Articles
Read articles and blog posts written by Betty Dodson, Carlin Ross, Bodysex Facilitators, and guest writers
Pleasure at End-of-Life
There are so many things I love about Betty Dodson. She dedicated most of her life to teaching women how to experience pleasure and orgasm. The impact of her work speaks for itself. Betty has connected countless women with their bodies, and her teachings continue...
Speak Your Mind, State Your Pleasure
Betty’s mother told her, “Betty Ann, never be afraid to speak your mind.” Our coaches wrote about their journey with speaking up. Browse the links below to read the full post.Dear Ex-Boyfriends, Dear Younger Self "Now that I’ve found you, my younger selves, I want you...
Bodysex Rituals Are Exercises in Shared Vulnerability
Carrying the legacy of an icon like Betty Dodson can be crushing at times. I’m representing Betty’s life’s work while trying to incorporate my experience taking Bodysex virtual during covid. There are complexities in the repression of female sexuality that are new,...
Finding My Voice
Art by Betty DodsonFor most of my life, I didn’t feel comfortable speaking up for myself. I was raised to be a “good girl,” to be “seen and not heard”, to “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” My own thoughts, feelings, and wants were diminished,...
Teenage Orgies
As a child, I was painfully shy. I barely ever spoke in school and had only a handful of friends. I wanted so badly to break out of my shell, but I didn’t know how I could drastically change my entire personality when everyone already knew me as being quiet and...
Masturbation is Where I Find Myself
Speaking my mind has always been a really hard thing to do. Not only because I feared what everyone would think every time I spoke my truth, but also because I couldn’t hear my own truth. My whole life I saw my external world as more important, more prominent than my...
Dear Ex-Boyfriends, Dear Younger Self
Dear ex boyfriends, lovers, et al, I have some things to say that might be hard for you to hear, but I can’t hold them and not speak about them anymore. Your lack of listening hurt me. And it bothers me that you let the words “calm down,” “too emotional,” and “not...
Reclaiming My Sexual Body
I started my journey into Bodysex in 2022. Before then I was engaging with the Dodson&Ross website for a few years. My career as a dance artist, actress and teacher spans over sixteen years. In 2011 I began making work focused on female empowerment which played...
Menstruation
Our coaches wrote about their relationship with menstruation. Browse the links below to read the full post.Shedding Menstrual Shame in the Sacred Space of Bodysex "I laid back vulva towards the circle and warned everyone again that they’d be seeing a lot of blood as I...
Shedding Menstrual Shame in the Sacred Space of Bodysex
I stared at my period app calendar, frustrated that either it wasn’t right or my body wasn’t. I was supposed to have my period by now, in fact I’d intentionally planned this Bodysex circle so that it would be just past the heavy days. Every time I went to the bathroom...
Who is Afraid of Blood?
Read Monica's post in French “Monica? Are you listening to me? Could you please repeat what I just said?" – Yes, I do listen. You explained that the verb ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ are auxiliaries in French and… "Ok, Monica, that will be all, thank you." – May I go to the...
Blood Everywhere
With my pants around my ankles, I squatted low in the 3-stalled corporate office restroom. My butt cheeks just a few inches from the floor, I pressed my PC muscles down and pulled the tip of my menstrual cup. Because squatting shortens the vaginal canal, it was then...
Blood Medicine
My understanding of the ways to connect myself with the Earth through my moon blood has been cobbled together from my own experimenting, errors, and random bits of information collected throughout my life. And I wonder how many fragments will equal a whole. How many...
My Menstruation Story
Art by Betty Dodson My mother told me about menstruation at an early age so I had been expecting it to come anytime. In fact, I was eager to get it and looked at it as a right of passage. I was 12.5 years old, sitting in my sixth grade classroom, when I was plagued...
My First Bodysex Experience
In April of 2019 I attended my first Bodysex Workshop. The months leading up to the workshop had been a whirlwind of emotions. In my personal life I was unknowingly at the very beginning of the end of my 15-year relationship. In my professional life I had...
A Love Letter to Moon Flow, Crones, and to Myself
My blood leaked around the edges, destroying countless pairs of underwear, spotting my pants, staining not just my clothes but my car’s seat, my friend’s couch, my good living room chair (years later, when I finally had a living room and enough time had passed for me...
Red Wings
When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. Whoever...
Busy and Disconnected from My Body
This is the most embarrassing story. And maybe even a little TMI (too much info) but if you stick with me there’s a point. Rewind to 2010. My days were fast-paced. At that time, my to-do list was never-ending. I’d earned two promotions at work so I was part of the...
Circles of Women are Powerful, Healing Spaces
These past few months have been hard. I want to blame it on perimenopause. I want to disconnect from my body, disassociate from the flight response building in my limbs. I think that’s why we scrape orgasm off our plate: it allows us to live without feeling, live...
Fantasy
Our coaches wrote about their relationship with fantasy. Browse the links below to read the full post.Life Is Just a Fantasy "That’s what fantasy is for, really, to help you push your self-imposed limits and find out who you really are. I’ve realized that I’m at a...
My First Bodysex Experience
When I arrived at Menla Center that Friday afternoon, I was tired yet excited. I drove all the way down from Quebec—a seven-hour straight drive to Upstate New York. For the first time, I crossed the frontier alone behind the wheel. “Is this your vehicle, Ma’am,” asked...
My Dirty Mind
Art by Betty DodsonHe smelled like gingerbread. We made small talk as he prepared me for bed. Then he instructed me to lay down on my back and get comfortable. He pulled the covers over my body and tucked me in. “If you need anything just call out my name,” his deep...
Fantasy Fosters my Self-Acceptance
Art by Betty Dodson As I ground my pubic mound down onto my partners I could feel myself getting closer and closer to orgasm. Strangely enough at that same moment my mind began wandering and started to really focus in on the guy I’d recently begun befriending. I could...
Normalizing My Fantasies
The same week in 1973 that Cosmo published an article stating that women were scientifically incapable of having sexual fantasies, My Secret Garden was released to the public. The book is a compilation of women’s fantasies. Nancy Friday, the author/compiler, grouped...