Ecosexuality 3/3 – A Cuddly New World

by Selva (Michele Galasso) from YanezMagazine

Cont’d from Ecosexuality 2/3 – when love goes 100{a9d64f7890d157e71e6efcce19e215a5f853c7f4151cde0b7bf7aada464173f6} bio

Even as American citizen, a few years ago SerenaGaia decided to try and recreate a base in our beautiful country. I recently visited her in Vidracco, in the Turin area, where she now lives. It’s the seat of Damanhur, a controversial eco village where she has been a guest, even though she’s not an integral part of the spiritual philosophical community called “the people of Damanhur.” An English couple was visiting, with their children, the underground temples that were built here. They invited us to a non-religious circle of celebrations and songs at their home. We entered their cozy bedroom, in the attic of a finely restored cottage they were renting through AirBnB. The floor is decorated with cushions, candles, inspirational books, and musical instruments. We are joined by few other friends. In the sacred circle that is created we all sing, pray, celebrate, and open our hearts and minds, as we connect to the cosmos. People pronounce words such as underground, nature, breath, a flapping of wings. When my turn to speak comes I feel quite high, full of love. I hear myself talk about how sensual it can be to walk and wander through hills and tree-lined ridges. While the shade becomes cooler and cooler, and a suave stream flows that gives life to sweet melodies. The image is that of soft open thighs where to penetrate to meet one’s pleasure.

I decide to share one of my experiences; a vision; a feeling. One day I almost cut half the tip of my finger. Without medications or bandages, I allowed nature to take its course. I was in the Canary Islands, in the middle of a rocky cove where overlapping geological layers were visible. I was amazed to notice how those piling up layers were incredibly similar to those I observed on the healing skin on my finger. For a moment I imagined myself being a tiny, invisible bacterium in my finger’s hollow. What appeared to me as immutable rock was only an insignificant moment in the course of a thousand grandiose mutations that the earth has lived in the past and will still live in the future. Perhaps that bacterium saw my finger and thought it had always been like that, just as I had forgotten that those rocks I saw were only a snapshot of a land that also changed, but with another rhythm. It grew and cracked, it collapsed, erupted, and became submerged, before humans even put a dent to it.

Who knows, perhaps even bacteria in our bowels wake up and wonder what life choices to make. Aren’t we simple bacteria in a plant’s reproductive system? Basically we are simply called to eat their juicy fruits so as to defecate their seeds at great distances. Eat, defecate, breathe, reproduce. Simple bacteria: this is how we look from the eyes of the organisms that host us. Probably one day a comet brought the first water to earth where bacteria used to live. The comet impregnated the earth with these seeds. Bacteria, the real aliens that speak to us from the stars in our guts, are nothing more than the oldest inhabitants of this planet. And they love us.

Perhaps with other visions, Eco-sexuality too speaks about this. It speaks of an ecological relationship with our own body, of sex-toys made from recyclable materials, of nature as an erogenous space where to make love, of dialogue and sharing in dual relationships, in threesomes, and in orgiastic situations. And SerenaGaia empowers those who decide to undertake a journey that leads to the awakening of one’s consciousness through the liberation of one’s body, in union with the planet and the cosmos. A real activist of sexual liberation.

She is involved in the organization of national events by the Italian Tantra family. She has recently returned from the Angsbacka Tantra Festival, 2019, which was held in Sweden. (Tantra, an ancient mystery discipline, is about opening one’s chakras in connection with another.) She participates in and holds Cuddle Parties, which got to Italy many years ago, at least in major cities. They empower people to open up to each other, based on rules that help one feel at ease. She participates in the ISTA, International School of Temple Arts. This organization “facilitates sexual healing and a healthy attitude towards sex” through mystery and shamanic rites that place men and women in a spiritual relationship with their own bodies. She attends swingers events, and other places where one can practice free sexual expression and naturism. She does love herself, her own body and is not the very least ashamed of it.

