Freeing oneself of sexual obsessions to access soul-deep intimacy you won’t want to return from
Sex has the potential to be the most sacred and religious act. Through sex, we can touch God. We can feel God. Sense God. Hear God.
This is beyond anything, any desire, any pleasure. This is a type of pleasure that will never be put into words.
This is what everyone is truly seeking in sex, somewhere deep within.
But once one has touched that level of pleasure, there is no going back. All the other pleasures become uninteresting.
It is what gives the flavor to the whole world. To life.
Can I ever get rid of a fetish or kink?
But even though it is possible to reach a certain level of spiritual sex mixed or alternated with obsessions, the type of sex where we truly touch God remains locked somehow. The more obsessions we have, the less available we are for the divine to enter us. And worse : if one is able to touch God while retaining obsessions, the obsessions energetically « eat » this experience and grow stronger, into a more double-sided way of being, teared in between the longing for the divine, mostly unreachable, and the craving for desires, to which we feel somehow slave to.
This double cristallisation causes a lot of suffering because one is teared in between two opposite forces that cannot truly mix together. It’s like having a foot on the boat and the other foot on the land. One feels teared in between those two cravings, yet never able to fully meet any of these.
Sex is the door to heaven and hell
Obsessions are one of the expressions of that hellish energy within. They pull us so strongly, and they make us forget everything, even our soul, in a soul-like sensation.
When we are finally satisfied through them, they leave us with something bitter. An attachment. Loosing one’s wings and falling back onto the bare earth.
So if you feel uneasy with your fetishes or kinks and you feel stuck with them, unable to get rid of them yet feeling like they somehow pull your energy down, this article is for you.
By the way, I’m Lydie Vachon, Sexual Transmutation Teacher and Coach. I’m also a yoga teacher and a former Chinese medicine practitioner.
So depending on their nature, sexual obessessions and fetishes can cause unnecessary suffering that yet feels absolutely necessary while pulling us down into a dark hole, keeping us away from the path of real life fulfillment, as our sexual (aka creative) energy is oriented towards satisfaction rather than growth and development of life-purpose.
Trying to get rid of a sexual obsession (think kink or fetishes) can often feel impossible. Most people will actually tell you that it is, and the best medicine is to fully accept it and learn to live with it. Is it really so? Or is the world becoming more and more kinky and obsessed by sex since the birth of pornography? It is hard to tell as these things were quite hidden in the past while they have become much more public nowadays. But the question can still be raised : have we become generally more enslaved to our sexual energy in the past century?
A bit of History
Let’s take a look at Classical Chinese Medicine theory. According to the classical branch (oral tradition, daoism and classical texts), disease (the broad term encompassing all sorts of disorders in the body, emotions, mind and spirit) is an energy that enters us and has its particular behavior within us. Disease energy (which they call « Xie Qi » translated also as « pathogenic energy ») is absorbed or created within by all sorts of mechanisms : what we eat, breathe, see, hear, touch, taste, smell. The effects of the climate on our body (« cold » energy for example can seep in and cause stiffness, inflammation…), the distorted perceptions of other people can impact us as we receive these impressions by our senses as reality. The energy associated to whatever experiences we’ve had that is unprocessed may linger within, change form or be excreted by the body. It can be in the form of an emotion (and the hormones and blood markers related to it) or a specific toxin or biological disruptor. The body is always seeking homeostasis thus tries to expel these pathogenic energies within, but when there is too much for what it can handle, it either goes latent or stays stuck in the body while not being fully latent.
The Chinese have studied this latency mechanism so well, that they even have described the progression of pathology pathway from the arrival of the toxic energy outside of the body (through the 5 senses, eating or breathing), down to our very depths where it is kept hidden from ourselves in order not to cause too much damage to our functioning.
That said, this pathway ends in the 8 particular meridian which contain the sexual energy. This means that whatever our bodies have not been able to deal with, expel or suppress ends up in our sexual energy (which also means it ends up in our genes and becomes intergenerational). Thus these pathogenic energies at this level will distort the natural sexual energy and make it an expression of this pathogen, whatever it may be. The problem is : this level is the deepest layer within ourselves. It’s the level of our deep nature, of our real identity behind all masks, of our « Being ». Everything there is written in our genes. It is (almost) unchangeable. But you guessed it… it IS changeable if these pathogens were able to seep all the way down there and make themselves become who we are.
