I’ve longed for and envisioned a context where we can take risks, make mistakes, find ourselves, support each other, and grow in our erotic literacy and ecstatic engagement as a tribe. On a practical level, the phrase “Erotic Maturity” also points to the baseline of awareness needed at a peer-led event, so we could skip over some of the introductory setup designed for beginners to group eroticism. Yet I’ve come to realize that even beginners find this context helpful—it lays out the destination, which in turn gives them a breadcrumb trail for reaching erotic maturity sooner than they otherwise might have.
While some of us have explored a path of sacred sexuality alone or with a partner, creating an intimate, erotic, and sensually engaged community marked by high levels of integrity is new terrain for all of us. Because the vast majority of us did not grow up with conscious relationships, consent awareness, or group erotic wisdom, these spaces are inherently experimental and emergent.
For years, this has meant educating ourselves and others on consent and boundaries, power and influence, discernment and communication, self-care and responsibility, confidentiality and privacy, as well as functional repair systems. It’s like playing scales on an instrument—no matter how advanced we get, we always return to the basics. Because we’re dealing with something long kept in the shadows—sexuality—learning new skills is often edgy, clunky, and confusing. And sometimes we get it wrong. That’s normal. It’s also why we return to the basics: we need to learn over and over, through practice, mistakes, community reflection, and, often, repair.
It’s so worth it!
As we come together to share erotic energy, sensual touch, and ecstasy, we deepen our ability to generate, integrate, and expand our aliveness. And beyond that—we heal. Through group erotic experiences, we regulate our systems, begin to trust in the abundance of life, and transform both the personal and the collective spheres through trauma healing and pleasure bonding. From my perspective, group eroticism is one of the fastest, funnest, and most effective ways to shift our culture from one of individualism, disconnection, and loneliness to one of belonging and care.
Erotic Maturity—or Erotic Eldering—has absolutely nothing to do with age or stage of life. It is a state of heart and mind and it takes us beyond the consent basics. It invites us to stretch into excellence. In my work with both newbies and those already experienced with community-based erotic events, I encourage each of us to grow our erotic literacy, capacity, and sovereignty as we lean into the practices on this list. Wherever you are on this journey, your presence is a contribution to the whole. By practicing these skills, we build our “muscles” toward the world we all want.
22 Top Tips for Building Erotic Maturity
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All wisdom is in the body.
Embodiment practices are crucial and transformative. We’ve been divorced, cut off, and distanced from our bodies—every single one of us. Every. Single. Day. We need to keep sinking, being, feeling, and courting the body. It holds everything we need.
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Be Your Authentic Self
No matter your size, age, shape, style, gender, or color, the more of YOU you express, the more we all fall in love with you. This is how it works—it’s a law of nature. The stronger your sense of self, the more you’ll belong—not by “fitting in,” but by being the real you.
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Practice Your Yes’s and No’s
This is new and hard for most of us, most of the time. Even those with experience catch themselves saying yes when they mean no, or no when they mean yes. Practice is the only way.
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Track Your Impact
Are you turning heads everywhere you go? Do others feel safe with you or do they pull back? Are you approachable? Do you take up too much space or not enough space? We influence each other, no matter what. What is your influence on others? See if you can notice.
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Get Curious
Curiosity helps us shift out of judgment—whether of ourselves or others. It’s the main ingredient in growth and aliveness. If there were only one trait on this list, curiosity would be it.
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Learn to Receive
A foundational tenet of the Tantric path, one we must all learn and relearn: RECEIVE. Receive what life is giving you, receive your own life force, receive your own arousal, receive from the beauty of others. Do this and watch your life change.
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Move Eros in the Body
Learn how to move energy from the root and sex chakras up through the body—into the heart, third eye, hands. Up to the heavens and down to the earth. This is a core practice of erotic mastery. Surfing pleasure is a tremendous tool for healing.
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Own Your Turn-On
Attractive people can turn us on, sure—but as we mature erotically, we realize that arousal is an inside job. Own it, and erotic sovereignty is yours. Then we’re able to delight in the existence of the other as the precious soul they are, the divine incarnate, without any filters, expectations, or stories. When we own our own turn on we are able, at any moment, to be ecstatic.