When we meet, which happens more and more frequently since this friendship was born, we continue to chat amiably as we did that first evening in Bagniaia. By now however, after having faced together our own fears and doubts about it, it can also happen that our chatter takes place while holding hands or huddled against each other, sometimes lying down on a meadow. When conditions allow it, or we are alone in private, we also spend time naked, which we love. We cuddle, while our hands caress the beauty of each other’s scars. Our skins and bacteria meet, our hormones and pheromones dance, the oxitocin [OXT] goes up, and, simply, we speak blissfully about ourselves, about Gaia, about the stars and the world to come, which we hope will be ever more open, welcoming and cuddly.

Thanks Gaia.

you may also like reading Ecosexuality 1/3 – Meeting Gaia

#drserenagaia #GEN #RIVE #Ecosex #Ecosessuality #YanezMagazine

a co-translation into English by Dr. SerenaGaia and Selva

Ecosexuality 2/3 – When Love Goes 100% Organic

by Selva (Michele Galasso) from YanezMagazine

Cont’d from Ecosexuality 1/3 – Meeting Gaia

The Ecosex Manifesto bears the signatures of two American activists: the artist Elizabeth Stephens and her partner and wife Annie Sprinkle, a former sex worker and New York porn star. Celebrated in their awareness campaign with several colorful events, the movement basically aims at a radical change in perspectives for the paradigms that see us humans today in our relationship with Planet Earth: we basically consider ourselves its users, or, even worse, its owners. And what if instead of seeing Gaia as an object, we could see her, not just even as our mother, but rather as our lover?

To explain this, SerenaGaia talks about Metamours. Let’s say that I am in love with Michele and that Gina is in love with Michele too; then Gina and I would be metamours: we would love each by interposed person. If we love the same person, perhaps we have something in common, and maybe we could also love each other. But there is more. Gina might be able to give Michele something I can’t give him, and vice versa. If I really love Michele and I want what’s good for him, then I should be glad that Gina can take care of his happiness in areas where I cannot reach. This, if we accept polyamory, would make life more simple and would be good for all of us. Gina, Michele, and I would be united by an energy of love, with respect and attention for the others’ well being, that would bring us all together. And on this basis we could build a healthy and fuitful relationship. Gina and I could finally also get closer to each other, while we both taking care of Michele.

In this perspective then, we are all, to each other, metamours. If we imagine that Earth is our lover, we realize that no one can claim her all for themselves, and we become aware that we all already always share a partner we love and need. All of us human beings, plants, animals, spores: we all are co-lovers, all in love with Gaia herself. Among other things, as the Earth no longer is our mother, we also need to stop taking for granted that she will always reciprocate our love. Actually, like good and careful lovers, we should constantly take care of her, renew our promises and, at every moment, get her to feel the force of our love for her.

From Nature, our new partner, we can even learn a lot about love. The oxygen that leaves emanate goes into my nostrils, then passes to those of an insect, and then may return to the nostrils of my neighbor. The sun warms up everyone, without distinction: beautiful, ugly, agreeable, disagreeable. Trees and plants show their genitals gifting the world with colors, smells and beauty. A cat’s purr can heal one’s body: the cat enjoys, and their enjoyment emanates waves that harmonize our organs. To love, be loved, and to feel pleasure, to take care of oneself and of others, we discover, are not necessarily mutually exclusive things.

Another significant lesson comes, for example, from Bonobos. Based on their matriarchal structure, these primates have made sex a key to their social organization. They use it, with pleasure, and it serves also to heal and resolve conflicts. They practice with multiple partners, of their own gender and of other genders of opposite or same sex; with wide ranging erotic imagination and in a playful way. If we paid more attention to this ring in the chain of being, often considered less evolved, we could perhaps learn some good tricks about how to live in a less convoluted way.