This is why most people’s self-awareness of these sexual preferences will tell you that there is no workaround and the only medicine is to accept it. This is true in the perspective of a certain inability of self-discovery to this level of depth. But when one is able to reach that depth within oneself and sincerely study what has been altered in order to fully understand it, there is potential for resolution. The hidden energies become more conscious, and slowly can make their way back up towards the more conscious layers of the being, in order to be transformed or expelled completely. This is what ancient Alchemy was describing as « purification of the materia prima ».
Now, how does one do this?
This obviously goes beyond this blog article, but I will orientate towards the main pillars on this work and steps on this transformation journey.
What we must know (and this is so clearly shown by empirical evidence, over and over), is that repression (I.e. judging it, wanting to change it, etc.) will only make it worse.
There is no change without real humility of being where we are now being honest with ourselves, and without heartfelt curiosity. And there is no change without help. The help doesn’t need to come from someone else, but some force must come in the way to make up for our own shortcomings. This is a work done for oneself, done because one is called to this transformation, as a form of self-love. But this goes beyond that. This is a work that is related to others in one way or another. To our genes. The ones we will pass on. To our future lives. To everyone we have sex with (because we exchange these constituants which are within our sexual energies when we share sexual intimacy with someone). To whomever we may influence consciously or unconsciously by being who we are in relation to these pathogenic factors experienced as unhealthy sexual preferences (but that also have other expressions). When one becomes aware of the interrelation of all things and one’s role in it, not from a guilt or shame perspective, but from a love perspective, then one finds a real wish to make this journey.
Once this sincere wish is found in the heart, there is a possibility for change. But it will require work, and this work will cease to be effective whenever the sincere wish stops to be felt, as it is often replaced by the mind wanting to change. Only the sincere heart can walk this path.
We’ll get back to the exact methods later.
First, how does a kink develops concretely?
Pleasure energy mixed with poison
Sexual energy is pleasure energy. Whatever we do with it, even the most harmful things, will always be mixed with the pleasure energy somehow, even if one doesn’t feel it at the moment. This is toxic and pathological pleasure, but there is some flavor of it nevertheless. There are many cases where someone who has received abuse which was felt as extremely painful or unpleasant then developed a taste for it, as it was given in the context of at least some sexual pleasure. This gets the signals mixed in one’s body and the two becomes intertwined together. It is, so to say, an acquired sexual preference from sexual contact with someone that contaminated us with that specific energy.
Identity energy mixing with another person’s
Another way one can get contaminated by specific energies sexually is simply through intercourse with someone who has those tendencies, even if they are not acted out. In many ancient philosophies, the sexual act was seen as a powerful exchange of energies between two partners. It is said that the partners exchange through intercourse their energies (think one of them is burned out and the other has full energy - the burned out partner will be energized and the energetic one will feel fatigued), their emotional and mental tendencies, and even their karma. They must learn to bear a bit of the weight that their partner has on their shoulders in order to truly make a partnership in the world. This makes total sense in the context of a monogamous long term relationship, but if you start exchanging deep stuff, karmic or toxic, with anyone and everyone, you can easily start to accumulate a lot of heaviness and toxicity. And since the sexual energy IS the energy of who we are deep down, our genetic energy, this definitely starts to change us, and can be felt in our sexual preferences. In this case, we have been contaminated by mixing our identity energy with someone else’s who had it within them, latent or not, even if not expressed.
