sex revealed to me was how deeply I had suppressed desire itself.
In the beginning, even speaking a simple desire in sex felt charged. Asking for what I wanted—clearly, directly, without softening it—was terrifying. Sometimes I would name something adjacent, something safer. Sometimes I would stay silent. And when I did speak, I would brace—afraid it would be too much, or that I would be.
I thought I was just learning a new skill, building a new muscle. But over time, I began to see that what was surfacing in sex pointed to something much deeper.
It wasn’t just about desire in the bedroom. It was about my relationship to desire itself. I had learned to keep it at a distance—not because I didn’t have it, but because it felt dangerous to want too much.
And one of the deepest desires I had buried was the desire to be a father.
In my first marriage, I couldn’t let myself touch that desire. I couldn’t even let myself imagine it. Because wanting to be a father would have brought me face-to-face with what wasn’t happening in my relationship. It would’ve connected me to the heartbreak and shame of being in a sexless marriage. And so I didn’t let myself feel it at all.
What sex revealed wasn’t just how much I had exiled desire—but how much I wanted it back. Not just physically, but emotionally. Spiritually. I wanted to feel again. I wanted to trust that my wanting was safe.
When I finally began to include sex back into my life, it wasn’t just about pleasure or connection. It was about feeling the full return of my own aliveness. The part of me that wants. That dares. That says yes to life.
Even now, with a much deeper integration around desire, sex continues to reveal. What once took years to notice now appears in near real-time—as a subtle contraction, a withheld truth, a breath I don’t take.
It shows me the micro-moments where I hesitate to speak something because it feels like too much, too intense, or too vulnerable—where I pull back because some part of me still wonders if I’m worthy, or fears rejection. And in those moments, I can feel: ah, here’s an edge. Here’s where more love still wants to flow. Here’s where more of me still wants to be touched.
That’s what sex reveals—if we let it. And once something is seen with that much clarity, it begins to change. Revelation isn’t the end—it’s the start of transformation.
This is the kind of work I’m devoted to sharing—truths that live in the body, that move us closer to what’s real.
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2. Sex is a Mirror.
Sex reflects our relationship with life.
Not metaphorically, but directly and holographically.
In a hologram, every small fragment contains the full image. In the same way, our relationship to sex—and especially, our relationship to desire within sex—holds the full imprint of how we relate to life itself.
How we relate to ourselves. To others. To power. To vulnerability. To being seen. To longing. To disappointment. To love. To the unknown.
Other mirrors—like work, parenting, or creativity—might reflect parts of us. They show how we handle pressure, how we perform, how we respond to feedback. But sex is different. Because sex contains the full spectrum of human experience—shame, joy, grief, control, surrender, trust, longing—it becomes a holographic slice of how we relate to everything.
It’s the most complete mirror I’ve ever found. Because it doesn’t just reflect a behavior—it reflects how I move with life itself.
And unlike skills-based domains like sports or pottery—where the technical skill is what’s being honed—the skill in sex, when held with awareness, becomes something deeper: the skill of relating to life. How I feel. How I respond. How I chase or avoid. How I stay or leave. How I love.
Because sex touches so many layers at once—emotional, physical, energetic, relational—it tends to reflect those patterns faster and with more clarity than almost anything else.
For me, one of the most powerful mirrors was how I tried to manage disappointment.
During sex, there was a part of me I couldn’t let go of—quiet but vigilant. It would track how things were going. Whether I was doing enough. Whether she was still with me. Whether the moment was unfolding “well.” It ran in the background of the most intimate moments. Not because I didn’t want to be present—but because some part of me didn’t yet trust that I’d be okay if something went wrong.
And that part wasn’t just in sex. It was in how I moved through work. How I created. How I made decisions. How I tried to prevent rupture. How I tried to get it right.
Sex just showed me the pattern more clearly than anywhere else—through the sensations in my body: the tightness in my chest, the pressure to perform, the sudden disconnection from my own pleasure.
And that’s the gift of sex as a mirror: it gives us a place to see ourselves—clearly, honestly, intimately. And when we choose to stay with what the mirror shows us—without turning away—it begins to rewire us. Not all at once, but breath by breath.