Native Americans typically start their circles and ceremonies by celebrating “all our relationships.” We are connected to the heavens, the stars, the earth, to our ancestors, animals, plants, and all of this while we also give and receive. Mitakuye Oyasin (“everything is connected”) the Lakota Sioux people repeat like a mantra: this is their way of praying and giving thanks. Likewise, we could celebrate “all our lovers,” all our metamours, which in my case include my grandparents, whom I love and know that they love me in return. In the same way, I love plants and hills around me, my cells and my bacteria. These are all connected by a warm energetic wave of mutual love.

this article will continue next week with Ecosexuality 3/3 – A Cuddly New World

#drserenagaia #GEN #RIVE #Ecosex #Ecosessuality #YanezMagazine

a co-translation into English by Dr. SerenaGaia and Selva

Ecosexuality 1/3 – meeting Gaia

picture & article from YanezMagazine

by Selva (Michele Galasso)

I met SerenaGaia one evening at the summer gathering of GEN, Global Ecovillage Network. This year the meeting was held at La Comune di Bagniaia [the Commune of Bagnaia], in Tuscany. Between this event and the meeting of RIVE, the Italian Network of Ecological Villages, in July 2019, Bagnaia has hosted more than 1000 people. As a group, the “Piumani” are now a significant element in the event’s program and its organization. Since I am a Piumano myself, this year, I was happily one of the volunteers, or, as we call them here, “Volentieri,” a pun that plays on the meaning of this Italian word, “with pleasure”.

It was evening, after dinner, when this lady and I started chatting about a book I was reading. As we got closer, I discovered she is exactly the age of my mother, which out of respect for both ladies we won’t say. It was a very pleasant deep intriguing conversation under the moonlight. After a few hours we walked ourselves to our respective tents and we hugged for a while as a goodnight gift before parting. As I looked at the stars, while falling asleep, I thought “what a sweet, pleasant encounter.”

A constant image of her: curly white hair, sometimes with a purple-colored hair lock. Among that hair, often, a wreath of flowers. Bubbling smiles like an enthusiastic girl who, when laughing to her heart’s content, would not hide whiffs of healthy pleasure. Hands quick and clear in explaining concepts with gestures, as well as in caressing and stretching out energies when the vibration is high.

The next day I am with the leaders of the organization when she appears, in her most formal and professional demeanor, with a complaint about books she sent for her presentation which had been sent back by mistake. This way I discover she is one of the lecturers in one of the many workshops and seminars for which people from all over the world come to these events.

Dr. SerenaGaia, aka Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, whose Italian name means serene and joyful, holds a course in Ecosexuality, a quick taste of what can be more thoroughly experienced in her seminars on the Alchemy of Eco-sexual Love. One can also read about this in one of her many publications, to name just a few: Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, Gaia and the New Politics of Love, Women and Bisexuality and many others. On her site she is defined as a leader in the eco-sexual movement, as well as an expert in the ecology of love. “A world where it is safe to love is a world where it is safe to live,” she claims, and intends to create this world with her sacred activism.

By all effects an American, so much so that she no longer even feels Italian is her preferred language, she has lived in the United States for most of her life. In California she became familiar with, and supported the bisexual movement (sometimes known today as “queer”), and in Puerto Rico she was for years a university professor. And it is precisely in the USA the she joined the revolutionary movement that stands “for an ecological love.”

But who are, in short, these Ecosexuals? In fact, this neologism in quite new. if you google it you could get the idea that they are, or should I say we are, mad people having sex with trees. This kind of facile humor, which also often happens in relation to topics like pranic nutrition and other holistic practices, is a natural human defense against what is not known. Potentially very dangerous according to some, these ideas and theories take the risk of questioning everything upon which one’s life is based. Therefore they are often exposed to contempt, mockery, belittling. All it takes is a quick look at the cartoons about Darwin and his theory on the “ape man,” considered absurd in his times, at the disputes against heliocentric theories, or the disbelief around Columbus as he claimed he could reach the Indies etc. Ah ah ah. Big laughs.

Yet, as the web reassures, unlike other movements, this one, albeint rapidly growing, focuses on personal pleasure and attitude rather than protests or political ends. So, basically, “it’s okay.” What’s important, always, is for it to appear harmless enough. Or maybe not so?!