Unprocessed experiences
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, whatever is unprocessed and unexpelled goes latent and hides within the body until the day it will be possible to detoxify it. This takes many forms in the body : body weight, varicose veins, nodules and tumors, and it can even hide in the joints. Once the body is unable to hold it there, it tries to send it deeper where it may be easier to hold it latent. But the deeper it goes, the more it becomes mixed with who we are. When it arrives to our sexual energy level (the « Yuan » level, in Chinese medicine), it becomes mixed with our identity and it definitely expresses as who we are. It’s like a distorted version of who we are, because of something unprocessed that made its way unto our very nature. Once it gets there, it is very hard to detoxify it because it is so deep and unconscious, and so tied to who we are. But this is also part of our life’s mission, to detoxify the energies that are within our deepest nature (which is also our sexual energy) in order to keep only our pure essence. This requires self-discovery through a mix of experience and restrain, and a lot of self-observation.
Unmet needs
Lastly, desires are a distortion of needs. They are from something true within, that has its purpose and place, but that is expressed in an hypnotic way. Thus it is not the best way to feed our need. But the need is deep, mostly unconscious, and because it is buried and not seen consciously, the particular behavior or desire is the way for this need to be expressed. As nothing is completely good or bad, this kink, however problematic it may be in one’s life, is also doing something good for us. It is feeding an unmet unseen need. But it comes from a real need. Something that is truly important in our development. But instead of supporting our development, it gets us stuck in the distorted expression which serves the need but only partially. It can never serve our need fully, because it is not seen nor understood fully. Only when one sees the full root of something this thing can dissolve, just like the plant dies when we dig down its root. The kink is the manifestation of something that is asking to be seen and understood, in order to be transformed. But if one only indulges in it, it keeps feeding on the hypnotic expression, and never goes into deeper self-discovery. One has to really inquire within to be able to find out what it truly means. I’m not talking about psychotherapy, but the simple ability to sincerely question oneself and be truly honestly with oneself. There needs to be an heartfelt urge to understand, which brings forth a particular type of self-observation which is very conducive to deep nself-discovery.
So what does the actual transformation process look like?
All these things may help on its own, but they are not of the pick and choose kind.
They work together as a system.
The middle ground : not repressing, not indulging
First, if I’m not supposed to repress, do I need it to feel satisfied and fulfilled? What happens if I let it go of this desire?
The line between letting go and repression is very thin. We do not want to feed it, because it gives it energy and even though it calms it on the moment, it usually comes back and builds itself stronger time after time. So there need to be an effort not to indulge, not to feed that energetic pathway within. But how can we do this without repressing it? The key is to feel the pain of wanting without satisfying it, and observing what is speaking from deep within through that pain. Trying to relax into that non-satisfactory state allows to sustain it for longer, and to be able to notice small patterns more clearly. What we can truly see will change form. Find the pleasure of the pain of not having this desire met. (Yes, there can be a pleasure to non-satisfaction!). Do not distract yourself from it because by bringing the energy elsewhere, it will often repress the desire at the same time (and surge back stronger later).
But yes, sometimes, it’s also useful to bring that energy back into something else that you cherish and feel pleasure with (like someone you love, something you love to develop within yourself, etc.). It has to be something that is not that easy (because the easiest ways to avoid feeling are our escape routes). It need to require some effort, to bring that creative energy into a pathway where it is not used to travel yet very much needed (something you are not used to do but you wish to do more).
And of course, help yourself a little! Create healthier lifestyle habits. Stay away from what triggers you into that desire (places like bars, add porn blockers on your computer, etc.) unless you feel completely disconnected from it and quite strong and you want to test yourself or work on a deeper layer of it. Create the habit of talking about your aim frequently with someone who cares and whom you don’t judged from. Develop healthy habits to discharge the excess sexual energy that accumulates in the pelvis and troubles the mind with fantasy : do a lot of physical activity, get yourself busy, see a lot of friends, etc. These tools will become alternative ways to cope with life’s pressure instead of the sexual release.
The power of relationships
Sexual energy is a polarized energy. We are built polarized, incomplete. Our sexual organs are the living demonstration of that : the vagina is a space, a hole within, something missing in the woman. The penis is an extra part of flesh, out of the body, something of excess in the man. Biologically, the sexual organs are looking for each other. They are built with a high charge of energy with a highly sensitive nervous system, and they are built to meet their opposites. They are built to give us feelings, and to anchor us and calm us down. This highly charged energy gets anchored through union with the opposite sexual organ, as long as this union is felt harmoniously within the rest of the nervous system (the mind and the heart).
