How Sexological Bodywork Woke Up My Skin

Stirring sensation where I’d gone numb

Let’s start by celebrating the body’s largest and most underappreciated organ: the skin. It’s not just a biological barrier between self and world—it’s a sensory powerhouse, equipped with millions of specialized receptors that translate pressure, temperature, and texture into electrical signals, firing up the spine to the brain in milliseconds. Fingertips can distinguish textures as fine as one-thousandth the width of a human hair. There are thermoreceptors for heat, nociceptors for pain, and still others that register the difference between a light graze and firm pressure. The skin doesn’t just feel. It knows. It’s wicked smart.

***

Robyn, the sexological bodyworker with whom I’d scheduled my first hands-on session, was about to teach my skin a new language—one spoken in texture, pressure, and pause. She and I had already had four virtual meetings, but I was nervous, unable to imagine what might transpire. In the treatment room of her modest San Rafael office, the lights were low, the heated table dressed with a crisp white sheet. I undressed completely, folded my clothes neatly on the chair, and slid my underwear into my pants pocket. I climbed onto the table, face up, and slipped under the sheet. She raised the volume on the music—ambient, with a steady rhythm—and the room shifted. Warmer now. Closer.

Robyn’s hands hovered over my body and then stopped at my throat. I could feel the warmth radiating from her palms.

In one of our virtual sessions, she’d given me a primer on the body’s chakras—energy centers aligned along the spine, from its base to the crown of the head. Each corresponds to a specific area of the body and governs emotional, physical, and energetic functions. These centers can become blocked, overactive, or underactive. Breath is one of the primary tools for awakening, balancing, or unblocking them.

“Breathe into the throat chakra,” she instructed now. The throat chakra governs expression—not just speech, but even silent acts of saying what’s true.

I’d talked to Robyn about my husband—what happened back in New York—but only in broad strokes. I had a way of flattening things, smoothing them out. Now, with her hands hovering over my throat, a familiar tightness returned. “It feels like there’s a big hairball caught in there,” I told her.

“Let’s add some additional sound to the breath,” she replied. These vocalizations, she explained, would help release stuck energy from all the things gone unsaid. She encouraged me to sigh, moan, hum, or make any spontaneous sounds that sought expression. So I did.

“Try this,” she said. “Cha! Nice and loud, cha!”

“Cha!” I called out repeatedly. But whatever was caught in my throat was stuck fast. It required not just cha! but feral, guttural growls.

“That’s good,” she encouraged. “Feel the vibration in your throat and then let it resonate throughout your entire body.”

All that breathing and grunting flushed my body with oxygen, reaching tight, hidden places I hadn’t known were clenched and flooding them with an unfamiliar spaciousness. It felt like I was being rinsed from the inside out.

Robyn’s hands then came to rest gently on my shoulders. “I’d like to begin with a sensate session.” A sensate session awakens the senses through intentional, non-goal-oriented touch. “Your only job is to notice. I want you to allow your skin to be curious. That’s it.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. My mind was already curious, and I trusted that my skin would follow suit.

“If at any point you want to say ‘stop,’ or ‘pause,’ you can. You don’t need to explain why. This is part of your work, right?—speaking your truth.”

I nodded again. I was not accustomed to redirecting someone’s touch, but I’d try.

“May I blindfold you?” Robyn asked. “It will help you feel things more clearly.”

“Yes,” I replied.

The absence of light made every sound louder. I heard Robyn arranging objects on the counter beside the table. The pulse of the music took shape in my chest.

Then, positioned at the foot of the table, she began gently tugging the sheet, drawing it downward along the length of my body with such a slow, deliberate motion that I could feel the precise moment each new patch of skin met the air. The cotton clung just slightly as it moved, awakening every nerve ending.

“Our skin is being touched constantly, but what do we actually feel?” mused Robyn.

She then began gliding something cool and smooth—a polished stone?—down my sternum, under my breasts, then along my inner thighs. The contact was clean and strangely calming. Robyn’s pace was unhurried. Minutes passed this way—each movement, each new sensation, given room to land and settle before she moved on.

Next was something sharper. A scratch of metal, fine and precise. It didn’t hurt, but made my nerves sit up. The edge moved across the bottoms of my feet, up my shins, around my knees, and then across my hip bones.

Then came something slung across my chest—strappy, weighted, floppy. In slow, rhythmic sweeps, it lifted and fell, lifted and fell. The movement was loose, almost lazy.

Then there was something textured, slightly prickly. It raked slowly across my abdomen, then down the outside of my thighs. My body responded with heat.

Robyn continued to apply a range of objects up and down my front body—soft and hard, smooth and sharp, heavy and light, warm and cool. She slid, stroked, dragged, scratched, and tapped, moving slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. I stopped trying to guess what object she was using, concentrating only on how it felt—how I felt. Alert. Receptive. Entirely in my skin. I was startled by how much I noticed. Each stroke was a reminder of how much I normally tuned out.

Finally, she swept something feathery—weightless, whisper-soft—across every exposed inch of my skin. This touch was so gentle it made me shiver. Fast upward strokes, quick circular motions. As she circled my breasts with impossible delicacy, a prickling current rippled up my spine and burst across my scalp, as if a fuse had been lit beneath my skin.

We are sensory beings, built to feel. Robyn’s sensate session wasn’t just about being touched—it was about discovering how much I’d stopped feeling. Like many of us, I’d been living from the neck up, the rest of my body treated like an afterthought. I’d gotten used to a kind of low-grade numbness—rushing through my days, tuning out, managing. But when touch is this slow, this deliberate, it leaves no place to hide. It coaxes sensation out of hiding, not for someone else’s pleasure, but for one’s own.

***

Somatic practitioners hold our bodies and desires without judgment. They’re willing to meet people wherever they are, whoever they are, and work with that. This doesn’t mean they’ll consent to anything they’re asked. Mutual consent is paramount. Sexological Bodyworkers operate under a strict code of ethics defined by The Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers. Touch is strictly one-way—from practitioner to client. Clients are not permitted to touch practitioners. This boundary ensures that any physical contact serves the client’s educational and therapeutic goals, maintaining professional integrity and client safety. Touch may include genital contact, but only with explicit, prior consent.

At the core is acceptance—a safe, consensual space to explore being touched. It’s a truth as obvious as it is profound, and one that sits at the center of today’s loneliness epidemic: we’re not just starved for connection—we’re starved for touch. Imagine wanting it, asking for it, and receiving it—freely, without shame. Meeting this basic human need might prevent sexual energy from being buried, twisted, or misdirected in ways that cause harm.

I’ve been so lucky in my life. As a child, I was held. Kissed. Cuddled close. It was how my mother loved. I’ve been spared the trauma of sexual violence. Horrifyingly, 1 in 3 women—and many men—have not. No gender is immune, though women bear the greatest burden. Which is why the work of healing—of reclaiming the body after trauma—is so urgently needed.

Untreated sexual trauma can fracture the connection between a person and their body. It numbs sensation, dulls vitality. Somatic practitioners help restore what was lost. They guide survivors back into their bodies—gently, patiently—so that pleasure, agency, and safety can return. The gift of healing that these trailblazing practitioners offer humanity is without equal. In my view, it borders on the sacred.

That first session with Robyn changed something in me. But it was only scratching the surface. What came next was more intimate still. Join me next week for a deeper de-armoring.

I love you.

Juliette

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