Find out next week in our next segment!

this article will continue next week with Ecosexuality 2/3 – when love goes 100{a9d64f7890d157e71e6efcce19e215a5f853c7f4151cde0b7bf7aada464173f6} bio

#drserenagaia #GEN #RIVE #Ecosex #Ecosessuality #YanezMagazine

a co-translation into English by Dr. SerenaGaia and Selva

I Fell in Love with the Piumani 2/2

a Piuman iterview to the Piumani

I Fell in Love with the Piumani 1/2, cont’d

“Yes but, in concrete, what do you all do there?”
This one is also not really easy to answer, because there are no real and exact rules. Shall we say that, by and large, given a general program, a lot of “flow” will follow. The practices are similar to those in rainbow gatherings: no alcohol or drugs, and lots of love. We all eat together, in a circle, always celebrating with songs, dances and lots of hugs. Above all, people use non-violent communication, in particular the Cycle Way style from Native Americans. Moreover, at the appropriate moments, anyone can propose workshops any kind, to share and exchange knowledge and know-how.

What I like most is the affectional company that weaves every moment together, the great value given to others and to affectivity: in other words, the “Cuddling”!

…Depth with lightness
also means a caress
it mens respecting sadness
[…]
Another custom of Piumani
is sitting not too far from each other
and consider, instead: “You know what I can do?
I can place myself next to you and then we hug.”
And with bodies tangled together,
rubbed and superkissed,
one never feels alone,
undervalued, or bored…

Suffice it to say this: every day, there must be at least two people in charge of the wake up ritual–the sveglia piumana, as they call it, because, while one plays and sings good morning, the other one goes from bed to bed to hug everyone, considering that people usually sleep together as much as possible. If this were not enough to give you the idea, another common practice is offering a welcome greeting for every group that arrives exhausted from a journey, in order to shake off a bit of the hangover from Babylon. This includes a welcoming song, stretching in pairs, five minutes of wild dancing, a group hug and a piuman greeting. At departures, when someone leaves the gathering, the offer is a hand love shower and a circle of appreciation, also from the practices of the Manitonquat’s Circle Way. In this circle everyone says something he or she appreciates about the other person, and we all know how difficult it can be to receive appreciations.

We don’t have to necessarily imagine all Hippies as all naked and promiscuous. Some follow standardized fashions and are very reserved. The Piuman philosophy of life simply tries to look at qualities instead of problems, to emphasize love and beauty (which are always present, even in defeat), and to overcome fear with trust. This is all that makes these much denigrated revolutionary, the hippies, appear so alien, blasphemous, and especially dangerous. Because in the world out there, all this power, the immense energy we have if we allow ourselves to be covered in light, if we hold hands, is deliberately denied and ridiculed. And yet it is something so simple, honest and immediate, like every child’s joy and game. The finest culture and education turns us graceful into bonsais cut especially for this society, but if we grew according to nature we would be immense trees in a virgin forest.

“Yes, but in practice …”

In practice, even if I assure you that one paper it does not render, this was the general program of a typical day at the Piumanno 2017, for example. This event was held from 12/27, 2017 to 01/04, 2018, partly at Casale dei Giganti, near Vasto, in the Abruzzi, and partly at the ecovillage Giardino della Gioia (Garden of Joy), in the Gargano peninsula in Puglia. This is where the 2020 Piumanno will also be hosted. Day Program:
07.00 awake with song and hugs
07.30 meditative walk / yoga
08.30 breakfast
09.00 activities
11.00 free time
13.00 lunch in a circle
15.00 activities
17.30 free time
19.30 dinner in a circle
21.00 evening
11.00 cuddly good night

I can also add details and anecdotes from my personal experience. For example, to me it meant a lot not to look at a watch throughout the new year’s eve, and to do without the hateful countdown of the minute to get to the firecrackers, while us Piumani in the fire clan was preparing great special effects for the bonfire, and while we were involved in a continuous ritual of passage under the stars with play, dance, fun, emotion and sacredness. Yet I do not believe in any way that I’d be able to describe why and how much I fell in love with this unapologetically piuman humanity.
So much I was involved that I can affirm, with every one of my cells, without fear, and, indeed, with a happy emotion of pleasure that “yes, I admit it, it’s true: me too, I am a Piumano!”

“there is freedom waiting for you
on the breezes of the sky
and you ask “what if i fall?”
oh but my darling
what if you fly?”