That makes the sexual union very powerful in anchoring an energy that could otherwise obsess us. Regular sex with one’s partner is extremely powerful in regulating these cravings, although it will not fully fix them. The problem is that when we have strong obsessions, our relationships may have been suffering and become less nourishing.
We need to heal these relationships. To do the work needed in order to harmonize our energies with our partner : trying to understand the other, being transparent and hopeful, being vulnerable and sincere, choosing love when it’s harder, being fully honest with oneself… Intimacy through honesty is food for the soul. If the soul is undernourished, there is a calling that will take darker tones. Work on beautifying your relationships day after day and it will bring you back sooner or later. This will allow you to have soul satisfying sex with someone you deeply love and develop intimacy with them. And this is one of the most regulating force one can be in contact with. It will do a huge part of the healing and will pull you away from your obsessions, because you will feel deeply nourished and satisfied within. The more love in sex, the more oxytocin will be released. By focusing on this, we rebuild our oxytocin receptors which have been numbed by avoidance.
And if you want to heal your relationships, you also need to be honest with yourself about all unprocessed traumas with your soul’s longings : with God, with your own destiny and fate, with the opposite sex, etc. Trying to find meaning in what went wrong. How can these things teach you now to get closer to your heart’s desires? How can these traumas be teachers and tools rather than blocks? You need to contemplate on this and find your own answers, bit by bit.
Plus, if you don’t have a love/sexual partner at the moment, you can still support the anchoring of your energy through simple friendships and non-sexual relationships. This also releases oxytocin and teaches us about love, which in return helps us channel our energy better.
Self-discovery all the way
What is not seen will never dissolve. Only by attentive self-observation one can, piece by piece, dig down the root of a particular behavior. Once the root is found, there is a deep sense of relief and suddenly one feels like one has the choice. The power to choose for oneself comes out of full awareness of what was pulling us in the direction we were pulled to.
In order to dig that root, one needs to look within not with the mind (trying to understand so that it can « control » or « fix » the problem), but with a sincere heart (just honestly wanting to see what is so that it can give love and tend better to what is needed). The seeking of the heart is that part of us which remembers what is calling us and chooses love, and to believe in it even when it seems impossible.
With that very heart, the self-discovery process is very different. It is not an analysis, but a listening. A contemplation. An inquiry with an open question. Answers come by pieces. Every piece is contemplated and brings a deep joy, like a small piece of puzzle that is meaningful to be found.
Through that self-discovery approach, you need to inquire about your deep unmet needs. What is this kink truly wanting, at the very bottom? What is the deep need there? Keep asking and allowing yourself not knowing the answer until the answer starts revealing itself to you, bit by bit.
Look at the unprocessed experiences. Something you have lived that created a belief, a wall or a fear in you. Something that you have lived and you still feel resentment from. That you could not find meaning for. Look for the meaning. Whenever we fully process a life experience, this experience changes form and it becomes our greatest teacher in being a better human. We feel deeply grateful for it. They have taught us how to love better, somehow. So go for these bitter experiences, and be truly honest with yourself. Of course they may not be a source of gratitude. Just be honest. And be hopeful that there is a meaning and you can find it through contemplation and sincere seeking. And that once you will find it, it will all make sense.
Observe yourself and your inner world A LOT : feelings and thoughts that are triggered by situations, or that trigger themselves urges. Try to understand them. Why do they have this effect? Keep looking until you find another piece in the puzzle, then another… and at some point, all these little observations will all come together.
Be careful of orgasm
I know that’s a weird thing to say, but orgasm pulls the energy down towards identification and obsession. On the spot, it brings release and peace. But afterwards, the energetic channel pulling the energy towards loss gets stronger, and the mind becomes more identified to this type of pleasure and seeks more and more, and it escalates. The energy pathways downwards become stronger, and the energy pathways upwards become more blocked, thus bringing pressure of the sexual energy stuck in the pelvis. It can either accumulate and cause cravings, or go down and be released. That is a really sad way to deal with one’s creative life-force energy.
