Rediscovering the body through experience
For generations, modesty was a second skin. We learned to look at our bodies with suspicion, to keep them hidden, not to touch or name them. Female desire became a barely audible rumor, something intuited but not spoken. However, the body does not forget: it holds in its memory the capacity to feel, to respond, and to communicate in a language prior to words.
Sexologist Arola Poch and writer and co-founder of Yuriyana Club, Ursula Pfeiffer, invite us to recover that lost bodily dialogue. It is not about fulfilling an ideal or imitating an external model, but about reconnecting with the living experience of the body. Each woman possesses a unique geography of pleasure, a map that can only be drawn from within. Exploring, observing, breathing, feeling: simple gestures that restore autonomy and presence.
A body that feels, not that judges
“Sexuality is part of our bodily experience,” says Arola. “Our body is the vehicle to live, express, and feel. But for that, we have to know it.” This familiarity is lacking in many of us because we grew up seeing our bodies as a monitored space, rather than inhabited. While the male body was visible and celebrated, the female body remained associated with silence or shame.
Reconnecting with it implies transforming that narrative. Ursula explains it precisely: “We can read about anatomy or sex education, but the most honest source of knowledge remains one’s own body.” Theoretical information opens the mind; experience, the soul.
The erotic map: a personal geography
Creating one’s own erotic map is, as Arola suggests, an exercise in self-discovery. “It’s not just about the genital area. We have a whole body to explore, with areas that awaken pleasure in different ways. The important thing is to do it without prejudice, with curiosity.”
The map is built little by little, without haste or goals. “Sexual empowerment is not about doing everything or trying everything,” says Arola, “but about being comfortable with our sexuality.” Ursula complements: “Pleasure also requires tenderness. Listening to what the body needs and giving it time is part of the act of care.”
Knowing oneself is not seeking perfection, but intimacy. And in that intimacy, every gesture becomes a coordinate of pleasure.
Self-exploration: knowing oneself without guilt
Self-exploration is still surrounded by taboos, but it is the door to self-knowledge. “We cannot delegate to others the task of discovering what we like or what gives us pleasure,” says Arola. “Self-exploration is not selfishness: it is a practice of intimacy with oneself.”
The first step, according to both, is not physical but mental. It involves questioning the inherited voices that taught us to feel guilt. “We must ask ourselves,” Arola proposes, “if we don’t explore because we don’t want to or because we believe it’s wrong.” That question reveals the root of many blockages: a cultural history that associated female desire with danger or shame.
Exploring the body is not transgressing it. It is reconciling with it.
The layers of taboo
Behind our distance from the body there is not biology, but culture. “Traditionally,” Arola explains, “female pleasure was invisible. Relationships revolved around the man’s pleasure. The desiring woman was singled out; the silent woman was rewarded.”
That legacy still weighs, although it has changed form. Today, the mandate is no longer to be silent, but to please. Ursula summarizes it thus: “They taught us to take care of others, but not to take care of ourselves.”
The result is an imbalance that also manifests itself in intimacy: women who give, accompany, and support, but who feel disconnected from their own desire. “Thinking about oneself is not selfishness,” Arola reminds, “it is a basic necessity. If we don’t give to ourselves, who will?”
Rewriting that logic is an act of bodily justice.
The myth of obligation
Few ideas have done as much damage as that of sexual “fulfillment.” “For a long time there was talk of marital duty,” Ursula recalls. “But no one asked if a woman who feels obligated can enjoy herself.”
Arola agrees: “Obligation is the worst thing that can happen in sexuality. Desire is not born of imposition, but of freedom.”
Both emphasize that self-exploration or masturbation do not compete with life as a couple. “They are different spaces,” says Arola. “Being with myself does not distance me from the other, it brings me closer from a more conscious place.”
When pleasure is lived out of duty, the body disconnects and the mind fills with noise: I don’t like this, better not say anything, let it end soon. Recovering desire implies inner silence, trust, and presence.
Talking about pleasure: the dialogue the body deserves
A full sexuality requires communication. And talking about pleasure should not be a taboo. “The key is naturalness,” says Arola. “It’s not about presenting our erotic map as a criticism, but as an invitation.”
Ursula proposes approaching it with humor and complicity: “We can set the framework of trust and say: let’s talk about what we like and what we don’t, without judgment. Just share.”
The dialogue about pleasure does not seek to correct, but to connect. “When we share our tastes,” Arola explains, “we are not dictating what the other should do. We are inviting exploration.” True intimacy does not depend on technique, but on mutual listening.
The body that changes, the pleasure that remains
Maturity is not the end of desire, but a new way of living it. “We have been led to believe that, when the reproductive cycle ends, sexual life also ends,” Ursula reflects. “As if we only served to reproduce.”
Arola refutes it clearly: “Our sexuality does not end with menopause. It changes, but it remains a source of pleasure. There may be vaginal dryness, but solutions exist. Furthermore, sex is much more than penetration.”
Pleasure is not measured in intensity, but in connection. In maturity, sexuality gains in depth: it becomes more conscious, more serene, more authentic.
Rewriting the map
Discovering the erotic map is, ultimately, an act of freedom. There is no single correct way to explore it, only the honesty of doing it at our own pace. It requires listening, time, and tenderness; and above all, permission: permission to feel, to enjoy, to not do it if one does not wish to.
“Sex is not obligation or demonstration,” Arola summarizes. “It is play, encounter, and discovery.”
Each woman, by drawing her own map, becomes a cartographer of her pleasure. And in that process, the body ceases to be a mystery to be deciphered to finally become a home that we can inhabit with joy and presence.
Watch the complementary episode “Discover Your Erotic Map” on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/sgnRW-YQzqU