(Erin Hanson)

by Selva (Michele Galasso) from YanezMagazine

a co-translation into English by Dr. SerenaGaia and Selva

#GEN #RIVE #ecovillages #Piumani #YanezMagazine

 

Mi sono innamorato dei Piumani 2/2

Intervista Piumana a dei Piumani

continua da Mi sono innamorato dei Piumani 1/2

“Sì, ma praticamente cosa fate?”
Anche questo non è proprio immediato da comprendere, perché in fondo regole vere e proprie non ce ne sono. Diciamo che in generale, dato un programma di massima, si segue molto ‘il flow’. Le prassi sono un po’ quelle dei rainbow gathering, ovvero niente alcool o droghe, ma tanto amore. Si mangia tutti assieme, in cerchio, celebrando sempre con canti, balli e tanto ascolto. Soprattutto si applicano la CNV (comunicazione non violenta) – in particolare la via del cerchio dei nativi americani – e lo scambio di condivisione orizzontale. Inoltre, chiunque può proporre, nei momenti adeguati, workshop di ogni tipo e genere, per favorire lo scambio di conoscenze.

La parte che io preferisco di più, in assoluto, è il costante accompagnamento affettivo che lega ogni momento, il grande valore dato all’attenzione agli altri, all’affettività: in una parola la “coccoleria”!

Profondità con leggerezza
vuol dire anche una carezza
che rispetti la tristezza
[…]
Un’altra usanza del piumano
è non sedersi troppo lontano
ma pensare: “Sai che faccio?
mi metto vicino e poi l’abbraccio”.
E coi corpi aggrovigliati,
stropicciati e pluribaciati,
non ci si sente mai isolati,
sottovalutati e nè annoiati.

Basti questo: le persone incaricate del risveglio ogni giorno devono essere almeno due, perché mentre una suona e canta il buongiorno, l’altra va di letto in letto ad abbracciare ognuno (si dorme di solito il più possibile tutti assieme). Se non bastasse a rendere l’idea, altre prassi comuni fra i piumani sono il saluto di benvenuto per ogni gruppo che arriva spossato da un viaggio, per scrollarsi di dosso un po’ di postumi di babilonia, che prevede una canzone di accoglienza, stretching di coppia, cinque minuti di ballo sfrenato, abbraccio di gruppo e saluto piumano. O ancora, alle partenze, quando qualcuno lascia il raduno, la doccia di mani piumane e il cerchio di apprezzamenti (sempre dalle pratiche della via del cerchio di Manitonquat), ovvero ognuno dice qualcosa che apprezza dell’altra persona – e quanto è difficile farne, e riceverne, di apprezzamenti.

Non sono da immaginare necessariamente tutti ignudi e promiscui, i figli dei fiori. Alcuni seguono anzi le mode standardizzate e sono molto riservati. La filosofia di vita piumana prova, semplicemente, a guardare alle qualità invece che ai problemi, a sottolineare l’amore e la bellezza (che sono presenti sempre, anche nella sconfitta) a vincere la paura con la fiducia: sono queste le cose che rendono così alieni, blasfemi e particolarmente pericolosi questi tanto denigrati hippie rivoluzionari. Perché nel mondo là fuori tutta questa potenza, l’immensa energia che abbiamo se ci lasciamo ricoprire di luce, se ci teniamo per mano, viene volutamente negata e ridicolizzata. Eppure è qualcosa di così semplice, onesto e immediato, come l’allegria e il gioco per ogni bambino. La più fine cultura e l’educazione ci rendono graziosi bonsai tagliati apposta per questa società, ma se crescessimo secondo natura saremmo immensi alberi di una foresta vergine.

“Si’ ma in pratica…”

in pratica, anche se visto così concretamente assicuro che non rende affatto l’idea, questo era ad esempio il programma di massima di una giornata tipo del Piumanno tenutosi dal 27.12.2017 al 4.01.2018 in parte al Casale dei Giganti, vicino Vasto, in parte all’ecovillaggio Giardino della Gioia, sul Gargano in Puglia [dove si terra’ anche il Piumanno 2020]:
07.00 risveglio cantato
07.30 passeggiata meditativa / yoga
08.30 colazione
09.00 attività
11.00 lavori pratici e tempo libero
13.00 pranzo in cerchio
15.00 attività
17.30 lavori pratici e tempo libero
19.30 cena in cerchio
21.00 serata
23.00 buona notte piumana