Practice relaxing and not seeking that kind of release but more of a sexual pleasure that fills your whole being and makes you feel more loving and relaxed WHILE being sexually stimulated (thus not accumulating it in the pelvis). The more it accumulates down there, the more it will harass the mind and make us feel a craving for release. When it doesn’t accumulate, there is no craving, just love and deep deep soul pleasure and nourishment. If the transmutation channels are not opened and the orgasm channel is pulling the energy down, one feels so much pressure that it is most of the time stronger than us. Practicing bringing it the other way up will help you tremendously.
Karma will pull you down
Make sure never to harm others with sex, because the more wrong you do (even unconsciously) to other through sex, the more blocked you will feel yourself from your own sexual slaveries and sufferings.
Watching porn is a unobvious way to harm others for example. Most of us feel like this is very benign way to satisfy oneself. But the truth (and research shows it more and more) is that the whole sex industry is built on abuse and sex trafficking, and there is no way to know for sure that the sexual products we consume (porn, escorts, sexual massages…) are truly consensual, even if they seem like it.
And of course, be very mindful of real consent. Real consent is not so much about what the person says or what they face looks like when they say yes. It’s something deeper that sometimes even the person is unaware of. We need to learn to read people in more subtle cues. And to have truly honest conversations, bringing to the table the very things that seem to support illusory consent. This will open the door for the other who may feel trapped within to fully choose what they wish for themselves.
Whatever karma you have accumulated through your sexual behaviors needs to be payed. Pay your karma by helping others the best you can without judging if this or that is a « good » way of helping. Just love people you cross along your way and put their needs first, putting yourself of service. It can be a homeless person, a sad friend, etc. The more you work on this, the more things will get easier for you, because we are all interconnected.
Give generously of whatever you can give. If you are poor, give a little. If you have more, give more. Give to whomever crosses your path in need. Don’t overthink it. Give your time when you don’t feel like it. Give what you have for those in need, and higher forces will give to you for your own need which you are not able to deal with on your own.
We ALL need help
Help can take many forms. But it is not optional. If you have been able to transform and truly create lasting change in your life completely on your own, you have been helped despite being aware of it by a force or something, in one way or another. Especially with sexual energy, which is by nature stronger than us, we need help. We all do. That’s why couples are written in biology.
Seek that help in whatever way seems right, without causing any harm. Let your heart pray (prayer is not a thing of the mind or words, just a sincere wish in total vulnerability). Reach out for a friend or a group of people that can understand.
There is a journey ahead but let me tell you that the end goal is just a bonus. Whatever you are seeking by reading this article, if you decide to walk this path seriously, every step will come with its own hidden gifts. Some of them so valuable that they will feel like even more valuable than the end goal you are seeking. So don’t worry about how long it will take to walk that path. Just walk it, step by step, day after day, effort after effort. This is an effort of love, not of the mind. Love makes everything easier. Remember what you are seeking ; not with your mind, but with your heart. Your heart loves that very thing. This love is fuel and it will give you the strength to go through struggles you would have never gone through otherwise.
And on the other side of this journey, you will be so grateful that you didn’t remain in that sexual expression, even if it didn’t seem like a big deal.
This is the beauty of this kind of work. You transform yourself through the inner work required to get out of a situation. But along the way you discover tiny treasures that sum up. So much, that at the end, when you are out of the situation, it feels like this is just the cherry on the top of everything else you harvested within from this sincere work.
Don’t be afraid of this work, even if it seems like a mountain sometimes. It’s realistic. It’s meant to be. Life will help you if you are sincere.
And if you wish to have some help from me, here are the options :
Coaching / Astrology & self discovery
I also offer two online programs : Transmutation - The Art of Sexual Transmutation (1 year long program, doors closed at the moment bur you can write me in private to put your name on the waitlist @ lydie@essencedao.com)
Align - The Art of Self-Discovery (year-long membership, doors closed but you can also message me to stay updated)
Lydie Vachon
Sexual Transmutation Teacher and Coach
Yoga teacher
Former Chinese Medicine Practionionner
