What is EcoSexuality?

Have you ever made love to a thunderstorm or felt warm winds caress your skin? EcoSexuality is a growing grassroots movement with many approaches and definitions based on the individual and community. The term was coined by sex and environmental activists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkles, who developed the EcoSexual Manifesto. The view of “Earth as Mother” shifts to “Earth as Lover”. Ecosexuality offers a lens of sexuality that goes beyond gender and sexual orientation and our own bodies to include the natural elements, water, fire, earth, and air. It is a sexuality that returns us to our origins.

As I followed my own journey of sexual awakening and aliveness, my experiences of nature, tantra, yoga and somatic teachings became increasingly tied together with my own version of EcoSexuality. In various Eastern traditions, the body is viewed as sacred, as a temple for the soul. Along similar lines, a foundation of Chinese and Ayurvedic Medicine is that the body is elementally composed. And when we connect with and worship the body, we are also worshiping the earth as sacred and vice versa. I experienced my connection to nature – and its rhythms, wildness, and lusciousness – as an incredible vehicle to awaken and cultivate my life force – my sexual arousal, desire, power, and more. And it connected me more deeply to my love for and desire to protect Earth. Connecting my sexuality to nature offers a path that not only fosters my own personal and relational well-being but also supports environmental well-being.

In the face of global and environmental challenges, EcoSexuality offers some embodied solutions. In the 1970s, the field of Ecopsychology asked questions along the lines of ‘how do we get human beings, having the greatest impact on the natural world, to care about and take care of the environment? One of the answers was Identity. Human beings need to feel connected enough to take care of what they are connected to. Obviously, we are connected to Earth; our well-being at each moment depends on the quality of water, air, sunlight, and Earth that we receive. And yet, as a society (speaking from the perspective of the average Western consumer), we couldn’t be more disconnected from where our garbage goes, where our water comes from, and the soil that grows our food. And time in nature isn’t a priority or possibility for most. The Ecosexual Manifesto proposes Ecosexuality as an Identity: we are all part of, not separate from, nature. All sex is eco-sex.

This brings me to the prompt I love most: if the Earth was your finest lover, demanding you to show up fully, how would you treat this relationship with yourself, your body, and the earth? What would reciprocity and reverence look like?