Potrei certo aggiungere dettagli e aneddoti della mia esperienza personale, dire ad esempio cosa abbia significato per me non vedere per tutto il capodanno un orologio – senza l’odioso countdown e senza botti (per quanto il clan del fuoco abbia preparato grandi effetti speciali per il falò) – ed essere invece immersi in un continuo rituale di passaggio sotto le stelle tra gioco, ballo, divertimento, ma anche commozione e sacralità. Eppure non credo in alcun modo riuscirebbe a descrivere perché e quanto io mi sia innamorato di questa umanità svergognatamente piumana.
Così tanto coinvolto da poter affermare, con ogni mio gesto, senza timore alcuno ed anzi con un felice moto di piacere che sì, è vero, lo ammetto, anch’io sono un piumano!

“there is freedom waiting for you
on the breezes of the sky
and you ask “what if i fall?”
oh but my darling
what if you fly?”

(Erin Hanson)

by Selva (Michele Galasso) from YanezMagazine

#GEN #RIVE #ecovillaggi #Piumani #YanezMagazine

I Fell in Love with the Piumani 1/2

by Selva (Michele Galasso) from YanezMagazine

“I fell in love..” I’ve been saying as of late – and with whom? – people ask me
– with Piumani!
It is always difficult for me to explain who the Piumani are to those who do not know about them: as with anything else, Piumanitas should be experienced.

If I’m talking with foreigners, I also have to explain, in another language, the impossible triple pun implicit in the Italian neologism piumano, which is their name: “more human” [piu’ umani], “more hands” [piu’ mani] and, even more challenging, also a little bit “feather like” [piuma meaning feather]. Then I indulge in weaving on the latter considerations, as in, “because they know how to flutter like angels and they are cuddly like pillows”.

“Depth with lightness,” says as a motto at the beginning of their Piumanifesto, a manifesto written out as a rhymed poem:
Stop! Don’t throw it in the bin
it is a Piumani’s manifesto,
it serves to explain to those who don’t yet know
who these people are …
and, I swear, there are people who’ve learned it all by heart, just so they can, every time, answer this typical  question:
– I’m going to an event hosted by the Piumani . . .
– by what?!?

Yet nothing can explain exactly how featherlike it is to participate together. How can I manage to even help you imagine the strange alchemy of openness and exchange that can be created in that feathery atmosphere. Because the Piumani are after all very regular people: just as any other alternative freak who professes universal love, they are people who, seen in a normal context (for example in a queue at the post office), cannot be distinguished all that easily.  Maybe they tend to smile a bit more or be a bit more colorful than most, but sometimes they too have moments when they huff off and are pissed off. Some arevegan and some even tend to fruitarian raw fooders. Others, on the other hand, happily eat meat, drink, smoke, and don’t even recycle. Some are polyamorous, others less so; some live in ecovillages, others have normal work routines in big cities; some have “feathery” names, like Majid, Lapis, Kalish, others less so, like Lapo, Dinamite, Ama, Saggio, and still others are simply called Guido.

In short, describing them is not easy. One could tell of how they came to be, of how they were formed within the seasonal gatherings of the RIVE (Italian Network of Ecological Villages) where they brought a big load of joy, sharing, music, dances and abundant “hugs.”

From there they slowly began to organize themselves as a group, with the awareness that “the arrival of a good clown benefits the health of a city more than twenty donkeys loaded with medicines,” as Patch Adams reports quoting a 17th-century doctor.  This is why eventually the Piumanis decided to multiply their events and contributions to humankind.  Most of all, events worth saving the date for include Piumanno (New Year Piumani style) & Piumancamp (summer gathering Piumani style).  The upcoming Piumanno is planned for Dec 29-Jan 5, 2019-20 at the ecovillage Giardino della Gioia. For more detailed information about all upcoming meetings the reference email is piumaposta@gmail.com

Continued here next week: I Fell in Love with the Piumani 2/2

a Piuman iterview to the Piumani

a co-translation into English by Dr. SerenaGaia and Selva

#GEN #RIVE #ecovillages #Piumani #YanezMagazine