3. Sex is Atomic.
Sex brings us to the root. And it carries the charge to transform it.
In any system, “atomic” refers to two things: the smallest indivisible unit—and the explosive energy contained within it. Sex—specifically sexual energy—is both.
At its most fundamental level, sex brings us into contact with our core essence—underneath the strategies and the stories. It takes us beneath the abstraction of concepts and into the immediacy of sensation, emotion, breath, and energetic truth.
But sex isn’t just deep. It’s charged.
It doesn’t just show us a pattern—it amplifies it. Sexual energy intensifies whatever is already there: fear, grief, longing, shame. That’s why sex can feel overwhelming. But it’s also why it can be so powerfully transformational. Because the same energy that threatens to unravel us is the energy that can rewire us—if we meet it with loving presence.
This is especially true because our core traumas and limiting beliefs aren’t just mental—they’re stored as tension and armoring in the body. These beliefs live in the nervous system. And when sexual energy is directed with awareness toward those places, it can begin to dissolve what the body no longer needs to hold.
This is what makes sex atomic: it doesn’t just point to the root—it carries the energy to repattern it.
I saw this most vividly in how I related to orgasm. For a long time, I couldn’t fully enjoy it.
In the beginning, self-pleasuring felt mostly mechanical—just a way to release tension. And even as I learned to enjoy my own touch, something inside would still tighten during partnered sex.
It wasn’t loud, but it was persistent.
A whisper of shame. Too fast. Not enough. You didn’t do it right. And underneath it, something deeper—quieter, older: a belief that love had to be earned. That pleasure had to be deserved. That just being me wasn’t enough.
That pattern showed up in sex more clearly than anywhere else. In life, it was harder to track.
At work, the voice showed up as strategic, productive, even noble—“Leave a legacy.” In creative projects, it wore the mask of discernment—“Is this idea strong enough?” In conflict with Kiki, it came as urgency—“Fix this, now.”
But in sex, the signal wasn’t diluted. It pulsed through my body. It was hard to ignore. And it brought me face-to-face with the lie: That I needed to do something to be loved.
A couple weeks after a medicine ceremony that opened my capacity to receive beauty, I was sitting in tea. I was holding the simple beauty of a parenting moment with Kiki and Ember—where I felt unbridled excitement, joy that felt orgasmic. The moment felt almost mundane.
And then it came: a knowing that exploded through my body from the inside out—this excitement moving through me is the same energy as orgasm. The same beauty. The same power.
Later, during sex, for the first time in my life, I let go. I didn’t try to come “better.” I didn’t try to last. I didn’t manage. And as orgasm moved through me, I let it be beauty. Not something to earn. Not something to control. Just something to receive.
And as I received it, I could feel it touch the part of me that had lived in striving—trying to prove worth, leave a mark, do enough—with an afterglow filled with warmth and love.
Vestiges of the pattern still linger, but the shame is gone. And its grip keeps loosening, softening with each breath.
And I trust that the more I allow orgasm to move through my body as beauty, the more it will direct healing to the places that still hold that old belief. That over time, it will keep rewiring me—gently, powerfully, from the inside out—teaching me that I am beauty.
That’s what sex can do. It doesn’t just show us where we’re stuck. It gives us the exact energetic charge we need to become someone new.
That’s why it’s atomic. Because it works at the level of root and energy. It brings the wound—and the medicine—in the same breath.
If this part of the journey stirred something in you, I’d love to keep sharing what’s unfolding.
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4. Sex is Quickly Iterable.
Sex offers a rapid feedback loop for transformation.
Unlike many areas of life where growth unfolds over long timescales—months in creative work, years in career, even decades in how we relate to purpose—sex, when approached with presence, gives us near-instant insight into our patterns and the chance to meet them again and again.
Because sex is a felt experience, not a theoretical one, the feedback it provides is immediate. You speak a desire—or you don’t. You tense up—or soften. You reach for connection—or pull away. And you get to feel, in real time, what happens when you make a different choice.