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Integrity. ALWAYS.
Sexuality is perhaps the second most powerful force in the world, survival being the first. Personally and culturally, we’ve built up fear and defenses around it because it has burned us, hurt us, maybe even destroyed us. But that’s partly because we’ve been immature, illiterate, and unmentored. Integrity is essential. Move as slowly as needed to stay in integrity.
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Regulation
Understanding our triggers and how to care for them, recognizing our projections and how to withdraw them, and asking for support—these are baseline skills for erotic maturity.
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Attune to Others
This doesn’t mean rescuing or even actively supporting others. It means tuning in, with empathy, to what’s happening for others in the group. Most of us feel confused, overwhelmed, insecure, and scared around sexuality. Awareness, compassion, and understanding goes a looonggg way to greasing the wheels.
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Articulate Your Desires
Asking for what we want builds connection. It gives others the chance to meet the desire or negotiate. There’s no better way to grow erotically than embracing and articulating your desires.
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Trust the FEELD
Our birthright and blueprint is to live in ecstatic bliss. The codes for that blueprint are all around us in nature. Erotic community immerses us in that field of abundance, repatterning our cells, DNA, nervous systems, and fascia toward goodness.
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Be Generous
Learn to be generous (and gentle) with yourself and others. How? Being erotically mature means we regularly nourish ourselves, enough to give and receive without extreme hunger or depletion. Additionally, we come to know that the FEELD contains an inexhaustible wealth of what we need! And community taps into that field.
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Repair Literacy
When we get less afraid of mistakes then we can take great risks. The answer to this is REPAIR. Learning to lean in when we hurt someone is the pinnacle of maturity. It builds trust, skills, capacity, and allows the group to soar to new heights. And it builds our own confidence.
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Innocence & Eldering
Sometimes we just want to romp and play. Other times we’re called to instruct and educate. It’s important to hold both roles and the vast spectrum of our potential opens to us.
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Cultivate Wildness
Contained eroticism is the hottest of all. Letting wildness emerge because we’ve built a container with integrity and smooth edges. This is the absolute sexiest.
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Remove the Pedestal
At our core, we’re all little kids trying to get love. Some of us have more skills, power, or charm, but we’re all a mixed bag of vulnerability. Don’t give power to experts. Don’t put anyone—yourself or others—on a pedestal. Assume everyone is your peer, even and especially if you’re new, young, or in a life transition.
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Each One, Teach One
Helping another person is the hallmark of eldering, at any age. If you have more experience, reach out and engage someone newer. Like a Montessori-style learning group where older kids help the younger, erotic community is built through kind, heartful, and respectful engagement. Thank you for doing your part.
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Trauma and Attachment Informed
It’s invaluable to understand the signs of trauma and attachment distress in yourself and others. This awareness makes us essential players in any group. Is someone in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? Is there stress in a partnership? Is there a sense of threat? We’re all learning together.
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Co-Creation
When we show up as co-parents of the project, we’re far more likely to expand ourselves and the container. Think of it this way: the group is the child, and we are all its parents. When we assume the environment is not therapeutic but peer-created, we each contribute to the safety and resilience of the container without relying on an outside force.
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Advocate for Pleasure
Advocate and initiate pleasure, fun, bliss, and creativity in more and more of the group endeavors. Use pleasure as a compass. Can meetings be pleasurable? Can work parties be pleasurable? Can conflict be pleasurable? Pleasure is the greatest tool for healing at our disposal. Let it rewire all the systems in ourselves and our collective.
The outcome of practicing these traits, skills, and behaviors is nothing short of revolutionary: We begin to rewire our brains and bodies for deeper connection. We start living with open hearts, thriving bodies, and flowing eros. Once we get the hang of that, we regularly attract healthy, nourishing, and pleasurable experiences, we increase our emotional resilience, and we find ourselves in secure and dynamic attachments. As we resonate with others who are also building these capacities, we soon discover that we are embedded in networks of beloveds, forming communities rooted in safety, empowerment, and delight.
This is, without a doubt, heaven on earth.
