BALANCE sat down with Lucy, founder of Chaya retreats and Grace, Sexual Healing Guide to discuss their upcoming retreat, the importance of sexual wellbeing, and how to set boundaries.

CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELVES AND WHAT YOU DO?

Lucy

I’ve been working within the retreat space as a transformational healing environment for 9 years. I see retreats as a really potent place for joy, healing, transformation and connection. With each retreat I set an intention and each one has a different theme so whatever that is, it’s something that I personally want to work on, and I invite people on that retreat with me.

I know I represent a lot of women when I say that there’s a lot of work to do when it comes to connecting to a healthy sense of sexual wellbeing and that’s not necessarily to do with a specific trauma or experience, it’s just knowing that I could be more empowered and there’s more to embody. When I started to share Grace’s work on my retreats, every single woman on the retreat came on high alert. A retreat is like a portal, it can cause all sorts of shifts, transformations, healing, creativity, so to combine that with what Grace does is amazing. 

Grace

I work in women’s sexual healing. I describe myself as a sexual healing guide, and the way I do that is that I have clients and I tend to work with them in person, doing physical somatic sexual healing sessions or I work in a therapeutic and coaching manner. When I work with another woman I want there to be a level of transformation within the experience. 

I’ve created spaces for women to allow them to talk about what’s really important to them and to create transformational experiences, rituals and ceremonies which will ignite something within them, which means that the woman they came into the space as isn’t the same person that leaves.

Me and Lucy came together with our shared passion and love to bring together a wealth of knowledge and understanding and the sexual healing in order to reclaim these pieces of us as women that we’ve perhaps repressed and bring that transformation together. 

FOR THOSE OF US WHO HAVEN’T COME ACROSS THE TERM BEFORE, HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE SEXUAL WELLBEING?

Grace

On a practical level, it’s looking after our physical body and taking care of our sexual health. For me, sexual wellbeing is really about addressing the emotional and spiritual side of sexuality. When I say the emotional side, I mean that most of us have grown up with a type of education around sex which would have come from our caregivers, school, who we grew up with, and also the blueprint of our first sexual partners and those after that. Nobody is actually taught about how to connect sexually and how to get to know one’s body in an intimate manner to ensure that what they are experiencing is healing and empowering. 

I think of sexual wellbeing in the context of the emotional sense. I almost see it as the foundation that we’ve been given about sexuality and during the work that I do with clients, and what will be happening on this retreat, it’s diving into that foundation and finding the areas that don’t empower us to have a really beautiful connection. We need to look at the foundation and unearth the things that don’t serve and pull that out, heal anything that is tender or triggering around sexuality and begin to look at what we want from our sexual experiences.

HOW DO YOU ADVISE PEOPLE ON HOW TO SET BOUNDARIES WHEN ON A RETREAT?

Lucy

Within my retreats, it’s a very sacred space. We always have an opening and closing ceremony which is an act of honouring the importance of safety and trust within that space. Irrespective of the theme of the retreat, whenever you create a space that is inviting people to transform and heal, it’s a completely unknown and mysterious space that you’re creating. We make it clear that everything is confidential, we’re on a journey together and we support each other. 

Grace

In retreat settings, we all sit in a circle and before any circle, for me there are set “rules” and aspects that I like to call in including self-responsibility, being able to sit with your feelings and judge if you should share or not. When you feel something bubbling up, that’s the time to open up about something that’s come through. The more you can express and share, the more healing will come through the experience. Without sharing, you can cause more harm, whereas sharing in a safe setting allows healing to happen. Everything that is shared on our retreats is shared in a safe space and experiences are not shared with anyone else outside of the retreat.

To join Lucy and Grace on their upcoming retreat, The Temple of Yoni: Transformation Through Pleasure in Ibiza, click here. For £150 off quote BALANCE upon booking.