And unlike those long feedback loops, sex offers something rare: the chance to iterate daily—not just through lovemaking, but through how we relate to sex each day. When held in a conscious container, it becomes a living, breathing laboratory for emotional patterning, relational truth, nervous system capacity, and presence.
This is what makes sex not just profound—but practical.
Because transformation becomes iterative. Repeatable. Embodied.
Early on in my sexual relationship with Kiki, I’d sometimes realize—afterward—that I hadn’t spoken a desire. I’d missed the moment and held it in. And I would spiral. There was this agitation in my system, like I’d missed my one chance. Regret. Self-judgment. A sense that I had failed some invisible test. At the time, I chalked it up to something circumstantial that mostly mattered just in sex.
During our 30-day sex container, the deeper pattern underneath became clear: scarcity.
A belief that there weren’t many chances. That I had to get it right. That mistakes were costly.
I didn’t trust that I could try again, that the opportunity to follow that desire would return, or that I’d be okay if it didn’t.
This loop wasn’t new. It had shown up in work, in creativity, in my relationship to life. I’d hesitate. Second-guess. Wait until the timing or words felt just right. And then beat myself up when I hadn’t taken action. I was living in a worldview where I believed I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. And that belief was shaping everything—from how I spoke in bed to how I moved through my creative life.
But in sex, the loop was undeniable. I could feel the contraction immediately. I could feel the impact. And, for the first time, I had the structure to meet it.
During our sex container, that loop began to shift. Because the very structure of the container meant there was another opportunity. The next night. The next breath. The next moment. To try. To choose something new.
Over those 30 days, something rewired.
I stopped treating each experience as a test. I started trusting that even if I missed one wave, another would come. And something shifted. Scarcity began to let go. That desire could keep flowing. That life wasn’t withholding something from me.
By the end of the container, I was blown away to discover that sex felt abundant in our relationship. And slowly, that sense of abundance began to ripple into other areas of my life—creativity, friendships, money, and even time.
And that’s what I mean by quickly iterable: that repetition—paired with presence—was everything.
Sex doesn’t just surface patterns—it gives us the chance to practice something different in how we relate to life. Not someday, but now. Again and again. Until the nervous system learns, moment by moment, it’s safe to feel, to speak, to want, to stay.
This is the kind of work I’ll be sharing more of.
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Sex as Sacred Practice
These four properties—sex reveals, sex mirrors, sex being atomic, sex being quickly iterable—aren’t just theoretical. They’ve been the living shape of my own transformation. And nearly every insight I’ve shared here, every wound I’ve faced, every opening I’ve touched, has happened in one field: with
. In the space of our intimate partnership.Because when two people commit not just to having sex, but to meeting through sex—to using it as a system for truth, healing, and return—something else comes online.
The felt sense of intimacy deepens. The nervous system learns new safety. Our attachment grows stronger, more secure, more free.
And that transformation doesn’t just stay in the bedroom. It ripples into how we parent, how we communicate, how we move through our home. It reshapes the energy of our family and the rhythm of our village.
Unlike many modalities, sex lives at the scale of the everyday. It can become a sacred practice woven into the rhythm of partnership. A field we return to—not just to feel good, but to remember more of our wholeness together.
And the deeper I’ve gone into this path, the more I’ve seen something else: That the system of sex isn’t just about sex. It’s a fractal, a pattern that points to something far greater.
Because when we learn to meet sex with this kind of presence, intention, and reverence, we begin to see that all of life is inviting us into the same thing.
All of life is lovemaking.
And I don’t mean that metaphorically.
The very sensations we learn to feel in sex—the trembling, the surrender, the charge, the ache, the truth—are the same ones we’re asked to feel in life. The direct contact we cultivate through sex is the same direct contact with reality that makes life feel vivid, real, and alive.
Every trigger is a revelation. Every moment a mirror. Every contraction a chance to meet the root. Every breath a new iteration. What begins as a system for transformation in sex becomes a system for living—one that rewires how we meet creativity, conflict, emotion, purpose, and love.
And that is the deepest magic I know.
If something in this piece stirred you—a memory, a longing, a reflection—I’d love to hear.
Feel free to share what moved you in the comments.
And if you feel called to pass it on—please do. That’s how these truths ripple.