The word “table” is evocative.

Only a simple flat surface by definition, it is a place that holds much of life’s sweet and sad memories. What does it bring to mind for you?

The place where Saturday morning pancakes dripped with syrup
where formal holiday suppers spurred separation or communion
where you sat tensely across from professional rivals
where you parked your keys at the end of the day
where that inspiration hit you
where you sat stunned upon hearing hard truths
where you put your feet up and grabbed the remote
where you placed cherished or sacred objects  

For me, the table is a thing. A place. An exaltation.

My lover placed me on a table and transformed the word, changed the circuitry in my brain to strongly react when those letters are read or spoken. A massage table covered in flannel, blonde wood and purple, the table has become a phrase fraught with meaning and charged with emotion.

“Do you have any requests when we’re together,” he asks.

“I’d like you to put me on the table,” I breathe.

He knows.

He asks me questions about my intentions for our sessions—he wants my purpose, what I’m asking for, where I’m seeking from. I need to have and speak the words—to lie down with my heart full and my self present. To show up. For me, it’s not about relaxation; it is connection in an elegant form.

And I want this.

I know what is there—what the experience is capable of containing, if it’s right, and I let it.

I want to let it. I want it all.

There’s something gorgeous about relaxing into the care of a beloved. It becomes something better when it’s turned into a ritual that our minds are prepared to accept. When it’s formalized, we become more open, more able to express what we really desire.

You are symbolically placed on an altar—naked, offering your body up as a vessel, catching the devotion pouring from your lover’s hands onto your flesh. You let go and feel yourself being adored without expectation.

Warm strokes, kneading fingers, gentle caresses. The dynamic of your lover filling your heart through your body, connecting through the magic of physical contact—skin-to-skin.

The hands are ones you know intimately. The fingers and palms are the ones your body craves contact with, the ones you feel on your back as an exquisite ghost when you’re apart.

You close your eyes and feel him brushing over you—arms, legs, back—putty being pulled and molded into pleasure, into ease. His moving hands provide doorways and windows.

You have him and his love and his heart and his mind on you, melting inside you. It is a gorgeous suspension, and the beauty puts tears in your eyes.

To then switch that and have a body laid out for you, to touch how and where your mind and heart lead, is such a blessing. It is a blessing to lay hands on the form that lifts you, to give them experience and love.

The table moves from a convenient place for massage, to a sacred space of uniting.

Introducing the feeling of ritual moves the table, the experience, to a place of sacred connection and openness and discovery—of sexual trance. It’s not difficult to add these elements to change your experience of touch from your lover.

Maybe you’d like to bring this loving, intimate, transformative touch into your life. Here are some steps for getting started:

1. Sit with your partner. You can meditate together, eye-gaze—whatever allows you both to feel connected.
2. Designate a giver and receiver.
3. Provide the giver with a foundation. Openly discuss what kind of touch you want—what you want touched, what you don’t want touched. Do you want only gentle touch on your arms and legs and back? Do you want genital touching? Set expectations as to how you would like it to end—will there be penetration? Do you want to be brought to orgasm? The giver should then stay within those boundaries.
4. Remember that this is an individual experience. This is the receiver’s experience with no expectations from the giver. The giver’s task is to pour themselves out onto the table.
5. Be an active receiver. This is important. Guide the giver where touch is pleasing with words, but also in terms of breathing, movement and sound. Tranced out is good, checked out is bad. The giver needs to know what is working, and only you can tell them.
6. The receiver needs to take responsibility to ensure that they are loving, and not just enduring, the giver’s touch. Is one area of your body not enjoying that pressure? Don’t endure it until they move their hands somewhere else on their own. Your stillness does not communicate; your words can. Don’t be afraid of providing gentle, loving feedback.
7. Voice your wants and needs; state what is pleasurable for you.
8. Asking for and participating in the cultivation of your pleasure with your partner is a beautiful, empowering thing. Open yourself, lose yourself and see what is found.

 

*Isaiah from Waking Eros contributed to this vision.

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Author: Jill Kern        

Image: Flickr/Therme Loipersdorf 

Editor: Callie Rushton