The Case for Coming Home to Yourself

There’s a song in the musical Hair that I loved singing as a kid because it led to pearl clutching and gasps. It asks why words like masturbation are treated as ‘nasty.’ Decades later, not much has changed. So let’s have a conversation. Not the awkward middle-school health class version, not the porn-saturated version, and definitely not the one whispered about like a dirty secret. The real conversation. The one about why touching yourself matters, and not just because it feels good.

Self-pleasure is one of the most powerful tools you have for knowing yourself, healing yourself, and transforming your inner landscape. And yet most of us were taught to treat it like something to be ashamed of, rushed through, or never spoken about in polite company.

I’m not polite company. So let’s talk about it.

Your Body Is Not a Stranger

Here’s something I see constantly in my work as a taboo doula: people who are completely disconnected from their own bodies. They can list their responsibilities, their roles, their obligations. But ask them what they actually like? What makes their breath catch? What kind of touch makes their toes curl versus what they’ve just been tolerating? Silence. Awkward silence.

Self-pleasure is how you learn. Not from a book, not from a partner’s expectations, not from whatever algorithm-curated thirst-trap the internet thinks you should want. From yourself. Your own hands. Your own curiosity. Your own reactions.

When you take the time to explore your own body without performance, without a goal, without somebody else’s experience to manage, you start to build a map. You learn where you hold tension. Where you feel nothing when you expected to feel something. Where sensation surprises you. You learn what “yes” actually feels like in your body, and that knowledge doesn’t stay in the bedroom. It changes how you make decisions, set boundaries, and move through the world.

Knowing your own body isn’t indulgent. It’s a foundational need.

What You Won’t Let Out Will Eat You Alive

Grief, rage, frustration, loneliness, the weight of caregiving, the exhaustion of performing okayness when nothing is okay. We carry so much in our bodies. We clench our jaws, lock our hips, hold our breath, and wonder why we can’t sleep.

Self-pleasure is release. And I don’t just mean orgasm, though let’s not underestimate what a good orgasm can do for a nervous system (and the pelvic-floor) that’s been in fight-or-flight for months. I mean the act of giving yourself permission to feel something that isn’t pain. To let the body shake, cry, laugh, make noise, be messy and uncontrolled in a world that demands constant composure.

And while we’re on the subject of what orgasms actually do for you: they strengthen your pelvic floor (yes, really, every contraction is a workout you didn’t have to think about). They release oxytocin and endorphins, which reduce cortisol and lower pain perception. They improve sleep. They boost immune function. They increase blood flow to tissues that most of us neglect until something goes wrong. When I had my hysterectomy two years ago, my amazing gynecologist told me to have as many orgasms as possible to speed up my healing and strengthen both the abdominals that surgery had cut into and the pelvic floor that the uterus was no longer helping to support. He wasn’t wrong. My pain was less than I’d been warned it would be, and I don’t even drip when I sneeze anymore. This isn’t fringe wellness talk. This is basic physiology that nobody brings up because we’re too busy being weird about acknowledging our own bodies.

There’s a reason people sometimes cry after an orgasm and it’s not because something is wrong. It’s because the body finally found an opening to let go of what it’s been holding. That release isn’t a side effect. It’s the whole point.

If you’re in grief, if you’re in the thick of caregiving, if you’re carrying something so heavy you’ve stopped noticing the weight: your body still knows. And sometimes the kindest thing you can do is give it a way to exhale.

Ritual, Magic, and the Energy You Carry

This is where I’ll lose the skeptics, and that’s fine. They can come back when they’re ready.

Self-pleasure, practiced with intention, is one of the most potent forms of personal ritual available to you. It doesn’t require tools, a teacher, or anyone’s permission. It requires presence.

Think about what happens during arousal: your awareness narrows, your analytical mind quiets, your body floods with sensation and energy. That’s not just biology. That’s a state of consciousness. And what you do with that state matters.

You can use that energy to release what no longer serves you. To call in what you need. To grieve. To celebrate. To reconnect with parts of yourself you’ve abandoned. When you bring intention to self-pleasure, you’re not just having an experience. You’re moving energy. You’re shifting something in your field that conscious thoughts alone can’t reach.

This isn’t purple fluffy bunny woo woo bullshit. This is ancient. Virtually every mystical tradition on the planet has recognized sexual energy as sacred, transformative, and powerful. We’re the weird ones for pretending it’s just friction and dopamine.

The Invitation

You don’t need to be in a relationship. You don’t need a reason. You don’t need to justify it to anyone, least of all yourself.

You need a body. You have one.

Start there. Start with curiosity instead of performance. Start with “what do I actually feel” instead of “what am I supposed to feel.” Start with the radical act of treating your own pleasure as worthy of your time and attention. Start with seducing yourself.

Because the truth is, nobody else can do this work for you. Nobody else can teach you what your body knows. And nobody else’s permission matters more than your own.

Come home to yourself. Literally.